Re: 'Discerned' and 'Recognizes' in Leontjev

Timothy Koschmann (tkoschmann who-is-at siumed.edu)
Thu, 19 Sep 1996 16:58:52 -0500

>Hi Tim,
>
>I've looked up the German translation of the paragraph in question.
>It goes like this:
>
>"So koennen im Laufe der Erreichung eines herausgearbeiteten allgemeinen
>Ziels Zwischenziele bestimmt werden, durch deren Realisierung die
>ganzheitliche Handlung in eine Reihe von einzelnen aufeinanderfolgenden
>Handlungen aufgegliedert wird. Das ist besonders f=FCr Faelle
>charakteristisch, in denen die Handlung unter Bedinungen verlaeuft,
>die ihre Ausfuehrung mit Hilfe bereits ausgeformter Operationen
>erschweren. ... " (Leontjew 1979, S. 109)
>
>A comparison of all three translations seems to say the following.
>ANL talks about a *certain articulated general goal*, that is: he
>asks you to imagine a "common goal" (generalized individual goal)
>which has already a habitual form for most occasions when it might be
>aimed for. However, in the case that ANL wants to talk about, there are
>certain prevailing conditions that do not allow the smooth realization
>via a fluid chain of embodied operations. Rather, it is now, in these
>cases, necessary to consciously find the path thru a set of sub-goals
>which are being separated from one another, mainly by the reflection
>about the conditions of the "breakdown" of the usual smoothness.
>
Arne,
I think I failed to make clear in my previous note what I was after, but
you are on the right track here. We are exploring the thesis that
Leontjev, like Heidegger and Dewey, maintained a model in which breakdown
induces a form of reflective practice. Thank you for providing the German
translation, which like the second English translation seems to support our
thesis. (Would you consider "deren Realisierung" to translate in this
situation to something like "recognition" or "register in conscious
awareness"?)

I would be most interested to hear from one of the Russian scholars out
there whether the original text also supported this view. ---Tim