I’ve been told I should read more from Marx, but my view has always been this.
Marx wrote his works 160 years ago. The world knows far more about economics, political science, psychology, sociology, etc than we knew back then. I don’t see what I would gain by reading people like Nietzsche, Marx, Adam Smith, etc.
Take the 2008 economic crisis. It was my understanding that the reason it didn’t turn into a full blown depression was because we had built up the knowledge base of economics to prevent a recession from becoming a depression. We didn’t have that knowledge in the 1930s or 1880 so those became depressions.
Its also my understanding that every nation that has adopted centrally planned economics has abandoned it for a mixed economic system. Most nations that want to pursue Marx’s ideas seem to feel that with the more advanced knowledge and experience we have now, that social democracy is a better way to achieve something akin to the Marxist goal of a society that values egalitarianism, wealth redistribution, investment in the public, consent of the governed, etc. Also from what I do know of Marxist work, it tends to subscribe to the blank slate of human psychology, thinking all social hierarchies are socially designed and we now know thats not the case. Humans are tribalistic and have misogynistic impulses. Socialization can aggravate or lessen these impulses, but they aren’t going to magically go away via socialization.
I just don’t see what benefit I would gain from reading the likes of Freud, Marx, Adam Smith, etc since the knowledge base humanity has as of 2024 is so much more advanced and contemporary writers would be far better sources of information.
ISTM all current philosophy (of whatever sort) is built on what came before.
There is value in understanding the basic building blocks and then going from there. As each block is added to the pile of knowledge you (general “you”) have a better chance at finding an error in the logic or seeing another way to go.
If you start from the “top” (the latest thought) you have less ability to critique it since you have to assume what came before was correct. If you disagree with the basis then you have to work backwards. Better to work forwards.
I would also say “ideal” systems are ok in a classroom and for intellectual discussion but they never work in the real world. Pure communism doesn’t work and neither does pure capitalism. That’s why we find a mix is better. What that mix should be is hotly debated.
There is some truth to that, but my view is that newer knowledge shows previous knowledge to be untrue.
Adam Smith believed in rational choice theory, which modern research has shown human behavior in general but also in economics is not really accurate. Humans have a lot of built in biases.
Marxist economics has been a failure everywhere it has been tried.
Humans are not a blank slate like early psychologists believed.
Freud took an unhealthy view on girls being molested by their fathers due to the misogynistic attitudes of the time (from what I understand of it).
I would suggest instead reading modern books summarizing what they said and placing them in societal and historic context.
Although philosophy is supposedly timeless, the truth is that the writers were responding to their own times and the forces that governed them. Without that context it is next to impossible to understand why they wrote what they wrote*. Trying to make their postulates universal stretches the concepts too far.
It’s also true that you don’t have to learn Latin to understand Newton’s three laws. Skip yourself the aggravation and go straight for the learning.
* It may be impossible to understand what they wrote in any case. The blame is then on them, not you.
This is a threadshit. It has nothing to do with the topic at hand and is offered solely to attack the choice of the OP. We don’t have a required format for thread titles as you seem to imply.
Since you seem to have nothing of value to offer in the thread, you are directed to stay out of it. Consider yourself thread banned.
The value in reading older philosophers is not to treat them as authorities, but to follow their lines of thinking so that you understand them. You are not seeking facts but training in how to think about things. If they were wrong, it helps you to understand where they went wrong, not only that their ideas were disproved in practice but what original assumptions were wrong, or what about their train of reasoning was wrong (or, of course, both).
In addition, some areas of philosophy have not changed materially, perhaps especially logic. The study of basic logic is useful for almost anyone.
That said, I agree with your disdain of Freud, but then he was not a philosopher but a kind of witch doctor.
Freud certainly had some odd notions. I think his value was in formalizing an approach to mental health which has proven valuable. Lots of people have built on what he started.
I wouldn’t say the point of reading philosophy (from any era) is knowledge that is true; you read it for ideas that are thought-provoking and / or influential. If you want to know why economic systems function the way they do, yeah, it might not make a lot of sense to read Marx. But if you want to know more about the ideas that fomented revolutions and still shape the world we live in today, it does. Similarly, Freud is clearly not the best source if you want an accurate understanding of human psychology, but knowing at least a little bit about Freud is helpful in understanding a lot of early twentieth-century literature and art, since the creators knew his theories and took them seriously.
Aside from transference, essentially every ‘scientific’ concept and therapeutic method that Freud developed was complete bunk, and many of them harmed patients, sometimes grievously, and often destroyed families with completely fabricated allegations of childhood sexual abuse. His “odd notions” included prescribing (and using) large amounts of cocaine and (in conjunction with is fellow pseudoscientist, Wilhelm Fliess) nasal surgery to correct problems of a supposed “nasogenital” connection for which there was never any physiological evidence and is now completely dismissed by anatomists. Psychoanalysis—along with its baseless dream and imagery interpretation components—writ large has been abandoned by the psychiatric community as ineffective, pointless, and potentially harmful, and while the model of the id/ego/superego has found its way into literature and still crops up in anthropology, is viewed as gross simplification of the complex web of desires, restraints, and drives by neuroscience researchers. The only reason to read Freud in particular is to understand all of these ways that pseudoscience can be elevated to high dogma by the logical fallacy of authority.
