PPESextonPhil2025

Having just studied Locke and Smith’s views on property, I was intrigued by how Marx used private property laws to explain the transition from man as a social being in society to an egoistic being. I am somewhat cynical about his description that all people act as the egoistic man does, only on self-interest and being unable to function in a community, as I believe there are some clear exceptions to this in our modern capitalist society. I will elaborate on these two thoughts in this post. According to Locke, man enters political society (and creates a social contract)  to protect his natural rights, including property. Marx argues that the political suppression of private property fails to abolish property, rather it “presupposes its existence” (33) Merely creating laws to prohibit the existence of private property, he argues, fails to eliminate it entirely. Instead, Marx believes, by suppressing this right to private property, property is still being used to separate inherently s...

To briefly clarify the misleading title, this post is not to explore whether or not Marx himself was an anti-Semite, as I cannot speak on that topic. Rather, I find it worth exploring whether or not his argument in “On the Jewish Question,” specifically his response to Bauer’s “Die Fähigkeit,” is rooted in anti-Semitic assumptions, and, more importantly, if it is, the extent at which that may discredit his argument. After our tutorial and prior to reading the passage, Professor Hurley told Gabe and I that Marx’s argument is often considered anti-Semitic and people are quick to dismiss it as purely such. However, Marx’s key takeaway is not to be overshadowed by perceived anti-Semitism: that mankind as a whole must emancipate itself from an obsession with money. (To add my own disclaimer, this was my understanding of the preface to the existing dialogue around this topic and is not to be taken as Professor Hurley’s words or thoughts on it). Marx puts forth a definition of “real and pract...

When discussing the “Jewish Question,” Marx clearly delineates the difference between political emancipation and human emancipation. In his view, political emancipation grants individuals formal legal rights, such as freedom of religion. However, he argues that this form of emancipation is incomplete because it does not address the underlying structures within society that sustain inequality. As Marx states, "To be politically emancipated from religion is not to be finally and completely emancipated from religion, because political emancipation is not the final and absolute form of human emancipation" (32). In essence, while the state might formally separate itself from religion and grant individual religious freedom, this political right doesn't prevent religion from playing a significant role in civil society and private life, potentially perpetuating social divisions and inequalities. Marx uses this example to illustrate a broader point: political rights alone don'...

The following quotation is the abbreviated version from an online PDF. I really recommend checking it out on the bottom of page 33-top of page 34. "The perfect political state... endowed with an unreal universality." pg. 33-34 First, before diving into the political philosophy of this quote, I want to endeavor to explain what made this passage stand out stylistically to me. The vividity of Marx's diction is striking--describing the double existence of man as "celestial and terrestrial." He paints the perfect political state as a grand illusion by comparing the state to heaven and civil society to earth. The passage cuts so deeply, I think, because of the duality between the political citizen and individual person described. He so perfectly points to the inherent tension of liberal political societies, and the tension he emphasizes isn't just a flaw in the system, but a deliberate function of the perfect political society.  Now, looking to what this means for...

On the Jewish Question is an essay in response to another philosopher, Bruno Bauer, who had argued that the state's separation from the church is what leads to the achievement of true freedom. Marx basically disagrees and provides an outline for a truer freedom called: human emancipation. This is framed by Marx as the ultimate end of human development, and is reached through man's discarding of religion and civil society which are simultaneously working to subject man to an oppression that stops him from recognizing the greatness of his unalienated labor, or species-being. For Marx, religion (enemy #1) is a human construct that was necessary to humanity's development, but now nothing more than a point of contention that causes struggles for (false) liberation. He writes that "as soon as Jew and Christian come to see in their respective religions nothing more than stages   in the development of the human mind ... they will no longer find themselves in religious opposit...

Karl Marx’s ‘On the Jewish Question’ explores the limitations of political freedoms. His work compares human emancipation and political emancipation. He criticizes Bauer for treating human emancipation and political emancipation as the same thing.  Marx argues that political emancipation for the Jewish community would simply regulate religion to a private manner in civil society. Marx summarizes his critique of regulating religion to civil society when saying, “the state may be a free state without man himself being a free man.”  Marx draws a parallel between religion and other forms of discrimination. For example, he discussed the property requirement for voting being removed in America. This removal did not eliminate property inequality or the general inequality between non-landowners and landowners. While this was a political emancipation for non-landowners, it did not not result in human emancipation. He seems to suggest that political emancipation is a distracting goal be...

 Marx summarized Bauer's answer to "The Jewish Question" as a theological answer. There can be no political emancipation for the Jewish people until the Christian people are emancipated from the Christian State. The political abolition of religion is needed for the emancipation of all people. That leads to the idea that the political abolition of religion is the abolition of all religion because it must retreat from the public sphere.  Marx responds to Bauer by reversing the order of emancipation. You first focus on secular political emancipation, and religious emancipation will follow. By making emancipation a secular issue, you can truly get at the failings of the state instead of just the failings of religion that the state is hiding behind. Marx points to North America as an example, where seemingly secular states have arisen. Marx points out that a secular state where religion is thriving would mean religion is not opposed to a perfect state. However, although religi...

