Article source: Journal of Hehai University (PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL SCIENCES EDITION), issue 5, 2017
Abstract: human has dual attributes of nature and society. The extension and externalization of human's social dimension embodies that human beings have always existed in the form of community in history, and the community has become the focus of philosophy because of its close relationship with human beings. From the multi-dimensional discussion of ethics, belief and transcendental rationality, western philosophy has formed the main community thoughts of city-state community, belief community, contract community, transcendental rationality community and love community. The commonness of traditional community thought is to grasp the community in an abstract and intuitive form, and the understanding of the community is introduced into the abstract field. By criticizing the abstract limitations of the traditional community thought, Marx pointed out that social relations are the fundamental link to maintain common life in the way of practice, and the development direction of the community is to move towards the union of free people, so as to open up revolutionary changes on the core issues such as the premise and foundation of the formation of the community, the relationship between internal members, and the development direction.
[Key words] Marx; community thought; practice; abstraction
In the history of western philosophy, philosophers thought about the relationship between individual and individual, individual and group, and produced a variety of community thoughts. Marx's community thought not only absorbs the nourishment of the western traditional community thought, but also criticizes the abstract generality of the traditional community thought, achieving the transcendence of the traditional community thought in the basic way of practice. It is of positive significance to understand and grasp the theoretical gist of Marx's community thought, and to promote the in-depth research and practical application of Marx's community thought by combing the five representative thoughts of the western traditional community and pointing out their theoretical limitations, so as to clarify the transcendental ways of Marx's community thought.
1、 Traditional community thought as transcendent object
As the transcendent object of Marx's community thought, the traditional community thought has a long history in western philosophy. Many schools of philosophy, such as Plato school in ancient Greece, Christian philosophy in the middle ages, transcendental rationalism in modern times and humanistic materialism in Feuerbach, have paid great attention to the problem of community. It is the necessary premise to grasp the essence of Marx's theory of community to systemically sort out the representative thought of western traditional community and its internal logic. Before Marx, there were five representative traditional community thoughts in the history of western philosophy.
The first is the city-state community thought of pursuing "goodness". Limited by the low level of productivity, early human production and communication activities can only be carried out in a limited scope - city-state. Ancient Greek philosophers produced the earliest idea of community in the perspective of exploring the organizational form of city states. Socrates thought that the most perfect form of city-state is based on the Communist system to eliminate the interest disputes between people and keep the individual interests consistent with the overall interests of the city-state. Socrates' idea of the Communist city-state influenced his student Plato. Plato advocated the Communist system of eliminating family and private property, and thought that "the public ownership of women and children" is "the greatest good" [1]. He proposed to build a city-state community ruled by the "king of philosophy", because only philosophers can get rid of the obsession of material desire and focus on the pursuit of knowledge and virtue, so as to educate the city-state people from virtue to goodness. In Aristotle's view, the city-state is the largest community. The existence value of the city-state community lies in guiding all members to pursue "the best". After comparing various kinds of city-state systems, Aristotle thought that aristocratic system was the best form of city-state community. It is the consensus of ancient Greek philosophers that the city-state community should be used as a means to pursue "good". The obvious difference lies in which regime the city-state community should adopt in order to achieve the goal of "good".
The second is the belief community thought of safeguarding the theocracy. The disintegration of the narrow city-state and the establishment of the Roman Empire with larger territory prove that it is difficult to maintain the huge empire rule only by virtue of "goodness". The Roman monarch tried to use religious belief to maintain and consolidate the rule, and the community entered the field of theological argument. In the book the kingdom of God, Augustine, the master of Christian philosophy, divides human beings into two parts: the kingdom of God composed of God believers and the kingdom of human beings composed of people who fight against God, representing the spiritual life and material life of human beings respectively. Augustine believed that the "Kingdom of God" and "the kingdom of man" were fighting endlessly, the result of which was that the former was bound to defeat the latter. The belief community in the Middle Ages demonstrated the legitimacy of God's authority, and its purpose was to recruit more believers to spread the spiritual monopoly of Christianity. In the belief community, the believers of God replace the real individuals and become the main elements of the community. The relationship between people is interpreted as the relationship between people and God. The link of the community changes from the "good" of virtue to a more abstract and mysterious religious belief.
