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Author Topic: Greatest Philosopher Contest on BBC Radio 4
robbie_dee
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posted 21 July 2005 12:48 PM      Profile for robbie_dee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
and the winner is...

Karl Marx


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rasmus
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posted 21 July 2005 02:10 PM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Granted that such contests are superficial by nature, Karl Popper really doesn't belong on the list. He had one major idea in the philosophy of science, an idea which far from dominated the other major ideas of 20th century philosophy of science.

Given that the question asked who the greatest philosopher was, I'd have to take exception to Marx's heading the list. As an overall social analyst and thinker, perhaps, but not as a philosopher per se. Hegel represents a far sharper turn from his predecessors than Marx, and as a philosopher is a far richer thinker. As Habermas has written of modern European philosophy, "we are all Hegelians". Hegel's critique of the epistemological project was decisive and put an end to two centuries of philosophical misery, at least on the continent. His notion of dialectics and the internal complexity of knowledge and its relation to the world are things we take for granted, but which were profound innovations at the time. The interrelatedness of history and self-understanding as processes of change and discovery, and the situatedness and social nature of human being, are also revolutionary ideas. Marx's major innovation, by his own description, was not to invent any of these, but merely convert Hegel's idealism into materialism.


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Mr. Magoo
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posted 21 July 2005 02:26 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
It's such an obvious popularity contest!
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Michelle
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posted 21 July 2005 02:43 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
You're so right!
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jeff house
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posted 21 July 2005 03:00 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I see that no one from Hockey Night in Canada is on that list.

And I am surprised that L. Ron Hubbard didn't make the cut either, but maybe that is because his cult doesn't listen to BBC.


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Contrarian
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posted 21 July 2005 03:09 PM      Profile for Contrarian     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ayn Rand didn't make the list.
No women did.
Charlotte Macleod once wrote about Bronson Alcott, Louisa May's philosophical dad, that while Papa sat in his office thinking deep thoughts, Marmee and the girls were out digging potatoes and slopping the pigs.

[ 21 July 2005: Message edited by: Contrarian ]


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Rufus Polson
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posted 21 July 2005 03:27 PM      Profile for Rufus Polson     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yeah, it seems like it's one of those activities that women were traditionally fenced out of. Even today I think Phil departments tend to be male dominated, even though it's hardly a position of privilege any more. I think frequently women who want to do philosophy do it in Women's Studies. The greatest women philosophers to date have generally been feminist ones. Would have been nice if a couple of top feminist thinkers had gotten in there.
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jeff house
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posted 21 July 2005 03:35 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The finest woman philosopher of the twentieth century was surely Hannah Arendt, hardly a feminist.
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belva
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posted 21 July 2005 03:37 PM      Profile for belva     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Contrarian:
Ayn Rand didn't make the list.
No women did.

[ 21 July 2005: Message edited by: Contrarian ]


I wonder where K. Marx's analysis would have started if he had to wear a corset, three petticoats and a cumbersome skirt? Other matters aside (hypothetically) if Karl had been Karla, would the basic class struggle not have been workers versus capitalists but rather women versus men? But then again, if he had been she, mostly likely we would never have DAS KAPITAL.


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belva
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posted 21 July 2005 03:43 PM      Profile for belva     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by jeff house:
The finest woman philosopher of the twentieth century was surely Hannah Arendt, hardly a feminist.

Why is it necessary to modify "philosopher" with "woman"?

And I think it depends very much on how you define "feminist"--if you use it narrowly, you may be right. If you use the term very generally meaning a woman who undertook "non-traditional" tasks in the face of male opposition, she certainly was a "feminist."


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Michelle
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posted 21 July 2005 03:43 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Finest "woman philosopher"? Pet peeve alert - when we say we want more women to be on a recognized list of top philosophers, that doesn't mean we want them to be put in a separate gendered category!
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
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posted 21 July 2005 03:50 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Someone else introduced the category "woman philosophers". I think it was a complaint that no women philosophers had been included in the top ten.

For the record, I think Arendt was one of the three or four most compelling philosophers of the twentieth century; on a level with Sartre.

When I say she was not a feminist, I mean that her thought did not contain a component in which women were celebrated, or even considered apart from men.

Belva quite sensibly says that she could be considered a feminist because she took on roles which were far outside those normally occupied by women. And that is true.

But every woman who chooses to be a philosopher is living outside of women's traditional roles; it won't tell us much about the content of their philosophy if they are all called "feminist philosophers."


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Michelle
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posted 21 July 2005 03:59 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I understand...but the cure for having no women philosophers on the list isn't to create a separate category for them.

If we say that we want women recognized, we want them recognized as philosophers, not as women. So instead, I'd have said, "Hannah Arendt is one of the finest philosophers" or even "the finest philosopher" in response.

Very nitpicky, I know, and sorry for that. I think it comes from having been continually annoyed in my late teens and early 20's by this guy I knew who always used to talk about "the best female guitarists". When I asked him why he would compare female guitarists only to other female guitarists instead of to ALL guitarists, he looked at me as if I'd suddenly grown another head or something. It was like, duh, it's not like they can actually compete against the BEST guitarists. You know, the REAL best ones.


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
rasmus
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posted 21 July 2005 04:04 PM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Some prominent women philosophers:

Simone de Beauvoir
GEM Anscombe
Hannah Arendt
Helene Cixous
bell hooks
Mary Warnock
Iris Murdoch
Susan Haack
Nancy Cartwright
Amelie Oxenburg-Rorty
Martha Nussbaum

It depends how wide your definition of "philosophy" is. On the whole, I think philosophy, at least as philosophy departments recognize it, tends to be a heavily male-gendered discipline and culture. I think it was Annette Baier who began a book talking about how many women couldn't stay interested in the "boy's games" you find in philosophy courses. The irrelevant formalism for the sake of difficulty, the smarter-than-thou machismo, and so on. It all seems irrelevant to the interesting questions.


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rasmus
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posted 21 July 2005 04:08 PM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
So to answer Michelle's question. I think the problem was raised of why there were no women on the list of best philosophers. I don't think there should be separate categories. But obviously, in thinking about why women aren't on the list, and who might be, you have to come up with some names of women philosophers.

PS to Jeff House. You're comparing Arendt to Sartre? I think Arendt is far more profound than Sartre. Mind you, to be fair, I got turned off Sartre in high school.

[ 21 July 2005: Message edited by: rasmus raven ]


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Michelle
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posted 21 July 2005 04:15 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
What turned you off of Sartre?
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rasmus
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posted 21 July 2005 04:17 PM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Tedious, sloppy windbag?

Not his novels. Just my impression of his philosophy. I found his novels a bit pat. Like I say, it was high school. It's possible I didn't get it.

[ 21 July 2005: Message edited by: rasmus raven ]


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retread
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posted 21 July 2005 04:28 PM      Profile for retread     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Anyone else have Monty Python's "Philosopher's Song" go through their mind when they read the article?
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Michelle
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posted 21 July 2005 04:37 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by rasmus raven:
Tedious, sloppy windbag?

Well, that's a good, succinct answer.

I'm not sure what I thought of him. The joy of the first couple of years of undergrad is that the courses you take are really broad survey courses, so a lot of the philosophers I read are a blur. We were more focusing on basic philosophical concepts than really deep readings of philosophers. By the time we would have started going more in depth, I left. But, January 2006 beckons, and I'll be back into it again (part-time) if I'm accepted.

I didn't have a bad impression of Sartre when I read one of his novels (can't remember which one, something about the French resistance if I remember correctly) and excerpts from his non-fiction, but as I said, my reading has been too superficial to judge for real. Actually, I feel my readings of all philosophers have been too superficial, but oh well.

[ 21 July 2005: Message edited by: Michelle ]


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rsfarrell
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posted 21 July 2005 05:00 PM      Profile for rsfarrell        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by jeff house:
The finest woman philosopher of the twentieth century was surely Hannah Arendt, hardly a feminist.

I thought of Hannah Arendt the instant the poster above said "no women"! Great minds. While Arendt is a traditional feminist, her humanism includes the essentials of feminism. She's not counted as a feminist only because she's too big for that box.


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rsfarrell
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posted 21 July 2005 05:01 PM      Profile for rsfarrell        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
bell hooks????

Get a grip.


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jeff house
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posted 21 July 2005 05:07 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I have read some Sartre...we had to in graduate school,,,and some was a bit windy, I admit. Being and Nothingness had a fair bit of hot air, I agree.

But some of Arendt was windy, too. Read the opening lines of "The Human Condition", for example, or parts of "The Life of the Mind".

For my money, the best Sartre is the play "The Flies". I saw it at Stratford two years ago; it is fantastic.


