Actual Individual In The Horizon Of Historical Materialism

Starting from the concept of subject in modern metaphysics, this paper holds that how to unite subject as pure thinking and the opposite concept of object, has been the main topic and task of modern metaphysics. The self-consciousness position in German classic metaphysics, which is the highest accomplishment they made, takes the pure consciousness subject as the activity of constructing the objective world, thus solving the problem of identification of thinking and having in abstract thinking. The real world, however, still stands opposite to the abstract subject which is turned into a historic pure self closed in consciousness not in real world. Accordingly, human beings become lonely individuals like atoms and the world is degraded into abstract material world. The key to solve the problem is to break the transcendental essence of consciousness and to take human beings as concrete, actual and historically existed individuals. Through the analysis of ontological bases of realistic individual, the author points out that actual individuals constitutes the material living condition of their activities. Activity is not that of spontaneous pure thinking, but of practice and perception and that which create human beings and world. The material living condition is the perceptual world in which human beings exist throughout. The illumination of actual individuals living in world and history is the downright subversion of the traditional concept of subject. Taking Actual individual in the horizon of historical materialism: stepping out from the embarrassment of subject as its title, this paper is comprised of seven parts. In introduction, actual individual is taken as the starting concept of historical materialism. In the first chapter, the author points out that the contribution of Descartes' philosophy is the certification of the existence of subject and the establishment of the base of spontaneous thinking while in the second chapter, the concept of transcendental subject in Kantism is analyzed and subject is marked out as the pure thinking activity in the construction of empirical world. In the third chapter, Hegel' s thought of taking entity as subject is mainly discussed, and the author puts forward that absoluteness achieves unity in the process of self spreading. In the fourth chapter, the author holds that it is through activity which is perceptual that human beings and world come into being, while in the fifth chapter, the material living condition is marked out as the world in which human beings exist. In the sixth chapter, the author shows that human beings are historical beings. This paper holds that it is of great significant to pull human beings from the...