THEODOR ADORNO (1903-1969) AND IDENTITY Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno wrote their critique of the culture of Western civilization, Dialectic of Enlightenment during the Second World War. When the book was published in German in 1947, the full extent of the...
THE PROBLEM OF CAPITALISM The Birth of Consumption As philosophers who inherited the goals of the Enlightenment, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels believed the main theme was freedom, freedom to become a full human being, creating oneself through free choices. They...
THE PROBLEM OF PROPERTY Engels and Ownership For centuries, philosophers had been trying to determine the origin of property. Almost without exception, from Rousseau to Hobbs, property was the equivalent to the apple in the Garden of Eden. Property was the cause of...
MODERN ALIENATION Marx and Capitalism Aware of Friedrich Schiller, Karl Marx was concerned with alienation and recognized the connection between the estrangement of human beings from themselves and from nature and the Industrial Revolution. Marx re-wrote Schiller’s...
MARX AND ENGELS Today it is fashionable in some quarters to dismiss Karl Marx because of his apparently “failed” theory of an inevitable revolution in which the lower classes, realizing their exploitation, would rebel against those who owned the means of production....
Late Nineteenth Century Social Philosophy Positivism of Comte The French Revolution ended in a very different way from the other great revolution of the eighteenth century, the American Revolution. The American Revolution was an uprising of a population distanced from...
