Jan,
Ilyenkov, like Vygotsky, or whoever - importantly points towards how ______
has a social, cultural, and historical exsistance. Now, if we take Ilyenkov
at his word that this is how the ideal works - it seems to me to open
various questions including political ones.
In particular and my reference to "historical transcedentalism" is, is there
this "reason" or systems of reason which can be assumed neutral. Lenin's
comments on logic comes to mind in which to quote Leontev, "“The practical
activity of man, ” notes V. I. Lenin, “must have brought the consciousness
of man a million times to the repetition of various logical figures in order
that these figures might acquire the significance of axioms". This leaves
me with a feeling of some neutral, objective form of reasoning that is
somehow seperate from social practice. A logic that occurs through history
or life activity instead of the head of Kant. Now if were going to explain
some form of reasoning lets say critical thinking this seems to make a
certain amount of sense. I am thinking about Luria here and how certain ways
of thinking emerge from historical activities like schooling. On the other
hand if we are talking about ways of reasoning or concepts that while still
being social-historical but having a life of their own so to speak that
seems a little different.
I read Marx's 1944 manuscript the other night and it seems to have some
significance here. Is abstracting reasoning, cognition, consciousness from
human activity a good or inevitable thing. Maybe this goes back to what the
ideal is limited to - does it incorporate just the "abstraction" of the
reasoning or more of social practice. An artifact and there material-ideal
qualities seem to convey more that just a form or type of reasoning, also
cultural values, beliefs, choices of what is important.
Really where I was going toward was the ideal being limited to "reason" in
your, "There is a danger both of understanding the realm in
which we act within - as open to conscious open-ended individual
construction and of misunderstanding that the ‘space of reasons’ (our ‘ideal
’ activity laid down in the world over centuries) has a local and
ahistorical character (and thus can be modified at will." Is that where its
boundary ends as an entity? Is it limited to the abstraction of reason from
social activity through history?
Nate
-----Original Message-----
From: jan derry [mailto:j_derry@hotmail.com]
Sent: Monday, September 04, 2000 2:20 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: RE: Re(2): Ideal - Ilyenkov
Nate, I’m not sure whether I have understood what you meant here by ideal
activity focusing solely on its positive side. I also find it difficult to
express in the written word what I have understood from reading Ilyenkov.
But here goes;
There is no sense in Ilyenkov that the meaning, that we incorporate in
matter via our activity, is positive in the way that you seem to mean by
excluding negative. Our activity in this world of matter (materialised as
meaningful, as significant via centuries of human activity – such that our
very engagement with matter is never without significance and meaning and
this is what allows our knowledge of it) can be individual, as we continue
to take as significant what is meaningful to ourselves.
How we move within this space of meaningful matter varies, involving
positive and negative sides if you put it like that. (When you refer to
negative, I was thinking of Vygotsky and Freud saying something like ‘a
brake is a drive on development’ – that something negative can have a
positive effect.)
I don’t know if I have understood what you were getting at here.
On the issue of transcendentalism; Bakhurst discusses in detail how Ilyenkov
offers the possibility of dealing with epistemology in a way that overcomes
many philosophical problems, but at the same time he raises the possible
implication of transcendentalism in Ilyenkov’s argument. However he argues
that this is one reading of Ilyenkov and it is possible to take his
arguments as avoiding transcendentalism in the sense you suggest.
There can be no spirit “guiding” reality because Ilyenkov is working with a
way of conceiving matter that does not leave the ideal as a separate realm.
There is only matter (Spinoza’s one substance of which thought and extension
are attributes) and the human form of matter has the ability to interact
with matter in a way that actualises matter as meaningful - (positions,
locates, constructs, makes noticeable through purposive activity, works on
certain aspects and ignores others through scientific models, intervenes
rather than represents etc.).
There is a similarity here with Dewey’s point that our knowing participates
in forming or altering the world and in this sense reality possesses
practical character. Jan
Jan Derry
www.edu.bham.ac.uk/SAT/Derry.html
Nate wrote;
jan, While I agree with what you said about individual construction, I am
still left wondering if "ideal activity" or the ideal as material activity
focuses solely on its positive side. It seems to me there are ways of
reasoning, thinking, acting that we have access to because of previous and
current material activities that have a negative side. In regards to ideal
activity I am still left with the feeling that there is this "invisable
hand" or "absolute spirit" guiding ideality. It seems to me ideality emerges
from social practice at a certain point in time and becomes materialized in
language, artifacts, buildings etc. That is how we have access to it at
another place and time. I guess what I am really wondering is if this takes
us beyond Kantian transcendentalism except for it being located in history
rather than the head, god or whatever. It seems one thing to argue that the
ideal is of importance in understanding consciousness, reasoning etc, but
quite another to give it solely a positive face.
Nate
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