Genus-being: On Marx's dialectical naturalism
- In his 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Marx famously claims that the human being is or has a ‘Gattungswesen.’ This is often understood to mean that the human being is a ‘species-being’ and is determined by a given ‘species-essence.’ In this chapter, I argue that this reading is mistaken. What Marx calls Gattungswesen is precisely not a ‘species-being,’ but a being that, in a very specific sense, transcends the limits of its own given species. This different understanding of the genus- character of the human being opens up a new perspective on the naturalism of the early Marx. He is not informed by a problematic speciesist and essentialist naturalism, as is often assumed, but by a different form of naturalism which I propose to call ‘dialectical naturalism.’ The chapter starts (I) by developing Hegel’s account of genus which provides us with a useful background for (II) understanding Marx’s original notion of a genus-being and its practical, social, developmental character. In the last section, I show that (III) theIn his 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Marx famously claims that the human being is or has a ‘Gattungswesen.’ This is often understood to mean that the human being is a ‘species-being’ and is determined by a given ‘species-essence.’ In this chapter, I argue that this reading is mistaken. What Marx calls Gattungswesen is precisely not a ‘species-being,’ but a being that, in a very specific sense, transcends the limits of its own given species. This different understanding of the genus- character of the human being opens up a new perspective on the naturalism of the early Marx. He is not informed by a problematic speciesist and essentialist naturalism, as is often assumed, but by a different form of naturalism which I propose to call ‘dialectical naturalism.’ The chapter starts (I) by developing Hegel’s account of genus which provides us with a useful background for (II) understanding Marx’s original notion of a genus-being and its practical, social, developmental character. In the last section, I show that (III) the actualization of our genus-being thus depends on the production of a specific type of ‘second nature’ that is at the heart of Marx’s dialectical naturalism.…
Author details: | Thomas KhuranaORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003092056-13 |
ISBN: | 978-0-367-54172-9 |
ISBN: | 978-1-003-09205-6 |
Title of parent work (English): | Nature and naturalism in classical German philosophy |
Publisher: | Routledge |
Place of publishing: | New York |
Publication type: | Part of a Book |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2022/08/18 |
Publication year: | 2022 |
Release date: | 2024/04/15 |
Number of pages: | 33 |
First page: | 246 |
Last Page: | 278 |
Organizational units: | Philosophische Fakultät / Institut für Philosophie |
DDC classification: | 1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 10 Philosophie / 100 Philosophie und Psychologie |