The Doctoral Thesis of Karl Marx
In 1839, marx, still int berlin, began writing
a doctoral thesis wich would help him to ge ajob as auniversity lecturer.
Pressure from his friend Bruno Bauer, quarrels with his family, his engagement
to Jenny v. Westhalen and the consequent need to obtain ajob quickly, made marx
present his thesis in ahurry and he obtained his degree in absentia from the
university of jena in april 1841. The title of the thesis was the differnce
between democritus and eficurus philosophy of nature. Many of marx’s young hegelian
colleagues were intersted in this post –aristotelian Greek philosophy, both
because it seemed to them to present the same problems as confronted pos
–hegelian philosophy and also because it was the intelectual climate in which
christianity started –and religion was a constant subject of debate among the
Young Hegelians.
The body of marx’s thesis is of little
interst: it consists of a criticism of those who equated the natural
philosophies of democritus and epicurus and a catalogue of the differences between
these philosophies. Marx’s attacke democritus’s mecahistic determinism and
praised epicurus for introducing the idea of spontaneity into the movement of
the atoms. The following extracts come from the far more intesting degressopms
interspersed between the notes and deferences and no doubt intended to be
incorporated into a revised and enlarged version of the thesis for publication.
Marx’s starting-point in these digressions is hegel’s philospophy of history,
which hi intended to revise and push
further. The extracts develop the problem raised by marx’ letter to his father:
what is the philosopher’s task after the seductive solution to the problem of
the relationship of the real to the retional as offered by hegel? Marx’s
answer, couched in reather obcscure and abstract language, is that Hegel has to
be radically rethought and put on a new basis, a basis tha will involve the
disappearance of philosophy at the same time as its realization. For the
function of philosophy is to criticize exiting rality and make the gap between
the ideal and the ral intorelable. Marx also introduces here the notion of
praxis, though as yet in an idealistic form.
Taken from Refleksi: Jurnal Kajian Agama dan Filsafat, vol. Ix, no. 1 (Ciputat: Fakultas Ushuluddin dan Filsafat, UIN Syarif Hidayatulllah Jakarta), 2007: 8-9, h.1
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