Introduction: Neue Engels-Lektüre

Abstract

This introduction draws together the past and present problems of reading Engels, emphasizing the importance of the political background and hermeneutic content of the controversy about ‘dialectics of nature’. It argues that dismissive attacks rather than reasoned arguments shaped much of the polemical framework of the literature. Present interpretations were often projected into a past text, but this risked a clear distinction between author’s intentions, his text and its subsequent readings. What we rather need today is a larger room for reasoned arguments rather than appeals to political authority, closer scrutiny of alternative positions rather than dismissive attacks, interesting questions rather than final answers.