Genius of the Modern World
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- Episode
- Marx
- Broadcast Info
- 2016 (59 mins)
- Description
- Historian Bettany Hughes retraces the lives of three great thinkers whose ideas shaped the modern world: Karl Marx, Frederick Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud.
Born in the C19th, they lived through a time, when old certainties were breaking down. Regimes were overthrown by mass uprisings. Science was undermining religious authority. Their challenge was, to figure out what makes us human, in a fast-evolving world.
In this first episode Bettany investigates the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx.
Born to an affluent Prussian family, Marx became an angry, idealistic radical, constantly on the run for his political agitating and incendiary writing.
In Paris he first formulated his explosive analysis of capitalism, and it’s corrosive effects on human nature. In Brussels he co-authored the Communist Manifesto with Frederick Engels. In London his obsessive theorizing dragged his family in to poverty, and tragedy.
Marx’s masterpiece Das Capital was largely over-looked in his lifetime, and only 11 people attended his funeral. Yet his ideas would generate one of the most influential, and divisive ideologies in history.
Drawing on expert opinion, and new evidence, Bettany reveals the flesh-and-blood man, and his groundbreaking ideas. - Genre
- Economics; History; Philosophy and Ethics
How to cite this record
The Open University, "Genius of the Modern World". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/225295 (Accessed 10 Jan 2025)