Phenomenology and Marxism according to Landgrebe

Noé Expósito, Agata Bąk

The aim of this paper is to explore the link that Landgrebe establishes betweenphenomenology and Marxism in “The Problem of Teleology and Corporeality inPhenomenology and Marxism” (1977) and unfold its more far-reachingimplications for both traditions. Landgrebe’s short 2 yet dense paper explores thevery basic insight he considers both thinkers to hold in common, namely, thatpraxis is an essential feature of human consciousness and needs to be grounded inphilosophical inquiry. The first step in our research is accordingly to reconstruct Husserlian phenomenology in order to demonstrate the close relationship between corporeality and teleology, between nature and history, and between the human being and the social world. Landgrebe reminds us that “it is not possible even to approach the problem of teleology in an adequate manner if the approach is not based on an analysis of corporeality, i.e. of man as a corporeal being.” What Marxism leaves undone, then, is a transcendental grounding of human embodied praxis, a project that the post-Marxian tradition typically fails to consider.