Contrary to Bauer, Marx believes that political emancipation—which separates religion from the state and removes property and ownership requirements for political participation—does not “abolish, and does not even strive to abolish, man’s real religiosity” (35). Instead, religion is transferred from the public sphere into the private one, thus assuming its role in civil society rather than governance. As a result of this emancipation, a divide between the public and private spheres—previously nonexistent—is created. While this means that property and religion are no longer prerequisites for participation in political society, they are not abolished completely but instead function exclusively within the private sphere. Importantly, Marx emphasizes that such political emancipation does not equate to human emancipation, as liberal democracies’ focus on individual rights in the private sphere alienates citizens from their species-being and exacerbates oppression. This is because transferri...

Bruno Bauer claims, “There is no longer any religion when there is no longer a privileged religion. Take away from religion its power to excommunicate and it will no longer exist” (29). This forms the nucleus of his broader argument against Jewish emancipation, because for Bauer, political emancipation is only possible by abolishing religion from state, and secularism implies the death of religion entirely. Posited in this way, Jewish emancipation, according to Bauer, would require Jews to relinquish not only their political subjugation, but also their religious identity. This poses the same problem for Christians who enjoy the benefits of living within a Christian state.  His error here, as Marx points out, is assuming that religion is a fundamental element of state (Bauer even says, as quoted on page 29, that “the state which presupposes religion is not yet a true or actual state”). Marx cites secular North America to show that when a state emancipates itself from religion, “the ...

In his essay on religion, Marx takes the opportunity to to talk about many intertwined topics to religion, including property, self-interest, and individualism. He also develops the idea of ‘species-being,’ which means man's ability to act upon nature with his labor.  Ultimately, he illuminated that at the core of capitalism lies an unsettling contradiction: while it champions individual freedom, it simultaneously limits people and their freedoms.  Marx interestingly begins his conversation on individualism with his explanation of property: “The right of property is, therefore, the right to enjoy one’s fortune and to dispose of it as one will; without regard for other men and independently of society. It is the right of self-interest” (42). Here, individualism is not about personal freedom but about property and self-interest—prioritizing the accumulation of wealth. This idea is central to capitalism, where success is often framed as an individual pursuit based on merit, with ...

Hobbes and Locke both discuss the inherent equality and freedom of people in the State of Nature to act as they want (within the bounds of the laws of nature they provide). However, I was immediately struck by their contrasting views on how people in the SoN reason. I view the Hobbesian SoN (before the introduction of a sovereign) as a prisoner’s dilemma due to the “three principal causes of quarrel” he describes, which provide different outcomes/benefits for people.  These are competition, diffidence, and glory, which all stem from his outcome-centered account of reason where he argues that the natural equality of man leads to forming enemies in the pursuit of self-preservation. In competition and, separately, in the pursuit of glory, one man is often killed by another, an outcome less optimal than a murderless state in which all men achieve their ends of self-preservation. Because Hobbes argues that these quarrels are inherent to the SoN, but cooperation between people in such a ...

     In the Prisoner's Dilemma, we are presented with a hypothetical which explains that without systems of trust, or an authority to enforce cooperation, rational individuals are incentivized to act in their own self-interest, even if it leads to a worse outcome for everyone. In Hobbes's Leviathan, the State of Nature becomes a State of War, where at the risk of being attacked by someone else, no one lowers their weapons.  I believe that Hobbes’s solution to this chaos aligns with the core idea of resolving the dilemma: an authority (the sovereign) can enforce cooperation by imposing consequences, ensuring that individuals act to benefit the whole.      There is also an overarching importance of authority in Locke's work. First, he establishes the State of Nature as conditional on lacking authority: "Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature"(15). ...

     Hobbes presents a compelling structure for how individualistic pursuits can lead to the formation of societies due to the shared binding to the first natural law: "a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life or taketh away the means of preserving the same, and to omit that by which he thinketh it may be best preserved" (Hobbes, 79). In needing to preserve one's own life above all else, individuals willingly sacrifice the complete freedom that they enjoyed in the state of nature. From there, groups of people can develop more advanced systems of contracts and covenants that are reinforced by the increased repercussions for injustice. Rather than solely fearing the power of those they directly harm, offending individuals have to account for the revenge and mistrust of the society that they rely on to protect their life. And while he acknowledges that there are limits to this fear — the need to lock our doors at night given as an example — his theory p...

 Is Hobbes' state of nature a prisonners' dillema?  A prisoners' dillema is an economic game wherein two players are faced with the choice to cooperate for a mutually split benefit or betray the other prisoner for a greater individual benefit. The catch is that if both prisoners choose to betray, they will both receive a poorer outcome than if they were to cooperate. The dillema is that the prisoners are unable to reach the mutually beneficial cooperative outcome because they can not trust that the other prisoner will uphold their cooperation and not betray. Hobbes' describes the creation of a contract as voluntarily giving up ones right of nature, either by renouncing or transferring it. This contract then grants its member parties an obligation to not hinder one another and a duty to not void the contract voluntarily entered, either of which being an injustice to the other person. As explained by Hobbes, the strength of a contract's bond is largely in the conseque...

