88 Pages
Publication Date: 28th May 2025
 
Edited by Andrés Saenz de Sicilia 
 
In a 2005 poll carried out by the BBC Radio show “In Our Time”, Karl Marx was voted the greatest philosopher of all time, winning more than double the number of votes of the second place thinker (David Hume). Marx would likely have been bemused – and perhaps even somewhat exasperated – by this, given the recurring aspersions he cast on philosophy and philosophers throughout much of his life. Yet Marx’s relation to philosophy is by no means straightforward, as the contributions to this issue demonstrate. While Marx struggled against it (most emphatically in his earlier writings), denouncing its distortions, parochialism, and impotence, philosophy remained a crucial reference point for him throughout his life, even long after he had apparently left it behind. Philosophy, too, has not been left untouched by this encounter, having irretrievably lost something of its naivety and self-satisfaction as a result of Marx’s famous claim that rather than merely interpreting the world (as philosophers have done), the point is to change it.

Christoph Schuringa’s essay deals with this vexed question head on, asking “Was Marx a Philosopher?” and suggesting in response that Marx achieved what no previous philosopher could: the actualisation of philosophy. Tatiana Llaguna focuses on how Marx’s analysis of mystified “forms of appearance” offers a powerful resource for Marxist-feminist critiques of the role of the family in capitalism. Andrés Saenz de Sicilia shows how Marx’s political commitments (to a communist revolution) drove him beyond the limitations of philosophy in his time. But this hardly meant that he rejected philosophy altogether, and understanding his work requires that we recognise the many ways in which philosophical elements are put to work within it. Sandro Brito Rojas addresses the question of ideology, showing how, for Marx, ideology is not simply a kind of “false consciousness” that could be corrected and replaced by the “correct” ideas, but rather is a distortion and mystification of an alienated social reality. Dissolving ideology would thus require changing social reality, not simply changing how we think. Paul North explores the different aspects from which we might read Marx’s incomplete masterwork, Capital. In the “Conversations” section, Vanessa Wills and Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò discuss the much neglected ethical dimensions of Marx’s project, while Paul North and I explore some of the many philosophical, social, and historical issues at stake in Capital.
 
Elsewhere in this issue, Anna Argirò explores how Hannah Arendt’s experiences of exile shaped her critique of the nation-state and sovereignty; Jonathan Egid traces the transformative journey of Neoplatonism across Africa, Asia, and Europe over 1,500 years; Rafael Holmberg argues that our understanding of nature is always culturally shaped; and Alan Shepherd explains how Henri Bergson reclaims intuition as the central method of metaphysical and spiritual knowledge. Emma Wilkins’ review reconsiders domestic labour as a meaningful, often undervalued act of love, care, and character, while Nishok G U’s review asks us what it means to begin again at the end.