ABSTRACT
In Hegel’s philosophy author can distinguish two things: first, a vision of the way reality is structured, and consequently a program for the kind of theory which adequately captures that structure; and second, a metaphysics which purports to explain why reality is structured this way, and which implies (in Hegel’s view) a certain epistemic status for the theories which capture the structure of reality. For Marx, however, the dialectical structure of the world is a complex empirical fact about the nature of material reality. It is not a vestige of God’s creative essence, and it is not to be explained or understood by means of a priori speculative principles. The ‘mystical shell’ is Hegel’s logical pantheistic metaphysics, which represents the dialectical structure of reality as a consequence of thinking spirit’s creative activity.