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rsfarrell
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posted 21 July 2005 05:12 PM      Profile for rsfarrell        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by rasmus raven: Hegel's critique of the epistemological project was decisive and put an end to two centuries of philosophical misery, at least on the continent.

Last time I checked, epistimology was still alive and boring. Post-structualism is essentially (no pun intended) an epistimological enterprise.

quote:
His notion of dialectics and the internal complexity of knowledge and its relation to the world are things we take for granted, but which were profound innovations at the time.

I don't take it for granted. The dialectic is mystical thinking. Unlike the well-developed sets of rules underlying logical or rational arguments, there is no rigorious way to describe how the dialectic works. No two people will do it the same way. It can't be falsified by evidence. The dialetic is one of the great snow jobs of philosophy.

quote:
The interrelatedness of history and self-understanding as processes of change and discovery, and the situatedness and social nature of human being, are also revolutionary ideas.

True, with two cavets; subjectivism and hermenutic understand are not original to Hegel, and you have to purify his thinking of a lot of dangerous crap to get to these useful ideas. Hegel is the origin of a lot of the underlying ideas of totalitarism, especially facism with its emphasis on "greatness" and what became the cult of personality. When you realize the people at the helm of the last superpower think they can determine truth in defiance of the "reality-based community," don't forget to thank Hegel.

[ 21 July 2005: Message edited by: rsfarrell ]


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skdadl
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posted 21 July 2005 05:17 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
After the war (and fairly chastened by it, I think), Sartre spent some time immersing self in American literature, and produced some really quite splendid readings, of Faulkner especially. His [two-?]part essay on Absalom, Absalom is one of the best readings of Faulkner I know -- I suspect that the fact that he was reading and writing cold, with little academic background, contributed to the freshness of that work.

And then he also did major studies of Baudelaire and Flaubert, of course. His version of existentialism strikes me as always having been psychological/psychoanalytical as much as philosophical anyway, which may explain the turn to literary biography.


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belva
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posted 21 July 2005 05:31 PM      Profile for belva     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by rsfarrell:
bell hooks????

Get a grip.


Yes, bell hooks!

No one likes every thinker or writer but I find her to be a national treasure. I've read six or seven of her books and have heard her speak twice. She's a powerful thinker. Her writing style is out of the ordinary but only adds, I think, to her attraction. Her books are in no way "light" reading but certainly are enlightening.


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rasmus
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posted 21 July 2005 05:58 PM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That sounds right to me skdadl. If I think about his philosophical contribution, I ask things like, how would philosophy today be different if Sartre had never existed? And it's hard to think of something important.

Oh... I didn't see Jeff House's remarks. Yes, you're right about Arendt. Fair point

rsfarrel, in the context of Hegel's critique of the epistemological project, it is a critique of the foundational epistemology begun by Descartes. Trying to find the bedrock of certainty to build everything on. The view from outside knowledge, or the view from nowhere as Thomas Nagel so memorably calls it. Hegel is the first to say you can't step outside the circle of knowledge to a position beyond questioning. It's a nonsense.

I don't see poststructuralism as continuing the epistemological project in this sense. Epistemology did survive in Anglo-Saxon philosophy, as it was revived in the 20th century in a big way and in many forms.

Hegelian dialectic is not supposed to be a system of inference, therefore to criticize it by saying it is not a system of inference isn't doing any work. The dialectic is best understood as a heuristic or a sensibility: our knowledge is complex and taken as a whole, contradictory. In encountering the world, knowledge encounters its limits, that is, its contradictions are exposed, and the dialectical progress of knowledge consists in assimilating new understandings to old in a way that preserves the essential truth of the old, while negating the inadequate and rising to a new, more comprehensive state of knowledge (aufhebung is cancelling, preserving, and raising up; its English cognate is upheaval). Few people can articulate Hegel's concept of the dialectic, and fewer would be inclined to agree with it unchallenged (so much is dialectical, after all). Perhaps I overstated the degree to which it is taken for granted, but the assumption of complexity and contradiction in our knowledge of the world, articulate and inarticulate, is more or less a commonplace today. The Simpsons wouldn't work without it.

[edited to add:]

Of course, for both Hegel and Marx the force of necessity behind dialectics was in fact metaphysical. Therein lies the problem.

[ 21 July 2005: Message edited by: rasmus raven ]


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jeff house
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posted 21 July 2005 06:16 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
If I think about his philosophical contribution, I ask things like, how would philosophy today be different if Sartre had never existed? And it's hard to think of something important.

Well, but lots of French philosophers were influenced by Sartre. I doubt that Foucault would have written many of his works without Sartre; for example, Discipline and Punish.

Also: it's too early to ask this question about Sartre, just as it is too early to determine whether the French Revolution was a good thing or not.


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rasmus
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posted 21 July 2005 06:21 PM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Perhaps. As an aside, Foucault himself more or less said that Marx+Nietzsche+Heidegger=Foucault.

Rene Girard once said that "to mention Sartre is to discredit yourself with the deconstructionists. Which means, of course, that he will return."


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Vigilante
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posted 21 July 2005 06:27 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sartre seemed to be repeating what Max Stirner said 100 years earlier. Stirner of course set up Nietzsche, wonder why he's so underated.
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Tommy_Paine
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posted 21 July 2005 07:24 PM      Profile for Tommy_Paine     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think first you have to define exactly what one means by contest, then one has to define exactly what constitutes a philosopher before one can go on to assert just who the greatest philosopher might or might not be or not be is being.
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jeff house
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posted 21 July 2005 07:28 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Good one, Tommy.
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rsfarrell
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posted 21 July 2005 07:54 PM      Profile for rsfarrell        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by belva:

Yes, bell hooks!

No one likes every thinker or writer but I find her to be a national treasure. I've read six or seven of her books and have heard her speak twice. She's a powerful thinker. Her writing style is out of the ordinary but only adds, I think, to her attraction. Her books are in no way "light" reading but certainly are enlightening.


It's not necessarily that I don't like hear (I like some of her stuff.) It's that she's such a conventional thinker. To a nonexistent audience of right-wing hicks she might be thought-provoking, but she is the lit.-crit. equivilent of McDonalds. As a critic she is limited; as a philosopher she is simply nowhere. Any original ideas in her work that I missed the first go-round? 'Cause as far as I can tell there aren't any.

Additionally, I offer that anyone after e. e. cummings who eschews capitialization is a pretentious wannabe until proven otherwise.


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rsfarrell
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posted 21 July 2005 08:08 PM      Profile for rsfarrell        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Hegelian dialectic is not supposed to be a system of inference, therefore to criticize it by saying it is not a system of inference isn't doing any work. The dialectic is best understood as a heuristic or a sensibility: our knowledge is complex and taken as a whole, contradictory. In encountering the world, knowledge encounters its limits, that is, its contradictions are exposed, and the dialectical progress of knowledge consists in assimilating new understandings to old in a way that preserves the essential truth of the old, while negating the inadequate and rising to a new, more comprehensive state of knowledge (aufhebung is cancelling, preserving, and raising up; its English cognate is upheaval). Few people can articulate Hegel's concept of the dialectic, and fewer would be inclined to agree with it unchallenged (so much is dialectical, after all). Perhaps I overstated the degree to which it is taken for granted, but the assumption of complexity and contradiction in our knowledge of the world, articulate and inarticulate, is more or less a commonplace today. The Simpsons wouldn't work without it.

Oh, I like the idea of the dialectic. Most people do; that is why it is so popular. I just don't think it's very useful. You can call it a heuristic or a sensibility, but ultimately philosophy is about coming to understands and having those understandings be sharable and defensible. You can't really advance that project with a method "[f]ew people can articulate . . . and fewer would be inclined to agree [with] unchallenged."

You may not think of post-structualism as an epistomological project, but in my opinion, whenever you try to articulate a general theory of how meaning interacts with society and vice versa, you are by default creating a system of epistomology, because a successful general theory must transend the subjectivism it analyzes, or it is not a general theory.

You mentioned the Simpsons: rock on. But the Simpsons would work in any time or place, because comedy is always about the contradictions in our knowledge. Personally, I think it is wiser to laugh at them than to try and transend them, not that Anglo-Saxon philosophy is spending their time in any more profitable activities (how did we get to the point where literary critics are crafting systems of epistomology and philosophers spending their careers studying vocabulary, grammer and syntax?)

Hegel's a bright guy and an important one, no one's saying that he isn't.


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MartinArendt
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posted 21 July 2005 08:21 PM      Profile for MartinArendt     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I'm totally down with Rasmus Raven's posts! I agree with everything you wrote, and you articulated Hegel so well! Excellent!

I would love to add less...er...mainstream?...thinkers to the BBC list, like Paulo Freire, who is really more of an educator than a "PHILOSOPHER", but who I think contributed immensely to a lot of modern-day philosophical thinking and discourse around power and education.

