History and the Generation of Humanity: An Interpretation of Marx's Historical View from the Perspective of Human Studies

Author: Guo Yanjun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-02-01
Features: Preface Whenever human history enters a new era, humans are inevitably drawn to look back and reflect on the arduous journey they have traveled. The purpose is not to enumerate the countless events, but to summarize experiences, transcend history, critique themselves, and guide the development of humanity in the present and future. This is the unique charm of philosophy and history, an embodiment of humanity's metaphysical thinking nature and complex emotions. Therefore, Hegel said, "Minerva's owl takes flight at dusk"; but on the other hand, this reflection is not merely to understand the past of humanity; its true purpose lies in the present and future of humanity, that is, through a critical reflection on the past of humanity, to guide the development of humanity in the present and future. Therefore, Marx also called this philosophical reflection the "Gaulish rooster." At this moment when humanity leaps into a new millennium, philosophical reflection on history once again attracts people's attention. Marx believed that the so-called world history is nothing more than the process in which humanity is born through human labor, the process in which nature is generated for humanity. This paper attempts to re-examine the connotation, driving force, process, and the relationship between humanity and history through an anthropological interpretation of the generation of history and humanity, thereby providing a new understanding and explanation of Marx's historical theory. Although questions such as what history is, the driving force of historical development, the process of historical development, and the relationship between humanity and history have been studied to varying degrees—whether in speculative historical philosophy, analytical and critical historical philosophy, or postmodern narrative historical philosophy—since the founding of Western historical philosophy, there has been no consensus. However, Marx's historical theory provides a brand-new perspective for understanding these issues, that is, to understand the history of humanity from the essence of humanity and its mode of existence. Therefore, it is necessary to first conduct an anthropological interpretation of Marx's historical theory to reveal the profound meaning of Marx's historical philosophy and lay a foundation for solving the above issues. This new interpretation is necessary mainly for the following reasons: First, since the 1980s, China has been engaged in a major discussion on the "practice as the sole criterion for testing truth." Since then, the theoretical circles in China have explored issues such as alienation, humanism, subjectivity, and practical philosophy, interpreting Marx's philosophical theory in various ways and basically forming an understanding framework of "practical materialism" (or "practical philosophy"). "However, few works have elaborated on the special topic of historical theory in a sustained and systematic manner." Our naming of Marx's philosophy has changed from "dialectical materialism and historical materialism" to "practical materialism." As a result, our understanding of Marx's thought has fallen into a contradiction. On the one hand, we uphold the practical essence of human subjectivity; on the other hand, we subsume the history of humanity under the laws of the movement of basic social contradictions, making the law a supernatural law and history an impersonal history, which is a distortion of Marx's historical theory. Therefore, whether from the perspective of the theory itself or from the perspective of reality, it is necessary to interpret Marx and re-examine his historical theory from an anthropological perspective. Second, against the backdrop of a profound cultural crisis in Western society, the growing globalization of social development has posed severe challenges to the development of the vast third world countries. What development path should the third world countries choose? Research on this issue, both domestically and internationally, is closely related to the study of Marx's late humanological notes and his theory of Eastern society. However, in the process of studying Marx's late philosophical thought, there have been unsatisfactory aspects. The main point is that Marx's late thoughts cannot be understood within the framework of his philosophical system, but rather, certain viewpoints or ideas are isolated from their overall context based on practical needs and then analyzed and evaluated in the relevant parts of Marx's late theoretical exploration, according to contemporary needs, leading to various interpretations and the emergence of various "late Marxes." Thus, following the debate between the young and old Marx, a major debate over the late Marx has emerged. The resolution of this issue also depends on the understanding of history and the understanding of the historical process of humanity within Marx's historical theory. Third, the study of anthropology and related issues has become an important field of research in the current philosophical theoretical circles both in China and in the world. This has not only opened up new areas for understanding Marx's philosophical texts but also raised new issues for the study of Marx's philosophy, especially his historical theory, because in Marx's view, history