Note the following post appeared originally on the marxistphilosophy list, that is moderated by Ralph Dumain. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marxistphilosophy/
Jim Farmelant -------------------------------------- Looking at Ralph Dumain's post on Martin Jay and Galvano della Volpe reminded me that I had written something on della Volpe three years ago for Proyect's Marxmail list. I wrote: -------------------------- Recently I picked up a copy of Della Volpe's *Logic as a Positive Science* at a used bookstore. Among the things that I have found noteworthy about him is how sparse the literature on him is in English as compared to other Marxist writers of comparable stature (i.e. Lukacs, the Frankfurters, Sartre or Althusser). From my attempts at doing Web searches on him, it would seem that most commentary on him is still in Italian. What little there is in English seems primarily concerned with his work in esthetics (there does appear to have some interest in him by film scholars and art critics). That raises the question of why this should be the case. Is this simply the result of a parochialism that ignores work done in the Latin countries (in which case why has Gramsci drawn so much attention over the last thirty years)? Or is it perhaps the substance of his message has ben unappealing to anglophone intellectuals. His thesis in *Logic as a Positive Science* was basically that whatever progress has been made in philosophy has come out of struggles against apriorist idealism and della Volpe provides in his book several case studies of such critiques of apriorism including Plato's critique of Parmenides, Aristotle's critique of Plato, Galileo's critique of scholastic science, Kant'scritique of Leibniz's rationalism, and the young Marx's critique of Hegelian idealism. For della Volpe the thrust of all of these critiques of apriorism was a movement towards materialism even though that movement did not really come to fruition until Marx & Engels. Della Volpe was also noteworthy for his anti-Hegelian interpretation of Marxism which put him at odds both with diamat and with much of Western Marxism (i.e. Gramsci, Lukacs, the Frankfurters, Sartre) which have to varying degrees emphasized the Hegelian roots of Marxism. Indeed, della Volpe contended that Hegel in some respects represented a regression from the achievements of Kant so that the young Marx in his critique of Hegel was forced to recover some of the ground that had been lost in the shift from Kantianism to Hegelianism. Apparently, the key to della Volpe's understanding of the philosophical bases of Marxism lied in his treatment of the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction. In della Volpe's view, Aristotle in formulating this law of logic treated it not only as a formalistic principle but also as an ontological principle as well. Here, the analysis of the relations between particulars and universals, between subjects and predicates is of crucial importance. Plato in his critique of Parmenides, showed, that discourse about the world becomes possible once the duality of Being and Not-Being was replaced by the dichotomy of sameness-otherness but Plato (in Della Volpe's view failed to push this to its logical conclusion). In analyzing the relations between species and general, Plato developed his famous theory of forms which was bases on his method of diariesis but this attempted to explain the lower genera in terms of the higher which required that we tacitly presuppose the lower genera so that we can discover what the higher ones are in the first place. Thus Plato claimed that true knowledge transcended sense perception but he still required sense perception to apprehend reality in the first place. As Della Volpe saw it, Aristotle exposed this contradiction within Plato's thinking. Aristotle as an ontological materialist saw that the substance of a species cannot be different from the substance of any member of that species. >From this he concluded that whatever exists is determinate and non-contradictory and that to think is to think of some determinate object. Therefore, in a materialist ontology, subject and predicate will always stand in synthesis in every judgement. The predicate is thus not induced from the subject nor is the subject deduced from the predicate - both rationalism and empiricism were thus in error. At the same time Aristotle failed to push this critique to its logical conclusion because he retained Plato's assumption that true knowledge must be certain and permanent and so necessary and unchangeable. Therefore, he retreated from the nominalist implications of his original insight by dividing the category of substance into first and second substance so that individual entities constituted one kind of substance while the genera and species to which they belong comprise