Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 20:27:03 -0500 From: Richard Moodey <moodey001-AT-mail1.gannon.edu> Subject: RE: BHA: Species Being At 04:19 PM 01/22/2002 -0500, Marshall Feldman wrote: >In sense this is human nature, but "human nature" as the term is >conventionally used, refers mostly to a set of psychological traits having >to do with motivations and behavior (e.g., are people inherently >acquisitive, as neoclassical economics supposes), whereas "species being" in >Marx seems to refer more to ontological/existential conditions (e.g., humans >transform nature to survive) and an underlying, collective self or being >that is fulfilled when actual existence and species being are transparently >related to each other and actual existence allows us to be as human as we >can be. Such conditions are the absence of alienation. Marshall, I really like the idea that using "species being" might be a way of revitalizing the over-psychologized and individualistic conception of human nature. We are, by nature, social. >For this reason, I've always understood alienation in a way that differs >with the ways some people have been discussing it on this list. I understand >alienation to refer to a situation in which humanity lives a way of life >(i.e., alienation is not a characteristic of an individual; it's applicable >to humanity as a whole) that precludes it from realizing its humanity. In >this sense, collective practices turn around and act back upon humanity, >preventing it from realizing its potential. Thus, there's an inherent >realism here in that humanity's possibilities and the defining >characteristics of humanity qua humanity resonate with similar CR terms (CR >rescuing the possible from the actual and finding necessity by virtue of the >nature of things). > >I don't feel Marx himself successfully extricated the whole problematic of >alienation and species being from its (speculative? idealist?) origins, but >I always felt this particular reading of these concepts provided at least a >start on how that might be done. Yes. Dick --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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