Re: [xmca] Excerpts (second part)

Dear Andy,
>From the very beginning , it was not intended for people like you , the more so to *respond to it * . At least one of them which is marked *for Andy* , got myself (pardon being so selfish) surprised as to support my previous justification about *war* inevitable of some *need* . Maybe your own explanation in one of your posts to the effect that people'd better study about and especialize on just one/two figures (profiles) rather than many numerous ones (like yourself with respect to Hegel) was due to the fact that in Peter and Anna's article many sociologists are just named taking it for granted that maybe all readers know about them . My own poverty of reading one cetain proven fact . Hence my concentration first of all on Troika and ... Not to be unfair , at least some of them in short words say a lot to trigger thought . I have to write contiguously ; I fear jumbledness . My first excerpt and my hope-to-be- argument : When we take , say ,
 Andy's life in its proliferation not in its superficial skin as a biogrophy , first of all , we try to have a look at his flow of activities and their due motives . We see this man was teen , educated so ; was a juvenile , so ; was an elder , so ; was an adult , so ; was a grown-up , so ; was a student , so ; was a man , so ; was 4o , so ; was 50 , so ; was 60 , so ; etc.etc. We see then that things get jumbled with such recounting . We feel then that we should have the *motives* behind * each of his specific activities , some activities (minor) ignored , some standing out . And then we see we need to have kind of ordering with these motives and due corresponding activities , an hiararchization of *motives* and activities . We know we should avoid getting involved with the kind of very abstract hiararchization Maslow has presented or the hedonistic one . Because we know we should deal with that kind of motives which has taken this profile into
 some activities which has most realized and depicted/manifested his Personality . Then with some screening , we see this profile in his true involvement with the kind of social relations he had to cope with . These social relations in the proper milieu he lived and with the specific kind of Personal Senses he had achieved , took him to become a political activist . The second most important motive which our such analysis takes us to is that he got to become a Marx disciple , he knew him and his work line by line .. The third , the fourth , the fifth , so on so forth . In such an analysis , many private traits , biological ones , physical ones , big and small , lose significance , become pale . Then we see at one point and for some other (maybe not even completely recognized/consciously-analyzed) motive he leant towards Hegel , so then happened , so then happened , etc.etc.. At this point , we might reach the conclusion that this leaning to Hegel
 was because at one point what (as an action or series of actions) had dragged him towards involvements which came from dealing with Marx had lost meaning for him , had dissipated from the scene , had given rise to the latter leniency (action to motive ; motive to action) . I don't know to what extent this might look to be acceptable ; however , it's ultimately my own practice which would tell me if what I gather here is or is not true . If you wish your next demand will be realized this way . P.S. At the level of analysis , true motives have to be recognized but in real life it's not the case that the person has to identify all his motives one by one ; he might go through many actions first not knowing the motive/cause , unless we suppose the person is both a man and a researcher . I think David Kellog objected to the *objectless activities of Leontiev having been to forcefully and scientifically searched/identifed .
Best
Haydi           

--- On Fri, 12/19/08, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Excerpts (second part)
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Friday, December 19, 2008, 2:06 PM

Haydi, your post is 5,700 words, and discontinuous excerptes rather than a
coherent argument, spanning across operations and actions as well as activities.
I find it impossible to respond to this. The first excerpt says:

"in the total flow of activity that forms human life, in its higher
manifestations mediated by psychic reflection, analysis isolates separate
(specific) activities in the first place according to the criterion of motives
that elicit them."

I.e., the motive defines the "unit" of activity.

And in the following excerpt ANL places the word "units" in inverted
commas. These inverted commas are a consistent practice with ANL, i.e., that he
did not actually get to a point of being able to define what these units were,

"The “units” of human activity also form its macrostructure. The
special feature of the analysis that serves to isolate them is that it does so
not by means of breaking human activity up into elements but by disclosing its
characteristic internal relations."

What do you make of you these two excerpts?

Andy

Haydi Zulfei wrote:
> Dear all,
> Here is attached the second part of excerpts of Leontief's (A,C,P) in
relation to the questions * What Is *an* Activity?/ *a* motive ? * Best
> Haydi
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca

-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435 Skype andy.blunden
Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm

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Received on Fri Dec 19 09:40:07 2008