From Classical German Philosophy to Marx

From Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) to Engels's Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886): how the three sources Lenin named for Marxism (German philosophy, French socialism and English political economy) met in Marx and Engels. Click a node to open its dictionary entry or the reference document.

1770 1780 1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 German idealism The Hegelian school divides Marx and Engels French Revolution, socialism English political economy the break of 1807 revolution and Napoleon Hegel dies, 1831 the Left takes shape critique of the theory of the state inverting subject and predicate studying political economy against the Bauer brothers against contemplative materialism 'Saint Max' critical inheritance critical inheritance dialectics 'inverted' three chapters issued separately the reckoning forty years on Critical philosophy: objects conform to the forms of our cognition, not the other way round. The starting point of German idealismKant,Critique ofPure Reason1781–1790 Dropped Kant's thing-in-itself and tried to derive everything from the activity of the selfFichte'sWissenschaftslehre1794– Schelling'sphilosophyof natureandidentity1797–1801 Hegel,Phenomenologyof Spirit1807 The method that grasps things and concepts as movement and development through contradictionHegel'sScience ofLogic anddialectics1812–1816 Systematised family, civil society and state as the realisation of reason. The school divided after his death in 1831Hegel'sPhilosophyof Right,the Berlinyears1820–1831 TheHegelianschooldivides(right,centre,left)1831–1840s Read the Gospels as myth and set off the split; Strauss also coined the names Right and Left HegeliansStrauss,The Life ofJesus1835 YoungHegelians(BrunoBauer,Ruge)1837–1844 Anthropological materialism: God is the human essence projected outside humanity. Hegel turned on his headFeuerbach,The EssenceofChristianity1841 Called Feuerbach's 'Man' one more spectre and recognised only the 'I'Stirner,The Ego andIts Own1844 Critique ofHegel'sPhilosophyof Right1843–1844 EconomicandPhilosophicManuscripts:estrangedlabour1844 (published 1932) The HolyFamily1845 “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”Theses onFeuerbach1845 (published 1888) The GermanIdeology:historicalmaterialism1845–1846 (published 1932) The PovertyofPhilosophy1847 TheCommunistManifesto1848 Located the source of profit in labour-power creating more value than its ownThe theoryof surplusvalue1857–1867 Capital1867 (vols. 2 and 3, 1885 and 1894) Engels,Anti-Dühring:dialecticalmaterialism1877–1878 Engels,Socialism:Utopian andScientific1880 Engels's reckoning of what Marxism took from classical German philosophy and what it left behindEngels,LudwigFeuerbachand the EndofClassicalGermanPhilosophy1886 (book edition 1888) FrenchRevolution1789–1799 Utopiansocialism(Saint-Simon,Fourier,Owen)1800s–1830s Made his name with What Is Property? (1840); in the System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty (1846) he applied Hegelian dialectics to economicsProudhon,ThePhilosophyof Poverty1840–1846 Revolutionsof 18481848–1849 Smith, TheWealth ofNations1776 Classicalpoliticaleconomy1770s–1830s Ricardo,PrinciplesofPoliticalEconomy andTaxation1817 The theory that the labour spent on producing a commodity determines its value; carried furthest by RicardoThe labourtheory ofvalue1776–1823
succession · split · merger influence antagonism suppression