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

Author: Guo Yanjun
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-02-01
Features: Preface Whenever human history enters a new era, humans cannot help but look back and reflect on the arduous journey they have traveled. The purpose is not to enumerate the great and small events, but to summarize experience, transcend history, criticize themselves, and point the direction for the development of humanity in the present and future. This is the unique charm of philosophy and history, the embodiment of humanity's metaphysical thinking nature and complex. Therefore, Hegel said, "Minerva's owl takes off at dusk"; but on the other hand, this reflection is not just 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 point the direction for the development of humanity in the present and future. Therefore, Marx also called this philosophical reflection the "Gaulish rooster." At this time when humanity leaps into the 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, dynamics, process, and the relationship between humanity and history through the philosophical interpretation of the generation of history and humanity, thereby providing a new understanding and explanation for 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, or primarily or secondarily, or in detail or briefly since the founding of Western historical philosophy, whether speculative historical philosophy, analytical and critical historical philosophy, or postmodern narrative historical philosophy, people have not reached a consensus. However, Marx's historical theory provides us with a brand-new perspective for understanding the above 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 a philosophical interpretation of Marx's historical theory from a philosophical perspective in order to reveal the profound meaning of Marx's philosophical thought of history and lay the foundation for solving the above issues. This new interpretation is necessary mainly for the following reasons: First, since the great discussion in China about the "practice being the sole criterion for testing truth" that began in the early 1980s, the theoretical circles at home have, through the discussion of issues such as alienation, humanism, subjectivity, and philosophical practice, provided numerous interpretations of Marx's philosophical theory and basically formed an understanding framework of "practical materialism" (or "philosophy of practice"). "However, few works have elaborated on this special topic in a sustained and systematic way." Our term for Marx's philosophy has changed from "dialectical materialism and historical materialism" to "practical materialism." In this way, our understanding of Marx's thought has fallen into a contradiction. On the one hand, we highly advocate 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 superhuman law and history a lawless 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-interpret Marx's historical theory from a philosophical perspective. Second, against the backdrop of the profound cultural crisis in Western society, the increasing globalization of social development has posed severe challenges to the development of the vast developing countries. What kind of development path should the developing 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 are still unsatisfactory aspects. The main point is that Marx's late thought cannot be understood within the framework of his philosophical system, but rather, based on the needs of the reality, a certain viewpoint or thought is isolated from its entirety and then, according to the needs of the contemporary era, is placed in the relevant part of the theoretical exploration of Marx's late thought for analysis and evaluation, thus leading to various interpretations and the emergence of various "late Marxes." As a result, following the debate between the young Marx and the old Marx, a major debate over the late Marx has also emerged. The resolution of this issue also depends on the understanding of history in Marx's historical theory and the understanding of the process of human history. Third, the study of philosophy and related issues has become an important field of research in the current philosophical theoretical circles in China and the world. This not only opens up new areas for understanding Marx's philosophical texts but also raises new issues for the study of Marx's philosophy, especially the study of Marx's historical theory, because in Marx's view, history is the history of humanity, and it is 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 limitation of perspective, we have paid more attention to its materialist nature, dialectical thought, and its critical analysis of capitalist society, etc., when understanding Marx's philosophy. However, the classical German philosophy, the classical British political economy, and the utopian socialism of Britain and France are only the direct sources of Marx's philosophical theory and cannot reveal the entire 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 German classical philosophers has shown Marx a sequence of thought development concerning the consistency between history and the generation of humanity. It is precisely on the basis of critically inheriting this tradition of Western historical philosophy since the modern era that Marx constructed his own historical philosophy theory. Therefore, with the rise of philosophy, the increasing depth of research on the philosophical thought of Western modernity has provided us with a new perspective for re-interpretation of Marx's texts, enabling us to conduct a philosophical interpretation of Marx's historical theory. At the same time, the increasing depth of philosophical 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 the historical philosophy theory of different periods of Marx 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 line of Marx's thought, to explain the thought 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 understanding method inevitably focuses more on his mature period. In fact, the seeds of all his thoughts were already present in the early stages of the development of his philosophical thought, while the thoughts of the middle and later periods were both the inevitable result of the internal logical development of the early thoughts and a further enrichment and development of the early thoughts. Therefore, it is not necessary to be limited by time but to pursue the internal logic of the development of Marx's thought and to grasp his thought as a whole. In the current process of studying Marx's thought, the debate over the young Marx, the old Marx, and the late Marx in the theoretical circles is due to the key issue of not regarding Marx's thought as a complete theoretical system but being obsessed with the theories of Marx in different periods and the different discourse systems used by Marx to explain his theories. The key to solving 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, and on the basis of criticizing German classical philosophy, he rescued Hegel's dialectics, thereby founding dialectical materialism, and 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 precisely within this historical philosophy system that Marx unifies his thoughts of different periods. It is also through this system that Marx not only ended the speculative tradition of historical philosophy but also pioneered the tradition of analytical and critical historical philosophy. However, in the current process of studying Marx's philosophical thought, Marx's historical philosophy system has not received the attention it deserves. First, in terms of domestic research, the study of Marx's philosophical thought is mainly concentrated on two aspects: On the one hand, starting from the early thought of Marx, through the understanding of the practical essence of humanity and the mode of existence as elaborated