‘Marx in 90 Minutes’ by Paul Strathern, Ivan R. Dee

‘Marx in 90 Minutes’ by Paul Strathern is a introduction to the thought and man of a German philosopher, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx.

On the main content ‘Marx’s Life and Works’ Strathern describes Marx’s biography along with his thought and philosophy.
Karl Marx was born in Trier, Kingdom of Prussia, and his family is a German Jewish affluent family. The cosmopolitan atmosphere and comfortable bourgeois surroundings were to have significant influences on Marx. And his father Herschel converted to Christianity. This enabled Karl to join German middle class society and European culture (Kant and Voltaire). Marx entered the Bonn University, and a year later Marx transferred to the University of Berlin to continue law studies. In there, Marx encountered philosophy and Hegel’s idealistic vast, all-embracing and ever-evolving system of philosophy. This dynamic system affected all history and all phenomenons. Hegel’s philosophy of history applied government and society. By Hegel, the Prussian state is the ideal liberal society made by a link of the state and citizens. But Hegel’s philosophy was idealism, it insisted that all was moving toward the absolute spirit, was made Marx disappointed but he influenced by Hegel’s dynamism and the dialectical method. Equal to Hegel, another large influence on Marx’s thought was the materialism of a German humanist and moralist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach. Marx participated in the Left Hegelians, and he attempted to mix the dialectical theory of consciousness and historical reality by the school with the materialism learned by Feuerbach. After worked at journalist of a liberal newspaper, Marx was exiled from his homeland, move to Paris, Brussels and London, met and formed a friendly relation with a bourgeois Communist Friedrich Engels, and joined the Communist League and wrote the ‘Communist Manifesto’ with Engels. In this era he intensively study Economics of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and form his own materialist epistemology to percept activities in the world. In London, Marx continued to study philosophy of Hegel and Feuerbach, classical economics and collect economic statistics to prepare for his original economic work. By 1859 Marx completed his first economic work ‘Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’. In this book, he stated his economic materialism. Social life based is on economic relations. A superstructure of laws and social consciousness reflects the economic structure. Capitalism productions, private property, money and profit motive alienate men from the world and nature. Marx’s massive masterworks, ‘Das Kapital’ published in 1867, which investigates the mechanisms of capitalist economics. Marx viewed history as a succession of class struggles. As capitalism developed, the internal pressures arose, and the revolution by workers collapses the capitalist system. Karl Marx died in 1883. One of Marx’s contributions to philosophy is that it takes place within society, which is run on economic lines.

Strathern comments on forming and content of Marx’s thought along with his life, philosophical background and works. Author particularly explains how Marx formed his philosophy and thought, and the significance of Marx’s thought. The thought realized us what are the value and significance of existence in the modern society. And author also comments Marx didn’t nothing but attack for the capitalism. A socialist society or freedom of workers were fulfilled by reformations of capitalism. And Marx thought the socialist society and the communist society (fulfilled by a revolution) can be formed by adoption of the merits of the advanced capitalist economic and production system.
Also author points out mistakes of Marx. For example, private property and profit motive make us wealthy, and give us freedom in capitalist societies. But socialist societies deprived people of motives for work and innovation, freedom and humanity. And Marx misjudged the role of the capitalist. Capitalists are not wicked men, they are challengers devoted themselves entirely to business, production, innovation and gaining private property by using their own property. The innovation improves technology, science, our working, social and economical conditions. One of the problem of Marxist theory is that he couldn’t foreseen the development of reforms in politics, mass production, technology, science and education driven by the capitalism economics.
Author stands philosophically neutral in judging Marx’s thought. He both criticise and follow thought of Marx. It’s very regrettable majority of people dismissed with prejudice which formed by the dogmatic Marxist theory. I think, for example, concepts of commodity, capital and value-from by Marx are very significance also in today. We should reconsider proper or better capitalist society and capitalist production system by the thought of Marxist philosophy. This book is very helpful to study Marx for quite beginners.
Also you can read this book as an interesting brief biography of Marx. Author describes penniless and wandering life humorously. So I recommend this small book to the reader who what to get a basic understanding of Marx.

