Shane M. writes: >In the depths of WW One Lenin felt called upon to study the Science of Logic. He found it revelatory, and in his "Philosophical Notebooks" he wrote (I quote from memory, perhaps inexactly):
>"It is impossible to understand Das Kapital without a thorough comprehension of Hegel's Science of Logic. That is why, after fifty years, none of the Marxists has understood Marx."< Daniel D: >was he right?< I'd say so (though there may have been Marxists before Lenin who studied the SCIENCE OF LOGIC and Lenin never heard about it). I think reading Hegel helps one understand Marx, but that it's too bad that one has to read Hegel to do so. Charles B: >I'm quite open to Hegel in relatively simple language compared to the original. From my experience, the translation to simpler language would be a complicated project itself though. Are you saying someone has put Hegel (or dialectics) into simpler language ?< Levins & Lewontin's DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST presents a good effort to present dialectical method (epistemology) in the language of science. They summarize it as describing the totality (whole) that we have to understand in which "parts make whole" (the various individuals and internal structures of a totality create the totality itself) and "whole makes part" (the nature of these individuals and structures is profoundly shaped by the totality in which they operate). This back-and-forth doesn't settle down into any kind of equilibrium. Instead, the totality is always changing. (an example: under capitalism, our actions create history, though not exactly as we please, since we are constrained by various institutional structures (such as corporations or political parties). The nature of our consciousness and thus our actions is in turn shaped and largely determined by our positions within capitalism, while the institutional structures are also shaped and largely determined by capitalism's laws of motion.) To L&L, the dialectical method does not produce answers to our questions as much as questions to ask of the real (empirical) world. ------------------------ Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
