The Game of Contradictions

Sven-Eric Liedman, Professor Emeritus of the History of Ideas at the University of Gothenburg, has been reading and writing about Karl Marx for over fifty years. His textbook on political ideologies (originally titled From Plato to Lenin in 1972, rechristened From Plato to the War Against Terrorism in 2014) has been through fourteen editions.

Preface to the English Translation

The Game of Contradictions



Foreword



Introduction



Part One

1 Back to Hegel



2 The Rational Method



3 Engels on Marx and Hegel



4 The Encounter with the Natural Sciences





Part Two

5 The Return of the Systems



6 Conservation of Energy, and Systems



7 Darwinism: Hypothesis or Worldview?



8 The Human Sciences



9 Facts and Laws about Humanity



10 Texts, Structures and Systems





Part Three

11 Engels’s Four Periods



12 The Literary Sources



13 The Direct Inspirations



14 Theory and Empiricism: The Three Tendencies



15 Inorganic Nature



16 Biology and Human Science





Part Four

17 Ideology and Science



18 The Debates on Darwinism and Socialism



19 Engels and Ideology





Sources and Literature

Index of Subjects