Also, I think the list is silly, and is dominated by the usual white male philosopher suspects. Not that some of those suspects didn't write great philosophy (I have a soft spot for Socrates, and Hegel makes me happy), but I think it could be more broad-based. What about Chuang-Tzu? What about Lao-Tzu? What about Mr. T? Think about it...

[ 21 July 2005: Message edited by: MartinArendt ]


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rasmus
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posted 21 July 2005 11:12 PM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Why thanks, MartinArendt.

rsfarrell, it's somewhat of a truism with any difficult philosopher that few people can articulate their point, and fewer would leave it unchallenged. Few people can articulate the private language argument, and fewer would leave it unchallenged. It's not the measure of its worth, or even its impact, to say so. The fact is, most people aren't very articulate.

I called it a heuristic or a sensibility; you called it a method. I resist the notion of "method" because I think it's an inaccurate description of the value of the idea. Part of its value as a sensibility, for example, is to leave us with the expectation that whatever certainty we have must meet its limits one day. In the best case, therefore, it encourages receptivity to criticism. But it is more than a mere injunction to be receptive to criticism: it is a critique of the limits of knowledge itself. At the same time, it is an assertion of the value of all knowledge, even that which has been "aufgehoben", in its proper context, and so, it is an assertion about the situatedness of knowledge. Its utility is seen more clearly in political analysis, where one wants to preserve what is good about one's commitments, but recognize the ways in which history and agency reveal the limitations of those commitments. A superb example of dialectical thinking in politics, in my view, is the philosophical argument in Hilary Wainwright's Arguments for a New Left, which can be read as a dialectic between 20th century socialist conceptions of knowledge and Hayekian critiques of them that results in a different conception of social knowledge suited to a democratic socialist project. It's a long argument I've summarized elsewhere. I highly recommend it.

Is Hegelian/Marxist dialectic a method yielding definite results, to be applied everywhere, or a model to which all knowledge can be subjected? No. Mathematical proof, scientific inquiry, the learning of art, riding a bicycle are just some examples of knowledge which make the point.

One of the things that is annoying about Hegelian and Marxist dialectics is their teleological conception, which accounts for their necessity and means that Marxists often treat Marxism as an ahistorical system of truths that operate above the level of history (a position that is patently self-contradictory in Marxism), as opposed to a system of claims that are an expression of history, and therefore, at some point, must "go under".

As for what philosophy is about, I wouldn't dare to offer a general definition. For me, it's about achieving clarity, getting to the bottom of things, articulating and challenging assumptions. Some forms of rationality are necessary to the project. I don't believe there are "understandings", full stop, to be achieved, except of trivial problems. Hegel is one of the people I thank for that sensibility.

quote:
meaning interacts with society and vice versa, you are by default creating a system of epistomology, because a successful general theory must transend the subjectivism it analyzes, or it is not a general theory.

You have to be able to use words in ways that recognize the important differences, and are historically sound. Historically, epistemology has been an explicitly foundational enterprise, and it's that enterprise that Hegel critiqued. That's the sense in which I use "epistemology"

I'm not sure I buy your argument, which is a variation of the argument against crass relativism (where the argument works). If I make a claim about the interdependence of language and social being, am I really claiming to do so from outside the position of language and society? It seems to me that you're importing another premise, the very premise that poststructuralists would argue against, namely that a claim made from within the social-linguistic system about that system doesn't have the leverage to "do the work". To assert that is to beg the question.

No, I think as a cultural phenomenon it's important to recognize that the kind of pervasive, self-referential ironizing you find in contemporary cultural artifacts like the Simpsons simply didn't exist before. It might have been funny before, but earlier people wouldn't have understood it in the same way (much as children find it funny, but probably don't understand it in the same way). The satire of Candide, for example, can boil down to the idea "Leibniz is an idiot". But it doesn't carry with it a kind of scepticism about the possibility of ANY position that isn't contradictory or ironic, in fact, it's quite optimistic (ironically).

Martin, I would certainly add Chuang Tzu, who is perhaps my absolute favourite.

[ 22 July 2005: Message edited by: rasmus raven ]


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skdadl
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posted 22 July 2005 08:33 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
rasmus wrote:

quote:
I don't see poststructuralism as continuing the epistemological project in this sense. Epistemology did survive in Anglo-Saxon philosophy, as it was revived in the 20th century in a big way and in many forms.

Hegelian dialectic is not supposed to be a system of inference, therefore to criticize it by saying it is not a system of inference isn't doing any work. The dialectic is best understood as a heuristic or a sensibility: our knowledge is complex and taken as a whole, contradictory. In encountering the world, knowledge encounters its limits, that is, its contradictions are exposed, and the dialectical progress of knowledge consists in assimilating new understandings to old in a way that preserves the essential truth of the old, while negating the inadequate and rising to a new, more comprehensive state of knowledge (aufhebung is cancelling, preserving, and raising up; its English cognate is upheaval). Few people can articulate Hegel's concept of the dialectic, and fewer would be inclined to agree with it unchallenged (so much is dialectical, after all). Perhaps I overstated the degree to which it is taken for granted, but the assumption of complexity and contradiction in our knowledge of the world, articulate and inarticulate, is more or less a commonplace today. The Simpsons wouldn't work without it.


I have to question only your opening broad dismissal of the place in this history of [whatever it is that some people call] poststructuralism, at least in terms of Derrida's meditation on the dialectic in the first third of the Grammatology.

[For those who haven't read it, the first third of the Grammatology consists of critical readings of the analytical devices of Ferdinand de Saussure (linguistics), Claude Levi-Strauss (anthropology), and Heidegger.]

In my (now fading) memory, much of Derrida's reading of Heidegger consists of a critique of the notion of the dialectic only because Derrida considers it an oversimplification and a kind of creaky metaphor, too likely to collapse into binaries. In other words, he is trying to describe a dialectic that has done an aufhebung. Ok: that's a metaphor too, but a useful one.

Much of the rest of the time Derrida is concerned to challenge both ontology (metaphor of beginnings) and teleology (metaphor of endings) -- just what you said you wanted, rasmus.


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skdadl
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posted 22 July 2005 09:04 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
About Tommy's most sensible point: I think it is more true of Anglo-Americans, and maybe people working in the German tradition, that we tend to define philosophy in the terms of the academic discipline, especially as it has been established since the early C19.

What that means in historical terms is that entire periods of thought in some cultures just drop out of the history of "philosophy" because North American professional "philosophers" don't think that that stuff was philosophy.

Because many of the major figures of the Enlightenment, eg, lived and worked more as what we seem nowadays to be calling "public intellectuals," dabbling in politics and history and literature, academic philosophers don't know what to do about them. We sometimes find academic philosophers or historians of philosophy taking a banal C18 taxonomist like Linnaeus more seriously than, say, Rousseau, which seems to me risible.

I think there are periods where "thought" is more socially engaged than others, or there are places or specific groupings where that is true, and to me, at least, it is important to observe those disruptions of the classical / academic traditions as part of the ebb and flow. Pretty obviously, a great deal of political thought since [at least] the 1960s -- anti-colonialist, anti-racist, then feminist, then succeeding waves of analogous theory -- have marked our times in ways that academic philosophy and history of philosophy has still not digested well.

The classical questions are still there, and learning them is good discipline ... but I think we are most faithful to philosophy (and to science) when we forge ahead and write our own stories and our own songs ... and also when we recognize, underlying the official histories of the past, the many figures who were playing roles like ours behind or between the (unrealistically isolated and preserved) Great Men.


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Michelle
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posted 22 July 2005 09:14 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I agree, skdadl. I was in the middle of taking an African philosophy course when I left school a couple of years ago, and that was one of the things they really talked about - how these philosophers are invisible because of geographical location and race. It wasn't "real" philosophy. "Real" philosophy is done by dead white guys in Europe, or living white guys with academic posts in western universities.
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skdadl
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posted 22 July 2005 09:34 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yeah -- and even then, the dead guys tend to be, in my experience, more interesting than the live ones.
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Cueball
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posted 22 July 2005 10:03 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by rasmus raven:
Granted that such contests are superficial by nature, Karl Popper really doesn't belong on the list. He had one major idea in the philosophy of science, an idea which far from dominated the other major ideas of 20th century philosophy of science.

Given that the question asked who the greatest philosopher was, I'd have to take exception to Marx's heading the list. As an overall social analyst and thinker, perhaps, but not as a philosopher per se. Hegel represents a far sharper turn from his predecessors than Marx, and as a philosopher is a far richer thinker. As Habermas has written of modern European philosophy, "we are all Hegelians". Hegel's critique of the epistemological project was decisive and put an end to two centuries of philosophical misery, at least on the continent. His notion of dialectics and the internal complexity of knowledge and its relation to the world are things we take for granted, but which were profound innovations at the time. The interrelatedness of history and self-understanding as processes of change and discovery, and the situatedness and social nature of human being, are also revolutionary ideas. Marx's major innovation, by his own description, was not to invent any of these, but merely convert Hegel's idealism into materialism.



