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Re: [xmca] Spanning Traditions: ingold and vygotsky



Thanks for that, Tony. And anyone else who has some gems from anywhere on concepts that I may have overlooked, send them my way.

As I see it, in this excert, Adorno sets off from an idealist understanding of "concepts" himself, so as to prove that philosophy is doomed to idealism by making concepts its subject matter. I think you have to be a Vygotskyist or Activity Theorist of some kind that understands the essential place of mediation in communication, to read Hegel other than as an idealist. It's to do with that sedimentation of culture we all just spoke about. Since Adorno's generation of Critical Theorists, knew only Freud and the "social psychology" of the crowd, this was ruled out. (My mind is still open about Merleau-Ponty but it appears that otherwise the situation has not improved in Critical Theory).

Andy

Tony Whitson wrote:
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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*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857

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