Marx and the Critique of Humanism: : Andres Saenz de Sicilia: Bloomsbury Academic

Marx and the Critique of Humanism

Description

Marx's writings refuse the notion of an unchanging or pre-given 'essence' of what it means to be human. However, even if Marx's concept of an 'open' humanity is plausible, it generates further questions: how can the 'continuous transformation of human nature' be compatible with the idea of a 'full' development of the individual? Is transformation equivalent to development? By what criteria (immanent, universal or otherwise) can the adequacy of any particular form of human existence be determined?

This book addresses these questions in relation to shifting contemporary scholarship on Marx's view of the human. It engages with the critics of Marx's thinking; his novel idea of transindividuality; the ways in which 'the human' informs and is transformed by Marx's critical theory of capitalist society; Marx on nature and the ecological dimensions of his thought; humanism and the critique of political economy; and humanism in relation to Marx's materialism. In this way, Marx and the Critique of the Human illuminates Marx's ideas in the context of a broader concern with 'the human' across the contemporary philosophical landscape.

Introduction

1. Etienne Balibar, The Marxian concept of Gattungswesen (generic being): a critical genealogy

2. Jacob Blumenfeld, The Redemption of Saint Max: Stirner's Critique of Marx

3. Manuel Disegni, "Man' is actually 'the German'”: Humanism and intolerance in German ideology

4. Simon Skempton, Totality as the "Absolute Movement of Becoming”: Marx's Aporetic Conception of the Human

5. Werner Bonefeld, On (Negative) Humanism and the Critique of Capital

6. Rocío Zambrana, Method, according to Marx: Toward a Critique of Normative Humanist Approaches

7. Lutti Mira, History and prehistory of human society: The place of humanism in Marxian critique of political economy

8. Arwa Awan, Dialectic in the Tropics: Praxis as a humanism

9. John Bellamy Foster, Marx's Critique of Enlightenment Humanism. A Revolutionary Ecological Perspective

10. Carol Gould, “Nothing Human is Alien to me”: Revisiting and Revising Marx's Critical and Constructivist Humanism