On 2002.05.28 08:05 AM, "Carrol Cox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I can't find the or original post you are responding to. And where does > the Marx quote come from? > > Carrol > > Sabri Oncu wrote: >> >>> reads like Humean instrumentalism to me............. >>> >>> Ian >> >> That should be your expertise so I make no comments about this. >> My only concern is with Marx's writing style. I find him very >> difficult to read. For example, this sentence: >> >>> If, therefore, industry is conceived as the exoteric >>> revelation of man's essential powers, we also gain an >>> understanding of the human essence of nature or the >>> natural essence of man. >> >> What exactly this sentence says, I am not sure. Maybe, partly >> because he wrote the original in German and this is a >> not-so-great translation and partly because to me English is a >> code I am decoding. Nevertheless, it is a difficulty I have to >> live with I suppose. >> >> Best, >> >> Sabri > Sabri MIYACHI TATSUO Psychiatric Department Komaki municipal hosipital 1-20.JOHBUHSHI KOMAKI CITY AICHI PREF. 486-0044 TEL:0568-76-4131 FAX 0568-76-4145 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To understand Marx's term ,beginning with " economic and philosophical manuscript " may be better. In it Marx writes The outstanding achievement of Hegel’s Phänomenologie and of its final outcome, the dialectic of negativity as the moving and generating principle, is thus first that Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a process, conceives objectification as loss of the object, as alienation and as transcendence of this alienation; that he thus grasps the essence of labour and comprehends objective man — true, because real man — as the outcome of man’s own labour. The real, active orientation of man to himself as a species-being, or his manifestation as a real species-being (i.e., as a human being), is only possible if he really brings out all his species-powers — something which in turn is only possible through the cooperative action of all of mankind, only as the result of history — and treats these, — powers as objects: and this, to begin with, is again only possible in the form of estrangement. We shall now demonstrate in detail Hegel’s one-sidedness — and limitations as they are displayed in the final chapter of the Phänomenologie, “Absolute Knowledge” — a chapter which contains the condensed spirit of the Phänomenologie, the relationship of the Phänomenologie to speculative dialectic, and also Hegel’s consciousness concerning both and their relationship to one another. Let us provisionally say just this much in advance: Hegel’s standpoint is that of modern political economy. [47] He grasps labour as the essence of man — as man’s essence which stands the test: he sees only the positive, not the negative side of labour. Labour is man’s coming-to-be for himself within alienation, or as alienated man. The only labour which Hegel knows and recognises is abstractly mental labour. Therefore, that which constitutes the essence of philosophy — the alienation of man who knows himself, or alienated science thinking itself - Hegel grasps as its essence; and in contradistinction to previous philosophy he is therefore able to combine its separate aspects, and to present his philosophy as the philosophy. What the other philosophers did — that they grasped separate phases of nature and of human life as phases of self-consciousness, namely, of human life as phases of self-consciousness, namely, of abstract self-consciousness — is known to Hegel as the doings of philosophy. Hence his science is absolute. Whenever real, corporeal man, man with his feet firmly on the solid ground, man exhaling and inhaling all the forces of nature, posits his real, objective essential powers as alien objects by his externalisation, it is not the act of positing which is the subject in this process: it is the subjectivity of objective essential powers, whose action, therefore, must also be something objective. An objective being acts objectively, and he would not act objectively if the objective did not reside in the very nature of his being. He only creates or posits objects, because he is posited by objects — because at bottom he is nature. In the act of positing, therefore, this objective being does not fall from his state of “pure activity” into a creating of the object; on the contrary, his objective product only confirms his objective activity, his activity as the activity of an objective, natural being. Man is directly a natural being. As a natural being and as a living natural being he is on the one hand endowed with natural powers, vital powers — he is an active natural being. These forces exist in him as tendencies and abilities — as instincts. On the other hand, as a natural, corporeal, sensuous objective being he is a suffering, conditioned and limited creature, like animals and plants. That is to say, the objects of his instincts exist outside him, as objects independent of him; yet these objects are objects that he needs — essential objects, indispensable to the manifestation and confirmation of his essential powers. To say that man is a corporeal, living, real, sensuous, objective being full of natural vigour is to say that he has real, sensuous objects as the object of his being or of his life, or that he can only express his life in real, sensuous objects. To be objective, natural and sensuous, and at the same time to have object, nature and sense outside oneself, or oneself to be object, nature and sense for a third party, is one and the same thing.> Hunger is a natural need; it therefore needs a nature outside itself, an object outside itself, in order to satisfy itself, to be stilled. Hunger is an acknowledged need of my body for an object existing outside it, indispensable to its integration and to the expression of its essential being. The sun is the object of the plant — an indispensable object to it, confirming its life — just as the plant is an object of the sun, being an expression of the life-awakening power of the sun, of the sun’s objective essential power. A being which does not have its nature outside itself is not a natural being, and plays no part in the system of nature. A being which has no object outside itself is not an objective being. A being which is not itself an object for some third being has no being for its object; i.e., it is not objectively related. Its being is not objective. Best regards
