INQ-120 | Marx & the Good Life

Full Title: Marx’s Philosophical Search for the Good Life in Modern Societies

Topic Description:

What is the good life? How can we live the most meaningful life? How can we fulfill our highest potentials? For Karl Marx our ability to answer these questions has a direct bearing on our ability to understand ourselves as participants in a shared, social world with others. People fulfill and realize their humanity through meaningful work or creative activity, which allows them to contribute to a wider community. According to Marx, in capitalist societies most people are denied such a work activity, which leads to their dehumanization and alienation from their social world. Marx proposed a system of production, which is based on cooperation rather than acquisitiveness and self-interest to counter the negative consequences of capitalism. We will follow the early and late Marx’s search for the good life to get a deeper understanding of key concepts coined by him, such as ideology, alienation, exploitation, exchange- and use-value and class antagonisms.

Counts as Global? No

Topic Approved: November 2009