The Self and the Subject from the Perspective of Historical Materialism

From the inception of idealism, the question of the self and the enigma of the subject, especially the issue of the intrinsic unity between the self and the subject, has always been an unavoidable difficulty. Only Marx, through historical materialism, achieved a historical and logical unification of the self and the subject on the real ground. Idealism opened the path to the unity of the self and the subject: from Descartes, who had already unified the self and the subject within spiritual substance; to Kant, who separated self-consciousness and free will into the two poles of theory and practice, achieving a partial unity of the self and the subject; Fichte, through his philosophy of action, unified the self and the subject within the process of the deduction of the categories of self-consciousness; and Hegel, at the level of the Absolute, determined subjectivity in interaction through the self-externalization and retrieval movement of self-consciousness. Marx's critique of idealism is also a critique of the modernity of capital. Although Hegel's dialectical logic is masterful, the Absolute is not truly real; only through the self-activity of the real subject can the intrinsic unity of the self and the subject be truly realized on the real ground.

从观念论伊始，自我之问和主体之谜，尤其是自我与主体的内在一致问题，总是一个绕不开的难题，唯有马克思通过唯物史观把自我与主体在现实大地上进行了历史与逻辑的统一。观念论开启了自我与主体统一之路：从笛卡尔已经把自我与主体统一在精神实体中；康德则把自我意识与自由意志分立于理论与实践的两端，实现了自我与主体的部分统一；费希特通过行动哲学，把自我与主体统一于自我意识的范畴推演过程中；黑格尔在绝对的高度上以自我意识的自我外化和回收运动确定了交往中的主体性。马克思对观念论的批判也就是对资本现代性的批判。尽管黑格尔的辩证逻辑高屋建瓴，但绝对的东西并不是真正现实的东西，唯有通过实在主体的自我活动才能真正实现现实大地上的自我与主体的内在一致性。

Historical Materialism's Transcendence of the Active Self-Thinking and the Acting Subject

唯物史观对能动的自我思维与行动主体的超越

Descartes, one of the founders of idealism, believed that thought (pensee), which includes the activities of will, intellect, imagination, and sense, is direct cognition, and that ideas (Idee) are the forms of thought, the direct perception of forms. Hence, only ideas can cognize thought. This means that the ideas of direct perception can cognize thought itself, which is direct cognition. The objective reality of an idea lies in the substantiality of the object represented by the idea. Substance is immortal and imperishable. A body can be substance, but the flesh cannot be substance; only the human soul or spirit (esprit) can be substance. The former is substance only formally existing in the object of the idea, while the latter is substance eminently existing in the object of the idea. Eminence means that "I," as a thinking spirit, can activate the imagination to cognize more clearly who "I" am. This thinking is "doubting," a resolution to suspend judgment. The substance in which thinking inheres is the spirit; ideas are formed only when representation reaches the spirit itself. The spirit is the bearer of ideas, and ideas can think about thinking because the spirit, in its self-reflection and introspection, can experience that it is thinking. Self-reflection and introspection are the basis of universal doubt. Descartes thus advanced the traditional outward-tracing cogito into an inward-reflecting, self-negating self-thinking (ego cogito). God, as spiritual substance, can exist independently of the subject and, using the subject as a vehicle, makes itself known through the subject and thinking. From the perspective of historical materialism, Descartes' resolution of the mind-body dualism through spiritual substance, i.e., God, leads to a split between the self and the subject, and to the incompleteness of the self's self-reflection. Descartes could not distinguish which knowledge is empirical, leaving the self's thinking and the acting subject in a parallel, unrelated connection. Only a person working in a workshop can truly feel the difference between thinking and being, between consciousness and life.

