Re: [xmca] ego, self, etc.

From: Andy Blunden <ablunden who-is-at mira.net>
Date: Mon Feb 04 2008 - 13:41:10 PST

I would be interested to hear from anyone who knows about the reception of
Hegel in Russia.

In English, you will not find The Phenomenology of Spirit taken seriously
or the Master-Slave dialectic more than mentioned until after the French
have gone crazy over it after WW2; the French only get enthusiastic over
the master-slave as a result of Hypollite's new translation in the 1930s,
having previously only had access to very poor translations of Hegel's
Logic. Marx emphasises the importance of the Phenomenology in his 1844
manuscripts but I see no evidence that he paid much attention to it later
or in fact that he ever read the master-slave section. The Hegel that is
most apparent in Marx is Hegel's early work (though I don't know if Marx
could have read it, it may be a case of "great minds think alike") and
Hegel's work on history and law, etc. and the Logic.

It is very easy to forget, given the prominence that the French gave to the
Master-Slave dialectic, that so far as I know, no-one paid much attention
to it before 1937. But maybe it was different in Russia? Plekhanov will be
the one. I'm just reading LSV's Psychology of Art at the moment, and he
quotes "Plekhanov" on Art in what is virtually a quotation from Hegel's
Lectures on Aesthetics. Lenin certainly never read the Phenomenology.

Andy

At 03:37 PM 4/02/2008 -0500, you wrote:
>Paul,
>
>Yes, each step in the education of consciousness can only be accomplished in
>relation with others, and/or in societal institutions. The master/slave
>dialectic has certainly been one of the most influential of Hegel's
>contributions, and I'm sure Bourdieu had it in mind.
>
>I'm especially partial to those analyses of this part of Hegel's
>phenomenology that view it not simply as the stage where a person becomes
>self-aware, but the stage where something we can call a self is *created*
>for the first time.
>
>What influence do you think this had on Vygotsky? His 'Educational
>Psychology' contains much reference to the importance of interpersonal
>conflict in development. Elsewhere too?
>
>I've explored this somewhat in a paper: Packer, M. J., & Goicoechea, J.
>(2000). Sociocultural and constructivist theories of learning: Ontology, not
>just epistemology. Educational Psychologist, 35(4), 227-241.
>
>Martin
>
>On 2/2/08 11:47 PM, "Paul Dillon" <phd_crit_think@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > But I have a problem with your interpretation of the passage from sense
> > certainty to more developed forms of consciousness. As I read what
> you've
> > written, the dimension of violence in the process is totally absent.
> > Violence plays a very important role in Hegel's dialectic and at two
> totally
> > crucial points of transition: the first being that of the Master-Slave
> > dialectic, in which the problem of solipsism is resolved through the
> > subordination of one "self-consciousness" to another.
>
>
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  Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
mobile 0409 358 651

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Received on Mon Feb 4 13:42 PST 2008

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