Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel vs Karl Marx
Marx began his philosophical career as a left-Hegelian and his mature work is in significant respects an immanent critique of Hegel. The relation of dialectical method to materialism is the heart of nineteenth-century post-Hegelian philosophy.
At a glance
| Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel | Karl Marx | |
|---|---|---|
| Dates | 1770 – 1831 | 1818 – 1883 |
| Nationality | German | German |
| Era | Modern | Modern |
| Movements | German Idealism, Continental Philosophy | Marxism, Continental Philosophy |
| Profile | Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel → | Karl Marx → |
Where they agree
Both held that history has a developmental logic, both used dialectical method to analyze the unfolding of contradictions within a given social form, and both treated the present age as standing at a decisive turning point. Marx's vocabulary — alienation, contradiction, the unity of opposites — is Hegel's vocabulary.
Where they disagree
Hegel's dialectic is a dialectic of Spirit: history is the developing self-knowledge of reason, and material conditions are the appearance of spiritual development. Marx inverted the relation: the dialectic is a dialectic of material productive forces and relations of production, and what Hegel calls Spirit is the ideological reflection of material conditions. Where Hegel's history culminates in the self-realization of reason in the modern state, Marx's culminates in the abolition of class society through proletarian revolution.
Representative quotes
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
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“The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.”
Only one word more concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be. For such a purpose philosophy at least always comes too late. Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready. History thus corroborates the teaching of the conception that only in the maturity of reality does the ideal appear as counter -
“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it. -
“Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”
Often abbreviated to: Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion. | Variant translation: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm.
Karl Marx
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“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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- Full profile: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Full profile: Karl Marx
- Shared movements: Continental Philosophy
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