Thought and reality in Marx's early writings on ancient philosophy

Schuringa, Christoph (2022) Thought and reality in Marx's early writings on ancient philosophy. European Journal of Philosophy, 30 (4). pp. 1518-1532. ISSN 0966-8373

Abstract

There is little agreement about Marx's aims, or even his basic claims, in his Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy and Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature. Marx has been read as an idealist, or as a materialist; as praising Epicurus, or as criticizing him. Some have read Marx as using ancient philosophers as proxies in a contemporary debate, without demonstrating how he does so in detail. I show that Marx's dialectical reading of Epicurus's atomism aims at transcending the dichotomy between idealism and materialism; that on Marx's reading Epicurus deserves praise for thinking through atomism to its “highest” conclusion, but criticism for not embracing this conclusion; and that Marx's intervention in contemporary debates takes the form of revealing a dialectical relationship between “liberal” and “positive” philosophers. I conclude that the importance of these texts is to be located in their original stance on the problematic of the relation of thought to reality, common to what Marx finds in ancient philosophy and in his contemporary environment.

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Official URL:	https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12775
Item Type:	Article
Disciplines:	Humanities > Philosophy
Depositing User:	Christoph Schuringa
Date Deposited:	07 Aug 2023 10:54
Last Modified:	28 Jan 2025 18:21
URI:	https://nul.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/473

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