Abstract
The concept of nature within the philosophical framework of Marxism draws upon a long tradition in philosophy, especially the work of Kant and Hegel. These texts form the basis for critique of the "production paradigm" of the Theses on Feuerbach. The challenge today is to contain the anthropocentric dispositions of the "humanization of nature," without surrendering to reductionism. The distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata, drawn from the philosophical tradition, serves as a hermeneutic device to develop the concept of the naturalization of the human: a call for a paradigm shift from Marxian Ecology to Ecological Marxism as both morally necessary and theoretically plausible.