is the history of humanity, the process in which humanity is realistically generated through its own activities. Although we have always understood Marx's philosophy within the context of the development of Western philosophy, due to the limitations of our perspective, our focus has been more on its materialist nature, dialectical thought, and its critical analysis of capitalist society, etc. However, the classical German philosophy, the classical political economy of Great Britain, and the utopian socialism of Great Britain and France are only the direct sources of Marx's philosophical theory. Limiting oneself to this cannot reveal the full essence of Marx's philosophy. In fact, in the development of Western philosophy since the modern era, the core of its ideological theory lies in the interpretation of the essence of humanity and its mode of existence. Especially in the field of historical philosophy, the development of the historical philosophy thought from Vico to the French Enlightenment thinkers and to the classical German philosophers of history has shown Marx a sequence of thought development regarding the consistency between history and the generation of humanity. Marx constructed his own historical philosophy theory on the basis of critically inheriting this tradition of Western historical philosophy since the modern era. Therefore, with the rise of anthropology and the increasing depth of research on Western anthropological thought since the modern era, it has provided a new perspective for reinterpreting Marx's texts, enabling us to conduct an anthropological interpretation of Marx's historical theory. At the same time, the deepening development of anthropological research also requires Marxism to respond. However, research that truly explains Marx's historical theory from the essence of humanity and its mode of existence and provides a comprehensive grasp of his historical philosophy theory in different periods has not yet emerged, which is one of the important reasons for writing this book. Fourth, this is a need for the study of Marx's historical theory itself. When explaining Marx's historical theory, people are accustomed to a diachronic approach, that is, by analyzing the development of Marx's thought, to explain the thoughts of Marx in different historical periods and their interrelationships, providing a history of the development of Marx's thought. This is closely related to the fact that Marx lacks a systematic and comprehensive work that elaborates on his theoretical system. However, this approach inevitably focuses more on his mature period. In fact, the seeds of his entire thought had already been sown in the early stages of his philosophical thought development, while the thoughts of his middle and late periods were both the inevitable result of the internal logical development of his early thoughts and a further enrichment and development of his early thoughts. Therefore, it is not necessary to be constrained by time but to pursue the internal logic of the development of Marx's thought and grasp his thought as a whole. In the current process of studying Marx's thought, the debate between the young, old, and late Marx exists because the key issue lies in the failure to regard Marx's thought as a complete theoretical system but rather in adhering to the theories of Marx in different periods and the different discursive systems he used to explain his theories. The solution to the problem lies in revealing the internal logic of the development of Marx's thought, and the core of this internal logic is Marx's interpretation of the essence of humanity and its mode of existence. In fact, Marx's philosophical thought is not, as traditionally understood, that Marx first inherited the thought of the materialist philosophers of 18th-century France, saved Hegel's dialectics through a critique of German classical philosophy, and thus established dialectical materialism, while historical materialism was the application and development of dialectical materialism in the field of social history. This traditional understanding model has not truly revealed the essence of Marx's philosophy. The core of Marx's philosophical thought is his historical philosophy theory. Through the analysis of the essence of humanity and its mode of existence, Marx critically inherited the tradition of Western historical philosophy since the modern era and constructed his unique historical philosophy theory. It is within this historical philosophy system that Marx unifies his thoughts in different periods. It is also through this system that Marx not only ended the tradition of speculative historical philosophy but also pioneered the tradition of analytical and critical historical philosophy. However, in the current study of Marx's philosophical thought, this historical philosophy system of Marx has not received the attention it deserves. First, in domestic research, the study of Marx's philosophical thought is mainly concentrated on two aspects: First, starting from the early thought of Marx, by understanding the practical essence of humanity and the mode of existence as explained by Marx, attempts are made to construct a new philosophical system of Marx. Regardless of its name, such as "practical materialism," "practical philosophy," "philosophy of the species," or "existential philosophy," the theoretical foundation is Marx's metaphysical contemplation of humanity in his early thought. Second, starting from Marx's late humanological notes