A Study Of Marx’s Concept Of Nature

The concept of nature is one of the most crucial foundations of Marxist theoretical system and many important concepts related by Marx are related to it.It is also one of the most disputable concepts in Marxist Philosophy,and many evaluations on Marx and his theories are from it.Since Alfred Schmidt published his famous Marx ’s Concept of Nature,the debate on this issue has lasted up to now.This concept is attracting more and more attentions also partly due to the recent deteriorating environmental conditions.This paper is motivated by environmental issues,but has no intention to directly intervene in the debates on environmental philosophy,but attempts to interpret Marx’s concept of nature,basing on the context of his works.It aims to broaden the practical basis of Marx’s concept of nature and provides a solid theoretical foundation for it.It tries to interpret the concept of nature in the context of Marx’s classic works according to the logic of the development of Marx’s thought.It will define the basic meaning of Marx’s concept of nature,briefly understand its process of enrichment and development.Marx’s first focus on nature began in his high school graduation thesis.But nature at that time did not have any physical content,but was only mentioned as an analogy of God.Later,under the influence of idealism,Marx has briefly turned his attention to the distant and unknown nature,while he was not satisfied with its "indifference" to human sufferings.After realizing the split between soul and body,spirit and nature under idealism,Marx began to turn to reality,and Hegel’s philosophy,which advocated the unity of spirit and nature entered into Marx,instead of idealism.However,Marx soon realized that in Hegel,nature was also only a creation of thought and had only an external meaning that should be abandoned without reality.With the help of Feuerbach’s critique of Hegel’s concept of nature and his reversal of the relation between thought and existence,nature leaps from being something exegetical to becoming the "essence of being".Marx fully recognized Feuerbach’s contribution to materialism,but was dissatisfied with the latter’s understanding of nature only from the perspective of the object and the absence of the subject.In Theses on Feuerbach,Marx wrote,"The main defect of all hitherto-existing materialism-that of Feuerbach included-is that the Object,actuality,sensuousness,are conceived only in the form of the object,or of contemplation,but not as sensuous human activity,practice,not subjectively." Of course,Marx also reserved and severely criticized the dynamic aspects,which was abstractly developed by idealism.On this basis,Marx proposed to understand nature from the perspective of practice,which thus contains both the dimension of object and subject,the unity of object and subject.On the contrary,understanding nature from the perspective of practice means that nature is no longer a self-contained,human-independent abstract.Marx points that nature fixed in isolation from man is nothing.Obviously,it is the critique of Hegel’s concept of nature which is also applicable to the evaluation of Feuerbach’s concept of nature,since abstract materialism and idealism go in the same direction.On the positive side,understanding nature from the perspective of practice means that nature is included in the scope of practice.As a result,nature and human are then closely linked by practice as an intermediary,ending the history of the opposition between nature and spirit,nature and man,and opening up the dialectical unity of nature and history,and the unity of man and nature changes with the slow or fast development of industry,Thus far,Marx’s concept of nature distinguishing from others has formed.It is obvious that practice is the fundamental factor in the formation of Marx’s concept of nature,and practice is the most distinctive feature of Marx’s concept of nature.In the process of forming Marx’s concept of nature,two different kinds of nature come into Marx in different ways.One is the distant unknown nature,and the other is the humanized nature.Both of them exist objectively,while the former is firstly noticed by Marx due to the influence of idealism which is called nature itself,and the latter attracts more attention because it was included in the scope of practice.It is true that Marx never denied the objectivity and priority of nature itself,but the priority is not in the sense of purely natural occurrence,but in the sense of the practice of material production as the satisfaction of man’s physiological needs.As the premise of practice,nature itself exists potentially for human being and provides both the potential material conditions and the space of possibility for human activity.Nature itself is thus indirectly associated with human beings and thus has a heterogeneity with the distant nature that Marx had been concerned with,the nature itself that first entered Marx’s vision and became part of Marx’s concept of nature with a changed content.Since nature itself exists only in a potential form for man,but cannot have a direct effect on man and his activities,Marx did not study it specifically,and it only plays a secondary