Search results for ""Author Sidney Hook""

In this classic work, originally published in 1932, Hook set out to demonstrate to the radical and conservative philosophers and activists of the 1920s and 1930s that Marx was a systematic thinker who developed a sound set of philosophical principles. His major argument is that Marx was undogmatic in his approach to philosophy and a critical thinker who assimilated and synthesized a variety of ideas. Hook explains how Marx engaged both Hegel and the young Hegelians in order to develop the notion of the dialectic with Marx's take on historical materialism. The individual chapters engage the reader through the debates and discussions between Marx and young Hegelians such as Moses Hess, who influenced Marx in the study of social and economic problems; Feuerbach, who influenced Marx's view of religion; Bruno Bauer (antiliberalism); Arnold Ruge (philosophy as politics); and Max Stirner (ideals as illusions).

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Published in 1933, at a time of widespread unemployment and bank failures, this book by the young Sidney Hook received great critical acclaim and established his reputation as a brilliant expositor of ideas. By "revolutionary interpretation" Hook meant quite literally that Marx's main objective was to stimulate revolutionary opposition to class society. Hook later abandoned the revolutionary views expressed in this volume, but he never abandoned his warm positive views of Marx as a thinker and a fighter for freedom. He eventually concluded that 20th century history had proved both him and Marx wrong about the necessity of revolutionary means to achieve their mutual social goals. But, says his son Ernest B. Hook in an introduction, this concession of error "he did not see . . . as an admission of intellectual weakness, but the natural position of a reasonable person when, in the light of observation and experience, he concludes he has erred." This expanded edition makes readily available for scholars an influential work long out of print and provides critical insight into the intellectual development of one of the 20th-century's great thinkers.

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