Faith And Marx’s View Of Faith

The paper begins with the question”Has Marx talked about faith?”,and then explores faith in Marx’s writings,where young Marx took "real people" as the mainstay,and for the first time used "passion" to refer to his faith of "working for the welfare of mankind".In fact,faith is not typical of religion,but a universal human right,and even a spiritual practice.Comparatively speaking,in Chinese and western contexts,faith is mostly attached to religion,which seems detached from human reality.Although faith mentioned in the early Marx’s works is largely associated with religion,it does not mean that it is only confined to the religious field.Marx talks about what are”real people” in essence,which is a metaphysics based on reality,but more than reality.In other words,it is a faith that exists because of its believers,caring for and transcending reality.In this sense,Marx has since been engaged in critical reviews,among which his critiques of religion,and philosophy of law,and money,suggest the three forms of alienated faith of“real people”.In other words,faith covers the three aspects: religion,philosophy of law and money.And yet,the alienation of faith is caused by the deviation of real people’s values from human reality.On the one hand,such external restraints as monarchy,private ownership,and alienated labor,have rendered people frustrated with reality.On the other hand,the intrinsic restraints,such as the complex of "fearing death and wanting to survive" and the obscuration of subjectivity,have made them spiritually confused.Between reality and ideal,a personal faith always exists in "human reality",and its power can be felt with human subjectivity.Finally,the disenchantment of alienated faith requires us to reconstruct the subjectivity of "real people" from the sum of social relations:material subjectivity,the spiritual subjectivity,and the subjectivity of the union of free people.All this aims to give faith something to support,and then make it a spiritual force to change the world.The alienation of faith shows that everyone has the right to pursue faith.Only by transcending the criticized alienation of faith,and building a true faith,can we gain lofty sincerity,return to the real humanity,and thus leave modern society with disenchanted values.