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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2017
It is generally agreed that Hegel and his younger and somewhat leftist followers contributed to shaping the philosophical and economic views of Marx. Not so generally recognized is the impact of a Polish writer, August von Ciezkowski, whose influence is the subject of our query. This note is not intended to be an original contribution on the subject but a brief restatement of an interesting proposition concerning Marx's intellectual origins by a German professor of philosophy, Reinhard Lauth. To the best of my knowledge Professor Lauth's proposition has not been discussed as yet on this side of the Atlantic.
The eleventh thesis of Marx on Feuerbach, appended to his Deutsche Ideologie (1845-46) reads: Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kommt darauf an, sie zu verändern. Its meaning is well known and the alteration from interpretation to change, from theoretical to practical philosophy, has been stressed sufficiently.
1 Lauth, Reinhard, “Einflusse slawischer Denker auf die Genesis der Marxschen Weltanschauung.” Orientalia Christiana Periodica, Vol. XXI, 3–4 (1955)Google Scholar, pp. 399-450; , “Die verwirtschaftete Humanitdt.” Neue Deutsche Hefte (August, 1955), pp. 334-46.
2 Marx, Karl, Die Frilhschriften. Ed. by Landshut, S. (Stuttgart: A Kroener, 1955), p. 341.Google Scholar (Philosophers have interpreted the world differently; the problem, however, is to change it.)
3 Berlin: Veit & Co.
4 Ibid., p. 9 (that it is impossible to understand the organic and ideatic totality as well as the apodictic process of world history without the knowledge of the future; the future is conceived as an integrated part of history; its knowledge, in turn, affects the realization of the vocation of mankind). The pillar of modern Soviet Marxism, interestingly enough, is the doctrine asserting the foresight of the Party leadership which, in turn, facilitates the apodictic dialectical process of the historical development of mankind.
5 Polski slownik biograficzny (Cracow, 1937).
6 Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIX siécle (Paris, 1869).
7 R. Lauth, “Einflüsse …,” op. cit., p. 414.
8 Especially since Professor Lauth did so in detail in his “Einflüsse …,” op. cit.
9 Cieszkowski, op. cit., p. 146.
