species-being

is that particular species which is capable of producing beyond our immediate needs for instance, for the sake of beauty.

Marx transforms Feuerbach, making the conception of man as a species-being still more concrete. For Marx 'Productive life . . . is species-life.' It is in activity, in production, that humans show themselves to be species-beings. The somewhat unconvincing reason Marx offers for this is that while animals produce only to satisfy their immediate needs, human beings can produce according to universal standards, free of any immediate need for instance, in accordance with standards of beauty (EPM 82). (Singer 'very short intro to marx : 35)

is that species which is capable of being conscious of their species, (and thus sees itself as a collection of individuals and as possessors of consciousness).

Feuerbach scrubbed out the super-Mind, and rewrote Hegel in less mysterious human terms... but he retained the idea that human beings are in some sense a unity. For Feuerbach the basis of this unity, and the essential difference between humans and animals, is the ability of humans to be conscious of their species. It is because they are conscious of their existence as a species that human beings can see themselves as individuals (that is, as one among others), and it is because humans see themselves as a species that human reason and human powers are unlimited. Human beings partake in perfection which, according to Feuerbach, they mistakenly attribute to God instead of themselves because they are part of a species. (Singer 'very short intro to marx : 35)

is the notion that, because man must maintain a continuing dialogue with nature (of which he is a part) if he is not to die, which is why estranged labor, which estrangers man from nature, also estranges man from himself.

Species-life, both for man and for animals, consists physically in the fact that man, like animals, lives from inorganic nature; and because man is more universal than animals, so too is the area of inorganic nature from which he lives more universal. Just as plants, animals, stones, air, light, etc., theoretically form a part of human consciousness partly as objects of science and partly as objects of art—his spiritual inorganic nature, his spiritual means of life, which he must first prepare before he can enjoy and digest them—so too in practice they form a part of human life and human activity. In a physical sense man lives only from these natural products, whether in the form of nourishment, heating, clothing, shelter, etc. The universality of man manifests itself in practice in that universality which makes the whole of nature his inorganic body, (1) as a direct means of life and (2) as the matter, the object and the tool of his life activity. Nature is man’s inorganic body, that is to say nature in so far as it is not the human body. Man lives from nature, i.e. nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. To say that man’s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature. Estranged labour not only (1) estranges nature from man and (2) estranges man from himself … it also estranges man from his species. It turns his species-life into a means for his individual life.47

is the flawed notion that humans are distinguished from nonhumans by the fact that humans create their own environment. This is flawed because it neglects the case of the termite or the beaver and any kind of “extended phenotype" like the spider’s genome, which includes not only spider legs but also spiders’ webs.

Within a single page, Marx does go on to say that I differ from nonhumans in my ability to change how I participate in symbiosis, which provides the basis for the strong correlationist interpretation that unlike nonhumans, human species-being is the way in which humans create their own environment, an idea so caught in Hegelian antics that it forgets the simple fact of termites or beavers and any kind of “extended phenotype,” the fact that a spider’s genome includes not only spider legs but also spiders’ webs.21

is an outdated definition of the human based on an anthropocentric metaphysics that distinguishes the human architect who acts from the bee that behaves.

In a non-metaphysical, which is to say post-Kantian, sense, we cannot rely on a teleological concept of species-being, a definition of the human based on an anthropocentric metaphysics that distinguishes the human architect who acts from the bee that (and I suspect the neuter would be the preferred pronoun here) behaves. We need to peel away the second page of Marx’s description of species-being in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts from the first page.

is grounded in the idea that we can’t help anthropomorphizing our world. That is, things become realities for us when we bring them into economic relations.

There’s a big difference between saying that we anthropomorphize and that we are anthropocentric. Marx himself argues that we can’t help anthropomorphizing. That’s what species-being means. Things become realities for us when we bring them into economic relations.

is inadequate in that it doesn’t go far enough to consider that as I anthropomorphize this bunch of grapes (this is Marx’s notion of our unique being as a species), the grapes are grape-morphizing my fingers and my mouth, causing me to handle them just so. Everything is in the –morphizing business.

is concerned both with the way the human species consciously creates our objective world out of inorganic nature and with the way we see our place in this world as representing its own essential being.

The practical creation of an objective world, the fashioning of inorganic nature, is proof that man is a conscious species-being, i.e. a being which treats the species as its own essential being or itself as a species-being. It is true that animals also produce. They build nests and dwellings, like the bee, the beaver, the ant, etc. But they produce only their own immediate needs or those of their young; they produce one-sidedly, while man produces universally; they produce only when immediate physical need compels them to do so, while man produces even when he is free from physical need and truly produces only in freedom from such need … It is therefore in his fashioning of the objective that man really proves himself to be a species-being … estranged labour therefore tears away from him his species-life, his true species-objectivity, and transforms his advantage over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him.48

species being, n.All

species being