>>> Rakesh Bhandari <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 08/11/99 01:17AM >>>
>Charles wrote: This "effective dissolution of the philosophy of metaphysic
>as stasis" or dialectics had already been accomplished by Hegel, Marx and
>Engels. Darwin wasn't fully conscious of the philosophical aspect.
_____________
But Marx's critique of Hegel was that he recognized change or more
precisely entwicklung only as development, not as a real evolution--that is
the unfolding and dissection of the various component elements
(Gedankenbestimmungen) contained in the Begriff ("notion of the essentials
of a thing").
Development is possible only under the rule of the Begriff
and hence takes place in the sphere of logic. "The metamorphosis," Hegel
wrote, " only occurs to the Begriff as such (i.e. to the notion of
essential as in contrast to the notion of phenomenon), for only its change
is development." Hegel therefore attacked the concept of natural
philosophers that evolution as an objective process in history is the
'external real production' of a higher stage from a lower one. He insisted
on the contrary that "the dialectical Begriff, which leads the way for the
stages is *the inner one itself*." So in his Philosophy of History he saw
the various stages in world history, not as an objective process in sphere
of real history but as a process with the sphere of logic. World history is
to Hegel the progress within man's consciousness of the idea of freedom,
and it is this development of consciousness which determines the four
principal levels achieved by the various peoples: the oriental world, the
Greek, the Roman, and the Germanic world.
Marx used the concept entwicklung however in the sense of an objective
process in the sphere of real history, not development within the sphere of
logic.
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Charles: Yes, or as Marx said in the Preface to the First Edition of _Capital_:
"My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct
opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e., the process of
thinking, which, under the name of "the Idea", he even transforms into an independent
subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external,
phenomental form of "the Idea." With me on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else
than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of
thought."
((((((((((((((
Dismissive of this other sense of entwicklung, Hegel could only conclude:
"Such nebulous...conceptions, and especially...the idea of the rise of more
developed animal organisms from the lower, etc. must be avoided by thinking
analysis."
Long before Darwin Hegel had already discarded all of Darwinism as a
confusion of the notion and external existence!
So Hegel wrote: "Within individuals there can easily be temporal
development, but with the race it is different." The individual has
development, belongs to history; the species, no, the species never moves:
"It is completely senseless to suggest that race evolve little by little in
time; the time difference has absolutely no interest for the thought...Th
eland animals did not evolve..from the water animal..nor did the land
animal take to the sky nor the bird come down to the earth again."
For Hegel, each animal is enclosed within its own rigid pattern: "Every
single animal belongs to a particular and thereby fixed and limited kind.,
beyond whose boundaries it may not trespass."
((((((((((
Charles: Yes ! Very interesting. I didn't know this of Hegel.
However, you said that DARWIN carried out the "effective dissolution of the
philosophy of metaphysic as stasis". Hegel had earlier carriedout the effective
dissolution of the PHILOSOPHY of metaphysic as stasis. Ironically, you are saying that
on biology Hegel was backward relative to his philosophy !
As Marx and Engels put it, the dialectic of "real" change is the rational kernel in
Hegel's idealistic mystfications. Hegel describes "real" change in abstract terms such
as quantity changes into quality, negation of the negation, etc.
(((((((((((((
But Marx's understanding of social evolution as a real process in history
the different stages of which could be discovered from the nature of the
technological instruments and from the social organization of labor in the
use of those instruments allowed him to be one of the first to acknowledge
the epochal nature of Darwin's work in which he uses nature's technology,
i.e. the formation of organs and plants, as 'instruments' to explain the
origin and development of species in real and objective natural history.
On matters of development and change, it is best to see how indebted Marx
was to forgotten political economists such as Jones and Sismondi, rather
than Hegel--as Grossmann from whom I have drawn here pointed out in 1943.
This of course raises the question of how Darwin then confirmed Marx and
Engels' philosophical breakthroughs, pushed them forward and backward
(critical of Darwin's Malthusianism, Marx flirted with terribly simplistic
counter theories of human evolution), and invited their criticism
(developed best by Levins and Lewontin).
But the argument I want to suggest here (Grossmann's) is that both Darwin
and Marx understood evolution in real and objective terms, not simply as an
idealistic dialectic.
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Charles: That Marx understood evolution ( and revolution; quantitative and qualitative
change) in real and objective terms, not simply as an idealistic dialectic , there is
no doubt. This materialist dialectic is what he is famous for along with Engels.
However in the same passage I quoted above, Marx went on to caution those who thought
Marx and Marxism have no connection to Hegel:
"The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a
time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of
"Das Kapital," it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre (Greek
alphabet word) who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in the same way
as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing's time treated Spinoza, i.e., as a "dead
dog." I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here
and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of
expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's
hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of
working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head.
It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel
within the mystical shell."
See also, Engels discussion of Hegel in _Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical
German Philosophy_.
(((((((((((
Practical activity of both labor and 'nature', the
concern with the mundane, the ever changing--all this was recognized by
Marx and Darwin in their respective domains. Hegel consigned the real world
to the invariant and thus never could recognize entwicklung as real and
objective evolution.
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Charles: Yes I see what you are saying , and it reminds me of a connotation of what
"REAL change" which I don't usually use. I usually think of "real change"in
opposition to "circular change". "Circular change" is "the more things change, the
more they stay the same", equilibrated change ( exactly as in economics or
anthropological equilibrium theory, and Stephen Jay Gould's punctuated equilibrium
sense). "Real change" means QUALITATIVELY new development, a revolution, etc. This
concept is in Hegel (philosophically, though you point out he didn't apply it in
biology)
( By the way, Darwin is only "2/3" correct on this. He discusses real change in your
sense of material, and real change in the sense that totally new forms develop out of
old forms, but he doesn't recognize that in the latter gradual change becomes leaping
change. Gould adds the leaps with the punctuations. Gould and associate render Darwin
fully dialectical in the Hegelian sense on this issue)
You are using "real change" to refer to material change as opposed to ideal change or
change in thought. Hegel is wrong on this aspect.
Marx takes the first sense of "real change" in the Hegelian manner. Society does not
remain the same forever with all change circular, as the propaganda of all ruling
classes from slaver owners to capitalists have put out in order to discourage
oppressed and exploited classes from making real, radical change in society.
The second sense of "real change" ,I agree with you, Marx advances, with Engels,
beyond Hegel into MATERIALIST dialectic. This is what he means when he says his
dialectic is the exact opposite of Hegel's ( in the first quote above).
(((((((((((((((
Not surprisingly, Marx criticized Prodhoun in 1846: having accepted Hegel,
he is "incapable of following the real movement of history..The
'evolutions' of which Prodhoun speaks are understood to be evolutions such
as are accomplished within the mystic womb of the Absolute Idea."
((((((((((
Charles: Yes, _The Poverty of Philosophy_. Prodhoun had a cardboard dialectic. But for
Marx, Hegel was not a dead dog even in 1867 when he was "mature".
Comradely,
Charles
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