Thanks Andy. This is rather nice: Vygotsky > Lenin > Hegel > Kant
On 12/3/06 5:56 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> Here's Lenin's famous comment on Hegel and abstract/concrete (Volume 38 in
> my edition):
> http://marx.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/ch03.htm
> I'll respond to your post when I've a bit more time to think, ... this evening
> Andy
> At 05:30 PM 3/12/2006 -0500, you wrote:
>> Andy,
>>
>> I would very much like to get clearer on Vygotsky's use of both Hegel and
>> Lenin. Perhaps you can help me?
>>
>> For example, in Pedology of the Adolescent (around 1931) V wrote on concept
>> development, and in particular on counting and the number concept. It seems
>> to me he oscillates between a simple view in which the concrete is primitive
>> and the abstract is advanced, and a very different view in which seemingly
>> abstract concepts are actually a reorganization of the relationship between
>> concrete and abstract: "a completely new form of relation between abstract
>> and concrete factors in thinking arises, a new form of their merging and
>> synthesis" (p. 39). The latter strikes me as distinctly Hegelian. The former
>> seems to come up when Vygotsky refers to Hegel. But my reading must be too
>> naive, because on page 79 we find V citing Lenin citing Hegel!
>>
>> First on concepts: The young child's perception of number "is based on
>> number images, on concrete perception of form and size of a given number of
>> objects. With [the] transition to thinking in concepts, the child is
>> liberated from purely concrete numerical thinking. In place of a number
>> image, a number concept appears. If we compare the concept of number with a
>> number image, at first glance it may seem to justify [the] premises of
>> formal logic relative to the extreme poverty in content of the concept in
>> comparison with the riches of the concrete content contained in the image"
>> (vol 5, 78)
>>
>> But Vygotsky immediately continues: "Actually, this is not so. The concept
>> not only excludes from its content a number of points proper to the concrete
>> perception, but for the first time, it also discloses in the concrete
>> perception a number of such points that are completely inaccessible to
>> direct perception or contemplation, points that are introduced by thinking
>> and are identified through processing the data of experience and synthesized
>> into a single whole with elements of direct perception.
>>
>> "Thus all number concepts, for example, the concept "7," are included in a
>> complex number system, occupy a certain place in it, and when this concept
>> is found and processed, then all the complex connections and relations that
>> exist between this concept and the rest of the system of concepts in which
>> it is included are given. The concept not only reflects reality, but also
>> systematizes it, includes data of concrete perception into a complex system
>> of connections and relations, and discloses the connections and relations
>> that are inaccessible to simple comprehension. For this reason many
>> properties of size become clear and perceptible only when we begin to think
>> of them in concepts" (78-79)
>>
>> This is all rather nice. But then, surprisingly, comes a footnote quoting
>> Lenin on Hegel!
>>
>> Lenin: "In opposition to Kant, Hegel was essentially completely correct.
>> Thinking going from the concrete to the abstract does not deviate if it is
>> correct from truth, but approaches it. The abstraction of material, a laaw
>> of nature, abstraction of value, etc., in a word, all scientific (correct,
>> serious, not foolish) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, more
>> reliably, more fully. From a living contemplation to abstract thinking and
>> from it to practice such is the dialectical path of recognizing truth,
>> recognizing objective reality" (Complete Works, Vol. 29, pp. 152-153). [Vol.
>> 29 is March Aug 1919]
>> So here, apparently, are Vygotsky, Hegel and Lenin all agreeing that
>> reflection is an active way of thinking which gets beyond appearances to
>> essences, systematizes concrete detail, grasps complex interconnections,
>> recognizes objective reality, achieves truth, and guides practice!
>>
>> I've tried to find this excerpt from Lenin on marxists.org, but without
>> success.
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/3/06 4:58 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>
>>> I don't know, Paul. I guess I would ask you to give me page references to
>>> justify this observation.
>>>
>>> The Lenin of the 1914/15 Notebooks certainly reads as a very different
>>> character from the Lenin of the 1908 ME&C, but I am sure that if Lenin had
>>> anywhere in those Notebooks made any kind of self-criticism of his 1908
>>> position I would have noticed it. The same Trotskyist group which spent
>>> countless hours bashing M&EC into my head spent even more hours bashing
>>> "Volume 38" into my head, and it was this experience which prompted me to
>>> make my own study of Hegel.
