Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
I am responding to a 6/22/2005 post from Victor, which I quote from. The quote below is a good example of where I think Victor gets Ilyenkov wrong 180 degrees. In the general section of Ilyenkov's 1977 essay The Concept of the Ideal that Victor quotes from, I believe Ilyenkov is making just the opposite point that Victor attributes to him. Victor quotes Ilyenkov: Paragraph 53: It is this fact, incidentally, that explains the persistent survival of such semantic substitutions; indeed, when we are talking about nature, we are obliged to make use of the available language of natural science, the language of science with its established and generally understood meanings. It is this, specifically, which forms the basis of the arguments of logical positivism, which quite consciously identifies nature with the language in which people talk and write about nature. Paragraph 54: It will be appreciated that the main difficulty and, therefore, the main problem of philosophy is not to distinguish and counterpose everything that is in the consciousness of the individual to everything that is outside this individual consciousness (this is hardly ever difficult to do), but to delimit the world of collectively acknowledged notions, that is, the whole socially organised world of intellectual culture with all its stable and materially established universal patterns, and the real world as it exists outside and apart from its expression in these socially legitimised forms of experience. (Ilyenkov The Concept of the Ideal 1977) Victor comments: The delimitation of what Ilyenkov calls the whole socially organised world of intellectual culture and the real world as it exists outside and apart from its expression in these socially legitimised forms of experience. can only be based on the distinction between the socially learned and confirmed concepts or ideas of the tribe and the concepts formulated by reflecting on practical material activity, i.e. labour activity: the operations carried out, the physical and material response of the instruments and material of production to these activities and finally the effectivity of the operations relative to their purposes. Victor says the delimitation that Ilyenkov makes (I am adding ...'s to make Victor's complex sentence a little more readable) can only be based on the distinction between the socially learned and confirmed concepts or ideas of the tribe ... and ... the concepts formulated by reflecting on practical material activity, i.e. labour activity: the operations carried out, the physical and material response of the instruments and material of production to these activities and finally the effectivity of the operations relative to their purposes. But this is decidedly *not* the distinction Ilyenkov makes. The essential discussion we are having here is over this question: where, precisely, is the boundary between ideality and materiality? Victor draws the boundary between socially learned concepts, on one hand, and conceptualizing practical activity/carrying out practical activity/the consequences of practical activity - on the other. Ilyenkov draws a very different distinction. Ilyenkov is investigating the distinction - and he refers to this as the main problem of philosophy - between the whole socially organised world of intellectual culture and the real world as it exists outside and apart from this. I believe I can draw on Ilyenkov, and: a) show where Ilyenkov makes his distinction between the ideal and the real and b) demonstrate that Victor is committing the very idealist error that Ilyenkov criticizes Hegel and Bogdanov for making. In the essay The Concept of the Ideal, my annotations offer the subtitles Hegel's Concept of the Ideal to paragraphs 45-49, The Secret Twist of Idealism to paragraphs 50-53, and The Distinction Between the Ideal and the Real to paragraphs 54-57. Interestingly, my reading of Victor's writings on the question of the ideal, such as in the quote above, is that his concept of the ideal is much closer to Hegel's than Ilyenkov's or Marx's, he is actually performing the same kind of secret twist of idealism that Ilyenkov attributes to Hegel and others, and Victor's distinction or boundary between the ideal and the real is not consistent with Ilyenkov's. None of my opinions or claims, of course, negate Victor's good advice and inspiration to me to study and make copious notes about the other books Ilyenkov has in English, as well as study relevant writings by Marx, Lenin, and Hegel. Nor do my philosophically sharp criticisms of what I perceive as erroneous interpretations by Victor of Ilyenkov's theory of the ideal take away from the respect and admiration I have for Victor's many intellectual accomplishments, which I have been privileged to learn much from in various internet venues. In all worthwhile discussions, there are points where it is best
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
This is going to take a little time, you raised some heavy questions here. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 17:17 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst At 02:12 PM 6/22/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Hegel regards objectification as simply the alienation of spirit in the object. The ideal itself is the alienated spirit that has become a universal through the mediation of language. True, I've not addressed the problem of whether Hegel regarded labour activity (transformation of the ideal as consciousness joined with language forms by its expression in labour activity) but if I recall correctly he does not really concern himself with this problem. The question of the effect, if any, of labour activity on the ideal certainly does not appear in the Logic. Marx in his 1844 Critique of Hegelian Philosophy takes Hegel to task for regarding the nature that becomes the subject of logos as the abstracted nature of theory rather than the material nature external to intellect. It is however an interesting question, and I would appreciate any additional information on this. Meanwhile I'll do some investigation on my own. I can't help you answer my question, but it _is_ the question (Hegel's specific view of labor activity) which you did not clearly address in your exposition. Hegel wrote quite a bit on labour, but it appears that most of his commentary on the subject is in regards to its social rather than epistemological role. The master-slave stuff from the Phenomenology and