Abstract

The debate over the continuity between Marx's early and later writings is now more than fifty years old and final resolution of the debate seems as remote as ever. Since the early 1970's, the "continuity view" first proposed by Shlomo Avineri and Istvan Meszaros has been widely regarded as the most plausible account of the linkage between these writings, while the main alternative to this view has been represented by the widely-criticised "epistemological break" thesis proposed by French philosopher Louis Althusser. ;A review of the literature since the late 1970's indicates that the main arguments upon which the continuity view was based have been increasingly undermined as new knowledge of the circumstances within which Marx worked in the 1840's has been developed. Marx's relationship to two contemporary "Young Hegelian" philosophers, Ludwig Feuerbach and Max Stirner, has especially emerged as an important aspect of the issue. ;This paper, drawing on the recent literature as well as additional original research in directions suggested by Althusser's discussion in his book For Marx, outlines a "corrected" epistemological break thesis. Thus in addition to showing that Marx was a "Feuerbachian" in 1843 and 1844 and documenting his break with Feuerbach in 1845 the paper will propose an explanation of why Marx broke with Feuerbach when he did and in the way he did, an explanation that is lacking in Althusser's discussion of the question. The explanation to be offered here is based on a study of the impact on Marx and the other Young Hegelians of Stirner's book The Ego and His Own, published in Germany in late 1844. ;The paper concludes with an overview of Marx's intellectual development between 1843 and 1846