马克思对“个体主义”的扬弃

Marx's Sublation of the Individualism

西方近代历经文艺复兴、宗教改革、启蒙运动所确立的个体主义,立足于人权的基址张扬了个性自由,这在人类近代史上是很大的进步。但个体主义不是绝对真理,它含有不可避免的历史局限性。正因为如此,个体主义遭到了空想社会主义者的激烈批判。但是,空想社会主义者的批判精神并没有击中资本主义制度的要害;空想社会主义者未能对合理的个体主义与极端的个体主义——利己主义加以客观的、历史的区分,而是将二者混为一谈,加以全盘否定,从而使自己置身于新生的社会文化价值目标的对立面,失去了广泛的社会认同基础。虽然空想社会主义看到了个体主义的局限性,但没有很好地"扬弃"个体主义的合理内核。于是,以空想社会主义为直接理论来源的马克思主义就对个体主义的实质进行了全新的解释,并将个体主义的合理内核加以了全面吸收,提出了"人自由而全面发展"的理论。这一理论既是对个体主义的超越,也是对空想社会主义的超越。

Individualism, originated and developed in the period of the Renaissance, Protestant Reformation movement, and Enlightenment, brought great progress to human civilization in terms of advocates for human rights and personal freedom. However, it also had some historical limitations. Because of this, it has been so far criticized especially by utopianism. But, the critical spirit of utopianism did not reach the in-depth nature of capitalism because they did not see the objective differences between reasonable individualism and extreme individualism （actually, the latter is often seen as equal to egoism）. Instead, they took the two as the same and completely refused to accept any kind of individualism. This led them to stand at the opposite side to their social and cultural values at that time as well as to have no social foundations for recognition of their theory. In other words, utopianism indicated the limitations of individualism but neglected the excellence of individualism as well. Under this circumstance, Marx, whose theory was somehow directly based on utopianism, proposed his own theory on the Human Free and Full Development. Marx＇s theory not only took full advantages of individualism but also greatly enriched it at a higher theoretical level and therefore surpassed the utopianism.