and his thoughts on the development of Eastern society, attempts are made to interpret the traditional understanding of historical materialism in a new way to resolve the contradiction between the old and late Marx. The focus is on the choice of development paths for contemporary Chinese society and the vast third world countries. Both of these approaches fail to regard Marx's historical theory as a whole. The former overemphasizes the thought of the young Marx, while the latter focuses on the contemporary historical significance of the late Marx. Second, in terms of foreign research, there are also significant differences in the study of Marx's thought. Humanistic Marxism primarily starts from the thought of the young Marx, by critiquing the understanding of Marx's philosophy as dialectical materialism and historical materialism, attempts to construct a humanistic philosophical system of Marx based on his early thought and thereby turns to the critique of contemporary capitalism. Typical representatives include the social critique theory of the Frankfurt School, such as Horkheimer and Adorno. Scientific Marxism, on the other hand, focuses on Marx's critique of capitalist society in his later years, believing that there is a break in thought between the young and old Marx, and that Marx constructed a scientific theoretical system for critiquing capitalism by discarding his immature early thought. This school is represented by Althusser, whose famous proposition is "Marx's epistemological break." At the same time, some schools in modern Western philosophy also expect to supplement their own systems with Marx's philosophy, forming various different understandings of Marx's philosophy. However, among these understandings, few regard Marx's philosophy as a whole and merely excerpt different parts of it according to their needs. As a result, there has been no comprehensive grasp of the system of Marx's philosophy. However, there is a common point in domestic and foreign research, which is that they all place great emphasis on Marx's discussion of the essence of humanity and its mode of existence and take this as a starting point to reconstruct Marx's philosophical system. This tendency, combined with the increasingly in-depth study of anthropology, not only provides a new perspective for studying Marx's historical theory but also provides a theoretical basis for critically analyzing the traditional understanding of Marx's philosophy. The traditional understanding of Marx's philosophy has a fundamental flaw in that it denies the existence and value of human existence. In essence, the traditional understanding of Marx's philosophy is based on a natural ontology, which is rooted in the materialism of 18th-century France, and through Ernst Haeckel, Plekhanov, and Lenin, it has formed the theoretical foundation for explaining Marx's philosophy. This is partly because Engels, in his later years, reinterpreted the materialist thought of the 18th century to critique the idealism of Dühring and partly because many of Marx's early philosophical works were not published. This traditional understanding, through an infinite reduction, reduces everything in the real world to natural matter, forming the "material unity of the world." When this way of thinking is applied to the field of social history, it forms what Lenin said, "to divide the economic sector from the various fields of social life, to divide the production relations from all social relations, and to regard them as the basic and original relations that determine the rest," and to elevate them to the level of productive forces, thus providing an objective standard for studying social development. However, in this way, Marx's vivid exposition of productive forces and production relations in the critique of capitalism becomes a rigid dogma, and the development of human history becomes a "natural historical process," thus dehumanizing human history. This not only distorts the original intention of Marx's historical philosophy but also obscures the profound connotations of Marx's critical analysis of capitalist society. The core of Marx's philosophical thought is his social historical theory. Marx, as the inheritor and critic of modern Western philosophy, also started his research from the analysis of the essence of humanity and its mode of existence. However, Marx was different from his predecessors in that he did not stop at the abstract understanding of the essence of humanity but linked the essence of humanity to the activities of real people through a critical analysis of German classical philosophy and British classical political economy. His understanding of history was not just for history but to understand history through a critical inheritance of speculative historical philosophy, regarding history as the history of human activity, thereby establishing a completely new historical philosophy system. First, in the "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844," Marx, through a critical analysis of the alienation of labor under capitalism, comprehensively elaborated on the essence of humanity and its mode of existence. Marx pointed out that the essence of humanity is not an abstract entity but is continuously created through the practice of human beings themselves in their relationships with one another. It is through human practice that the unity between humanity and nature is realized. Because human activity is a two-way process, on the one hand, people, through