Basic Problems of Marx's Philosophy (review)

A. James Gregor

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 4, Number 4, October 1966,

pp. 349-350 (Review)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2008.1308

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/229693/summary

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 BOOK REVIEWS 349

The idiosyncratic criticisms of an earlier day now articulated present a n d increasingly widespread
fears; pessimism a n d fantasy took on a prophetic ring to be borne out b y cataclysms to come.
The crucial crisis of our time, when m a n lost faith in T r u t h and in himself, is only half a cen-
tury away. I t s tale or its significance has not been told. I t would have provided a fitting climax for
Swart's book. As i t is, his m o n o g r a p h provides some h a n d y signposts for the rash student who
would understand a little more a b o u t this purgatory so speedily transmogrified into a belle
gpoque.
EUGEN WEBER
University o/Cali]ornia, Los Angeles

Basic Problems of Marx's Philosophy. By N a t h a n Rotenstreich. ( N e w York: Bobbs-Merrill,

1965. Pp. iii + 168. $5.00.)
Professor Rotenstreich's brief work is of the same intellectual caliber, and covers essentially the
same ground as the early work produced by Gentile 1 and the elaborate study written more re-
cently by Jean-Yves Calvez2 Gentile's work (which Lenin r e c o m m e n d e d as " n o t e w o r t h y " 8) was
published originally in 1899 and has passed largely unnoticed in the English-speaking intellectual
community. Calvez's work has attracted the a t t e n t i o n of M a r x scholars, b u t because of its
length does n o t recommend itself readily to non-specialists. Rotenstreich's book, on the other
hand, provides insights t h a t are as significant and more fully d o c u m e n t e d (because of the con-
temporary availability of the early Marx documents) t h a n those to be found in Gentile's work
and provides much of the substance (in more compact form) of the work of Calvez.
C h a p t e r One affords a brief, b u t adequate, account of Feuerbach's influence o n the young
Marx, indicating t h a t Marx's "inversion" of the Hegelian dialectic is of Feuerbachian origin ~ and
the ultimate source of Marx's conception of alienation. C h a p t e r Two is a retranslation of Marx's
"Theses on Feuerbach," the same material upon which Gentile based his reconstruction a n d upon
which much of Calvez's interpretation turns. C h a p t e r Three is a n insightful explication of the
first three theses. I t is interesting to note t h a t Rotenstreich's i n t e r p r e t a t i o n finds evidence for the
influence of G i a m b a t i s t a Vico's verum et ]actum convertuntur, t h a t is to say, "practice, in
Marx's sense, is the guarantee t h a t it is possible for m a n to know reality; in other
words, because m a n creates reality with the strength of his being, called practice, he is likely to
know this reality" (p. 48). Gentile identified precisely the same influence. ~ The "materialism" such
an epistemology would support would be difficult to characterize. W h a t this leads to, Rotenstreich
argues, is Marx's conviction " t h a t reality is rational in its core" (p. 52). I t is a conviction t h a t ac-
cords itself ill with materialism, however materialism is t o be understood.
Chapter Four is a consistently compelling exposition of the fourth through the eighth theses
a n d provides one of the best brief accounts of Marx's conception of m a n and society. Marx, in
some significant sense, construed the two concepts, h u m a n a n d social, as identical. "He said t h a t
m a n is socially active in so far as he is active as man. Social m a n is a h u m a n m a n " (p. 76). This ac-
cords itself with Gentile's account of Marx's view : "In t r u t h the m a n which we recognize is social
m a n . . . . T h e i n d i v i d u a l . . , is real as part of an association, a society ; [he] is a result of social re-
lations . . . . ,, e C h a p t e r Five, devoted to the final three theses, develops this theme, a n d the
identification of the individual and his historic c o m m u n i t y provides the justifying grounds for
the issuance of n o r m a t i v e imperatives. Chapter Six is a searching analysis of the implications of
Marx's implicit rationalism a n d his identification of the individual a n d society. All the problems
which collect around Marxism are reviewed a n d assessed: the evident tensions between m a -

