Man must prove the truth, i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking, in practice.(Karl Marx)
The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question. (Theses of Feuerbach)
The highest point reached by contemplative materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is contemplation of single individuals and of civil society.
(Theses of Feuerbach)The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity.(Theses of Feuerbach)
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.(Theses of Feuerbach)
It has not occured to any one of these philosophers[german] to inquire into the connection of German philosophy with German reality, the relation of their criticism to their own material surroundings.
The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of the world.
By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life [...] The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.
The first form of ownership is tribal ownership[...]The second form is the ancient communal and State ownership which proceeds especially from the union of several tribes into a city by agreement or by conquest, and which is still accompanied by slavery.
[third form]this form of ownership is feudal or estate proprety.
The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life.
Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc, - real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms[...]the existence of men is their actual life-process.
In direct contrast to german philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven.
When speculation sends - in real life - the real, positive science begins.
In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.