A Study Of Self-Conscious Thought In Marx’s Doctoral Dissertation

Marx’s doctoral dissertation "The Difference between Democritus’ Natural Philosophy and Epicureus’ Natural Philosophy" is an important text in the growth of Marx’s thought,in which Marx highlights the theme of self-awareness philosophy contained in Epicurean natural philosophy by comparing Democritus and Epicureus natural philosophy,and forms his own self-awareness thought on this basis.Value and limitations are studied.First,the theoretical sources of Marx’s philosophy of self-consciousness are clarified.An important opportunity for Marx’s attention to the philosophy of self-consciousness was his shift from Kant-Fichte’s idealism to Hegelian philosophy;he joined the Young Hegelians after he began to study Hegelian philosophy carefully,and the direct source of his doctoral dissertation topic and his research on the philosophy of self-consciousness was the influence of the Young Hegelians,especially Powell;after deciding on his doctoral dissertation topic,Marx conducted a After deciding on the topic of his doctoral dissertation,Marx researched and wrote two notebooks: Notes on the Philosophy of Epicurus and Berlin Notebooks which are both important texts for Marx’s research in writing his doctoral dissertation and studying the philosophy of self-consciousness.Second,it is explored how Marx manifested the idea of self-consciousness in his doctoral dissertation.First,he highlights the direction of self-consciousness insinuated in Epicurus’ philosophy of nature in his justification of Epicurus;second,he highlights the idea of self-consciousness in Epicurus’ philosophy through the comparison of Democritus’ and Epicurus’ atomism,drawing on the atom as a metaphor for self-consciousness and analyzing the contradictory nature,absoluteness,and freedom of self-consciousness expressed in the atomic world;third,in his doctoral dissertation,Marx breaks down the Thirdly,in his doctoral dissertation,Marx broke the closed and perfect system of self-consciousness established by philosophers in the past,stepped out of the dilemma of self-consciousness to face reality,and used self-consciousness as a weapon to criticize religion and to explore the relationship between philosophy and the world.Finally,combined with Marx’s other later philosophical thoughts,the self-awareness thought in Marx’s doctoral dissertation is reviewed,and the theoretical status,theoretical value and theoretical influence of self-awareness thought in Marx’s doctoral dissertation are analyzed.The theoretical status is mainly manifested in two aspects,on the one hand,it is the transcendence of the Young Hegelians,which is specifically manifested in Marx’s deeper thinking about religious issues through self-consciousness and more intense criticism of religion,and on the other hand,it is also manifested in Marx’s thinking about self-consciousness and practical problems;On the other hand,the issue of self-consciousness also occupies an important position in Marx’s own intellectual history,not only the starting point of Marx’s philosophical thought,but also Marx’s first declaration of atheistic thought,but also presents the picture of human liberation theory.The idea of self-consciousness highlighted by Marx in his doctoral dissertation also had a certain influence on Marx’s later thinking and has certain theoretical value.It is mainly manifested in the following three aspects: first,self-awareness is an important opportunity for Marx to later turn to historical materialism;Second,self-awareness also had an important impact on Marx’s conception of freedom;Third,the freedom of self-consciousness and the establishment of man’s subjective status became the keynote for Marx’s thinking about the all-round development of man and the liberation of mankind.However,at this time,Marx’s self-consciousness thought still had certain limitations,mainly reflected in the fact that when arguing the relationship between self-consciousness and reality,it was only a kind of speculation and criticizing religion from the standpoint of self-consciousness,rather than according to the principles of materialism.