Online research in philosophy

This volume gives a broad and accessible account of Marx's philosophy and emphasizes his relationship to Hegel.

For a long time, under the influence of traditional Western philosophy, Orthodox interpreters have distorted Marx’s philosophy as the ontology of matter, thereby concealing the essence of Marx’s philosophy, and eliminating the fundamental difference between Marx’s philosophy and traditional philosophy. This paper proposes that Marx’s philosophy is not the ontology of matter, but on the contrary, by examining the ontology of matter, Marx put forward his own ontological theory, i.e., the ontology of the praxis-relations of social production, by which Marx linked the realms of phenomenon and essence, revealing the content and essence of his philosophy.

No one would dispute that it is impossible to understand the intellectual and political history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries without taking Karl Marx (1818-83) into account. Most believe, however, that Marx‘s legacy was buried once and for all in the rubble of the Berlin Wall. This consensus is mistaken. It would be foolish to assert that Marx anticipated the correct answer to every significant question facing us today. But it would be no less foolish to deny that Marx‘s work presents a powerful challenge to contemporary political philosophy.

From the point of view of the development of Chinese Marxist philosophy, this paper comprehensively analyzes the current phenomenon of “Return to Marx” by pointing out: (1) the phenomenon of “Return to Marx” meets the need to reconstruct ideology during the time of social change in China and it is a theoretical manifestation of the shift from planned economy to market economy in China; (2) the phenomenon of “Return to Marx” embodies the academic path of the past ten years of Chinese Marxist philosophy; (3) the phenomenon of “Return to Marx” places too much emphasis on logic while too little emphasis on history. This understanding, the epistemological root of “Return to Marx”, has caused the negative effect and is also worth our attention and further study.

This article presents a new interpretation of Marx's dialectical method. Marx conceived dialectics as a method for constructing a model of society. The way this model is developed is analogous to the way organisms develop according to the German embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer, and, indeed, Marx's theory of capitalism hinges on the same concept of Organisation that is found in teleomechanical biology. The strong analogy between pre-Darwinian biology and Marx's structure of argument shows that the analogy often supposed to exist between Darwin and Marx is not relevant to Marx's theory of capitalism.

Combining Marx's focus upon the totality (and its appearance as capitals in competition) with specific applications in political economy, 'Following Marx' ...

The fall of the Berlin Wall had enormous symbolic resonance, marking the collapse of Marxist politics and economics. Indeed, Marxist regimes have failed miserably, and with them, it seems, all reason to take the writings of Karl Marx seriously. Jonathan Wolff argues that if we detach Marx the critic of current society from Marx the prophet of some never-to-be-realized worker's paradise, he remains the most impressive critic we have of liberal, capitalist, bourgeois society. The author shows how Marx's main ideas still shed light on wider concerns about culture and society and he guides the reader through Marx's notoriously difficult writings. Wolff also argues that the value of a great thinker does not depend on his or her views being true, but on other features such as originality, insight, and systematic vision. From this perspective, Marx still richly deserves to be read. Why Read Marx Today? reinstates Marx as an important critic of current society, and not just a figure of historical interest.

Introduction -- Marx and postwar French philosophy -- A writer full of affects : Marx through Lyotard -- Messianic without messianism : Marx through Derrida -- The history of the present : Marx through Foucault -- Becoming revolutionary : Marx through Deleuze -- Marx through post-structuralism.

A programmatic excursus -- Marx's incomplete quest -- The works of Hegel that Marx knew -- Marx's mis-reading of Hegel -- Marx's method.