ABSTRACT
One of the strands in the debates on Karl Marx concerns his relationship with and possible philosophical debt to G. W. F. Hegel, and the Hegelian theme of recognition, intensively discussed in social and political philosophy. The normative or evaluative principle of concrete freedom clearly applies both in horizontal and vertical relations in that both can realize concrete freedom to various degrees. The chapter describes the idea of an evaluative ontology of the human life-form based on the concepts of recognition and concrete freedom is worth a more serious philosophical scrutiny than quick rejections of anything smacking of 'essentialism' common in philosophy and social theory. Marx's own comments on Hegel in Paris have a clear Feuerbachian tendency—criticizing Hegel for abstract mentalization of human life, and for ignoring its concrete embodiment in nature and in 'the social relationship of "man to man”. Essential in Marx's sketch is the contrast between human life in capitalism and in communism.
