Remembrances of Werner Marx

Continental Philosophy Review -     

Drawing Memories: Edouard Manet's Remembrances of the Past

The author examines Edouard Manet's quotations of traditional masters in his work. Instead of debating whether Manet simply imitated, competed with, or paid tribute to the great painters of the past, the author suggests that Manet used the depictions of his painterly past not as a remedial but as a deliberate device. By relying primarily on Freud's Interpretation of Dreams and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, the author interprets the traditional works embedded in Manet's paintings as dream thoughts lying behind a façade. The author examines these depictions as if they were associations and memories of Manet's painterly past and in so doing uncovers Manet's subtle use of the past as a means of articulating social commentaries and of creating dialogues with both his contemporaries as well as his predecessors. Drawing on Freud's idea of deferred action (Nachtraegklichkeit), the author illustrates how Manet reflects upon the present through images of the past while at the same time rearticulating the scenes of the past through the lens of the present.     

Marx and Russia

I present the scope andcharacteristics of Marx's interest in Russiaand review its evolution. Initially, Marx'sattitudes were marked by russophobia,pronounced anti-panslavism, assessments ofRussia as an outpost of European reaction andcounterrevolution, and even as the head of aconspiracy to block the world revolution. Withtime, however, Marx came to consider Russia asthe country in which the outbreak of theRevolution was most likely. In his research forsucessive volumes of Capital, he readRussian theoretical works by, among others, V.Bervi-Flerovskij and A. Koshelev. Marx'sattitudes to the anticipated peasant revolutionin Russia remained ambivalent; to a certaindegree he feared its occurrence suspecting thatit could take on an `asiatic' hue.     

Marx and Exploitation

The discussion of the adequacy of Karl Marx's definition of exploitation has paid insufficient attention to a prior question: what is a definition? Once we understand Marx as offering a “reference-fixing definition in a model” we will realise that it is resistant to certain objections. A more general analysis of exploitation is offered here and it is suggested that Marx's own definition is a particular instance of the general analysis which makes a number of controversial moral assumptions.     

Marx and Justice

Marx's thought about justice is essentialist and dialectical. It has been interpreted in terms of immoralism. It is rather a synthesis of the traditional natural law, based on the Aristotelian concept of nature as the potential for perfection or ideal fulfilment, radically different from the Hobbesian reductionist concept of nature as atomistic and mechanical; of the tradition of dialectics in its German idealist form; and of Feuerbach's humanism. Marx's explicitly realist idea of science reveals 'veiled wage-slavery'. Concentration on the market exchange, to the exclusion of the subsequent exploitative use of labour power, deceives exclusively analytic observers into the belief that there is some justice in capitalism. Marx characterized the proletariat as the 'universal class', capable of bringing about the fulfilment of the human essence in a family-style mode of production , because it is the victim of total injustice . However, he criticized workers for not rising above such bourgeois selfishness as demanding 'a fair wage', which is not even a coherent concept. Capitalism is not only a moral injustice, but an ontological injustice, a violation of the worker's humanity. It is coercion into alienation, fetishism and idolatry.     

Marx on Nature

Ecological Marxists argue that Marx forged a view of nature compatible with more recent models of environmentalism. John Bellamy Foster argues that Marx ascribed an ecological value to nature by asserting a co-evolution between man and nature. James O＇Connor presents a more nuanced view in which Marx at best defended a conservationist defense of nature. I argue that such ecological views of Marx tend to overlook his abandonment of an ontology of nature as a totality of relations among physical objects with respect to their interactions and mutual preservation and order. He followed Kant in reducing nature, or the physical world, effectively to a regulative notion, thus reducing its value to a simply a heuristic one for judgments about and actions towards objects. But he also radicalized this reduction by envisaging nature only as a material field of fungible and consumable things, such that each thing is a mere locus of energy or force that human labor cannot substantively perfect but only change to a function. Labor in this view creates new arrangements of natural things for a singular ultimate purpose： the formation of associations of free labor. I conclude that Marx＇s thinking thus cannot be utilized to support an environmental philosophy, such as deep ecology or eco-socialism, that would posit any intrinsic value to nature.     

马克思与正义——评当代英美马克思主义伦理学研究中的一场争论

20世纪70年代以来英美的马克思主义伦理学研究热潮是由一场"马克思与正义"的争论引发的.从立场上看,主要有"马克思反对正义"和"马克思赞成正义"两派,议题涉及正义价值的来源问题、道德善和非道德善问题、道德现实主义问题、道德改良主义问题等.在争论中,虽然有学者对马克思主义的正义现作出了合理客观的评价,但从历史背景、社会条件和西学立场来看,英美学界实际上是想借助马克思的批判精神为新型的资本主义良序社会扫除障碍.所以,由这场争论带动的正义问题研究,从程度上讲,尽管很深入,但却不彻底.     

Marx and religion

R. Leuze, Kaiser Verlag, Theologie und religionsgeschichte: Der Weg Otto Pfleiderers, München, 1980, pp.448. N.p.

P. J. Nel, The structure and ethos of the Wisdom admonitions in Proverbs: (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 158). W. de Gruyter. Berlin, New York, 1982. p. xii + 142. DM.74.00     

作为亚里士多德阐释者的马克思

马克思对于古希腊思想资源的借鉴一直是一个较少深入的主题,本文旨在从历史文献及逻辑线索两个方面,展示亚里士多德的思想是如何根本性地影响着马克思对他同时代哲学及历史现实的思考的。马克思作为卓绝的哲学家,从本质上把握了亚里士多德在主体/谓词、经济学/致富术之间建立的概念框架,并将之用于对黑格尔的法哲学及其后的商品、货币的本质问题的分析。因此,我们也更能深刻地理解马克思唯物主义的维度绝不是一种简单的还原论或者演进说,而是从亚里士多德处继承而来的、作为破解黑格尔体系哲学的思辨理论。     

Peter Harzem (1930–2008: Bonds and Remembrances in Mexico

The Psychological Record -