Supplement to the classroom questions:
My confusion arose because I had first listened to Professor Wu’s lecture at Tsinghua and read the transcript of Professor Wu’s remarks on “Technology as the difference of being,” and only then looked at Marx, where everything felt extremely, extremely familiar—so familiar that it seemed Marx and Professor Wu were basically saying the same thing!
First let me talk about my reading of some of Marx’s views on “human essence” in the 1844 manuscripts:
Marx says: “The externalization of labor appears … first, that labor is external to the worker, that it does not belong to his essence; that therefore he does not affirm himself in his work but denies himself,” (I copied the quotation directly from an electronic document; a quick search in Word will reveal the source, so I will暂 not indicate the page number.) — The implication is that labor was originally supposed to be something belonging to human essence.
“Alienated labor, by alienating from man (1) nature, and (2) himself, his own activity function, his life activity, also alienates from him the species:” — Here, “man himself,” “activity function,” and “life activity” are used in parallel. The same is true elsewhere: “… it makes his life activity, his essence, merely a means for his existence.” — “His life activity” and “his essence” are in parallel!
“The whole character of a species, its species-character, lies in the nature of its life activity, and the species-character of man is precisely free conscious activity. Life itself appears only as a means to life.” — I want to give a special reading of this sentence: first I take it as settled that speaking of “the essence of …” and “the character of …” are different things. In the preceding sentence, we see Marx placing “man himself,” “species,” and “life activity” in parallel; here, Marx places “the whole character of a species,” “species-character,” and “the nature of life activity” in parallel — both sides are marked with “character/nature,” but in substance “species” and “life activity” remain in a parallel relation. This shows that my hypothesis is reasonable: in Marx, “the species itself”=“its life activity,” and “the character of a species”=“the character of its life activity.” In other words, the “essence” Marx is talking about is already very different from that of earlier essentialists; the “essence” he speaks of is not a conceptual determination — “man is an animal that is how-and-how” — but rather refers to human “activity” itself.
Elsewhere, Marx speaks of “… labor, this life activity”; taken together with the two points mentioned above, namely that “labor should belong to human essence” and that “life activity is essence,” the understanding becomes quite smooth.
Let me then refer to two passages in The German Ideology in which Marx discusses freedom:
The German Ideology (selected excerpts), People’s Publishing House, 2003:
The constraint of the development level of the productive forces on freedom (Chinese edition of the Collected Works, 1st ed., vol. 3, pp. 506–508)
The issue as Sancho himself understands it is ultimately pure nonsense. He thinks: up to now people have always first set up for themselves the concept of man, and then acquired freedom within the range necessary for realizing this concept in themselves; the degree of freedom attained each time is determined by each person’s view of the ideal of man; and in each individual there must inevitably remain some residue that does not conform to this ideal, and thus this residue, as the “inhuman,” has not yet attained freedom, or has attained it only malgreeux [against their will].
