From: Shane Mage
c b wrote: > http://www.marxists.org/subject/japan/uchida/index.htm > > Hiroshi Uchida (1988) > Marx's Grundrisse and Hegel's Logic > In 1916 Lenin, in the margins of his copy of Hegel's The Science of Logic, made perhaps his most profound, and surely his most ignored [including by Uchida], statement: "It is impossible to understand Marx's Das Kapital without a profound grasp of Hegel's Logic. Consequently, fifty years later none of the Marxists have understood Marx." ^^^^^^^^ CB: Yes, I know. Lenin's well known aphorism caused me to read (The Shorter) _Logic_. However, Lenin doesn't spell out the specifics. Uchida pretty much nails that, really proves Lenin's claim. . He demystifies Hegel Also, Uchida here finds Marx saying what Lenin said and demonstrates it as more explicit with respect to the Grundisse. Also, in the following passage, Uchida asserts tht Hegel is the vulgar materialist, the positivist, relative to Marx. "However, according to Marx the specific characteristic of human life is that it has consciousness. This appears in his Economic and philosophical manuscripts (1844). He thinks that when human beings obtain food they not only ingest calories but also generate and express their culture. Hegel, on the contrary, defines human beings as mere existence, and does not inquire into the specific mode of human life which varies regionally and historically. After that definition he discusses mental activity in a way that is indifferent to material life." ^^^^^ Fixated on Aristotle the empiricist, Uchida seems hypnotized by the materialist illusion still present in the earliest Marx: ^^^^^ CB: 1857 is not the earliest Marx, and Uchida finds this by Marx on Artistotle ,the first I heard it.: "Marx's comments in his letter of 21 December 1857 to Ferdinand Lassalle are evidence that he was most interested in Aristotle whilst writing the Grundrisse: 'I always had great interest in the latter philosopher [Heraclitus], to whom I prefer only Aristotle of the ancient philosophers.' " ^^^^ > > In The holy family of 1845 he discusses Hegel's mode of > presentation, writing, for example, that many forms of fruit really > exist, so 'man' may abstract 'fruit in general' as an idea. Hegel, > however, reverses the process, insisting that at the beginning 'fruit > in general' exists as substance, and it posits many particular forms > of fruit as positive subjects. Marx reveals the secret of Hegel's > philosophy, which presupposes an ideal subject par excellence, even > though this subject is in reality a 'thought-product' or abstraction > that exists merely in the mind. Shane: For Aristotle, the concept of "fruit," like all universals, is a convenient label to cover perceived-as-similar phenomena. While this may reflect how primitive humans formed concepts it is, in an evolving reality, totally unscientific. ^^^^ CB: Here your anthropology is wrong. "Primitive" humans formed concepts in the same way the "modern" humans did. Their methods were significantly "scientific" (See _The Savage Mind_ by Claude Levi-Strauss). Humans have never been empiricists. Their knowledge has always been socially, not individually made. "Empiricist" means isolated individual observation and discovery. ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^ Shane: Fruits existed for eons before humans and no empirical generalization can be formed from unexperienced phenomena. Fruit is a necessary evolutionary consequence of the existence of seed-bearing (flowering) plants and is such has always existed "ideally" as a *possibility* inherent to the laws governing the evolution of life (and of course was actualized through the line of evolution followed by our planet).. These laws are substantial-- they exist independent of any temporal particular material reality. Hegel here is the Platonist (idea=substance) and it is that line of thought, not Aristotle's, that is in this case, as in so many others, "fruitful." ^^^^^^^ CB: I think what you say above is correct, except that Uchida is criticizing Hegel as a Platonist just as you are. You are agreeing with Uchida. By the way, both Plato and Hegel were objective , not subjective , idealists. As Lenin said, Hegel was "arch-brilliant" and very close to being a materialist (probably another note in his notebook on Hegel) _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
