THOMAS CUMMINS ART

MARX & HEGEL

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Almost the entire philosophical edge found in Marxism is due to Hegel and this fact is particularly evident in the specific terminology that Marx adopted from Hegel. Marx's system of "dialectical materialism" (or "historical materialism") is obviously indebted to Hegel's focus on reality as a continuous historical process where the dialectic is the key to understanding this historical change. In his introduction to 'The Communist Manifesto,' Gareth Jones notes, however, that it was the writings of another Left-Hegelian, Ludwig Feuerbach, that eventually guided Marx to his eventual break with Hegel's Idealism. Jones declares that is from Feuerbach that "Marx adopted the notion that Hegelian idealism needed only to be 'reversed' or 'inverted' to become true." Contrasted to Hegel's idealism and dialectic, Feuerbach instead embraced, respectively, materialism and metaphysics. Marx took the dialectic change from Hegel and the materialism of Feuerbach and reshuffled them to come up with the novel combination of "dialectical materialism." Instead of the dialectic being relegated solely to the Spirit, Marx brought it back to earth. Hegel had not recognized the development found in nature or society and left it up to Marx to turn him on his head.

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Thomas Cummins art philosophy