Darwin

[Charles Brown]

Without necessarily disagreeing, _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_ was written in 1848 and already applied the idea of real change to the real world before Darwin's book. Marx and Engels speak of Darwin as applying "our view" in natural history. Marx did not learn the philosophical issue from Darwin, though he may have learned from him; or rather Darwin corroborated him.

Charles Brown


>>> Jim heartfield <jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> 08/11/99 05:07AM >>>
In message <s7b026ad.016 at mail.ci.detroit.mi.us>, Charles Brown
<CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes
>
>Charles: This "effective dissolution of the philosophy of metaphysic as stasis" 
>or dialectics had already been accomplished by Hegel, Marx and Engels. Darwin 
>wasn't fully conscious of the philosophical aspect.

I rate Hegel very highly, but essentially Darwin is the more important
thinker. The point is that Hegel's dissolution of metaphysics remains an
intuition. It is to Darwin's advantage that he was not operating in the
rarefied atmosphere of philosophy, but real relations between living
organisms.

Furthermore, Darwin influenced Marx, but Marx did not influence Darwin.
Indeed it appears that Darwin never read the copy of Capital that was
sent him, whereas the supplicant Marx was a great fan of Darwin's. Maybe
that was Darwin's loss, but it demonstrates that Darwin dispensed with
metaphysical concepts of nature all on his own.

-- 
Jim heartfield