NODE.801 Genealogical Sources on Materialism for the Study of the Writings of Karl Marx Ge

"Once into his library, however, and having fixed his one eyeglass in the corner of his eye, in order to take your intellectual breadth and depth, so to speak, he loses that self-restraint, and unfolds to you a knowledge of men and things throughout the world apt to interest one. And his conversation does not run in one groove, but is as varied as are the volumes upon his library shelves. A man can generally be judged by the books he reads, and you can form your own conclusions when I tell you a casual glance revealed Shakespeare, Dickens, Thackeray, Moliere, Racine, Montaigne, Bacon, Goethe, Voltaire, Paine; English, American, French blue books; works political and philosophical in Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, etc., etc."
            Chicago Tribune reporter's comments upon interviewing Marx, January 5, 1879

"Marx and the Foundations of the Critical Theory of Morality and Ethics"
Cultural Logic, Vol. 2., no. 2 which contains some references to the sources of Marx's materialism.

Bibliography on Karl Marx and Marxism from Stanley Aronowitz's course "Marx" 1996.
Prometheus Bound   Aeschylus  An enhanced version I have been working on from time to time.

Marxism-related lists and archives
Electronic Texts in Philosophy
The Marx Engels Archive

Aeschylus

Prometheus Bound
The Seven Against Thebes
The Persians
The Choephori
Complete (Existing) Plays.
 
 

Anaxagoras

"The Eleatics, as the first discoverers of the ideal forms of substance, who themselves still apprehended the inwardness of substance in a purely internal and abstract, intensive manner, are the passionately enthusiastic prophetic heralds of the breaking dawn.  Bathed in simple light, they turn away indignantly from the people and from the gods of antiquity.  But in the case of Anaxagoras the people themselves turned away indignantly from the wise man and declared him to be such, expelling him from their midst.  In modern times Anaxagoras has been accursed of dualism.  Aristotle says in the first book of the Metaphysics that he uses the nous like a machine and only resorts to it when he runs out of natural explanations.  But this apparent dualism is on the one hand that very same dualistic element which split the heart f the state in the time of Anaxagoras, and on the other hand it must be understood more profoundly.  The nous is active and is resorted to where there is no natural determination.  It is itself  the non ens [not-being] of the natural, the ideality.  And then the activity of this ideality intervenes only when physical sight fails the philosopher, that is, the nous is the philosopher's own nouz, and is resorted to when he is no longer able to objectify his activity.  Thus the subjective nous appeared as the essence of the wandering scholar, and in it power as ideality of real determination, it appears on the one hand in the Sophists and on the other in Socrates" (Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy, 436)

According to Diogeneres Laertius "Among the early philosophers....[Epicurus] favorite was Anaxagoras, although he occasionally disagreed with him..."
 

Aristotle

Pierre Bayle

Pierre Bayle not only prepared the reception of materialism and of the philosophy of common sense in France by shattering metaphysics with his skepticism.  He heralded the atheistic society which was soon to come in to existence by proving that a society consisting only of atheists is possible, that an atheist can be a man worthy of respect, and that it is not  by atheism but by superstition and idolatry that man debases himself.  To quote a French writer, Pierre Bayle was 'the last metaphysician in the sense of the seventeenth century and the first philosopher of the eighteenth century'" (Holy Family 157-158).

The Pierre Bayle Home Page
Correspondences of Pierre Bayle (French)
Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique
Pensées diverses sur la comète: Avis au lecteur
Philosophical Commentary on the words of the Gospel, 'Compel them to come in'
 
 

J.E.Cairnes

Henry Charles Carey

Henry Carey: The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign (excerpt)
 
 

Democritus

Duns Scotus

A Treatise on God as First Principle
"Already the British schoolman Duns Scotus, asked, "whether it was impossible for matter to think" (Holy Family, 158)?
 
 

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Epicurus

Principal Doctrines Translated by Robert Drew Hicks
Vatican Sayings
Letter to Pythocles
Letter to Menoeceus Translated by Robert Drew Hicks
Letter to Idomeneus
Letter to Herodotus
Fragments
Epicurus' Last Will
The Philodemus Project
Epicurus and Epicurean Philosophy
The Garden
 
 

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Feuerbach

Feuerbach page
Feuerbach Page 2
Principles of the Philosophy of the Future
The Essence Of Christianity In Relation To The Ego and Its Own
Principles of the Philosophy of the Future
 
 

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Gassendi

Gassendi
 
 

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Hegel

Hegel by Hypertext Home Page (features many complete texts)
http://www.werple.net.au/~andy/future.htm

The Organisation of the Logic by Jean Hyppolite
 
 

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Luesippus

(fl. about 450-370 BC), Greek philosopher, probably born in Abdera. Virtually nothing is known of his life and none of his writings survive. He is, however, credited with founding the atomic theory of matter, later developed by his pupil, Democritus. According to this theory, all matter is constituted of identical indivisible particles called atoms. We have but one fragment, which Wheelwright translates ( though Kirk and Raven dispute its authorship) as: "Nothing happens at random; whatever comes about is by rational necessity".
 

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Lucretius

Lucretius Carus, Titus: On the Nature of Things
On the Nature of Things

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Proudhon

Proudhon Archive

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Shakespeare

Shakespeare:     Timon of Athens (Marx's favorite and often quoted

All's Well That Ends Well Antony and Cleopatra As You Like It The Comedy of Errors  The Comedy of Errors Complete Works. Coriolanus Cymbeline Florizel and Perdita (adaptation of Winter's Tale) Hamlet Henry IV, Part 1 Henry IV, Part 2 Henry V Henry VI, Part 1 Henry VI, Part 2 Henry VI, Part 3 Henry VIII Julius Caesar King John King Lear

Love's Labour's Lost Macbeth Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night's Dream Much Ado About Nothing Othello Pericles Richard II Richard III Richard III (18th century adaptation) Romeo and Juliet The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Timon of Athens Marx's favorite. Titus Andronicus Troilus and Cressida Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Winter's Tale

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Spinoza

Spinoza's Ethics
Studia Spinoziana
A Theologicol-Politico Treatise
Ethica (latin)
Ethics
On the Improvement of the Understanding: Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect
TRACTATUS POLITICUS.] Edited with an Introduction by R. H. M. Elwes Translated by A. H. Gosset Published by G. Bell & Son London 1883

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Copyright © 1996-2007
by
The Institute/NODE.801/The Summer Club

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