KARL MARX

4° TRIER, BONN AND BERLIN 41
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French Revolution and those of the reaction that succeeded it was fought
out in such disputes as then existed in the Law Faculty.
It is not, therefore, surprising that Marx should have been led, through
his legal studies, to engage in philosophical speculation. The two were,
in his mind, closely connected and he tried to work out a philosophy of
law. He prefaced this with a metaphysical introduction and the whole
grew to a work of three hundred pages before he gave it up. The particular
problem which he was unable to overcome in the metaphysical introduction
was the conflict between what is and what ought to be, 'the hallmark
of idealism which gave rise to its dominating and very destructive features
and engendered the following hopelessly mistaken division of the subjectmatter:
firstly came what I had so graciously christened the metaphysics
of law, i.e. first principles, reflections, definitions distinct from all actual
law and every actual form of law - just as you get in Fichte, only here
more modern and with less substance'. 85 It was precisely this gap between
what is and what ought to be that Marx later considered to have been
bridged by the Hegelian philosophy. Marx's second objection to the metaphysical
system he had constructed was its 'mathematical dogmatism'.
According to Marx, the systems of Kant and Fichte, which were the
inspiration for his own ideas at this time, were open to this objection:
they were abstract systems that, like geometry, passed from axioms to
conclusions. In contrast, 'in the practical expression of the living world
of ideas in which law, the state, nature and the whole of philosophy
consist, the object itself must be studied in its own development, and
arbitrary divisions must not be introduced'. 86 Marx then outlined the
complicated schema of his philosophy of law that comprised the second
part of his treatise. The main reason for his dissatisfaction with this
classification seems to have been that it was essentially empty - a desk,
as he put it, into whose drawers he later poured sand.
When he got as far as the discussion of material private law, he realised
that his enterprise was mistaken:
At the end of material private law I saw the falsity of the whole
conception (whose outline borders on the Kantian but when elaborated
veers completely away), and it again became plain to me that I could
not get by without philosophy. So I was forced again with a quiet
conscience to throw myself into her arms, and composed a new basic
system of metaphysics at the end of which I was forced to realise the
perversity of this and that of all my previous efforts. 87
This brought Marx to the end of his first semester and he sought refuge
from his philosophical problems in writing the poetry discussed above: