Marx, Epicurus, and the Origins of Historical Materialism

Marx, Epicurus, and the Origins of Historical Materialism PDF Author: Diego Fusaro
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781912142156
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Get Book Here

Book Description
Diego Fusaro's monograph on the influence of Epicurus on Marx's thought is multilayered. It not only explains Epicurean thought and how it impacted the young Marx, but also manages to do unto Marx what Marx did unto Epicurus. Marx employed Epicurus' critical stance toward Plato and Aristotle as an excuse, as it were, to drop not-so-subtle hints about the philosophy and politics of the Germany of his day. Fusaro, described by the influential paper La Repubblica (July 2013) as possibly the "brightest star in the Italian philosophical firmament of our times," employs Marx's critique of the German present of Marx's time to propose a critique of our own times, a critique of economic libertarianism and moral libertinism. Fusaro's underlying argument seems to be that we live in times that are nothing but Epicurean, in which dogmatic and hedonistic liberalism dominates our lives, as pensée unique. This monograph combines a twofold approach: the exoteric and the esoteric. Exoterically, it analyses of the long-ignored University dissertation of the young Karl Marx and the influences of Greek Atomism on the molding of Marx's thought system. Esoterically, or by implication, it analyses our contemporary world.

Marx, Epicurus, and the Origins of Historical Materialism

Marx, Epicurus, and the Origins of Historical Materialism PDF Author: Diego Fusaro
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781912142156
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Get Book Here

Book Description
Diego Fusaro's monograph on the influence of Epicurus on Marx's thought is multilayered. It not only explains Epicurean thought and how it impacted the young Marx, but also manages to do unto Marx what Marx did unto Epicurus. Marx employed Epicurus' critical stance toward Plato and Aristotle as an excuse, as it were, to drop not-so-subtle hints about the philosophy and politics of the Germany of his day. Fusaro, described by the influential paper La Repubblica (July 2013) as possibly the "brightest star in the Italian philosophical firmament of our times," employs Marx's critique of the German present of Marx's time to propose a critique of our own times, a critique of economic libertarianism and moral libertinism. Fusaro's underlying argument seems to be that we live in times that are nothing but Epicurean, in which dogmatic and hedonistic liberalism dominates our lives, as pensée unique. This monograph combines a twofold approach: the exoteric and the esoteric. Exoterically, it analyses of the long-ignored University dissertation of the young Karl Marx and the influences of Greek Atomism on the molding of Marx's thought system. Esoterically, or by implication, it analyses our contemporary world.

Marx’s Ecology

Marx’s Ecology PDF Author: John Bellamy Foster
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583673806
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book Here

Book Description
Progress requires the conquest of nature. Or does it? This startling new account overturns conventional interpretations of Marx and in the process outlines a more rational approach to the current environmental crisis. Marx, it is often assumed, cared only about industrial growth and the development of economic forces. John Bellamy Foster examines Marx's neglected writings on capitalist agriculture and soil ecology, philosophical naturalism, and evolutionary theory. He shows that Marx, known as a powerful critic of capitalist society, was also deeply concerned with the changing human relationship to nature. Marx's Ecology covers many other thinkers, including Epicurus, Charles Darwin, Thomas Malthus, Ludwig Feuerbach, P. J. Proudhon, and William Paley. By reconstructing a materialist conception of nature and society, Marx's Ecology challenges the spiritualism prevalent in the modern Green movement, pointing toward a method that offers more lasting and sustainable solutions to the ecological crisis.

