Marx und vernünftiges Tiersein

Abstract We humans are the rational animal. But how are our rationality and our animality connected? On both Aristotelian and Hegelian views, our rationality and our animality are rightly taken to form a unity. In this paper, however, it is argued that both views remain trapped within a dualism of rationality and animality. Instead, it is argued that Marx had a diagnosis of what lies behind such dualism – an individualistic and theoretical conception of our knowledge of ourselves as a manifold of self-consciously alive individuals – and that Marx shows, then, how the dualism can be avoided. Moreover, it is argued that the critical potential of Marx’s philosophy, compared with the philosophies of Aristotle and Hegel, ultimately resides in his better understanding of our knowledge of ourselves as human beings.