How Did Marx and Engels Critically Transcend Feuerbach’s Sensible Intuition?

Abstract

In Section 41 of Feuerbach’s Principles of the Philosophy of the Future , three forms of sensible intuition are discussed, which attracted the attention of Marx and Engels and is centrally reflected in their co-authored work The German Ideology . Among these, the references to “higher philosophical intuition” and “the highest intuition” in The German Ideology have sparked lively debate among Chinese scholars. Through a comparative analysis of the texts of Marx, Engels, and Feuerbach, we find that “higher philosophical intuition” is Marx and Engels’ generalization of the highest form of sensible intuition in Feuerbach, specifically referring to the intuition of art, religion, and thought as pointed out by Feuerbach himself in Principles of the Philosophy of the Future. Marx and Engels’ method of observing the external world did not discard intuition; rather, their transcendence over Feuerbach’s sensible intuition lies in their establishment of: an empirical intuition rooted in historical materialism, an active intuition grounded in practical materialism, and a dialectical intuition imbued with materialist dialectics.