Meaning and Freedom in the Marxist Conception of the Economic

  • Joseph J. Bien
Chapter
Part of the Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy book series (SSPE, volume 6)

Abstract

The introduction by Marxism of consciousness as the development of man’s relations with nature and society presented philosophy with a direct contrast to modern philosophy’s claim of understanding life by consciousness. Rather than the individual ego, the types of production and ownership were understood as the determinants of man’s social thought, and freedom, which had been conceived to be man’s essence (although qualified even here in space and time), was now to be seen in reference to the economic. This new view of freedom is most often seen as an attempt to surmount both Kant’s notion of freedom and Hegel’s metaphysics of freedom.1

Keywords

Economic Base Historieal Materialism Phenomenal World Subjective Individual Assigned Goal 
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References

  1. 1.
    Irving Fetscher, “Marx’s Concretization of the Concept of Freedom,” Socialist Humanism, ed. Erich Fromm, Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1966, pp. 260–72; Herbert Marcuse, Studies in Critical Philosophy, Boston: Beacon Press, 1973, pp. 48–155.Google Scholar
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    On this question see Merleau-Ponty’s final chapter of Phenomenology of Perception, pp. 434–456, and his long footnote on historical materialism, pp. 171–73. I have commented at some length in my articles, “Man and the Economic: Merleau-Ponty’s Interpretation of Historical Materialism,” The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. III, 1, pp. 121–127; and “Merleau-Ponty’s Conception of History,” in The Horizons of the Flesh: Critical Perspectives on the Thought of Merleau-Ponty, ed. Garth Gillan, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973, pp. 127–142.Google Scholar
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 1977

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  • Joseph J. Bien

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