Materialism

Materialism PDF Author: Robin Brown
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429535376
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Get Book Here

Book Description
The doctrine of materialism is one of the most controversial in the history of ideas. For much of its history it has been aligned with toleration and enlightened thinking, but it has also aroused strong, often violent, passions amongst both its opponents and proponents. This book explores the development of materialism in an engaging and thought-provoking way and defends the form it takes in the twenty-first century. Opening with an account of the ideas of some of the most important thinkers in the materialist tradition, including Epicurus, Lucretius, Hobbes, Hume, Darwin and Marx, the authors discuss materialism’s origins, as an early form of naturalistic explanation and as an intellectual outlook about life and the world in general. They explain how materialism’s beginnings as an imaginative vision of the true nature of things faced a major challenge from the physics it did so much to facilitate, which now portrays the microscopic world in a way incompatible with traditional materialism. Brown and Ladyman explain how out of this challenge materialism developed into the new doctrine of physicalism. Drawing on a wide range of colourful examples, the authors argue that although materialism does not have all the answers, its humanism and commitment to naturalistic explanation and the scientific method is our best philosophical hope in the ideological maelstrom of the modern world.

The History of Philosophy

The History of Philosophy PDF Author: Alan Woods
Publisher: Wellred Books
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Get Book Here

Book Description
Alan Woods outlines the development of philosophy from the ancient Greeks, all the way through to Marx and Engels who brought together the best of previous thinking to produce the Marxist philosophical outlook, which looks at the real material world, not as a static immovable reality, but one that is constantly changing and moving according to laws that can be discovered. It is this method which allows Marxists to look at how things were, how they have become and how they are most likely going to be in the future, in a long process which started with the early primitive humans in their struggles for survival, through to the emergence of class societies, all as part of a process towards greater and greater knowledge of the world we live in. This long historical process eventually created the material conditions which allow for an end to class divisions and the flowering of a new society where humans will achieve true freedom, where no human will exploit another, no human will oppress another. Here we see how philosophy becomes an indispensable tool in the struggle for the revolutionary transformation of society.

Oxford Handbook of Epicurus and Epicureanism

Oxford Handbook of Epicurus and Epicureanism PDF Author: Phillip Mitsis
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 0199744211
Category : PHILOSOPHY
Languages : en
Pages : 848

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume offers authoritative discussions of all aspects of the philosophy of Epicurus (340-271 BCE) and then traces Epicurean influences throughout the Western tradition. It is an unmatched resource for those wishing to deepen their knowledge of Epicureanism's powerful arguments about death, happiness, and the nature of the material world.

The Politics of Change

The Politics of Change PDF Author: W. Bonefeld
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0333993799
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book Here

Book Description
This work takes a critical view of the debate on globalization and assesses revamped versions of structuralist thought, which underpin much of the globalization discourse. In contrast to conventional views of change, the book emphasizes change as a politics of emancipation.

Marx and Aristotle

Marx and Aristotle PDF Author: George E. McCarthy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847677146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Get Book Here

Book Description
'The work is an interesting and unusual collection of writings on a subject about which little has been written.' s RELIGIOUS STUDIES REVIEW

Philosophy of the Encounter

Philosophy of the Encounter PDF Author: Louis Althusser
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789602319
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the late 1970s and 1980s, Louis Althusser endured a period of intense mental instability during which he murdered his wife and was committed to a psychiatric hospital. Spanning this deeply troubling period, this fourth and final volume of political and philosophical writings reveals Althusser wrestling in a creative and unorthodox fashion with a whole series of theoretical problems to produce some of his very finest work. In his profound exploration of questions of determinism and contingency, Althusser developed a "philosophy of the encounter," which he links to a hidden and subterranean tradition in the history of Western thought which stretches from Epicurus through Spinoza and Machiavelli to Marx, Derrida and Heidegger.

Encyclopaedia of Marxism and Education

Encyclopaedia of Marxism and Education PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900450561X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 704

Get Book Here

Book Description
This Encyclopaedia of Marxism and Education showcases the explanatory power of Marxist educational theory and practice.

The Evolution of Dialectical Materialism

The Evolution of Dialectical Materialism PDF Author: Zbigniew A. Jordan
Publisher: London ; Melbourne [etc.] : Macmillan ; New York : St. Martin's P
ISBN:
Category : Dialectical materialism
Languages : en
Pages : 520

Get Book Here

Book Description