Marx’s reading of Greek atomism informs his uncompromisingly materialist stance, something we will inspect more closely further on in the chapter. At this point, suffice it to say that the contradiction that underpins Epicurean atomism, according to young Marx, is the product of the properties that define an atom materially and the form that is atom’s conceptual determination. The latter, however, does not constitute a higher form of truth or purpose of existence, causa finalis, it is nothing that would go beyond being quite simply the concept of a material phenomenon – the atom, always already embodied never endowed with an ideality or participation in a greater and an all-encompassing Idea.5 Ideality thus is not an idea but a perfect form of the material whose predication in terms of property is necessarily an aberration from the ideal form or simply – the concept as Marx puts it. The concept is abstracted from the concrete but does not reside in a realm of ideality, it cannot inhabit any other universe but that of materiality – because there is no such world.
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