Thanks Paul,
I enjoyed the quotes and what I have read so far in Chapter 8. It definately gave me a
different impression of the ideal that the canvas quote.
His emphasis on activity and practice was useful for me, and in general there was a lot I
agreed with.
You said something to Diane that I'd like to take up.
" Human practice that fails to conform to the independent structures, the ecological
parameters of the material world (e.g., the Anasazi, the lowland Maya, the
20th century global civilization?) quite simply autodestructs--no gas in the
tank, no drive-- that's pretty objective and doesn't admit of regionally
applicable truths except in "make-believe"."
In the crisis Vygotsky critiques the behaviorists assertion that they simply deal with "facts"
and puts forth an argument for why this wasn't so. The "fact" of independent structures,
ecological parameters of the material world" do not exist in themselves. That knowledge most
of the time is mediated by some ideology or theory whether explicit or implicit. Recently I
looked through a "how to do" book on grounded theory and frankly it was the most
theoretically loaded book I ever read.
The "fact" that over production of land in the mountains through central and south america
tells us nothing about poor peasents being removed from fertile by the rich landlords and
American corporations and put on the mountains to survive. The news of course stated the
dead were a result of a "natural" disaster - there is frankly nothing natural about it. Or how
one teacher I worked with upon seeing garbage thrown everywhere in the poor communities
in Brasil, told the students that they (the poor) need to be taught how to take care of their
community. The so called progressive ideals of enviromentalism often come at the price of
the poor. We, say no more landfills in my back yard, and 9 times out of ten they end up in
some poor community.
It seems to me that to say that facts are simply objective, neutral or the like is one of the most
hideous forms of power.
Nate
> ** Original Subject: RE: Language and ideality
> ** Original Sender: "Paul H. Dillon" <illonph@pacbell.net>
> ** Original Date: 08 Jun 2000 10:56:14 -0700 (PDT)
> ** Original Message follows...
>
> Nate,
>
> I think that Peter's recommendation of Ch. 8 of Ilyenkov's "Dialectical
> Logic", which is available on line on Andy's website, answers the question
> you asked:
>
> > So, in the context of the spider where does this idea come from. Is it
> motivated by and
> > determined by activity, so therefore a dialectic of both "the world" and
> the carptenter. This
> > makes sense to me, but the quote by Ilyenkov felt real unidirectional to
> me. Kind of like a
> > suburban carpenter ;).
>
> Allow me to pull out some of the passages that directly answer your
> question, leaving to the side (for now?) any exegesis .
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------------------------
>
> "The ideal is the subjective image of objective reality, i.e., reflection of
> the external world in the forms of man's activity, the the forms of his
> consciousness and will. The ideal is not the individual psychological fact,
> much less a physiological fact, but a socio-historical one, the product and
> form of mental production. It exists in a variety of forms of man's social
> consciousness and will as the subject of the social production of material
> and spiritual life."
>
> "All general images, however, without exception, neither sprang from
> universal schemas of the work of thought nor arose from an act of passive
> conteplation of nature unsullied by man, but took shape in the course of its
> practical, objective transformation by man, by society. They arose and
> functioned as forms of the social-man determination of the purposive will of
> the individual, i.e., as forms of real activity. General images, moreover,
> were crystallised in the body of spiritual culture quite unintentionally,
> and independently of the will and consciousness of individuals, although
> through their activities. In intuition they appeared precisely as the forms
> of things created by human activity, or as 'stamps' ('imprints') laid on
> natural, physical material by man's activities, as forms of purposive will
> alienated in external substance."
>
> "A purely objective picture of nature was therefore disclosed to man not in
> contemplation but only through activity and in the activity of man socially
> producing his own life, of society. "
>
> "The ideal is therefore nothing else than the form of things, but existing
> outside things, namely in man, in the form of his active practice; i.e., it
> is the socially determined form of the human being's activity."
>
> "At first hand, transformation of the material into the ideal consists in
> the external fact of being expressed in language, which 'is the immediate
> actuality of thought' (Marx). But language of itself is as little ideal as
> the neuro-physiological structure of the brain. It is only the form of
> expression of the idea, its material-objective being . . . In other words,
> the object proves to be idealised only when the faculty of actively
> recreating it has been created, relying on the language of words or
> drawings; when the faculty of converting words into deeds, and through deeds
> into things, has been created."
>
> "The ideal, as the form of social man's activity, exists where the process
> of the transformation of the body of nature into the object of man's
> activity, into the object of labour, and then into the product of labour
> takes place. The same thing can be expressed in another way, as follows:
> the form of the external thing involved in the labour process is 'sublated'
> in the subjective form of objective activity (action or objects); the latter
> is objectively registered in the subject in the form of the mcechanisms of
> higher nervous activity; and then there is a reverse sequence of therse
> metamorphoses, namely the verbally expressed idea is transformed into a
> deed, and through the deed into the form of an external, sensuously
> perceivewd thing, into a thing. These two contrary series of metamorphoses
> form a closed cycle: thing-deed-word-deed-thing. Only in this cyclic
> movement, constantly renewed does the idea, the ideal image of a thing
> exist."
>
> "The fundamental distinction between man's activity and the activity of an
> animal is this, that no one form of this activity, no one faculty, is
> inherited together with the anatomical organisation of the body. All forms
> of activity (active faculties) are passed on only in the form of objects
> created by man for man. The individual mastery of a humanly determined form
> of activity; i.e., the ideal image of its object and product, are therefore
> transformed in a special process that does not coincide with the objective
> moulding of nature (shaping of nature in objects)."
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----------------
>
>
> Paul H. Dillon
>** --------- End Original Message ----------- **
>
________________________________________________________
1stUp.com - Free the Web
Get your free Internet access at http://www.1stUp.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Jul 01 2000 - 01:00:30 PDT