Karl Marx
The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
14. Marx’s work Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature is part of a general research on the history of ancient philosophy which he planned as far back as 1839.
During his research on ancient philosophy Marx compiled the preparatory Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy (see this volume, pp. 401-509). In early April 1841 Marx submitted his work to the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Jena as a dissertation for a doctor’s degree (see this volume, p. 379) and received the degree on April 15. He intended to have his work printed and for this purpose wrote the dedication and the foreword dated March 1841. However, he did not succeed in getting it published, although he thought of doing so again at the end of 1841 and beginning of 1842.
Marx’s own manuscript of the thesis has been lost. What remains is an incomplete copy written by an unknown person. This copy has corrections and insertions in Marx’s handwriting. Texts of the fourth and fifth chapters of Part One and the Appendix, except for one fragment, are missing. Each chapter of Part One and Part Two has its own numeration of the author’s notes. These notes, in the form of citations from the sources and additional commentaries, are also incomplete. They are given, according to the copy of the manuscript which has survived, after the main text of the dissertation and marked in the text, in distinction to the editorial notes, by numbers and brackets. Obvious slips of the pen have been corrected. Changes made by Marx which affect the meaning are specified.
In the first publication of the thesis in Aus dem Literischen Nachlass" von Kar1 Marx, Friedrich Engels und Ferdinand Lassalle, Bd. I, Stuttgart, 1902, the fragments from the Appendix "Critique of Plutarch’s Polemic Against the Theology of Epicurus", have been omitted as well as all the author’s notes except for some excerpts. The first publication in full (according to the part of the manuscript that has been preserved) was carried out by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, CC CPSU, in 1927 in Volume One of MEGA (Marx/Engels, Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Erste Abteilung, Band 1, Erster Halbband, S. 3-81).
The first translation into English was done by Kurt Karl Marx in 1946 in Melbourne (a typewritten copy of it is kept in the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, CC CPSU, in Moscow). The foreword to the thesis was published in the collection: K. Marx and F. Engels, On Religion Moscow, 1957, pp. 13-15. In 1967 a translation by Norman D. Livergood was published in the book: Activity in Marx’s Philosophy, Hague, 1967, pp. 55-109. Two excerpts from the dissertation (see this volume, pp. 84-87 and 103-05) were published in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, New York, 1967, pp. 60-66, and Karl Marx. Early Texts, Oxford, 1971, pp. 11-22.
15 Marx here refers to the book Petri Gassendi, Animadversiones in decimum librum Diogenis Laertii, qui est De Vita, Moribus, Placitisque Epicuri, Ludguni, 1649.
16 Marx never realised his plan to write a larger work on the Epicurean, Stoic and Sceptic philosophies.
17 This refers to the following passage from the book by Karl Friedrich Köppen, Friedrich der Grosse und seine Widersacher, Leipzig, 1840: "Epikureismus, Stoikismus und Skepsis und die Nervenmuskel und Eingeweidesysteme des antiken Organismus, deren unmittelbare, natürliche Einheit die Schönheit und Sittlichkeit des Altertums bedingte, und die beim Absterben desselben auseinanderfielen" (S. 39) ("Epicureanism, Stoicism and Scepticism are the nerve muscles and intestinal system of the antique organism whose immediate, natural unity conditioned the beauty and morality of antiquity, and which disintegrated with the decay of the latter"). Köppen dedicated his book to Karl Marx.
18. Marx quotes David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature from the German translation: David Hume über die menschliche Natur aus Englischen nebst kritischen Versuchen zur Beurtheilung dieses Werks von Ludwig Heinrich Jakob, 1. Bd., Über den menschlichen Verstand, Halle, 1790, S. 485.
19 Marx quotes from a letter by Epicurus to Menoeceus; see Diogenes Laertii de clarorum philosophorum vitis, dogmatibus et apophthegmatibus libri decem (X, 123).
20 Gymnosophists - Greek name for Indian sages.
21 Ataraxy- in ancient Greek ethics- tranquillity. In Epicurean ethics - the ideal of life; state of the sage who has attained inner freedom through knowledge of nature and deliverance from fear of death.
22 The manuscripts of "General Difference in principle Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature" and "Result" have not been found.
23 Characterising here the gods of Epicurus, Marx, obviously, had in mind the remark by Johann Joachim Winckelmann in his book Geschichte der Kunst des Altelluim, 2 Teile, Dresden, 1767: "The beauty of the deities in their virile age consists in the combination of the strength of mature years and the joyfulness of youth, and this consists here in the lack of nerves and sinews, which are less apparent in the flowering of the years. But in this lies also an expression of divine self-containment which is not in need of the parts of our body which serve for its nourishment; and this illuminates Epicurus’ opinion concerning the shape of the gods to which he gives a body, which looks like a body, and blood, but which looks like blood, something which Cicero considers obscure and inconceivable".