观念论鼻祖之一的笛卡尔认为，包括了意志、理智、想象和感官的活动的思维（pensee）是直接的认识，观念（Idee）是思维的形式，是形式的直接知觉，因而只有观念才能认识思维。这也就是说，直接知觉的观念可以认识作为直接认识的思维本身。观念的客观实在性在于用观念表象的对象的实体性。实体是不死不灭的。物体可以是实体，但肉体不能是实体，人的灵魂或称精神（esprit）才能是实体。因为前者只是形式地存在于观念对象中的实体，后者才是卓越地存在于观念对象中的实体。卓越性意味着“我”作为一个在思维的精神，能够发动想象力以更清楚地认识“我”是谁。这个思维就是“在怀疑”，是下定决心不去下判断，思维寓于其中的实体就是精神，表象通达精神本身的时候才形成观念。精神是观念的载体，观念可以对思维进行思维，因为精神在自我深思和反思的时候，才能够体验到它是在思维。自我深思和反思是普遍怀疑的根据，笛卡尔于是把传统的向外追溯的我思，推进为向内反思、自我否定的自我思维（ego cogito）。神作为精神实体可以脱离主体独立存在，并以主体为载体，通过主体和思维使自身被认识。在唯物史观看来，笛卡尔对身心二元的协调问题以精神实体即神来解决，这就导致了自我与主体的割裂，以及自我对自我反思的不彻底性。笛卡尔无法区分哪些知识是经验性的，使自我的思维与行动的主体处于平行的、无联系的联系中。只有在工场中做工的人，才能真实感受到思维和存在、意识和生活之间的区别。

Kant's transcendental idealism first distinguishes a priori knowledge from transcendental knowledge. The former is directly related to objects, while the latter is indirectly related, relating to objects through empirical intuition formed by the reflection of self-consciousness. A priori knowledge can be independent of experience, but transcendental knowledge must be related to experience, though not directly. Transcendental intuition and concepts study the possibility of objects in general, answering the question of how a priori knowledge is possible. This is a kind of legislation, providing formal conditions for a priori knowledge, forming a transcendental logic that includes transcendental analytic and transcendental dialectic. Transcendental logic, together with transcendental aesthetic, constitutes transcendental knowledge and has epistemological implications. The objects of transcendental knowledge can be divided into empirical objects and non-empirical objects. However, within transcendental knowledge, there is the apperceptive consciousness of the subjective self, which is an empirical-intuitive, reflective self-consciousness. Once this apperceptive consciousness of the subjective self is used non-empirically, i.e., transcendentally, it moves towards intellectual intuition. Because of its non-empirical use, the object of intellectual intuition can only be the thing-in-itself. The objects of transcendental intuition and concepts move beyond experience and become transcendent objects that cannot be applied to experience. A transcendent object is a transcendent idea, aimed at the goals of practice and faith; hence, it is an idea of reason, not a category of the understanding. Once a transcendental idea is used transcendentally, it produces transcendental illusion. Thus, it can be seen that the synthetic unity of the self-consciousness of Kant's subject's transcendental apperception cannot function as a court of the understanding in the practical sphere. Practice takes the moral imperative as its norm; this is the autonomy of free will. From the perspective of historical materialism, the subject possessing sensible intuition, empirical intuition, and intellectual intuition simultaneously has both self-consciousness and free will. However, the self-consciousness of Kant's subject's empirical intuition cannot be elevated to the free will of the subject's intellectual intuition; the two are separated at the two poles of theory and practice. In this respect, Kant's subject can encompass the self, but the self cannot encompass the subject. Although the subject and the self possess a certain consistency at the theoretical level, they still cannot achieve intrinsic unity. As Marx pointed out, Kant's distinction between a hundred imagined talers and a hundred real talers merely proves the equal existence of real talers and imagined gods.

