Instead of abstract “man,” Marx argued that there is an ensemble of societal relations that underpins social formations of various kinds as well as a variety of forms of individuality. In this second volume of Thinking with Marx Today, Lucien Sève presents what he calls Marx’s revolution in anthropology. He deftly analyzes the philosophical preconditions and the fundamental concepts of this anthropology. This is followed by critiques of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and contemporary primatology coupled with borrowings from Freud, Politzer, Vygotsky, and contemporary literature on biography. Sève’s aim is nothing less than to outline a science of human individuality.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction Part 1 A Revolution in Anthropology 1 An Introductory Survey  1 In Search of Biography  2 Sartre: The Unpleasant Surprises of the ‘Original Project’  3 Politzer: Towards a Psychology ‘Embedded in the Economy’  4 Marx: An Entirely New Approach to the Psychological  5 Historical Essence of the General Figures of Individuality  6 Drive and Desire: The Social Genesis of the Psychological  7 Capacities: The Key Idea of Objectivation  8 Time and Biography  9 Historical Time and the ‘Human Condition’ 2 Philosophical Approaches  1 No Anthropological Revolution without a Philosophical Revolution  2 The Theses on Feuerbach: Goodbye to ‘Man’  3 The Traps of ‘Hominism’  4 The Use and Misuse of Abstraction  5 What the Sixth Thesis on Feuerbach Says When Read without Misinterpretation  6 The Key Question of the Essence  7 On the Essentiality of ‘Social Relations’  8 On Praxis  9 Philosophy of Praxis or Materialism of Tätigkeit 3 Marxian Anthropology and Its Fundamental Concepts  1 The Characteristics of Humanity  2 The Processes of Hominisation  3 Human Activity and Its Mediators  4 ‘The Ensemble of Social Relations’ as Objective Humanity  5 Mind and Thing-Form  6 The Human World and Its Corollary: Individual Hominisation  7 Aneignung and Its Effects  8 Historical Forms of Individuality  9 Figures of Individuality and Forms of Individuation  10 Althusser and the ‘Forms of Individuality’  11 Is Theoretical Anthropology a ‘Mirage’? 4 Questions and Additions  1 Is Marx Truly Innovative?  2 A Fundamentally Post-hegelian Conception  3 Points of Agreement and Disagreement Concerning the ‘Human Essence’  4 The Ambiguity of Anti-Essentialism  5 A Puzzling Ignorance  6 And That is Why Your Marxism is Blind  7 A Careless Refutation  8 A Highly Structural Obfuscation  9 Productive Activities and Signifying Activities: Quite Distinct Practices  10 The Idea That ‘Everything Is a Language’ and Its Effects 5 Objections and Responses  1 A Missing Theory of the ‘Superstructures’?  2 On the Meaning of an Objection  3 Naturalism: Substitute for Historical Materialism  4 Under-Estimation of the Natural in ‘Man’?  5 On Some Naturalist Mistakes in Marx  6 Marx and the Idea of ‘Human Nature’  7 On ‘Anthropological Invariants’  8 An Implausible Hypothesis  9 The Illusion of Biological Materialism  10 Does Marx Reduce the Psychological Subject to the Social Individual?  11 A Politically Disturbing Conception?  12 Marx and Human Rights Part 2 An Approach That Is Still Relevant Introduction to Part 2 6 Critique: Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and Primatology  1 Nietzsche and ‘The Death of Man’  2 How Nietzsche Thinks ‘Woman’  3 Feminism Is the Enemy  4 Anthropology Structured by Bad Abstraction  5 The Superman and His Doubles, the Sub-men  6 Is God Truly Dead in Nietzsche?  7 Freud’s Innovation  8 Obsolete Biological Foundation  9 Freudianism Does Not Have the Anthropology It Deserves  10 Freud and Marx  11 How Should We Read Heidegger?  12 An A-critical Critique of Humanism  13 The Worst ‘Oblivion’  14 Anthropoid Apes  15 Erasing the Boundary between Animal and Human  16 The Significance of Erasing the Boundary between Animal and Human 7 The Heuristic Example of Vygotsky’s Work  1 Productive Perspectives for All the Human Sciences  2 The Example of Vygotsky  3 Ape, Tool, and Sign  4 Vygotsky’s Revolution in Anthropology  5 A New Psychology  6 Prophetic Hypotheses on Cerebral Functioning  7 Vygotsky the Educationalist  8 Avant-Garde Views in Defectology  9 Thoughts in the Grip of Prejudice  10 Leontiev’s Contributions  11 Open Research  12 Vygotsky’s Limitations  13 Truly Unlimited Potential 8 A Critical Examination of Man in Marxist Theory and the Psychology of Personality  1 Politzer: Another Critique of Psychology  2 Freudianism between Discovery and Illusion  3 Concrete Psychology: True and False Problems  4 Moments of Research  5 Anticipatory Works  6 The Structure of the Field of the Sciences of ‘Man’  7 Two Paradoxes and Their Solution  8 On the Form of a Science of the Singular  9 What Is Personality?  10 Outline of Content  11 A Very Mixed Reception  12 Towards an Unlimited Debate  13 What Knowledge of Individuality?  14 Three Objections 9 The ‘Return of Biography’?  1 Sartre: Understanding a Life ‘in Interiority’  2 Gustave Flaubert and His ‘Original Project’  3 Strengths and Weaknesses of a Biography ‘In Interiority’  4 Bourdieu: Accounting for a Life Through Its ‘Fields’  5 From the Biographical Illusion to the Biographical Elision  6 Le Goff: How to Write a Historical Biography Today?  7 Daniel Bertaux: Again on ‘Life History’  8 The Social Sciences Deprived of Psychology  9 Marxian Contributions and New Research Prospects 10 A Crucial Task: Think Personality Anew  1 Identification  2 With Freud, beyond Freud  3 With Marx, beyond Marx  4 Genesis of Personality  5 Alienation  6 We Should Study Capital To Think Alienation  7 Alienation and Personality  8 Once Again on the Principles of Use-Time  9 Personality and Biography: What Autonomy?  10 Do We Freely Think What We Think?  11 Intellectual Biography  12 Towards a Critique of the Idea of Sublimation  13 Reversal and Autonomy  14 Rethinking Ideas on Ageing  15 The Life That Dies and the Life That Does Not Die  16 From Personality to the Person  17 Historical Urgency: Saving the Human Planet Bibliography Index