Abstract

"Marxism and Anthropology" is one of the most detailed philosophically-oriented attempts at explaining Marx's own position on philosophical anthropology, encompassing the organic conditions of human sociality, the humanization of nature and the naturalization of man. In the second decade of the 21st Century, rethinking Marx's intensely historicized conception of human nature has become an important consideration for critical and social theory due to a renewed interest in finding a possible anthropological basis for normatively grounding radical social critique (for example, in the works of Axel Honneth, Charles Taylor or Emmanuel Renault). Gyorgy Markus belongs to the small group of Hungarian theorists associated with Georg Lukacs and usually referred to as the 'Budapest School'. He completed his philosophical training at Lomonosov University in Moscow in 1957. Due to ideological disputes, he was removed from his teaching positions in Hungary in 1973, and fled in 1977 to Australia, where he has since 1978 taught at the University of Sydney. This special reissue of Markus' most influential work adds an introduction by Axel Honneth (Director of the Frankfurt School for Social Research) and Hans Joas (University of Freiburg).