- 11 Jul 2004 11:17
#378962
Do you believe in species-being?
According to this theory, a theory developed by Feuerbach, what sets us apart from the animals is not our consciousness of ourselves as individuals, but of ourselves as a species. Human beings are species-beings.
But our material life, how we live in the actual world, in capitalist society, where the individual man is separated from the community, conflicts with our species-being.
Karl Marx said in On the Jewish Question:
"The perfected political state is by its nature the species-life of man in opposition to his material life. All the presupppositions of this egoistic life continue to exist ouside the sphere of the state in civil society, but as qualities of civil society. Where the political state has attained its full degree of development man leads a double life on earth, not only in his . . . consciousness, but in reality. He lives in the political community, where he regards himself as a communal being, and in civil society, where he is active as a private individual, regards other men as means, debases himself to a means and becomes a plaything of alien powers. The relationship of the political state to civil society is just as spiritual as the relationship of heaven to earth. The state stands in the same opposition to civil society and overcomes it in the same way as religion overcomes the restrictions of the profane world, i.e. it has to acknowledge it again, reinstate it and allow itself to be dominated by it. Man in his immediate reality, in civil society, is a profane being. Here, where he regards himself and is regarded by others as a real indiidual, he is an illusory phenomenon. In the state, on the other hand, where he is considered to be a species-being, he is the imaginary memner of a fictitious sovereigny, he is divested of his real individual life, and filled with an unreal universality."
Marx later abandoned this sort of thinking, but I tend to agree with it.
According to this theory, a theory developed by Feuerbach, what sets us apart from the animals is not our consciousness of ourselves as individuals, but of ourselves as a species. Human beings are species-beings.
But our material life, how we live in the actual world, in capitalist society, where the individual man is separated from the community, conflicts with our species-being.
Karl Marx said in On the Jewish Question:
"The perfected political state is by its nature the species-life of man in opposition to his material life. All the presupppositions of this egoistic life continue to exist ouside the sphere of the state in civil society, but as qualities of civil society. Where the political state has attained its full degree of development man leads a double life on earth, not only in his . . . consciousness, but in reality. He lives in the political community, where he regards himself as a communal being, and in civil society, where he is active as a private individual, regards other men as means, debases himself to a means and becomes a plaything of alien powers. The relationship of the political state to civil society is just as spiritual as the relationship of heaven to earth. The state stands in the same opposition to civil society and overcomes it in the same way as religion overcomes the restrictions of the profane world, i.e. it has to acknowledge it again, reinstate it and allow itself to be dominated by it. Man in his immediate reality, in civil society, is a profane being. Here, where he regards himself and is regarded by others as a real indiidual, he is an illusory phenomenon. In the state, on the other hand, where he is considered to be a species-being, he is the imaginary memner of a fictitious sovereigny, he is divested of his real individual life, and filled with an unreal universality."
Marx later abandoned this sort of thinking, but I tend to agree with it.