1 G. Gentile, "La filosofia della prassi," I ]ondamenti della diritto (Florence: Sansoni, 1955),
pp. 197-303.
J. Calvez, La pens~e de Karl Marz (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1956).
3 V. I. Lenin, " K a r l Marx," Collected Works, X X I (Moscow: Progress, 1964), p. 88.
' Cf. A. J. Gregor, "Marx, F e u e r b a c h and the Reform of the Hegelian Dialectic," Science and
Society, X X I X : 1 (Winter, 1965), 66-80.
Gentile, op. cit., p. 211.
6Ibid., pp. 222, 264; cf. Calvez, op. cit., pp. 513 ft.
350 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

terialism and a rationalist commitment, and the relationship between normative utterances and
economic conditions, freedom and determinism, transcendence and immanence.
The final chapter, Chapter Seven, is an account of the transformation of the cognitive meaning
of the concept "alienation" from the time of Plotinus to Marx. While the treatment is interesting,
it is much too brief to be substantial, and its direct relevance to the preceding discussion is not
immediately evident. The final chapter is more of an appendix than an integral part of the
text. Unfortunately, there is little attempt to explicate the various meanings which Marx himself
assigned to the concept in the course of his own intellectual maturation.
This volume is recommended as a compact and responsible exposition and critique of the
philosophy of the young Marx. It is significantly better than much of the available English lan-
guage literature and as such is a welcomed addition to the body of scholarship devoted to the
subject.
A. J~LMES GBEGOR
University o] Texas

Immediacy, Reason and Existence. By R. N. Kaul. (Allahabad: Udayana Publications, 1965.

Pp. x[i] T 259. $6.50.)
This book deserves to be read carefully by anyone who wishes to learn how a scholar who is
thoroughly familiar with the philosophy of F. H. Bradley, Bernard Bosanquet, and other members
of that great group of idealists in and around Oxford estimates the achievements of other philos-
ophers and other movements in recent and contemporary thought. It is written with great sim-
plicity, clarity, and incisiveness, so that not only the initiated but also beginning students can fol-
low Professor Kaul's expositions and criticisms with pleasure and profit.
Kaul has included in his analysis brief accounts of the ideas of some of his colleagues and
teachers in India (especially Sri Aurobindo, K. C. Bhattacharya, Ramana Maharshi, and R. D.
Ranade) in so far as these ideas have a bearing on the problem central to this work the rela-
tion of immediacy and reason to existence. But the theme that dominates his historical narrative
is the development of dialectical method since Hegel, and this story is told with exceptional
lucidity. What is most impressive is the skill and sympathy with which a mind that is dominated
by Bradley's handling of the problems centering in the absolute can appreciate the various "re-
actions" to such a dialectical idealism that range from the romantic revolt of Nietzsche to Ryle's
"geography of the categories."
In the course of the history of "reactions" Kaul gives serious attention to British realism, to his-
toricism, to Whitehead's and Nicolai Hartmann's "neo-romantic" accounts of the ingression of
eternal objects into natural processes, to logical positivism, phenomenology, Heidegger, and
Jaspers. He criticizes these varied departures from what he regards as genuine metaphysics with-
out losing patience and with a respect for genuine difficulties. He gives an informative account
of how philosophical problems became increasingly perplexing on top of the serious initial per-
plexities of Bradley. His chief interest appears to be in the recent re-appearance of immediacy
in existential ontology after it had been bracketed out of the realm of knowledge ; and he gives
the impression that there is hope for a better understood absolute in both East and West as a
result of the misfortunes that the idealistic absolute encountered in the West after Hegel's
romantic adventure with it.
Pure knowing or pure theory cannot stand apart by itself--it must be one moment of a whole
which is completed by a second moment of doing or acting. No philosophy which claims to be
purely theoretical can be genuine . . . . Bradley and Bosanquet go too far when they assume that
philosophy by definition is a secondary activity, presupposing a primary activity, of which it
is a theoretical interpretation . . . . According to this arbitrary limitation of the scope and func-
tion of philosophy, it may be regarded as itself but appearance. (pp. 102-3)
However, the primary contribution of this fine piece of philosophical writing lies less in its con-
clusions than in its rare combination of good history and keen rational criticism.
HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER
Claremont, Cali/ornia