The Preliminary Exploration Of Marx’s Thought Of Free Time

Since the time of human being,people has achieved self transcendence in the coordinate of time.In order to explore their own mysteries,human beings have begun to study the problem of time in the scientific and philosophical fields.Western philosophers had studied the problem of time before Marx,but most of them separated human or society or practice from time.And as a social revolutionist,Marx was committed to the pursuit of human freedom and liberation.From the perceptual time of Marx in his Doctoral Thesis to his later humanistic time,Marx had gradually formed a free time theory in the horizon of historical materialism,combined people’s liberation and time closely.With the clue of productive labor and the perspective of historical materialism and surplus value,Marx explored the existence of human beings in the free time.This is also the uniqueness of Marx.Free time has personal characteristics in the concept of Marx,people could dominate it freely,and with which people can get rid of material necessities and achieve free and comprehensive development.The realization of free time means the transition from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom.However,China is in the primary stage of socialism,and the free time presents the characteristics of consumption and alienation in the current society.Therefore,the systematic interpretation of Marx’s thought of free time provides a theoretical and practical basis for us to realize the liberation of human beings in the new era.The article spreads from the following several aspects:The first is the premise of Marx’s free time thought.Aristotle represented the natural time,which split time from the people;Augustine attributed time to an extension of the human soul;the time for Kant was transcendental and pure intuition;it was an externalizing process of the absolute spirit for Hegel,and a natural and historical time.Starting from the labor and practice,Marx returned the time to people in the perspective of criticizing surplus value and the historical materialism,putting forward the social time which belongs to people.Then is the formation of Marx’s thought of free time.Marx’s idea of free time was based on his concept of time.Time was abstract and perceptual in his Doctoral Thesis.Marx defined the time as the positive existence of human beings,and the practice and labor as the starting point of the investigation of the time in Capital and its manuscripts.In this process,Marx had always unified the time and the freedom and liberation of the people.From Doctoral Thesis to The Poverty of Philosophy was the beginning of Marx’s thought of free time.Marx realized that the liberation of human beings is not a question of epistemology,but a question of existentialism.Marx unfolded the interpretation of free time gradually through the three stages of social formation,the distribution of free time and so on in Capital and its manuscripts.Thirdly is a deep reading of the meaning of Marx’s thought of free time.Marx understood the free time as the time for the full development of individuals.This part mainly from comparing the free time to labor time,and leisure time to clarify the meaning of free time.It also probes the differences that Marx had with Aristotle and Kant and Hegel,that is,Marx’s research had always been based on historical materialism,and spread from multiple dimensions such as the real man and criticism of capital and human liberation.Finally is the significance of Marx’s thought of free time.Free time was proposed on the background of criticism of capital,so the realization of free time will make people get rid of material necessity and change the illiberality way that people live in,which ultimately is the change of the people’s way of life.However,the free time is facing a new dilemma in the contemporary era: the arrival of information age and the age of online retailers make people unlimited to sell free time,free time is gradually capitalized and materialized.How to achieve the return of free time and make people more close to the free way of existence,are becoming problems to be solved.