From the Introduction to Breaking the Bonds of Fate
Praxis: Ancient and Modern
In terms of praxis, or the dialectic of theory and practice, the contribution of Epicurus’s philosophy was affected by the fact that he was writing at a time of an “empire of chaos” that ensued during the Wars of the Diadochi (or Successors) over Alexander’s Empire, and the related demise of the polis.9 Nevertheless, his emphasis on contingent freedom was an important break from the fatalism of his time. Although he advised his followers to avoid where possible any serious engagement in the political life of the time, he also supported taking direct actions on behalf of friends who were victims of injustice. In a famous case, Epicurus, and his follower Metrodorus, intervened in support of their friend the Syrian Mithres when he was imprisoned in Piraeus, reflecting the fact that in Epicurean philosophy the distinction between Greek and “barbarian” had been dissolved. Epicurus was well known for providing aid, in the form of bushels of food, from his limited means, to those in distress.10 In general, the social praxis promoted by Epicurus in the Hellenistic Age was one of defiance of the state (astral) religion, accompanied by a relatively distant relation to the polis itself, focusing instead on creating self-sufficient communities rooted in friendship, the reconciliation of humanity and nature, egalitarianism, and ataraxia, or contentment. The emphasis was on internal human development, cultivation of philosophy, and an atmosphere of reciprocity and “mutual exchange.”11 “Nothing is enough,” Epicurus wrote, “for those for whom enough is too little.”12
The significance of Epicurus and Epicureanism for an understanding of classical historical materialism and for the renewal of Marxism today should be readily apparent. The one-sided Western Marxist philosophical tradition, for all of its immense contributions, was based from its beginning in the 1920s on a rejection of materialist dialectics, or the dialectics of nature, and thus of natural science. This translated into the negation of any meaningful materialist conception of nature. Yet, without a thoroughgoing materialist perspective it is impossible to perceive the relation of humanity to nature, of which we are a part. In terms of Marx’s later analysis, this requires recognizing how the labor and production process constitutes the specific human “social metabolism” within the “universal metabolism of nature.” The relation of freedom to necessity, peculiar to our time, demands a dialectical perspective, one that refuses to divide nature from society, while recognizing the contradictions imposed by capitalism in that respect.13
In any attempt to address Marx’s materialism, his “genetic exposition” of Epicurus’s philosophy, exploring its “objective logic,” is of decisive importance given its genetic relation to his own materialism and dialectical method.14 Reduction of historical materialism to a purely social dialectic, excluding the natural-material realm, has robbed Marxian theory of its earthly basis, including any understanding of the relation of freedom and necessity. The result is to negate the whole larger conception of revolutionary struggle as aimed at the creation of a society of sustainable human development…
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