The young Marx, reader of Epicurus

Abstract

The Epicurean conception of the clinamen – the deviation of the atom from its fall in a straight line – suggests, within the atomist conception, the possibility of breaking with determinism. Would the contribution of this philosophy from the so-called Hellenistic period have somehow contributed to the young Marx’s materialist conception? This article aims to present the possible use made by the young Marx of his reading of the garden sage as a tool (organon) for a reading of Hegel different from the other companions of the Doktor Club, however, opposing open and closed totalities in the apprehension of the deviation as a possibility – at the atomic level – of an indeterministic justification of freedom.