Shift in Marx and Engels’ historical materialism perspective

Abstract

Marx and Engels were not born as natural historical materialists, and their historical materialism arose on the basis of criticizing Hegelian idealism and Feuerbachian humanistic materialism. In The German Ideology, they first expounded the concept of historical materialism and systematically and elaborately discussed its basic principles, thereby realizing a great transformation in the history of philosophy. This paper selected Marx and Engels’ criticism of Feuerbachian humanistic materialism to illustrate their transcendence of Feuerbach and the birth of historical materialism, thus deepening our understanding of this issue.