Human Emancipation Beyond The Enlightenment Horizon

The purpose of this subject is to develop a research into theform and meaning of the philosophy of Marx. The dissertation notonly elaborates the early development of Enlightenment inmodern Europe, but also interprets and analyzes, on the basis ofmodern Enlightenment, other mental resources that exertsinfluence on Marx, such as modern western philosophy, Germanclassical philosophy and Feuerbach philosophy. This aims atoffering a more direct realistic context for the study ofphilosophy of Marx as well as focusing on the main propositionthat how the philosophy of Marx based on the gist of humanemancipation could grow from social public opinion of the day,so that a thorough understanding of the philosophy of Marx canbe made under the background of neoteric history of ideas andspirit of the time. On the foundation of this and taking thedevelopment of enlightening spirit as a clue, the dissertationstates the various early theoretic forms of enlightening spirit inBritain, France and German, compares the differences andrelationships among these ideas, and expounds Hegel andFeuerbach’s introspection, criticism and development toenlightening. The emphasis is the realization of criticism, promotion and surmounting of emancipation stand to enlighteningpolitics through Marx’s criticism to Hegel and Feuerbach, whichdiscovers the value and meaning of all these ideas; and elaboratesas well the distinction in principle between the most basic standof Marx and these idea resources, which unfolds the formingideological track of human emancipation theory by Marx’spolitical emancipation stand beyond enlightening and furthersupplies a new angle for explanations and discussions of human’soverall development theory by Marx.The dissertation consists of five chapters.The first chapter is chiefly a theoretical background for thestudy of philosophy of Marx by the announcement of politicalemancipation stand for enlightenment and its limitation. As anecessary revolution in Europe, enlightenment has its realistichistorical reasons. The direct manifestation is the enlightenmentmovement against religious theology and feudal autocracy.Although they had certain differences in forms of manifestationin Britain, France and German at the beginning of the movement,the core of enlightenment rationality are all to realize reasonablefreedom and emancipation, in which the reasonable emancipationis realistically represented as political emancipation; politicalemancipation may make a country get rid of the boundary ofreligion and church to become a political one, in which people’s affairs committee can be set up to deal with their own politicalaffairs so that people may acquire the freedom in political orspiritual life–the freedom they hold as the right that everycitizen should have. The essence of people’s demand for this kindof civil rights is to guarantee the individual legal right andmaximization of personal stakes. Therefore, the politicalemancipation is not the final form of emancipation for humanbeings, the limitations of political emancipation stand ofenlightening are obvious although its huge role in emancipationcannot be neglected.The second and third chapter deepen the substantialunderstanding of enlightenment rationality through thecombination of the rethinking, criticism and development toenlightening stand by Hegel and Feuerbach, which is also thetheoretical premise and key point to understand the developmentand transformation of Marx’s thoughts; at the meantime, theestablishing course of human emancipation stand by Marx and itsbasic theoretical purport are understood through the analysis ofMarx’s criticism to Hegel and Feuerbach. While criticizing theenlightenment rationality, Hegel raises solutions to the deficiencyof enlightenment rationality too. He regards enlightenmentrationality as an abstract formalism and suggests overcoming itby the uniform of contents and forms. Limited by the one-sidedness of empiricism, the British and FrenchEnlightenment only realized unilateral freedom, representing aslimited thinking that unable to offer universal relations, thusHegel suggests to overcome the limitation of empiricism bynegative dialectics which to overcome this kind of unilateralfreedom through the self-movement of subjects. Although Hegelexpands enlightenment rationality and makes it to an extreme,Feuerbach thinks that his rationality is a “rationality withoutliving body” and the freedom and emancipation realized though itare not realistic. In Feuerbach’s view, the truly realisticemancipation should keep a foothold on “perception”, however,he only understands “perception” as “perceptual audio-visual”but not “perceptual activity”. But just because of Feuerbach’sthorough clearing to Hegel’s philosophy or general philosophy,Marx’s overall exceeding to philosophy in the future finds itsmoment. With the premise of criticism and heritage to Hegel andFeuerbach’s philosophy, Marx achieves his exceeding to theenlightenment stand. He criticizes Hegel’s abstractness, whichonly concerns about abstract self consciousness but not therealistic concrete human beings and cares about abstract spiritualactivity but depreciates material productive work, only realizingrational emancipation unilaterally without the premise ofachievement of perceptual emancipation; he criticizes that the direct materialism of Feuerbach can not understand humanbeing’s perceptual activities due to the ignorance of dialectics,which makes the study on human being can only realize the directview on single citizen while cannot understand the social essenceof humans. Absorbing the “rational core” of Hegel’s dialecticsand combining of “basic core” of Feuerbach’s materialism, Marxputs forward the political emancipation beyond enlightenmentstand by realistic human emancipation.The forth and fifth chapter mainly discuss how Marx absorbsthe “rational core” of Hegelian dialectics and “basic core” ofFeuerbach’s materialism, analyze the dynamic role and rationalfoundation of human emancipation which Marx wants to achieve,and elaborate the subject for human emancipation and thepossibility and necessity that the subject is capable of this task.The emancipation of labor is the essence and core of humanemancipation. Marx bring forward that “labor is to foundation tounderstand human history” and points out that not only everysocial existence is the product of labor, but also all the socialpolitical and spiritual life would change with the development oflabor ability,“the history of labor is the key to understandhuman’s history”; through the analysis of economic facts incapitalist society, Marx finds that all alienation phenomenon incapitalist society is the result of political emancipation, because political emancipation realizes only the freedom of people’sspiritual life while their material life is still controlled by capital,and the direct result of this is capitalist private ownership andalienation labor, in which the latter one is the toot cause ofvarious phenomenon in the society; thus, Marx thinks thatemancipation of labor can only achieved by the abandon ofcapitalist private ownership and alienation labor. Politicalemancipation is not the completion of human emancipation andonly a stage of it, the ultimate form of human emancipation canonly be emancipation of labor, for human being is essentially freeand conscious activity while labor alienation leads to alienationall round among people, so the emancipation of labor inevitablybecomes the essence and core of human emancipation.