From "natural person" to "objective people" -Marx's transcendence of the concept of enlightenment "people"

During the collapse of European feudalism, the political and religious system led by Catholicism gradually disintegrated. Following the wave of religious reforms set off by Martin Luther, John Calvin and others, Memphus, Rousseau, Kant and others also opened a vigorous modern enlightenment ideological movement. Throughout the 18th century, the pioneers of enlightenmentism were committed to exploring key issues such as the country, government, freedom, equality, and human rights. The modern rational tradition brought by the Enlightenment had a profound impact on the historical process after the 18th century. In particular, the analysis of the "people" problem directly expel the obscure darkness by the rationality of people, replaced the superstition of religion with human science, and defeated historical legends with people's knowledge. The answer to the question of "what is the person" in modern enlightenment indirectly affects the proposal and interpretation of Marx's concept of "objective people". From the "natural person" as the ideal of modern enlightenment, to the "objective person" proposed at the beginning of Marx's labor alienation theory, the concept of modern "people" has moved from the desire, passive, and mandatory, and to society Active, active, objective. In this process, Marx completed the concept of enlightenment "people".

Modern enlightenment thinkers represented by Rousseau believe that the social environment is the most important factor that leads to human nature changes. In order to cultivate modern people who are free and rational, they must maintain nature from education, that is, to become "natural people". What is "natural person"? In "The Origin and Basic of Human inequality", Rousseau initially put forward the idea of ​​"barbarians". The barbarians are completely from the master of the owner. They are wandering in the forest and are not affected by social environment. They are completely free. In "Ai Mi", Rousseau's thoughts were further improved. "Nature people" are no longer in a completely primitive state, but people who live in society and are full of longing and love for freedom and equality. "Natural person" is different from social citizens. Citizens are members of a democratic country, while natural people are prepared by social citizens. He does not have a fixed social identity and social position. At the same time, he can adapt to any position because he has complete morality. Those who are in line with modernity. In Rousseau, human social nature is considered to be forced by life. For example, division of labor and cooperation are forced to accept that people are forced to maintain their survival substances. The historical contribution of Rousseau's "natural person" is that he stripped the social shell of modern people to restore it to the natural state of animal nature, and began to examine "what people are" from a natural perspective.

Pure primitive "natural persons", that is, "barbarians", are free from a social perspective, but they are limited from the perspective of possession of material data. The biggest progress of modern society is to replace natural restrictions with social restrictions, at the cost of allowing part of the freedom of the ferry to ensure the stability of people's survival with social order and division of labor. Kant further improved the image of a "natural person" as a modern ideal. He believes that people are rational existences and people have free will. In order to enable people to consciously obey morality, they need to continuously promote their understanding and compliance with good guidelines in order to live in a natural state freely. Kant further refined and emphasized the free attributes contained in Rousseau's "natural person", pointing out that people are both "natural people" and "rational people". Only by combining the two can they achieve a complete modern ideal state. That is, becoming a real "free person". As a pioneer who discusses the issue of human and human nature, Rousseau and Kant's discussion about the attributes of "human" as modern ideals became a hot topic of philosophical thinking in the 18th century. In 1776, Jeremy Bentham claimed that the concept of freedom was "negative", and he defined "free people" as "unsurprising people". All signs show that the exposition of modern enlightenment thinkers' discussions on the attributes of "people" has changed the obscure state of the passive survival of religious people, and began to reuse the value of the person as the world.

By the 19th century, the question of "what is human" is still the fundamental issue of solemn and seriousness in the context of philosophy. Marx's understanding of human nature is a gradual process. "Manuscripts of Economics in 1844" (hereinafter referred to as "Manuscript") The previous Marx still did not get rid of the essence of people under the modern western epistemology of people, thereby jumping out of the understanding of people in the "essentialist" vision of people. , Especially influenced by the philosophy of Hegel's "unparalleled rationality" and Ferbaha humanism. Therefore, he believes that as long as you realize that the existence of people's reality is a different kind of alienation that is different from the nature, once the reality of this alienation is abandoned, it can re -realize the true nature of people. In the "Manuscript", Marx began to define the essence of man as an object of existence, which is manifested in the essence of the essence of "free and conscious activities" and "conscious categories".

Marx pointed out in the "Manuscript": "Animals and their own life activities are directly the same. Animals do not distinguish themselves with their own life activities. It is a life activity. People make their lives itself become their own themselves into themselves themselves. The object of will and his own consciousness. He has conscious life activities. This is not the prescribedness that people are directly integrated with them. Conscious life activities directly distinguish between people and animals. One thing, talent is a class existence. "It can be seen that the reason why people are classified by people are determined by human consciousness. Through conscious activities, people can treat nature as their own spiritual objects or material objects in theory or practice, which makes people "universal". At the same time, people can distinguish themselves and their lives through consciousness, and can turn their "life activities itself into the object of their own will and consciousness." In this sense, "free and conscious activities" have become the "class characteristics" of people. In terms of production objects, people can freely consciously conscious production activities and products as their own life; for natural objects, people can regard nature as "his work and his reality", and Make nature be true for his essential power, and realize the unity of man and nature at the level of "people" rather than "things". The characteristics of human beings are from human objectiveness. Therefore, the process of human life, that is, the process of objective activities to the process of "freedom" and "consciousness". In addition to the essence of the witnesses in the difference between humans and animals, the essence of conscious categories, Marx is still the essence of witnesses in a free and conscious activity. He believes that under the premise of discarding the private ownership, labor is no longer just to "a means to meet the need to maintain the need for physical survival"; on the contrary, labor has become a "free life performance" of people. For people, the labor process is no longer a self -denial. "I affirm my personal life in my labor, and it has affirmed the characteristics of my personality." Therefore, in the process of labor, I "enjoyed personal life performance" and got fun, joy and pleasure; labor products became the result of the essence of my free personality and being objectized. Therefore, they "all reflect us on us Essential mirror ". It can be seen that in a place where the person's essence was "inner, silent, and connecting many people purely and naturally linked", Marx understood it as a who confirmed his essential power in his objective activity. The main body of reality is understood as the existence of its essence in the sum of all social relations. This fundamentally corrected Rousseau to put aside all social factors, pursue the excessive idealistic vision of pure "natural person", and transform the pure moral rationality in Kant's "free man" into a sensible realistic form. Marx's objective principles not only acknowledge that human existence is perceptual, but also understands people as moving and historic existences. In the "Manuscript", Marx's greatness to praise Hegel's greatness is that "seeing the self -esteem as a process, treating objects as non -objectized, and abandonment of externalization and externalization." The historic activity of people's objective activity stipulates the historic and social nature of human nature: the object world of human activity creation is associated with the person, and the human emotional creation and the actual objective activity of human reality can be launched. Time constitutes history, and the space that can be developed has become a society in the body.

In short, Marx's objective principle has eliminated the abstract understanding of the essence of people and people, so as to restore the understanding of people to the objective activity of reality. Only by understanding people and their essence in the historic and social nature of people's objective activities, can we truly grasp people and understand the true objective relationships and objects for understanding people under the conditions of private ownership. The alienity of sexual activity provides theoretical prerequisites. At the same time, it also lays the foundation for the theory of communist doctrine that is designed to make people liberated from the objective relationships and objective activities of people.

(Author unit: Department of Political Science and Research, Party School (School of Administration), Inner Mongolia)

Source: China Social Science Network-Journal of Social Sciences of China

Author: Meng Huimin

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