Philosophy Radio! drlabasham777's Podcast
Society & Culture:Philosophy
Let chat about Karl Marx
The core idea that German Philosopher Marx pursues is easily traced back to the German Philosopher Hegel. It goes like this.
A world begins in combat, filled with deadly contradiction and by resolving these conflicts ends in a crystallization of a world without conflict, without any self-created troubles. Hegel lives in the world of ideas, and so does Marx, but Marx constantly refers his ideas to physical, material reality, as Hegel generally does not. So first Hegel,
Hegel believed our system ideas is infested with logical contradictions. But first, what is a logical contradiction?
A logical contradiction is a combination of at least two ideas that is logically impossible. Call the first idea “thesis”. Call the second, “anti-thesis”. Often, both of the two make sense, and both cannot be true. Take “Flat Earth Theory”,
Observational Answer: No
So the world is flat and round? At the very same time? Logically impossible given the shared definitions of “flat” and “round”.
How do we get around this? We might try reconciling both thesis and anti-thesis with the idea that the seenearth is largely flat, but the entire earth is basically round. If we make the Earth big enough. So we have a synthesis of observations: A new idea: The Earth is so bog it looks flat but isn’t. Hegel believed in the end, with Philosophy, all contradictory ideas would be synthesized into a single final thought, a single perfect idea. This, he called the Mind of God.
Marx took this idea and applied it to what he saw as social contradictions in structure and power with our societies. History would inevitably resolve all social contradictions. To a single final society, and a single, final thought. The final society, the final thought? Perfect, total Communism. It’s not if you become a communist, it’s, if you live long enough, when.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
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