Karl Marx and the Actualization of Philosophy

It is indisputable that Marx began his intellectual trajectory as a philosopher, but it is often thought that he subsequently turned away from philosophy. In this book, Christoph Schuringa proposes a radically different reading of Marx’s intellectual project and demonstrates that from his earliest writings his aim was the ’actualization’ of philosophy. Marx, he argues, should be understood not as turning away from philosophy, but as seeking to make philosophy a practical force in the world. By analysing a series of texts from across Marx’s output, Schuringa shows that Marx progressively overcame what he called ’self-sufficient philosophy’, not in order to leave philosophy behind but to bring it into its own. This involves a major reinterpretation of Marx’s relationship to his ancestors Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, and shows that philosophy, as it actualizes itself, far from being merely a body of philosophical doctrine, figures as an instrument of the revolution.