Essay on Karl Marx

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ophies of Democritus and Epicurus. More
distinctively, it sounded a note of Promethean defiance:


Philosophy makes no secret of it. Prometheus'
admission: "In sooth all gods I hate," is its own
admission, its own motto against all gods, . . .
Prometheus is the noblest saint and martyr in the
calendar of philosophy.


In 1841 Marx, together with other Young Hegelians, was much
influenced by the publication of Das Wesen des Christentums
(1841; The Essence of Christianity) by Ludwig Feuerbach. Its
author, to Marx's mind, successfully criticized Hegel, an idealist
who believed that matter or existence was inferior to and dependent
upon mind or spirit, from the opposite, or materialist, standpoint,
showing how the "Absolute Spirit" was a projection of "the real man
standing on the foundation of nature." Henceforth Marx's
philosophical efforts were toward a combination of Hegel's
dialectic--the idea that all things are in a continual process of change
resulting from the conflicts between their contradict...