>>>
>>> As to Ilyenkov, yes, Ilyenkov has been my guiding light to get out of the
>>> dogmatism of M&EC. The problem is that while A&C and the Essays are at odds
>>> with M&EC, Ilyenkov chooses to back Lenin to the hilt when he writes a book
>>> about M&EC. As I said, there is nothing actually incorrect in M&EC; it
>>> just, IMO, makes the wrong call in terms of emphasis and what is said/not
>>> said. I am not aware that anywhere Ilyenkov said something like "M&EC was a
>>> bad book".
>>>
>>> Andy
>>>
>>> At 06:07 AM 3/12/2006 -0800, you wrote:
>>>> Andy,
>>>>
>>>> Isn't it the case that Lenin rejected his early position of M&EC in the
>>>> Philosophic Notebooks and his study of Hegel's logic? Also, isn't
>>>> Ilyenkov's position in 'From the Abstract to the Concrete' also at odds
>>>> with the position in M&EC?
>>>>
>>>> Paul
>>>>
>>>> Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>>> Can I see if I can say what I think Mike means by the "Russian"
>> meaning of
>>>> "reflection"?
>>>>
>>>> I was introduced both to Lenin and Vygotsky through a British Trotskyist
>>>> group in the early 1980s, and this involved intensive study of Lenin's
>>>> "Materialism and Empirio-criticism". This book was regarded in that
>> quarter
>>>> as more or less the last word in philosophy. Ilyenkov's book on
>> Positivism,
>>>> was published in English by the same group, and is a full-on defence of
>>>> this book of Lenin's. In M&EC, Lenin uses "reflection" to mean a universal
>>>> property of matter, more or less the propensity of any material thing to
>>>> retain impressions of another material thing with which it has interacted.
>>>> So this view of cognition as something utterly divorced from
>>>> self-consciousness or even living organisms, let alone human beings, but
>>>> rather as a universal property of matter, was encoded in the meaning
>>>> attached by Lenin to the word "reflection."
>>>>
>>>> Now, my experiences in British Trotskyism may have been paralleled by the
>>>> experience of others in Russian Stalinism, I don't know. But much as I
>> love
>>>> Ilyenkov, it has always been hard for me to understand his enthusiasm for
>>>> M&EC. The political effect of ME&C as I received it was very
>>>> retrograde. In the same book, Lenin blasts all forms of semiotics, by the
>>>> way. There was a definite and valid purpose for Lenin's book when it was
>>>> written in 1908, and he doesn't say anything in the whole several hundred
>>>> pages which is actually wrong, but the drift of the polemic is
>> crushing. In
>>>> arguing against subjectivist epistemology, it encourages an absolutely
>>>> devastatingly objectivist view of the human condition in general and
>>>> cognition in particular.
>>>>
>>>> Personally, I find the notion of "reflection" an extremely *passive*
>>>> rendering of the process of knowledge and life. The idea emphasises the
>>>> dominant place of the object in a true subjective image, and the
>>>> indifference of the image to the internal structure of the subject, but I
>>>> have never found that it convinced anyone that didn't already understand
>>>> these issues. The likening of human society to inorganic natural processes
>>>> is not a point which needs to be made today.
>>>>
>>>> Is that what you meant Mike?
>>>>
>>>> Andy
>>>>
>>>> At 10:59 PM 2/12/2006 -0500, you wrote:
>>>>> Agreed!
>>>>>
>>>>> The version of 'The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology'
>> that I
>>>>> have to hand is in 'The Esssential Vygostky' (2004, R. W. Rieber & D. K.
>>>>> Robinson, eds. Kluger). It's a compilation of the 'best' of the 6 vol
>>>>> Collected Works. The mirror example is on page 327.
>>>>>
>>>>> Regarding reflection, which is another concept I'm puzzled by (what
>> is the
>>>>> Russian manner, Mike?), I'd forgotten that this paragraph begins:
>>>>>
>>>>> "Let us compare consciousness, as is often done, with a mirror
>> image..." At
>>>>> the end of the paragraph I still can't tell whether V is suggesting
>> it's a
>>>>> good comparison or not.
>>>>>
>>>>> ...and 3 pages earlier (p. 324) when he cites Lenin (1975, p. 260)
>> along the
>>>>> lines that I've mentioned, here again the work reflection is used:
>>>>>
>>>>> "the only 'property' of matter connected with philosophical
>> materialism is
>>>>> the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside of our
>>>>> consciousness.... Epistemologically the concept of matter means NOTHING
>>>>> other than objective reality, existing independently from human
>>>>> consciousness and reflected by it" (original emphasis).
