Re: Dialectical bagels

From: Paul H. Dillon (illonph@pacbell.net)
Date: Fri Jun 23 2000 - 15:36:30 PDT


Interesting to see Sartre brought up. Sartre's original position on
"nothingness" (le neant), the lack of determinate being that is the
experience of being-for-itself in Being and Nothingness, (the one that
Marcuse labeled a nihilistic reaction to the Nazi occupation of France), was
modified in Sartre's later "Critique of Dialectical Reason" in a way that
makes much clearer sense from the perspective of activity theory. Instead
of an "ontological nothingness", an immanent negation of being at the heart
of consciousness, Sartre proposed that NEED (le besoin). He wrote "The
entire historical dialectic rests on individual praxis in so far as it is
already dialectical, that is to say, to the extent that action is itself the
negating transcendence of contradiction, detrmination of a present
totalisation in the name of a future totality, and the real effective
working of matter. . . . Everything is to be explained through need (le
besoin); need is the first totalising relation between the material being,
man, and the material ensemble of which he is part . . . Need is a negation
of the negation in so far as it expresses itself as a lack within the
organism; and need is a positivity in so far as the organic totality tends
to preserve itself as such through it."

Unlike early Sartre (and Derrida, many of whose doctrines Sartre's
investigations prefigure), the materialistic reorientation of the
"phenomenological ontology" on a materialist basis (need) leads to forms of
sociality and to the material force of History itself.

Paul H. Dillon

----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Erickson <mericks@ruralnet.net>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2000 6:56 AM
Subject: Re: Dialectical bagels

> Bruce,
> As Sartre wrote in his Being AND Nothingness, "Nothingness is at the heart
> of being" Thus, the very essence of the bagel is the hole. Without the
hole,
> the whole does not exist!
>
> Michael E.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Bruce Robinson <bruce.rob@btinternet.com>
> To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Friday, June 23, 2000 7:25 AM
> Subject: Dialectical bagels
>
>
> >
> >
> > On Wednesday, June 21, 2000 5:17 PM, Diane Hodges
> > [SMTP:dhodges@ceo.cudenver.edu] wrote:
> > > well, i tried to think of an "object" for Hegel
> > > but all I could think of was poppyseed bagels,
> > > so I ate 'em.
> > >
> > > used the crumbs with some "dough" and made the "upper crust" look real
> > > good.
> > > > long live chaos and the surreal.
> > > diane
> >
> > This is not as surreal as it appears - bagels are profoundly
dialectical.
> > Bill Livant uses Hegel's bagels as a theme for one of his humourous
> > articles designed to introduce his students to dialectics. It is
entitled
> > 'The hole in Hegel's bagel'. It starts:
> >
> > 1. Hegel's great insight is that the truth is the whole.
> > 2. What about the hole? Is the hole part of the whole?
> > 3. On first sight, it appears that it isn't, that in the hole there is
> > nothing. But this is deceptive.
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > 8. How does one get to the hole in the center of the bagel? Only be
eating
> > your way through, by moving. But if your mind can't walk, can't move, yu
> > can't get there. And if you can't get there, there seems to be nothing
> > there. Appearances seem to be all there is.
> >
> > 9. Only by analyzing - getting into and going beyond - appearances can
we
> > arrive at the essence of anything.
> >
> > 10. In sum, the whole without a hole is really a part in drag trying to
> > pass itself off as everything, which, come to think of it, isn't a bad
> > definition of ideology.
> >
> >
> > I've been meaning to get into this whole discussion, but haven't had
time.
> > Hope to wing a fifteen-part commentary on everything your way soon ;-).
> >
> > Bruce Robinson
> >
> > >
> **********************************************************************
> > > :point where everything
listens.
> > > and i slow down, learning how to
> > > enter - implicate and unspoken (still) heart-of-the-world.
> > >
> > > (Daphne Marlatt, "Coming to you")
> > >
***********************************************************************
> > >
> > > diane celia hodges
> > >
> > > university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum
and
> > > instruction
> > > ==================== ==================== =======================
> > > university of colorado, denver, school of education
> > >
> > > Diane_Hodges@ceo.cudenver.edu
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
>



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