AustLit

'The tale of the political left is a tale of violent conflict. Of barricades and bullets. Of hard-won victories and merciless reprisals. Of lives cut short in martyrdom. And philosophy, we have been told, is a reflection of this: ‘the class struggle in theory,’ according to Louis Althusser’s famous dictum. The apposition of conflict and philosophy is doubly appropriate when it comes to Germany, birthplace of Karl Marx, and especially so during the twentieth century. It was in Germany that two of the left’s foremost intellects were thoroughly committed to the kind of civil dissensus that would ultimately claim their lives.' (Introduction)