Eugene Kamenka – författare

First published in 1970, The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach presents the first full length scholarly study of Feuerbach in English. The author expounds and assesses Feuerbach’s work both for its own sake and to explain the influence it had on others. A detailed study of Feuerbach’s critique of religion and philosophy is followed by an examination of Feuerbach’s own positive views- his ‘philosophy of the future’, his method, his theory of knowledge, his materialism, his anthropology or concept of man and his ethics. The book makes use of the large corpus of Feuerbach’s work that was not available in English back in 1970s and provides a general introduction to Feuerbach’s work. This important work will be of interest to scholars of philosophy, theology and anthropology.

The Ethical Foundations of Marxism, first published in 1962 and corrected and revised for a 1972 edition, examines carefully and critically the origin, precise nature and subsequent role of Marx’s ethical beliefs. Drawing freely on Marx’s still largely untranslated philosophical works and drafts the author elicits the ethical presuppositions with which Marx began. He then examines the intellectual development that made Marx a Communist and seeks to clarify the place of Marx’s ethic in his mature, ‘materialist’ work. Professor Kamenka distinguishes sharply between the critical, ethical views of Marx and the inept, conventional applications of his doctrine by Engels. He appraises the ‘ethics’ of the Communist Party and traces the development of the moral and legal theory in the Soviet Union. He concludes by subjecting Marxism as a whole to a radical, ethical and philosophical criticism for which Marx himself laid some of the foundations.