Abstract

In four compact chapters, Kant and Marx are appraised in terms of their accounts of human passivity and activity. Comparatively brief examinations of Hegel’s treatment of this theme provide a transition from Kant to Marx. The “idealism” of Kant is found to be incoherent. Contradictions abound in it. The “naturalism” of Marx is free of contradictions; it carries the day. The writer’s style is a close explication of texts. The reader does well to have the sources at his elbow.