Philosophy and Revolution: From Kant to Marx

Philosophy and Revolution: From Kant to Marx

by Fredric Jameson (Preface), Fredric Jameson (Preface), Stathis Kouvelakis (Author), G. M. Goshgarian (Translator)

Synopsis

Throughout the nineteenth century, German philosophy was haunted by the spectre of the French Revolution. Kant, Hegel, and their followers spent their lives wrestling with its heritage, trying to imagine a specifically German path to modernity--a revolution without revolution. Trapped in a politically frozen society, German intellectuals were driven to brood over the nature of the revolutionary experience. In this ambitious and original study, Stathis Kouvelakis paints a rich panorama of the key intellectual and political figures in the effervescence of German thought before the 1848 revolutions. He shows how the attempt to chart a moderate and reformist path entered into deep crisis, generating two antagonistic perspectives. In one camp, represented by Moses Hess and the early Friedrich Engels, were those socialists who sought to discover a principle of reconciliation and harmony in social relations, by bypassing the question of revolutionary politics. In sharp contrast, the poet Heinrich Heine and the young journalist Karl Marx developed a new perspective articulating revolutionary rupture and struggle for democracy, thereby redefining the very notion of politics itself.

$40.67

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 450
Publisher: Verso
Published: 17 Mar 2003

ISBN 10: 1859844715
ISBN 13: 9781859844717

Media Reviews
Perhaps the first truly original new version of [Marx's] formation since Auguste Cornu's monumental postwar history... but also a new theory of what is structurally most central and distinctive in Marx's achievement, namely the unique political nature and powers of the Proletariat. - Frederick Jameson, from the Preface
Author Bio
Stathis Kouvelakis is the vice-director of the French journal Actuel Marx and the co-editor of the Dictionnaire Marx Contemporain.