康德的先验观念论首先把先天知识与先验知识区分开。前者与对象直接相关，后者则是间接相关，经由自我意识的反思形成经验性的直观来与对象相关。先天的知识可以脱离经验，但先验的知识必须与经验相关，但又不是直接相关。先验的直观与概念，研究的是一般对象的可能性，解答先天知识何以可能的问题。这是一种立法，为先天知识提供形式条件，形成包括先验分析论和先验辩证论内在的先验逻辑。先验逻辑与先验感性论共同构成先验知识，具有认识论意蕴。先验知识的对象可以分为经验性的对象以及非经验性的对象。但是在先验知识中有一经验性直观的、反思性的主体自我的统觉意识即自我意识，一旦主体的自我的统觉意识非经验性地运用也就是先验地运用，就会走向智性直观。由于非经验性地运用，因而智性直观的对象只能是自在之物。先验的直观和概念的对象，走向经验之外并且无法运用于经验的超验的对象。超验对象是一种超验理念，是就实践和信仰的目标而言的，因而是理性的理念，而不是知性的范畴。先验理念一旦被超验运用就会产生先验的幻象。可见，康德的主体的先验统觉的自我意识综合统一，在实践领域中并不能发挥知性法庭的作用。实践以道德律令作为规范，这就是自由意志自律。在唯物史观看来，拥有感性直观、经验性直观和智性直观的主体是同时具有自我意识和自由意志的，但康德的主体经验性直观的自我意识，并不能提升到主体智性直观的自由意志，两者分立于理论与实践两端。从这个方面来说，康德的主体能够涵盖自我，但自我无法涵盖主体，主体与自我尽管在理论层面具有某种一致性，但依然无法实现内在一致性。正如马克思指出的，康德对一百个想象的塔勒和现实的塔勒的区分，无非是证明了现实的塔勒与想象的众神的同等存在。

Historical Materialism's Critique of Illusory Unity

唯物史观对虚幻统一性的批判

When Fichte, through Kant's table of categories, truly deduced the self and the subject from the categories themselves, he made a practical advance in their mutual unification. Fichte's idealism is a kind of idealism of the self. Its starting point is the self, its point of return is also the self, and it constructs a philosophy of action from the self. Fichte believed that all activity proceeds from the self. The self-consciousness of the self positing itself deduces the categories, thus achieving two major breakthroughs beyond Kant. First, it discards Kant's thing-in-itself. Fichte believed there is no thing-in-itself; everything is established by the subject. Whether it is the thing-in-itself or sensory experience, it is all a product of the subject's active self-construction. Second, Fichte merged Kant's two principles of self-consciousness and freedom into one. The highest principle of Kant's epistemology is the synthetic unity of the self-consciousness of transcendental apperception. For Kant, free will belongs to the moral realm, not the cognitive realm. In the cognitive realm, the transcendental idea is an empty place. Free will exists only in the realm of moral practice. Kant's twelve categories of the understanding are fixed within a framework structure, but in Fichte's view, all these categories are deduced from self-consciousness, indicating a fact-act (Tathandlung). The intellectual intuition that Kant strongly opposed was deduced by Fichte through self-consciousness. Self-consciousness produces the not-self, thus encountering an obstacle in intellectual intuition. This means that after the self posits the not-self object, it encounters a contradiction in the object, which can only be resolved by returning to the absolute self, i.e., God, through the self's action. This set of dialectical logic of thesis-antithesis-synthesis uses the self's action to unify Kant's split between theory and practice, i.e., to unify the split between self-consciousness and free will. However, from the perspective of historical materialism, this self, full of activity and self-negation, cannot explain concrete and diverse real problems. Fichte's philosophy of action did not solve problems such as how the subject in interactive relations itself embodies the coordination between the transcendental and the empirical, or how the self and the subject achieve intrinsic unity in concrete diversity.

当费希特通过康德范畴表真正把自我与主体从范畴自身推演出来时，他对两者的相互统一作了实际性的推进。费希特的观念论是一种自我的观念论，出发点是自我，回归点也是自我，并由自我构建起行动哲学。费希特认为一切活动都从自我出发，自我对自我进行设定的自我意识推演出诸范畴，这样就实现了对康德的两大突破。一是抛弃了康德的自在之物。费希特认为没有什么自在之物，一切都是主体建立的。无论是自在之物，还是感觉经验，都是主体能动性的自我建构产物。二是费希特把康德的自我意识和自由两大原则合二为一。康德认识论的最高原理就是先验的统觉的自我意识的综合统一。自由意志在康德那里隶属于道德领域，而不在认识领域范围内。在认识领域里，先验理念是一个空位。只有在道德实践领域，才有自由意志。康德认识论的十二范畴表，只固定在一个框架结构内，但是在费希特看来，所有这些范畴都由自我意识推演出来，表明一种事实行动（Tathandlung）。康德极力反对的智性直观，被费希特通过自我意识推演出来。自我意识产生非我，因而在知性直观上遇到障碍，这意味着自我设定非我对象后在对象上遇到矛盾，通过自我的行动再回归到绝对自我也就是神之中才能解决。这一套正反合的辩证逻辑用自我的行动统一了康德的理论和实践的分裂，也就是统一了自我意识和自由意志的分裂。但是在唯物史观看来，这一充满能动性和自我否定性的自我，无法解释具体多样的现实问题。交互关系中的主体本身如何体现出先验与经验的协调关系，自我与主体如何在具体的、多样性中实现内在一致性等，费希特的行动哲学并没有解决这些问题。

