I am confused about the following sentence:
Hegel was a german philosopher who Marx 'stood on his head'
I can't seem to find a proper definition for this phrase. What does "stood on his head" mean in this context?
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Sign up to join this communityI am confused about the following sentence:
Hegel was a german philosopher who Marx 'stood on his head'
I can't seem to find a proper definition for this phrase. What does "stood on his head" mean in this context?
I am not too familiar with Hegel or Marx, but the usual meaning in a context like this, is that Marx took Hegel's ideas and used them to reach a completely opposite conclusion. In this sense, Hegel's ideas were overturned, just as if he were literally standing on his head.
To stand on one's head is to be upside down - doing a handstand or a headstand.
To stand something on its head is to turn it upside down.
We use the expression metaphorically, as stand X on its head or turn X on its head, to metaphorically turn it upside down - take the same elements and put them in a different order to produce a very different, possibly even a contradictory meaning.
Sometimes it's more literal, as we might "turn a dessert on its head" by arranging its components in a different order - though not necessarily literally reversed. By saying Mark stood Hegel on his head, we mean that Marx took the components of Hegel's philosophy and rearranged them to reach a very different conclusion.
This review of a reinterpreted ballet gives an interesting example with pretty good exploration and explanation.
Your example sentence isn't quite idiomatic, though. We wouldn't usually put a metaphor like that in quote marks.