Karl Marx by Imran Khan (#8)

Imran Khan 

Section 8

First Installment

Karl Marx lived from 1818-1883 and was a German philosopher that was known for being the founder of communism. Today I would like to discuss a little bit about his life and his works. Marx started out in his early days by studying law in Bonn and Berlin. Afterwards he went on to writing a PhD thesis in Philosophy comparing two very popular philosophers Democritus and Epicurus. He had really hoped to have some type of academic job, but he had become to radical with his thinking and turned to journalism. He quickly became involved with political and social issues and developed many of his early writings such as ‘On the Jewish Question’ or Philosophical Manuscripts. All of his early writings were never published until only after his death. The German Ideology was also one of the pieces that were not published in his lifetime, but in this writing we can start to see his develop his theory of history. Of all of his writings the most popular was probably The Communist Manifesto, which was jointly written with Engels. This piece of work was published with great excitement from the two as he returned to Germany from being exiled. He returned with hopes to take part in the revolution of 1848. This revolution had failed for Marx so, he moved to London where he lived and concentrated on economics for the rest of his life. He then published some more writings with the help of Engels such as Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy. All of his works that I have mentioned above are only a small fragment of everything he has written. At the end of his lifetime he will have completed around a 100 volumes, but the ones I have mentioned are the most important to the role he played in philosophy. I will leave you guys with a quick link to a video you can watch to learn more about him.

Sources: http://www.biography.com/people/karl-marx-9401219
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-Marx