The Disintegration And Resurgence Of "Gattung"

Marx and Engels criticized the Young Hegelians and advocated the necessity to liberate real people from the bondage of ideas in The German Ideology,showing that the human essence lies in social relations,with the process of the division of labor and productive interaction.It is completely distinct from the Idealism which hold the view that the human essence is a priori and universal idea.The great shift of view in Marx and Engel was not due to their sudden and fractured stand against their predecessors,the Young Hegelians;on the contrary,they could critique and reconstruct their theories on the basis of the same theoretical model,the Dual Structure of I ndividual and Gattung.Marx and Engels completed what the Young Hegelians had left off and presented the prototype of Materialist Conception of History in The German Ideology.In the early 1840 s,the Young Hegelians and Marx realized the problem of German Idealism represented by Hegel,the risk of Absolutism in Hegel’s theory,which means Hegelians tend to use a universal essence Gattung to regulate the individual and would deprive the freedom of individuals.In order to avoid this risk,they regarded the theory of Individual and Gattung in Hegel as a vertical Dual Structure which conducted by Gattung,and tried to refresh the subjective freedom of individuals by disintegrating Gattung: Bruno Bauer criticized Gattung,arguing that the objective Reason should sink down to each individual;Max Stirner reconstructed the Individual,arguing that all power outside the individual should be rejec ted,only der Einzige exists.Feuerbach questioned the idealist dualism of I ndividual and Gattung and reduced the human essence from God to secular world.Marx was also on this path at the beginning and continuously absorbed theories of the Young Hegelians,but soon,Marx found logical paradoxes within their respective theories.Although they claimed to deconstruct the vertical duality,to varying degrees,they all kept the statute of the individual through universal reason,which means the definition of human essence is still dependent from a priori and preconceived conceptual principle.Marx and Engels continued to disintegrate Gattung,but in a way that allowed it to be reborn: the real person is not the "ought to be",however,the human essence lies in social relations,which is derived from the labor and interaction activities of individuals in order to satisfy their needs.This means Gattung is not vertical to individuals,but horizontal;behind which,the production and interaction are the driving forces of historical development and the emancipation of individuals.The above horizontal Dual Structure could also be clearly identified through the study of the bibliographic issues related to the German Ideology.However,the horizontal Dual Structure of Individual and Gattung is not stable,as the capital constitutes new relations of domination in social interactions,thus opening up new critiques and deconstructions.