This sort of analysis is what I mean by extracting ideas of philosophical interest from Marx's writings about other things. I've done it myself, arguing in various paprties taht Marx has an ethic of freedom and a reliabilist conception of epistemology, etc. But really, Marx had a PhD in philosophy (equivalent to a modern American Master's degree), and was more than competent to do philosophy if he wanted to do it. In fact, he did.s ome, in his early writings (pre German Ideology).
Why not take him at his word when he says that he thought he was a lot of bushwa (ideology as opposed to science, dreck, etc.), and that he didn't see himself as doing that any more? Of course we don't have toa gree that he was right about philosophy, but we can agree with him that whatever it was he was trying to do, it wasn't what he thought philosophy was. So, we can say, well, although he didn't think of what he was doing as philosophy, some of it can be looked at as philosophy that is either different from he thought he was getting away from, thus OK on his herms, or not different, whichs hwos either that his terms were wrong or he was wrong to reject philosophy as he saw it.
>
> My impression (as an autodidatic, which may be why
> I'm wrong) is that while Capital V. I is a work
> of economics, it depends upon and/or implies a
> philosophical structure that starts with this
> critique of metaphysics.
>
> 2) I know Kaufmann pointed out that the distance
> between
> Hegel and Nietzsche on some philosophical points was
> not
> as great as N. liked to make out. As a pro on these
> topics,
> do you know if anybody's tried to do the same with
> Marx
> and Nietzsche?
I am very far from being any kind of a Nietzsche scholar. I am justa former professor who used to teach a bit of Nietzsche in classes on 19th century philosophy. I do not even try to keep up with the literature. I have read one book on Nietsche in the last maybe deacde -- my friend Brian Leiter's recent book, and I read it because Brian is a friend. His book is pretty good, too. But there are sort of left wing Nietzscheans whose work I am dimly aware of who try to make N more palatable to lefties. I think Tracy Strong, who I think has an old book on Nizetsche and the Politics of Transfiguration, for example. Yoshie might knwo more about this than I would.
I know, I know, N. would have had
> nothing
> to do with economics, let alone socialism, but on at
> least
> one topic, the insubstantiality of the subject, they
> seem
> to coincide. M never says this in so many words as
> N does
> (IIRC in _Gay Science_ where he writes of
> consciousness as
> a consequence of the social nature of language), but
> I feel
> it's there.
I don't think that M has any views on this of the sort than N does; he just wasn't interested in formulating metaphysical theories.
>
> Just wondering,
> Curtiss
>
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