Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

Andy, thanks for adding to the height of my reading pile!  :)

Until I complete the assignment (at least partly) I will merely juxtapose
here two quotations whose contrast gives me pause for thought. The first
from the first page of the book by Ilyenkov you've provided:

"And only materialist dialectics (dialectical materialism), only the organic
unity of dialectics with materialism arms the cognition of man with the
means and ability to construct an objectively-true image of the surrounding
world, the means and ability to reconstruct this world in accordance with
the objective tendencies and lawful nature of its own development."

The second from Carlos Marx himself:

"The formulation on [in? MP] thought of an exact picture of the world-system
in which we live is impossible for us, and will always remain impossible. If
at any time in the evolution of mankind such a final, conclusive system of
the interconnections within the world... were brought to completion, this
would mean that human knowledge had reached its limit, and, from the moment
when society had been brought into accord with that system, further
historical evolution would be cut short-which would be an absurd idea, pure
nonsense" (A Handbook of Marxism, 1935, p. 234)

Martin


On 1/23/09 5:56 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> Martin,  I have converted to PDF Ilyenkov's book defending
> Lenin's "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism":
> 
> http://marx.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/positive/positivism.pdf
> 
> I think you can agree that if such a renowned Hegel
> interpreter as Ilyenkov can defend "reflection" and Lenin's
> book, then there has to be something in it. The above is
> much shorter and easier to read than Lenin's book, BTW.
> 
> Sidney Hook is far from alone in the sentiments he
> expresses. But you have to take Lenin and Engels and the
> Russian CHAT people *as a whole* and this criticism (which I
> sympathise with) of the notion of "reflection" as "passive"
> is, as you have remarked yourself, constantly contradicted
> by the "change the world" notes constantly and discordantly
> accompanying every mention of "reflection."
> 
> This is the point: humans change the world, but only
> according to its own nature. The aeroplane actually obeys
> the laws of nature as it flies across the sky. Hegel has a
> great bit on this:
> 
> "So also when someone starts building a house, his decision
> to do so is freely made. But all the elements must help. And
> yet the house is being built to protect man against the
> elements. Hence the elements are here used against
> themselves. But the general law of nature is not disturbed
> thereby. The building of a house is, in the first instance,
> a subjective aim and design. On the other hand we have, as
> means, the several substances required for the work ­ iron,
> wood, stones. The elements are used in preparing this
> material: fire to melt the iron, wind to blow the fire,
> water to set wheels in motion in order to cut the wood, etc.
> The result is that the wind, which has helped to build the
> house, is shut out by the house; so also are the violence of
> rains and floods and the destructive powers of fire, so far
> as the house is made fire-proof. The stones and beams obey
> the law of gravity and press downwards so that the high
> walls are held up. Thus the elements are made use of in
> accordance with their nature and cooperate for a product by
> which they become constrained. In a similar way. the
> passions of men satisfy themselves; they develop themselves
> and their purposes in accordance with their natural
> destination and produce the edifice of human society. Thus
> they fortify a structure for law and order against themselves."
> 
> http://marx.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/introduction.htm
> 
> Andy
> 
> Martin Packer wrote:
>> At risk of actually killing the horse I'm flogging, I want to return one
>> more time to the debate over 'reflection.' Mike asked me why I would be sad
>> to hear that Vygotsky was significantly influenced by Lenin. I've been
>> reading some of the work in the 1920s and 30s by Sidney Hook, on the topic
>> of Marx and Hegel. I'm copying below a fairly long excerpt in which Hook
>> takes to task both Engels and Lenin (in 'Materialism and Empirio-Criticism,'
>> at least) for viewing ideas as "reflections" of reality - exactly in the
>> sense of mirror images or copies. That Lenin did this was the sense I have
>> got from reading other comments on Lenin, though I haven't read Lenin
>> myself.
>> 
>> The problem, as Hook points out, is that the reflection view treats thinking
>> as a passive process, that solipsism and skepticism cannot be avoided, that
>> in this view knowledge cannot be creative, and consequently knowledge of the
>> world cannot change the world. This, as he notes, is a long way from Marx.
>> 
>> Martin
>> 
>> The excerpt is from:
>> Hook, S. (1928). The Philosophy of Dialectical Materialism. II. The Journal
>> of Philosophy, 25(6), 141-155.
>> [ http://www.jstor.org/stable/2014691 ]
>> 
>> "He [Engels] presents the "dialectic" as the method which
>> corrects the limited and ossified character of classificatory thinking
>> and claims that it enables one to avoid the predicament of English
>> empiricism which is peculiarly addicted to this way of thinking.
>> But Engels failed to understand the real weakness of English
>> empiricism. Otherwise he would have realized that his uncritical
>> reference to ideas as reflections, pictures, or images (Abbilder,
>> Spiegelbilder) of things made him fall into an epistemological trap
>> whose mazes lead into the cul-de-sacs of solipsism and nominalism-
>> the very positions he was anxious to avoid. Since sensations, accord-
>> ing to Engels, gave immediate knowledge, the organizing activity of
>> thought becomes purely ancillary to classifying and relating sensa-
>> tions. Practice and experiment, which he later says must serve as
>> the criteria of truth, are introduced by a double inconsistency. For
>> if our sensations are copies, we can never know anything of the
>> originals or even know that there are any, while if sensations give
>> immediate knowledge there is no sense in trying to check up upon
>> them by experiments which only give other sensations, just as im-
>> mediate. The disastrous consequences of the belief in the cognitive
>> character of sensations comes to light in Lenin's fanatical insistence
>> upon accepting every word of Engels literally. According to Lenin,
>> sensation is "a copy, photograph, and reflection of a reality existing
>> independently of it." He takes Plekhanov to task for regarding
>> sensations as "signs" or "symbols" of what things are, instead of
>> adhering to the crude formula, "(sensations) are copies, photo-
>> graphs, images, mirror-reflections of things" (p. 195). He adds
>> further on, "the idea that knowledge can 'create' forms and change
>> the primeval chaos into order, is an idealist notion. The world is
>> a uniform world of matter in motion, and our cognition, being the
>> highest product of nature, is in a position only to reflect this law."
>> But if knowledge only "reflects" the laws of the world, how can it
>> change the world? A mirror or a lake reflects the natural scene,
>> but neither knows nor changes it. This is, indeed, a far cry from
>> the functional and experimental theory expressed in Marx's gloss
>> on Feurbach and strange words from one who believed that by "mass
>> action" and the creation of new machines and forms of distribution,
>> a better social system will be evolved." (p. 149-150)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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