Sean Sayers' Research On Marxist Human Nature

What is a person?This is a question that philosophers have always pursued.Socrates believed that the most important mission of life is to "know yourself",which shows the difficulty and importance of knowing yourself.At this point,from ancient times to the present,east and west,numerous sages and sages have been involved in the debate of this question for thousands of years,and from this question further extended a series of philosophical questions,such as what are the characteristics of people and whether their nature is good or evil.Similarly,the human nature thought of Marx,the great philosopher,attracts and puzzles many researchers.For this reason,this paper intends to deeply consider and elucidate the existing problems and feasible approaches in the study of contemporary Anglo-American marxist human nature thought through the study of the famous British marxist scientist Sean Sayers' marxist human nature thought.The article is divided into four parts.The first chapter combs a controversy existing in the research of marxist theory of human nature,that is,the contention of essentialism against essentialism.Essentialism holds that as a social criticism theory,marxism must be supported by a universal and absolute value foundation,so marxism must adhere to a universal concept of human nature.Anti-essentialism believes that marxism is "anti-human nature" and there is no universal human nature.No matter what kind of theoretical claims can be found in Marx's works,at the same time,it has its difficult to solve the theoretical difficulties,it is based on this,Sayers tried to transcend the thinking mode of the two,looking for a third way to understand the marxist theory of human nature.The second chapter systematically analyzes and interprets sayers' s historical theory of human nature.Firstly,it explains the general content of the marxist concept of human nature of Sayers,that is,human's various abilities and needs,which include both the perceptual natural needs of human as anatural existence and the needs of social existence,namely the needs of work and leisure.Compared with mill's utilitarian theory of human nature,marxist view of human nature has the same thing,that is,people have a higher demand for happiness beyond the perceptual lower happiness.However,the difference is that the marxist view of human nature believes that human needs mainly come from production activities or work,and consumer needs are based on the former as a prerequisite.Secondly,from the perspective of work,leisure and other aspects of human nature,this paper discusses Sayers' point of view,that is,human nature is not permanent as essentialism believes,but develops and changes in history,which is a social historical phenomenon.Finally,it is pointed out that his marxist theory of human nature is the transcendence of the debate between essentialism and anti-essentialism of human nature theory,and the profound understanding and interpretation of marxist historical materialism on the basis of criticizing them.The third chapter examines the marxist moral value thought based on the thought of human nature.First of all,the article explains the specious problem of moral theory in marxism.Secondly,this paper takes Marx's thought of justice as an example to sort out two ways of interpreting this moral theoretical problem.Finally,the article from the "to the analysis of the dichotomy of marxism criticism","the method of marxism","evaluation of capitalism" and "human nature and moral values" four aspects explains the Sayers the history of marxist socialism morals,and points out that in Sayers point of view,analysis of the marxist theory of marxist social and political ethics thought of binary,see them as incompatible,Chen is a dialectic way of thinking.However,the correct way to understand marxism is to regard the two as a whole,to lay its criticism of capitalism on the basis of social theory,and to think about Marx's human nature and moral values in a historical,relative and dialectical way.Finally,in the conclusion part,the article points out the Sayers to the position of historical materialism,with a dialectic way of thinking of marxist human nature and the thought of moral value and enlightening interpretation,however,also points out that his ideas have some difficult to overcome problems,for example,it is easy to reduce the problem of human nature and moral value to the problem of economy,thus ignoring the theoretical power contained in the marxist moral concept.