Re: Psychology and Marxism Updates

From: Nate (vygotsky@charter.net)
Date: Tue Jul 02 2002 - 04:42:49 PDT


The quote was taken from Lucien Seve's book Man in Marxist Theory. It
originated in, A Louria: Vygotsky et les fonctions psychiques,
Recherches internatonal;es a lalumiere du Marxisme, NO 51, 1966 (La
Psychologie), pp 96-97.

Alfred, here is my take on objective, both Vygotsky and Seve were using
  objective from much less of a national tradition than a philosophical
/ political one.

My sense is that it is a relation (subjective / objective), but I think
your use of person external or person independent may be a little too
strong. Now, if we were going to understand the soul of a factory worker
      we would have to take the objective forms of social life seriously
(factory etc). But then this does not mean objective social life is
external or independent of the factory worker.

nate
> Andy and all,
>
> where do I find the quote and its further context?
>
> "To find the soul it is necessary to lose it."
>
> A remarkable sentence for a psychologist. All the more so since "finding
> the soul" is a sort of key idea in many mystical traditions and loosing
> it for the better of its fate a key idea in at least some Eastern
> traditions.
>
> While this sentence is just a chatch phrase Vygotksy's claim that "it is
> necessary to seek the sources of human consciousness and freedom in the
> social history of humanity", does look like a capsule statement of CHAT.
>
> Yet I would like to clear a problem remaining for me. In the sentence:
> "to discover the sources of free action [...] in the objective forms of
> social life", what is the Russian word translated with "objective"? Is
> it the Latin-derived term? If yes, what does it mean? If it refers to
> social life seen independent of how it is to be processed by the persons
> involved? Formulated as it is it seems to refer to the person-external
> world. But how could ever "free action" arise from person-independent
> facts?
>
> Best, Alfred
>

-- 
There is no hope of finding the sources of free action in the lofty 
realms of the mind or in the depths of the brain. The idealist approach 
of the phenomenologists is as hopeless as the positive approach of the 
naturalists. To discover the sources of free action it is necessary to 
go outside the limits of the organism, not into the intimate sphere of 
the mind, but into the objective forms of social life; it is necessary 
to seek the sources of human consciousness and freedom in the social 
history of humanity. To find the soul it is necessary to lose it.
LS Vygotsky



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