Hegel’s absolute idealism pushes the question of the unity of the self and the subject to the absolute. Hegel believes that action is not only the action of the self, but also the action between multiple concrete selves, an objectifying movement in which opposites embodying essential differences, lacking each other, continuously transform into each other. This must be elevated to the universal social-historical process of intercourse. After throwing the self into objectification and externalization, and then reclaiming the self through self-sublation, it harvests the rich concreteness of reality, embodying the overarching power of self-consciousness and the objectivity of absolute spirit. This process from the inside out and then from the outside in is also the process by which self-consciousness constructs the subject. The self and the subject achieve inner consistency through the objectifying movement of self-consciousness, not through Fichte’s categorical deduction, and resolve the problem of the identity of self-consciousness and free will on the basis of the logical consistency of the transcendental and the empirical. If, like Fichte, action and practice are confined to the scope of a single self, it is impossible to explain the problem of the identity of the many differential experiences of reciprocal relations. How to coordinate the transcendental and the empirical is also an innovation of Hegel’s. The transcendental is regarded by Hegel as pure being, a direct, abstract, indeterminate determination; the empirical is concrete, determinate existence or determinate being [Dasein]. The determination of determinate being is negation, and negation implies mutual distinction and mutual difference; the most essential difference is opposition. Thus opposition liberates determination, i.e., negation, from bad infinity, forming a unified essential negation. Through the movement of inward reflection and inward retrieval, it moves towards essential opposition, i.e., contradiction and its identity. From the perspective of historical materialism, the determinate being of spiritual self-consciousness is the determinate being of free will, which moves towards indeterminate determination and throws itself into real action. Although in the unfolding process of empirical determinate being, self-consciousness grasps the necessity of transcendental free will, achieving the historical and logical inner consistency of the empirical and the transcendental, this inner consistency is capped with the label of the “absolute,” causing the self and the subject, the empirical and the transcendental, self-consciousness and free will, and the problem of their consistency to all degenerate into illusion.

黑格尔的绝对观念论把自我与主体的统一问题推向绝对。黑格尔认为，行动不仅是自我的行动，也是多个具体的自我与自我之间的行动，是体现本质性差异的对立面之间相互缺乏而不断相互转化的对象化运动。这必须上升到普遍交往的社会历史进程，把自我投身对象化、外化运动后，再通过自我扬弃实现自我回收的过程，收获了现实的丰富具体性，体现自我意识的统摄性和绝对精神的客观性。这个由内而外再由外而内的过程，也是自我意识建构起主体的过程。自我与主体通过自我意识的对象化运动，而不是费希特的范畴推演活动，实现了内在一致性，并且是在先验和经验的逻辑一致性基础上解决自我意识和自由意志的同一性问题。如果只是像费希特那样，把行动和实践局限在单个自我的范围内，就无法阐释交互关系诸多差异性经验的同一性问题。先验与经验问题如何协调一致的问题，也是黑格尔的一个创举。先验的东西被黑格尔视为直接的、抽象的无规定的规定之纯有，经验的东西则是具体的、有规定性的实有或定在。定在的规定就是否定，否定又意味着相互区别和相互差异，最本质的差异就是对立，因而对立把规定即否定从坏的无限性从解放出来，形成的是统一的本质性的否定，通过向内反思、向内收回的运动走向本质性的对立即矛盾及其同一性。在唯物史观看来，精神的自我意识的定在，是向着无规定的规定且投身现实行动的自由意志的定在，尽管在经验性的定在着的现实的展开过程中，自我意识抓取到先验的自由意志的必然性，实现了经验与先验走向历史和逻辑的内在一致性，但是这种内在一致性被扣上了一顶“绝对”的帽子，使自我与主体、经验与先验、自我意识和自由意志以及它们的一致性问题都沦为幻觉。

