ABSTRACT
The context of Marx’s thought must be understood in terms of the real political world in which he lived and the vibrant intellectual debates of his day. Marx was a great proponent of the view that there was a strong connection between theory and practice. It was his practice to reflect upon his day-to-day experiences in a philosophical manner. We find in the man himself the embodiment of his own view that a main aim of the intellectual was to define a notion of ‘praxis’, a condition of action that married theoretical reflection with human labour. Unfortunately the personal context of Marx’s life as a young journalist, seeing at first hand the poverty of the countryside, is easier to explain with stories like the one above than the theoretical element of his praxis, for Marx was embedded in a school of philosophy that today may seem somewhat obscure. It also has an internal debate that stretched back in its modern form over two hundred years, and in its entirety to the very origins of Western philosophy itself. That school of thought is Idealism or, to be more precise in Marx’s case, German Idealism. Failure to grasp the basic principles of Idealism and Marx’s place within this school of thought has led to countless misinterpretations of his work, and many wrongly placed criticisms. Thus it is to an explanation of this once dominant philosophical perspective that we must now turn.
