[xmca] Fakhrutdinova & perezhivanie

["White, Phillip" <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>]

After having read Fakhrutdinova’s “On the Pnenomenon of ‘Perezhivanie’”, I was reminded of  Martin Heidegger’s response (“Letter on Humanism” p. 208, in Martin Heidegger’s Basic Writings, 1977) to Jean Paul Sartre is that Sartre, “stays with metaphysics in oblivion of the truth of Being.”

If I’m understanding correctly, “perezhivanie” is structural unit of consciousness – rather like, say, a human’s thumb is a structural unit of a hand – and as such allows human existence through consciousness to develop, shape and transform itself.

But, there are all of these metaphysical terms: spirit, essence, soul, magic, dialectic unity, transcendental reflection, spiritual principle (which separates us from animals!), inner self, higher I, shell of personality, heart of the human psyche, oedipal complex, etc., to list a partial inventory.

And this metaphysical excursion is to explain why “these days one rarely encounters a mature, adult, responsible, creative, self-aware person who know what he (sic) wants.”

Except that we’ve got Gurdjieff to explain that, “Man is a machine.”  I remember a Walt Disney educational film from the 1950’s explaining that man is a machine.  And I suppose the universe is still a clock.

In the end, I was left wondering if the researchers themselves are attempting to understand what happened to the consciousness of the citizens of the soviet union as they existed under the communist “finite state machine”.  After all, the soviet state organization focus was to erase diverse reflection, creativity and consciousness within an entire population in lieu of a state determined cultural structure of consciousness.  (This is what all state power structures attempt to do, it’s just that totalitarian regimes are more tenacious and violent in their implementation of state control.  Witness the social violence in China, for example, particularly over Tibet; or racial segregation in the American South.)

I was not convinced that any of the research was grounded in empirical standards of research.  (yes, a cultural construction - but i don't know of any other methods of research grounded in professional consensus.) 

Anyway, my two-bits, half-baked response.

phillip


Phillip White, PhD
Urban Community Teacher Education Program
School of Education & Human Development
University of Colorado Denver
phillip.white@ucdenver.edu__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca