Volume 10, Number 7 · April 11, 1968
Reason and Revolution
By George Lichtheim
Theory and Practice: History of a Concept from Aristotle to Marx
by Nicholas Lobkowicz
Notre Dame, 442 pp., $8.95
The Evolution of Dialectical Materialism
by Z.A. Jordan
Macmillan (London), distributed in US by St. Martin's Press, 490 pp., $12.00
The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx
by Shlomo Avineri
Cambridge, 264 pp., $8.50
The owl of Minerva spreads its wings when the shades of dusk are falling. Hegel's celebrated aphorism has often been invoked to characterize the difference between his own contemplative bent and the activism of his rebellious disciples. Philosophy (it was said) was indeed backward-looking by its very nature. Hegel had been right to emphasize this truth, but wrong to suggest that contemplation of the past was the only mode of thought proper to rational comprehension of the world. History, after all, was still going on, and its understanding could not be put off until the time had once more come to sum up the achievements of a bygone epoch. It was possible to theorize about the future, as well as about the past. More than that: the future could be shaped by conscious action guided by experience. Hegel had severed theory from practice, thought from action, reason from revolution. The task was to re-unite them. 'The philosophers have merely interpreted the world in different ways. What matters is to transform it.'
Review, 4686 words
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