Lex Fridman: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Engels came in. Engels essentially from his family fortune and then from his journalism afterwards supported both himself and the Marx family for decades. And so in a sense, Engels made things happen. In the mysterious way that friendships work, the very differences between these men made them formidable as a dynamic duo because they balanced off one another’s idiosyncrasies and turned what might’ve been faults into potential strengths. British historian, A.J.P. Taylor always has a lovely turn of phrase, even when he’s wrong about a historical issue. In this case, he was right. He said that Engels had charm and brilliance, Marx was the genius. And Engels saw himself as definitely the junior partner in this relationship. But here’s the paradox. Without Engels, pretty clearly Marx would not have gone on to have the sort of lasting historical impact in the world of ideas that he had. Just to throw in the mix, there’s interesting characters swimming around. So you have Darwin. He has a… I mean, it’s difficult to characterize the level of impact he had. Even just in the religious context, it challenges our conception of who we are as humans. There’s Nietzsche who’s also, I don’t know, hanging around the area. On the Russian side, there’s Dostoevsky. So it’s interesting to ask maybe from your perspective, did these people interact in the space of ideas to where this is relevant to our discussion, or is this mostly isolated? I think that it’s a part of a great conversation. I think that in their works, they’re reacting to one another. Dostoevsky’s thought ranges across the condition of modernity and he definitely has things to say about industrialization. I think that they react to one another in these oblique ways rather than always being at each other’s throats in direct confrontations. And that’s what makes the 19th century so compelling as a story just because of the sheer vitality of the arguments that are taking place in ways big and small.…

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