  For Hobbes, why does he think that we will keep the contract that we make to leave the state of nature?  If it is motivated entirely by our pursuit of our own benefit, won’t we have reasons to violate it in any case in which adhering to it is not to our own benefit?  If so, won’t the contract fail?  His answer to the “Foole” seems to be crucial to his response to such challenges.   Defined by Hobbes, covenants are the foundation of cooperation and society, requiring individuals to trust one another despite the risk of betrayal. Hobbes’ answer to the Fool focuses on the idea that notions of right and wrong (justice and injustice) arise only with this establishment of covenants to leave the state of nature. That is to say, to break a covenant is to create injustice as doing so would undermine the very foundation of the society that was created for mutual benefit. Hobbes goes further by highlighting how, if motivated by our pursuit of our own benefit, we attempt ...

Both Hobbes and Locke view equality as a foundational aspect of their respective definitions of the state of nature. They also both acknowledge the role of religion within the state of nature. The extent to which they intertwine religion and equality helps me make more sense of how they reach different conclusions about the state of nature.      Hobbes views God as an enforcer of oaths but that's about it. When speaking about the incentive of going to heaven Hobbes says "There being but one way imaginable, and that is not breaking, but keeping covenant". He counters any argument that the influence of heaven is an additional incentive besides preserving one's life, by arguing that there is no natural knowledge of life after death, so heaven can't be a reasonable motivation. Similarly, religion doesn't play a role in his arguments about equality. They instead seem to be based on observation "Nature hath made men so equal...when all is reckoned together, the...

Hobbes starts with a broad definition of a “right” as “the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature” (79). From this, a contract is a “mutual transfer” of this right between men. But, distinct from a contract is a free-gift , as this is a “not mutual” transfer. But is it not true that the acceptance of a free-gift implies a mutual agreement between both parties? Just as both parties opt into a contract, both parties opt into a free-gift. The giver will only offer a free-gift if the “friendship or service” or “magnanimity” he may receive is in his own self-interest (82). The recipient will only accept the free-gift if possession of it benefits his own self-interest. Neither has entered the transfer until both have consented to it, and both will only consent to it if it is in their own self-interest. Therefore, the transfer is mutual. By this definition, Hobbes assumes that all free-gifts will be accepted. But what if accepti...

     Hobbes argues, to the end of pushing for a unitary and ultimate sovereign, that man’s state of nature is a constant state of war. This is because any period of time where each man is only secure by way of his own strength/possessions (which is the Hobbesian state of nature), man will constantly be disposed to fight for the sake of his own security or gain. If this is true, it’s a compelling (in fact, imperative) reason to join civil society, even under Hobbes’ ideal of an absolute higher power in the commonwealth. Locke’s picture of the state of nature doesn’t initially necessitate the need for such a sovereign, because it was possible (prior to the formulation of money) for the state of nature to be a state of peace.      As I understood it, the reason why Locke and Hobbes differ here is because of their contrasting views on property and possession in the natural state. For Locke, the most intuitive form of property is yourself: “every man ...

 In Hobbes’ Leviathan, Hobbes argues that in a state of nature, where there is no central authority, humans exist in a state of war and conflict. To escape the state of nature, individuals must consent to a social contract, or covenant, and a central authority must be established. The central authority is essential as it compels individuals to adhere to the contract since the “terror of some punishment” from such central power “is greater than the benefit” expected by breaching the covenant (89).   The Fool argues that since humans are inherently self-interested and responsible for their own survival, it can be rational for individuals to break the covenant if doing so better serves their individual interests. For example, breaking the agreement, or injustice, can align with reason if it allows an individual to ignore the criticisms or power of others. If the covenant is broken, the state of nature and state of war will persist.  As part of his response to the Fool,...

Within the Hobbesian framework, the natural condition of man is one of "war." This state of contention is manifested from the inherent equality of man. Given this equality, superiority between individuals becomes marginal, and as Hobbes characterizes human nature by an avarice wherein "if any two men desire the same thing... they become enemies," we are left with a natural state of violence and competition. (Paradoxically) Within this violence, man searches for peace out of fear for his individual life (The first of nineteen fundamental natural laws that Hobbes outlines). The pursuit of this peace is not rooted in the maintenance of a "state of freedom" that Locke, for example, outlines, but rather it is purely from a place of self-preservation. The commonwealth is positioned in such to provides us with the required contract to assure this self-preservation. We don't seek its establishment toward the end of some common good. The commonwealth, and the a...

For Hobbes, a contract is when a right is “mutually transfer[ed].” There are certain situations which make a contract invalid, such as a contract formed under torture. Such a contract terminates either by performing the transfer or being forgiven (aka released from the agreement by the party who already transferred their right). To break a contract otherwise is to be unjust or perform an injustice . However, the concept of injustice only exists within a commonwealth. Prior to the formation of a commonwealth, all men have a right to all things. Hobbes believes that a higher power (such as a commonwealth) must exist in order for a contract to be followed through by both individuals. The higher power punishes people for being unjust. Without such a power, people will violate their contracts for their own benefit. People fear the higher power’s punishment thus will be compelled to follow their contracts.  A fool may say that reason guides men to break their contracts or rebel against ...