A Research On Marx Early Religious Thought

Marx's early religious theory mainly came from the Young Hegelians religious criticism theory and Feuerbach human religion theory. The Marx's early stage statements of religious issues generally was conducted as part of the historical materialism. Furthermore, he scientifically, systematically and comprehensively expounds the theory of religious thought. Ultimately, the formation of the historical material religion brought far-reaching influences on the whole world.There are three transformation processes about Marx's early understanding of religious issues along with the constant improvement of philosophical system: from Enlightenment Deism to Idealism atheism, from Idealism atheism to Materialism atheism, from the prototype of the historical materialism to establishment of historical materialism. The three phases of transition in theory was the concentrated reflection of Marx's early theory about the origin, essence, function and the demise of religion.First of all, youth Marx achieved the transformation from the pursuit of goodness, sacred, the enthusiasm of the virtue of god into a highly self-consciousness philosophy of Epicurus, the critique of religious theology and secular state. Moreover, he also acquired the change from the deism enlightenment into idealism atheism; Then, Marx, in “Rheinische Zeitung” and “deutsch-franzosische jahrbucher” time period, paid attention to integrate the critique of religion with political criticism and social criticism. He also emphasized on combining theory with the specific practical, as well as determination the truth of this side, so that to achieve the transaction from idealism proselytizing atheism position into materialism atheism position; Eventually, Marx really realized the close contact between political economy and the historical materialism. Then, in “Economics Philosophy Manuscript in 1844”, “The outline of Feuerbach” and “German Ideology” gradually implemented the historical materialism on religion.Marx applied natural source and social source to analyze the cause of religion, used the social material production to illustrate the essence of religion, utilized the class struggles in the class society to research the function of religion, also he considered elimination the capitalist private ownership and alienated labor as the path of achieving religious ultimate demise.There are both the concreteness of history and the developmental characteristics of history in Marx's early religion theory. For the purpose of researching the Marx's early religion theory, it requires to use its theory characteristics as the basis, to contrast background of the times, and to comprehensively, practically and realistically analyze from the perspective of historical materialism. In summary, Marx's early religion theory is beneficial to our party's religious policy formulate scientifically and implement correctly in the new period.