Description:
In this outstanding introduction to Marx's philosophy Jaime Edwards and Brian Leiter begin with an overview of Marx's life and intellectual development. It is an indispensable introduction to Marx's philosophy, and will also be useful to those in related disciplines such as politics, sociology, history and economics.
Review Quotes:
"A beautifully written synthesis of Marx's ideas and a powerful argument in favor of many dimensions of Marx's thought. This book supplants Jon Elster's Making Sense of Marx as the standard (at least for me) one volume treatment." - Steven N. Durlauf, Director of the Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility, Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago, USA
"[I]t is certainly an extremely useful book that should become a standard book for students and anybody interested in understanding Marx. Other books purport to do that, but not usually with this level of communicative skill. It's written by philosophers who can write and who are thinking critically about what they are writing about. It's not an inert summary, but something that brings Marxist ideas alive, and shows their strengths and limitations." - Nigel Warburton, Five Books, Best Philosophy Books of 2024
"Karl Marx is simultaneously one of the most important and most mischaracterized philosophers of the last 200 years. And yet there has been no clear, transparent introduction to the life and works of Marx, until now. Students and newcomers to Marx's writings will find in this text an approachable but rigorous introduction to his central ideas in philosophy, politics, and economics. ... [T]his is also a work of scholarship in which Edwards and Leiter develop and defend a plausible reading of the historical materialism theory, showing both how it represents the correct movement away from Hegel's dialectical idealism and again demonstrating the practical importance of the theory, including how the failure of the Bolsheviks to embrace it ultimately led to problems for the Russian Revolution. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers." - CHOICE
"A tour de force. Not only the best available introduction to Marx's thought and to post-Marx Marxist theories, but also of interest to specialists. The organization is excellent, and the writing is always clear and jargon-free. It covers all the main topics that a book on Marx should address. It is remarkably fair and balanced, sympathetic to Marx's ideas, but also appropriately critical of them." - Allen Buchanan, Duke University, USA
"A philosophical introduction to Marx which manages to be genuinely accessible without avoiding controversy or consigning its subject to history. Edwards and Leiter bring Marx into a productive conversation with current work in the social sciences in order to develop and defend distinctive accounts of his views on history, ideology, and capitalism. A very welcome addition to the literature." - David Leopold, University of Oxford, UK