[Xmca-l] Re: Hegel's Headstand

[David Kellogg]

Andy:

Thanks for that. In return--this is Gramsci, complaining again that
Engels is a radical realist in philosophy..

"The scientific 'experience' (i.e. experiment--DK) is the first cell
of the new method of work, of the new form of active union between man
and nature: the scientist-experimenter is a 'worker', an industrial
and agricultural producer--he is not pure mind--he is also, or rather
he is the first instance of, a man whom the historical process has
freed from the position of walking on his head in order to let him
walk on his feet."

Gramsci, Q. (1975) Prison Notebooks, Vol. II New York: Columbia
University Press, p. 197.

David Kellogg

On 9/28/17, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> David, see
> https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch01.htm
>
> "It was the time when, as Hegel says, the world stood upon
> its head": ... and in the footnote:
>
> Hegel in the Philosophy of History, speaking of the French
> Revolution:
>
>     “Thought, the concept of law, all at once made itself
>     felt, and against this the old scaffolding of wrong
>     could make no stand. In this conception of law,
>     therefore, a constitution has now been established, and
>     henceforth everything must be based upon this. Since the
>     Sun had been in the firmament, and the planets circled
>     around him, the sight had never been seen of man
>     standing upon his head – i.e., on the Idea – and
>     building reality after this image. Anaxagoras first said
>     that the Nous, Reason, rules the world; but now, for the
>     first time, had men come to recognize that the Idea must
>     rule the mental reality. And this was a magnificent
>     sunrise. All thinking Beings have participated in
>     celebrating this holy day. A sublime emotion swayed men
>     at that time, an enthusiasm of reason pervaded the
>     world, as if now had come the reconciliation of the
>     Divine Principle with the world.”
>
> Andy
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> On 26/09/2017 7:48 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
>> In any case, it's not in Philosophy of Right, although
>> there Hegel does write about the French Revolution at some
>> length and with considerable asperity.
>>
>> Gramsci is essentially a linguist and not a sociologist.
>> That explains his sensitivity to "bookish" modes of
>> expression as opposed to conversational registers in Hegel.
>>
>> Anyway, we can see from this little example from Chapter
>> Two of Thinking and Speech just what Vygotsky meant by
>> "mastering the whole of Marx's method" and "writing
>> psychology's Capital" rather than simply stitching quotes
>> together.
>>
>> In the pedology (end of Early Childhood, and also the
>> passage on the omnirelevance of speech at the end of
>> Crisis at One), Vygotsky refers to Marx with a certain
>> apophasis, to say that he could cite Marx here--but it
>> would be out of context and people might assume that it is
>> sufficient proof of what he wants to say about
>> speech--still, it would show the penetrating quality of
>> Marx's method. That's what he's doing in Chapter Two:
>> citing Marx by not citing him. Gramsci does a lot of that
>> too.
>>
>> David Kellogg
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 25, 2017 at 7:11 PM, Andy Blunden
>> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>
>>     While it is possible that Hegel said that, I don't
>>     know where and I haven't heard that before. I must
>>     have missed it in Gramsci.
>>
>>     Marx was about 11 when Hegel died, so he never heard
>>     Hegel speak personally, but he was immersed in a
>>     milieu of Left Hegelians in a Germany in love with
>>     Hegel until 1841, when Marx was about 22. So he
>>     certainly has a "conversational" familiarity with Hegel!
>>
>>     andy
>>
>>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>>     Andy Blunden
>>     http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>>     <http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
>>     On 25/09/2017 6:01 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
>>>     Andy:
>>>
>>>     Gramsci has this, on p. 232 of the Complete Prison
>>>     Notebooks, Vol.1, New York: Columbia University
>>>     Press, 1975.
>>>
>>>     “In studying Marx’s Hegelianism one should remember
>>>     (especially given Marx’s eminently practical-critical
>>>     character) that Marx participated in German
>>>     university life very shortly after Hegel’s death,
>>>     when there must still have been a most vivid memory
>>>     of Hegel’s ‘oral’ teachings and of the passionate
>>>     discussions about concrete history which these
>>>     teaching generated—that is, discussions in which the
>>>     historical concreteness of Hegel’s though must have
>>>     stood out much more clearly that it does in his
>>>     systematic writings. Some of Marx’s assertions, it
>>>     seems to me, should be considered in special relation
>>>     to this ‘conversational’ vivacity: for instance, the
>>>     statement that Hegel ‘has men walking on their
>>>     heads’. Hegel really does use this image when dealing
>>>     with the French Revolution; he writes that at a
>>>     certain time during the French Revolution (when the
>>>     new state structure was organized) ‘it seemed’ that
>>>     the world was walking on its head or something of the
>>>     sort (c.f.). I think that Croce asks (search the
>>>     reference) from where Marx derived this image; it
>>>     certainly is in one of Hegel’s books (perhaps the
>>>     Philosophy of Right, I don’t remember). However, it
>>>     seems to me that, given the persistence with which
>>>     Marx returns to it (I think that Marx repeats the
>>>     image; check), it seems to me that at a certain time
>>>     it was a topic of conversationi: it really seems to
>>>     have sprung out of conversation, fresh, spontaneous,
>>>     so little ‘bookish’”.
>>>
>>>     The editor of the book remarks that Gramsci seems to
>>>     have in mind the “Postface” to the second edition of
>>>     Capital. However, this is simply the Marx, not the
>>>     Hegel: it’s the passage Lenin (and Vygotsky) referred
>>>     to “Sie steht bei ihm auf dem Kopf. Man muss sie
>>>     umstülpen, um den rationellen Kern in der mystischen
>>>     Hülle zu entdecken.” While reading this over, I
>>>     realized that Vygotsky, in Chapter Two of Thinking
>>>     and Speech where he cites this passage in Lenin,
>>>     cites it for good reason. The whole chapter is
>>>     essentially doing to Piaget what Marx did to Hegel.
>>>     Vygotsky, more than anyone alive at that time,
>>>     understood Piaget's extraordinary contribution, and
>>>     what Marx says of Hegel could easily have been said
>>>     by Vygotsky of Piaget: "Die Mystifikation, welche die
>>>     Dialektik in Hegels Händen erleidet, verhindert in
>>>     keiner Weise, dass er ihre allegeminen
>>>     Bewegungsformen zuerst in umfassander und bewusster
>>>     Weise dargestellt hat." Having admitted that Piaget
>>>     was the first to present the child's thinking in its
>>>     general form of motion in a comprehensive and
>>>     conscious manner, Vygotsky then goes on to stand
>>>     Piaget on his head, by inverting
>>>     "autism-->egocentrism-->social speech" to "social
>>>     speech-->egocentric speech-->inner speech".
>>>     David Kellogg
>>>
>>
>>
>
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