Jean Louise Cohen reads and discusses with Bernard E. Harcourt Marx’s “Introduction” to his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and “On the Jewish Question” in conversation with Claude Lefort’s “Politics and Human Rights”

Thursday, November 14, 2024

Columbia University, New York

Watch the full introduction to Marx 3/13 here:

In February 1844, Marx published two articles in the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher, which he and Arnold Ruge edited in Paris: “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” and “On the Jewish Question.” The first article, Jean Hyppolite referred to as “a first communist manifesto.” The second article, famously, called for human, as opposed to merely legal or political emancipation.

Together, the two articles push the reader past the juridical remedies that Marx proposed in his 1842 articles on the thefts of wood and that we discussed at Marx 2/13. There, you will recall, Marx called for a legal framework based on a customary right for the poor. By contrast, in these two 1844 articles, Marx recognizes the thoroughgoing political nature of the struggle and turns instead to the class of workers for the realization of emancipation.

From Marx’s juridical writings, we turn in Marx 3/13 to his more political writings on the state and on the true nature of emancipation. At Marx 3/13, we will read Marx’s 1844 articles with Professor Jean Louise Cohen, the Nell and Herbert Singer Professor of Political Theory and Contemporary Civilization at Columbia University, in conversation with the political philosopher Claude Lefort’s essay “Politics and Human Rights.”

Welcome to Marx 3/13!

[Read the full introduction to Marx 3/13 here].

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Primary text: Karl Marx, Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843) and “On the Jewish Question” (1843)

Commentary: Claude Lefort, “Politics and Human Rights,” in: The Political Forms of Modern Society, pp. 239-272

Philosopher:  Jean Louise Cohen

Date: Thursday, November 14, 2024

In-person location:  Jerome Greene Hall Annex, Columbia University 

Time: 6:00PM New York time (EDT, UTC/GMT -4)

Readings: On-line here

Language: English