Karl Marx

First published Tue Aug 26, 2003; substantive revision Mon Jun 14, 2010 found http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/

"Karl Marx (1818–1883) is best known not as a philosopher but as a revolutionary communist, whose works inspired the foundation of many communist regimes in the twentieth century. It is hard to think of many who have had as much influence in the creation of the modern world. Trained as a philosopher, Marx turned away from philosophy in his mid-twenties, towards economics and politics. However, in addition to his overtly philosophical early work, his later writings have many points of contact with contemporary philosophical debates, especially in the philosophy of history and the social sciences, and in moral and political philosophy. Historical materialism — Marx's theory of history — is centered around the idea that forms of society rise and fall as they further and then impede the development of human productive power. Marx sees the historical process as proceeding through a necessary series of modes of production, characterized by class struggle, culminating in communism. Marx's economic analysis of capitalism is based on his version of the labour theory of value, and includes the analysis of capitalist profit as the extraction of surplus value from the exploited proletariat. The analysis of history and economics come together in Marx's prediction of the inevitable economic breakdown of capitalism, to be replaced by communism. However Marx refused to speculate in detail about the nature of communism, arguing that it would arise through historical processes, and was not the realisation of a pre-determined moral ideal."

1. Click here to access The Communist Manifesto.

2. Read from the beginning to the sentence that reads The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

3. Identify 3 major ideas Marx is working with in the passages. 

4. In what ways is Marx clearly influenced by Hegel? Give examples from the text. 

Multiple Selves and "Who am I?"

Read "To Thine Own Selves Be True" article. Found on Edline page.
Think about the main ideas discussed in the article.
Compare these ideas to some of the main ideas you have discovered in Hegel.

Write a 3-4 paragraph auto-biography using language/terminology found in the article and Hegel. Who are you? Which self do you think is your real self? How many selves do you have? Is unifying all of your selves possible like Hegel thinks?

Required- use 1 quote from Hegel (or from powerpoint) & use at least 2 quotes from the article.

Paragraphs 178-181 of The Phenomenology of the Mind

 After reading sections 178-181 and reviewing your notes from class today, write a 3 sentence summary of what you think Hegel's main ideas are within the Phenomenology of the Mind. No more, no less than 3 sentences. 

Preface to Phenom. (Part Two)

Read pp.5-10 (so that you have read up to but not including Section 7 of the Preface).

Provide a 2 paragraph summary for EACH section (Section 4, Section 5, & Section 6).

Link to Preface here.

Intro to Hegel & Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

First published Thu Feb 13, 1997; substantive revision Thu Jul 22, 2010

Along with J. G. Fichte and F. W. J. von Schelling, Hegel (1770–1831) belongs to the period of “German idealism” in the decades following Kant. The most systematic of the post-Kantian idealists, Hegel attempted, throughout his published writings as well as in his lectures, to elaborate a comprehensive and systematic ontology from a “logical” starting point. He is perhaps most well-known for his teleological account of history, an account which was later taken over by Marx and “inverted” into a materialist theory of an historical development culminating in communism. For most of the twentieth century, the “logical” side of Hegel's thought had been largely forgotten, but his political and social philosophy continued to find interest and support. However, since the 1970s, a degree of more general philosophical interest in Hegel's systematic thought has also been revived. (Information from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

ASSIGNMENT- Due by start of class on April 14th.

Instructions
Read the quote from Pascal at the front of your packet.
Read the quote from Hegel on the Dialectic in Politics.
Watch the first 10-12 minutes of this video.
Read pp. 2-4 found here.

1. Re-write Pascal's quote in your own words. Afterwards, give a 2-3 sentence synopsis of what you think he is trying to accomplish?
2. Summarize how the dialectic works in Politics? What are some main ideas Hegel is raising in this passage concerning freedom?
3. Write a 2 paragraph summary of pp. 2-4 and the video. How is Hegel defining philosophy? What are some of the key terms he is using? How is he different from the other philosophers we have studied?

Second Part of Intro to the Critique of Pure Reason

1. What is Kant's perspective on "dogmatist promises"? What is a dogmatist? Why do you think Kant may have an issue with their perspective?

2. What are the two indispensable conditions? Do you agree that these two things are indispensable?

3. At the bottom of p. 8, Kant talks about prior investigations and that they had "two sides". Explain his prior investigations into pure reason. What were the issues? Were there any conclusions?

4. Explain/describe the moment when Kant became "aware of the magnitude of my task". What did he realize?

5. How does Kant define and describe Metaphysics in this second reading? How are Reason and Metaphysics related to one another?

6 Write a 6-7 sentence summary of this quote- it is one of the most important ones from the CPR.
"Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but all attempts to find out something about them a priori through concepts that would extend our cognition have, on this presupposition, come to nothing. Hence let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition, which would agree better with the requested possibility of an a priori cognition of them, which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us. This would be just like the first thoughts of Copernicus, who, when he did not make good progress in the explanation of the celestial motions if he assumed that the entire celestial host revolves around the observer, tried to see if he might not have greater success if he made the observer revolve and left the stars at rest. Now in metaphysics we can try in a similar way regarding the intuition of objects. If intuition has to conform to the constitution of the objects, then I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori; but if the object (as an object of the senses) conforms to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, then I can very well represent this possibility to myself. Yet because I cannot stop with these intuitions, if they are to become cognitions, but must refer them as representations to something as their object and determine this object through them, I can assume either that the concepts through which I bring about this determination also conform to the objects, and then I am once again in the same difficulty about how I could know anything about them a priori, or else I assume that the objects, or what is the same thing, the experience in which alone they can be cognized (as given objects) conforms to those concepts, in which case I immediately see an easier way out of the difficulty, since experience itself is a kind of cognition requiring the understanding, whose rule I have to presuppose in myself before any object is given to me, hence a priori, which rule is expressed in concepts a priori, to which all objects of experience must therefore necessarily conform, and with which they must agree. "

Questions from the Critique of Pure Reason

  

1.       Put Slide #5 into your own words.

2.       Desc. Difficulty Reason falls into on pp. 3-4. Do you agree? Why/WN?

3.       How does Kant describe Metaphys.’ Evolution on pp. 4-5. What is the current state of Metaphys, IKO.

4.       Explain K’s “critical investigation of pure reason” starting on top of p.6

5.       Put the last full paragraph on pp. 5-6 into your own words. This should be 7-8 sentences. This is where the thesis of the entire work starts to unfold.