[Xmca-l] Re: Perezhivanie of perezhivanie

[David Kellogg]

Those who find that Martin's book won't quite fit in their stockings should
look at Martin's 2008 article "Is Vygotsky relevant?"

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749030701798607

Scrooges can get a free pre-draft by googling "Is Vygotsky Relevant". For
some reason the LCHC link doesn't work any more, and the paper doesn't
appear to be on Martin's website any more either.


David Kellogg

Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'

Free e-print available (for a short time only) at

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full


On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 4:58 AM, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co
> wrote:

> On Dec 18, 2017, at 7:43 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com<mailto:d
> kellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> For example, when Wolff-Michael says that Vygotsky rejected
> both "scientific" and "interpretive" psychology, he doesn't mention the
> context, which is "History of the Crisis in Psychology". Vygotsky's talking
> about reflexology on the one hand and Dilthey's "interpretive" psychology
> on the other. It's not about "quantitative" and "qualitative" research at
> all.
>
> If this is what Michael was referring to, then yes Vygotsky does reject
> Dilthey’s approach to social science, and he rejects Dilthey’s division of
> the natural sciences and the human sciences — sciences of spirit — as yet
> another version of dualism. It’s not quite true that this has nothing to do
> with contemporary conceptions of ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’ research,
> in so far as people on both sides of this divide today continue to accept
> Dilthey’s proposal that the natural sciences can provide ‘explanation’
> whereas the human sciences, using interpretive investigation, can provide
> only ‘description.’ I reject this proposal.
>
> There are other problems with Dilthey’s version of interpretive inquiry. I
> write in SQR that on the one hand "hermeneutics, for Dilthey, is the theory
> of how life discloses and expresses itself in cultural works....
> Interpretation aims to go beyond subjectivity to the 'thought-constituting
> work' of life itself. For Dilthey, understanding is not a purely cognitive
> matter, but life grasping life in and through a full and rich contact that
> escapes rational theorizing.”
>
> This remains a powerful idea. However, on the other hand:
>
> “[Dilthey] recognized that the objects of inquiry in the human sciences
> are historical phenomena, but he could not fully accept the implications of
> his own belief that the inquirer, the interpreter, is also always
> historically situated. It is ironic that someone who emphasized the
> historical character of our experience wanted to provide interpretations
> that would transcend history.... If we are thoroughly involved in history
> it is difficult to see how we can achieve an objective viewpoint on human
> phenomena, yet this was the goal that Dilthey struggled all his life to
> achieve. He had accepted the dominant ideology of science as an activity
> that provides objective knowledge, but he could not identify a solid
> foundation for objective knowledge in the human sciences, whose legitimacy
> he sought to define.”
>
> Martin
>
>