The Dialectical Moments of Marx’s Concept of Matter

Through his critique of the mysticism of Hegel’s philosophy, Marx oriented himself toward its concrete concept of matter; thus it can be said that Marx’s materialist standpoint was extracted from Hegelian idealism, rather than derived from a direct adoption of French materialism or Feuerbach’s materialism. We generally regard modern materialism as one independent source of Marx’s philosophy, and therefore must confront the problem of combining materialism and dialectics. But if we show that Hegel’s philosophy contains the possibility of a latent materialist standpoint, then “materialism” and “idealism” must be understood as two basic factors of dialectics, thereby avoiding the problem of their external combination. This means that what Marx inherited from Hegel’s philosophy, and even from the entire tradition of classical philosophy, was not only dialectics but also the gene of materialism. Whether for Hegel or for Marx, the concept of matter is understood from the mediating activity of the subject, and Marx’s critical work mainly consists in presenting the concept of matter that was wrapped in the mystical shell of Hegel’s philosophy.

马克思通过对黑格尔哲学神秘性的批判，导向了其具体的物质概念，因此可以说马克思的唯物主义立场是从黑格尔唯心主义中剥离出来的，而非源自对法国唯物主义或者费尔巴哈唯物主义的直接采纳。我们一般将近代唯物主义视为马克思哲学的一个独立来源，因此不得不面对唯物主义与辩证法的组合问题，而如果我们表明黑格尔哲学中包含着一种潜在的唯物主义立场的可能性，那么“唯物”与“唯心”就必须被理解为辩证法的两个基本因素，从而避免二者的外在组合难题。这就意味着，马克思从黑格尔哲学甚至整个古典哲学传统中继承的不仅仅是辩证法，而且也包括唯物主义的基因。无论是黑格尔还是马克思，都是从主体的中介活动出发来理解物质概念，而马克思的批判工作主要是将被包裹在黑格尔哲学神秘外壳中的物质概念呈现出来。

If matter is understood from the perspective of mediation, the Marxist concept of matter must logically trace back to Kant’s thing-in-itself. Although Kant claimed that the thing-in-itself is inaccessible to any means of cognition and absolutely unknowable, he nevertheless “determined” the thing-in-itself in a negative way, namely, that the thing-in-itself is a “necessary” postulate of cognitive reason, and therefore a necessary condition for the possibility of knowledge. The German idealists after Kant all regarded the elimination of the thing-in-itself as their fundamental task, striving to dissolve the thing-in-itself into the activity of the subject—in other words, to dissolve the thing-in-itself into various forms of mediation, to explain how matter arises from mediating activity, that is, how its determination as “in-itself” is sublated. If the thing-in-itself represents the immediacy of knowledge, then the idealists sought to make this immediacy comprehensible through mediacy or mediation. The crux of the problem is the productive character of mediating activity, because the problem of dissolving the thing-in-itself into mediating activity is essentially the problem of how the thing-in-itself arises from mediating activity. This is the core logic of German idealism, from Kant’s “I think” necessarily accompanying all its “representations,” that is, all its “objects,” to Fichte’s “the I posits the not-I,” to Hegel’s spirit “determining” the thing-in-itself—all are manifestations of this logic. And although Marx, by determining the concept of matter through social productive labor, oriented himself toward a materialist standpoint, the continuity of his logic with that of German classical philosophy is already obvious.