a second substance. In this way Aristotle continued Plato's belief that the universal has ontological primacy over individuals and so the empirical world is subsidiary to a transcendent realm. These notions continued to dominate Western thought into the Renaissance when Galileo challenged the assumptions of scholastic science. Galileo demanded that theories about the natural world had to be empirically testable, that such theories must be subjected to the test of experiment and observation. Furthermore, Galileo outlined the essentials of the logic of modern science by recognizing that experimental verification works not by being able to prove a given hypothesis to be true (which would involve committing the fallacy of affirming the consequent) but rather by the elimination of its rivals as they are disconfirmed or refuted experimentally. Here, Della Volpe advances an understanding of the logic of scientific verification that is not unlike the one that Karl Popper presented in his *Logic of Scientific Discovery*. However, as far as I can tell, Della Volpe did not rely upon Popper in developing his analysis but on such writers as Galileo, Lord Bacon, Claude Bernard, John Dewey, and Friedrich Engels. Whereas, Popper was concerned in *The Logic of Scientific Discovery* was concerned with providing solutions to the demarcation problem (i.e. rules for distinguishing science from non-science) and the induction problem, Della Volpe was concerned mainly with demonstrating that the "moral sciences" follow the same logic as the natural or positive sciences, and with showing that Marx had likewise embraced what Della Volpe called a "moral Galileanism." Della Volpe contended that Marx in such writing as his 1857 introduction and his *Capital* had outlined then applied this moral Galileanism to his work in political economy. He argued that Marx demonstrated that: " . . . there is only one logic, there is only one method, that is of modern science understood and expounded in the materialist sense, which has nothing whatever to do with any attempted positivist or scientist justification of science." Thus for Della Volpe, Marx had demonstrated the unity of science, although this defense of the unity of science was different from the one that the logical positivists later were to give. For Della Volpe the Galilean logic of science (in both the natural and moral sciences) was a dialectical one. And in *Logic as a Positive Science*, Della Volpe outlined his own conception of dialectics or to be more specific materialist dialectics. In this discussion, Della Volpe articulates his rejection of Hegelian dialectics including the laws of dialectics such as the law of the negation of the negation, the law of the unity of opposites and the law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For Della Volpe all such formulations were in reality quite undialectical, "...merely formulas of abstract thought, of a mystified and therefore 'falsely mobile' and undialectical dialectic." Rather, for Della Volpe true dialectical thinking is represented by the process of scientific inquiry in which proposed scientific laws are formulated as hypotheses, which are tested against empirical reality, and then are modified or replaced. The self-correcting nature of science was for Della Volpe, the true embodiment of dialectics, not the abstract speculative metaphysics of Hegel and his disciples. For Della Volpe, in scientific inquiry, induction and deduction are said to form a methodological circle, along with matter & reason, fact (or 'accidental') and hypothesis (or 'necessary'). And these methodological circles constitute the basis for scientific dialectics. In Della Volpe's view scientific dialectics was concerned with the formulation and verification of hypotheses as opposed to hypostases Della Volpe used these foregoing arguments to defend the thesis that Marxism is a science insomuch as to the extent that it relies upon a Galilean methodology, it is exemplifying the same sort of logic as that which underlies the natural sciences. *Capital* is the best exemplification of this moral Galileanism in practice, with Marx exploding the apriorist reasonings of the classical economists which involved reliance upon 'speculative' or 'forced' abstractions which had implied the existence of natural and eternal economic laws. Instead Marx followed a methodology that relied upon determinate abstractions instead. Della Volpe analyzed Marx's methodology as one which followed the pattern of Concrete- Abstract-Concrete (C-A-C), which is the pattern or circle of scientific materialist dialectics (as opposed to Hegelian dialectics which follows the circle of Abstract-Concrete- Abstract). ----------------- Jim Farmelant On Thu, 02 Oct 2003 09:33:15 -0400 Ralph Dumain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I picked