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Draft only – do not quote without permission.
Critical comments are welcome.
Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Theory of Recognition as a Person
by Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch
Seminar für Philosophie, Technische Universität Braunschweig
HCSaB@t-online.de
Marxian and Hegelian social philosophy are opposed to one another on a fundamental
level. While Marx claims to articulate a theory of liberation from existing social and
political relations, one of the central concerns of Hegelian philosophy is to explain why
these relations have the character of guaranteeing freedom. This opposition might be
sketched out in broad strokes as follows:
Hegel claims that the basic institutional structure of the modern world is rational on the
grounds that this structure is a realization of what Hegel calls the concept. For this
reason, Hegel views the modern world as a place of social freedom. In turn, Hegel
understands social freedom as having different elements, which include something like a
self-identification of citizens with basic state and societal institutions. Therefore, social
freedom realizes a reconciliation of the individual with the social world.
By contrast, Marx understands existing social and political relations as being incorrigible
sources of alienation. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx
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attempts to ground this thesis in a critique of the institution that he finds characteristic of
modern European societies of his time: private property. As is well known, Marx’s
investigation leads him to the conclusion that in societies in which there is private
property, humans are alienated in four respects: namely, from the products of their work,
from their work as activity, from themselves as human beings, and from their fellow
human beings. Against the backdrop of this finding, Marx develops, albeit in abstract
form, the model of a post-capitalist society in which humans are liberated from the
aforementioned types of alienation (and from alienation in general), and in which they
are reconciled with one another. In his critique of private property as well as in his
modeling of a society free from alienation, Marx justifies his position on the grounds of a
specific conception of what he calls the free life activity of human beings.
In view of this fundamental difference, it is no surprise that Marx makes Hegel’s theory
of social freedom an object of scathing critique. On the other hand, what is surprising is
the fact that Marx does not simply discard the precise element of Hegel’s theory of
freedom that in his view should have been most problematic from a normative
standpoint—in fact, he tries to integrate this element in a different form into his own
theory of free human vital activity and of the unalienated society.
The element in question is Hegel’s conception of personal freedom. In Hegel’s view,
personal freedom is one necessary component of social freedom among others. As we
will see, Hegel believes that a praxis of personal freedom includes the recognition of the
individual as a subject that has the right to acquire, use, and dispose of private property.
Hegel’s theory of personal freedom thus contains a legitimation of the very institution
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that in Marx’s view is a source of comprehensive alienation: that is, private property.
Therefore, one would expect that this element of Hegel’s theory of freedom would be
discarded as a dead end.
As I will show in what follows, the conception of free human vital activity that Marx
develops in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 can in fact be
understood as a transformation of Hegel’s theory of personal freedom. In order to arrive
at this understanding, I will first reconstruct the basic characteristics of Hegel’s theory of
personal freedom. I will then show that Marx does not simply discard this theory, but
instead adopts and transforms it within the framework of his own conception of the free
vital activity of human beings. Finally, I will try to answer the question of whether or not
Marx had good reasons for proceeding in this way, and whether or not he succeeds in
developing a social-philosophical standpoint that is satisfactory.
I.
According to Hegel, personal freedom is realized through a social praxis that is given
whenever human individuals understand and affirm themselves and one another as
persons. But when does a human individual understand and affirm him- or herself, or
another human being, as a person? For Hegel, being a person is a relation of the will,
which he characterizes as follows:
[1] The universality of this consciously free will is abstract universality, the self-conscious
but otherwise contentless and simple relation of itself to itself in its individuality, and from
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this point of view the subject is a person. Personality implies that as this person: (i) I am
completely determined on every side (in my inner caprice, impulse, and desire, as well
as by immediate external facts) and so finite, yet (ii) none the less I am simply and solely
self-relation, and therefore in finitude I know myself as something infinite, universal, and
free. (PR, §35)
To this Hegel adds the following Remark:
[2] Personality begins not with the subject's mere general consciousness of himself as
an ego concretely determined in some way or other, but rather with his consciousness of
himself as a completely abstract ego in which every concrete restriction and value is
negated and without validity. (§35, Rem.)
Following Hegel, we might conclude that being a person is a self-relation that has two
salient attributes. For one, an individual that is a person has concrete needs,
inclinations, interests, and so forth, and as a rule this individual also knows that it has
these needs, inclinations, interests, and so forth. On the basis of this attribute, the
individual maintains, as Hegel writes, a relation to itself that is “completely determined
on every side.” At the same time, however—and this is the second salient attribute of
being a person—this individual has, again in Hegel’s words, “a self-consciousness of
itself as a completely abstract Ego in which every concrete restriction and value is
negated and without validity.” What Hegel means is that the individual understands itself
as a being that can willingly distance itself from any of its needs, inclinations and
interests, and that can decide on the basis of reasons which of these needs, inclinations
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and interests it wants to satisfy. Moreover, the individual not only ascribes to itself this
faculty I have just described, but understands the exercise of this faculty as an essential
component of its freedom—as follows from the passage just cited from the Philosophy of
Right. For an individual that is a person, it is therefore important to relate to itself in the
manner I have sketched out. Therefore, being a person is, in Hegel’s understanding, a
relation of the will.
How, then, might we characterize a social praxis in which personal freedom is realized?
Humans who regard and affirm one another as persons share the opinion that each of
them can willingly distances him- or herself from their needs, inclinations and interests,
and can each decide on the basis of reasons which of these needs, inclinations and
interests to actively satisfy. Furthermore, they believe that in order to be free it is
important for them to make such decisions, and finally they regard themselves as being
entitled to do so. Following the terminology of the Philosophy of Right, humans who
encounter one another in this stance are standing in a relation of reciprocal respect as
persons: each of them, Hegel writes, “respects the others as persons.” (§36)
Which institutional arrangements pertain to a praxis of reciprocal respect? In our context,
the following argument is decisive: individuals who respect one another as persons
regard each other as having the right to acquire, use and dispose of property as
individuals. They thus recognize one another as individuals capable of possessing
private property. As the following passages from the Philosophy of Right show:
[3] A person must translate his freedom into an external sphere in order to exist as Idea.
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Personality is the first, still wholly abstract, determination of the absolute and infinite will,
and therefore this sphere distinct from the person, the sphere capable of embodying his
freedom, is likewise determined as what is immediately different and separable from
him. (§41)
[4] Since my will, as the will of a person, and so as a single will, becomes objective to
me in property, property acquires the character of private property ... (§46)
To this Hegel remarks: “my actuality is private property.” And: “Private property, because
[a] person should be individual and Ego, should as such be there.”
The standpoint that we glean here from Hegel can be reconstructed in the form of the
following three theses:
1.
A person “must translate his freedom into an external sphere,” which is to say that
he must realize the willful self-relation that is constitutive for personhood in the
form of a social praxis.
2.
A person can only realize the willful self-relation that is constitutive for
personhood in the form of a social praxis if he establishes a social relation that is
structurally similar to his willful self-relation.
3.
The relation of an individual capable of possessing private property to his
property is a social relation which is structurally similar to the willful self-relation
that is constitutive for personhood.
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From these three theses—as well as the unspoken assumption that the relation of an
individual capable of possessing property to his property is the only social relation that is
structurally similar to the willful self-relation constitutive for persons—Hegel draws the
conclusion that the institution of private property is a necessary component of the
“external sphere” of the freedom of persons. For Hegel, a praxis of reciprocal respect
thus goes along with the recognition of the individual as a subject capable of possessing
private property.
In order to explain Hegel’s argument, it must first be emphasized that the necessity
articulated in Thesis 1 is of a speculative nature. For Hegel, the self-relation that is
constitutive of a person is a specific constellation of the Hegelian concept. This, in turn,
has the teleological tendency to actualize itself and thereby become an “Idea” in the way
Hegel understands it. Therefore, Hegel can claim that “the person must translate his
freedom into an external sphere in order to exist as Idea.”
Furthermore, Hegel believes that a social praxis can only then be “an external sphere” of
personal “freedom” if it is structurally similar to the willful self-relation that is constitutive
of a person. This follows from Hegel’s use of the term “likewise” in an aforementioned
context:
[5] Personality is the first, still wholly abstract, determination of the absolute and infinite
will, and therefore this sphere distinct from the person, the sphere capable of embodying
his freedom, is likewise determined as what is immediately different and separable from
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him.
As we have seen, Hegel believes that as a person, the human takes the standpoint that
he can willfully distance himself from his needs, inclinations and interests as an
“individual” without ceasing to be a person. Therefore these needs, inclinations and
interests are his, on the one hand, while on the other hand they are “immediately
different and separable” from this individual.
Now, in Hegel’s understanding, it is precisely these structural characteristics that point
towards the relation of an individual capable of possessing property to his property.
Such an individual takes the standpoint that he can separate himself from an object that
he possesses as private property, yet without ceasing to be an individual who is capable
of possessing property. Therefore such an object is, on the one hand, his, while on the
other hand it is something that is “immediately different and separable” from this
individual.
Following from these remarks, Hegel concludes that a person’s relation to his needs,
inclinations and interests etc., as well as the relation of an individual capable of
possessing property to the things that he privately possesses, are structurally similar.
And this in turn means for Hegel that the institution of private property is an adequate
social realization of the self-relation that is constitutive of personhood.
II.
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As I remarked in the beginning, Marx believes that the institution of private property
alienates humans not only from the results of their work and from their work as an
activity, but also from themselves as human beings and from their fellow human beings.
For this reason, one would believe that Hegel’s theory of personal freedom is completely
unacceptable for Marx from a normative standpoint. It is therefore astonishing that Marx
not only does not reject this theory outright, but even integrates it in a modified form into
his conception of a free human life activity and of an unalienated human society. I will
now try to explain why this is the case.
Following Marx’s own argument, one can say that free human life activity has two
characteristic elements. In my view, the first of these two elements is nothing other than
the willful self-relation that is constitutive of personal freedom for Hegel. The second
element is a specific form of the social realization of the first element. This position can
be established from a reading of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.
Element 1: In view of the first element of Marx’s theory of freedom, the following
passages are especially illuminating.
[6] Man is a species-being, not only because in practice and in theory he adopts the
species (his own as well as those of other things) as his object, but — and this is only
another way of expressing it — also because he treats himself as the actual, living
species; because he treats himself as a universal and therefore a free being. [Ec-PhilMS XXIV]
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A little further on, Marx continues:
[7] The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It does not distinguish itself from it.
It is its life activity. Man makes his life activity itself the object of his will and of his
consciousness. He has conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he
directly merges. [...] Only because of that is his activity free activity. [Ec-Phil-MS XXIV]
According to these passages, humans are free to the extent that they treat themselves
in a particular manner, namely as “universal beings.” In Marx’s understanding, humans
are universal beings for two reasons: first, they have linguistic and conceptual capacities
that allow them to recognize the essential properties of things and events and to classify
them according to general points of view–in Marx’s words, humans adopt in theory the
species (their own as well as those of other things) as their objects.” Second, they do not
“merge” or become “one” with a specific way of life on the basis of their biological nature,
but have the capacity to willfully distance themselves from their needs, inclinations and
so forth (that is, to “distinguish” themselves), as well as to decide which activities they
wish to carry out or which lifestyles they want to put into practice. Correspondingly,
humans relate “to themselves” as “universal beings” when they are conscious of the
aforementioned capacities and activities and wish to put them in practice. In Marx’s
understanding, this kind of self-relation is a necessary element of human freedom and of
free human life activity. (This follows from the claim cited above that “only because of
that is his activity free activity.”)
If this analysis is correct, then Marx regards the self-relation that Hegel understood as
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constitutive of personhood to be a necessary element of free human life activity. Here
one can wonder how Marx views the conceptual connection that Hegel establishes
between personal freedom and private property. One answer to this question may be
found on the basis of the second element of Marx’s theory of free human life activity to
which I now turn.
Element 2: With regard to this second element the following passages are particularly
relevant:
[8] The universality of man appears in practice precisely in the universality which makes
all nature his inorganic body — both inasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means of life,
and (2) the material, the object, and the instrument of his life activity. [Ec-Phil-MS XXIV]
[9] In creating a world of objects by his practical activity, in his work upon inorganic
nature, man proves himself a conscious species-being [...] [Ec-Phil-MS XXIV]
[10] It is just in his work upon the objective world, therefore, that man really proves
himself to be a species-being. This production is his active species-life. Through this
production, nature appears as his work and his reality. The object of labour is, therefore,
the objectification of man's species-life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in
consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he sees himself
in a world that he has created. [Ec-Phil-MS XXIV]
Here Marx is saying that there is a specific set of activities through which the universality
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of man – which I identified as the first element – “actually” “proves” itself or “appears in
practice.” Even if Marx does not go any further in clarifying his terminology, we are
justified to say that he deems the activities in question as an adequate, “true” realization
of man’s universality. This follows from the repeated use of the expression “to prove,”
which in the philosophical literature of the time was employed in precisely this sense—
for instance, in the chapter on Lordship and Bondage from the Phenomenology of Spirit,
a text Marx famously engages with in the Manuscripts.
If my observation is correct, then it does make a difference for Marx’s conception of free
vital activity whether or not humans carry out such activities through which their
universality is proven. For as we have seen, Marx ties human freedom to the universality
of man. Consequently, humans who do not actively “prove” their universality can at best
be free only to a limited degree.
What emerges from the passages I have cited is that the “work upon” external or
“inorganic” or the “creating a world of objects by [man’s] practical activity” is the activity
through which Marx thinks human universality can adequately realize itself. This activity
thus represents for Marx the second element of free human life activity.
In view of his critique of private property, it is not surprising that Marx would think that an
adequate proof of human universality—by means of working upon external nature—can
only take place in a social context in which there are no institutions of private law or
market economy. (Here I only have the time to point out that this thought derives from
Marx’s theory of the objectification of species-life.) What Marx is arguing against here, at
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least implicitly, is Hegel’s claim that there is a conceptual connection between
personhood and private property. In Marx’s view, private property is not only not a
possible proof of human universality, but also an institution that renders this proof
impossible. Because this is so, free human life activity can be viewed by Marx as the
central activity in a society free from alienation.
III.
Is Marx’s transformation of Hegel’s theory of personal freedom convincing? And is the
concept of free life activity an attractive social-philosophical concept?
Here it might first be said that there are good reasons for Marx to be skeptical about
Hegel’s treatment of the conceptual connection between personhood and private
property. As we have seen, this connection is established in the Philosophy of Right by
an argument that is speculative in the Hegelian sense and relies on the thesis that the
self-relation constitutive of personhood must be socially realized and can only realize
itself in the form of a praxis that is structurally similar to it. Furthermore, since Hegel
does not elaborate a non-speculative argument in this connection, he can at best only
show that the connection he sees between personhood and private property is valid on
the premises presupposed by his “philosophy of spirit.” Yet even if these premises are
adopted, it remains unclear whether Hegel’s argument is truly satisfactory. It is
questionable whether or not the structural similarity posited by Hegel in Thesis 3
(between the self-relation that is constitutive for personhood, on the one hand, and the
relation of an individual capable of possessing property to his property on the other
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hand) really exists. While a person can willfully distance himself from his needs,
inclinations and interests as an “individual,” it appears that an individual capable of
possessing property depends precisely on the agreement with another – and thus the
recognition by that other – in order to be able to distance himself from his property. This
holds at least if one presupposes that distancing oneself from one’s property takes place
in practices of gift and exchange—which is what Hegel does in explicit terms. Finally, it
is important for the present discussion to recall that Hegel silently assumes that the
relation of a private owner to his property is the only social relation that is structurally
similar to the willful self-relation constitutive for a person. In critique of Hegel, it would be
worthwhile to investigate whether or not the self-relation in question is not (also)
realizable in other institutionalized practices. If that were the case, one would be able to
conclude from Hegel’s own starting point that the institution of private property is only
one possible manner in which the willful self-relation that is constitutive for personhood
may be socially realized.
In the writings that we have been discussing, Marx does not engage directly with the
paragraphs of the Philosophy of Right in which Hegel establishes a conceptual
connection between personhood and private property. Nonetheless, we are justified to
believe that Marx must have rejected this connection on the basis of the first of the two
aforementioned reasons. As we have seen, Hegel simply introduces a speculative
argument in this context that relies on premises deriving from his “philosophy of spirit.”
This philosophy, however, is seen as fundamentally problematic by Marx in his
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts:
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[11] Hegel's Encyclopedia, beginning as it does with logic, with pure speculative thought,
and ending with absolute knowledge — with the self-conscious, self-comprehending
philosophic or absolute (i.e., superhuman) abstract mind — is in its entirety nothing but
the display [ausgebreitete Wesen], the self-objectification, of the essence of the
philosophic mind, and the philosophic mind is nothing but the estranged mind of the
world thinking within its self-estrangement — i.e., comprehending itself abstractly. [EcPhil-MS, 3rd MS, XII]
Judging from this passage, Marx could not have found Hegel’s claim of a connection
between the self-relation constitutive for personhood and the institution of private
property to be well-founded. He must have thus believed that it is possible to depart from
Hegel’s analysis of personal self-relation without adopting the claims of the theory of
property presented by Hegel in this context. As we have shown above, there is a
number of good reasons for such a position.
Nonetheless, Marx’s theory of free life activity, with which he transforms Hegel’s
conception of personal freedom, is also not free of weaknesses. As we will see, there
are two problems in particular that are raised by Marx’s position and that cast doubt
upon whether or not this position can be attractive for social philosophy without further
qualification.
Problem 1: Marx does not provide an argument for the theses 1) that human universality
– that is, Element 1 – actually proves itself at all in particular activities; and 2) that these
activities are precisely the ones named in the Manuscripts. Marx takes the correctness
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of these two theses to be self-evident. However, it is easy to see why Marx’s position
requires justification. For if Element 1 of Marx’s theory of freedom consists in fact of
nothing other than the self-conscious, rational decision to carry out or abandon any
activity whatsoever, it would not be obvious why this element only “proves” itself in
particular activities that are selected in the manner demanded by Element 1, and not in
all activities. As we have seen, however, Element 2 boils down to a restriction of the
domain of all “free activities” to a specific set of activities—namely those relevant to the
context of working upon external nature. Consequently, Marx’s claim that the universality
denoted in Element 1 proves itself through the activities specified by Element 2 still
needs further justification. As far as I can tell, Marx never gives this justification in either
the Manuscripts or another writing.
Problem 2: Marx not only leaves open the question of why human universality proves
itself in working upon external nature, he also does not elaborate on why the relation of
the self to itself, which characterizes human universality, is vital in context of societal
work and how it can be institutionally secured. All that we learn from Marx on this topic is
that the proof of human universality can only be adequate if it takes place in a social
space in which there are institutions of neither private law nor market economy. Which
institutions this social space should have, however, is a question that Marx does not
answer in either the Manuscripts or in another place.
Now one could argue that this finding is not problematic in any further sense. Perhaps,
one might say, this is a case of a gap that is easily filled by an extension of Marx’s
theory—namely, by a theory of legally secured possibilities of participation in a collective
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process of will formation, through which people establish how external nature should be
worked upon, which goods should be produced in this way, and so forth. Such a theory,
one might argue, can give precise information on how the relation of the self to itself that
is characteristic of human universality can be institutionalized in the domain of societal
work.
However, there is a problem. Indeed it is doubtful whether the position I have just laid
out (that is, of legally secured possibilities for participation in a collective process of will
formation) can be established at all within the framework of Marxian theory. This doubt is
raised by Marx in a text nearly contemporaneous with the Manuscripts, namely the
treatise on the Jewish Question. In On the Jewish Question, Marx performs a
fundamental critique on political and legal institutions, ultimately suggesting that every
praxis in which individual rights are granted is incompatible with an adequate realization
of free life activity. As Marx writes:
[12] Above all, we note the fact that the so-called rights of man [...] are nothing but the
rights of a member of civil society, i.e., the rights of egoistic man, of man separated from
other men and from the community. [On the Jewish Question]
If we take this critique seriously, then it is not only not possible for the relation of self to
itself characteristic of human universality to be secured, in view of societal work, through
democratically controlled representative organs or through the granting of individual
rights of participation in the production process. In fact, it is not possible to see at all how
an institutional securing of this relation might look like. Marx’s fundamental critique of
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political and legal institutions thus presents a huge problem for our present discussion.
But, one might ask, is institutionalization necessary at all for the willful self-relation
characteristic of human universality? Might one not argue that this self-relation realizes
itself in an unplanned or spontaneous fashion in context of the societal work upon
external nature? Such a claim seems to me naive in view of the size of the activities
through which external nature is worked upon—and naive as a position even if we take
working upon external nature not as a project of the human species, as Marx would
have it, but of national economies.
If these observations are correct, then Marx’s theory of free life activity does not seem to
be fully satisfactory. What this theory lacks is a justification of the thesis that human
universality proves itself solely through societal work upon external nature, as well as a
conception of how the willful self-relation constitutive of human universality might be
institutionalized. Making up for these deficits does not seem possible without giving up
some aspects of Marx’s thinking.