Yan Yan: Comment On Kosik’s Marxist View of Reality
Release time: 2024-01-25
From Max's viewpoint “philosophers should change the world”, Kosik, the Czech Neo-Marxist theorist, believes that the basic function of dialectics is to “understand and change the reality”. In Kosik’s opinion the reality is not the sum of the facts, but the concrete totality, Only put the facts in the social structure can we grasp the reality, without the facts the reality will become abstract totality. Kosik believes that the reality is closely related to man and praxis which is a process of constantly generating and pointing to certain future possibilities. However, in the capitalist society the world of pseudoconcrete with the apparent autonomy makes individuals fall into the utilitarian praxis, economic factor determinism and reductionism in epistemology. which eventually eds to the system control on human beings and the reversal of the object/subject. To make the modernity survive, it requires not only the dialectics of revolution, but also the complete transformation of the way of life and the transition from the capitalist society to the socialist society. Kosiks view of reality belongs to the humanitarian Marxism, with the tendency of subjectivism, utopia and pessimism, which stems both from the failure to grasp the logic of capital, but also from the failure to understand the diversity of the socialist development path.
Editor: Zhong Yao Wei Xiaoxue
From:Studies on Marxist Theory.2023.No.11.