ABSTRACT
It was a guiding idea of Marx that our knowledge of the world is limited by the historical epoch within which we live. Understanding is thus itself both produced and constrained by historical process. Such an apparently paradoxical and relativistic view is deeply pessimistic of the attainment of objective, timeless knowledge. However, like Hegel, Marx envisaged a utopian future when the distinctions between essence and appearance and subjectivity and objectivity would be obliterated in an historically achieved condition of social awareness. The attainment of ‘knowledge’ of the world for Marx was therefore progressive: a process of ‘seeing through’ surface appearance to underlying reality which, rather like personal development, was temporally ordered.
