Philosophy and Revolution: From Kant to Marx

Philosophy and Revolution: From Kant to Marx, by Stathis Kouvelakis. New York: Verso Press, 2003. Paper, $22.00. Pp. xiv, 434.

This book is quite simply the best study of the "young Marx" (pre-1848) and his immediate predecessors I have ever read. For supporters of the ancien régime in the first half of the 19th century, the failure of the French Revolution meant that everything could now go back to "normal." But for the thinkers Kouvelakis examines - Kant, Hegel, Heine, Hess, Engels, and Marx - the Revolution's promise of emancipation was merely deferred, not defeated. What exactly did that mean? Answers differed greatly.

Kant held that a combination of enlightened monarchy and extensive public discourse among intellectuals would inexorably undermine the remaining residues of feudalism, leading to a political order embodying the moral principles Kant discerned at work in the French Revolution. Hegel thoroughly rejected Kant's subordination of politics to morality. He too, however, believed that a suitably reformed state could attain the legitimate goals of the French Revolution, thereby avoiding the risks involved in actual revolutions. The harsh reactionary policies adopted by monarchies throughout Europe quickly revealed the practical irrelevance of this "philosophical science of the state."

Heinrich Heine did not share Kant and Hegel's illusions. Anticipating Walter Benjamin, Heine saw that only a revolution interrupting the flow of linear time could possibly make good on the debts that bind generations. Anticipating Derrida, Heine refused to ignore the specters that haunt everyday life, showing how...