Re: [xmca] Re: One more example: errors in translation/interpretation

Gee Andy and Sasha--

I hope there is hope for development and learning in adulthood or a lot of
us should
be put underground and silenced!

Sasha! Your comments on the very recent XMCA discussions would be most
appreciated.
mike

On 3/25/08, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
> Sasha, my friend, I must respond. You refer to my 1997 review of "Thinking
> and Speaking"
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/comment/vygotsk1.htm which
> was my reaction to the first book of Vygotsky's that I had just read at
> that time. As it happens, as the response of a newcomer to Vygotsky, the
> little article struck a kind of chord I think with others who were also
> just coming to Vygotsky for the first time, and it was widely copied and
> quoted around the internet. I hope I have learnt a little in the 11 years
> since writing that piece, but as it happens, I am happy to stand by the
> phrase you quote.
>
> Your counter-claim, so far as I can see is that two entities, or forms of
> motions, which have separate roots, cannot through their identity or
> "intersection" produce something new and profound, but rather only a
> superficial relation.
>
> Dialectics, it is often said, sees contradiction as internal to the thing,
> not in the external relations between things. However, if that internal
> contradictory relation is _only_ internal to the thing, that is, if the
> contradictory sides of the thing have no capacity for independent
> existence, then the contradiction can only be subjective, in the eye of
> the
> beholder, and not objective.
>
> I think in the same article I likened this conception to Hegel's
> conception, but at that time I would not have known how about Hegel
> resolved the contradiction in Kant's philosophy, between Reason and
> Intuition, the two necessary aspects of thought, which apparently have two
> different sources (intelligence and the sense organs). Hegel brilliantly
> resolves this problem, demonstrating that in the use of products of human
> cultural production human beings sensuously apprehend objective thought
> forms. The resulting unity of concept and Intuition does not produce an
> immediate, inseparable, flat unity, but on the contrary, the achievement
> of
> unity turns out to be a protracted and contradictory process, covering in
> fact the entire process of human history, with the construction of ever
> more adequate thought forms in an unending struggle to overcome the inner
> contradiction inhering in specifically human activity.
>
> Nonetheless, even at the early stage of my Hegel studies I recognised in
> Vygotsky the hand of the great master of dialectic, G W F Hegel. And I
> stand by that.
>
> Andy
>
> At 06:59 AM 25/03/2008 +0300, Sasha Surmava wrote:
> >... Andy Blunden asserts "Vygotsky's study of the relationship of
>
> >thought and language is a model of the materialist application of the
> >dialectical method of the first order of importance, both by reason of
> its
> >results and of its methods." Andy is my friend, but I can't share his
> >statement. Moreover I think that just that very case is very expressive
> >example of Vygotsky's failure in realizing dialectical approach. The
> first
> >idea that thinking and speech have different and independent roots is
> >basically incompatible with the next one concerning their "dialectical"
> >interaction. Those which are mutually alien are doomed to fruitful
> >superficial relation and any genuine dialectical relation in this case is
>
> >totally impossible. ...
>
>
> Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
> mobile 0409 358 651
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
Received on Tue Mar 25 19:58 PDT 2008