Karl Marx

Ubermensch

nationality

American

occupation / innovator as

political scientist

is of the belief that he had turned Hegel on his head by emphasizing matter rather than spirit.

Philosophers in the idealist tradition may be more likely to put forward a determined end to history, for the tradition does not emphasize action in the real world as the empirical tradition does. Experience is the great relativizer and compromiser. Thus, Marx believed he had turned Hegel on his head by emphasizing matter rather than spirit. Marx did not hold that he had abandoned the form of Hegel’s thought, which, in turn, Hegel received in considerable part from Kant.

My Archive

is influenced by Darwinism but it is not the outcome of a biological process. Rather, it is a spiritualized form of Darwinism.

Nietzsche sought a new sort of aristocracy of super- or above-men, which would be the ultimate goal of civilized existence. The sources of this Nietzschean idea were several. Darwin’s theory of evolution suggested to Nietzsche the notion of humanity as an evolving species, although Nietzsche emphatically rejected the concept of the superman or above-man as the outcome of a biological process; in a sense, the superman or above-man is a spiritualized form of Darwinism.

Alan Ebenstein

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Alan Ebenstein