Michael Lazarus, "Absolute Ethical Life: Aristotle, Hegel and Marx" (Stanford UP, 2025)

Oct 26, 2025

Michael Lazarus, a Lecturer in political theory at King's College London and author of Absolute Ethical Life, explores the intertwining of ethics and capitalism through the lenses of Marx, Aristotle, and Hegel. He critiques the impoverished ethical landscape under capitalism and reinterprets Marx as an ethical thinker. Lazarus discusses how capitalist structures shape freedom, critiques Hannah Arendt’s separation of action and production, and emphasizes the need for systemic solutions to foster human flourishing in modern society.

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INSIGHT

Marx As An Ethical Critic

Michael Lazarus argues Marx's critique of capitalism is fundamentally ethical, not merely economic.
Reading Marx's value theory reveals capitalism as a social form that shapes our moral life and agency.

INSIGHT

Absolute Ethical Life Defined

'Absolute Ethical Life' borrows Hegel's term to link individual morality with institutions.
Lazarus uses the term to connect Hegelian dialectic to Marxist critique and ethical politics.

ADVICE

Analyze Capitalism As A Social Form

Treat capitalism as a form of life, not just an economic system when assessing social problems.
Use Marx's social-totality approach to analyze how economic logics shape institutions and norms.

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Absolute Ethical Life: Aristotle, Hegel and Marx by Michael Lazarus

Karl Marx gave us not just a critique of the political economy of capital but a way of confronting the impoverished ethical quality of life we face under capitalism. Interpreting Marx anew as an ethical thinker, Absolute Ethical Life provides crucial resources for understanding how freedom and rational agency are impacted by a social world formed by value under capitalism, with consequences for philosophy today.

Michael Lazarus situates Marx within a shared tradition of ethical inquiry, placing him in close dialogue with Aristotle and Hegel. Lazarus traces the ethical and political dimensions of Marx's work missed by Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, two of the most profound critics of modern politics and ethics. Ultimately, the book claims that Marx's value-form theory is both a continuation of Aristotelian and Hegelian themes and at the same time his most distinctive theoretical achievement.

In this normative interpretation of Marx, Lazarus integrates recent moral philosophy with a historically specific analysis of capitalism as a social form of life. He challenges contemporary political and economic theory to insist that any conception of modern life needs to account for capitalism. With a robust critique of capitalism derived from the determinations of what Marx calls the "form of value," Lazarus argues for an ethical life beyond capital.

Michael Lazarus is a Lecturer in Political Theory in the Department of Political Economy. Before coming to King’s College London, he was Deakin University Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute and a visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.

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