Hegel vs. Marx, Nietzsche vs. Socrates & Ortega: A Philosophical Comparison

Posted on Nov 11, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

Hegel vs. Marx

Marxism is an inverted Hegelianism, replacing the spiritual and idealistic conception with a materialist one. The Absolute is Spirit (Hegel), but Matter (Marx).
Regarding the nature of man, Hegel believes that mind or spirit is “self” and freedom. For Marx, man becomes man through productive activity or work.
In the philosophy of law and valuation, Hegel sees the state as the embodiment of freedom and rationality. Marx’s “proletarian existence” contradicts this. The bourgeois state is a superstructure that perpetuates the alienation of the proletariat.
Hegel’s interpretation of history is classified as an action of imaginary subjects. Marx interprets history in economic terms and as class struggle.
The end of history for Hegel is the Germanic bourgeois state where all are free. For Marx, it’s the overcoming of the bourgeois and the arrival of communism where man achieves real freedom and equality.
Hegel belongs to the class of philosophers who have contemplated the world. Marx understands philosophy as the practice of transforming the world.

Marx accepted Hegel’s dialectical conception and applied it to reality (dialectical materialism) and history (historical materialism).
Dialectic means that contradiction governs social and historical reality and the need to overcome this contradiction.
The revolution is the process of overcoming the contradiction inherent in capitalist bourgeois society.

Socrates is the target of Nietzsche’s critique on morality.
The moral or ethical issue is central to both.
Socrates’ philosophy is a reflection on ethical values, seeking a definition against the relativism of the Sophists.
Nietzsche’s critique of Western culture is a critique of morality.
Moral values are one of the roots of illness and decline of modern culture according to Nietzsche.

Nietzsche sees Socrates as the great corruptor, replacing the “tragic man” with the “man of theory”.
With Socratic rationality comes the decline of Greek culture and the beginning of the era of reason, according to Nietzsche.
Socrates gives supremacy to rationality and morals over instincts, identifying happiness with wisdom and the wise man with a virtuous man.
Nietzsche opts for life as an absolute value: the nature of the world and man’s impulse is the will to power.
Socrates’ method for studying ethical values is rational, trying to define them inductively. Nietzsche uses genealogy to discover the origin of good and bad.
For Nietzsche, moral conscience is an invention of the priestly caste, a perversion of the instinct of cruelty.
For Socrates, man’s will is truth. For Nietzsche, it’s the will to power.
Socrates is one of the causes of implementing commoner values against Dionysus. Nietzsche defends a transmutation of values.

Both are within the European philosophical context, where life is the absolute reality.
Against rationalism, they assert that life, not reason, is absolute.
Both reject the static conception of reality for a dynamic one.

Life in Nietzsche is more biological, its essence being the will to power. In Ortega, life starts biologically but becomes more biographical.
Nietzsche is irrational, opposing reason because it distorts life. Ortega proposes overcoming the opposition between reason and life with his theory of ratiovitalism.
Life needs reason to know what to expect, according to Ortega.

Both are vitalists and assert the supremacy of life over reason.
Against rationalism, both warn that abstract reason is unable to understand life because it manages fixed concepts while life is fluid.
Both oppose the claim of positive science as the only valid form of knowledge.

Ortega believes that life and reason are not opposed as Nietzsche claimed. Ortega speaks of ratiovitalism against Nietzsche’s irrationalism.
Ortega sees reason as a vital function serving life, necessary for it to know what to expect.
Reason is not the enemy of life; it’s necessary to make life human.