-
Birth and Early Life
Friederich Engels was a nineteenth-century German political philosopher born in Prussia in 1820. Born the eldest son of a textile manufacturer, Engels was forced to drop out of high school and enter the workforce at a young age. However, this did not stop his academic studies, and he quickly began reading the teachings of renowned German Idealist Hegel. -
Berlin and Intellectual Development
This interest blossomed in the early 1840s when he enlisted in the Prussian Army and was stationed in Berlin, where he found the association of a group of Neo-Hegelians. Engels would continue to point to this time in his life and the works of German philosophers as having a major effect on his intellectual development (Friedrich Engels). -
Partnership with Karl Marx
Upon leaving England, Engel would return to Germany. While traveling back to Germany, he would visit Paris to meet a like-minded friend with whom he had been corresponding for some time, Karl Marx. Together Marx and Engels began shaping their distinct ideology, starting with the denouncement of fellow Neo-Hegelians and German Socialists for their rejection of revolutionary attitudes (Friedrich Engels). -
Communist Manifesto
In 1848 the German Communist League commissioned Engels and Marx to publish a political pamphlet on communism. What they would put together would become one of history's most influential political documents, The Communist Manifesto. In a concise framework, Engels and Marx would outline a course of action for overthrowing the middle class by the working class. They proposed an agenda of ten objectives to accomplish this that would result in establishing a classless society. -
Dialectical Materialism, Pt. 1
Engels and Marx's philosophical approach in their writings had even more far-reaching impacts than their political works. Dialectical Materialism is the composition of two distinct philosophical concepts. First, Materialism contrasts Hegel’s Idealism which holds that reality and the physical world exist as expressions of the mind. In this way, materialism states that all existence is grounded in material interactions and that all that truly exists is matter. -
Dialectical Materialism, Pt. 2
Building on materialism, dialectics considers things in their “movements and changes” and “interrelations and interactions” (“Dialectical Materialism”). All items are part of a continual process of becoming and ceasing to be. Engels argued that the contradictory aspects drive the tension and conflict that lead to change. With this, Marx and Engels held that principles could be inferred through the analysis of events. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZXaZHe901w -
References
References “Dialectical Materialism.” Encyclopædia Britannica, www.britannica.com/topic/dialectical-materialism. Accessed 23 July 2023. “Friedrich Engels.” Visit the Main Page, www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Friedrich_Engels#Early_years. Accessed 23 July 2023.