ABSTRACT
Marx’s writings have very little to say directly about epistemology. The main theme of the few passages there are is the close relation between human ‘thinking’ or ‘theory’ and practice. It is difficult to exclude the possibility that Marx might agree with this definition, but harder still to convince oneself that he is expressing it in the second thesis on Feuerbach. Marx equates the truth of thinking with its actuality and might, and says that it is in practice that the human being must prove this actuality or might. In the equation, the emphasis is plainly on ‘actuality’, with ‘might’ as an afterthought. A new materialism which is capable of grasping sensuousness as practice requires the perspective of a new society, ‘human society or social humanity’. As with alienated religious consciousness, alienated philosophical consciousness cannot be overcome except by changing the conditions of life which are the basis of its appeal.