The third is the idea of contractual community based on different forms. During the Renaissance and the enlightenment, human nature submerged in religious belief began to awaken, Christian philosophy gradually declined, and modern philosophy with the banner of "human discovery" stepped onto the stage of history. When the focus of the community changed from the illusory God to the real individual, the idea of contractual community filled the power vacuum of the decline of belief community. Social contract theorists believe that community is a kind of human Union created in the form of signing a contract under the premise of members' recognition and inspiration in order to protect and realize human's basic rights. Hobbes conceived a kind of natural state in which people attack each other and fear of death. In order to overcome the violent attack and fear of death in the natural state, he advocated that the people sign a contract with the monarch and transfer their individual rights to the monarch, and establish a kind of autocratic state community called Leviathan, in which the monarch provides protection for the people. Rousseau denied Hobbes' assumption of the natural state of confrontation and conflict of everyone, opposed the people's transfer of rights to the monarch, and advocated that the people should sign a contract to give rights to a community with moral personality, that is, a contract community based on the people's "general will" and of no small scale. Rousseau's direction is to find the balance between individual freedom and collectivism, which is the "fundamental problem to be solved by social contract" [2]. Although Rousseau pointed out that private ownership is the origin and basis of the inequality between people, he did not advocate the abolition of private ownership, but hoped to use the means of property equalization to stop the excessive concentration of wealth and bridge social cracks. In Montesquieu's view, "law" is another form of contract, and the community embodying the spirit of law is the perfect community, because law is the main means used by the government to maintain the stability and unity of the country and realize the stability and peace of the houses.
The fourth is the transcendental rational community thought of pursuing freedom. From the middle of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th century, the rational wave of the enlightenment and the free tradition of German philosophy met in the community thought. In Kant's view, freedom is man's universal spiritual essence and inner demand, and moral law comes from man's transcendental rationality. If all people act in accordance with moral laws, all people will be free by following their own rationality. The community formed by the subject who obeys the moral law is the perfect community that can realize freedom, which is actually the formation premise and foundation of the community with transcendental rationality. In the relationship between man and man, Kant holds that every rational being should regard himself and others as "purpose". Hegel believes that freedom interpreted from the innate moral rationality can only reflect part of human nature. Hegel designed the development track of ethical concept according to the course of concept itself, took "absolute spirit" as the basis of personal philosophy, and advocated the establishment of an "ethical world that can comprehensively understand and understand all the manifestations of human freedom and rational nature, external objective existence and its practical activities created by moral, political and legal" [3]. Absolute spirit occupies the dominant position of Hegel's philosophy. Families, civil society and states are all born in absolute spirit, which is the product of the pursuit of freedom in the process of localization. How and even whether there is a connection between the members of the community is an irrelevant topic, because absolute spirit has already dominated and set everything, "whether individual exists or not, does not matter to the objective ethics, only the objective ethics is eternal, and is the power to adjust the whole life" [4], and people lose their main position in the community.
The fifth is the humanistic "community of love" thought. Feuerbach exposed the speculative and abstract nature of belief community based on religion and transcendental rational community based on absolute idea, and tried to restore the authority of materialism on the understanding of community. Feuerbach's theory is essentially a theory about human beings. In the understanding of community, Feuerbach follows the understanding paradigm of "individual community" and takes revealing the essence of human beings as the starting point of understanding community. Feuerbach regards human being as a kind of perceptual object existence, and holds that nature is the material premise of human existence, human being is a unique and conscious existence in nature, and natural attributes such as will, reason and emotion are the absolute essence and purpose of human existence. Compared with the traditional idealism that regards man as an isolated existence, it is a remarkable progress to understand the essence of man from the object of man and nature, but Feuerbach didn't realize that the objective perceptual world comes from the practice shaping of man, and when he examined the essence of man, he lost the dimensions of society and history, but only summed up the essence of man as "abstract" in the dimension of nature The natural person of. This one-sided understanding of human nature also influenced Feuerbach's understanding of community. In the relationship between people, Feuerbach did not return to the real society and practical activities, but took love, friendship and emotion as the basic relationship between people. The community formed through this connection is a kind of "community of love": ethical factors such as love, friendship and emotion originated from the nature of human beings are not only the premise and basis of community formation, but also the human beings The link between them.
As a kind of social consciousness, the emergence of community thought is inevitably determined by social existence. The common production of the five Western traditions is based on certain social needs, with distinct era brand and stage characteristics. Although there are different understandings of the community, the traditional community thinking focuses on three issues: the first is the premise and foundation of the formation of the community, the second is the connection between the members of the community, and the third is the design and pursuit of the perfect community. In the exploration and solution of these three basic questions, the traditional community thought not only shows the theoretical wisdom of the philosophers, but also exposes their own theoretical limitations. They provide the theoretical basis, breakthrough entrance and transcendence possibility for Marx's community thought.
2、 Abstract common essence of traditional community thought
The commonness of traditional community thought lies in its abstract and intuitive understanding