The Education of an Educator

Abstract

Marx received an academic schooling in his native Rhineland, based on classical studies and strongly influenced by Enlightenment thinkers such as Immanuel Kant. At Berlin University, he mixed with the radically minded younger Hegelians who followed Ludwig Feuerbach’s call to engage with the world of experience and feeling. Even so, the dominating influence of Hegelian idealism is evident in Marx’s 1841 doctoral dissertation, a study of ancient materialism. His first career as a newspaper editor is marked by outspoken opposition to censorship and government paternalism. Following his teachers, he champions individual freedom of thought and speech. But Marx grows disillusioned with liberalism as he comes to see the reforms needed for realising its goals as impossible within the present social system. In debate with his former mentor Bruno Bauer over Jewish emancipation, he argues that theological criticism must be replaced by social criticism, since the real problems are those of an economic system that runs on self-interest.