Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.3, 2014

The Noumenon of Human Life under the Mechanism of “Structure and Choice”——New Explorations in Marxist Theory of the Study of Man

(Abstract)

Chen Binggong

For a long time, structuralism and existentialism have separated “structure” from “choice” and made them opposites, thus getting bogged down in dualism. For the life noumenon to shift from “dualism” to “twofoldness” is the earnest hope of the age. Based on more than twenty years’ research into the life noumenon, the author uses the scientific method of Marxist dialectical thinking to try to reconstruct life ontology in the field of philosophical anthropology. The paper proposes that the life noumenon has an integrated twofoldness in which structure and choice are linked and are mutually determining and transforming in an integrated existence. The structure and choice of the life noumenon have multiple modes of being: synchronic, diachronic, and interactive. Moreover, they have many personal attributes and functions: those of practice, reality, subjectivity and twofoldness. The reconstruction of theory represents the deepening of research into the principles of the noumenon of anthropology; it provides a foundation in the life noumenon for the humanities and social sciences, offers a scientific philosophy of life, provides anthropological self-transcendence with theoretical reference material, and offers a number of preliminary theoretical hints.