The Thesis of Historical Materialism: The Self-Activity of the Real Subject

唯物史观论：实在主体的自我活动

Historical materialism, in turn, reflects on Hegel’s concept of necessary identity or the premise of reason. Hegel’s logic of objectification, which captures the rich and concrete body and thought in the real world through an inside-out movement, and then returns from the outside in to self-consciousness to determine human subjectivity, is exactly the same logic as that of capital under the premise of capitalist private ownership: capital’s logic of objectification captures rich and concrete profit and surplus value through an inside-out movement, and then returns from the outside in to the self-expanded capital itself to determine the subjectivity of things. Hegel’s inner consistency of the self and the subject is nothing but a false consistency of a supersensible fetishism realized on the basis of the social relations of things. Originally, the essence of man is, in its reality, the ensemble of the social relations. However, the social relations between men, in the inverted relationship of the inner consistency of the subject and the self, turn into the social relations of things.

唯物史观则反思了黑格尔的必然的同一性之观念或理性的前提。黑格尔的对象化逻辑以由内而外的运动在现实世界中捕获了丰富具体的肉体与思维，再由外而内地回归自我意识来确定人的主体性的逻辑，与资本主义私有制前提下，资本的对象化逻辑以由内而外的运动捕获了丰富具体的利润与剩余价值，再由外而内地收回到增殖了的资本自身确定物的主体性的逻辑如出一辙。黑格尔的自我与主体的内在一致，不过是在物与物的社会关系基础上实现的超感官的拜物教的虚假一致性。本来人的本质在其现实性上是一切社会关系的总和，然而人与人之间的社会关系，却在颠倒了的主体与自我的内在一致的关系中走向了物与物的社会关系。

From the perspective of historical materialism, the entire logical chain of capital’s modernity points to fetishism — the directness in historical reality or the slumbering power of free will is capital’s direct, insatiable drive for self-expansion. Through the mediation of the objectifying movement, it produces qualitative determinations and differences. These are the differences of the capitalist private ownership of the means of production as essential differences. The opposition formed is the opposition between the personification of things and the reification of persons. The unity is the unity of the various links and forms of material metabolism on the basis of opposition. The contradiction is the self-opposition of productive forces and relations of production in the process of socialized large-scale production. Identity, then, is the identity of the supersensible world’s new god, capital, which subsumes the circulatory movements of the forms of money, commodities, and production. Hence, Hegel’s identity of the self and the subject can only be a false identity created by the fetishism of the inverted supersensible world.

在唯物史观看来，资本现代性的整个逻辑链条指向的拜物教——历史现实中的直接性或沉睡着的自由的意志力量是资本的直接的、无穷的增殖欲望，通过对象化运动这个中介，产生质的规定和差异，这就是作为本质性差异的生产资料资本主义私人占有的差异，形成的对立是物的人格化和人格的物化的对立，统一是对立基础上的物质变换诸环节和形态的统一；矛盾是社会化大生产过程中的生产力与生产关系的自我对立，同一则是统摄了货币、商品、生产诸形态循环运动的超感官世界资本新神的同一。故黑格尔那自我与主体的同一性，也只能是颠倒的超感官世界的拜物教造成的虚假同一性。

Historical materialism elevates the speculative subject to the real subject, which always lies beyond representation. Through its own objectifying activity, i.e., the self-activity of the real subject, it achieves the historically conditioned inner consistency of the subject and the self. This historical condition implies the reality of the historical field. Under the conditions of capitalist private ownership, it is necessary to break through fetishism through the elevation of productive forces, to break through objectified labor through the elevation of labor capacity, and to move towards the true inner consistency of the self and the subject, towards a human society of free and comprehensive development for every individual.

唯物史观把思辨的主体提升为始终浮现在表象之外的实在主体，通过自身的对象化活动也就是实在主体的自我活动，实现主体与自我有历史条件的内在一致性。这个历史条件意味着历史场域的现实性。在资本主义私有制条件下，要通过生产力的提升来突破拜物教，通过劳动能力的提升突破物化劳动，走向真正的自我与主体的内在一致性，走向每一个人自由全面发展的人类社会。

Online Editor: Paul

网络编辑：保罗