Judy, Paul, Diane, Peter, .................
My frustration with Herder is this - it is NOT some ideal that was not
implemented but one that was. U.S. History, Consitution, Federalist papers
are all motivated by this ideology. This is a similar frustration of one
"post-modernist" who was argueing for this "third space" - civil society -
as a response to modernism. Freedom and responsibility is not something new
I for one am living in a country based on that ideal. In this sense I agree
with Diane about going backwards, but also look forward for Alfred's
clarification.
We can look at a recent rebubli___who argued this ideology in reference to
the Panama Canal I believe - "WE GAVE gave them FREEDOM and they weren't
RESPONSIBLE with it". This is the classic case of who determines freedom and
in turn what responsibility is. We also know all to well who this ideology
tends to be directed at. It is "wefare queens", those on W2, working class,
raped women, Shepard's (wrong spelling I'm sure) of this world. In other
words it is the elements of our society that are on the bottom. Personally
I am all in favor of acadamians, middle class, wealthy, capitalists etc etc.
acknowleding their "freedom" and taking "responsibility" for it, but at the
same time we need to acknowledge the victims this discourse comes down upon
on a daily basis. I also agree with what Diane and Judy were getting at
eventhough I am leary of the terms freedom and responsibility.
I also find myself wondering why diversity of social experiences or ideal
being continually re-negotiated is automatically in opposition to something
on the level of ideology. They seem related to me - for a certain way of
thinking / reasoning / action to be produced it must occur at variety of
sites with "free movement". It seems to me the "free movement" or "diversity
of uses" of an ideal like freedom is not so much in opposition to its
ideological use but makes it possible. I am brought back to Jim's book
where he points out the irony of his Russian-American educational study that
resistence was more or less absent in American schools (not so in Russian
schools). What we lacked was counter-narratives - and his topic was freedom
too. What was interesting was even those exploited by that ideology
addressed that exploitation on "freedoms" terms.
Nate
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul H.Dillon [mailto:illonph@pacbell.net]
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2000 2:27 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: freedom & responsibility
Judy,
What is the difference between desires and needs?
Paul H. Dillon
----- Original Message -----
From: Judy Diamondstone
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 11:15 PM
Subject: Re: freedom & responsibility
I found this message helpful. However, I think there's a confusion about the
notion of freedom/agency that is being discussed; as I understood it,
"freedom" or "free play" is inherent in a semiotic system and a world
mediated by such psychological tools. Earlier this morning, I was thinking
that I'd be willing to relinquish the notion of "freedom" if a discourse of
_desire_ is admitted into the discussion. There needs to be some way to
account for individuals' orientation to take up one practice, not another;
use certain tools, not others; --the acquisition of different styles of
participation. Desire is also produced on a sociocultural stage, in power
relations, but it is peculiarly shaped by each individual's social
history -- Local Social in cultural hist. context. So it is HERE where
responsibility takes on the tones assigned to it by Alfred, Diane, and
others.
So what do others think?
Judy
At 09:27 PM 9/10/00 -0700, you wrote:
>>>>
Randy,
You have raised a very practical problem. "One question that arises for me
about Ilyenkov is to what degree
is the ideal universal or local?" The way I understand it, the ideal is to
be understood as an aspect of objective existence much in the same way that
hardness, heat/cold, color, and other qualities are aspects of objective
existence. It is not a phenomena that exists in the specific neural patterns
of our brains but is a quality of the real world. Its peculiarity consists
in that it is a property of the real world that we as humans create through
historical-practical activity. So in the broadest sense of the word, the
ideal is both universal and local.
A confusion arises, however, when we ask about a specific form of the ideal
as it pertains to our specific place in history and its corresponding
cultural/material context. The notion of freedom is one such specific
manifestation where this confusion tends to appear. As an ideological
concept comparable say to the Maori concept of "mana" that Durkheim analyzes
in "Elementary Forms of Religious Life"; it appears to us in a reified form
that we attach to physical objects, in this case, the individuals of the
species homo sapiens.
