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Re: [xmca] The Missing Part
Ulvi:
Yes, it is missing from the Collected Works version. The Collected Works edition is based on the 1956-1982 Russian editions. There were many cuts made in 1956 and not all of them were repaired in 1982. These cuts are not noted and the only way to find them is to go through the 1934 and the 1956-1982 two versions paragraph by paragraph, which is what we've been doing for three years now for our Korean translation.
Kozulin is the only person who makes any part of the 1934 edition available in English. But the problem with Kozulin is that he was only supposed to update--not rewrite--the 1962 Hanfmann-Kasanin translation which, most people will agree, is not a translation so much as a selective paraphrase (it was HALF the length of the original book). That means that although the Kozulin book includes extremely well translated passages of the 1934 material (and priceless footnotes and a great intro) the main body of the text is a pale copy of Thinking and Speech.
I have to agree with Rene van der Veer and Luciano Meccaci: the 1934 edition was virtually complete when Vygotsky died, and this is therefore the only canonical edition. No adequate translation of this edition into English exists. Therefore, we have no authoritative edition of Thinking and Speech.
If (like me) you cannot read and understand it well enough in Russian, my advice is to read it in French (but this is still the 1982 edition) or Italian (the 1934 edition in all its glory, with only a very few minor errors!). Or you could learn Korean!
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
--- On Mon, 7/12/10, ulvi icil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com> wrote:
From: ulvi icil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] The Missing Part
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Monday, July 12, 2010, 12:53 AM
David,
Is this part missing also in Col. Works edition?
Ulvi
2010/7/12, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>:
>
> This is the beginning of Chapter Two of Thinking and Speech that was not
> translated into English. I posted it once several years ago, and Anton
> thought it didn't add very much.
>
> I think it does: it structures the whole chapter, because it makes it clear
> that Freud, Levy-Bruhl, and Blondel share a common idealist basis as well as
> a common canonical stature.
>
> ≪Мы полагаем, . говорит он, . что настанет день, когда мысль ребенка по
> отношению к мысли нормального цивилизованного взрослого будет помещена в ту
> же плоскость, в какой находится ≪примитивное мышление≫, охарактеризованное
> Леви-Брюлем, или аутистическая и символическая мысль, описанная Фрейдом и
> его учениками, или ≪болезненное сознание≫, если только это понятие,
> введенное Блонделем, не сольется в один прекрасный день с предыдущим
> понятием≫ (1, с.408).1 Действительно, появление его первых работ по
> историческому значению
> этого факта для дальнейшего развития психологической мысли должно быть по
> справедливости сопоставлено и сравнено с датами выхода в свет ≪Les fonctions
> mentales dans les societes inferieures≫ Леви-Брюля, ≪Толкования сновидений≫
> Фрейда или ≪La conscience morbide≫ Блонделя. Больше того, между этими
> явлениями в различнейших областях научной психологии есть не только внешнее
> сходство, определяемое уровнем их исторического значения, но глубокое,
> кровное, внутреннее родство . связь по самой сути заключенных и воплощенных
> в них философских и
> психологических тенденций. Недаром сам Пиаже в огромной мере опирался в
> своих исследованиях и построениях на эти три
> работы и на их авторов.
>
>
> “It is therefore our belief", says (Piaget), "that the day will come when
> child thought will be placed on the same level in relation to adult, normal,
> and civilized thought as ‘primitive mentality’, as defined by Lévy-Bruhl, as
> autistic and symbolical thought as described by Freud and his disciples and
> as ‘morbid consciousness,’ assuming that this last concept, which we owe to
> M. Ch. Blondel, is not simply fused with the former.” (p. 201-202). In
> reality, the appearance of this first works, in regard to the historic
> importance as a fact for future reference in the development of
> psychological thought must be on the compared with the appearance of “Les
> fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures” of Levi- Bruhl, Freud’s
> “The interpretation of dreams’, or Blondel’s “La conscience morbide”. It is
> not simply that between these phenomena in the development of the field of
> scientific psychology there is a formal
> resemblance, determined by their level of historic importance, but that
> there is a deep, internal kinship, a connection in essence which is visible
> in their philosophical and psychological tendencies. Not without reason does
> Piaget himself base in enormous measure his own studies and constructions on
> these three works and on their authors.
>
> Last night I was re-reading Bleuler's criticisms of Freud in "Autistic
> Thinking" and I also came upon these words, which Vygotsky quotes
> approvingly.
>
> "Examining the more grown-up child, I also do not much observe that he
> would prefer the imaginary apple to the real. The imbecile and the savage
> are alike practitioners of Realpolitik and the latter, (exactly like us, who
> stand at the apex of cognitive ability) makes his autistic stupidities only
> in such cases when reason and experience prove insufficient: in his ideas
> about the universe, about the phenomena of nature, in his understanding of
> diseases and other blows of destiny, in adopting measures to shield himself
> from them, and in other relationships which are too complex for him.”
>
> It seems to me that here and elsewhere in this chapter Bleuler is arguing
> for, and Vygotsky is agreeing with, a position that is simultaneously
> universalist, relativist, and developmentalist. It is universalist in the
> sense that it argues for a universal human autistic response to areas of
> experience of which we are ignorant. It is relativist in the sense that it
> argues for the independence of an "autistic" response from rationality and
> an autonomous art and autonomous humanities based on that independence that
> is in no way subordinate to rationality. It is developmentalist in the sense
> that it argues for an autistic response which develops out of a narrow,
> immediately realistic (perception based?) reality function rather than vice
> versa (as in Freud, Janet, and Levy-Bruhl).
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
>
>
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