1001Philosophers

Friedrich Nietzsche vs Karl Marx

Nietzsche and Marx are the two great nineteenth-century critics of European modernity, but they criticize it from opposite directions. Marx attacked the modern order from below, in the name of the proletariat; Nietzsche attacked it from above, in the name of human excellence.

At a glance

Friedrich NietzscheKarl Marx
Dates1844 – 19001818 – 1883
NationalityGermanGerman
EraModernModern
Movements Existentialism, Continental Philosophy Marxism, Continental Philosophy
Profile Friedrich Nietzsche → Karl Marx →

Where they agree

Both held that modern European morality and culture are not what they take themselves to be: they conceal interests and origins behind a facade of universal validity. Both held that the apparent universality of moral and political claims hides specific historical conditions of their formation. Both wrote in the long shadow of Hegel and against the optimistic complacency of nineteenth-century liberal modernity.

Where they disagree

Marx located the hidden interest in class: the moralities and ideologies of bourgeois society serve to legitimate and sustain a system of exploitation, and the resolution lies in proletarian revolution and the abolition of class. Nietzsche located the hidden interest in resentment: Christian and democratic moralities are the revenge of the weak against the strong, and the resolution is the cultivation of higher individuals capable of creating new values. Where Marx looks toward a classless future, Nietzsche looks toward the Übermensch as a recovered cultural type.

Representative quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

  • “Postcard to Franz Overbeck , Sils-Maria (30 July 1881), tr. Walter Kaufmann , The Portable Nietzsche (1954)”

    I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor , and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza : that I should have turned to him just now , was inspired by "instinct." Not only is his overtendency like mine—namely to make all knowledge the most powerful affect — but in five main points of his doctrine I recognize myself; this most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely

  • “Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.”

    Letter to Elisabeth Nietzsche, Bonn, 1865-06-11, [ specific citation needed ] quoted as epigraph in Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic (1961)

  • “Letter to Elisabeth Nietzsche, Bonn, 1865-06-11, [ specific citation needed ] quoted as epigraph in Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic (1961)”

    Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.

Karl Marx

  • “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”

    Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretirt; es kommt aber darauf an, sie zu verändern.

  • “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

    In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-ope

  • “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

    As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (1848), p.2

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