Hi Michael, Andy,I don't think this can lead anywhere. I don't think Michael that the statement highlighted in red makes much sense. Did you mean, "THe theory of relativity can be stated in a few lines?" Since when? Did Einstein state it in a few lines? Wouldn't it then point to a few thousand years of cultural history on which it depends? Moreover, I suspect it took more than a few lines to state it first, like J. C. Maxwell, who took an entire book to work out what now is shown in 4 simple equations. But in each of the signs that are probably 5,000 years of human experience and voices recorded. . ..
Michael On 22-Apr-09, at 7:41 AM, Michael Glassman wrote: Andy,I'm a little uncomfortable with this five page thing. Okay, you don't think it's important, but I don't think length has much to do with it. Plato's allegory of the Cave was only a few pages if I remember correctly and yet it it in many ways one of the primary ways of discussing Plato's ideas and eventually became the basis for idealism. Short does not equate with unimportant and long does not equate with important. The theory of relativity is only a few lines.
Michael ________________________________ From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Andy Blunden Sent: Wed 4/22/2009 10:34 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: Re: [xmca] Where is thinking Ha, ha, ha! And imagine, if those 5 pages of his first book have proved to be so rich, just imagine the wealth to be uncovered in the remaining 99.9% of his corpus! :) Bloom away! Andy Martin Packer wrote:
Let 1,000 Hegels bloom! Martin On 4/21/09 7:28 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:Let 1,000 flowers bloom. And may every flower cross pollinate with every other flower! No problem. But that does not mean that there is no problem with the Hegel that Marx and Lenin read being cast into the skip parked out the back of the library, or with the meaning of terms being jumbled up into meaninglessness. ("Being determines consciousness" said Marx, but if Being is personal identity formation, does Being still determine consciousness? For example) It is my very mission to facilitate interaction between divergent currents of thinking, most specifically Hegelianism, Marxism and CHAT, and I am more than happy to appropriate French philosophy along with the way. But this wave of master-servant (NB "servant" not "slave" which was an insertion of Kojeve's) mythology is actually destroying, burying and eradicating Hegel's legacy. Kojeve and Sartre were brilliant writers whose contribution I value. I even see Sartre as a precurser of my own work. But why dump Hegel? Isn't it worth considering that one passage in his early work which in its whole structure and tenor though not content, is very untypical of Hegel, if taken out of context, could lead to misunderstanding? even if that misunderstanding is itself an interesting insight? Andy Martin Packer wrote:Andy, I don't see the mixing of Hegelian and existentialist concepts asproblematic. Existentialism started with Kierkegaard, right? He was writing a kind of anti-Hegelianism, in which rather than there being a logic that guarantees the movement of spirit, there are moments in which a leap is necessary. He wrote of a "leap of faith" but (just as with Hegel) a secular reading is possible. These are the moments when humans must choose, withoutguarantees, without certainty, without transparent rationality.So existentialism has always had ties to Hegel. The existential- Marxists, it seems to me, were rediscovering in Marx what Michael just mentioned, a placefor agency on the level of the individual. That has been a valuablecounterpoint to those readings that find in Marx, like Hegel, only an anonymous movement to the historical process in which no genuine choices areavailable. Martin On 4/21/09 10:28 AM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:I'm actually quite fond of Sartre, Martin, and I appreciate his efforts in "Critique of Dialectical Reason" to make something like an activity reading of Hegel. It is the eclectic mixing up of Existentialist concepts with Marxist or Hegelian concepts that I object to. What does "Being" mean? It depends doesn't it, whether you are reading Hegel, Engels or Heidegger. I can't cope with mixing up these sources indiscriminately. There may be differences between French and German Marxism, but I think we are here talking about post-WW2 Marxism, yes? and the particular experiences of Algeria, 1968, Berlin, the PCF, etc., and Kojeve. And there is no doubt that the legacy of the French Revolution still figures hugely in France. But I really think this has little to do with a reading by Marx or French Marxists of the master-servant narrative at any time earlier than 1933. For a start, the Phenomenology had not even been translated into French until 1939. So a knowledge of the master-servant narrative was kept to a pretty small group in France. A few professional philosophers like Koyre and Hyppolite. When I started up the Hegel-by-HyperText website in 1999, it intrigued me that I got mail from two quite distinct groups of people. One of these groups I just could not understand what they were talking about. After a while I realised that these were people who had read Kojeve or were reading Hegel in the wake of Kojeve. This is a completely different philosopher than the one I learnt as a Marxist, reading Marxists texts and then moving on from Marx, Lenin and Lukacs to study Hegel's Logic. This other group only knew these 2% of Hegel's first book. The other group usually knew only the Logic and Philosophy of Right, the books that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Lukacs & Co. commented on. Why not read my book Martin? Much easier to read than the Phenomenology! Andy_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
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