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The Holy Family: Foreword

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table of contents
  1. Foreword
  2. I: "Critical Criticism in the Form of a Master-Bookbinder", or Critical Criticism as Herr Reichardt
  3. II: "Critical Criticism" As a 'Mill-Owner', Or Critical Criticism As Herr Jules Faucher
  4. III: "The Thoroughness of Critical Criticism", Or Critical Criticism As Herr J. (Jungnitz?)
  5. IV: "Critical Criticism" As the Tranquility of Knowledge, Or "Critical Criticism" As Herr Edgar
    1. 1. Flora Tristian's "Union Ouvrière"
    2. 2. Bèraud on Prostitutes
    3. 3. Love
    4. 4. Proudhon
  6. V: "Critical Criticism" as a Mystery-Monger, Or "Critical Criticism" as Herr Szeliga
    1. 1. "The Mystery of Degeneracy in Civilisation" and "The Mystery of Richtlessness in the State"
    2. 2. The Mystery of Speculative Construction
    3. 3. "The Mystery of Educated Society"
    4. 4. "The Mystery of Probity and Piety"
    5. 5. "Mystery, a Mockery"
    6. 6. Turtle-Dove (Rigolette)
    7. 7. The World System of the Mysteries of Paris
  7. VI. Absolute Critical Criticism, Or Critical Criticism As Herr Bruno
    1. 1. Absolute Criticism's First Campaign
      1. a. "Spirit" and "Mass"
      2. b. The Jewish Question No. 1: The Setting of the Questions
      3. c. Hinrichs No. 1: Mysterious Hints on Politics, Socialism, and Philosophy
    2. 2. Absolute Criticism's Second Campaign
      1. a. Hinrich's No. 2: "Criticism" and "Feuerbach". Condemnation of Philosophy
      2. b. The Jewish Question No. 2: Critical Discoveries on Socialism, Jurisprudence, and Politics (Nationality)
    3. 3. Absolute Criticism's Third Campaign
      1. a. Absolute Criticism's Self-Apology: Its "Political" Past
      2. b. The Jewish Question No. 3
      3. c. Critical Battle Against the French Revolution
      4. d. Critical Battle Against French Materialism
      5. e. Final Defeat of Socialism
      6. f. The Speculative Cycle of Absolute Criticism and the Philosophy of Self-Consciousness
  8. VII: Critical Criticism's Correspondence
    1. 1. The Critical Mass
    2. 2. The "Un-Critical Mass" and "Critical Criticism"
      1. a. The "Obdurate Mass" and the "Unsatisfied Mass"
      2. b. The "Soft-Hearted" Mass "Pining for Redemption"
      3. c. Grace Bestowed on the Mass
    3. 3. The Un-Critically Critical Mass Or "Criticism" and The "Berlin Couleur"
  9. VIII: The Earthly Course and Transfiguration Of "Critical Criticism"
    1. 1. Critical Transformation of a Butcher into a Dog, Or Chourineur
    2. 2. Revelation of the Mystery of Critical Religion, Or Fleur De Marie
      1. a. The Speculative "Marguerite"
      2. b. Fleur de Marie
    3. 3. Revelation of the Mysteries of Law
      1. a. The maître d'école, or the New Penal Theory
      2. b. Reward and Punishment: Double Punishment (with a Table)
      3. c. Abolition of Degeneracy Within Civilisation and of Rightlessness in the State
    4. 4. The Revealed Mystery of the "Standpoint"
    5. 5. Revelation of the Mystery of the Utilisation of Human Impulses
    6. 6. Revelation of the Mystery of the Emancipation of Women
    7. 7. Revelation of Political Economic Mysteries
      1. a. Theoretical Revelation of Political Economic Mysteries
      2. b. "The Bank for the Poor"
      3. c. Model Farm at Bouqueval
    8. 8. Rudolph, "The Revealed Mystery of All Mysteries"
  10. IX: The Critical Last Judgement
  11. England and Materialist Philosophy
  12. Notes

Foreword

Real humanism has no more dangerous enemy in Germany than spiritualism or speculative idealism, which substitutes "self-consciousness" or the ''spirit" for the real individual man and with the evangelist teaches: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing." Needless to say, this incorporeal spirit is spiritual only in its imagination. What we are combating in Bauer's criticism is precisely speculation reproducing itself as a caricature. We see in it the most complete expression of the Christian-Germanic principle, which makes its last effort by transforming "criticism" itself into a transcendent power.

Our exposition deals first and foremost with Bruno Bauer's Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung -- the first eight numbers are here before us -- because in it Bauer's criticism, and with it the nonsense of German speculation in general, has reached its peak. The more completely Critical Criticism (the criticism of the Literatur-Zeitung) distorts reality into an obvious comedy through philosophy, the more instructive it is. -- For examples see Faucher and Szeliga. -- The Literatur-Zeitung offers material by which even the broad public can be enlightened on the illusions of speculative philosophy. That is the aim of our book.

Our exposition is naturally determined by its subject. Critical Criticism is in all respects below the level already attained by German theoretical development. The nature of our subject therefore justifies our refraining here from further discussion of that development itself.

Critical Criticism makes it necessary rather to assert, in contrast to it, the already achieved results as such.

We therefore give this polemic as a preliminary to the independent works in which we -- each of us for himself, of course -- shall present our positive view and thereby our positive attitude to the more recent philosophical anti social doctrines.

Paris, September 1844

Engels, Marx


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