‘Last of the Schoolmen’: The Young Marx, Latin Culture, and the Doctoral Dissertation

ABSTRACT

This article examines Marx’s earliest writings, especially his doctoral dissertation on “The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature” and the notebooks he kept while preparing it. Previous commentators on this material have tended to take one of two approaches: either they have used it to associate Marx with an expansive and abstract Western Tradition of philosophical inquiry, or they have located it in the narrow context of the intellectual culture of the German Vormärz. Here I seek to mediate between these extremes. These documents, I argue, suggest that Marx was less a part of a Western Tradition, or a set of abstract normative debates that ostensibly stretches from the ancients to modernity, than of what I call Latin Culture, or a Latin-speaking culture that was inscribed in practices, norms, and institutions, and that persisted in Europe from late antiquity into the nineteenth century. Placing Marx’s early writings in this context helps explain some of the tensions that characterise his thought and to clarify the practical consequences of what might otherwise appear as purely theological and metaphysical speculations.

KEYWORDS:

• Marx
• Epicurus
• Aristotle
• Trendelenburg
• atomism
• Hellenism
• Latin culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ McLellan, Marx Before Marxism, 83–85; Fenves, “Marx’s Doctoral Thesis”; Stanley, “Marx’s Critique”; Breckman, Marx, 262–70; McIvor, “The Young Marx”; Heinrich, Karl Marx, 299–322.

² Sannwald, Marx und die Antike; Baronovitch, “German Idealism”; Meikle, Essentialism; McCarthy, Marx and the Ancients; McCarthy, ed., Marx and Aristotle; Pike, From Aristotle to Marx, 21–30; Rockmore, Marx After Marxism; Rockmore, Marx’s Dream.

³ Skinner, Visions of Politics.

⁴ Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law,” 171 (emphasis in original).

⁵ Meiksins Wood, Citizens and Lords, 8–11; Meiksins Wood, Liberty and Property, 26–31; Femia, “Historicist Critique”; Wood, “Social History.”

⁶ Armitage, “Big Idea”; McMahon and Moyn, eds., Rethinking; Guldi and Armitage, History Manifesto; Whatmore, Intellectual History.

⁷ Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 8–9, 12–16.

⁸ Curtius, European Literature.

⁹ Waquet, Latin, 30; Leonhardt, Latin, 12; Farrell, Latin, 7. See also Grafton, Defenders.

¹⁰ Marx, “Notebooks,” 490–93; Marx, “Hefte zur epikureischen Philosophie,” 99–102.

¹¹ Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 14–15, 382–83 n. 6; Beiser, “Jakob Fries,” 54–63.

¹² Stein, “Education.”

¹³ Butler, Tyranny of Greece.

¹⁴ McCarthy, Marx and Aristotle; McCarthy, Marx and Social Justice. For a recent, vehement version of the argument that Marx belongs to the Western Tradition, see Rockmore, Marx’s Dream.

¹⁵ Anderson, Marx at the Margins.

¹⁶ Marx and Engels, “German Ideology,” 186.

¹⁷ Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, 36.

¹⁸ Meikle, “Engels,” 84.

¹⁹ Meikle, “Marx,” 57.

²⁰ Avineri, Karl Marx, 1–17; Sperber, Karl Marx, 1–25; Rose, Jewish Philosophical Politics, especially chap. 4.

²¹ Bloch, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left. There is a large question here, beyond the scope of this article, concerning how critical theory sits in relation to Latin culture. It is certainly significant that the first to appreciate the importance of Aristotle vis–à–vis Marxist philosophy was arguably Herbert Marcuse. See Marcuse, “Concept of Essence.”

²² Thouard, ed., Aristote au XIXe Siècle; Hartung, King, and Rapp, eds., Aristotle Studies.

²³ Other articles that discuss Marx and Trendelenburg include Jaulin, “Marx lecteur d’Aristote”; Arndt, “Hegels Wesenslogik.” See also Rossi, Da Hegel a Marx, 56–63.

²⁴ Trendelenburg, Aristotelis De Anima.

²⁵ Beiser, Genesis of Neo–Kantianism, 12–13.

²⁶ Beiser, Late German Idealism, 60–69.

²⁷ Käufer, “Post–Kantian Logical Radicalism”; Martin, “Nothing More.”

²⁸ Hegel, Encyclopaedia Logic.

²⁹ Ibid., 135–45.

³⁰ Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, 31.

³¹ Bauer and Marx, March 29, 1841, 354; Köppen and Marx, June 3, 1841, 361.

³² Marx, “Exzerpte aus Aristoteles,” 155–82.

³³ Depew, “Aristotle’s De Anima,” 133–87.

³⁴ Marx, “Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy,” 38. Hereafter page references are cited in the text.

³⁵ Marx, “Notebooks,” 472–75.

³⁶ Ibid., 473–75.

³⁷ Usener, Epicurea; Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker; Diels, Doxographi Graeci.

³⁸ Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 430–53; Hegel, Lectures: Medieval and Modern, 1–9.

³⁹ Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume One, 11–15.

⁴⁰ Leo, Historiographical Concept, 196.

⁴¹ Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume Two, 233–36.

⁴² Foster, Marx’s Ecology, 21–65; Althusser, “Underground Current,” 163–207.

⁴³ Marx, “Notebooks,” 468.

⁴⁴ Moggach, Bruno Bauer.

⁴⁵ Breckman, Marx.

⁴⁶ Bunn, “Censorship.”

⁴⁷ Marx, “Notebooks,” 432–41.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 449.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 454.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 457.

⁵¹ Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies.

⁵² Berdahl, Politics, 182–310.

⁵³ Stahl, Monarchische Prinzip; Breckman, Marx, 80–89; Berdahl, Politics, 348–73.

⁵⁴ Moggach, Bruno Bauer, 62–65.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 65.

⁵⁶ Marx, “Critique of Political Economy,” 261–62.

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Notes on contributors

Charles Barbour

Charles Barbour, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University, Australia. Along with numerous journal articles and book chapters, he has published The Marx-Machine: Politics, Polemics, Ideology (Lexington Books, 2012) and Derrida’s Secret: Perjury, Testimony, Oath (Edinburgh University Press, 2017).