Yeah, but dude... what about... “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”

So perhaps theoretetically in terms of the philosophical construct as an abstract you might want to argue for Hegel, or any number of people, but that 'activist' slant, though not complicated, is a fairly big leap. Hasn't he changed the concept of what a philosopher can be, not just what a philospopher can think about?


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Jay Pausner
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posted 22 July 2005 10:06 AM      Profile for Jay Pausner     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Not one post about Bertrand Russell yet.

He, I think, applied his philosophy and chose not to remain idle in his life. The greatest should be reserved for those who did their best for humanity. While far from perfect, Russell fought for universal suffrage, was a pacifist, and worked with Einstein for nuclear disarmament. In his philosophical mould he tried to make philosophy accessible to many people, not trying to hold philosophy as anything more important than anything else and wanting people to understand their world. Afterall, as Russell might have said, we could be wrong.

Perhaps the contest was geared to toward popularity of name and should have been called the the popular philospoher.


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skdadl
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posted 22 July 2005 10:11 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I thought about Russell, Jay -- at least I thought about him, in just that way.

Iris Murdoch, whom rasmus has listed above, has a similar sort of place. You might not even rank her as highly in traditional terms as you would Russell, and yet, through her fiction, she did engage in a similar way.


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Cueball
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posted 22 July 2005 10:28 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Jay Pausner:

Perhaps the contest was geared to toward popularity of name and should have been called the the popular philospoher.

Perhaps the philosopher in question, Marx, actually is more popular because he actually had a bigger impact on peoples lives than the others, and that might be because of Marx's explicitly 'interventionist' approach.


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N.Beltov
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posted 22 July 2005 10:48 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
rasmus raven: Is Hegelian/Marxist dialectic a method yielding definite results, to be applied everywhere, or a model to which all knowledge can be subjected? No. Mathematical proof, scientific inquiry, the learning of art, riding a bicycle are just some examples of knowledge which make the point.

Dialectics is a doctrine or theory of development, of change. This could be development in thought, development in nature, or development in society. It's been called a science of the general laws of development and has a lengthy history of development itself - which makes sense since it should be applicable to itself if it is universal in scope.

The best example of definite results is Marx's Capital. It is this work which most fully expresses Marx's two basic discoveries: the theory of surplus value and the materialist conception of history. The first revealed the secret of exploitation and substantiated the tenet on the historical mission of the working class, which is only possibility and not inevitability, as the grave digger of capitalism and the builder of a new, socialist society. The second discovery has become common sense - we don't even think about it anymore. When John Turner stung Brian Mulroney with the assertion in the great Free Trade Debate of 1988 that "a country that abandons its economic levers of power then that country will surely give up its political levers of power" ....Turner expressed the common sense of Marxist theory. How's that for definite results?

quote:
rasmus: One of the things that is annoying about Hegelian and Marxist dialectics is their teleological conception, which accounts for their necessity and means that Marxists often treat Marxism as an ahistorical system of truths ...

They're just lousy Marxists. Good ones nowadays don't say that socialism is inevitable . They assert that there are other possibilities, like barbarism or some apocalyptic ending for humanity. Marx himself noted this when he referred to the "mutual annihilation of the contending classes" in previous historical class battles. But Marxists do exclude the idea that history has come to an end and do reject the notion that capitalism is an eternal socio-economic formation. I would challenge anyone to theorize the likely future of the world, after capitalism, without reference to Marxian theory.

Other doctrines, like Buddhism, for example, which starts from the premise of the universality of change, find common ground with Marxist approaches. Incidently, I'm rather disappointed that Guatama Buddha wasn't in the list of philosophers. I'm sure that if the survey was done in a different part of the world then the results would be different.

Ivan Frolov, the former editor of Voprosy Filosophii [Вопросы философии] under Gorbachev has this to say about the usefulness of dialectics and the merits of the Marxist approach in general:

quote:
The materialist method of study used in Capital, essentially differs from the methodology of pre-Marxian thinkers. Substantiation of the proposition that it is in labour activity that people's social relations, and hence people themselves and their consciousness are formed and subsist made it possible to understand society as a self-moving organism, developing according to definite laws, and whose activity includes production of ideas, notions, and consciousness. Consciousness in its relation to being is therefore considered in Capital not naturalistically, i.e., not as a relation of already existing consciousness to the outside world, but from socio-historical positions, with knowledge of objects and the means of obtaining it being understood as a result of the process of practically mastering the outside world. This is the meaning of the principle of correspondence of thought to reality, which is developed in Capital and according to which, the forms of thinking, of theoretical cognition of objects appear as laws of the latter's development. The content of these forms is revealed by dialectics, which regards cognition as an aspect of man's practical activity, in the course of which general categories evolve, disclosing the essence of the development of both things and ideas. Dialectics, reproducing the objective logic of the motion of the real world, therefore appears both as a form of theoretical thinking (logic) and as a means of understanding reality (epistemology).

Edited to add:

At the heart of dialectics is the idea of contradiction as the chief category. Contradiction reveals the motive force and source of all development. It contains the key to all other categories and principles of dialectical development: development by passage of quantitative change into qualitative ones, interruption of gradualness, leaps, negation of the initial moment of development and negation of this very negation, and repetition at a higher level of some of the features and aspects of the original state. As a previous poster on this thread has noted, contradiction is at the heart of laughter as well since "comedy is always about the contradictions in our knowledge" (rsfarrell).

[ 22 July 2005: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]


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Jay Pausner
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posted 22 July 2005 11:09 AM      Profile for Jay Pausner     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Cueball:

Perhaps the philosopher in question, Marx, actually is more popular because he actually had a bigger impact on peoples lives than the others, and that might be because of Marx's explicitly 'interventionist' approach.



For some reason, I've never become familiar with Marx. It has been easier for me to understand Russell and, so therefore, I feel an attraction to his writings more than Marx. Would many people consider Marx accessible, and understand him? Or do people rely on interpretations of Marx in forming opinion?

No doubt, Marx has had more impact. I concede that much. So the contest is more aptly titled the "Philosopher with the biggest bang for their philosophical buck".


I probaly jsu hate the term the "Greatest". It means very little.


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Geneva
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posted 22 July 2005 04:40 PM      Profile for Geneva     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
well, greatest lasting achievement for breadth and depth:
Plato, Aristotle, Kant

no one in the 20th century (or maybe 19th) of that calibre


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Rufus Polson
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posted 22 July 2005 05:05 PM      Profile for Rufus Polson     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Well, if you want to talk "lasting" that does pretty much leave out recent people.
For lasting impact, I think maybe I'd have to suggest Hammurabi.

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Stephen Gordon
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posted 22 July 2005 05:09 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by N.Beltov:

The best example of definite results is Marx's Capital. It is this work which most fully expresses Marx's two basic discoveries: the theory of surplus value and [... something else].


Nope. The LTV predated Marx - Ricardo used it as well.


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rsfarrell
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posted 22 July 2005 05:34 PM      Profile for rsfarrell        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by rasmus raven:
[QB]rsfarrell, it's somewhat of a truism with any difficult philosopher that few people can articulate their point, and fewer would leave it unchallenged.

I don't agree. Hume is a difficult philosopher, so is Hobbes, but lots of people can articulate their ideas. Kant is a mindbender, but once you have extracted the theory of the categorical imperative, you can explain it to any other intelligent person.

quote:
I called it a heuristic or a sensibility; you called it a method. I resist the notion of "method" because I think it's an inaccurate description of the value of the idea. Part of its value as a sensibility, for example, is to leave us with the expectation that whatever certainty we have must meet its limits one day. In the best case, therefore, it encourages receptivity to criticism.

Considering that Hegel is one of the few thinkers that can claim to be a major influence on both totalitarian communism and national socialism, the idea that the dialectic encourages receptivity to criticism takes on something of an ironic character.

quote:
But it is more than a mere injunction to be receptive to criticism: it is a critique of the limits of knowledge itself.

It is not. It would be a critique of knowledge if Hegel believed that you can never analyze the dialectic from within the dialectic; but, in fact, he thinks that metaphysics can uncover necessary interactions between thesis and antithesis, leading to laws of historical development. To read historicism as a critque of absolute knowledge is wrongheaded; the analysis of social determination of knowledge can inspire such a critque, but a historicist thinks that they can arrive at laws which transend social determination; those would be the laws of historical development.

quote:
Is Hegelian/Marxist dialectic a method yielding definite results, to be applied everywhere, or a model to which all knowledge can be subjected? No. Mathematical proof, scientific inquiry, the learning of art, riding a bicycle are just some examples of knowledge which make the point.

