Re: The human conditionAlfred,
I am very interested in hearing more about these matters and what you have
been thinking. In our work we are interested precisely in using CHAT as a
theory of intervention - Which is what I understand you to mean when you
say:
For various reasons, the most important of which may be that it has no
process theory on the concrete level. This makes it weak in view of the
present power of the natural sciences and their functioning techniques.
Surely the work of Yrjo and his colleagues in Finland is about process
theories at the concrete level. Or have I misunderstood your meaning?
Phillip Capper,
Centre for Research on Work, Education and Business Ltd. (WEB Research),
Level 13
114 The Terrace
(PO Box 2855)
WELLINGTON
New Zealand
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-----Original Message-----
From: Alfred Lang [mailto:alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch]
Sent: Friday, 12 July 2002 2:31 a.m.
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: The human condition
Alfred,
I would contend that LSV's Thought and Language comes the closest.
Would you agree?
eric
My answer to your question needs a more than one word; there's a risk of
being misunderstood. Yes, Eric, LSV's cultural-historical approach is a
great step in the right direction towards understanding the human condition
when compared to all what has been done in the basic human sciences such as
psychology, sociology and the related fields in the last two centuries. And,
today, I judge it one of, if not the most comprehensive ans important
theoretical perspective. It also suggests and guides great practice, simply
great. CHAT is, in some ways, ecological (stretching beyond the individual),
evolutive (including historical becoming), and semiotic (emphasizing
mediation and meaning). Strangely enough, I have reason to believe, as I
have claimed before on this list and elsewhere, there has been one even more
comprehensive approach, more than two centuries ago: Johann Gottfried
Herder's -- similary or even more marginal, given the scientific and
anthropological scene.
Yet, as I have attempted to convey as a discussant on Anna's Symposium on
status and future of CHAT in Amsterdam, the cultural-historical approach has
little chances, in my judgment, in getting influence on a much broader field
in the modern world. For various reasons, the most important of which may be
that it has no process theory on the concrete level. This makes it weak in
view of the present power of the natural sciences and their functioning
techniques, however much (non)sense and (reckless in)humanities those two
produce.
Ironically, the present situation of CHAT looks as promising as marginal
as did Herder's ideas around 1800 when scientific and technical modernity
had its actual beginnings. To some measure because Kant had apparently
demonstrated that reason could take something like the place of God (to say
it cuspidally). Such prospect and Kant's ambivalences as to whether reason
was universal or individual, objective or subjective, had born that
bifurcation into modern individualism, subjectivism (Fichte etc.) and
objectivism, materialism (Hegel and Marx etc.) respectively. The latter
opened that broad avenue for natural law and, in addition, has lead to the
most silly consequentual human project, namely to understand humans, as
individual and as social bodies, also according to natural law and to
research them by means of the same logic of science. The former took reign
in matters of greed and exploitation, in the modern way life, for short.
What hypocritical coalition of the two: to believe -- as the scientific
faith! -- in determinististic natural law for everything, salted with a
pinch of chance, and at the same time to promote and to savor personal
"freedom" in the sense of "everybody's license to do what s/he likes (short
of killing and stealing others exept in power position).
One of the weaknesses, then, of CHAT may be that it sometimes comports
itself and looks to others like any other science whereas it also resembles
very much also an interpretative, hermeneutic project like a classical
Geisteswissenschaft. This ambivalence, perhaps, makes it unattractive to
both, normal scientists and traditional humanists.
Since I think that both these prospects are equally limited and, in
particular erroneous if extended beyond their original domain, I follow the
path that emerges from my suggestion that, unfortunately, CHAT is not
radical enough in implementing its evolutive, ecological and semiotic base.
I have started to elaborate a bit on my ideas about problematic features
of CHAT and how I could go beyond. Would anybody be interested?
Alfred
--Alfred Lang, Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland --- alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch Website: http://www.psy.unibe.ch/ukp/langpapers/
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