> But you don't make interpretive arguments. 99% of the time you just string quotations together.
This isn't true.
In the present case, for instance, the text quoted was supporting this interpretive claim:
> Whatever it is and whatever it does, it's not found "occasionally."
>
> Its distinction of "human" from animal and inanimate activity is what distinguishes Marx's "materialism" from the "the crude, material fetishism ... where not only the difference between man and animal disappears but even the difference between a living organism and an inanimate object."
Another text supporting the same interpretive claim is the following:
"In creating a world of objects by his personal activity, in his work upon inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species-being, i.e., as a being that treats the species as his own essential being, or that treats itself as a species-being. Admittedly animals also produce. They build themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young. It produces one-sidedly, whilst man produces universally. It produces only under the dominion of immediate physical need, whilst man produces even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom. An animal produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole of nature. An animal’s product belongs immediately to its physical body, whilst man freely confronts his product. An animal forms only in accordance with the standard and the need of the species to which it belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accordance with the standard of every species, and knows how to apply everywhere the inherent standard to the object. Man therefore also forms objects in accordance with the laws of beauty."
An interpretive claim supported with text is an interpretive argument.
Ted