ABSTRACT
Karl Marx's theory of man can be best seen as an attempt to integrate the radical humanism of Fichte and Hegel and the naturalism of Ludwig Feuerbach. A view of man was therefore needed, Marx seems to have thought, and that satisfied two conditions. First, it must combine the valid humanistic insights of Fichte and Hegel and the naturalistic and empirical orientation of Feuerbach. Second, it must combine them not mechanically but dialectically; that is, it must not combine them in the 'insipid' spirit of 'Bourgeois' compromise but a truly dialectical manner. According to Marx, if readers compare man's productive activity with that of the animal readers find that he differs from it in four basic respects, — that his humanity consists in his possession of four basic features or capacities. The four basic features are man is a conscious being; man is a free being; man is a universal being and man is a species-being.
