Karl Marx Research Paper

Karl Marx and Plato are two names heard all across the world. Their names ring in halls of philosophy everywhere, and their ideas run rampant in the heads of bright young thinkers. Karl Marx was a very prominent and influential philosopher from Germany. While Marx addressed a wide range of issues, he is most famous for his analysis of history in terms of class struggles, made very evident in his book titled The Communist Manifesto. Marx took a very strong stand against social oppression and was a very active political economist and social revolutionary. Plato was a revolutionary from many centuries before Marx. Plato was a very influential Greek philosopher who gave lectures on many topics, and expressed several of his ideas through his …show more content…
This is your being, your core. The core cannot be changed. There is, however, a state of constant changes; changes that define the self. We invent ourselves and create who we are through our actions and activities. The Marxist self is located in the reactions between an individual and society. To Marx, the self is simply our human behavior, and it can become whatever we may create it to be through our creative activity. Marx believed that doing and becoming is achieved through creativity and inventing. There is no defined or essential nature to the Marxist self, or "soul". Its nature is created and shaped with the help of its environment and the influence of historical …show more content…
This belief was to help him understand the changes in the world. Form is what makes a person who they are. Matter makes up the form. The form does not change, however the configuration of matter does. Plato viewed the self as your very being. The essence of a being is its inner self. The best form of expression for this self is knowing; the realization of self. This realization can be liked to an "epiphany". This is the sublime moment of self-realization. This self is located in a mixture of body/soul dualism. The self is inside your very being, waiting for that moment of self-realization. To Plato, the self's essential nature is fixed, however, to get down to the basic self, history must be stripped away. The evil, to Plato, is ignorance. If primary expression of self is knowing, then being ignorant or not knowing is the worst state. Not being able to recognize and achieve that moment of self-realization is the evil for Plato. Many will say that Plato is too authoritarian, or order-oriented to provide the freedoms that would be provided from a democracy. This is true, but moreover, Plato simply forces us to confront the forces of self-control, whether it is as an individual or in a political