The relation of Marx’s humanist political economy to ideas of “divinity” and humanity found in Plato and Aristotle

Abstract

In this paper I will argue that Marx’s political economy is “humanist” in a sense that sublates ontological and anthropological concepts found in Plato’s and Aristotle’s conceptions of “divinity” and its relation to the human being. The tension in the relationship between humanity and divinity in the thought of Aristotle and Plato will be explored. Plato identifies the human being with the potential for “divinity,” i.e., with the potential to achieve knowledge of “divine beauty.” Aristotle, in contrast, while associating human beings with “divinity,” denies that the ultimate “good” for humanity is the same as that for “God.” Marx sublates the idea of an objective and knowable “good” which is the same for “gods” as for “man” from Plato, and from Aristotle he sublates the idea of this “good” as “the actual exercise of complete virtue,” including the ideas of “justice” and true “friendship” as essential aspects of this idea (while rejecting Aristotle’s exclusion of women and others from human “nature”). This sublation is found in his conception of truly “good” activity as fully “free” end-in-itself activity actualizing universal ethical, aesthetic and intellectual values. With Marx, therefore, we have a completed humanism, and it is an essential element of his revolutionary political economy. Marx’s revolutionary humanism was influenced by the intellectual climate of his day and his exposure to debates about theology and religion was essential for the development of his critique of political economy and revolutionary social theory.