role in Marx’s concept of nature.Unlike nature itself,Marx used the term"humanized nature" explicitly.In Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,when he exploring the causes of human sense,Marx wrote," For not only the five senses but also the so-called mental senses,the practical sense(will,love,etc.),in a word,human sense,the human nature of the senses,comes to be by virtue of its object,by virtue of humanized nature." This is the first presentation of "humanized nature",which releases two important aspects.First,both humanized nature and objects are regarded as the causes of the forming of human sense.Such facts confirms that humanized nature exists objectively.In other words,objectivity is the primary feature of humanized nature.Second,Marx italicized the word "humanized" to highlight the practical nature of humanized nature.Humanized nature is not only the result of practice but also the reason of further development to human practice and practice is the fundamental feature of humanized nature.Practice,as the unity of active and passive,includes the dual perspective of understanding nature from the subjective sides and from objective sides,which gives rise to the third characteristic of humanized nature,which is the two-way feature.It means that the result of humanized nature is twofold,one is the change of nature and the other is the change of human.The former is by virtue of human and suitable for human beings while the later is by virtue of nature and suitable for the law of nature.On this point,Marx made a similar statement in his discussion of the labor process.He pointed out that human and nature change at the same time when he acts on nature.Marx analyses the connotations of humanized nature after putting forward it.According to him,humanized nature is "the genesis of human society "and "man’s real nature".Objectivity,practicality and the bi-directional characteristics are the two-way feature of Marx’s concept of humanized nature.Among them,objectivity is primary,practicability is fundamental,and the two-way feature is important.Because of the centrality of humanized nature,the practicality in turn constitutes the fundamental feature of Marx’s concept of nature.The two-way character of the naturalization of man logically includes the content of the"naturalization of man".Although the term "naturalization of man" was not proposed by Marx,Marx’s thought contains a wealth of ideas in this regard,and gives two different meanings to"naturalization of man" depending on the object of its context.One is the "naturalization of man" as opposed to the "humanization of nature",that is,the "naturalization of man Ⅰ".Another is the "naturalization of man" as opposed to the "alienated man",that is,the"naturalization of man Ⅱ".Among them,the "naturalization of man Ⅰ" presents two different results.The positive side is to bring harmony to the relationship between man and nature,while the negative side is to cause tension between man and nature.As to which of these two outcomes is finally presented or dominates,it depends on the way and the extent to which man "naturalizes" nature.Although in Marx’s concept of nature,humanized nature and nature itself occupy different positions.They are both parts of Marx’s concept of nature and together constitute the complete connotation of Marx’s concept of nature.When it comes to the relationship between them,the former is the foundation of the latter while the latter is the aim of the former.Both of them perfectly complement each other and neither can do without the other.Although nature itself shrinks with the development of practice,it does not completely disappear and becomes nothing,only in this way does humanized nature have the object and space to be"transformed".Although humanized nature expends with the development of industry and invention,it can’t completely replace nature itself and become the whole.The humanized nature not only confirm human’s essential powers but also positively proves the priority of nature itself.In the subsequent development of Marx’s concept of nature,a number of elements emerged that made Marx’s concept of nature more distinctive,contemporary and realistic,which,while contributing to a more active role of the concept of nature in Marx’s theory,also provided richer dimensions for bridging Marx’s concept of nature with the contemporary world.As an important part of Marx’s theories,Marx’s concept of nature has received sustained attention from researchers and has suffered from different situations,either criticized or affirmed,opposed or supported,condemned or defended and so on.Among these different voices,some have clearly touched on the very essence of Marx’s theory,and therefore these statements about Marx’s concept of nature need to be analysed carefully and responded to positively.In addition to the Introduction,this thesis is divided into four chapters,covering the connotation,formation process,its development,and situation of Marx’s concept of nature,answering the questions of what Marx’s concept of nature is,where it came from,and where it is going to.In the meantime,it shows the value of the times while exploring the true meaning of Marx’s concept of nature.