[Ixa]

Do you believe in species-being?

According to this theory, a theory developed by Feuerbach, what sets us apart from the animals is not our consciousness of ourselves as individuals, but of ourselves as a species. Human beings are species-beings.

But our material life, how we live in the actual world, in capitalist society, where the individual man is separated from the community, conflicts with our species-being.

Karl Marx said in On the Jewish Question:

"The perfected political state is by its nature the species-life of man in opposition to his material life. All the presupppositions of this egoistic life continue to exist ouside the sphere of the state in civil society, but as qualities of civil society. Where the political state has attained its full degree of development man leads a double life on earth, not only in his . . . consciousness, but in reality. He lives in the political community, where he regards himself as a communal being, and in civil society, where he is active as a private individual, regards other men as means, debases himself to a means and becomes a plaything of alien powers. The relationship of the political state to civil society is just as spiritual as the relationship of heaven to earth. The state stands in the same opposition to civil society and overcomes it in the same way as religion overcomes the restrictions of the profane world, i.e. it has to acknowledge it again, reinstate it and allow itself to be dominated by it. Man in his immediate reality, in civil society, is a profane being. Here, where he regards himself and is regarded by others as a real indiidual, he is an illusory phenomenon. In the state, on the other hand, where he is considered to be a species-being, he is the imaginary memner of a fictitious sovereigny, he is divested of his real individual life, and filled with an unreal universality."

Marx later abandoned this sort of thinking, but I tend to agree with it.

[Maxim Litvinov]

Hmm. A good thread and an interesting question.

I think there is a natural inclination in humans towards consciousness on the basis of self-consciousness, kin and species. In evaluating which was strongest, my thought experiment would be being stuck in a lift with a friendly intelligent alien or a stupid fellow human. I think I'd be much more comfortable with the stupid human - even without any fear or misunderstanding of an intelligent alien.

This is my convoluted way of thinking that the acknowledgement of species is stronger than that of our loyalty to 'intelligence'. But obviously the two aren't mutually incompatible.

I ramble. I agree, Ix, that it is to the detriment of many ideologies that they see the individual as the 'unit' of society which should somehow make sense without recourse to understanding society as a functioning whole. We should be, and are, community beings.

Having said all this, I'm sure I've taken your thread off-topic already.

[Garibaldi]

I disagree with both of you completly. Nothing sets us apart from other animals other than our looks and our intellegence. BEcause we can voluntarily set up complex social contracts and choose to accept them or not is the only thing which truly differentiates us from cattle, wolves, dolphins(not so sure about this one), birds, lizards, and other species not part of the hominid, or possibly even the primate with a dolphin appendage, tree.

[Maxim Litvinov]

So, Garibaldi, you think that dolphins also have an awareness of themselves as a species?

I can't see how you can say that it is so clear that our social contracts are 'voluntary', whereas animals have 'involuntary' societies - that sounds a bit wrong to me. Where is the evidence - even circumstantial - that all animal societies are involuntary? Or are you claiming that animals act entirely on instinct and not through any reasoning... in which case, dolphins wouldn't have an awareness of themselves, and hence not species-being... is that not correct?

I would agree that we look and think differently to other animals in many respects though.

[Garibaldi]

So, Garibaldi, you think that dolphins also have an awareness of themselves as a species?

No, but that's not the basis of my statement. They can act intellegently concerning a social contract, and build inter-special social contracts with humans that are of the same quality as the ones humans build with themselves, atleast to all my knowledge.

At anyrate, I included them as possibilities as a safety net; humans can develop complex social contracts with eachother, and that is what makes us special. Dolphins and Primates also have the ability to develop complex social contracts with humans, and that they could possibly be included within the social contract in the future if they could be raised to understand them.

[Wellsy]

I don’t think Marx abandoned the concept but simply didn’t refer to species-being in that he does keep the belief that humans can only exist socially (people don’t arise as individuals but develop within social groups) and that we structure the material natural world to meet our needs and purposes. Through such labor we shape ourselves through our activity and if we are our activity then the freer our doings the more fulfilling and well rounded as a people we become as opposed to repeating the same kind of activity forever.