So what kind of knowledge is it? How is one concept of the lessons of the dialectic more correct than another? Is it simply -- and I do not mean to be dismissive when I say this; I respect religion -- an idea we are all supposed to grow by comtemplating, like the Holy Trinity?

quote:
One of the things that is annoying about Hegelian and Marxist dialectics is their teleological conception, which accounts for their necessity and means that Marxists often treat Marxism as an ahistorical system of truths that operate above the level of history (a position that is patently self-contradictory in Marxism), as opposed to a system of claims that are an expression of history, and therefore, at some point, must "go under".

Yes. And the rest of the continiental tradition has the same problem. If Focault tells us that what we say is determined by what society will let of say or hear us as saying, it is that true, or just what his society is forcing him to say?

quote:
As for what philosophy is about, I wouldn't dare to offer a general definition. For me, it's about achieving clarity, getting to the bottom of things, articulating and challenging assumptions. Some forms of rationality are necessary to the project. I don't believe there are "understandings", full stop, to be achieved, except of trivial problems. Hegel is one of the people I thank for that sensibility.

Understandings to not have to be perfect; what I call understandings you are calling articulation of assumptions, or "clarity." Po-tat-o, Po-tot-o.

As I said, Hegel's an important thinker. Critizing philosophers is like critizing a figure skater's triple axel; it should be done with an awareness of the fact that what they are doing, well or poorly, is something that most people cannot do at all. That said, we were talking about the dialectic, not just Hegel in general, and I would argue that the dialectic gives neither clarity, nor a way of getting to the bottom of things, nor articulation of assumptions, and therfore no way to challenge them. It's a crappy tool.


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rsfarrell
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posted 22 July 2005 05:35 PM      Profile for rsfarrell        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Geneva:
well, greatest lasting achievement for breadth and depth:
Plato, Aristotle, Kant

no one in the 20th century (or maybe 19th) of that calibre


Word. Hume, Descartes.


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Tommy_Paine
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posted 22 July 2005 08:47 PM      Profile for Tommy_Paine     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I made a sensible point about philosophy? You do know how to hurt a man, don't you Skdadl.
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Sven
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posted 22 July 2005 09:04 PM      Profile for Sven     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
But, for a purely fun read, it's really hard to beat Bertrand Russell.
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N.Beltov
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posted 23 July 2005 11:04 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Stephen Gordon: Nope. The LTV predated Marx - Ricardo used it as well.

I'm disappointed by your apparent lack of knowledge or understanding of some basic elements of Marx's ideas, SG. You've conflated the Labour Theory of Value (LTV) with the Theory of Surplus Value (TSV). These are far from the same thing. Ricardo had nothing to do with TSV though he was probably the most coherent proponent of the LTV prior to Marx.

Surplus-value is the value accruing to the capitalist as a consequence of the working day extending beyond necessary labour time; the rate of surplus-value, the ratio of surplus-value to variable capital (wages) or of surplus to necessary labour time, expresses the degree of exploitation of labour by capital.

Value, as Marx uses the term in Capital, is the amount of socially necesary labour time for the production of a commodity incorporated in that commodity.

I agree with you that historical materialism is "something else" but probably not in the way that you mean it.

[ 23 July 2005: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]


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Geneva
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posted 23 July 2005 07:19 PM      Profile for Geneva     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
hell, who was talking about fun reads??

loads of those around; I think Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" is fantastic, full of irony and extraordinarily well observed psychology

but, great philosophy? not.


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Cueball
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posted 23 July 2005 08:42 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Jay Pausner:

For some reason, I've never become familiar with Marx. It has been easier for me to understand Russell and, so therefore, I feel an attraction to his writings more than Marx. Would many people consider Marx accessible, and understand him? Or do people rely on interpretations of Marx in forming opinion?

No doubt, Marx has had more impact. I concede that much. So the contest is more aptly titled the "Philosopher with the biggest bang for their philosophical buck".


I probaly jsu hate the term the "Greatest". It means very little.



I agree the whole 'greatest' thing is a bit silly, especially if you haven't defined the terms on which "Great" is determined.

Just for real impact, Marx wins hands down, but if you are talking in terms of their impact on philosophy any number of candidates appear. Hegel for instance.


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jeff house
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posted 23 July 2005 09:04 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Is Hegelian/Marxist dialectic a method yielding definite results, to be applied everywhere, or a model to which all knowledge can be subjected? No.

That's certainly true. But my objection does not have to do with the field of applicability of dialectics, but with its origin.

Although some people derive dialectics from the Soctratic method, the form in which it is found in Marx comes from Christian theology in the Middle ages, because it is that theology which used the triad of thesis/antithesis: synthesis.

So, there is nothing particularly new or scientific about the idea. In the middle ages, it was associated with millenarianism, the idea that the Millenium would soon arrive.

There is a particularly good discussion of the topic in Norman Cohn's book on Millenarianism. I've forgotten the details, but the general point remains clear to me.


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N.Beltov
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posted 23 July 2005 10:13 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
jeff house: Although some people derive dialectics from the Socratic method, the form in which it is found in Marx comes from Christian theology in the Middle ages, because it is that theology which used the triad of thesis/antithesis: synthesis.

So, there is nothing particularly new or scientific about the idea. In the middle ages, it was associated with millenarianism, the idea that the Millenium would soon arrive.


This is almost completely wrong. Marxian dialectics doesn't mimic Christian theology from the middle ages; neither medieval dialectics nor Marxist dialectics relies on triads; and the Marxist approach, while heavily relying upon Hegel's outstanding accomplishment, is new in some ways and most definitely scientific.

Firstly, for the philosophy of feudal society, scholasticism, the term of dialectics was used to denote formal logic as opposed to rhetoric.

Some history might be useful here. My quotes are from Dictionary of Philosophy; Frolov, Ivan, editor, Moscow, 1984.

quote:
The scientific conception of dialectics was preceded by a long history of development and the very concept of dialectics emerged through revising, even overcoming, the original meaning of the term. Originally, the term (dialektike techne-art of dialectic) denoted: a)the art of debate by means of questions and answers, and b) the art of classifying concepts, dividing things into genera and species. In antiquity philosophers strongly stressed the mutability of all the existent and considered reality as a process, postulating change of every property into its opposite. We could mention here Heraclitus, some of the Milesian philosophers, and the Pythagoreans. But the term "dialectics" was not,as yet, used. Aristotle believed that dialectics had been invented by Zeno of Elea, who analyzed the conflicting aspects in the concepts of motion and plurality. Aristotle differentiated dialectics, the science of probable opinions, from analytics, teh science of proofs. Plato defined true being as identical and immutable, yet gave credence to the dialectical conclusion that the higher genera of the existent can each be conceived only as being and not being, as equal to themselves and not equal to themselves, as identical to themselves and as passing into "something else". Therefore, being contains contradictions: it is single and plural, eternal and transient, immutable and mutable, at rest and in motion. Contradiction is the necessary condition for prompting the soul to reflection. This art, according to Plato, is the art of dialectics.

In the more recent history of dialectics, starting with the epoch of the Renaissance, dialectical ideas on the "coincidence of opposites" were elaborated by Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno.

quote:
Later, despite the prevalence of metaphysics, Descartes and Spinoza produced specimens of dialectical thought. In the 18th century in France, a wealth of dialectical ideas was produced by J.J. Rousseau and Denis Diderot. Rousseau examined contradiction as a condition of historical development. Diderot went a step further and investigated contradictions in the contemporary social consciousness.

quote:
The most important pre-Marxian stage in the development of dialectics was classical German idealism which, in contrast to metaphysical materialism, considered reality not merely as an object of cognition, but also as an object of activity. However, ignorance of the true, material basis of cognition and activity of the subject limited and distorted the dialectical notions of the German idealists. The first to make a breach in metaphysics was Kant. He noted the opposite forces in the physical and cosmogonic processes and followed Descartes by introducing the idea of development into cognition of nature. In his epistemology, Kant developed dialectical ideas in his teaching of antinomies. Yet he described dialectics of reason as an illusion which evaporates as soon as thought recedes within itself, bounded by the cognition of phenomena proper. After Kant, Schelling too, developed a dialectical appreciation of the processes of nature.

The idealistic dialectics of Hegel was the summit in the development of pre-Marxian dialectics. "For the first time the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as a process, i.e., as in constant motion, change, transformation, development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all this movement and development." (F. Engels, Anti-Duhring. The result of Hegel's dialectics transcended by far the significance which the author himself ascribed to it. Hegel's teaching on the necessity with which all things arrive at their own negation, contained an element which revolutionized life and thought, for which reason the foremost thinkers of the time regarded his dialectics as the "algebra of revolution" (Herzen).

