Abstract

Marx's determination of the species-essence (Gattungswesen) provides a consistently critical orientation by inverting Aristotle's commitment to the priority of actuality over potentiality in accounts or definitions of the human essence. This privileging of potentiality in definition renders the human essence historically developmental and makes good on some of Aristotle's own commitments. If, as Aristotle holds, the form of the species has the power or potency to cause the development of a child into a fully formed adult, then its definition ought to privilege potency. Further, if distinctly human capacities are rational capacities for opposites, then no account that begins with one actual side will provide a satisfactory account of human abilities. Marx was aware of Aristotle's position on potentiality and in the 1844 Manuscripts, Grundrisse, and Capital Marx developed the critical dimension of his philosophical anthropology by thinking the human as a constrained set of historically developing potentialities.