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From the introduction of Marx's PhD dissertation. Can you imagine any PhD student having the guts to write something like this today?)

Philosophy, as long as a drop of blood shall pulse in its world-subduing and absolutely free heart, will never grow tired of answering its adversaries with the cry of Epicurus:

Not the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them, is truly impious.

Philosophy makes no secret of it. The confession of Prometheus:

In simple words, I hate the pack of gods
[Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound]

is its own confession, its own aphorism against all heavenly and earthly gods who do not acknowledge human self-consciousness as the highest divinity. It will have none other beside.

But to those poor March hares who rejoice over the apparently worsened civil position of philosophy, it responds again, as Prometheus replied to the servant of the gods, Hermes:

Be sure of this, I would not change my state
Of evil fortune for your servitude.

Better to be the servant of this rock
Than to be faithful boy to Father Zeus.

(Ibid.)

Prometheus is the most eminent saint and martyr in the philosophical calendar.

Berlin, March 1841

https://archive.org/stream/Marx_Karl_-_Doctoral_Thesis_-_The_Difference_Between_the_Democritean_and_Epicure/Marx_Karl_-_Doctoral_Thesis_-_The_Difference_Between_the_Democritean_and_Epicurean_Philosophy_of_Nature_djvu.txt
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