Der Band enthält 123 Dokumente von Marx und Engels aus dem Zeitraum von Oktober 1857 bis Dezember 1858. Dazu zählen 81 Korrespondenzen für die „New-York Tribune“ – eine der bedeutendsten US-amerikanischen Zeitungen – sowie 39 Arbeiten für das große Lexikon „New American Cyclopædia“ und drei Texte für andere Zeitungen. Sieben bisher unbekannte Texte werden hier erstmals ediert. Im Mittelpunkt der journalistischen Arbeiten steht die Kommentierung der ersten Weltwirtschaftskrise von 1857/58 und des Indischen Aufstands 1857-59, der die britische Herrschaft erschütterte. (...) Marx tritt hier als Krisenanalytiker und als Kolonialkritiker hervor. Hinzu kommen seine Artikel zum Opiumhandel, den er als internationalen Drogenhandel darstellt, zum Beginn der "Neuen Ära" in Preußen und die Kommentierung des Anschlags auf Napoleon III. Des Weiteren finden sich Berichte zu den Kämpfen im Kaukasus und zu den britischen Antiterrormaßnahmen in Irland. Der Band zeigt Marx und vor allem Engels außerdem als Autoren von Lexikonbeiträgen. Darunter finden sich umfangreiche Biografien, wie die zu Blücher und Bolivar, Militärartikel zu Artillerie und Kavallerie sowie zu großen Schlachten, wie der Schlacht bei Borodino und zum Untergang der spanischen Armada. (shrink)

The present work carries us back to a period which, although chronologically no more than a generation or so behind us, has become as foreign to the present generation in Germany as if it were already a full hundred years old. Yet it was the period of Germany's preparation for the Revolution of 1848; and all that has happened in our country since then has been merely a continuation of 1848, merely the execution of the last will and testament of (...) the revolution. Just as in France in the eighteenth century, so in Germany in the nineteenth, a philosophical revolution ushered in the political collapse. But with what a difference! The French were in open combat with all official science, with the church and often also the state; their writings were printed beyond the frontier, in Holland or England, while they themselves were often on the point of landing in the Bastille. But the Germans were professors, state-appointed instructors of youth; their writings were recognized textbooks, and the system rounding off the whole development---the Hegelian system---was even raised, in some degree, to the rank of a royal Prussian philosophy of state! Was it possible that a revolution could hide behind these professors, behind their pedantically obscure phrases, their ponderous, wearisome sentences? Were not the liberals, the very people who then passed as the representatives of the revolution, the bitterest opponents of this brain-befuddling philosophy? But what neither governments nor liberals saw was seen by at least one man as early as 1833, and indeed by a man called Heinrich Heine. (shrink)

The failures of a philosophic system are often a good deal more revealing than its successes, for such failures test its strength and mark the limits of its endurance. Yet if these failures disclose any uniform pattern they are not only revealing but instructive and can be turned to good account.

This paper was presented at the XIX World Congress of Philosophy, "Mankind at a Turning Point: Philosophical Perspectives" held in Moscow, August 22-28, 1993. The author, representing the International Association of Women Philosophers, criticizes the use of "Mankind" in the Congress title and incorporates a resolution, subsequently passed unanimously by the steering committee of the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie, that calls for the use of non-sexist language at future World Congresses.

The book introduces Ramsey's main doctrines and assesses their contemporary significance. In particular, Jérôme Dokic and Pascal Engel are interested in Ramsey's thoughts on truth and belief, and his pragmatic thesis that the truth of one's beliefs guarantees the success of one's actions. From this, it is a short step to what may be called "Ramsey's principle": the content of a belief is constituted by the success of one's actions. This principle finds its current expression in the work of philosophers (...) who offer evolutionary conceptions of mental states, according to which the success conditions of a belief are constituted by its biological functions. (publisher, edited). (shrink)