On the Jewish Question
Overview
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, written in 1843, and first published in Paris in 1844 under the German title Zur Judenfrage in the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher
Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher
The Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher was a journal published in Paris by Karl Marx and Arnold Ruge. This is where Marx had published his On The Jewish Question. It was created as a reaction to the censorship of the Rheinische Zeitung. Only one issue, a double number, appeared in February 1844...
. It was one of Marx's first attempts to deal with categories that would later be called the materialist conception of history
Historical materialism
Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history, first articulated by Karl Marx as "the materialist conception of history". Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans...
.
The essay criticizes two studies by fellow Young Hegelian, Bruno Bauer
Bruno Bauer
Bruno Bauer was a German philosopher and historian. As a student of GWF Hegel, Bauer was a radical Rationalist in philosophy, politics and Biblical criticism...
on the attempt by Jews to achieve political emancipation
Political emancipation
Emancipation is a broad term used to describe various efforts to obtain political rights or equality, often for a specifically disenfranchised group, or more generally in discussion of such matters...
in Prussia. Bauer argued that Jews can achieve political emancipation only if they relinquish their particular religious consciousness, since political emancipation requires a secular state
Secular state
A secular state is a concept of secularism, whereby a state or country purports to be officially neutral in matters of religion, supporting neither religion nor irreligion. A secular state also claims to treat all its citizens equally regardless of religion, and claims to avoid preferential...
, which he assumes does not leave any "space" for social identities such as religion.