如果从中介的角度来理解物质，马克思主义的物质观在逻辑上就必须回溯到康德的自在之物。尽管康德声称自在之物是任何认识手段所不能触及的，是绝对不可认知的，但是他终究以否定的方式“规定”了自在之物，即自在之物是认知理性的一个“必然的”设定，因此也可以说是知识之可能性的一个必要条件。而康德之后的德国唯心主义者们都将消灭自在之物视为根本任务，努力让自在之物溶解在主体的活动之中，换言之就是将自在之物溶解到各种形式的中介之中，要说明物质是如何从中介活动中产生出来，也就是说其“自在”之规定是如何被扬弃的。如果自在之物代表知识直接性的一面，那么唯心主义者们就是力图让这种直接性通过间接性或者中介性而得到理解。问题的关键是中介活动的生产性问题，因为让自在之物溶解于中介活动的问题，实质上就是自在之物是如何从中介活动中产生的问题。这是德国唯心主义的核心逻辑，从康德的“我思”必然伴随其所有“表象”，也就是伴随其所有“对象”，到费希特的“自我设定非我”，再到黑格尔的精神“规定”自在之物，莫不是这一逻辑的体现。而马克思通过社会性的生产劳动来规定物质概念，尽管导向了唯物主义的立场，但其与德国古典哲学在逻辑上的连续性已然显而易见。

The terminus of German idealism is Hegel’s absolute idealism, and at this peak it is not difficult to discern the materialist quality it contains. The orientation of Hegel’s philosophical spirit is toward substantive knowledge, not empty knowledge; but in order to master the substantiveness of this knowledge, he had to posit an “absolute” spirit, even though the “absoluteness” of this spirit and the “substantiveness” it craves are mutually external to each other. From this we can distinguish two motives in Hegel’s philosophy: first, the idealist demand for absoluteness, which necessarily leads to the conclusion that the subject’s activity unilaterally produces the object; second, the craving for substantiveness already evident in Hegel’s critique of Jacobi and Fichte, a craving that requires absolute spirit to immerse itself in its concrete experience. Thus the demand for absoluteness requires detachment from experience, while the demand for substantiveness requires close integration with experience; these two opposing motives are strangely combined in Hegel’s dialectics. This contradictory motive is itself an abstract expression of real human activity, or social productive labor. Hegel’s assertion of the unity of subject and substance, his assertion that spirit is living substance, is internally consistent with Marx’s understanding of the human being as a real, sensuous natural being possessing objective essential forces. However, Marx does not regard this unity as a demand yet to be realized, but rather, with the development of the productive forces, as the most salient fact of modern society. Marx in fact reifies the second motive of Hegel’s philosophy, making it the premise of philosophical reflection and even of real human activity. On the basis of this premise, we can understand history as the process of mutual generation between the human being and nature through labor. This process has an “intuitive, irrefutable” proof, that is, we are already situated in the dialectical relation between the human being and nature, subject and object; therefore the reality of nature is already “actual” and “intuitable.”

德国唯心主义的终结点是黑格尔的绝对唯心主义，而在这个巅峰之处，我们已不难看出其包含的唯物主义品质。黑格尔哲学精神的导向是实质性的知识，而非空洞的知识，但为了驾驭这种知识的实质性，便不得不设定一个“绝对”的精神，尽管这个精神的“绝对性”与其所渴望的“实质性”之间是相互外在的。就此我们可以区分出黑格尔哲学的两重动机，首先是唯心主义的绝对性诉求，由此出发必然导向主体性活动单方面产生客体这一结论，其次则是从黑格尔对雅各比和费希特等人的批判中就已体现出来的对实质性的渴望，这一渴望要求绝对精神沉潜在它的具体经验之中。因此绝对性诉求要求脱离经验，而实质性诉求则要求与经验紧密结合，这两个相反的动机奇特地结合在黑格尔的辩证法之中。这种矛盾的动机本身就是现实的人类活动，或者说社会性的生产劳动的一种抽象表达。黑格尔主张主体与实体的统一，主张精神是活的实体，与马克思将人理解为现实的、感性的和拥有对象性的本质力量的自然存在物，是内在一致的。不过，马克思不认为这种统一性是一个有待实现的诉求，而早已随着生产力的发展，成为现代社会的一个最为显著的事实。马克思其实是将黑格尔哲学的第二方面的动机实在化，使之成为哲学思考甚至人类现实活动的前提。基于这一前提，我们就可以将历史理解为人和自然通过劳动而互相生成的过程。这个过程有着“直观的、无可辩驳”的证明，也就是说，我们已然处于人类与自然、主体与客体的辩证关系之中，那么自然界的实在性，已然是“实际的”和“可以直观的”。

