Marx's Moral, Social, and Political Philosophy

Catalog description

A majors seminar in Philosophy. Karl Marx is one of the most politically and intellectually influential philosophers of the modern period. Even today, in the aftermath of Soviet Communism, but also in the aftermath of the Great Recession, his ideas continue to be debated in academic circles, in the financial press, and among pundits, activists, and politicians. This seminar will survey his canonical writings roughly in chronological order. We will focus thematically on: Marx's views on morality and ideology; his theories of history, the modern capitalist economy, and the modern state; his views on political change and political agency; and on the few but suggestive passages in which he imagined what a post-capitalist society might look like. Readings will span from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of his youth to the Ethnological Notebooks written during the last decade of his life.