Marx and the Human: From Static Anthropology towards a Materialist Post-Humanism

This paper will examine Marx’s early critique of Feuerbach’s concept of human species-being [Gattungswesen], which was central to his critique of religion that Marx followed and moved beyond, insisting that Feuerbach’s concept of the human was too abstract, failing to consider the historical and material conditions that make up humanity’s existence. I trace Marx’s movement from Feuerbach’s static anthropology towards a historically open, relational idea of the human — one that is both shaped by and capable of transforming the social relations that constitute it — and/as a materialist post-humanism that became the “guiding thread” of his subsequent critique of political economy.