A truly scientific appreciation of dialectics was given by Marx and Engels. They discarded the idealistic content of Hegel's philosophy and based dialectics on their materialistic understanding of the historical process and the development of knowledge, on their generalization of the real processes taking place in nature, society and thought. Scientific dialectics organically combines the laws governing the development of being and the laws of cognition, these two being identical and differing in form only. For this reason, materialist dialectics is not only an "ontological", but also an epistemological teaching, a logic which regards thought and cognition equally as being in a state of becoming and development, inasmuch as things and phenomena are what they are becoming in the process of development and contain as a tendency their own future, or what they will become. In this sense the theory of knowledge too, is considered by materialist dialectics as a generalized history of cognition; and every concept, every category is, therefore, historical in nature, despite its extremely general character.


I love that line: contradiction is the necessary condition for prompting the soul to reflection.


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rsfarrell
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posted 24 July 2005 08:33 PM      Profile for rsfarrell        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
A truly scientific appreciation of dialectics was given by Marx and Engels. They discarded the idealistic content of Hegel's philosophy and based dialectics on their materialistic understanding of the historical process and the development of knowledge, on their generalization of the real processes taking place in nature, society and thought. Scientific dialectics organically combines the laws governing the development of being and the laws of cognition, these two being identical and differing in form only. For this reason, materialist dialectics is not only an "ontological", but also an epistemological teaching, a logic which regards thought and cognition equally as being in a state of becoming and development, inasmuch as things and phenomena are what they are becoming in the process of development and contain as a tendency their own future, or what they will become. In this sense the theory of knowledge too, is considered by materialist dialectics as a generalized history of cognition; and every concept, every category is, therefore, historical in nature, despite its extremely general character.

I like the fact that your own source calls the dialectic "an epistemological teaching." But that's the immature "gotcha" impulse in me coming out.

Seriously, I don't see how this is scientific or even useful. How do you use it to solve problems? You say it's not a method, but your source seems to think it is. If it's a sensibility, what does it teach us? That knowledge is socially determined and not objective? That is a trival deduction from Hume's problem of induction. That contradictory propositions can both contain elements of truth? That is a "sensibility" which Plato would be entirely comfortable with; it is not orginal to historicists.

I see a lot of flattering things being said about the dialectic, but it seems to me to be more of a religious mystery rather than a scientific or philosophical tool.


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Stephen Gordon
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posted 24 July 2005 09:08 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Gaaah. And again: Gaaah.

From where I stand, Marx' contributions consist of

- a less-than-useful notion of 'class',

- the surplus value proposition, which makes no sense,

- the prediction that wages would stay at subsistence levels (they didn't), and

- the prediction that the rate of return on capital would decline over time (it hasn't).

Not to mention the Transformation Problem of going from Marx' notional 'values' to the prices we actually observe. At one point, I decided to figure out just what this involved, but when I learned that Paul Samuelson had gone before me, and had concluded that

quote:
In summary, "transforming" from values to prices can be described logically as the following procedure: "(1) Write down the value relations; (2) take an eraser and rub them out; (3) finally write down the price relations - thus completing the so-called transformation process."

I decided not to bother.


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jeff house
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posted 24 July 2005 09:10 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yes, definitely a history of philosophy published in Moscow in 1984 can be relied upon to treat seriously
1) The religious thought which underpins Marxism;

2) The unscientific nature of the official ideology of the state.


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Cueball
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posted 24 July 2005 09:30 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
No of course not, since they in no way could be construed to be part of the opening up and rethinking of the basic underpinnings of Soviet ideology and Marxism that was going on at that time. We all know that Mikail Gorbachov's decision to pursue Glasnost came from a sudden revelation that he had while sleeping, and had nothing to do with a progression of thought within the Soviet intelligencia.

Next Beltov will be trying to tell us that reading other expressions of monolithic and unquestioning Soviet orthodoxy like "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," by Solzhenitsyn published in 1962 in the USSR, might actually be useful in understanding the Soviet Union.

The Red narrative must always be condemened and the books burned!

[ 24 July 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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jeff house
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posted 24 July 2005 09:48 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Gorbachov came to power in 1985. That article was written in 1984.

Also, there is not a word in the article which relects any rethinking of anything.

That's why analogies with Ivan Denisovich don't make any sense.


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Cueball
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posted 24 July 2005 10:00 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Gorbachov came to power in 1985. That article was written in 1984.

Right that is what I was saying, there was no change or progression in Soviet thought between 1917 and 1984. It was monolithic, all texts were closely read and monititored by the politburo using their superhuman commie powers. Krusheov stole his speed reading techniques from the Amricans, it is a well known fact, and then applied them to his malign and evil ends.

Nor was there any exchange of ideas or progression of ideas. Gorbacheov was a mystic, whose sudden idea for Glasnost can in no way be located in the development of political ideas and philosophy, for all ideas come from within the Commie Borg unit.

There was no variance from the centralized plan, "One Day in the Life," was just more carefully arranged commoe propoganda, and anything written in Russia between 1917 and 1990, must be discarded as mere commie fraud.

There is no need to even discuss its content, all we need do is note the date it was published and where it was published and then discard it.

[ 24 July 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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jeff house
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posted 24 July 2005 10:31 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Right that is what I was saying, there was no change or progression in Soviet thought between 1917 and 1984.

OH! And here I thought you were trying to attribute the article to a period to which it does not belong.

By locating it in the glasnost' period, you could then falsely pretend that the article is somehow a critique, rather than what it is, the state ideology of the Soviet Union.

To simply copy long paragraphs from this state philosophy, and state categorically that other views are "almost completely wrong" is simply to argue from authority.

Your parody of my views was funny, though. You needed a straw man, so you made one up! But now I'll wait for someone with something more interesting to say.


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Cueball
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posted 24 July 2005 10:38 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Oh no. I am not interested in pointing to this document as a critique.

But I have discovered, as of late, that some people seem fond of an ideological construction, whereby other ideological constructions can not be understood from within the tenents of their own construct, but only from within the confines of the preffered construct which they apply, while ignoring the fact that they too are operating from within an equally rigid ideological construct.

This, when applied, creates an interesting phenomena, wherein they are infinitely capable of seeing nuance and division within their own ideology, but can not see nuance and division within the ideology of others, which appears as a monolithic and threatening obstruction to their missionary like application of the methodolgy they say they are opposing.

Please take note of the disclaimer below...

[ 24 July 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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jeff house
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posted 24 July 2005 10:55 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
can not see nuance and division within the ideology of others

Soviet ideology prided itself in being simple. It abhorred division.

You will be unable to find, anywhere, a Soviet publication after about 1925 which celebrates "division" within Marxism.


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forum observer
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posted 24 July 2005 11:20 PM      Profile for forum observer   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Good for Angie Hobbs

A lot of people use the image of Plato, yet do not understand where it comes from. Consider this and the Vatican. Is Raphael's picture held there?

Plato established the dialogue as a vehicle of philosophical thought and his writing on topics as varied as love, government, politics, ethics, friendship, metaphysics, law and cosmology set out the terms of much of what we call philosophy today.

It should have been Plato, together with the understanding of dialogue. What it can do to bring forward new ideas. That's why Plato points to heaven

Maybe It's that One thing Curly mentions in City Slicker?

Model absorbtions can do that. That's what philosophy should be about...Non!

[ 24 July 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]


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rasmus
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posted 25 July 2005 12:04 AM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hegel, Schlegel, Bagel, and lox
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Cueball
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posted 25 July 2005 03:04 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by jeff house:

Soviet ideology prided itself in being simple. It abhorred division.

You will be unable to find, anywhere, a Soviet publication after about 1925 which celebrates "division" within Marxism.


That is a hefty order. Given that if you identify Soviet Marxism as unified whole, without division, anything that is part of it, or published by its institutions, no matter how new or different it is from what came before is perforce still part of its indivisible nature, according to your view, just because of its source.

Just as if I were to assert that anything published by the Capitalist press was an expression of its central thesis that should be accounted for as part of its whole and therefore just another example of its indivisible nature, just because of its source.

I think there is a difference bewtween Keynes and the Neo-liberals, even though in the main, at any one time in history while those sub-division of Capitalist ideology are 'fashionable,' their adherents, and the governments they control seem to operate with a nearly uniform and singular purpose. Note if you will, how some "celebrate" the divisions between the Democratic and Republican parties even though they have operated under very much the same economic (Globalized free trade, internaionally, and government cut backs domestically) and foreign policy (interventionist) platform over the last 15 years.

"Celebration" of division in the USA amounts to overplaying the importance of trivialities. Just as there were "debates" between the publisher of Novy Myr and Pravda. The New York times and the Washington Post, as it were. On the big issues, such as Soviet intervention in Afghanistan there was lockstep agreement, until things went sour, much as the neccesity of pursuing a "War on Terror" is a "given" of US politics.

