no, Carrol, I wasn't saying that Marx was an empiricist. Rather, his philosophy aimed to "understand the world" in order to "change it." This involved a focus on relations, as you say. One can be empirically-oriented without being empiricist.
by "textual," I was referring to the detailed exposition of what various famous people said and what it really meant when they said it. You know, the persistent debate about "what Marx (really) meant" and the like. On 5/22/07, Carrol Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Jim Devine wrote: > > I try to respond to all threads that involve me, but I'm not going to > do so for this one (even though I let it sit in my in-box for weeks). > I just don't have the constitution for scholasticism, the quoting and > interpretation of Authorities. I prefer the method of folks like Marx > & Keynes, whose main interests were empirical rather than textual. I don't know a bout Keynes, but it does not seem to me accurate to say that Marx's main interests were empirical (though of course he like any rational person regarded it as essential to begin with empirical actuality). Marx was concerned above all with _relations_, and as he notes in the Grundrisse, relations as opposed to the things in relation must be thought, not observed. For example, no amount of empirical observation can constitute even a beginning to understanding class, which is a relation, not a life style or a job activity. For example, it was not by empirical observation that Newton arrived at his theory of gravity. One can observe an apple falling, and one can (with enough intermediary thinking about invisible relations) observe the moon moving in orbit about the earth. But only thought, not observation, could unite those two motions under one theory or law. I take it that by "textual" here you mean what was traditionally labelled "philology," the attempt to understand clearly past thought and feeling, and I agree that that cannot be a primary concern. But without the labor of philologists, and without being to some extent philologists ourselves, we would know nothing. Carrol
-- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
