# Marx submits a Jena dissertation pairing Democritus with Epicurus

Date: 1841

## The fact

In 1841 [Karl Marx](/people/karl-marx) submitted Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature. The public later carrier includes the marxists.org text. [Epicurus](/people/epicurus) is the ancient heading. The dissertation is Marx’s. Later party materialism used the pairing as ancestry.

## Context

A student thesis is not a five-year plan. It is a dated intellectual instrument that later political camps cited. Store the 1841 filing, not 1917.

Epicurus is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official edition, museum, archive, or agency page and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Marx, doctoral dissertation on Democritus and Epicurus (1841) (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1841/dr-theses/index.htm; Marxists Internet Archive).

## Significance

Materialist ancestry-claims polarise later schools. Do not convert a dissertation into a soviet statute.

Materialist ancestry-claims polarise later schools. Do not convert a dissertation into a soviet statute.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Epicurus: https://factrail.ai/people/epicurus

## Drivers

- Political Polarization: https://factrail.ai/drivers/political-polarization

## Sources

- https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1841/dr-theses/index.htm
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/ep-marx-dissertation-1841