Philosophy and Revolution: From Kant to Marx

Description

In this ambitious and original study, Stathis Kouvelakis paints a rich panorama of the key intellectual and political figures in the effervescence of German thought before the 1848 revolutions. He shows how the attempt to chart a moderate, reformist path entered into crisis, generating two antagonistic perspectives within the progressive currents of German society. On one side were those socialists - such as Moses Hess and the young Friedrich Engels - who sought to discover a principle of harmony in social relations. On the other side, the poet Heinrich Heine and the young Karl Marx developed a new perspective, articulating revolutionary rupture, thereby redefining the very notion of politics itself. This new edition of the book includes a long interview with Kouvelakis which puts the work in context.

Stathis Kouvelakis is a reader in political theory at King's College London. He is author and editor of many books, including the La France en revolte. Luttes sociales et cycles politiques (Textuel, Paris, 2007), Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism (Haymarket, New York, 2009) and Lenin Reloaded: Toward a Politics of Truth (co-edited with Sebastian Budgen and Slavoj Zizek, Duke University Press, Durham, 2007), a book translated in German, Italian, Spanish and Turkish. For years Kouvelakis was prominent member of the Syriza, Greece's far left political party. He even had a leadship role during their rapid ascent from a protest movement to the governing party of the beleaguered country, but resigned with thousands of other party members following the Prime Minister's capitulation to Troika in the summer of 2015.

Quite simply the best study of the 'young Marx' (pre-1848) and his immediate predecessors I have ever read. * Science & Society *