Abstract

Marx is generally taken to be important in the history of thought as a social philosopher, that is, a philosopher whose main categories are human individuals, their interactions, and the development and modification of institutions, values, and the like. Not so, according to Carol C. Gould, who contends, rather, that Marx is important in the history of thought as a metaphysician, that is, a philosopher whose main categories are particulars, classes, the relation of individuals to class concepts, change, causation, and the like, and, having developed principles in that universal ontic domain, Marx proceeded to apply them to a special subdomain of reality, namely, society. In other words, Marx was important as an ontologist in general, and specifically as a social ontologist. Thus, the author states: "I present Marx for the first time as a great systematic philosopher in the tradition of Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel. Yet I show that Marx’s philosophical system is distinctive in that he develops it as a framework for his concrete social theory and his critique of political economy".