object-oriented activity, endow their essence on the external natural world, thus giving nature human attributes and making it part of the human world; on the other hand, because in the process of natural humanization, people externalize their essence to nature, this is also a process of human naturalization. Therefore, natural history and human history are unified, and they are unified in the real process of human practice. This is the foundation of Marx's historical philosophy theory. In the following "Theses on Feuerbach" and "The German Ideology," Marx comprehensively elaborated on the essence of history and its internal mechanism of development from a metaphysical height and preliminarily divided the development of human history, all based on Marx's understanding of the essence of humanity and its mode of existence. Second, Marx did not stop at this abstract understanding of human history but always combined it with concrete analysis. In Marx's view, "the general specification determined by thought as common to all production stages exists, but what is called the general conditions of all production are nothing more than these abstract elements, and it is impossible to understand any real historical stage of production with these elements." Therefore, it is necessary to analyze it concretely according to the characteristics of each era. Because history, as the expression of human activity itself, is the result of human activity, the confirmation and demonstration of the power of humanity, only by concretely analyzing the specific conditions of human society in each era can one truly understand and grasp the history of each era. Therefore, in Marx's historical theory, there always exist dual logics: on the one hand, Marx, from the metaphysical level, from the essence of humanity, through the elaboration of the relationship between labor, interaction, and division of labor, established the theory of three stages of the development of humanity itself; on the other hand, Marx applied his metaphysical analysis of human history to critique capitalism, thereby revealing the historical development of capitalism in Western Europe, that is, the historical materialism as traditionally understood. However, because the main historical materials Marx encountered in that period were those of Western Europe, this specific analysis had limitations and was only applicable to the history of Western Europe. After Marx encountered historical materials of non-Western societies in his later years, this realistic critique turned to an anthropological critique, as seen in Marx's late humanological notes and his theory of Eastern society. However, it should be pointed out that in the process of turning to the critique of political economy and anthropology, Marx did not abandon his metaphysical analysis of the development of human society but always guided it. Therefore, we believe that there is no logical break between the young, old, and late Marx, but rather a closely linked unified whole. It is within this unified theoretical system that Marx showed how humanity creates history through its own creative activities and is realistically generated in history, thereby transcending the tradition of speculative historical philosophy and pioneering the tradition of analytical and critical historical philosophy. However, in the elaboration of this book, on the one hand, to distinguish from the habitual diachronic research method, on the other hand, to highlight the revolutionary transformation Marx achieved in the development of Western historical philosophy, this book uses the internal logic of Marx's historical philosophy as an implicit thread to govern the entire text, and in the narrative, it elaborates on the development of Western historical philosophy from different themes such as the essence of history, the driving force of history, and the process of history, to reveal Marx's inheritance and development of Western historical philosophy. At the end of the book, a chapter is devoted to summarizing Marx's historical philosophy. This book holds that the greatest contribution of Marx to historical philosophy lies in his linking the real activities of humanity with history, indicating that the development of human history is a dual generative process, on the one hand, history is a generative process for humanity, and on the other hand, humanity is a generative process for history. These two aspects are unified and are unified in the real, creative practice of humanity. And it is precisely in this generative process that the harmony between the regularity and purposefulness of human activity is unified, and the development of human history can be shown as a process of humanity continuously self-transcending. Humanity and history are unified, and the process of historical development is the process in which humanity is realistically generated through its own activities. The formation and development of Western historical philosophy gradually reveal this unity between humanity and history. This book proposes: In Marx's historical theory, there always exist dual logics: on the one hand, the theory of three stages of the development of humanity itself; on the other hand, his specific analysis of human history, that is, the theory of the five successive forms of Western Europe and the theory of Eastern society. These two levels are unified, but they differ in context. It is within this unified historical theory that Marx shows the generativity of humanity and history.