** Reply to note from [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed, 15 Oct 1997 16:22:33 +1000
> I'll take up the last point first, because I think this is the most
> important point. The question is: can one make 'sense' without making a
> claim to 'absolute truth' or 'objective truth'. I do not pretend to have a
> definitive answer to this question. However, I think there is a prima facie
> case for the claim that one can. I think, uptil now whatever I have said
> seems to have made some 'sense', eventhough it is a claim about the
> noexistence of 'truth'. If Descartes could doubt his own existence, why
> couldn't existence of 'objective truth' be doubted? And if nothing makes
> sense without a claim to 'objective truth', then this very doubt about its
> existence must logically become meaningless; and so the whole basis of
> critical thinking would come to an end here. Moreover, if we think that the
> whole idea of 'absolute truth' or 'objective truth' came up in a historical
> context, say in Europe during the period of Enlightenment, then the
> question arises whether Europeans before Enlightenment and people in other
> cultures communicated or not. If they communicated and made 'sense' to each
> other, then obviously the Enlightenment's idea of 'objective truth' cannot
> be the basis for making sense in a non-Enlightenment world. Otherwise one
> will have to make a much stronger claim that the idea of 'objective truth'
> or the criterion of 'objective truth' as the basis of making sense has been
> there since the first humans arrived on this planet. I suspect that this
> strong claim would not hold water if put to the test of its own criterion
> of 'objective truth'. Now, if what I just said made some sense, then what
> criterion did you use to make 'sense' of it? I think coherence and internal
> consistency of an argument is good enough to make 'sense' without any claim
> to 'objective truth'.
Ajit, if "coherence" and "internal consistency" of an argument is "good
enough to make 'sense'" then you are simply adopting an intellectual's
criterion and I'll let Marx have the word on this (with all due apologies
to Jim Devine who doesn't like invoking authority): THESES ON FEUERBACH,
II: "The question of whether objective truth can be attributed to human
thinking is not a question of theory but is a *practical* question. Man
must prove the truth, that is, its reality and power, the this-sideness of
his thinking in practice". Ajit, there is no *practice* in your criterion
in any way whatsoever and is thus idealistic.
> Now, my answer to the question of the BASIS for making the claim that
> 'historical materialism' is an implicit critique of the notion of
> 'objective truth' is that according to 'historical materialism' an event
> can/should be understood in its 'historical' context, where the historical >
>contextualization itself is a theoretical practice based on
> theoretical concepts such as mode of production or social formation etc.
> Now, if you accept that the idea of 'objective truth' as the basis of
> 'making sense' is an historical event, then it loses its 'objectivity',
> in the sense that it cannot stand as a transhistorical standard against
> which everything else must be judged. That's why 'historical materialism'
> is a strategy of radical critique. But it cannot escape it's own
> critique, in the sense that it itself cannot stand as the transhistorical
> basis of judgement, as Lenin tries to do.
I don't need to response to the above nor the first few sentences of your
subsequent paragraph. Historical materialism is "materialistic", not
idealistic as your criterion is. We are not on the same ground of
discussion.
When you later write,
< Althusser's theory neither accepts nor denies the existence of the 'real'
< (which you could call 'objective truth'). He argues that the very act of
< knowing the 'real' necessarily creates an object which is logically not
< the 'real'. Thus 'objective' knowledge is always distanced from the
< 'real'. Once he establishes this theoretical point that the 'objective'
< (i.e. scientific) knowledge cannot capture the 'real', the 'real' loses
< any operative role in the theory."
How do you explain Althusser's statement in LENIN AND PHILOSOPHY, 'Lenin
before Hegel', first paragraph, "Marx's scientific theory did not lead to
a new philisophy (call dialectical materialism), but to a *practice* of
philosophy, to be precise to the practice of philosophy based on a
proletarian class position in philosophy" which in turn represents a
summary of Althusser's 40-page 1968 paper "Lenin and Philosophy"? Note
that a proletarian class position is materialist.
More generally, Althusser evinced much respect for Lenin, including Lenin
of 1908 (the source I cited) earlier.
< The real could either exist or may be fictional we would never know. This
< is much more coherent and internally sound position than Lenin's.
This sounds very idealistic to me, but I don't really want to debate this
sentence.
< Althusser does not have a theory or even a notion of approaching closer
< and closer to the 'real'. He is more interested in distinguishing
< 'scientific knowledge' from 'ideology', where this distinction itself is
< theoretical and is not based on or argued on the basis of some kind of
< 'objective truth'.
That's not my reading of Althusser and is not consistent with Althusser's
respect for Lenin in 'Lenin and Philosophy'.
Paul
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Paul Zarembka, supporting the RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY Web site at
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