Marx in 90 Minutes (Philosophers in 90 Minutes Series)
Paul Strathern
Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 17 April 2001
96 pages $9.95
ISBN: 978-1-56663-355-0
Contents:
Introduction
Marx’s Life and Works
From Marx’s Writing
Chronology of Significant Philosophical Dates
Chronology of Marx’s Life and Times
Recommended Reading
Index

“Derrida in 90 Minutes” by Paul Strathern, Ivan R. Dee

“Derrida in 90 Minutes” by Paul Strathern is a introduction to philosophy of French philosopher Jaques Derrida.
The main content “Derrida’s Life and Works” describes Derrida’s biography with his thought and philosophy. Strathern comments on forming and content of Derrida’s philosophy along with his career and his philosophical, political and cultural background. Author describes how Derrida’s philosophy was influenced and affected political affairs and Western philosophy and thought. This book is a very very short history of philosophy related to Derrida, from platonism, rationalism, idealism and empiricism, to phenomenology, existentialism, psychology, structuralism and philosophy of language. As for philosophers, Plato, Descartes and Hume, to Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Freud, Roland Barthes and Wittgenstein.

The good point of this book is description of difference to structuralism and Roland Barthes. Derrida thought like this, Barthes’ argument of “death of the author” told there is no self-evidence truth by the author, but the theory made by hidden assumptions of bourgeois values. Structuralism criticized theory of idealism, humanism and intellectualism by meta-analysis, but the theory made of a positivism of analyzer, humanism and intellectualism. Then structuralism became a kind of humanism or intellectualism, and formed a “aporia” and fixed and ideal theory. Beyond structuralism, Derrida and post-structuralism attacked, destroyed and escaped from “presence”, “aporia”, basis and constructions of Western philosophy, thought and their statements themselves.

But in this book, there’s no detailed comment and criticism for Derrida’s theory. His theory is ambiguous but profound. So this book is just a introduction to philosophy of Derrida and post-structuralism.

Derrida in 90 Minutes (Philosophers in 90 Minutes Series)
Paul Strathern
Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 1 November 2000
99 pages $7.95
ISBN: 978-1-56663-329-1
Contents:
Introduction
Derrida’s Life and Works
Derrida: Mixed Quotes and Mixed Reviews
Chronology of Significant Philosophical Dates
Chronology of Derrida’s Life and Times
Recommended Reading
Index

“Sartre in 90 Minutes” by Paul Strathern, Ivan R. Dee

“Sartre in 90 Minutes” by Paul Strathern is a introduction to philosophy and thought of French philosopher, novelist and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre.
The main content ‘Sartre’s Life and Works’ describes Sartre’s biography with his thought and philosophy. The biographical description describes from his complex private background, glorious school life, the experience of the World War Ⅰ, the unusual relationship with Simone de Beauvoir, to a great success and vogue of his existentialism after ruin of Europe and the world by the World War Ⅱ, to his sympathy with and commitment to communism and Marxism, and his political actions. (Although he couldn’t desert a particular bourgeois life style and an intellectualism by elitism.)
Sartre’s life was large quantities of drinking, smoking, caffeine, romances and writing. Strathern mentions Sartre’s brutal and excessive life style as the “chemical life”. He led a decadent life from his teenage. On the other hand he had an excellent philosophical insight and genius. In his writings, he emphasized human reason, right and freedom, but his private life was absurd and terrible. In a sense he was a very selfish “humane” person…

Strathern explains Sartre’s philosophy by important works “Being and Nothingness”, “Nausea” and “Existentialism and Humanism”, but commentaries to Sartre’s complicated philosophy in this book is short and brief. Thus Strathern make a excellent quotation below. ‘Another key concept of Sartre’s existentialism is that existence precedes essence. “This means that a human being first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and only defines himself afterwards,” according to Sartre. “There is no such thing as human nature, because there is no all-seeing God to have a conception of it… A human being is nothing else but what he makes of himself; he exists only as much as he realizes himself. He is thus nothing more than the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.”’
Strathern allots much of philosophical commentaries for explanations of Sartre’s philosophical background such as the concept of “contingent” by Immanuel Kant, phenomenology by Edmund Husserl, existentialism by Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger.

This book is only a short interesting biography of Sartre. You can read this as short interesting biography and introduction of Sartre.

Sartre in 90 Minutes (Philosophers in 90 Minutes Series)
Paul Strathern
Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 1 June 1998
93 pages $9.95
ISBN: 978-1-56663-192-1
Contents:
Introduction
Sartre’s Life and Works
From Sartre’s Writings
Chronology of Significant Philosophical Dates
Chronology of Sartre’s Life
Recommended Reading
Index