Pyotr Kondrashov

The article deals with the destruction of the widespread myth about Karl Marx as a “Promethean thinker”. Under Prometheism/Prometheanism is the point of view according to which nature is considered as a quantitatively “inexhaustible storehouse”, which must be known and conquered on the basis of scientific and technical knowledge in order to be used to meet constantly growing human needs through continuous growth of production and, accordingly, a permanent increase in the degree of aggressive exploitation of nature while completely ignoring the consequences of this exploitation both for the environment and for human society itself. Since the myth of the “prometheanism” of Marx, which is very tenacious to this day, was previously dispelled in the field of political economy, sociology, ecology, political science, then in the proposed study the author focused only on some of the philosophical aspects of the problem. In the first part of the article it is shown that Marx is mistakenly criticized by many thinkers for anti-environmentalism; in the second, relying on the texts of Marx himself, it is proved that these fragments torn from the general context of his philosophy are mostly false, because Marx, often praising technological progress, nevertheless, was not a Promethean, as he subjected the social and environmental consequences of the capitalist application of technology and science to radical scientific criticism; Finally, in the third part, through the reconstruction of Marx’s philosophical-anthropological and socio-philosophical ideas, Marx’s true attitude to environmental issues is shown. The author’s arguments are as follows. According to Marx, the ontological basis for the existence of any human society is social metabolism, i.e. the exchange of substances between man and nature through transformative activity, during the deployment of which all the “worlds” in which man exists are drawn into metabolic exchange. Each socio-historical stage of development has its own specific type of metabolism, i.e. its own special form of ecological interaction between all “worlds”. Based on this method, Marx shows that metabolic rifts, i.e. disturbances in the processes of normal, balanced flow of social metabolism in the totality of all these “worlds” are most characteristic of capitalism due to its structural Promethean intentions. And in this sense, Marx’s philosophical ecology not only fully corresponds to the modern level of understanding of ecological/environmental problems, but also offers a holistic methodology not only for “explaining” these problems, but also for their “practical solution”.

The article is based on a detailed textual analysis is the attempt of historicalphilosophical explication of the formation of Karl Marx’s teaching about the species essence of human beings. In modern studies of Marx’s philosophy, the view according to which Marx understands the nature of human beings only as «the ensemble of social relations» dominates. However, as the author shows, there are several definitions in Marx’s texts. Thus, the species essence of human beings is defined as: true social relation of people, genuine community ; praxis ; creative activity ; ensemble of social relations. Constitutive moments of the human essence arising from the praxis as a basic characteristic of a person are: objectivity, intersubjectivity, sociality, historicity and existential indifference. It is shown that according to Marx the species essence of human being is not given by nature but arises in the course of historical development. Moreover, in the «Capital» Marx distinguishes between an invariant essence and the historical modifications of praxis. So, the history is understood as a «continuous change of human nature». For the first time in the history of philosophy, the historical sequence of the development of Marx’s ideas about the species essence of man is explicated. Despite the radical changes in Marx's philosophical preferences, his ideas about the species essence of human beings however has been changing not so much as series of «jumps», but rather as a dialectical movement towards a deeper, comprehensive development and enrichment of the original humanistic intuitions, which eventually led him to the formulation of the original concept of human being.

The article discusses the key ideas of professor K.N. Lyubutin – one of the founders of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Ural University, the Chair of History of Philosophy at this University, and the founder, inspirer and leader of the Ural School of Marxist Studies. The author focused on Konstantin Lyubutin’s ideas, which at time were innovative in the framework of Soviet Marxism-Leninism, and the postSoviet history of Russian philosophy ; on the ideas, which were not presented in a systematic and complete form in printed works, but rather were expressed fragmentary in the context of researching other problems, in numerous lecture courses, and in interviews and personal conversations. All K.N. Lyubutin’s ideas are relevant today, especially in the conditions of renaissance of Marx at the beginning of the XXI century.