Ideal

From: Nate Schmolze (nate_schmolze@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Sep 02 2000 - 08:11:29 PDT


I read the piece a couple times and too found it interesting. Consciouness
too came to the forefront especially the emphasis on the ideal. Initially
had mixed reactions, but with Helen's message decided to re-read focusing on
the consciousness question.

Starting on what on my Microsoft reader is page 66 (piece ends on 71), there
were 4 blurbs or quotes that specifically stood out for me. They are all
from the latter part of the piece that focus on the ideal.

"It is here and only here that there arises the IDEAL plane of life activity
unknown to the animal. Consciousness and will are not the “cause” of the
manifestation of this new plane of relationships between the individual and
the external world, but only the mental forms of its expression, in other
words, its effect."

"Psychology must necessarily proceed from the fact that between the
individual consciousness and objective reality there exists the “mediating
link” of the historically formed culture, which acts as the prerequisite and
condition of individual mental activity. This comprises the economic and
legal forms of human relationships, the forms of everyday life and forms of
language, and so on. For the individual’s mental activity (consciousness and
will of the individual) this culture appears immediately as a “system of
meanings”,which have been “reified” and confront him quite objectively as
“non-psychological”, extra-psychological reality."

"The riddle and solution to the problem of “idealism” is to be found in the
peculiar features of mental activity of the subject, who cannot distinguish
between two fundamentally different and even opposed categories of phenomena
of which he is sensuously aware as existing outside his brain: the natural
properties of things, on the one hand, and those of their properties which
they owe not to nature but to the social human labour embodied in these
things, on the other."

"Man acquires the “ideal” plane of life activity only through mastering the
historically developed forms of social activity, only together with the
social plane of existence, only together with culture. “Ideality” is nothing
but an aspect of culture, one of its dimensions, determining factors,
properties. In relation to mental activity it is just as much an objective
component as mountains and trees, the moon and the firmament, as the
processes of metabolism in the individual’s organic body."

Now, in regards to a "neutral" question of how consciousness is formed and
where it exists his arguments of the ideal really make sense to me. Staying
in this "neutral" space for just a moment, where consciousness and we maybe
could add "cognition" and identity lie is a very practical question as Helen
pointed towards in the field of education.

In the end through this is just a "how question" which philosophers and
psychologists love. The talk of "man" and "human life activity" gave me the
strong impression that there is this "one consciousness" which is very
difficult for me to accept. A definate hierarchy in places in which
"western culture" is put on top as the more "human".

I think questions like what kinds of consciousness are being formed in this
or that activity are important ones to ask especially in a field like
education. So, when Ilyenkov argues "man acquires the ideal plane only
through mastering historically developed forms of social activity" it leaves
me with a lot of questions. One being there seems to be social activitieS
and they are often in tension with each other.

I guess the big question for me is the application of the ideal to more
culturally, socially specific forms of historical activities.

Nate

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Nate Schmolze
http://members.home.net/schmolze1/
schmolze1@home.com

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Nate Schmolze
http://members.home.net/schmolze1/
schmolze1@home.com

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