Nate,
I think that Peter's recommendation of Ch. 8 of Ilyenkov's "Dialectical
Logic", which is available on line on Andy's website, answers the question
you asked:
> So, in the context of the spider where does this idea come from. Is it
motivated by and
> determined by activity, so therefore a dialectic of both "the world" and
the carptenter. This
> makes sense to me, but the quote by Ilyenkov felt real unidirectional to
me. Kind of like a
> suburban carpenter ;).
Allow me to pull out some of the passages that directly answer your
question, leaving to the side (for now?) any exegesis .
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"The ideal is the subjective image of objective reality, i.e., reflection of
the external world in the forms of man's activity, the the forms of his
consciousness and will. The ideal is not the individual psychological fact,
much less a physiological fact, but a socio-historical one, the product and
form of mental production. It exists in a variety of forms of man's social
consciousness and will as the subject of the social production of material
and spiritual life."
"All general images, however, without exception, neither sprang from
universal schemas of the work of thought nor arose from an act of passive
conteplation of nature unsullied by man, but took shape in the course of its
practical, objective transformation by man, by society. They arose and
functioned as forms of the social-man determination of the purposive will of
the individual, i.e., as forms of real activity. General images, moreover,
were crystallised in the body of spiritual culture quite unintentionally,
and independently of the will and consciousness of individuals, although
through their activities. In intuition they appeared precisely as the forms
of things created by human activity, or as 'stamps' ('imprints') laid on
natural, physical material by man's activities, as forms of purposive will
alienated in external substance."
"A purely objective picture of nature was therefore disclosed to man not in
contemplation but only through activity and in the activity of man socially
producing his own life, of society. "
"The ideal is therefore nothing else than the form of things, but existing
outside things, namely in man, in the form of his active practice; i.e., it
is the socially determined form of the human being's activity."
"At first hand, transformation of the material into the ideal consists in
the external fact of being expressed in language, which 'is the immediate
actuality of thought' (Marx). But language of itself is as little ideal as
the neuro-physiological structure of the brain. It is only the form of
expression of the idea, its material-objective being . . . In other words,
the object proves to be idealised only when the faculty of actively
recreating it has been created, relying on the language of words or
drawings; when the faculty of converting words into deeds, and through deeds
into things, has been created."
"The ideal, as the form of social man's activity, exists where the process
of the transformation of the body of nature into the object of man's
activity, into the object of labour, and then into the product of labour
takes place. The same thing can be expressed in another way, as follows:
the form of the external thing involved in the labour process is 'sublated'
in the subjective form of objective activity (action or objects); the latter
is objectively registered in the subject in the form of the mcechanisms of
higher nervous activity; and then there is a reverse sequence of therse
metamorphoses, namely the verbally expressed idea is transformed into a
deed, and through the deed into the form of an external, sensuously
perceivewd thing, into a thing. These two contrary series of metamorphoses
form a closed cycle: thing-deed-word-deed-thing. Only in this cyclic
movement, constantly renewed does the idea, the ideal image of a thing
exist."
"The fundamental distinction between man's activity and the activity of an
animal is this, that no one form of this activity, no one faculty, is
inherited together with the anatomical organisation of the body. All forms
of activity (active faculties) are passed on only in the form of objects
created by man for man. The individual mastery of a humanly determined form
of activity; i.e., the ideal image of its object and product, are therefore
transformed in a special process that does not coincide with the objective
moulding of nature (shaping of nature in objects)."
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Paul H. Dillon
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