Species Being and Alienation in the Early Marx

Species Being and Alienation in the Early Marx
A Master Class in philosophy by Michael Quante (University of Münster)

Description
During the year 1844 Karl Marx developed his early philosophical conception of human being in its most elaborated form. It is based on a particular conception of action (labour), and explicated through Marx's concept of alienation. In the so called "Economic-philosophical Manuscripts" and in the so called "Mill-Excerpt" Marx furthermore elaborates his philosophical anthropology based on the notion of "Species Being". On the one hand, his conception of "species being" is a central cornerstone of his theory of alienation. On the other hand, it also includes the normative presuppositions and implications of what a non-alienated form of human interaction would be. In this Master Class we will analyse Marx's conceptions of alienation and species being by a detailed reading of the central texts.


Program
Monday, August 12, 1-4pm, Morven Brown 310
            Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Collected Works. Volume 3. Moscow 1975, pp. 211-228 (Mill-Excerpt: the normative blueprint)

Tuesday, August 13, 1-4pm, Mathews 210
            Ibid., pp. 270-282 (Economic-philosophical Manuscripts: Alienation)

Wednesday, 1-4pm Morven Brown 310
            Ibid., pp. 293-306 (Economic-philosophical Manuscripts: Species Being)

Students are expected to read in advance the texts to be discussed in the class. You may also want to take a look at: Michael Quante, ‘Recognition as the social grammar of species-being’, in Heikki Ikäheimo & Arto Laitinen, Recognition and Social Ontology, Leiden, Brill, 2011, 239-270.


Teacher
Michael Quante is University Professor in philosophy at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, and currently the President of the German Society for Philosophy (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Philosophie). He is well known for his work on Hegel, German Idealism, philosophy of personhood, bioethics, and related themes. Professor Quante has recently published a new edition of the Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts with an extensive commentary: Michael Quante, Karl Marx: Ökonomisch-Philosophische Manuskripte (Kommentar), Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 2009.


This Master Class is meant for advanced students. If you wish to attend, please notify Heikki Ikäheimo [email protected].