Martin Jay's MARXISM AND TOTALITY off the shelf to look up > the > chapter on the surrealists, and got hooked on the book. I never > read it > all the way through, but I could not keep from devouring several > chapters, > but not in order. So far I've read about Gramsci, Benjamin, Adorno, > > Lefebrve, Surrealism, Goldmann, Della Volpe, and Colletti, plus the > intro > to Western Marxism. This leaves Lukacs, Korsch, Bloch, Horkheimer, > Marcuse, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Althusser, Habermas, the prehistory > of > totality, and the challenge of poststructuralism. > > The book is irresistible. Jay always gets to the point, revealing > the > essentials, including the internal tensions and contradictions and > fundamental weaknesses of each thinker. This degree of candid > critique is > very helpful. "Totality" proves, just as Jay says, to be a lens > that > reveals central issues and debates in the purview of Marxism and I > would > say all available philosophies/worldviews. This book is a marvelous > > resource for investigating the positivism-lebensphilosophie polarity > I > always keep harping on. Holism always gravitates toward idealist > mystification, and the rebellion against it may lead to a rejection > of > dialectics or Hegelianism altogether. Sometimes Jay applies the > word > holism too indiscriminately in characterizing some thinkers, Marx > especially. It should also be clear that dialectics (not just in > the case > of Adorno) may be anti-holist as well as holistic. The alternatives > are > there in the book of course, but I'm not certain that Jay makes this > > abstract point. But as I said, the tensions are clearly there to be > seen > and learned from, especially as Jay is no mere cheerleader for > Western Marxism. > > I've always been suspicious of all the fuss over Gramsci. The very > word > "organic" would be enough to make me reach for my gun if I had one. > I get > a very negative feeling about Gramsci from reading this chapter, > confirming > my worst suspicions. I once probed a Gramsci scholar about > Gramsci's view > of intellectuals, with questions about independence, originality, > and the > generation of novel ideas not merely the social organization of the > transmission of existing ideas. I could not get any clear answers, > though > my interlocutor was intrigued by my questions. I got the feeling he > never > thought through those issues before, which would hardly surprise me, > as > I've detected certain problems he has in achieving his own > intellectual > independence. Jay says that Gramsci leaves no room for independent, > > free-floating intellectuals, the only kind of intellectual I > recognize. That is enough to condemn him. Free your inner Stalin. > > I had forgotten all about the other Italians while I often cite the > Polish > Poznan School when I discuss Marxism and scientific method. The > Della > Volpe school, in reaction to Italian idealism, was militantly > scientific, > developing intense suspicion against muddy holistic thinking and > even > rejecting dialectics. I was surprised to learn that Della Volpe was > > enthralled by Gentile early in life and rebelled later, just as > Gramsci was > soaked in Croce. Interesting flipflops. But once Della Volpe > rebelled, he > was fanatical. He even condemned the Frankfurt School as a cabal of > > anti-scientific, mystical irrationalists. This accusation makes my > criticisms look mild by contrast. His condemnation is excessive, > but I > admire his fanaticism. Della Volpe drew an oppositional distinction > > between Hegelian and Marxian dialectics. He also claimed there is > one > scientific method only--that of Galileo--and Marx used it. Gotta > admire > the guy! (The Galileo connection reminded me of the Poznan > School.) Though Della Volpe's politics were uninspiring (as were > Colletti's), his views on logic, science, and aesthetics are > intriguing > (with little intrinsic connection to his politics), and I should > learn more. > > Colletti was even more fanatical. He would brook no challenge to > the > logical law of non-contradiction. He opposed dialectics in every > form, and > when he concluded that Marx's theoretical structure was irredeemably > > dialectical, Colletti rejected Marxism. In his zeal, he was > reckless in > his criticisms of Hegel and others. > > There is a lot to be learned from these examples. > > > ___________ > " .... People yakkity yak a streak and waste your time of day > But Mister Ed will never speak unless he has something to say....." > > > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to > http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ > > > ________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today! ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. 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