| This question <42|42> overall <37|39> Rugdoctor: <622|140>. graded A– |
| Question 99: Why did God create something as imperfect as nature and humans? (And what does this have to do with the topic at hand?) Compare chapter 1 in Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence. |
| [38] Rugdoctor: Hegel claimed that things only exist because of their properties, that it is these properties that brought about the existence of the thing. Or in other words, if there are properties, then exists something. Marx, however, concludes the opposite. He says that existence is immediate, and that determinate being is mediated, or that the inner traits and usefulness of the thing are brought out, through labor, for human purposes. |
| Marx makes perfect sense here. We already know that the use-value of a commodity is the menu of possible uses of that commodity. If use-values are contained within the physical properties of an object, then it must be humans who create those use-values, taking those things which exist, capturing their properties within them, and using them to their advantage. If labor is necessary to bring about these properties, then it is not reasonable to think that the properties could be the driving force behind the existence of something. |
| If God is perfect, it seems logical that he would create something perfect. According to Marx, these things (humans and nature) already existed, and their properties were simply brought out as their useful properties were discovered. Humans' and nature's imperfections possibly are not creations of God, but were realized after their creation, or existence, as labor brought out these hidden properties for their use-values. If Hegel was right, God could have harnessed those perfect properties, and the existence of his creations, being mediated by those perfect properties, would continue in their perfection. Obviously, they do not, and one can realize through the ideas of Marx how God could have created something perfect, even humans and nature, that would lose their perfection through the realization of their use-values and the mediation of their determinate beings, not by God, but by humans, for their own purposes and desires. |
|
|
|||||