Yes, thank you Dot for those interesting poems. In reading Chapter 4 I took
it as a focus on the relationship between Activity and Consciousness. Like
the object / subject they are relational categories which frankly "English"
and maybe language in general does not handle to well (thinginess).
I think dialectics is helpful in this regard - here are two definitions from
the MIA Encyclopedia.
Subject:
“Subject” refers to the person carrying out an action, rather than the
object which is being acted upon. The term is often used as a synonym for
“human being”, or the consciousness of a human being. In the context of
history, “subject” means the agent of history, the people who are the
conscious architects of events, rather than their unconscious tools.
The “subject-object” problem, or the separation of subject and object is
often taken as a fundamental problem of Western thinking, ever since
Descartes invented the “Cartesian divide”. For dialectics, subject and
object can only be understood as opposite aspects of the subject-object
relation and thus one and the same.
Object and Subject:
Subject and Object are crucial concepts in Epistemology, the study of
knowledge. ‘Subject’ refers to the active, cognising individual or social
group, with consciousness and/or will, while ‘object’ refers to that on
which the subject’s cognitive or other activity observes.
In the dialectical theory of knowledge, the important thing is to understand
the subject and object as a unity and to see both the activity of the
subject (which had been developed by idealism — see Theses on Feuerbach No.
1) and the independent existence of the world of which the subject is a part
(which had been emphasised by materialism).
Now, how well Leont'ev adheres to it being a object/subject relation I'm not
sure. I'm also thinking of Arne and his discussion on how in Activity Theory
the whole notion of self or individual needs to be reinterpreted. He goes
for the self-selves differentiation argueing historically self is rooted in
a biological adaptation conception of individual - not the
culural-historical evolution that Leontev draws upon.
Lastly, I do not think there are any experts here - most of us are grabbing
for staws trying to make sense of the book just like you with our own goals
and interests.
Nate
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