>>>>>
>>>>> I can't find the references from the Crisis anywhere in this book, but I
>>>>> have the Spanish translation now too, and the citation there is to
>> Lenin's
>>>>> Collected Works, vol 19, p. 275. In Spanish the word 'reflected' is
>>>>> translated as 'reflejada' and 'mirror image' as 'reflejo.'
>>>>>
>>>>> Martin
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 12/2/06 10:40 PM, "Mike Cole" wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Nothing sceptical, Martin. There are many imponderables here from
>>>>>> many
>>>>> sources. Trying to think with you.
>>>>> I would be greatly assisted, and I
>>>>>> assume I am not alone in this, if
>>>>> discussants would provide page numbers
>>>>>> and
>>>>> references so that those not "in the know" could pin down sources and
>>>>>> thus
>>>>> better triangulate on what the focus
>>>>> of discussion is.
>>>>>
>>>>> I am not versed
>>>>>> in Spinoza. I am barely versed in parts of Vygotsky. So when
>>>>> arcaine
>>>>>> references and partial information
>>>>> are floated out on xmca as if everyone were
>>>>>> an insider, when we are all
>>>>> border liners, it confuses me.
>>>>> mike
>>>>>
>>>>> On 12/2/06,
>>>>>> Martin Packer
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Mike, this sounds to me like a
>>>>>> skeptical Hmmmm. What strikes you as
>>>>>> dubious?
>>>>>> I'm happy to be
>>>>>> mediated.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Martin
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 12/2/06 6:03 PM, "Mike Cole"
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hmmmm indeed.
>>>>>> mike
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 12/2/06,
>>>>>> Martin Packer
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Natalia, thanks very much.
>>>>>> The cyrillic didn't come through, but I can
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> piece
>>>>>>> together the
>>>>>> English:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "after all a cornerstone of materialism is a
>>>>>>> proposition
>>>>>> about (that)
>>>>>>> consciousness and the brain are, both, a product
>>>>>>> (of
>>>>>> nature), (and) a part
>>>>>>> of nature, (the one) that reflects the rest of
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> nature"
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Might you be able to take a look at the other two excerpts in
>>>>>> the
>>>>>>> original
>>>>>>> Russian?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Let me think about this 'out loud' a
>>>>>> little. This is
>>>>>>> the point in Crisis
>>>>>>> where Vygotsky is specifying what
>>>>>> a truly Marxist
>>>>>>> psychology, a 'general'
>>>>>>> psychology, must study. A
>>>>>> science, he insists,
>>>>>>> studies not appearances but
>>>>>>> what really exists.
>>>>>> Optics, for example, studies
>>>>>>> mirror surfaces and light
>>>>>>> rays, not the
>>>>>> images we see in the mirror, for the
>>>>>>> latter are phantoms. A
>>>>>>> scientific
>>>>>> psychology must study the real processes
>>>>>>> that can give rise to
>>>>>>> such
>>>>>> appearances, not (just) the appearances. [It's
>>>>>>> not clear to me how
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> far
>>>>>>> to go with this seeming analogy between the way a
>>>>>>> mirror reflects
>>>>>> and the
>>>>>>> way the brain/Cs 'reflects the rest of nature'.] So
>>>>>>> any
>>>>>> descriptive,
>>>>>>> intuitionist phenomenology must be rejected. What really
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> exists? A
>>>>>>> materialist maintains that the brain exists, and consciousness
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> too. V
>>>>>>> cites
>>>>>>> Lenin to the effect that what is matter, what is
>>>>>> objective,
>>>>>>> is what exists
>>>>>>> independently of human consciousness. And,
>>>>>> seemingly
>>>>>>> paradoxically,
>>>>>>> consciousness can exist outside our
>>>>>> consciousness: for we can
>>>>>>> be conscious
>>>>>>> without being self-conscious. I
>>>>>> can see without knowing that I
>>>>>>> see. So a
>>>>>>> general psychology must study
>>>>>> consciousness, but to know the mind
>>>>>>> we can't
>>>>>>> rely on introspection, in
>>>>>> part because in introspection mind splits
>>>>>>> into
>>>>>>> subject and object: a
>>>>>> dualism arises in the act of self-reflection.
