RE: Ideal - Ilyenkov

From: Nate Schmolze (nate_schmolze@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Sep 03 2000 - 08:16:24 PDT


jan,

While I agree with what you said about individual construction, I am still
left wondering if "ideal activity" or the ideal as material activity focuses
solely on its positive side. It seems to me there are ways of reasoning,
thinking, acting that we have access to because of previous and current
material activities that have a negative side.

In regards to ideal activity I am still left with the feeling that there is
this "invisable hand" or "absolute spirit" guiding ideality. It seems to me
ideality emerges from social practice at a certain point in time and becomes
materialized in language, artifacts, buildings etc. That is how we have
access to it at another place and time.

I guess what I am really wondering is if this takes us beyond Kantian
transcendentalism except for it being located in history rather than the
head, god or whatever. It seems one thing to argue that the ideal is of
importance in understanding consciousness, reasoning etc, but quite another
to give it solely a positive face.

Nate

-----Original Message-----
From: jan derry [mailto:j_derry@hotmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2000 12:31 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: Ideal - Ilyenkov

Nate, I realised that when I responded to Helen I pushed the reply button
and it went to Helen's own email and not XMCA so I have reposted what I
wrote here and because it relates to your concern over 'hierarchy' and
'western culture'.

There are problems with what can be an isolated and localised
characterisation of (western) culture. (Is an Aristotelianism introduced to
western Europe in the twelfth century by a Syrian (Ibn Sina) and an Arab
(Ibn Rushd)'western culture'?)

Helen, I agree with you that that Ilyenkov’s piece is inspiring in the way
that it makes us think about the problem of consciousness quite differently.
I think some of this he draws from Spinoza and like Vygotsky, conceives of
will in a quite different way to that of Descartes. I agree with you that as
a teacher, to be engaged in the development of intellect is a quite
different activity than to be testing ‘capacities’ and transmitting
information.

I’m not sure that using the term language (as solving the problem of
consciousness) does justice to what Ilyenkov meant by the ideal as human
material activity. There is a danger both of understanding the realm in
which we act within - as open to conscious open-ended individual
construction and of misunderstanding that the ‘space of reasons’ (our
‘ideal’ activity laid down in the world over centuries) has a local and
ahistorical character (and thus can be modified at will. This would not be
the case even for a Cartesian will with it’s independence from the
material). The force of Ilyenkov’s point is that the historically developing
‘culture/social consciousness’ is what the individual must reckon with to be
more than an animal responding to ‘organic attractions and needs of the
individual body’(that is to be something more than a biochemical process –
an extension of an environment, and so to have consciousness). Jan

Jan Derry
www.bham.ac.uk/SAT/Derry.html



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