I think your view of the USSR is extremely simplistic, in line with your view that "Soviet ideology prided itself in being simple." Are you sure that statement isn't simply a reflection of the way you like to interpret Soviet ideology?

How about examples of division and change within the Marxist ideology and philosophy of Soviet Russia?

One example of work that signals division or change within the USSR that was published in the USSR after 1925, (other than Solzhenitsyn and one that is actually philosophical) is Mikhail Bakhtin.

Bakhtin is not simple, either.

[ 25 July 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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N.Beltov
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posted 25 July 2005 12:01 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
jeff house: To simply copy long paragraphs from this state philosophy, and state categorically that other views are "almost completely wrong" is simply to argue from authority.

The point of the lengthy quotes was to address your assertions and insist, right off the bat, on a logical and historical approach to the question. I guess if you had actually quoted Norman Cohn then I could denounce your source in principle as you did mine. As Cueball has pointed out, your response is more interesting than anything I wrote.

Just to remind you, your assertions were:

quote:
Jeff House: But my objection does not have to do with the field of applicability of dialectics, but with its origin.

Although some people derive dialectics from the Soctratic method, the form in which it is found in Marx comes from Christian theology in the Middle ages, because it is that theology which used the triad of thesis/antithesis: synthesis.


This "triad" is both a caricature of dialectics and a reflection of the views of those who have a poor understanding of it. Medieval scholasticism used the term dialectics to denote formal logic. That's got very little in common with an articulate and radical "young Hegelian" by the name of Marx.

quote:
So, there is nothing particularly new or scientific about the idea. In the middle ages, it was associated with millenarianism, the idea that the Millenium would soon arrive.

I showed what was new by quoting the appropriate passage from the dictionary edited by Frolov. What was new? Marx and Engels got rid of Hegel's idealistic content and they used their newly found materialist approach to history as a basis for a new chapter in the history of dialectics. Furthermore, nobody who has critiqued Marx in this thread has dared to challenge historical materialism or the Marxist claims about its scientific usefulness. In fact, historical materialism is so common that I'm a little suprised that some critics of Marx on this thread haven't claimed that someone else invented it.

The scientific validity and usefulness of a dialectical approach isn't that hard to confirm outside of orthodox Marxism. Stephen Jay Gould theorized "punctuated equilibrium" in relation to evolution by natural selection. The approach continues to generate rich dividends. See also The Dialectical Biologist by Levins and Lewontin. I've not read it but it is supposed to be outstanding.

So, new? Check. Scientific? Check. My only regret is that I'm not nearly as articulate about dialectics as I would like to be . But even my primitive understanding is better that some excellent misunderstandings.

**************************************
Sidebar: The parts of the dictionary that relate to assertions about the role of the Communist Party I simply ignore. That's where the "state ideology" comes in. But there's nothing wrong with separating the wheat from the chaff in regard to such sources just as Marx himself took what was useful, as he saw it, from the conservative philosophy of one George W.F. Hegel.
**************************************

I'm going to try to make time to address some of the other comments here. But I expect that at the end of it I will be asserting that if people want a good example of the application of dialectics in a Marxist way, they are simply just going to have to read Marx's book, Capital. And that advice applies especially to Stephen Gordon, whose deafening silence about his conflation of LTV with TSV makes me think that his comments are far from a disinterested search for the truth. However, having a look at Capital might address the fair question raised by rsfarrell, to wit, "Seriously, I don't see how this is scientific or even useful. How do you use it to solve problems?"
Looking at the best example of the application of dialectics to a concrete problem, the analysis of the capitalist mode of production, might convince a person of the usefulness of dialectics.

There are, however, other examples. In 1993, Bertell Ollman wrote Dialectical Investigations in which he outlined more than half a dozen examples of the application of dialectics to concrete problems. Ollman has recently re-printed some of this material, and added more, in his Dance of the Dialectic. For a Canadian example, see Canadian Identity by Robin Matthews. A word of caution about the last example: if my memory serves me correctly, Matthews book wasn't all that great. But learning about dialectics, like learning about anything useful and demanding, requires continuous effort over the long haul.

I think I shall end this submission with my favourite inspiring quote of Marx. It's about hard work and effort, which Marx put at the heart of his conception of what it is to be human. When I want to inspire myself I try to cultivate an appetite for hard work which is what Marx, I think, is getting at here.

quote:
There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.

[ 25 July 2005: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 25 July 2005 01:09 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
For rsfarrell: Here is Bertell Ollman's summary of the dialectical approach used by Marx in Capital.

The Utopian Vision of the Future: A Marxist Critique

quote:
The first step Marx took to unravel the mysteries of capitalism was to make a detailed investigation of the capitalist mode of production, or the specific ways in which wealth is produced, distributed, exchanged, and consumed in our form of society together with the relations between the classes involved in these processes (or what Marx was later to call “capital accumulation” and “class struggle”). After tracing the broad patterns found in the interaction between these processes and relations within the mode of production and those in a few other sectors of capitalist society, Marx set out to look for their preconditions in the past. The second step in this systematic use of the dialectical method is to look backward from the present. His main guiding question is—what had to have happened in the past for capitalism to appear and function as it does now? And his search for answers is as much deductive (proceeding from what he found in his survey of the present) as inductive. Then turning around—in the decisive third step—he takes what he has learned about preconditions reorganized as a set of overlapping contradictions, and projects them forward into the present...and beyond.

By following this procedure, Marx is able to conceive of the present as the future of its past which is in the process of becoming the past of its own future. What is now the result (capitalism) of its own preconditions is viewed as the precondition of what will soon become its result and its own negation. The point is that any conditions which arise in historical time are capable of disappearing in historical time. The broad relations they had with whatever helped bring them into being are reproduced when these conditions themselves are in the process of giving way to what comes next. Capitalism took and transformed but also rejected a good deal of its own preconditions, and will receive the same treatment from the society that follows it. In this way, examining what happened in the evolving relation between capitalism and the society from which it emerged can be an important guide to what socialism is likely to take, transform, and reject from capitalism. And throughout, it is organizing the major tendencies involved as contradictions—that is, as mutually dependent processes that simultaneously support and undermine one another while building up to a major collision up ahead—that enables Marx to project both the possibility of a socialist revolution and the kind of society which can follow from it.


E.V. Ilyenkov also wrote about the methodology used in Capital if you are interested in investigating further.


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jeff house
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posted 25 July 2005 01:14 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
As Cueball has pointed out, your response is more interesting than anything I wrote.


Well, I certainly agree with that.


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N.Beltov
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posted 25 July 2005 02:16 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Thanks for your lengthy reply and your willingness to engage in debate. Poor Cueball seems to have wasted his time pointing out that democratic babies shouldn't be thrown out with the Brezhnev bath water. Or is it your view, Jeff, that perestroika, glasnost and accelerating economic development and productivity were all worthless ideas?
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jeff house
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posted 25 July 2005 04:46 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
When a pithy remark says all that is required, I prefer the pithy remark.

K. Marx

(Okay, I made up the quote, but I wanted it to be authoritative.)


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
forum observer
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posted 25 July 2005 04:57 PM      Profile for forum observer   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
By Heaven, can we be ready to believe that the absolutely real has no share in movement, life, soul or wisdom? That it does not live or think, but in solemn holiness, unpossessed of mind, stands entirely at rest? That would be a dreadful thing to admit.[33]
From: It is appropriate that plectics refers to entanglement or the lack thereof, | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
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posted 25 July 2005 05:38 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Even if it pitheth people off?

[ 25 July 2005: Message edited by: Michelle ]


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
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posted 25 July 2005 07:49 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by N.Beltov:
Thanks for your lengthy reply and your willingness to engage in debate. Poor Cueball seems to have wasted his time pointing out that democratic babies shouldn't be thrown out with the Brezhnev bath water. Or is it your view, Jeff, that perestroika, glasnost and accelerating economic development and productivity were all worthless ideas?

What do you mean poor me? I rather enjoyed contributing to Jeff's ideological gridlock. Heaven forbid that capitalist idealogues should ever go through a process of self-examination, such as the one engaged by the Soviet inteligensia just prior Glasnost, or they should examine their own methodology. If they were to do that they might be able to squeeze out something beyond pithy remarks and derrision.

Interesting indeed that thread should begin with the assertion that Marx is the "greatest" philosopher, an idea which I think is highly debatable on any number of fronts, but that beyond simple derrision and the assertion, more or less, that after 1925 the USSR enetered intellectual stasis, Jeff has managed nothing of substance to contradict the original assertion.

God forbid that anyone should even refer to texts written as an expression of that philosophy by its own architects. What a terrible precedent you are setting Belotv! the next thing you know you will be suggesting that defendants might actually be allowed to testify at their own trial.

