Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-31-2024

Publication Title

Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia

Volume

80

Issue

1-2

Pages

435-64

Publisher Name

Axioma - Publicações da Faculdade de Filosofia

Publisher Location

Braga, Portugal

Abstract

This essay critically re-examines Marx’s youthful analysis of the separation of church and state and his complex views about the function of rights in the modern state. I argue that Marx’s condemnation of Christian nationalism and endorsement of citizenship for Jews is consistent with his view that the modern, secular state cannot emancipate itself entirely from religiosity, as evidenced by the continuing legacy of nationalism and cultural identity politics today. Although Marx correctly follows Hegel in identifying modernity with a structural differentiation between civil society and state, I argue that he misunderstands the nature of this separation and, along with it, the relationship between private property rights, on one side, and civil, political, and social rights on the other. I conclude that Marx’s mistake resides in his failure to adhere to his own Rousseau-inspired social understanding of rights. In the final analysis, far from rejecting the deontological moral intuition underlying rights according to which individuals possess a human dignity (social nature) that merits protection, he rather upholds this idea against what he perceives to be its degradation in service to narrow sectarian self-interest, whose pursuit obstructs rather than promotes the full development of our humanity.

Comments

Author Posting © Aletheia - Associação Científica e Cultural, 2024. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Axioma - Publicações da Faculdade de Filosofia for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, Vol. 80, Iss. 1-2 (July 31, 2024), http://doi.org/10.17990/RPF/2024_80_1_0435.

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