Brian Hamilton-Vise

Marxist thoughts on original sin

Following up the other day’s post on original sin, here are a couple ideas I’ve run across in my weekend reading–one from Karl Marx himself, the other from Erich Fromm writing on Marx. Marx just gives us another reason to have a problem with the traditional doctrine of original sin:

bq. Let us not begin our explanation [of the system of alienation], as does the economist, from a legendary primordial condition. Such a primordial condition does not explain anything; it merely removes the question into a gray and nebulous distance. It asserts as a fact or event what it should deduce, namely, the necessary relation between two things; for example, between the division of labor and exchange. In the same way theology explains the origin of evil by the fall of man; that is, it asserts as a historical fact what it should explain. (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1st man., XXII; pp. 94–5 in Fromm)

All I take from this little quote is that the doctrine of the fall as it’s usually invoked–in order to explain human sinfulness by reference to some other, earlier human sin–has “always already” been broken, since it doesn’t actually explain anything. The fathers, at least, are usually aware of this. Their common appeal to some hidden sin that precedes the eating of the apple (which would in the same sense “explain” that sin) is a tacit admission that no single historical sin can explain all the sinfulness that follows. What we’re referring to in the doctrine of the fall, rather, is the “uncaused cause” of sin, which is to say, its utter mysteriousness. But in the way the doctrine is usually used, what Marx says is exactly right. If we want to talk helpfully about greed or vengefulness or lust, it’s no good to say that Adam once ate an apple that he shouldn’t have; we have to depend on concrete social facts. A robust doctrine of the fall will do more than refer to some very old sin; it will explain the structural reality of our intransigence.

Fromm does more than critique; he might actually provide a way forward:

bq. Man, before he has consciousness of himself, that is, before he is human, lives in unity with nature (Adam and Eve in Paradise). The first act of Freedom, which is the capacity to say “no,” opens his eyes, and he sees himself as a stranger in the world, beset by conflicts with nature, between man and man, between man and woman. The process of history is the process by which man develops his specifically human qualities, his powers of love and understanding; and once he has achieved full humanity he can return to the lost unity between himself and the world. This new unity, however, is different from the preconscious one which existed before history began. It is the at-onement of man with himself, with nature, and with his fellow man, based on the fact that man has given birth to himself in the historical process. (Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man, §6, pp. 64–5)

This could, perhaps, provide a way of rethinking death–of acknowledging to some extent its apparent goodness within the whole natural order, without ceasing to recognize the way in which human death is evil. One could piggyback off Herbert McCabe’s idea (that Marxist scoundrel) that human death is uniquely atrocious, since in that case alone nature takes away more than she had originally given.

26 April 2009 | Comments (1)
Tags: Karl Marx, Original Sin