From Feuerbach To Marx:the Formation And Development Of Species Concept

Species is an important concept of the philosophy of young Hegelians and Marx.For a long time,the species concept that mainly exists in the earlier philosophical works of Marx is considered as the remains of the thought of Feuerbach in the study of Marx's works and thus should be removed from the philosophical thoughts of Marx.In this dissertation,the differences and links between the species concept of Marx and young Hegelians is explored by turning to the history that of from Feuerbach to Marx.Faith is for god in religion,but love exists among humans.And the faith in god is interpreted as love,a true relation between people.And it is the core of Feuerbach's philosophy to explain belief in God as relations of humankind.In fact,the problem of the relations between God and humans on which Feuerbach focused brings the problem of the links between thinking and existence back to that of humankind and finally finds the original relation between man and nature of which thinking and existence are unified.In order to demonstrate the viewpoint above,the process of human nature's development is explored by turning to Feuerbach's philosophical thought according to its inherent logic from man in religion to man as species being.Feuerbach used the concept of species being to replace God,which just explained the relationship between human and human nature.But what about the relation between human as natural being and social being? Therefore,Feuerbach is bound to be questioned for his incomplete critique of the essence of Christianity.Stirner critique Feuerbach's idea of humans as species being with the conception of “Ownness”,which is,in essence,the deny of fixed ideas and what's more,the relation between individuals and the outside world more than species concept.That means he denied everything including the self.As written in The Ego and Its Own: “I have taken up my cause without foundation”.If understood as merely “nothing”,his idea is just thesame as the universal thoughts of Hegel and Feuerbach which he critiqued.“Nothing”,hence,is just the foundation of his cause,while the “Ownness” formed on the basis of“nothing” is the core which he used to attack species concept.Human nature should be the unification of individuation and commonality.Feuerbach put emphasis on human's commonality as a species while ignored its individuality.Stirner,on the contrary,explained human nature as just individuality,turning a blind eye to the commonality.Professor Gao Qinhai holds opinion that it is the liberation of human being from commonality to individuality,but it is narrow and is just from an extremist to another extremist.From this point of view,we can see that the thought of Feuerbach just defined the natural attribute of human,namely commonality,and Stirner only advocates egotism,namely the individualism.the interpretation of human essence by both of them is far from comprehensive.It is the basis of Marx's philosophical thoughts that man is the starting point of all practical activities.Therefore,we must have a grasp of the realistic existence of mankind before we can see the thoughts of Marx in a comprehensive way.To analyze Marx's development of species concept from the perspective of the realistic existence of mankind,we can have a precise understanding of the premise of Marx's thought and its influence in reality since species concept has its origin in mankind while mankind is just an aspect of the existence of mankind.And if it is authentic depends on how philosophers treat the existence of mankind.For example,Feuerbach considered humankind as species being,Stirner “Ownness” and Marx man in real situation.The difference of philosophical dimension,in essence,is the divergence of philosophical views,which lead to different views of history that philosophers use to interpret the world.In general,views of history are formed in two approaches.The first is to use idealistic philosophy which is built by deducing some philosophical notions to reflect the material world.The second is to have an overall understanding of the material world by carefully observing the relations in the world and then explain the real world from the perspective of history.Marx's materialist conception of history is formed in the latter way.Therefore,to understand the existence of mankind in the thought of Marx,we must turn to the view of historical materialism.The existence of mankind is interpreted as natural being,species being and social being in the thought of Marx.And the natural being of the mankind is the subject of man's activities as well as the basis of the historical development of mankind in reality.The species being and social being are progress in the aspects of ideology and reality respectively on the basis of natural being.This dissertation is aimed at demonstrating the dialectical relationship between man as species being and social being based on an understanding of the conception of natural being so as to have a deep understanding of Marx's development of species concept.