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The Hell of the Populace: Marx, Epicurus, and the Limits of Enlightenment

By Martin Devecka

Marx’s doctoral dissertation reads like a full-throated vindication of Epicurus against the uncomprehending critique to which he had been subject from antiquity onward. In a fragment (“On Religious Feudalism”) that comes at the end of that dissertation, however, Marx takes a surprising turn: he admits that an ancient criticism of Epicurus may actually be correct.

Marxing out on Fundus: Salvaging the Slave from Virgil’s Farm

By Tom Geue

This paper explores the hitherto rebuffed possibilities of using Marx to read ancient texts. I shall argue that, far from being a frame that paralyses literature through historical determinism, Marxist criticism is one of the best available tools for unsettling our experience of ancient culture by chasing its conspicuous absences, the things that are not there. In this way, such criticism becomes a fundamentally creative way to embrace antiquity’s gaping gaps. Marx is especially helpful in allowing us to crack even further, and more productively, the wrecked texts of antiquity.

Ode on a Grecian Printing-Press: Marx and the possibility of antiquity

By Adam Edward Lecznar

In 1842, Karl Marx (1818-1883) submitted his doctoral dissertation on the differences between the Epicurean and Democritean theories of atomism. This paper begins with Marx’s youthful treatment of Epicurean philosophy as an example of how to philosophize practically in the aftermath of the theoretical philosophy of Plato and Aristotle; it goes on to argue that ,throughout his life, ancient Greece offered Marx a source of hope in the potential of human activity.