Re: [xmca] Return to the ideal?

But Michael, the ideal is material.
Andy
At 03:06 PM 9/10/2007 -0700, you wrote:
>I have been thinking about the ideal as the complement of the
>material, both sublated in activity. Thus, Leont'ev writes about the
>object as both ideal and material. We can then look at the Engeström
>triangle and think of it as really consisting of two layers, two
>levels, one pertaining to the material world, the other to the ideal.
>Because the two are inherently different, there therefore is an inner
>contradiction..... and so on...
>Cheers,
>Michael
>
>
>
>On 9-Oct-07, at 7:26 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
>
>Rolling back through this discussion, I come I think to the following
>words of yours, Eric, which I think was what prompted me to re-post
>the link to Ilyenkov on the idea:
>
>Eric said:
>>I truely believe that the result may be far from the ideal.
>>However, if
>>there is a discourse taking place between people who are engaged in
>>a goal
>>directed activity, then within the paramaters of this discoursing
>>the "ideal" is the "object"??? ...
>>
>>Perhaps I have mice in my basement. I go to the feed mill and talk
>>to an
>>expert on mice eradication. The ideal would be to rid my basement
>>of mice.
>>The discourse between I and the expert revolves around ridding my
>>basement
>>of mice. This may not result from the efforts I engage upon my
>>return home
>>but nevertheless, when I am talking to the expert we are engaged in a
>>discourse of "rid the mice"; not, "get rid of SOME of the mice."
>
>The way you are using the word "ideal" here, it seemed to me was
>different from the sense in which it is used as a technical term in
>CHAT. Here's my selected excerpt from the Ilyenkov essay:
>
>"The ideal form is a form of a thing, but a form that is outside the
>thing, and is to be found in man as a form of his dynamic life
>activity, _as goals and needs_. Or conversely, it is a form of man's
>life activity, but outside man, in the form of the thing he creates.
>Ideality as such exists only in the constant succession and
>replacement of these two forms of its external embodimentand does not
>coincide with either of them taken separately. It exists only through
>the unceasing process of the transformation of _the form of activity
>into the form of a thing and back - the form of a thing into the form
>of activity._"
>
>So yes, Ilyenkov begins exactly with the sense you use, the ideal as
>a form of things which accord with people's needs, but then he takes
>it a step further where it really becomes something else. The example
>of the commodity is the paradigmatic case because Marx devoted so
>much effort on it. The commodity has value. This value is not
>connected with any property of the thing, its weight, its hardness,
>even its beauty because it is actually a _social_ relation: it is an
>ideal. Value is an ideal. Where does this ideal exist? That is the
>issue. Marx shows that historically it emerged mediated through
>relations with other commodities in the activity of people exchanging
>products of labour, but ultimately, the ideal, the value of all
>commodities, became a material thing, gold, or money. That is, people
>created a new material thing, an artefact, which embodied this ideal,
>value. So the ideal is a material thing in the world alongside other
>material things.
>
>I didn't get the sense that you were using the term "ideal" in that
>way, but I could be quite wrong, Eric.
>
>Andy
>
>At 08:40 AM 9/10/2007 -0500, you wrote:
>
>>Andy:
>>
>>Thank you for the understanding that this is a difficult philosophical
>>subject. In rerereading Ilyenkov I am attempting to discover the
>>essence
>>of how the ideal provides understanding of conscious
>>action/internalization/appropriation and activity.
>>
>>Wells article discusses how discoursing mediates goal directed
>>activity, in
>>this sense Wells refers to the transitional discourse between
>>subjects as
>>it relates to the object as being the "ideal". Gordon, if I am
>>wrong here
>>please jump in.
>>
>>Please consider the following quote from Ilyenkov Page 19 from the
>>hyperlink article found on the marxist.org website:
>>
>>This Hegelian definition of the term "ideality" took in the whole
>>range of
>>phenomena within which the "ideal", understood as the corporeally
>>embodied
>>form of the activity of social man, really exists.
>>
>>
>>Without an understanding of this circumstance it would be
>>totally
>>impossible to fathom the miracles performed before man's
>>eyes by the
>>COMMODITY, the commodity form of the product, particularly in
>>its money
>>form, in the form of the notorious "real talers", "real rubles",
>>or "real
>>dollars", things which, as soon as we have the slightest
>>theoretical
>>understanding of them, immediately turn out to be not "real" at
>>all, but
>>"ideal" through and through, things whose category quite
>>unambiguously
>>includes words, the units of language, and many other
>>"things". Things
>>which, while being wholly "material", palpable formations,
>>acquire all
>>their "meaning" (function and role) from "spirit" and even owe to
>>it their
>>specific bodily existence .... Outside spirit and without it
>>there cannot
>>even be words, there is merely a vibration of the air.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Andy, I see little difference between Gordon's claim and what
>>Ilyenkov
>>writes about the ideal.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>help?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>eric
>>
>>
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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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  Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
mobile 0409 358 651

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Received on Tue Oct 9 16:13 PDT 2007