>>>>>>> We
>>>>>>> can't
>>>>>>> establish a
>>>>>> psychological science only on the basis of what we
>>>>>>> experience
>>>>>>> directly
>>>>>> (as Husserl tried to do); it must be based on knowledge,
>>>>>>> which is
>>>>>>> the
>>>>>> result of analysis, not merely of experience. And what is
>>>>>>> analysis?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Complicated answer put briefly: analysis lies at the intersection
>>>>>>> of
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> methodology and practice: it is the exhaustive study of a single case
>>>>>>> in
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> all
>>>>>>> its connections, taken as a social microcosm. It involves what
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Marx
>>>>>>> (following Hegel) called abstraction.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'll confess I'm still
>>>>>> not
>>>>>>> clear what V is proposing as the solutions to
>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> epistemological and
>>>>>>> ontological problems that he has distinguished. It
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> looks
>>>>>>> to me as though
>>>>>>> he is saying that the epistemological problem -
>>>>>> that
>>>>>>> concerning the relation
>>>>>>> between subject and object - arises only
>>>>>> when one
>>>>>>> accepts uncritically the
>>>>>>> dualism that arises in introspection
>>>>>> (or 'blind
>>>>>>> empiricism'?). So once one
>>>>>>> rejects introspection this
>>>>>> problem dissolves.
>>>>>>> The
>>>>>>> implication is that if
>>>>>>> one begins not with
>>>>>> introspection but with
>>>>>>> practice,
>>>>>>> one avoids any
>>>>>>> subject-object
>>>>>> dualism. The ontological problem -
>>>>>>> concerning
>>>>>>> the relation
>>>>>>> between
>>>>>> mind and matter - is what he's trying to study, no?
>>>>>>> How
>>>>>>> is a
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> brain-in-a-body-in-a-social-world the basis for consciousness, then
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> self-consciousness, then self-mastery and knowledge?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hmmm
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Martin
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi Martin,
>>>>>>>> I found it --- in Russian, vol.1 of
>>>>>> "Sobranie Sochinenii", on
>>>>>>> page 416.
>>>>>>>> It reads in Russian as very
>>>>>> similar to the English quote your
>>>>>>> posted
>>>>>>> above:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> "à åÃÃπ --
>>>>>> after all-- êâºÃ åÓãîëÃπíûì
>> êà ìíåì ìÃ
>>>> ÔåâºÃ¨Ã
>>>>> ëèçìÃ
>>>>>>> -- a corneestone
>>>>>>> of
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>> materialism -- ÿâëÿåÔñÿ
>> ïîëîÃåíèå î Ôîì, -- is a
>>>>>>> proposition about, ---
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ÷Ôî
>>>>>>>> ñîçíà íèå è ìîçã
>> åñÔÃπ ïâºÃ®ÃÓêÔ ---
>> -
>>>> (that)
>>>>>>> consciousness and the
>>>>>> brain are,
>>>>>>>> both, a product (of nature),--- ÷à ñÔÃπ
>>>>>>> ïâºÃ¨âºÃ®Ãû, ---(and) a
>> ) a
>>>>>> part of
>>>>>>> nature, --
>>>>>>>> îÔâºÃ ÃÃ ï¬ Ã’Ã ï¬ Ã¶Ã Ã¿
>> îñ±Ã”à ëÃπíÓï¬
>>>> ïâºÃ¨âºÃ®ÃÓ
>> “
>>>>>>> -- (the one)
>>>>>> that reflects the rest of
>>>>>>>> nature"
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Or something like
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> this.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hope this is helpful, and not making things more
>>>>>> confusing.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>>>> Natalia.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 11/30/06 2:47
>>>>>> PM, "Natalia Gajdamaschko"
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, 30 Nov 2006 08:55:29 -0500
>>>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> A few pages later:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> ""After all,
>>>>>>> a cornerstone of
>>>>>> materialism is the proposition that
>>>>>>>>> consciousness and
>>>>>>> the brain are
>>>>>> a product, a part of nature, which
>>>>>>> reflect
>>>>>>>>> the rest of
>>>>>>> nature"
>>>>>> (327).
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The last sentence is not grammatical English, so
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> something has clearly
>>>>>>>> gone
>>>>>>>>> wrong with the translation.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> If
>>>>>>> anyone has access to the original Russian and could comment,that
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> would
>>>>>>> be
>>>>>>>>> great. (Page numbers are from the version in The
>>>>>> Essential
>>>>>>> Vygotsky.)
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Martin
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435, AIM
>>>> identity: AndyMarxists mobile 0409 358 651
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