Rethinking Marx and the Spiritual

摘要

This essay explores the “the spiritual” in Marx's thought and, in so doing, interprets that thought as an integral whole. A metalevel characterization of the spiritual, oriented toward a broad spectrum of specific modes of the spiritual, is given. Various citations from Marx's texts open up, in a preliminary way, a vista on a humanistic Marxist mode of the spiritual. Feuerbach's views on religion are examined, followed by Marx's critical appropriation of them, that construes religion as an alienated form of the spiritual that tears it away from its this-worldly home in the secular domain. An analysis of Marx's religion in “the opium of the people” passage is given—with special concern for the meanings of “imaginary flowers” and the “living flower.” The essay argues that implicit in this passage is Marx's recognition of an array of fundamental existential needs that all people have. Finally, an exposition of how each of these needs would be manifested in the specific mode of the spiritual at play in Marx's thought concretely brings it into focus.