Hegel versus Marx

Another re-upload from the previous channel. This short clip comes from the 1987 interview of Peter Singer with Bryan Magee on the life and philosophical work of Hegel and Marx. I put it together quite a long time ago, but I still think it provides a relatively decent summary of some of the main similarities and differences between Hegel and Marx. I apologize for the rather cheap visuals. I originally did that only because the interview was of rather poor quality. Note, Marx did not actually say that he stood Hegel on his head, but instead that he turned him around and put him back onto his feet. I think this is actually important for the original metaphor because it implies that he is taking Hegel out of the realm of Geist and abstraction "up high" and putting him back on his feet, the right way around, on the ground of the material world. Also, I'm not sure about whether that point about a conflict-free society was originally intended to be the Hegelian or Marxist goal, or even how accurate that is as a characterization of either view. I'd be curious to hear anyone's thoughts on that though.

As a young Hegelian, Marx had very much been influenced by Hegel and even took up much of Hegel's system. But one crucial difference is that Marx substituted a kind materialism for Hegel's idealism. Among other things, this meant that rather than it being ideas which underlie everything and drive historical change, it was the material and economic conditions which determine one's ideas, culture, and historical development.

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#philosophy #hegel #marx