Philosophy

Philosophy is a broad range of exercises in thought with the ultimate goal of to unmasking parts of the world. According to Marx, "It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked".

Hegel described philosophy as the science that "is the unity of art and religion" and as "cognition of the necessity in the content of the absolute picture-idea".

Ancient philosophy

Bourgeois philosophy

Rationalism

The rationalists, led by René Descartes, criticized feudalism and the Catholic Church. He coined the phrase "I think therefore I am" and believed everything, including religion, should follow human reason. His ideas were progressive even though they relied on deductive reasoning instead of objective reality.

Empiricism

David Hume and the empiricists believed experience from the senses was the only source of knowledge. They thought knowledge was merely a collection of facts that could not be generalized or processed.

Proletarian philosophy

Marx and Engels

Marx once stated that "As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy." It was Marx who first brought philosophy from the bourgeois world into the proletarian side, and fashioned it into a weapon for the proletariat.

Of philosophy Marx states that "You cannot abolish philosophy without making it a reality", and perhaps more famously that "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it", marking the distinction between proletarian and bourgeois philosophy.