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Marx and Engels’ Critique of Modern Western Love Though, Master thesis, Marxist Philosophy, Yunnan University, Yunnan, Kunming, China 2022. [doi.org/10.27456/d.cnki.gyndu.2022.000438]

  • [Chinese abstract not available] Love is an inescapable issue in the development of human society, and love is not simply a matter of >sexual attraction< the definition of the concept and the true meaning behind it need to be further explored. Marx and Engels affirmed the importance of sex as the biological basis of love from the perspective of human physiology. On this basis, they emphasise that love is a social relationship unique to human society and should be a strong, solid and deep feeling between people of the opposite sex based on mutual admiration and a desire to be with each other for life. Marx and Engels were not crystallised by gender relations in the capitalist era and saw the illusion of ’love first’ created by capitalist private ownership. The aim of this paper is to analyse Marx and Engels’ critique of recent Western ideas on love and to explore the model of love envisaged in the society of the future, which undoubtedly adds to their thinking. At present, there are relatively few studies on Marx’s and Engels’ ideas on love in the academy, so this paper is a critical entry point to explore Marx’s and Engels’ ideas on love.– The first chapter starts from the four dimensions of sex, reason, marriage and religion to clarify the development of modern Western love thought, while laying the foundation for Marx and Engels to carry out their love critique. The analysis of the main types of classical Western love thought in Chapter 1 shows that these views of love do not delve into love as a uniquely human social relationship, and therefore do not properly grasp its essential properties. Marx and Engels found that love has both natural and social properties, and used this as a basis for their fierce critique of Western love thought. Love, as an indispensable social relationship, has been inextricably linked to marriage, politics and art since the dawn of humanity. It is through four aspects that Marx and Engels also critique the modern Western idea of love, thus affirming the role of love in human society. Marx and Engels saw the phenomenon of false love and alienation as a real consequence of capitalist private ownership, and that the purification of love could only be achieved when private ownership disappeared and productivity became highly developed. And the conditions for purification can only be realised in a communist society. Although Marx and Engels’ theoretical elaboration of love did not result in a systematic text, it still had an impact on Marxists in the West. Fromm, Marcuse and Badiou, three Western Marxist scholars, explored the path from love to human emancipation as an inheritance and development of Marx and Engels’ critical thinking on love. Although the two great men were in different times from us, their critique of love in the modern West is very much a modern reference. Capitalist private ownership is a constant danger to the relationship between the sexes today, and it is only when private ownership is extinguished and society is freed from the shackles of economic factors that true love can be achieved. At the same time, Marx and Engels’ critique of the concept of love in capitalist society is a positive guide to the construction of socialist love values in China and deserves our profound reflection. [Translation: www.cnki.net, 2/2014]

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Metadaten
Author:Zhihan Dou
Document Type:Dissertations
Language:Chinese
Year of first Publication:2022
Release Date:2024/04/04
Format:no download and copy possible
IdNo:Dou_Zhihan_2022
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Dissertations / Dissertationen
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Dissertations / Dissertationen
Licence (German):
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