Alfred, yes, "objective" derives from Latin roots in Russian and almost
sounds the same -- "objektivnij." As to your question. Note that the phrase
relates to "SOCIAL life", that is, communal life of humans doing things
together and relating to each other and to the world around them in their
own, specifically human or humanized ways, and also creating and constantly
transfroming the world (and their forms of life), as well as themsleves, in
the process. In this sense, social life is certainly not independent of
human beings.
Greetings,
Anna
-----Original Message-----
From: Alfred Lang
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Sent: 7/2/2002 3:48 AM
Subject: Re: Psychology and Marxism Updates
Andy and all,
where do I find the quote and its further context?
"To find the soul it is necessary to lose it."
A remarkable sentence for a psychologist. All the more so since
"finding the soul" is a sort of key idea in many mystical traditions
and loosing it for the better of its fate a key idea in at least some
Eastern traditions.
While this sentence is just a chatch phrase Vygotksy's claim that "it
is necessary to seek the sources of human consciousness and freedom
in the social history of humanity", does look like a capsule
statement of CHAT.
Yet I would like to clear a problem remaining for me. In the
sentence: "to discover the sources of free action [...] in the
objective forms of social life", what is the Russian word translated
with "objective"? Is it the Latin-derived term? If yes, what does it
mean? If it refers to social life seen independent of how it is to be
processed by the persons involved? Formulated as it is it seems to
refer to the person-external world. But how could ever "free action"
arise from person-independent facts?
Best, Alfred
-- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Alfred Lang, Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland --- alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch Website: http://www.psy.unibe.ch/ukp/langpapers/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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