[Xmca-l] Re: Fw: Re: Vygotsky,Marx, & summer reading

[Andy Blunden]

Haydi, I really can't deal with so many questions, certainly 
not if we want this to be more than a dialogue between the 
two of us. So I will respond to your first paragraph only.

Here is Hegel on moments: 
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slsubjec.htm#SL163 
.
It comes at the beginning of "The Concept" because it is 
only with the formation of a concept of the whole that 
moments of the whole can arise. Universal, Particular and 
Individual are the archetypes of "moments" for Hegel, but he 
also sees the Legislature, the Executive (public service) 
and the Crown (or President) as three moments of the state. 
The name of a thing is a whole -everyone is a person 
("person" = Universal). But humanity is also made up 
communities, it being taken that a person cannot be a person 
unless they participate in some human community ("community" 
in this sense = particular). And every person is an 
individual, born at some time and place and dying in some 
time and place, with their own unique mind ("individual").
Do you see the sense in which these 3 moments are all 
simultaneously the whole?

All the various communities are parts of the whole of 
humanity, just as each individual is a part of a community. 
But we can equally say that the various demographic 
groupings (age, gender, employment, etc.) are parts of the 
whole. It depends on the units chosen, that is, of how the 
whole is conceived.

Here is Hegel on whole and parts: 
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slappear.htm#SL135 
.

Our mind does not create the problem; our minds are part  of 
the same social formation which creates the object we think 
about and reproduce in our activity. Nonetheless, it is 
always legitimate to ask how much of a basis a given "whole" 
has in the material world or in activity. For example, when 
a science first begins it orients to an object which is an 
Appearance (or Phenomenon) - some problem strikes the eye 
and people address themselves to it. For example, as a young 
man Marx was outraged by the injustices he saw around him in 
Germany - censorship, autocracy, persecution of the 
peasantry, etc - but after 20 years of study he formed a 
different conception of the whole - capitalism. David made 
the same point last week pointing to how Vygotsky said that 
some sciences addressed themselves to natural wholes 
(including pedology) while other sciences studied the 
general processes underlying phenomena (Psychology, 
Medicine, Biology, ...). So the whole is not arbitrary - 
different wholes, different units, different problems, 
different insights, different remedies.

That's more than enough!

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
https://andyblunden.academia.edu/research
On 23/08/2017 4:10 AM, ‪Haydi Zulfei‬ ‪ wrote:
> Thank you for your solemn answering , Andy.
>
> I follow your responses not my questions. I admit too many 
> questions but they are related at least for me.
>
> I have not reached 'moment' in Hegel yet but first it was 
> Wolff-Michael years ago who referred to it on debates and 
> ever since I've got to be clear with it at no cost. If I 
> may ... I would say "each moment IS the whole" might be a 
> little bit faulty ; and it might cross your saying of 
> wholes and parts to David ; being a whole despite 
> containing parts ; you here differentiate between moments 
> and parts yet I do not get the distinction ; I would say 
> if moments and parts are matters of Natures of Phenomena 
> or again it's our 'mind' which creates the problem , 
> ontology/epistemology things! ; is it the case that 
> whatever thing we're talking about , finites vs infinite , 
> determinate 
> being/emptiness/filledness/nothingness/transition/becoming/concepts/notion/ought/actuality 
> vs clock parts , we can talk of wholes and parts?
>
>