Karl Marx

Since Critical Rationalism is considered by some more of an attitude or mindset and by others a methodological approach to philosophical thinking and practical problem-solving, its application, or more accurately, its epistemological testing grounds, should be expected to be much more wide-ranging than they have been so far. With the exception of some published anthologies on Critical Rationalism and occasional nods to the legacy of Karl Popper’s falsificationist methodology, relatively few applicaions of a critical rational approach to contemporary theoretical debates in the social sciences have been published. I wish here to critically challenge the (optimistic) Hegelian and by extension the neoliberal view of the progress of American capitalism by reframing it with the Marxian notion of expropriation as applied to enslavement on plantations. The logic of enslavement as a process by which brutal exploitation has been practiced for centuries offers a falsifying test case of the rationality of capitalism and its promise of individual freedom of choice. This essay is an explicit exercise in the potential power of a version of Popperian critical rationalism being applied to the intersection of modern liberalism and capitalism, exploring the imbrication of a critical and rational analysis.

This article investigates the foundational role of philosophical anthropology in shaping social, legal, and political theories across both Islamic and Western intellectual traditions. It argues that any theory in human sciences is necessarily rooted in an underlying conception of the human being. Drawing upon Aristotle’s fourfold causality-efficient, final, material, and formal causes-the article demonstrates that philosophical anthropology is not merely a background assumption but the structural core of theory formation. The study has hired an analytical and intellectual method, systematically examining the internal logic of philosophical texts and ideas to identify how anthropological premises inform broader theoretical architectures.Through a comparative case study of Abu Nasr al-Farabi and Karl Marx, the article illustrates how divergent anthropologies—metaphysical and teleological in the former, materialist and historical in the latter—give rise to distinct visions of society and governance. Al-Farabi’s conception of the rational soul and hierarchical faculties grounds his model of the virtuous city (Utopia) , while Marx’s notion of the human as a laboring, self-transforming species-being underlies his critique of capitalism and vision of emancipation. Despite methodological and cultural differences, both thinkers reveal that social and political systems are ultimately constructed upon philosophical understandings of human nature. By centering  philosophical anthropology at the middle of interdisciplinary inquiry, the article calls for a renewed focus on the human essence as the necessary starting point for reforming or generating coherent knowledge systems in the humanities and social sciences.

The position and relationship between the government and the civil society has always occupied the minds of political thinkers, especially in the modern period. In general, governments assume different roles depending on the application of different approaches. From the point of view of the relationship and the type of influence of the government on the society, there have always been two competing views, which are rooted in the thoughts of two prominent political philosophers: John Locke and Karl Marx. In John Locke's view, the government is a mediating entity, limited and conditional, based on the principle of consent and with the aim of creating peace and public welfare based on the social contract and the right of public rebellion in times of inefficiency and disobedience to the law, and ultimately independent of civil society. And in the view of Karl Marx, the concept of government is based on three different opinions. The government as a means of suppressing the working class, the government as an arbiter or mediator, and finally the government as a function of the changing economic infrastructure, and ultimately relying on classes of society.