24 Hyrcanian Sea-ancient name of the Caspian Sea.
25 The reference is probably to the commentaries by johann Baptist Carl Niirnberger and johann Gottlob Schncider on the following editions: Diogems Laertius. De vitis, dogmatibus et aethegmatibus liber decimus graece et latine separation editus... a Carolo Nürnbergerg Norimbergae, 1791 (the second edition appeared in 1808) and Epicuri physica et meteorologica duabus epistolis eiusdem compmhenia. Graeca ad fidem librorum sciiptorum et editorum emandavit atque interpretatus est. jo. Gottl. Schneider, Lipsiae, 1813.
26 This is not Metrodorus of Lampsacus, the disciple of Epicurus, but Metrodorus of Chios, the disciple of Democritus, named incorrectly by Stobaeus (in the author’s note) as the teacher of Epicurus. The same lines may be found in the fifth notebook on Epicurean philosophy (see this volume, pp. 96 and 486).
27 Two fragments from the Appendix have been preserved: the beginning of the first paragraph of Section Two and the author’s notes to Section One. The general title of the Appendix, which is missing in the first fragment, is reproduced here according to the contents (see this volume, p. 33). The text of this fragment corresponds almost word for word to the text of the third notebook on Epicurean philosophy (see this volume, pp. 452-54) and was written in an unknown hand on paper of the same kind as the text of the notebook. On this ground some scholars assume that this fragment does not belong to the Doctoral dissertation, but is part of a non-extant work on ancient philosophy. The content of the fragment, however, and the quotations from Plutarch in it are closely connected with the author’s notes to the Appendix (see this volume, pp. 102-05). As the available data do not yet permit a final decision as to where this fragment belongs, in this edition it is included in the Doctoral dissertation.
28 The reference is to Plutarch’s mystic conception of three eternally existing categories of men.
29 In the manuscript of the author’s notes all quotations are given in the original-Greek or Latin. While Marx, in the Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy, quotes Diogenes Laertius according to Pierre Gassendi’s edition (Lyons, 1649), in his notes to the dissertation he quotes from the Tauchnitz edition of Diogenes Laertius, De vitis philosorum libri.... X, T. 1-2, Lipsiae, 1833. Editorial explanatory insertions are given in square brackets when necessary.
30 Massilians were the citizens of the city of Massilia, now Marseilles, founded circa 600 B. C. as a Greek colony by Ionic Phocaeans. The battle of Marius with the German Cimbri tribes who invaded Caul and Northern Italy took place in 101 B. C. near Vercelli.
31 Marx refers here to the struggle between different trends in the German philosophy of the late thirties and early forties of the nineteenth century. By the "liberal party" Marx means here the Young Hegelians. The most advanced of the Young Hegelians (Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, Arnold Ruge) took the stand of atheism and political radicalism. In answer to this evolution of the Left wing of the Hegelian school, the conservative German philosophers united under the banner of the so-called positive philosophy- a religious-mystical trend (Christian Hermann Weisse, Immanuel Hermann Fichte junior, Franz Xaver von Baader, Anton Gunther and others), which criticised Hegel’s philosophy from the right. The "positive philosophers" tried to make philosophy subservient to religion by proclaiming divine revelation the only source of "positive" knowledge. They called negative every philosophy which recognised rational cognition as its source.
32 Marx cites (in the manuscript in French) from the book System de La nature, ou des du monde physique et du monde moral. Par. M. Mirabaud, Secrétaire Perpétuel et 1’un des Quarante de l’Académie Francaise, Londres, 1770. The real author of the book was the French philosopher Paul Holbach, who for the sake of secrecy put the name of J. Mirabaud, the secretary of the French Academy, on his book (J. Mirabaud died in 1760).
33 Both Friedrich Schelling’s works quoted by Marx (Philosophische Briefe uber Dogmatismus und Kriticismus and Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie, oder uber das Unbedingte im menschlichen Wissen) appeared in 1795. Later Schelling renounced his progressive views and turned to religious mysticism. In 1841 Schelling was invited by the Prussian authorities to the University of Berlin to oppose the influence of the representatives of the Hegelian school, the Young Hegelians in particular.
34 Marx probably refers to the 13th lecture on the history of religion delivered by Hegel at the University of Berlin during the summer term of 1829.
35 The reference is to Kant’s critique of different ways of proving God’s existence in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason).
36 Marx refers to the following remark made by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason in connection with the speculation on the logical meaning of the elements of reasoning (subject, predicate and the copula "is"): "... A hundred real talers do not contain the least coin more than a hundred possible talers. For as the latter signify the concept, and the former the object and the positing of the object, should the former contain more than the latter, my concept would not, in that case, express the whole object, and would not therefore be an adequate concept of it. My financial position is, however, affected very differently by a hundred real talers than it is by the mere concept of them (that is, of their possibility). For the object, as it actually exists, is not analytically contained in my concept, but is added to my concept (which is a determination of my state) synthetically; and yet the conceived hundred talers are not themselves in the least increased through thus acquiring existence outside my concept."
37 Wends - old name of West Slavic tribes.
38 At the end of 1841 and beginning of 1842 Marx made a new attempt to publish his dissertation. He drafted the beginning of a new preface in which many passages were altered or crossed out. It was probably at the same period that he wrote the note against Schelling which was inserted in Marx’s handwriting in the copy of the manuscript.