“人口”作为统计学变量存在的知识形式往往直接而明确。然而，当问题意识延伸至社会历史领域，探讨“人口”在人类文明进程中的角色和作用时，人口知识生产的挑战便由此出现。矛盾就在于，不对“人”进行抽象，就得不到“人口”的概念；而一旦得到“人口”的概念，探讨“人”的存在本质的可能性却在抽象过程中被抹杀，致使求解“人口”所承载的文明意义成为一项极具挑战的任务。如果不能揭示人口在社会历史发展中的作用，人口知识的意义和地位将始终处于模糊不清的状态。一个可行的解决方案是通过人口哲学把“人”带回来。其中的关键在于，如何把“人”带回来，以及带回什么样的“人”，这直接关系到人口哲学的构建路径及其对人、人口与历史三者关系的阐释方式。将历史唯物主义引入人口领域，以“现实的人”为理论支点，充分展示了马克思的人口思想在探索人类文明命题上一种积极的可能性。可以预见，人口哲学的出场，将为剖析人口问题的复杂性及其与个体的生存境遇和人类文明的内在联系，提供全新的分析视角和理论路径。

人, 人口, 人口哲学, 历史唯物主义, 马克思的人口思想

The knowledge form of “population” as a statistical variable is often direct and explicit. However,when the awareness of issues extends into the socio-historical domain, exploring the role and function of “population” in the progress of human civilization presents challenges in the production of population knowledge. The contradiction lies in that without abstracting “people”, the concept of “population” cannotbe obtained; yet, once the concept of “population” is established, the possibility of exploring the existential essence of “people” is eradicated in the process of abstraction, making it a highly challenging task to uncover the civilizational significance embodied by “population”. If the role of population in the historical development of society cannot be revealed, the significance and status of population knowledge will remain in a state of ambiguity. A feasible solution is to bring “people” back through the philosophy of population. The crux lies in how to bring “people” back and what kind of “people” to bring back, which directly relates to the construction path of population philosophy and its interpretative approach to the relationship among people, population, and history. Introducing historical materialism into the field of population, and using “real individuals” as the theoretical fulcrum can fully demonstrate the positive potential of Marx’s ideas on population in exploring the propositions of human civilization. It is foreseeable that the emergence of population philosophy will provide new analytical perspectives and theoretical paths for dissecting the complexity of population issues and their intrinsic connections with individual survival circumstances and human civilization.

people, population, history, philosophy of population, historical materialism, Marx’s population, thoughts