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Modern Philosophy Of Rights And The Marx's Social Existence Theory

Posted on:2004-04-11Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:R M LiuFull Text:PDF
GTID:1115360095962709Subject:Marxist philosophy
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
This paper centers on Marx's subversion of the metaphysical foundation of rights, with the great emphasis on the perspective of Social Existence Theory on which Marx's critique on the philosophy of rights is based, and the two demarcation lines existing in Marx's critique. Modern philosophy of rights, by nature, is metaphysical since it never criticized, still less denied its established prerequisite of private property. Besides, its system of modern rights such as freedom and equality was established in the spectrum of civil society and political emancipation. Therefore, its discussion on modern rights was divorced from reality - the economic base and social relationship. Locke started a new approach different from the continental philosophy of rights, which, based on natural rights, empiricism and individualism, and characterized by liberalism and individualism, was a typical example of philosophy of natural rights. Likewise, Locke's philosophy and his argument on private property and individual right presupposed metaphysics of natural rights and was clearly abstract, non-historical and formal. Rousseau initiated a French approach different from the English and developed his philosophy from the will of liberty, considered the general will as the only possible foundation and introduced equality into the concept of freedom. However, the abstract "general will" and the confusion between the general will and the special will, along with his ideas of individualism and private property, made his philosophy of rights remain on the level of metaphysical abstractness and formalism. His social contract theory could only be represented as a democratic republic of bourgeois. Kant founded his philosophy of rights on the transcendental idealism, trying to find out the common law in the noumenal world based on the Categorical Imperative. He believed in the liberty of will on the law of morals as the foundation of rights, thus finding a new philosophical basis for man's liberty and right, and broadening the classical philosophy of natural right. However, Kant's philosophy of rights, which was characterized by transcendental idealism, had been always trapped in the contradiction between the sensible world and noumenal world. The thing-in-itself, as the prop of right, was nothing more than "another transcendental world", which was abstract and unrealistic. The metaphysical property, the pointless formalism and the weakness was obvious in Kant's philosophy of rights. Hegel, on the level of absolute mind, united the natural law and positive law, moral and law, power and right, liberty and right, and completed the modern philosophy of rights on the basis of metaphysics. In other words, Hegel's philosophy of rights marked the completion of modern metaphysics of right Marx's philosophy of rights by nature was a critique on metaphysical philosophy of rights. Marx's critique started in his "Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Rights" and experienced the following four periods: his critique on religion; his general critique on the philosophy of rights; an analysis of economics in civil society and an intensified critique on the metaphysics of rights; the establishment of Social Existence Theory founded on the objective action and subversion of the metaphysical foundation of right. Marx's Social Existence Theory, which is based on the objective action, lays a cornerstone for the total subversion of metaphysics. It includes: individual, production and materialized livingcondition which exist as a real fact, the actual social relationship between individuals, and the process in which contradiction develops in the subjects of objective actions(this is what we call history). Marx's argument and the implication of his approach lie in these facts: (1) his principle that social existence determines idea unveils the modern philosophy of rights; (2) his principle that economic base determines right, that the contradiction between productive forces and production relations determines right, or that civil society...
Keywords/Search Tags:Modern Philosophy of Rights, Marx, Critique of Metaphysics of Rights, Social Existence.
PDF Full Text Request
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