KARL MARX COMO PATRIMÔNIO DA HUMANIDADE: ENTREVISTA COM DAVID MCLELLAN

Entrevista com o Cientista Poítico David McLellan, Professor Emérito da University of Kent (Inglaterra). McLellan é considerado um dos principais biógrafos, comentadores e tradutores de Marx e de sua obra no mundo anglófono. É autor de vários livros sobre Marx e o marxismo, entre eles destancam-se The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx (1969); Marx antes do marxismo (1970); Karl Marx: vida e pensamento (1973) e Marxism and e Religion (1987).

Whither Transcendence? Immanence and Critique in The Self-Emptying Subject

This paper engages Alex Dubilet’s The Self-Emptying Subject: Kenosis and Immanence, Medieval to Modern and his account of immanence and kenosis as exhibited in his reading of Hegel’s concept of Entäußerung [externalization]. Specifically, I focus on the “problematic of desubjectivation” that centers Dubilet’s critique of transcendence and its relationship to subjection and subjectivity. I reconsider the relationship made between this problematic, the ethics of kenosis, and the concept of immanence so as to demonstrate the ways in which Dubilet attempts to depart from transcendence, subjectivity, and their concomitant ethics. In particular, I consider his reading of Hegel’s concept of Entäußerung and its similarities to the Young Hegelians’ understanding of this concept. My reading of Dubilet suggests that while he seeks to depart from transcendence, he reintroduces transcendence through the “problematic of desubjectivation” and its relationship to kenosis. In conclusion, I question the philosophical import of immanence in contemporary critical inquiry and why its conceptualization is often positioned in opposition to transcendence.

Understanding Marx's Concept of Justice

Did Marx's critique of capitalism involve a concept of distributive justice? This question arose in a dispute that started in the 1970s, based on the argument by U. S. analytical Marxist Allen Wood. The dispute lasted for decades, and spread to China. But if we follow Marx's thinking, we see that this controversy already appeared then, in Marx's critique of capitalism. Marx's theory formed in response to the viewpoints of the Young Hegelians, the National Economists, and others. Some key points of the dispute can be clarified by tracking Marx's critical thought, from the standpoint of both its historical and its normative dimensions, juridical judgment and value judgment, the theoretical dimension and the dimension of reality. The research draws in particular on the text of the new MEGA.

The Rogue’s Gallery

This chapter treats Strauß’s Streitschriften, his chief polemical writing against the first critics of Das Leben Jesu. These critics came from many quarters, from young Hegelians to orthodox pietists and Lutherans. The Streitschriften are very revealing about Strauß’s ambivalence on certain issues, viz., whether the dogma of Christ’s resurrection was necessary for Christianity; they also show that Strauß held out the possibility of an allegorical interpretation of the Bible. The Streitschriften are most interesting about the reasons for Strauß’s allegiance to criticism and the authority of reason. Here we see why Strauß believed that critique was essential for religious belief.

A POLITICS WITHOUT COMPROMISE: THE YOUNG HEGELIANS AND POLITICS

This article aims at exploring how most of the Young Hegelians came toreject all forms of compromise. It will first show how Young Hegelianism itself wasborn from a process of radicalisation. Then, it will expound some of the theoreticaldevelopments that this process produced and explain why and how all forms ofcompromise came to be rejected. For Young Hegelians, a compromise is an antidialecticalposition. It consists in the adoption of a median posture, which does notcorrespond with a real mediation. It is a way of deflating conflicts and, moreprecisely, to avoid the oppositions at work in history being unveiled in their purity.

The Reinvention of Our Language. "material" = woman.

The analysis of an SMS sent by a former Director of the IMF servesas the basis for a wider study on the many ways in which the elites ofour days – be it the “old” of the financial or the “new” ones from thetechnological world – successfully define and redefine our language,and hence our thoughts. In the days of Marx and Engels, the critic ofdominant ideology meant primarily a critic of the philosophical estab-lishment (Hegel and the Young Hegelians), at a time when philosophyreigned supreme amongst disciplines. But, our days are not theirs :they present us with particular challenges, when makers of ideas (e.g.professors of economics at various leading educational institutions) aresimultaneously, or successively Directors of international institutions,Ministers of Economy, leading financiers and investment bankers orquantitative analysts; the same who were, and continue to be for allthose not mentioned here, involved in various crises – be it financialor otherwise (political, social, etc.) – worldwide.

Hess, Moses (1812–75)

Hess was a socialist philosopher, closely connected with the Young Hegelians, who influenced the initial philosophical development of Karl Marx, and later articulated, in the context of a critique of European bourgeois society, one of the first calls for the re-establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine.

3. From God to money

The Young Hegelians, including Bauer and Feuerbach, saw religion as the alienated human essence, and sought to end this alienation through their critical studies of Christianity. ‘From God to money’ explains how Marx then went on to transform Hegel’s ideas and methods. Marx’s ideas at this stage were liberal rather than socialist, thinking that a change in the state of consciousness was all that was needed. A shift to his emphasis on the material and economic conditions of human life was to come later, initially in his essay ‘On the Jewish Question’ (1843). Marx insisted that it is neither religion nor philosophy, but money that is the barrier to human freedom.

Dandy Socialism

‘It was a dark and stormy night...’ with these words Edward Bulwer-Lytton began his 1830 novel Paul Clifford. ‘Le 13 décembre 1838, par une soirée pluvieuse et froid’ are the words with which Eugène Sue begins his novel The Mysteries of Paris, its narrative following a ‘conceptual’ introductory address to the reader. There are many more features connecting these two popular literary pieces of the Romantic period. In-between, a new genre emerged – the melodramatic social(ist) novel – together with new means of communication, i.e. the novel feuilleton that was printed in daily newspapers. This subtle form of censorship suggests that a genre believed to be melodramatically mediocre had an excessive aestheticopolitical attractiveness. Eugène Sue was a star writer of nineteenth century bestsellers novels–feuilletons during the period between the two revolutions of 1830 and 1848. Afterwards he practically fell into oblivion and was barely mentioned in the company of ‘serious’ writers like Balzac and Hugo or Dickens and Thackeray, all of whom, however, took his allegedly mediocre melodramatic and popular narratives as cases to be followed. His temporary fame was confirmed by the response of Bruno Bauer’s group of young Hegelians, who found in Sue’s literary attractiveness a philosophical solution for all the mysteries and conflicts of the period. Marx’s criticism of their philosophical and political position in The Sacred Family includes a lengthy and thorough criticism of their ‘philosophical’ readings of the novel, of the novel itself, and of their and Sue’s understanding of the new bourgeois reality. Among other points, Sue’s alleged socialism is described with the help of a comparison between the police and the moral police. Can we, along with a re-establishment of the context of The Mysteries of Paris, leave behind the critique of ideology and the literary critique of popular and mass culture in order to bring back into the aesthetic field this melodramatic narrative of class society and to re-establish the politics of its aesthetics?