“自然人”还是“社会存在物”？——马克思与卢梭平等思想的规范主体预设及其张力

“Natural Man” or “Social Being”?—The Normative Subject Presupposition in Marx’s and Rousseau’s Thought on Equality and Its Tension

摘要: 规范主体预设是平等理论的逻辑地基。卢梭依托启蒙理性建构“抽象自然人”作为平等本源，而马克思立足历史唯物主义确立“现实的社会存在物”的人学范式。本文以现有文献为依托，从异化理论、共同体建构、分配正义、私有制认知、解放道路五大维度，系统考察二者之间的传承与对峙关系。研究发现：马克思吸收了卢梭对文明异化、私有制导致不平等的批判性洞见，却摒弃了自然状态的先验假说与道德政治的改良路径。卢梭囿于抽象自然人预设，困于“批判私有制但保全私有财产”的“卢梭悖论”，仅能在道德政治与契约框架内谋求法权形式上的平等。马克思则以处于具体生产关系中的现实人为立足点，从分工与所有制的内在关联揭示不平等的经济根源，在区分形式平等与实质平等的基础上，经由消灭私有制，以人的全面发展意义上的平等为最终指向。梳理这两种主体预设的理论分野，既能厘清启蒙思想向唯物史观的演进脉络，也为当代分配正义与平等建构问题的讨论提供思想史参照。

Abstract: The normative presupposition of the subject constitutes the logical foundation of any theory of equality. Rousseau, drawing upon Enlightenment rationality, constructs the “abstract natural man” as the normative origin of equality, whereas Marx, grounded in historical materialism, establishes the paradigm of “actual social being” in his philosophical anthropology. Drawing on existing scholarship, this paper systematically examines the relationship of inheritance and opposition between the two thinkers across five dimensions: the theory of alienation, the construction of community, distributive justice, the conception of private property, and the path of emancipation. The study finds that Marx appropriates Rousseau’s critical insights into civilizational alienation and the role of private property in generating inequality, while rejecting the transcendental hypothesis of the state of nature and the path of moral-political reform. Confined by the presupposition of abstract natural man, Rousseau remains ensnared in what may be called the “Rousseauian paradox”—criticizing private property while preserving the institution of private property itself—and can thus only pursue formal juridical equality within the framework of moral politics and the social contract. Marx, by contrast, takes as his starting point the actual human being situated within specific relations of production, revealing the economic roots of inequality through the internal connection between the division of labor and the relations of ownership; and on the basis of distinguishing formal equality from substantive equality, he advances toward the abolition of private property, with the ultimate orientation toward equality in the sense of the full development of human capacities. Tracing the theoretical divergence between these two normative subject presuppositions not only clarifies the trajectory from Enlightenment thought to historical materialism but also provides a reference in the history of political thought for contemporary discussions of distributive justice and the construction of equality.