Marxism and Human Nature

by Sean Sayers

Is there such a thing as human nature? Here Sean Sayers defends the controversial theory that human nature is in fact an historical phenomenon. He gives an ambitious and wide ranging defence of the Marxist and Hegelian historical approach and engages with a wide range of work at the heart of the contemporary debate in social and moral philosophy.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics

216 pages, Hardcover

First published November 5, 1998

About the author

Sean Sayers has written extensively on Hegelian and Marxist philosophy from a Hegelian‑Marxist perspective. He has worked in the areas of social philosophy, ethics, theory of knowledge, metaphysics and logic. He has also written on Freud and psychoanalysis, and is currently working on issues in aesthetics. He studied at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and holds a PhD from the University of Kent. His work has been translated into Chinese, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Korean, and Turkish. He has held visiting appointments in Colorado, Massachusetts, Sydney, Istanbul, Shanghai, Wuhan, and Beijing. He is currently Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Peking University (2016-18).

Reviews

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall this is a really good book that puts the humanism back in Marx's work; something that is completely necessary in contradistinction to supposed Marxists regimes.

The title though is quite misleading. Although the book is supposed to be about Marxism and Human Nature, it's really about a plethora of things, including humanism, production, analytical Marxism, justice, progress, history, values, alienation, etc. Human Nature makes an appearance in all the chapters, but it's only the focal point of two of them.

The book is a re-working of 9 essays Sayer has written over his life, and then placed in order of some continuity between subjects. Unfortunately the essays are only re-worked to a minor degree and thus often completely repetitive and redundant. The same quotes by Hume, Marx, Engels, and Hegel appear over and over again, and the same points are repeated over and over again. Moreover, it's not at all clear to me that one of Sayer's primary theses is vindicated. He is under the impression that Human Nature, according to Marx, is completely fluid. And he quotes the same passage from Marx over and over again (which is bad scholarship, since Marx has about a dozen on human nature). The passage he cites claims that man's "slumbering" nature is developed. Well slumbering, and complete fluidity are not identical. Socrates makes a similar point regarding the slave boy and his mathematical acumen. There's more that needs to be said in refutation to this thesis - and I plan to do so academically - but it's outside the scope of this review.

Nonetheless, this is overall a good book, with lots of insight regarding morality, and values. And as I said above, more philosophy books that vindicate the humanism of Marx are a breath of fresh air, when he's often conflated with the East side of the Berlin wall.

I look forward now to reading his recent book Hegelian themes of Alienation.

[Bram · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weighed and found wanting

In this apologetic and purely theoretical book the author, a self-proclaimed (‘true’) believer in Marxism, defends Marxism as he sees it against a number of attacks and criticisms. To me, however, those attacks do not seem particularly relevant and therefore in need of refutal at all.
The chapters of the book are clearly based on an equal number of separate articles/essays; the book as a whole doesn’t hang together very well and contains an exasperating amount of repetitions.
Furthermore, the author doesn’t seem to be very good at reading his opponents’ writings. His interpretations seem flawed & filled in in advance by his unwavering faith in (his own interpretation of) Marxism.