From Hegel’s philosophical standpoint, one can continuously transition to Marx’s standpoint, and with this many basic concepts also change. If the transition from spirit’s conscious activity to real human labor is the reification of subjectivity, then the bearer of this subjectivity becomes an unavoidable question. The human being is no longer first of all a determinate being of spirit, but “directly a natural being,” a natural being that manifests its own “life.” The human being and nature mutually generate each other in the process of human productive labor, and labor-power should first of all be understood as a natural force. Labor-power as a natural force means, first, that it is activity based on the human body; physical labor is the substantive extension of the human body into nature by means of tools, while mental labor is the symbolic extension into nature by means of concepts. Through this extension, the human being expands the scope of humanized nature, and nature becomes the human being’s inorganic body. It is evident that the human being is not only a natural being, but a “human” being, a “species” being. Natural things, including the human being’s own nature, do not directly exist according to the human measure; and the generation of the human being and nature means the transformation and creation of the human being itself and of nature. In this process, the “human” capacity manifests itself as a capacity for universality and mediation, which is the key for immediate natural things to overcome their immediacy and particularity. Whether concepts or tools, or machines as advanced forms of tools, all are activities that confer universality upon particular things, stamping them with the imprint of civilization. Human labor always presupposes nature; therefore, contrary to what bourgeois economists and philosophers maintain, labor alone is not the source of all wealth.

从黑格尔的哲学立场可以连续性地过渡到马克思的立场，而随之诸多基本概念也发生了改变，如果说从精神的意识活动到现实的人类劳动是主体性的实在化，那么这种主体性的承载者就成为不可回避的问题。人首先不再是精神的一个定在，而“直接地是自然存在物”，是一个表现着自己“生命”的自然存在物。人与自然在人类的生产劳动过程中相互生成，而劳动力首先应该被理解为一种自然力。劳动力作为自然力，首先意味着其为基于人类身体的活动，体力劳动是人类身体借助于工具向自然的实质性延伸，而脑力劳动则是借助于概念向自然的象征性延伸。通过这种延伸，人类扩展了人化自然的范围，而自然界则成为了人类无机的身体。可见，人不仅仅是自然的存在物，而且是“人的”存在物，是“类的”存在物。自然物，包括人本身的自然并不直接地按照人的尺度存在着，而人和自然的生成也就意味着对人自身和自然的改造和创造。在这个过程中，“人的”能力表现为一种普遍性和中介性的能力，这是直接的自然物克服其直接性和个别性的关键。无论是概念还是工具，抑或是作为工具的高级形态的机器，都是将普遍性赋予个别的事物，给它们打上文明烙印的活动。人类的劳动均以自然为前提，因此并不像资产阶级的经济学家和哲学家所主张的那样，单纯的劳动就是一切财富的源泉。

Universality also contains an intersubjective dimension; in Marx, this concept likewise has a material premise and occurs within material activity—the division of labor. First, the division of labor is a necessary requirement for carrying out the universality of labor. If tools represent the functional extension of the human body, then the division of labor means the functional extension of the human collective; tool-use means that a specific part of the human body establishes a necessary and universal connection with a specific part of nature, while the division of labor means that a specific part of the human collective establishes a universal and necessary connection with a specific part of nature; both are a unity of universalization and specialization. The division of labor can also be understood as the realization of the functionality of tools within the human collective. The division of labor creates specialization, and specialization creates sociality. On one hand, this is the systematization of society itself; on the other hand, it is economic exchange, whose core is commodity exchange. This sociality is essentially a determination of the human essence, and can also be said to be the objectification of “human” life. It satisfies the demand of individual life to escape its immediacy, but it also runs the risk of being alienated into a mere natural thing or quasi-natural thing.