Although Ilyenkov might have written about this specific problem (i only
know the work translated into English), Felix Mikhailov does provide an
analysis of individual agency from this perspective that I consider the
genetic root (as labor is the genetic root of value) of the concept that we
encounter as "freedom". Fundamentally the question of agency is involved
with two dimensions the individual homo-sapiens social existence: *needs* of
various kinds (biological, psychological, etc.) and *purposes* which arise
necessarily in the context of realizing social activity. (see
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/mikhailov/works/riddle/riddle2e.htm>http://
www.marxists.org/archive/mikhailov/works/riddle/riddle2e.htm)
I'll quote two passages that I believe best adumbrate this position. The
first establishes a framework for viewing individual agency and the second
the nature of purpose as goal-oriented action:
"Human individuality is the inimitable originality of each individual Homo
sapiens realising his life-activity as a subject of socio-historical
development. The inimitability, the uniqueness of the individual is
determined by the organic unity and integrality of the process of
development of his needs and abilities, which are formed in active
intercourse with living, inimitabler bearers of social culture. The
essential media of this intercourse are the objective forms, ways and means
of culture: the instruments and products of all forms of socio-historical
activity (labour), language, knowledge, skills, abilities and so on." [ie,
the ideal]
. . .
"Purposeful activity can be performed only by an individual capable of
distinguishing himself from his own activity. Otherwise activity cannot be
treated as a guided process, a process directed towards some aim. What is
more the setting of the aim is a function of the indvidual's abilitity to
view his activity from the side.
Activity directed toward an aim. The image of what should appear as a result
of activity, but which is not yet and without this activity never will be,
hovers in the mental vision of the acting individual. And it is this
goal-oriented activity that Marx includes among the universal (simple and
abstract from all their real historical social forms) elements of labour."
It would seem to me that the ideological concept of abstract "freedom"
amplifies the "goal-oriented" aspect of individual activity without taking
into consideration how the individual comes to view his or her activity
"from the side". To answer this both Ilyenkov and Mikhailov propose that the
entire history of human evolution (during which process even the very
biological nature of homo sapiens is defined) forms the substance of
individuality. As I interpret it, the ability to stand to the side, the pure
negation of the given, is the fundamental characteristic of goal
orientation, the difference between the worst human carpenter and the spider
that Marx alluded to in his well known example.
I guess the question about the ideal as universal or particular is sort of
like asking about color: yes color exists concretely (and this concreteness
is definitely not given as specific wavelengths on the electromagnetic
spectrum impacting optical neurons but a culturally and historically
determined maniforld) but always as particular colors and furthermore always
given in disappearing moments; ie, individuals.
Paul H. Dillon
----- Original Message -----
From: Randy Bomer <<mailto:rbomer@indiana.edu>rbomer@indiana.edu>
To: <<mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 12:56 PM
Subject: Re: freedom & responsibility
> Hi all.
>
> I'm assuming that the freedom/responsibility discussion does relate in
some
> way to Ilyenkov, so I wanted to explore whether I could understand how. (I
> know it spun off, but still...) Might it be seen as a case study in the
> ways ideality operates in activity and social relations? There is this
> sign/concept "freedom" that exists independent of any of our thinking,
that
> predates our existence, that has no material presence, and that carries
with
> it (but represses, abbreviates, enfolds) a history of relations and
> activity. "Freedom" in the US and "Freiheit" in
> Germany surely aren't at all the same, as some have pointed out. And
> "freedom" in the US is not identical across contexts, either. So is
> Ilyenkov's notion of the ideal situated in particular contexts or is it
> something that transcends those contexts? I tend to think that ideality is
> really instantiated in very particular conversations and that the
> intersubjectvity necessary to sustain the Ideal has to be continually
> re-negotiated. Consequently, philosophical explorations of notions like
> "freedom" can only be partial, and we can only see their consequences if
we
> are working to solve together some particular pragmatic problem, like,
say,
> what side to take on legislation regarding abortion, or how to respond to
> the situation of Afghani women, or how to set up a classroom.
>
> Also, people invoke and employ terms that signify ideal concepts always
and
> only in social action. Like people use "freedom" as they negotiate
> relationships along the lines of who gets to play the role of being right,
> who gets to correct whose discourse, who can claim a transcendent voice,
who
> remains silent to signal their disinterest. I don't remember this point in
> Ilyenkov, but it seems like the ideal not only carries material history
> hidden behind it but also is always named in the new making of new social
> and material history. I imagine that was behind Helena's earlier question
> about whom Ilyenkov was writing for and what the conversation was like, to
> re-situate his signification of the ideality of "ideality" within social
> activity.
>
> That's what I'm thinking about...
>
> Randy
> ----------------------------
> Randy Bomer
> Language Education
> Indiana University
> 201 N. Rose Ave.
> Bloomington, IN 47405
> (812) 856-8293
>
>
>
>
>
>
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