You picked an excellent passage. It would work as a gloss on the Theses on Feuerbach
Carol
On 5/26/2011 12:05 PM, Eubulides wrote:
> -----Original Message----- From: c b
>
>
> Ian spoke for himself, not Marx. I beg to differ that we discard the
> concept of nature or biology in understanding humans. Humans have
> both unique biological features ( bipedalism, high level of sociality
> e.g.) and features shared with other species ( instinct of
> self-preservation).
>
> =================
>
> Well, since we're playing at channeling dead people, I'll post some
> writing from a neglected Marxist who had an interesting proposition or
> two about the issue at hand. My posting of the writing by no means
> constitutes a product endorsement of all the terms brought to bear on
> the issue:
>
>
> What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean
> that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the
> world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist
> sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing.
> He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes
> of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to
> have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he
> conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives
> himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap
> towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of
> himself.
>
> [snip]
>
> Furthermore, although it is impossible to find in each and every man a
> universal essence that can be called human nature, there is
> nevertheless a human universality of condition. It is not by chance
> that the thinkers of today are so much more ready to speak of the
> condition than of the nature of man. By his condition they understand,
> with more or less clarity, all the limitations which a priori define
> man’s fundamental situation in the universe. His historical situations
> are variable: man may be born a slave in a pagan society or may be a
> feudal baron, or a proletarian. But what never vary are the
> necessities of being in the world, of having to labor and to die
> there. These limitations are neither subjective nor objective, or
> rather there is both a subjective and an objective aspect of them.
> Objective, because we meet with them everywhere and they are
> everywhere recognisable: and subjective because they are lived and are
> nothing if man does not live them – if, that is to say, he does not
> freely determine himself and his existence in relation to them. And,
> diverse though man’s purpose may be, at least none of them is wholly
> foreign to me, since every human purpose presents itself as an attempt
> either to surpass these limitations, or to widen them, or else to deny
> or to accommodate oneself to them. Consequently every purpose, however
> individual it may be, is of universal value. Every purpose, even that
> of a Chinese, an Indian or a Negro, can be understood by a European.
> To say it can be understood, means that the European of 1945 may be
> striving out of a certain situation towards the same limitations in
> the same way, and that he may reconceive in himself the purpose of the
> Chinese, of the Indian or the African. In every purpose there is
> universality, in this sense that every purpose is comprehensible to
> every man. Not that this or that purpose defines man for ever, but
> that it may be entertained again and again. There is always some way
> of understanding an idiot, a child, a primitive man or a foreigner if
> one has sufficient information. In this sense we may say that there is
> a human universality, but it is not something given; it is being
> perpetually made. I make this universality in choosing myself; I also
> make it by understanding the purpose of any other man, of whatever
> epoch. This absoluteness of the act of choice does not alter the
> relativity of each epoch.
>
> What is at the very heart and center of existentialism, is the
> absolute character of the free commitment, by which every man realises
> himself in realising a type of humanity – a commitment always
> understandable, to no matter whom in no matter what epoch – and its
> bearing upon the relativity of the cultural pattern which may result
> from such absolute commitment. One must observe equally the relativity
> of Cartesianism and the absolute character of the Cartesian
> commitment. In this sense you may say, if you like, that every one of
> us makes the absolute by breathing, by eating, by sleeping or by
> behaving in any fashion whatsoever. There is no difference between
> free being – being as self-committal, as existence choosing its
> essence – and absolute being. And there is no difference whatever
> between being as an absolute, temporarily localised that is, localised
> in history – and universally intelligible being.
>
> <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm>
>
> ==============
>
> I have no problem at all with humans doing biology to understand
> themselves. I'd assert that as the concepts used in the disciplines of
> biology, ecology, neuroscience, medicine etc. more thoroughly permeate
> human societies, people will no longer bother with futile arguments
> over what is and is not human nature.
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk