Overview

What is the status of ‘the human’ and ‘humanism’ in Marx’s thought? Does Marx’s critical project rest upon ‘humanist’ commitments? If so, what are these and how do they shift across his writings and inform his critical theory of capitalist society? Marx and the Critique of Humanism addresses these questions through a diverse collection of critical interventions from leading Marxist scholars. These contributions offer both a renewed appraisal and contextualisation of the notion of ‘the human’ across Marx’s oeuvre, as well as a range of critical perspectives on the status of humanism within critical social theory today. The book revaluates Marx’s relation to humanism by examining the intellectual context, influences and interlocutors which shaped his theoretical commitments and critical methodology; the concept of ‘Gattungswesen’ in Marx’s early writings; the ways in which 'the human' informs and is transformed by Marx's critique of political economy; the ecological dimensions of Marx’s thought; the reception of Marx’s humanism by anti-colonial thinkers; and the relation of Marx’s thought to post-structuralist and post-humanist critiques of enlightenment humanism. Moving beyond the simplistic picture of a ‘humanistic’ early Marx and a ‘scientific’ late Marx, this volume shows instead how a sustained concern with the human evolves in tandem with Marx’s broader intellectual development.

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9781350526358

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Reviews

This book revisits Marx's early philosophy to trace and theorize the evolution of his dialectical humanism and its implications for life under capitalism’s subsumption of labor. Marx's interpretation comes out from under the weight of the obfuscating categories imposed by 20th century Marxism, including a reconsideration of his thought as a whole in relation to German idealism. Every page gives us something new to think about. * Amy Wendling, Professor of Philosophy, Creighton University, USA *

Author Information

Andres Saenz de Sicilia is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University London, UK. He is the author of From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Society: Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx (2024) as well as texts in Radical Philosophy, European Journal of Social Theory, Language Sciences, Valenciana, the SAGE Handbook of Marxism & the SAGE Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory.

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