Marx repurposed Aristotle’s mere-life distinction as a liberation premise.
Evidence
Of course, with these formulations, Aristotle ontologized an unfree order, one based on slavery, gender, and class domination, and divided humanity between those condemned to mere life and those free to pursue the good life. Arendt was infamously uncritical of Aristotle’s ontology. Marx, however, seized upon Aristotle’s distinction as a premise for liberation: all humans should be emancipated from mere life for the good life. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 475
Categorization
- XREF: This genealogy of the good-life/mere-life distinction connects to the reader’s interest in how secular political theory inherits and repurposes older frameworks. — connects to: Marx’s blind spot on slavery descended directly from Aristotle’s philosophy of slaves