Jacob Held

Haunting us with such unforgettable stories as The Shining, Shawshank Redemption, Salem s Lot, Carrie, The Green Mile, and Pet Semetary, Stephen King has been an anchor of American horror, science fiction, psychological thrillers, and suspense for over forty years. His characters have brought chills to our spines and challenged our notions of reality while leaving us in awe of the perseverance of the human spirit. As the first book in the new Great Authors and Philosophy series, Stephen King and Philosophy reveals some of the deeper issues raised by King s work. From retribution, freedom, and moral relativity, to death and insanity, the chapters of this book expose how King s stories access the questions and fears that nag each of us in the middle of night."

Although there has been consistent interest in Marx and Marxism there has been little sustained interest in the origins of Marx’s ethical thought and his relation to the German philosophical tradition as a whole. Work has been done linking Marx to Fichte, and a great deal more linking him to Hegel. However, the fundamental concept joining them all is recognition, or interpersonal relations in general. In this regard, none of the German thinkers can be understood withoutfirst grasping their understanding of the human person as one among many. This article begins this process for Marx. Although some literature has been devotedto the explication of Marx’s notion of species-being it is sparse and dated. In this article I proceed to reiterate how important species-being is as the foundationto Marx’s ethical philosophy. However, my main focus is on simply how to understand the concept itself. I, therefore, devote the majority of the article to ananalysis of Marx’s use of the concept in his early work as well as his critique of Ludwig Feuerbach’s use of it. This account provides the basis for understandingMarx’s concept of human essence and is the beginning of a project of rephrasing Marxian ethics around the concept of recognition thus reconnecting him to theGerman philosophical tradition.