This chapter introduces the book’s project of rereading Marx’s early critique of capitalism as the development of an “anti-practical philosophy”. It first situates the argument within contemporary debates on normativity in Marx, justice, recognition, and critical theory, and explains why attempts to extract a positive moral theory from Marx are rejected. It then clarifies what is meant by “practical philosophy” and formulates the core problem of how Marx can call for revolutionary transformation and freedom without grounding his claims in a justificatory ethical framework. Subsequently, it reconstructs Marx’s anti-philosophical stance as a refusal to translate practical contradictions into merely theoretical problems and as a way of grasping capitalist social relations themselves as contradictory. Finally, the chapter outlines the book’s three-part structure and shows how each subsequent chapter contributes to a negative conception of normativity and to a critique of practical philosophy as a form of ideology.