RE: [xmca] Re: One more example: errors in translation/interpretation

Sasha, my friend, I must respond. You refer to my 1997 review of "Thinking
and Speaking"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/comment/vygotsk1.htm which
was my reaction to the first book of Vygotsky's that I had just read at
that time. As it happens, as the response of a newcomer to Vygotsky, the
little article struck a kind of chord I think with others who were also
just coming to Vygotsky for the first time, and it was widely copied and
quoted around the internet. I hope I have learnt a little in the 11 years
since writing that piece, but as it happens, I am happy to stand by the
phrase you quote.

Your counter-claim, so far as I can see is that two entities, or forms of
motions, which have separate roots, cannot through their identity or
"intersection" produce something new and profound, but rather only a
superficial relation.

Dialectics, it is often said, sees contradiction as internal to the thing,
not in the external relations between things. However, if that internal
contradictory relation is _only_ internal to the thing, that is, if the
contradictory sides of the thing have no capacity for independent
existence, then the contradiction can only be subjective, in the eye of the
beholder, and not objective.

I think in the same article I likened this conception to Hegel's
conception, but at that time I would not have known how about Hegel
resolved the contradiction in Kant's philosophy, between Reason and
Intuition, the two necessary aspects of thought, which apparently have two
different sources (intelligence and the sense organs). Hegel brilliantly
resolves this problem, demonstrating that in the use of products of human
cultural production human beings sensuously apprehend objective thought
forms. The resulting unity of concept and Intuition does not produce an
immediate, inseparable, flat unity, but on the contrary, the achievement of
unity turns out to be a protracted and contradictory process, covering in
fact the entire process of human history, with the construction of ever
more adequate thought forms in an unending struggle to overcome the inner
contradiction inhering in specifically human activity.

Nonetheless, even at the early stage of my Hegel studies I recognised in
Vygotsky the hand of the great master of dialectic, G W F Hegel. And I
stand by that.

Andy

At 06:59 AM 25/03/2008 +0300, Sasha Surmava wrote:
>... Andy Blunden asserts "Vygotsky's study of the relationship of
>thought and language is a model of the materialist application of the
>dialectical method of the first order of importance, both by reason of its
>results and of its methods." Andy is my friend, but I can't share his
>statement. Moreover I think that just that very case is very expressive
>example of Vygotsky's failure in realizing dialectical approach. The first
>idea that thinking and speech have different and independent roots is
>basically incompatible with the next one concerning their "dialectical"
>interaction. Those which are mutually alien are doomed to fruitful
>superficial relation and any genuine dialectical relation in this case is
>totally impossible. ...

  Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
mobile 0409 358 651

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Received on Tue Mar 25 06:11 PDT 2008