his discourses on the Korporations and such in his Philosophy of Right. See Ashton's interesting discussion on the subject in the MIA: www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/txt/ashton.htm Hegel's discussion of the relation of the ideal to life is about as close as one can get to a Hegelian epistemology of the relation of the ideal to the practical: Interestingly, but expectedly, the resemblances and differences between Hegel and Marx's concepts of the practical are exactly paralleled in those of their respective concepts of the ideal. Ilyenkov describes Marx as adopting the meaning or essence of Hegel's ideal but revising Hegel's concept of ideality: 61. In Capital Marx quite consciously uses the term ideal in this formal meaning that it was given by Hegel, and not in the sense in which it was used by the whole pre-Hegelian tradition, including Kant, although the philosophical-theoretical interpretation of the range of phenomena which in both cases is similarly designated ideal is diametrically opposed to its Hegelian interpretation. The meaning of the term ideal in Marx and Hegel is the same, but the concepts, i.e., the ways of understanding this same meaning are profoundly different. After all, the word concept in dialectically interpreted logic is a synonym for understanding of the essence of the matter, the essence of phenomena which are only outlined by a given term; it is by no means a synonym for the meaning of the term, which may be formally interpreted as the sum-total of attributes of the phenomena to which the term is applied. Concept of the Ideal 1977) Hegel describes the ideal as the reification of human activity, i.e. the embodiment of activity - pure activity, pure form-creating activityin the form of a thing. Hegel's explanation of the relation of activity to its objective form is, of course, his theory of activities as a function conceptualised (objective) social ideas that describe and circumscribe ethical social life. To explain how concepts become material activity Hegel describes the production of activity as the consequences of the operations of consciousness and will. Consciousness and will are the transcendental pattern of the psyche and the will that realises the ideal form, the ideal form being the law that guides man's consciousness and will, as the objectively compulsory pattern of consciously willed activity. While Marx adopts the essence of the Hegelian ideal as the embodiment or reification of activity as social practice, he regards the ideal as a product of activity rather than as its law and guide. Take for example the ideal concept of Value: Value-form is understood in Capital precisely as the reified form (represented as, or representing, the thing, the relationship of things) of social human life activity. Directly it does present itself to us as the physically palpable embodiment of something other, but this other cannot be some physically palpable matter... in the sphere of economic activity this substance was, naturally, decoded as labour, as man's physical labour transforming the physical body of nature, while value became realised labour, the embodied act of labour.Ilyenkov 1977 Par. 95, 96). The identical difference characterises the distinction between Hegel's concept of practicality and that of Marx. While Marx adopts the essence of practicality
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
- Original Message - From: Steve Gabosch [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and thethinkers he inspired marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 12:40 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst I am responding to a 6/22/2005 post from Victor, which I quote from. The quote below is a good example of where I think Victor gets Ilyenkov wrong 180 degrees. In the general section of Ilyenkov's 1977 essay The Concept of the Ideal that Victor quotes from, I believe Ilyenkov is making just the opposite point that Victor attributes to him. Victor quotes Ilyenkov: Paragraph 53: It is this fact, incidentally, that explains the persistent survival of such semantic substitutions; indeed, when we are talking about nature, we are obliged to make use of the available language of natural science, the language of science with its established and generally understood meanings. It is this, specifically, which forms the basis of the arguments of logical positivism, which quite consciously identifies nature with the language in which people talk and write about nature. Paragraph 54: It will be appreciated that the main difficulty and, therefore, the main problem of philosophy is not to distinguish and counterpose everything that is in the consciousness of the individual to everything that is outside this individual consciousness (this is hardly ever difficult to do), but to delimit the world of collectively acknowledged notions, that is, the whole socially organised world of intellectual culture with all its stable and materially established universal patterns, and the real world as it exists outside and apart from its expression in these socially legitimised forms of experience. (Ilyenkov The Concept of the Ideal 1977) Victor comments: The delimitation of what Ilyenkov calls the whole socially organised world of intellectual culture and the real world as it exists outside and apart from its expression in these socially legitimised forms of experience. can only be based on the distinction between the socially learned and confirmed concepts or ideas of the tribe and the concepts formulated by reflecting on practical material activity, i.e. labour activity: the operations carried out, the physical and material response of the instruments and material of production to these activities and finally the effectivity of the operations relative to their purposes. Victor says the delimitation that Ilyenkov makes (I am adding ...'s to make Victor's complex sentence a little more readable) can only be based on the distinction between the socially learned and confirmed concepts or ideas of the tribe ... and ... the concepts formulated by reflecting on practical material activity, i.e. labour activity: the operations carried out, the physical and material response of the instruments and material of production to these activities and finally the effectivity of the operations relative to their purposes. But this is decidedly *not* the distinction Ilyenkov makes. The essential discussion we are having here is over this question: where, precisely, is the boundary