普遍性还包含着主体间性的维度，这一概念在马克思这里也是具有物质性前提，并在物质性活动——分工中发生的。首先，分工是贯彻劳动普遍性的必然要求。如果说工具代表人类身体的功能性延伸，那么分工则意味着人类群体的功能性延伸，工具行为意味着人类身体的特定部分与自然的特定部分建立必然和普遍的联系，而分工则意味着人群的特定部分与自然的特定部分建立普遍和必然的联系，二者都是普遍化和专门化的统一。分工也可以理解为工具的功能性在人类群体中的实现。分工造成专门化，而专门化造就了社会性。这一方面是社会本身的体系化，另一方面就是经济交往，其核心是商品交换。这种社会性实质上是人的本质规定，也可以说是“人的”生活的对象化。它满足了个人生活摆脱其直接性的要求，但又有疏远化为一种单纯自然物或者类自然物的危险。

The presuppositionality of human activity simultaneously implies the finitude of the human subject and the conditionality of subjective freedom. In this subject–object, human–nature relation of objectivity, real individuals act and create history under the presupposition of nature; the free purpose of the historical subject and the necessary laws of nature are organically combined, and “natural history” and “human history” are inseparable and mutually conditioned. In the real life-process, nature generally means that human life has its necessary presuppositions to be satisfied, is constrained by material conditions, and follows the principle of “things”; while history means the free creation of human beings, carried out according to the measure of “man.” For Marx, freedom can be understood from two aspects: one is the appropriation of external nature, the other is the appropriation of one’s own species-essence, one’s own nature. These two aspects mutually promote and simultaneously mutually limit each other. Human beings externalize their essential powers into nature and incorporate humanized nature into the scope of their wealth; this process is at the same time a transformation and appropriation of their own nature. We can understand this process as a process of the self-preservation of the human subject, i.e., humanity must constitute its own identity through external objects, yet this process always harbors the danger of losing the self. Therefore, the core of the human essence is in fact a tension between the relation to objects and the relation to the self, and humanity always overcomes the alienation of the object-relation through critical action in order to maintain its own identity. This is the essential structure of freedom. From the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844* to *The German Ideology* and then to *Capital*, Marx was always soberly aware of the boundary and tension between the two, and at the same time always explored the concrete forms of human mediating activity. Whether alienated labor, the division of labor, or labor that produces exchange value, all are modes of relating to the material world that Marx conceived, and also ways to overcome them and thereby realize freedom.

人类活动的有前提性同时意味着人类主体的有限性，意味着主体自由的有条件性。在主体—客体、人—自然的这种对象性关系中，现实个人在自然的前提之下进行活动并创造历史，历史主体的自由目的与自然的必然规律有机地结合，“自然史”和“人类史”不可分割，彼此相互制约。在现实的生活过程中，自然一般地意味着人们生活有其必须满足的前提，受到物质条件的制约，遵循着“物”的原则；而历史则意味着人的自由的创造，按照“人”的尺度进行创造。在马克思这里，自由可以从两方面来理解，一是对外在自然的占有，一是对自身类本质、自身本性的占有。这两个方面是相互促进，同时也是相互限制的。人类将自身的本质力量外化到自然，将人化自然纳入自身的财富范围，这一过程同时也是对自身本性的一种改造和占有。我们可以将这一过程理解为一种人类主体的自身持存过程，即人类不得不通过外界对象来构成自身的同一性，而这一过程又始终存在丧失自我的危险。因此，人类本质的核心实质上是一种对象关系与自身关系之间的紧张，而人类始终是通过批判性的行动来克服对象关系的异化，来维护自身的同一性。这便是自由的本质结构。从《1844年经济学哲学手稿》到《德意志意识形态》，再到《资本论》，马克思始终清醒地意识到二者的界线和张力，同时也始终在探索人类中介活动的具体形式，无论是异化劳动、分工还是生产交换价值的劳动，都是马克思设想的关涉物质世界的方式，也是将其克服而实现自由的方式。

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