[ 25 July 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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rsfarrell
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posted 25 July 2005 08:05 PM      Profile for rsfarrell        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Furthermore, nobody who has critiqued Marx in this thread has dared to challenge historical materialism or the Marxist claims about its scientific usefulness.

That's probably because historical materialism is widely known to be one of the most utterly useless and baseless ideological fantasies of all time. Yeah, I'll write a critque of historical materialism right after I write a 200 page treastie on why the world is not flat.

quote:
The scientific validity and usefulness of a dialectical approach isn't that hard to confirm outside of orthodox Marxism. Stephen Jay Gould theorized "punctuated equilibrium" in relation to evolution by natural selection. The approach continues to generate rich dividends.

"Punctuated equilibrium" is a biological process, not a philosophical idea. It's apples and oranges -- like claiming neutron stars prove the theory of the Golden Mean.

I'm sure Gould would be highly amused at the idea of you using his work as an example of dialectical thinking.


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Cueball
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posted 25 July 2005 08:15 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think the Marxist analysis of capital is so ingrained in our culture that people don't even know they are applying it, when they are.

Some ideas cease to be notable, after they become generally accepted. For instance, many women will publically eschew feminism, yet when it comes to issues such as equal pay for equal work, the vote, and other aspects of universal sufferage, they are on side. These ideas are generally accepted by the great majority of men as well. But were you to actually identify these ideas as "feminist" ideas, you would get marked resistance to the assingation.

I think this is partly because these ideas are so universal they are no longer identifiable with their source, just as I think a lot of Marxist ideas, no longer even appear to be Marxist ideas, but simply part of our basic mode of interpretting the world.

For instance, it is widely understood by most people in North America, Latin America and Europe, that "class" is an effect of economic relationships as opposed to genealogy. This was not the case in 1848.

[ 25 July 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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Boom Boom
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posted 25 July 2005 09:05 PM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The world wouldn’t be
In such a snarl
If Marx had been Groucho
Instead of Karl
- Isaiah Berlin

From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
rsfarrell
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posted 25 July 2005 10:05 PM      Profile for rsfarrell        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Cueball:
I think the Marxist analysis of capital is so ingrained in our culture that people don't even know they are applying it, when they are.

Some ideas cease to be notable, after they become generally accepted. . . For instance, it is widely understood by most people in North America, Latin America and Europe, that "class" is an effect of economic relationships as opposed to genealogy. This was not the case in 1848.

[ 25 July 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


As a thinker, Marx made a number of important contributions to the discourse. All of Marx's "science," unfortunately, is pretty much bunk; that goes for his analysis of capitial, historical materialism, and the labor theory of value, and other unintentionally humorous theories.

That's OK; lots of Frued's ideas are bunk, but no one denies his importance for modern thought.

Popper's analysis of Marx in The Open Society and Its Enemies is a good look at the flaws in Marxist theories as well as his very important contributions.


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Boom Boom
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posted 25 July 2005 10:14 PM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Originally posted by rsfarrell:
All of Marx's "science," unfortunately, is pretty much bunk; that goes for his analysis of capitial, historical materialism, and the labor theory of value, and other unintentionally humorous theories.

This was summed up well in this Groucho Marxist analysis: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies".

Okay, I'll go now. This thread brought out the devil in me.


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Cueball
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posted 25 July 2005 10:16 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by rsfarrell:

As a thinker, Marx made a number of important contributions to the discourse. All of Marx's "science," unfortunately, is pretty much bunk; that goes for his analysis of capitial, historical materialism, and the labor theory of value, and other unintentionally humorous theories.

That's OK; lots of Frued's ideas are bunk, but no one denies his importance for modern thought.

Popper's analysis of Marx in The Open Society and Its Enemies is a good look at the flaws in Marxist theories as well as his very important contributions.


I think this is a an odd dichotomy here. You have first stated that "as a thinker, Marx made a number of important contributions to the discourse," then gone on to describe every single major facet of his thinking as bunk. I don't know what to make of it really.

Perhaps I should ask what Marx's important contributions were. How about that?

[ 25 July 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
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posted 25 July 2005 10:17 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Boom Boom:

This was summed up well in this Groucho Marxist analysis: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies".
[/QB]


This is of course, very funny.


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
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posted 25 July 2005 10:27 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Cueball:

I think this is a an odd dichotomy here. You have first stated that "as a thinker, Marx made a number of important contributions to the discourse," then gone on to describe every single major facet of his thinking as bunk. I don't know what to make of it really.

Perhaps I should ask what Marx's important contributions were. How about that?


Maybe he was just being polite. How 'bout I repeat what I said earlier?

quote:
From where I stand, Marx' contributions consist of

- a less-than-useful notion of 'class',

- the surplus value proposition, which makes no sense,

- the prediction that wages would stay at subsistence levels (they didn't), and

- the prediction that the rate of return on capital would decline over time (it hasn't).

Not to mention the Transformation Problem of going from Marx' notional 'values' to the prices we actually observe. At one point, I decided to figure out just what this involved, but when I learned that Paul Samuelson had gone before me, and had concluded that

'In summary, "transforming" from values to prices can be described logically as the following procedure: "(1) Write down the value relations; (2) take an eraser and rub them out; (3) finally write down the price relations - thus completing the so-called transformation process." '


I decided not to bother.


[ 25 July 2005: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]


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Cueball
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posted 25 July 2005 10:46 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Stephen, we have had these discussion before. I have basicly written you off. It would nice if you could do the same for me.

One of the reasons for this is that you insist on pulling out your pet talking points without real relevance to the discussion at hand. My post becomes a springboard for whatever your pet graph of the day is. If you had actually been paying attention to the discussion, you would have seen that there was an exchange of opions in progress, and I, lowly and inadequate thinker that I am was actually interested in what Farrel had to say, and was not simply looking for a soap box.

I know it is diffcult for you to imagine a post without a soap box. But there it is: I object to you trying to make one out of me.

The fact that you have simply reposted your earlier post, without any reference to what Farrel of I was talking about, except as am insertion point for your list of talking points is indicative of your modus operandi.

Stephen, we have had these discussion before. I have basicly written you off. It would nice if you could do the same for me.

[ 25 July 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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Stephen Gordon
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posted 25 July 2005 11:11 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sorry, I won't: I take these issues seriously.
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Cueball
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posted 25 July 2005 11:12 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ok, then, aside from your obvious technical disagreements with Marx, is there anything valuable in it? As in a general approach, or insights that he may have had, which might not have been all reconcialable with each other or techincally perfect but perhaps pointed in useful directions etc?

[ 25 July 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
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posted 25 July 2005 11:28 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The one thing I do think is interesting - although I really don't know where to go with this idea - is the 'alienation' notion. I live a life that is pretty much sheltered from the market (I'm a tenured professor), and most of the decisions that affect me and my colleagues are made on a consensual basis. And I have to admit that I like it like that.

[edited to add: rsfarrell's post below is a more eloquent expression of what I was trying to get at.]

[ 25 July 2005: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]


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rsfarrell
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posted 25 July 2005 11:30 PM      Profile for rsfarrell        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I'm at work; I want to look at some books at home and think a little about Marx's contributions before I respond. For now I can only reiteratite that I think he's an important thinker.

One thing I liked in Marx was his idea of the alienating nature of modern factory work. As far as I know, he was the first person to compare production in industrial societies with that of pre-industrial societies not just in term of the standard of living, but in terms of the worker's emotional health. The idea that everyone has a right, not just to money, or to the job that makes the money, but to a satisfying job that is engaging rather than dehumanizing -- that's a powerful dream.


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rsfarrell
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posted 25 July 2005 11:35 PM      Profile for rsfarrell        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hey, I didn't read the post above my last before I posted. Spooky.
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Cueball
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posted 25 July 2005 11:37 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
The one thing I do think is interesting - although I really don't know where to go with this idea - is the 'alienation' notion. I live a life that is pretty much sheltered from the market (I'm a tenured professor), and most of the decisions that affect me and my colleagues are made on a consensual basis. And I have to admit that I like it like that.

[edited to add: rsfarrell's post below is a more eloquent expression of what I was trying to get at.]

[ 25 July 2005: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]


I think that is pretty funny given that Maex later rejected his early notions of alienation.


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
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posted 25 July 2005 11:39 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Damn - I'm tired and about to go to bed, so I can't come up with a smart-ass comeback...
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rsfarrell
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posted 25 July 2005 11:41 PM      Profile for rsfarrell        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!"

The sentiment was not entirely new, but this perfect expression of the socialist ideal we owe to Marx. I don't think his economic theories showed us a way to get there, but is there any doubt that the perfect society would obey this simple principle?


From: Portland, Oregon | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged

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