G'day again,
A quickie before bed ...
>Gidday to you too, my slippery eel!
Fair go! You've been known to daub yourself with the Johnson's Baby Oil,
yourself, Hugh!
>>I hope we focus on the categories S&C make salient,
>
>but fail to tell us just what these might be...
Er, S&C make 'em SALIENT. Stuff like the nature of freedom, the (gulp)
diamat/histomat stoush, the humanism/antihumanism (and what kinda humanism)
set-to, the posited gap between 'What is to be Done' and the aforementioned
list, the spectre of crude physicalism, and contending interpretations of,
say, 'Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right' - leading to the
question that, I submit, sumsumes lots of the above: *exactly* what did Marx
mean when he claimed he turned Hegel upside down?
>You blinked when you tried to pre-empt the practice argument, Rob!
That wasn't a blink - I was just proffering the white piece. Well mannered
chap, me.
>Obviously smelling a weak spot or two in S & C... So I'll double that!
Yeah, it's a short piece which tries desperately to get an awful lot of
self-distancing in. That'd make for a couple of fissures big enough for the
odd imaginative Leninist to slip through. But I'm of the opinion Smith
knows his Hegel (he wrote a lovely book which fellow Progressive Labour
Partier Andy Blunden has on his beaut site), and Lenin was still saying
right up to 1921 that he was having trouble getting his head 'round Hegel,
and wasn't sure how to teach it to the comrades - poignantly honest and, as
S&C note, productive of some late shifting of ground.
>PS And please, Rob, don't make quoting as such an issue, there's a
>good lad! Let's relate to the, how-shall-we-put-it, saliency of any
>quotes given, rather than doing the old "All you can do is quote!" vs
>"Where's your proof, then?" dance again.
Whatever. I honestly just want to see you take on this (and everybody
else's, natch). I reckon you'd find more wrong with it than I would, after
all.
Hope there's something redly indignant here when I crawl out of the cot!
Best to all,
Rob.
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