Marx and kant comparison

common ideas:

For both the story has a dialectical structure. Kant fails to formulate the terms of thesis, antithesis and synthesis (which do appear in Hegel and Marx later), but he defends, like Marx, that history suffers apparent setbacks can have a sense from this not easy to determine. The story, as Kant conceives it, is also dynamic and historical movements could be explained dialectically.

For both authors, there is also a positive assessment of the conflict. This has been sufficiently clear in our discussion of Marx, and also appears in Idea of a universal history with cosmopolitan purpose, where Marx says that the antagonism already present in human nature itself ( it is unsocial sociability) is the mechanism that nature uses for the progress of human affairs.

Finally, both authors understand that the story has a purpose. This teleology of history separates them, for example, Nietzsche, for that time (both the historical cosmological) has been defined by the eternal return. Against this, both Kant and Marx said that history is directed toward an end, although this is not always directly observable from the present in which we live.

differences in the theory of Kant and Marx history:

An essential difference lies in their conception of history: for Marx would be the development of the subject (or the material conditions of life), while for Kant is the story unfold through time of the Enlightenment ideals such as freedom , autonomy and emancipation. This idealistic view contrasts very clearly with the historical materialism of Marx, from Kant's conception that could be described as ideological.

The end of the story is different for both: the classless society of which Marx speaks is not the same union that great cosmopolitan people describing Kant in his work. The policy approach and illustrated the role Kant collides with the historical materialism of Marx gives to the economy.

Both the conception of human being and the culture in which they live are very different for both thinkers. For Kant, man is essentially right, and this is the attribute that unlike animals, releasing the instinct and necessity. The culture is therefore an opportunity for liberation, would be the true path of development of reason, the greatest of human opportunities. By contrast, the human essence is, for Marx, the work and activity. Man transforms nature in the development of its essence. With regard to culture, is interpreted with suspicion, as it often can take an ideological basis to help maintain the basic contradiction of the infrastructure.

I compare Kant's philosophy with that of Karl Marx.

While Kant assumes that rationality is the nature of man and it should work towards being completely rational, Marx would describe this position as an idealist, not taking into account the actual circumstances of human life.

Kant was a man well-off middle class and temperament reasoner. It was cult, which at the time was a luxury available to very few and generalized his own experience if all men could reach it. However, Marx would make a deeper objection by pointing out the role of ideology, understood as a rationalization, that is, as seemingly rational arguments but in the background mask class interests, that is, that Kant did not suspect that their own system apparently rational, could be contaminated by the interests of its middle class and even by their political outlook.

In short, Marx shows that rationality is a fundamental objective of human life, but it is more difficult to achieve what Kant might suppose, because of the disruption that our ideological systems introduced in rationality. In other words, if we want to be more rational we must first analyze our class interests, which make us disguised as universally valid what is nothing more than a particular interest.