[Xmca-l] Re: On the difference between the social and the societal

[Andy Blunden]

Michael, I studied Marx from 1968 on, but I never learnt the
word "societal" until the 2000s, on this list actually. I
thought it was just an academic pretension, but someone
explained to me the distinction intended. 40 years of
studying Marx before hearing the word "societal" does *not*
mean I never understood Marx. Really! German, like English,
has plenty of words which are used with a number of
different meanings, with varying degrees of difference.
Should I claim that German-speakers do not understand the
meaning of "Gestalt" because in German "Gestalt" has the
same meaning as "form" in English? "Gestalt" has a clear
meaning, not to be confused with "Form" in every language
except German.

Andy

Andy Blunden
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
On 12/01/2018 1:05 AM, Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
> Hi, some of you may be interested in this article where I show that English
> translations of Marx are missing some important distinctions, without which
> some aspects just do not make any sense.
>
> http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-19.1.2988
>
> This has repercussions on such things as the student learning of
> *universal *concepts rather versus individual (local) "meanings". There are
> certain nouns that in Marx, Vygotsky, Leont'ev etc. always are modified by
> societal but never by social (including personality, consciousness).
>
> German and Russian versions of the same works (Marx, Vygotsky, Leont'ev)
> will have a strict equivalence of gesellschaftlich = obshchestvenij (En:
> societal) and sozial = social'nij (En: social), whereas English texts only
> use the adjective social.
>
> Michael
>
>
> Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne Professor
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Applied Cognitive Science
> MacLaurin Building A567
> University of Victoria
> Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2
> http://web.uvic.ca/~mroth <http://education2.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/>
>
> New book: *The Mathematics of Mathematics
> <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new-directions-in-mathematics-and-science-education/the-mathematics-of-mathematics/>*
>
>