ABSTRACT
The universality of the human essence expresses itself in the three traits described: in dealing with work people can describe man as a natural-universal being; in discussing man’s social characteristics, man can be qualified as a socio-universal and historical-universal being; lastly when broaching man’s conscience, people characterised man as a universally conscious being. Work, sociality and consciousness can indeed be conceived as necessary and permanent traits of every human individual, but when conceived in this way their meaning loses those philosophical characteristics which Marx took to be their substance. Work, from being free self-activity in which man forms, develops and appropriates his own capacities, becomes under the circumstances of alienation a forced and externally imposed activity resulting in the increasing one-sidedness and deformation of its subject. The issues rose by Darwin, Leakey, Ponce de Leon and Dobshanzky reinforce the central ideas of Marxian philosophical anthropology.
