Game of Contradictions

Sven-Eric Liedman is Professor Emeritus of the History of Ideas at the University of Gothenburg. He has been reading and writing about Karl Marx for over fifty years. His textbook on political ideologies (originally titled From Plato to Lenin in 1972, rechristened From Plato to the War Against Terrorism in 2014) has been through fourteen editions.

“Liedman’s study deserves to be much more influential [...] than it heretofore has been.” —Matt Shafer, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

• Preface to the English TranslationThe Game of ContradictionsForewordIntroductionPart One1 Back to Hegel2 The Rational Method3 Engels on Marx and Hegel4 The Encounter with the Natural SciencesPart Two5 The Return of the Systems6 Conservation of Energy, and Systems7 Darwinism: Hypothesis or Worldview?8 The Human Sciences9 Facts and Laws about Humanity10 Texts, Structures and SystemsPart Three11 Engels’s Four Periods12 The Literary Sources13 The Direct Inspirations14 Theory and Empiricism: The Three Tendencies15 Inorganic Nature16 Biology and Human SciencePart Four17 Ideology and Science18 The Debates on Darwinism and Socialism19 Engels and IdeologySources and LiteratureIndex of Subjects