Hi Pete,
Good to see that you're still on xmca. I was thinking about you the other night (Labor Day) when PBS had a special on the Oakland General Strike in the later 40s. That must of been a great time -- what with the San Francisco Renaissance in the arts and a general focus on the working class struggle around which all of the oppressed factions, including women and minorities, could rally. The loss of focus in practice that resulted from the repressive actions of the capitalist state (anti-communist crusades) seems to have inevitably led to a loss of focus in theory. It's a real sad commentary to see the stale old rhetoric of those crusades popping up again and again.
The problem about the use of this use of freedom/responsibility issue (besides the fact that its a red herring in the context of a discussion of Ilyenkov) centers on its clearly ideological function and the consequent need to, as Husserl would have said, "bracket" it use. Alfred wants to bring "ethics" into the problematic but I can't help remembering that for both materialist and idealist theories (let alone dialectical materialist) since the time of the Greeks, ethics has always been subordinate to politics. At the close of the Nichomacean Ethics, Aristotle emphasized the impotency of reason to lead men to virtue and the need for laws. Socrates, although he didn't doubt his own ideas, recognized the necessity of the "polis" and therefor drank the hemlock. My point here is simply that one can't talk about ethics without talking about society. Karl Otto Apel, in his book on Peirce, said that there are three living philosophical directions in the world today: pragmatism, existentialism, and marxism. It seems that the existentialist position is the one being presented here in pragmatist clothes as a foil for an anti-marxist program although the alliances forming before our very eyes astound and amaze and ultimately bring one to wonder whether there is any philosophical position being represented here at all.
Anyway, Carl R. has been promising me that he is going to join xmca, in particular to participate in the Leont'ev discussion, but I guess he hasn't done so yet. He is finishing a new book on Cultural Psychology and just had an article on culture and agency accepted for publication (not sure where), the latter being particularly relevant to the present subject matter. I think that Ilyenkov isn't the person who needs to be discussed in this context (freedom/necessity) but Felix Mikhailov whose "Riddle of the Self" (available on Andy's website) deals in depth with several areas of psychological phenomena (dreams, personality, individuality). Hopefully the presence of your voice and Carl's when he gets on, will provide some deeper perspectives on these issues that will certainly become topics of focus whenever we get to the Leont'ev reading.
Paul H. Dillon
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