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The 20th Century Began Today in 1873
When will the 21st begin?
It is sometimes said that the 20th century started with World War I and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. In geopolitical and social terms, there is poignancy in that outlook. I venture a different one.
I think the 20th century — and with it the full advent of modernist philosophy (i.e., search for antecedents) began on this day, January 24, in 1873, when Karl Marx wrote in his afterword to the second German edition of Capital v. I that Hegel grasped the “dialectics” of life but had the warring sides wrong: they are not thoughts / ideas (or Nous in Hermetic terms) but rather economics.
As Marx saw it, Hegel’s extra-physicalism had reality upside down or “standing on its head,” e.g.:
The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.
Marx’s reasoning — still compelling to many engaged in academic and legacy letters — is, I think, where the main fissure occurred between spirituality (i.e., extra-physicality) and modernism, a division that has been has been…