That being said, there is a lot of value in reading the works of many 19th century and earlier luminaries because what they wrote still forms the basis for both current ideologies and the criticism of them today, and without that historical context it may seem that ideas just formed out of the vacuum instead of coming together through generations of debate, pontification, and synthesis. Adam Smith obviously knew nothing of what would develop from mercantilism into today’s “Free Market”, but he anticipated many of the problems that would come from unregulated trade and speculation. I don’t think Karl Marx (and Friedrich Engels) knew much about economics or applied social psychology, but they understood how the concentration of capital resources could foment corruption and exploitation. That the philosophy of communism became the basis for multiple failed authoritarian regimes would seem to negate its value as a practical system of economic management or social justice, but their writings and the history that extended from them is highly illustrative of how the highest of ideals can be twisted into brutal repression.
Context is everything in understanding how social ideas such as economic systems, political philosophies, and cultural conflicts came to exist, and you cannot have that context without studying the writings of the influential people behind them. And, for the record, the 2008 global economic crisis occurred because people failed to heed the lessons of history, and was mitigated (to the extent that it was) by an artificial stimulus that ended up benefiting and protecting the very people who created the crisis in the first place. The “knowledge base of economics to prevent a recession” is something you can fit in a matchbox because all we fundamentally really understand at a policy level is to increase spending or money availability and cut lending interest rates. It’s a very dull tool that often has serious consequences and does not address the fundamental causes that led to recession in the first place.
Sometimes you’ll find yourself surprised by just how modern some of those philosophers are even today. Marx’s Theory of Alienation, that when a worker loses the ability to determine their own actions including being able to define their own relationships or keep the products of their own labor is something that’s still applicable today. I didn’t do a great job explaining it, but it’s food for thought.
I think there’s central point here that’s nothing to do with how obsolete or otherwise these writings are in 2024
I have not read any of those texts. But I do think there is probably some value to reading them. I have not read them as they are dense unreadable tomes in my experience. If I was trying to get a PhD in economics I would definitely read them, but as an casually interested amateur historian there is no way in hell I’m taking the time to read that crap. If your tolerance for reading dry verbose 18th economic texts (and available free time) is higher maybe it would be worthwhile for you
The existence of understanding of critical thinking is not the same as widespread use of it. There is not a person reading this, including you and me, who couldn’t use lots of practice in critical thinking.
There is also such a thing as fashion in ideas. Some older concepts and ideas that have fallen out of favor may still have use.
But clearly we’re not convincing each other, so thanks for reading this far.
Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.
—Jacob Bronowski
I’ve read some of the classics cold, and although there’s plenty of charming, inspiring nuggets, I know I miss the vein. I don’t think one can read Marx without an understanding of Hegel in the background, or an understanding of what Metternich, Tallyrand and an anonymous cabal of bankers in London envisioned for the human race in the era they shared.
I would recommend to the OP a current assessment/survey of Marx. Every hour reading the unnecessary esoterica of Marx is an hour lost reading Voltaire, Montaigne, or Epictetus (and what a loss!) And I’m sure a few recommendations of summarizations will be forthcoming from among us.
I’m partial to John Kenneth Galbraith’s take: where the reforms he suggested (the social safety net) were not adopted, the revolutions he predicted (the destruction of societies) were inevitable.
The OP seems to have a utilitarian approach to reading: the book must be true, relevant and useful. I warmly recommend adding some pleasure to the mix: read for fun. Consider the classic authors like writers, read Hobbes like you would Jonathan Swift, and Nietzsche as if he were Dostojevski.
And Freud is indeed unreadable, his German is awful. And Marx’ “Das Kapital” is quite fun and illustrative to read, surprisingly, except for the first chapter, where he defines his terms. This is tedious beyond my endurance. Skip it, is my advice.
When I took a philosophy class on Kant, the lecturer told us that his original German is so impenetrable that native German speakers find it easier to learn English, and then read him in translation. No doubt an exaggeration, but presumably with some truth behind it.
To the OP, I agree with most other responses - much older philosophy (going back to Plato and beyond) is worth reading for its own sake, both to critique it in light of more recent knowledge/theories and to understand how we got here from there. Plus much of it is simply entertaining (e.g. Socrates being a bit of an ass).
C. S. Lewis was a fan of reading old books, and he defended the practice both on the grounds that it provides context for newer works (which is a point @Stranger_On_A_Train made)…
…and because each age has its own blind spots, assumptions, and worldview that we sometimes aren’t aware of because we tale it for granted.
That is an exageration indeed. This is only true of Heidegger. And not in the English translation, but the French one.
I believe the translator cheated and invented half of what he translated and put the other half on its head.