Ask yourself how you arrive at that question.

Ask yourself whether

your question does not arise from a point o f view to which I cannnt
reply because it is an absurd one ? . . . I f you ask a question about the
creation o f nature and man you abstract from nature and man. You
suppose them non-existent and you want me to demonstrate that they
exist. I reply: give up your abstraction and at the sam e time you abandon
your question. O r else, i f you want to maintain your abstraction, be
consistent, and i f you think o f man and nature as non-existent, rhink o f
yourself too as non-existent, for you are also man and nature. D o not
think, do not ask me any questions, for as soon as you think and ask
questions your abstraction from the existence o f nature and man
becomes meaningless.**

This peculiarly emphatic passage is typical o f M arxs

attitude to all prima philosopkia, and once again makes plain
his main concern. Questions directed to the pre-human and
pre-sodal existence o f nature should not be posed abstract
ly ; in each case they presuppose a definite stage o f the
theoretical and practical appropriation o f nature. A ll
putatively primeval substrata are always already involved
with what is supposed to emerge from their activity, and are
for precisely tb it reason by no means absolutely primeval.
T he question o f the act o f creation *4 o f man and nature is
therefore less a metaphysical than a historico-sodal question:
In th a t. . . for socialist man the whole o f what is colled world history is
nothing but the creation o f man by human labour, and the em ergence
o f nature for m an, he therefore has die evident and irrefutable p roof o f
his self-creation, o f his own process oforigination. Once the essen tially
o f man and o f nature, man as a natural being and nature as a human
reality, has become evident in practice, and sensuously, the quest fo r
an alien being, a being above nature and man (a quest which is an
avowal o f the inessentiality o f nature and man) becomes im possible in
practice.**

M arxist atheism, which is basically post-atheist, is

against any devaluation o f man and nature.** For idealism ,
the supreme being is G o d ;Jo r jh e materialism which is
identical with humanism, it is man. T he concept o f G od is
the most abstract expression o f domination, always com
bined with the dogmatic assertion that the world has a total,
uniform ly spiritual meaning. I f G od exists, revolutionary
man no longer comes into the picture as the maker, not adm ittedly - o f a world meaning, but o f a meaningful social
whole in which each individual is uplifted and honoured. It