by Marx, attempts are made to construct a new philosophical system of Marx. Regardless of its name, such as "practical materialism," "philosophy of practice," "philosophy of the species," or "philosophy of existence," the theoretical foundation is Marx's metaphysical philosophizing on the essence of humanity in the early period. On the other hand, 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 Marx and the late Marx. The focus of attention is on the choice of development path for contemporary Chinese society and the vast developing countries. Neither of these understanding methods regards Marx's historical theory as a whole. The former places too much emphasis on the thought of the young Marx, while the latter focuses on the realistic significance of the late Marx. Secondly, in terms of the research status abroad, there are also significant differences in the study of Marx's thought. Humanistic Marxism mainly starts from the thought of the young Marx, by criticizing the understanding of Marx's philosophy as dialectical materialism and historical materialism, attempts to construct a humanistic Marx philosophy based on the early thought of Marx, and thus turns to the critique of contemporary capitalism. The typical representatives are the social critique theory of the Frankfurt School, such as Horkheimer and Adorno. Meanwhile, scientific Marxism focuses on Marx's critique of capitalist society in his old age, believing that there is a break in thought between the young Marx and the old Marx, and that Marx constructed a scientific theoretical system for critiquing capitalism by abandoning his immature early thought. This school is represented by Althusser, whose famous proposition is "the break in Marx's epistemology." At the same time, some schools in modern Western philosophy also expect to supplement their systems with Marx's philosophy, forming many different understandings of Marx's philosophy. However, among these many understandings, few regard Marx's philosophy as a whole and only excerpt different parts of it according to their needs. As a result, they have not formed a comprehensive grasp of the system of Marx's philosophy. But there is a common point in the research both domestically and internationally, which is that they all pay great attention to Marx's discussion of the essence of humanity and its mode of existence, and take this as the starting point to reconstruct Marx's philosophical system. This tendency, combined with the increasingly in-depth study of philosophy, not only provides us with 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 is fundamentally flawed 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 due to the fact that Engels, in his later years, for the purpose of criticizing the idealism of Dühring and others, elaborated on the materialism of the 18th century in a new way, and partly due to the fact that 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, to regard them as the basic and original relations that determine the rest of the relations," and to raise them to the level of productivity, thereby providing an objective standard for studying social development. However, in this way, Marx's vivid elaboration on productivity and production relations in the process of critiquing 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 connotation 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, through the critical analysis of German classical philosophy and British classical political economy, linked the essence of humanity to the actual activities of humans; his understanding of history was not for history but for history, but through the critical inheritance of speculative historical philosophy, he regarded 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 the critical analysis of the alienation of labor under capitalism, conducted a comprehensive elaboration 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 activity in the relationship between people. It is precisely through human practice that the unity between humanity and nature is achieved. Because human activity is a two-way process, on the one hand, through object-oriented activity, humans attribute their essence to the external natural world, making the natural world possess human attributes and become part of the human world; on the other hand, because in the process of naturalization, humans externalize their essence to the natural world, this is also the process of naturalization of humans. Therefore, the history of nature and the history of humanity are unified, and they are unified in the process of actual human practice. This is the foundation of Marx's historical philosophy theory. In the following "Theses on Feuerbach" and "The German Ideology," Marx elaborated on the essence of history and its internal mechanism of development from a metaphysical height, and initially divided the development of human history, all of which were based on Marx's understanding of the essence of humanity and its mode of existence. Secondly, Marx did not stop at this abstract understanding of human history but always combined it with practical analysis. In Marx's view, "the general specification that is determined by thought as a general specification and is common to all production stages exists, but the general conditions of all production are nothing more than these abstract elements, and it is impossible to understand any real historical production stage with these elements." Therefore, it is necessary to analyze it specifically 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 human essence, can only be truly understood and grasped by specifically analyzing the specific situation of human society in each era. Therefore, in Marx's historical theory, there always exist dual logics: on the one hand, Marx's theory of the three stages of the development of humanity itself, which he established from a metaphysical level by elaborating on the relationship between labor, communication, and division of labor; on the other hand, Marx applied his metaphysical analysis of human history to criticize capitalism, thereby revealing the historical development of capitalism in Western Europe, that is, the historical materialism that we traditionally understand. However, because the main historical materials that Marx was exposed to at that time were those of Western Europe, this specific analysis has limitations and is 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 Marx, the old Marx, and the late Marx, but rather a closely linked unified whole. It is precisely within this unified theoretical system that Marx shows how humanity creates history through its own creative activities and is realistically generated in history, thereby transcending the speculative tradition of 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 that 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 whole 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 actual activities of humanity with history, pointing out that the development of human history is a dual process of generation, on the one hand, history is a process of generation for humanity, and on the other hand, humanity is a process of generation for history. These two aspects are unified and are unified in the actual, creative practice of humanity. Moreover, it is precisely in this process of generation that the regularity and purposefulness of human activity are 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 of humanity being 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 that in Marx's historical theory, there always exist dual logics: on the one hand, the theory of the 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 evolution in Western Europe and the theory of Eastern society. These two levels are unified, but the context of discourse is different. Precisely within this unified historical theory, Marx shows the generative nature of humanity and history.