Abstract

The concept Gattungswesen, while evidently central to Marx’s early thought, has received surprisingly little detailed philosophical examination. An obstacle to progress when it comes to understanding the concept is a tendency to miss the import of the dimension of universality that Marx says is crucial to the concept. It has often been assumed that Marx must have in mind membership of the human species, where this is considered as one species among others. But an examination of the concept Gattung as it figures in Hegel (in particular in his Philosophy of Nature) and as it passes to Marx through Feuerbach helps to reveal that a generality of a different order is involved. I trace this trajectory, giving special attention to early writings by Feuerbach (characterized by an uncompromising Hegelianism) that have been largely ignored, and show how a full appreciation of the generality of the Gattung can help with seeming puzzles that present themselves in the interpretation of the Marx of the early 1840s.