[Xmca-l] Re: LSV&Spinoza

[lpscholar2@gmail.com]

Annalisa, Mike, Andy.


thanks for this article. 

I would agree with Annalisa that it is very difficult to understand the meaning that Vygotsky was reading into engaging with Spinoza because of what we the readers bring to our understanding of the words/concepts used. I want to draw attention to the last line of Jan’s article.

“the point of this article a propos Vygotsky’s thought is that this first step REQUIRES philosophical work.”


so we are in the realm [the kingdom of] philosophical psychology. Vygotsky lived in a time when the disciplines of philosophy and psychology were not so distinct and to understand psychology was to engage with philosophical inquiry.


Jan also concludes with,
”Vygotsky considered freedom in Spinoza’s sense of self-determination as INTEGRAL to education as a specifically human process of COMING TO BE in the world.” This is the process of “bildung” as Hegel used the term.


to develop intellect and to develop will ARE processes of bildung leading towards self-determination through “adequate concepts” which exist within a “system”.

I read the concept “system” as used in the notion of adequate thought as linked also to “tradition”.

Vygotsky said that every word exists only within a “theory”

so a “word” is never isolated or an orphaned word but always exists within a system that the word emerges “from …” To “read a word is actually to read a “word/from …”


in other words Jan is inviting us to enter a system or a tradition in order to understand the meaning of “word” and “concept” as Vygotsky meant these words. In order 



to enter the world of this word [as adequately used] is to “know” where the word developed “from …”


THIS system and tradition is expressing the meaning of the centrality of “reason” but is not “abstract reason” [which is orphaned reason which has lost its ancestral home]


I would recommend Jan Derry’s new book [Vygotsky, Philosophy and Education] for a more extended conversation on her notion of how to adequately read Vygotsky through the systematic horizon of bildung [educational philosophy]


Jan in her book attempts to show that reading Vygotsky through a “constructivist horizon” is an inadequate reading emerging FROM an alternative system/tradition with different philosophical roots.
I read Jan as helping to make clear that Vygotsky must be read “from” a Spinoza and Hegelian tradition.

Then we can engage with whether this tradition/system itself is adequate but the first step is to show that representational paradigms emerging from abstract reasoning are radically inadequate readings of freedom “from” all constraint and simplistic notions of freedom.Larry


Sent from Windows Mail





From: mike cole
Sent: ‎Thursday‎, ‎June‎ ‎18‎, ‎2015 ‎8‎:‎51‎ ‎AM
To: Andy Blunden, eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity





Oh! Whatever it was it was not supposed to be the published version. Thanks
Andy.
mike

On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 8:42 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> That's a PDF file, MIke.
> Try opening the attached instead.
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>
> On 19/06/2015 1:27 AM, mike cole wrote:
>
>> For those of you, like myself, who are not steeped in Spinoza, this
>> article
>> by Jan Derry from 2006 (Educational Review) might prove a helpful entry
>> point to the vygotsky-spinoza connection. This copy is  a draft version
>> obtained from Jan with thanks.
>>
>> mike
>>
>>
>


-- 

All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes
you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see something
that isn't even visible. N. McLean, *A River Runs Through it*