Neither Beast Nor God: Marx, Sartre, and Aristotle on Freedom and Human Nature

As an inherently social being, man’s knowing-through-freedom is possible only from within the confines of the human community. In this article, the dilemma of human na­ture is examined from two modern perspectives, following Marx, who describes man as a material-social being, and Sartre, who describes man as free existence. The article focuses on Marx’s early philosophical writings, wherein he characterizes freedom as a social at­tribute, while Sartre speaks of freedom as the essence of the human being. For Aristotle, however, freedom represents meaningful action within the framework of the social com­munity. The goal of this paper is an attempt to reconcile Marx’s and Sartre’s views by utilizing Aristotle’s philosophy to demonstrate that man is necessarily a social being, and that freedom as such can only be realized within the community.