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Thus, Marx appears to say that human nature is no more than what is made by the "social relations". Norman Geras's Marx and Human Nature (1983), however, offers an argument against this position. [3] In outline, Geras shows that, while the social relations are held to "determine" the nature of people, they are not the only such determinant.
Marx's definition of religion as an opiate would, on this reading, be not a "metaphysical specification of religion," but the expression of experience within a certain historical period and in a certain geographical area. Even Christian participants in dialogue picked up on this statement and made it a ground for approaching Marxism. [42]
Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of a Legend is a 1983 book by the political theorist Norman Geras, in which the author discusses the philosopher Karl Marx's theory of human nature with reference to Marx's Sixth Thesis on Feuerbach.
Marxist humanism is an international body of thought and political action rooted in a humanist interpretation of the works of Karl Marx.It is an investigation into "what human nature consists of and what sort of society would be most conducive to human thriving" [1] from a critical perspective rooted in Marxist philosophy.
For Marx, the human nature – Gattungswesen, or species-being – exists as a function of human labour. [ 231 ] [ 232 ] [ 234 ] Fundamental to Marx's idea of meaningful labour is the proposition that for a subject to come to terms with its alienated object it must first exert influence upon literal, material objects in the subject's world. [ 235 ]
Furthermore, he criticized Feuerbach's conception of human nature in his sixth thesis on Feuerbach as an abstract "kind" which incarnated itself in each singular individual: "Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man [menschliche Wesen, human nature]. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single ...
Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes the separation and estrangement of people from their work, their wider world, their human nature, and their selves. Alienation is a consequence of the division of labour in a capitalist society, wherein a human being's life is lived as a mechanistic part of a social class. [1]
The force of this attraction to religion though, giving divinity to a figure like God, is explained by Feuerbach as God is a being that acts throughout man in all forms. God, "is the principle of [man's] salvation, of [man's] good dispositions and actions, consequently [man's] own good principle and nature."