hi mike,
no he was not an activity theorist because his was an object of pure reason,
not of activity at all: his a perfect subject that knows nothing other than
itself , his the perfect object completely incapable of being known. To
his credit, he had imagination bridge the gulf -- but a disembodied, sexless
imagination.
Nevertheless Hegel applauded Kant for discovering "the notion" (intro to the
Shorter Logic) and Ilyenkov, the concrete universal (Essays in Dialectical
reason), in Kant's description of the beautiful as the sublimation of
reason in sensuality and vice-versa (Critique of Judgment). Marcuse
impacted directly or indirectly, an entire generation by mixing Kant's
interpretation the beautiful with Freud's theory of sublimation and Marx's
theory of class society (Eros and Civilization). Angela Davis did her
dissertation on it.
So there was something old Kant caught a glimpse of, no doubt.
Paul
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Cole <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 2:51 PM
Subject: taking a break
>
> I'll be away from the 24th-June 5th and have been too tied up to get
> into the discussion around psychoanalysis and chat. A last little bit
> for now, see you around.....\
>
> Diane wrote:
> the problem of pragmatics and theory is always in this lust for proof
>
> (this is a followup of several commentaries)
>
> Speaking absolutely personally, Dianne, and not as a person particularly
> knowledgable about pragmatism, I thought that the whole point of
> Dewey's work ("The quest for certainty") being one prominent place where
> it is expressed, is that it assumes that uncertainty NEVER goes away and
> that all we can know, for certain, in general, is that whatever we think
> is wrong/incomplete/still becoming.
>
> Seems from a comment Paul made in response to the Kristeva quote is
> that Kant was an activity theorist! :-)
> mike
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jun 01 2000 - 01:01:31 PDT