[Xmca-l] Re: intersubjectivity and perspective taking, po russkii

[Andy Blunden]

Greg, you do as almost any Hegel reader of our times would do and turn 
to the master-servant dialectic in the Phenomenology for an answer to a 
question about Hegel. The problem is that this dialectic is about the 
confrontation between two subjects who have no third, no means of 
mediation of their relation (in the wild so to speak) and find 
themselves in a situation of having to fight to the death, etc., etc., 
but manage to live together only by one subordinating the other, and by 
means of a dialectic of needs and labour, so one, at least (the 
servant), gets to know the Other. Secondly, no Marxist or psychologist 
took any interest in this passage until after Vygotsky's death. Mead in 
the US and Kojeve in France in the mid-1930s, were the first to write 
about it.

There are a number of passages to go to in Hegel to find about his ideas 
on empathy, but I would think the natural place to go is the Philosophy 
of Right where Hegel is concerned that the growth of "bourgeois society" 
(i.e., the market) is leading to mutual alienation. In his early work he 
thought that the market, by publicly circulating and valuing someone's 
product would be the means of mutual recognition or mediation, but this 
is less prominent in the Philosophy of Right. Mostly he looks to all 
manner of voluntary association as the means by which conflict and 
failure of recognition may be mediated. And *mediated* is the big word 
there. Marx actually makes fun of Hegel for his obsession with mediation 
in the Philosophy of Right. But I think that is Hegel's answser (if one 
wants to know that): mediation. That is the problem which the two 
subjects running into each other in the wild had.

Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.mira.net/~andy/


Greg Thompson wrote:
> Mike,
> Not so dumb, I would think, since this is a very central part of Hegel's
> social ontology of the subject. (Too) Simply put, self-consciousness arises
> from our awareness that others are subjects just like ourselves. Here is
> what I take to be Hegel's description of perspective-taking:
> "It must cancel this its other. To do so is the sublation of that first
> double meaning, and is therefore a second double meaning. First, it must
> set itself to sublate the other independent being, in order thereby to
> become certain of itself as true being, secondly, it thereupon proceeds to
> sublate its own self, for this other is itself."
>
> This is, of course, the second paragraph in the introduction to Hegel's
> Master/Slave dialectic (all 5 paragraphs of the intro are below). In that
> tale, perspective-taking fails b.c. although the slave takes the
> perspective of the master, the master has no reason to take the perspective
> of the slave. This is imperfect recognition and does not allow for the full
> constitution (consummation, following Bakhtin) of the subjects as fully
> self-conscious.
>
> [There is good evidence that this was part of G. H. Mead's inspiration in
> his development of perspective taking (but this is both debatable and, to
> my mind, of little consequence).]
>
>  I also wonder if some variant of perspective taking can be found in Marx's
> early concept of species being, or perhaps in the idea of the relations of
> persons one to another. It would seem that Marx's writings on the commodity
> fetish are precisely a problem of perspective taking - the individual
> participants no longer see that there are others who are full and rich
> individuals like themselves; instead, other people become tools for
> accomplishing MY aims. And it is this that communism is supposed to
> reconcile - bringing all people into a deep appreciation of not just our
> deep dependence upon one another, but also of our universal kinship, i.e.
> our "mutuality of being" as Rupert Stasch has so eloquently put it.
> Mutuality of being requires an understanding that other people are "just
> like us".
> Isn't that perspective taking?
>
> But I have no clue how or in what linguistic forms this would have made its
> way from Hegel's and Marx's German to Vygotsky's Russian (if at all...).
> -greg
> p.s. psychological anthropologist Doug Hollan has been seriously looking
> into "empathy" along with fellow psyc anth scholar C. Jason Throop. One of
> Doug's pieces is listed in the email that just I'll forward in just a
> minute to XMCA.
>
>
> Full text of paras 179-184 from Phenomenology of Spirit:
>
> Φ <http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/philosophie/hegel/phaenom/kap4.htm#p179>
> 179 <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/findlay2.htm#m179>
> . Self-consciousness has before it another self-consciousness; it has come
> outside itself. This has a double significance. First it has lost its own
> self, since it finds itself as an *other* being; secondly, it has thereby
> sublated that other, for it does not regard the other as essentially real,
> but sees its own self in the other.
>
> Φ <http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/philosophie/hegel/phaenom/kap4.htm#p180>
> 180 <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/findlay2.htm#m180>
> . It must cancel this its other. To do so is the sublation of that first
> double meaning, and is therefore a second double meaning. First, it must
> set itself to sublate the other independent being, in order thereby to
> become certain of itself as true being, secondly, it thereupon proceeds to
> sublate its own self, for this other is itself.
>
> Φ <http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/philosophie/hegel/phaenom/kap4.htm#p181>
> 181 <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/findlay2.htm#m181>
> . This sublation in a double sense of its otherness in a double sense is at
> the same time a return in a double sense into its self. For, firstly,
> through sublation, it gets back itself, because it becomes one with itself
> again through the cancelling of *its *otherness; but secondly, it likewise
> gives otherness back again to the other self-consciousness, for it was
> aware of being in the other, it cancels this its own being in the other and
> thus lets the other again go free.
>
> Φ <http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/philosophie/hegel/phaenom/kap4.htm#p182>
> 182 <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/findlay2.htm#m182>
> . This process of self-consciousness in relation to another
> self-consciousness has in this manner been represented as the action of one
> alone. But this action on the part of the one has itself the double
> significance of being at once its own action and the action of that other
> as well. For the other is likewise independent, shut up within itself, and
> there is nothing in it which is not there through itself. The first does
> not have the object before it only in the passive form characteristic
> primarily of the object of desire, but as an object existing independently
> for itself, over which therefore it has no power to do anything for its own
> behalf, if that object does not *per se *do what the first does to it. The
> process then is absolutely the double process of both self-consciousnesses.
> Each sees the other do the same as itself; each itself does what it demands
> on the part of the other, and for that reason does what it does, only so
> far as the other does the same. Action from one side only would be useless,
> because what is to happen can only be brought about by means of both.
>
> Φ <http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/philosophie/hegel/phaenom/kap4.htm#p183>
> 183 <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/findlay2.htm#m183>
> . The action has then a *double entente* not only in the sense that it is
> an act done to itself as well as to the other, but also in the sense that
> the act *simpliciter* is the act of the one as well as of the other
> regardless of their distinction.
>
> Φ <http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/philosophie/hegel/phaenom/kap4.htm#p184>
> 184 <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/findlay2.htm#m184>
> . In this movement we see the process repeated which came before us as the
> play of forces; in the present case, however, it is found in consciousness.
> What in the former had effect only for us [contemplating experience], holds
> here for the terms themselves. The middle term is self-consciousness which
> breaks itself up into the extremes; and each extreme is this interchange of
> its own determinateness, and complete transition into the opposite. While
> *qua* consciousness, it no doubt comes outside itself, still, in being
> outside itself, it is at the same time restrained within itself, it exists
> for itself, and its self-externalization is for consciousness.
> *Consciousness *finds that it immediately is and is not another
> consciousness, as also that this other is for itself only when it cancels
> itself as existing for itself , and has self-existence only in the
> self-existence of the other. Each is the mediating term to the other,
> through which each mediates and unites itself with itself; and each is to
> itself and to the other an immediate self-existing reality, which, at the
> same time, exists thus for itself only through this mediation. They
> recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another.
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 10:08 AM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> Hi Larry-- You are almost certainly way ahead of me on these issues. My
>> interest at present is on the development of social and relational
>> perspective taking. From, say, a Vygotskian, or Bakhtinian point of view
>> (perspective!) what are the socio-cultural contributions to interpersonal
>> understanding that we associated with psychological perspective taking,
>> perhaps just the ability to "stand in someone else's shoes"? Empathy has to
>> be one potential contributor, and...... (in the Russian traditionS we often
>> discuss)?
>>
>> Perhaps just a really dumb question. Wouldn't be the first time!!
>> mike
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 6:37 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Mike,
>>> I am wondering if you could expand on your question that is referring to
>>> perspective taking and its possible meanings. I believe this question of
>>> perspective taking is also converging with your other question on *kinds*
>>> or *types* of persons. [personhood like childhood]
>>>
>>> I am asking for more clarity on your *bad question* which seems to be
>>> central to the multiple discourses on *sociocultural* theory and practice
>>> This *space* or *zone* of  questioning which opens up a clearing for the
>>> multiple notions of the concept *intersubjectivity* and its convergence
>>> with the concept of *perspective-taking* and how this topic is explored
>>>       
>> in
>>     
>>> Russian translation is a topic I want to explore further.
>>>
>>> I wanted to offer a quote which I found interesting exploring notions of
>>> *identity* AS KINDS [categories]
>>>
>>> Oakeshott argues that "This distinction, then, between 'goings-on'
>>> identified as themselves
>>>
>>> exhibitions of intelligence and 'goings-on' which may be made
>>>       
>> intelligible
>>     
>>> but are not themselves
>>>
>>> intelligent, is not a distinction between mental and physical or between
>>> minds and bodies regarded
>>>
>>> as entities. It is a distinction within the engagement of understanding,
>>>       
>> a
>>     
>>> distinction between
>>>
>>> 'sciences' (that is, ideal characters) and the identities with which they
>>> are concerned. And in
>>>
>>> calling it a categorial distinction what is being asserted is that the
>>> understanding of identities
>>>
>>> recognized as themselves exhibitions of intelligence cannot be 'reduced'
>>> to the understanding of
>>>
>>> identities no so recognized", *On Human Conduct*, pp. 14-15.
>>>
>>>
>>> I was intrigued by Oakeshott's understanding of *sciences* [multiple] AS
>>> RESPRESENTING IDEAL KINDS [categorical distinctions]. This realm of KINDS
>>> AS perspective taking moves the question of intersubjectivity to converge
>>> with *culture* and *history*.
>>>
>>> I will pause, but this topic is endlessly fascinating.
>>>
>>> Larry Purss
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 10:21 AM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Dear Russian experts on XMCA
>>>>
>>>> I have been reading about the development of intersubjectivity and
>>>> perspective taking, including an article by scholars who say they are
>>>> working in the "sociocultural perspective." It got me to wondering how
>>>> Russian scholars discuss these topics. No Russians are cited in the
>>>>         
>> work I
>>     
>>>> am reading, but Mead and
>>>> Piaget.
>>>>
>>>> When looking at suggested translations into Russian from English for
>>>>         
>> these
>>     
>>>> terms, the cognate
>>>> perspectiv seems to appear almost everywhere. The phrase for "point of
>>>> view" is literally that,
>>>> tochka-point  zreniya-seeing, genetive case.
>>>>
>>>> I figure I am blind to something obvious here, but darned if I know what
>>>> it
>>>> is. Any help out there??
>>>> mike
>>>>
>>>> P
>>>> S-- Eugene wrote an interesting article in MCA a while back on
>>>> intersubjectivity and there are Vygotsky
>>>> refs but they do not seem to go to the question I am asking. Perhaps its
>>>> just my bad question!
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>       
>
>
>
>