Dialectics of the Concrete

Introduction

Kosík published the book in 1963, during the cautious cultural opening that preceded 1968; German and Spanish (both 1967) and English (1976) translations followed. He begins with the world of everyday care and manipulation, in which things, institutions and ideas appear fixed and self-evident – the “pseudo-concrete”. Dialectical thought does not reject this world but takes it apart to show how it is produced by human activity, and grasps reality as a concrete totality, not as a sum of facts. Drawing on Marx, Lukács’s concept of totality and Heidegger’s analysis of care, Kosík defines praxis as the specific mode of human being. The book was read as a manifesto of Marxist humanism in Eastern Europe and found a wide readership in Latin America.

Connections

Builds on

• Capital1867 · Karl Marx
• Being and Time1927 · Martin Heidegger