Re: [xmca] Spanning Traditions: ingold and vygotsky

[Tony Whitson <twhitson@UDel.Edu>]

On Sun, 25 Sep 2011, Andy Blunden wrote:

> Currently, I am writing a book on 
> Concepts, which is meant to make inroads into analytical science.

Might Adorno be of interest? Here's from Adorno, Theodor W. Negative 
Dialectics. New York: Seabury Press (1973) Continuum (1983):

[p. 11] DISENCHANTMENT OF THE CONCEPT

Philosophy, Hegel's included, invites the general objection that by 
inevitably having concepts for its material it anticipates an idealistic 
decision. In fact no philosophy, not even extreme empiricism, can drag in 
the _facta bruta_ and present them like cases in anatomy or experiments in 
physics; no philosophy can paste the particulars into the text, as 
seductive paintings would hoodwink it into believing. But the argument in 
its formality and generality takes as fetishistic a view of the concept as 
the concept does in interpreting itself naïvely in its own domain: in 
either case it is regarded as a self-sufficient totality over which 
philosophical thought has no power. In truth, all concepts, even the 
philosophical ones, refer to nonconceptualities, because concepts on their 
part are moments of the reality that requires their formation, primarily 
for the control of nature. What conceptualization appears to be from 
within, to one engaged in it--the predominance of its sphere, without 
which nothing is known--must not be mistaken for what it is in itself. 
Such a semblance of being-in-itself is conferred upon it by the motion 
that exempts it from reality, to which it is har¬nessed in turn.

Necessity compels philosophy to operate with concepts, but this necessity 
must not be turned into the virtue of their priority--no more than, 
conversely, criticism of that virtue can be turned into a summary verdict 
against philosophy. On the other hand, the insight that philosophy's 
conceptual knowledge is not the absolute

[p. 12] of philosophy--this insight, for all its inescapability, is again 
due to the nature of the concept. It is not a dogmatic thesis, much less a 
naïvely realistic one. Initially, such concepts as that of "being" at the 
start of Hegel's _Logic_ emphatically mean nonconceptualities; as Lask put 
it, they "mean beyond themselves." Dissatisfaction with their own 
conceptuality is part of their meaning, although the inclusion of 
nonconceptuality in their meaning makes it tendentially their equal and 
thus keeps them trapped within themselves. The substance of concepts is to 
them both immanent, as far as the mind is concerned, and transcendent as 
far as being is concerned. To be aware of this is to be able to get rid of 
concept fetishism. Philosophical reflection makes sure of the 
nonconceptual in the concept. It would be empty otherwise, according to 
Kant's dictum; in the end, having ceased to be a concept of anything at 
all, it would be nothing.

A philosophy that lets us know this, that extinguishes the autarky of the 
concept, strips the blindfold from our eyes. That the concept is a concept 
even when dealing with things in being does not change the fact that on 
its part it is entwined with a non-conceptual whole. Its only insulation 
from that whole is its reification--that which establishes it as a 
concept. The concept is an element in dialectical logic, like any other. 
What survives in it is the fact that nonconceptuality has conveyed it by 
way of its meaning, which in turn establishes its conceptuality. To refer 
to nonconceptualities--as ultimately, according to traditional 
epistemology, every definition of concepts requires nonconceptual, deictic 
elements--is characteristic of the concept, and so is the contrary: that 
as the abstract unit of the noumena subsumed thereunder it will depart 
from the noumenal. To change this direction of conceptuality, to give it a 
turn toward nonidentity, is the hinge of negative dialectics. Insight into 
the constitutive character of the nonconceptual in the concept would end 
the compulsive identification which the concept brings unless halted by 
such reflection. Reflection upon its own meaning is the way out of the 
concept's seeming being-in-itself as a unit of meaning.
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