Shorter Notices

Abstract

So valuable are the individual essays that it is difficult to choose among them. No doubt the historian of general philosophical ideas will welcome the pellucid handling of Bruno Bauer and the fecund Feuerbach. No doubt the historian of political philosophy will welcome the discussion of Marx's neglected analysis of Max Stirner. The student of political movements will profit from the conceptually less significant passages which are devoted to Arnold Ruge and Moses Hess. The handling of Strauss clearly shows the extent to which the doctrine of "myth" and "ideology" depends upon the doughty author of the Leben Jesu and Die Christliche Glaubenslehre in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung und in Kampf mit der modernen Wissenschaft. Indeed, if one interrelationship stands out above the rest, it is the debt of Marx (and of social critics generally) to the spirit, and especially the method, of those scholars who were revolutionizing the attitude of modern thinkers toward ecclesiastical forms and dogmas.