between ideality and materiality? Victor draws the boundary between socially learned concepts, on one hand, and conceptualizing practical activity/carrying out practical activity/the consequences of practical activity - on the other. Ilyenkov draws a very different distinction. Ilyenkov is investigating the distinction - and he refers to this as the main problem of philosophy - between the whole socially organised world of intellectual culture and the real world as it exists outside and apart from this. I believe I can draw on Ilyenkov, and: a) show where Ilyenkov makes his distinction between the ideal and the real and b) demonstrate that Victor is committing the very idealist error that Ilyenkov criticizes Hegel and Bogdanov for making. In the essay The Concept of the Ideal, my annotations offer the subtitles Hegel's Concept of the Ideal to paragraphs 45-49, The Secret Twist of Idealism to paragraphs 50-53, and The Distinction Between the Ideal and the Real to paragraphs 54-57. Interestingly, my reading of Victor's writings on the question of the ideal, such as in the quote above, is that his concept of the ideal is much closer to Hegel's than Ilyenkov's or Marx's, he is actually performing the same kind of secret twist of idealism that Ilyenkov attributes to Hegel and others, and Victor's distinction or boundary between the ideal and the real is not consistent with Ilyenkov's. It's not enough simply to say that Victor is making the same error as Hegel and Bogdanov. You have to show it to be so. What does Ilyenkov actually say about Hegel and Bogdanov? 49. In other words, Hegel includes in the concept of the ideal everything that another representative of idealism in philosophy
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
This 6/26 post by Victor seems like a good stopping place for the moment - I need to put our discussion about ideality aside for just a little while to tend to other projects, but I am certainly interested. I will follow up. Victor is perfectly correct, I must show what I claim. BTW, for anyone trying to follow this discussion, two different essays by Ilyenkov are quoted in Victor's post, both available on the internet at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/index.htm The main essay Victor and I have been debating interpretations of is: The Concept of the Ideal http://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/ideal/ideal.htm This essay appeared in the book Problems of Dialectical Materialism; Progress Publishers, 1977 and was scanned by Andy Blunden. The numbering both Victor and I have been using refers to the sequence of 142 paragraphs in that essay. In Victor's 6/26 post, he quotes from paragraphs 49, 50 and 51. I have an important side point to bring up about this essay. In my scrutiny of this on-line version, the only version I have, I believe there are some scanning errors and possibly some original translation errors to contend with. There is also some reason to wonder if the original Russian that the translation was based on may also contain editorial errors. In other words, this version must be read with caution, and if something does not make sense, it may not be Ilyenkov's original writing. I bring this up because there are a handful of places in the essay where publishing errors like these seem to contribute to confusion over what Ilyenkov was really saying. In his 6/26 post Victor also quotes Ilyenkov using paragraph numbers 57, 58, 59, 60. However, these are from a different essay - chapter 8 in DIALECTICAL LOGIC (1974), Part Two Problems of the Marxist-Leninist Theory of Dialectics 8: The Materialist Conception of Thought as the Subject Matter of Logic http://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/essays/essay8.htm The scanned book is Dialectical Logic, Essays on its History and Theory; Progress Publishers, 1977; English translation 1977 by H. Campbell Creighton; Transcribed: Andy Blunden; HTML Markup: Andy Blunden. BTW, these paragraphs (found on pages 285-288) are from the same essay Victor mentioned on 5/26 and I quoted from on 5/30, and which were discussed a little on this list. The question of the ideal is a major topic of this essay and I agree with Victor that it should be discussed in conjunction with the Concept of the Ideal essay when we take this topic up again. The philosophical work we are doing here is to try to untangle the ideal and the material, closely studying Ilyenkov's work on this complex question in doing so. In the process, it seems we should also seek to keep untangled which citation by our philosopher-teacher we are talking about. :-)) Best, ~ Steve end of my post ___ At 07:32 PM 6/26/2005 +0200, Oudeyis (Victor) wrote: - Original Message - From: Steve Gabosch [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and thethinkers he inspired marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 12:40 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst I am responding to a 6/22/2005 post from Victor, which I quote from. The quote below is a good example of where I think Victor gets Ilyenkov wrong 180 degrees. In the general section of Ilyenkov's 1977 essay The Concept of the Ideal that Victor quotes from, I believe Ilyenkov is making just the opposite point that Victor attributes to him. Victor quotes Ilyenkov: Paragraph 53: It is this fact, incidentally, that explains the persistent survival of such semantic substitutions; indeed, when we are talking about nature, we are obliged to make use of the available language of natural science, the language of science with its established and generally understood meanings. It is this, specifically, which forms the basis of the arguments of logical positivism, which quite consciously identifies nature with the language in which people talk and write about nature. Paragraph 54: It will be appreciated that the main difficulty and, therefore, the main problem of philosophy is not to distinguish and counterpose everything that is in the consciousness of the individual to everything that is outside this individual consciousness (this is hardly ever difficult to do), but to delimit the world of collectively acknowledged notions, that is, the whole socially organised world of intellectual culture with all its stable and materially established universal patterns, and the real world as it exists outside and apart from its expression in these socially legitimised forms of experience. (Ilyenkov The Concept of the Ideal 1977) Victor comments: The delimitation of what Ilyenkov calls the
