Class Synopsis 2/23

Today’s lecture was a continuation of the German philosopher, Marx, and we started by discussing his metaphysics. Marx is against idealism and believes that there is no noumena without the phenomena and what is real is what appears. He believes that the creation of the world or man is a process and that history is production. We must create it.
We then moved on to his views psychology and the study of the soul. Very different to Descartes’ views, Marx thinks that the self is alienated from the world and we are what we make out of our relationships with external materials. He views the human as a producer whose first order of business is to meet our primary needs such as food and shelter. These primary needs will eventually expand into satisfying our wants. Dr. Layne used Plato’s Republic as an example. They had a city of basic needs, but the people of the city eventually wanted more of a luxurious place to live. He sees the human as simultaneously the creator and the creature of the world because we create our history through a process. This being said, Marx does not believe that there is teleology to history or the world because we are constantly creating and history is a “succession of the separate generations.”
We then discussed how labor is something we’re supposed to do as humans, but it now causes more alienation. In today’s world, labor is no longer natural but done for the sake of exchange instead of self- production. For example, a tailor who makes a coat in order to buy food, instead of the for the simple joy of making a coat. He believes that freedom now means “freedom from the means of production.” What he means by this is that we sell our labor for something supposedly of “equal” quality. But if your labor is equal to the product, then why is there profit?
Lastly, we started the discussion of Marx’s views of Bourgeois vs. proletariat, or Capitalist vs. the laborer. The bourgeois uses others as a tool for the production rather than producers themselves and the alienate the proletariat from owning the process of production. Marx predicts that the proletariat will join together to fight against the bourgeois for freedom of the rights of their products.