In fact, of course, the matter is naturally this way: people each time acquire freedom not within the range prescribed and permitted by their ideal of man, but within the range prescribed and permitted by the existing productive forces. … (p. 96)
This so-called “inhuman” thing is, like the “human” thing, also a product of modern relations; this “inhuman” thing is the negative side of modern relations, the resistance to the ruling relations based on the existing productive forces and to the corresponding ways of satisfying needs, without any new revolutionary productive forces as its basis. The positive designation “human” corresponds to certain ruling relations at a certain stage of development of production and to the ways of satisfying needs determined by those relations, just as the negative designation “inhuman” corresponds to those intentions that seek to negate within the existing mode of production the ruling relations of this kind and the ways of satisfying needs that are dominant in those relations; and such intentions are continuously produced day after day by this stage of development of production. (p. 97)
Communism and the free development of man (Chinese edition of the Collected Works, 1st ed., vol. 3, pp. 513–516)
The transformation of personal relations into their opposite, namely into purely material relations, the distinction that individuals themselves make between personality and accidentality, as we have already pointed out, is a historical process, which takes different, increasingly sharp and universal forms at different stages of development. In modern times, the domination of material relations over individuals, the suppression of individuality by accidentality, has assumed the sharpest and most universal form, and thus poses a very definite task for the existing individuals. This situation poses the task of replacing the domination of relations and accidentality over individuals with the domination of individuals over accidentality and relations. This situation does not, as Sancho imagines, demand “that I develop myself” (without Sancho’s advice every individual has always been doing this), but instead prescribes that one must get rid of a completely determinate mode of development. The task determined by modern relations is identical with the task of organizing society according to communist principles. (p. 99)
— Although what Marx is discussing in these passages may not be our topic, there still seem to be some views here that one can read as concerning issues like “human essence.” In trendy terms, Marx here seems to be expressing a constructivist claim — the “concept of man,” and the distinction between “man” and “inhuman,” are all socially constructed, historical, and dependent on the productive forces and relations of production of the time. Marx made clear that other people’s definitions of “man” are historical; so does he himself talk about some transhistorical, general “human essence”? Marx makes no stipulation whatsoever about “what it is to be human,” but instead emphasizes that “one must get rid of a completely determinate mode of development” — a formulation that is not much different from what Professor Wu stressed in his two lectures: that “nothingness,” and the capacity for “what it is and what it is not,” are the things that make one human. The freedom Marx discusses also refers to the fact that human beings do not have any transhistorical, conceptual “human essence” or “ideal man”; Marx says all of these are constructed. The task of the communists is not to “develop myself,” that is to say, not to “realize human nature.” What does Marx mean when he says that we must “replace the domination of relations and accidentality over individuals with the domination of individuals over accidentality and relations”? I think it means that people should not be governed by those accidental, constructed things such as a pre-given “human nature,” “what man is,” the “concept of man,” and the “ideal man,” but should instead free themselves from every limitation and free themselves from all determinations, on the level of “concept,” “ideal,” and Idea, of “man.” But since the concept and ideal of man are both determined by the productive forces and by relations, to truly break these fetters one must ultimately develop the productive forces and reform society. Marx held that a society organized according to communist principles would not bestow on “man” a wholly new concept or ideal, but would rather break through all such conceptual or ideal determinations.
From the above discussion, I think at least one thing can be shown: even if Marx still has not escaped essentialism (language is always essentialist), the “human essence” he speaks of is certainly already very different from traditional ontological philosophy, and Marx was conscious of this difference.
As an additional point, let me raise another question. Marx says “… through practice creating an objective world, that is, by working over the inorganic world, …” “Thus it is in the working-up of the objective world that man first truly proves himself to be a species-being. This production is his active species-life. Through it nature appears as his work and his reality. Therefore, the object of labor is the objectification of man’s species-life: man not only duplicates himself intellectually, as in consciousness, but also actively, actually duplicates himself, and thereby contemplates himself in a world created by him.” What does “creating an objective world,” “creating a world,” and making nature into “reality” mean here? If we recall Professor Wu’s statement in his lecture: “technology is a way of unfolding the world, a concretization of the unfolding of the world,” and “technology as ontological difference,” then, as a way of understanding it, perhaps it would be better to say that Marx is saying “practice is the way of unfolding the world.” Human labor “creates an objective world” — and the creation of the objective world is precisely the creation of the distinction between oneself and nature, with oneself being contemplated from within the objective world — the creation of the “inhuman” world and the creation of “man” himself must certainly be simultaneous; through so-called “working over the inorganic world,” or practice, or labor, or technology, human beings create the objective world and at the same time create themselves. Perhaps this is one interpretation of “labor creates man himself”?
I know very little about Marxist philosophy and phenomenology, and I have not yet done any further verification. I am just tossing out some shallow thoughts on the spur of the moment in an attempt to make use of the technology of sending mass Email messages—perhaps they may serve to bring forth further insights?
Xiao Gu
2007年3月15日
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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