Re: FW: [xmca] Adult before their time?

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Early claims:
David Elkind, The hurried child. Cambridge. DeCapo Press. 1981

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 3:25 AM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:

> Not quite the same sort of trauma, but there's plenty of pop analysis on
> the
> life of Michael Jackson these days. p
>
> Peter Smagorinsky
> Professor of English Education
> Department of Language and Literacy Education
> The University of Georgia
> 125 Aderhold Hall
> Athens, GA 30602
> smago@uga.edu
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 4:19 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [xmca] Adult before their time?
>
> Can anyone tell me of any research done on the idea of
> children who have "grown up before their time," as a result
> of war, family disaster or otherwise having been projected
> into the adult world on their own? And how is such a
> characterization "adult before their time" made? On the
> basis of the use of concepts?? Lack of interest in play??
>
> Andy
>
> Tony Whitson wrote:
> > I would add Nietzsche, along with Heidegger and Derrida, to what Michael
> > says.
> >
> > Heidegger is sometimes dismissed as incomprehensible, but Nietzsche and
> > Derrida are more often treated as wild and reckless writers who can be
> > fun to read, but without looking for any careful argument.
> >
> > If you don't expect either of them to be writing seriously, you won't
> > read them seriously and you won't see what they're writing. N said as
> > much, but then if you're not taking him seriously, you won't take him
> > seriously when he says that, either.
> >
> > I saw an interview with D once where the interviewer, in the interview,
> > in D's presence, ventured that deconstruction was basically the same as
> > the US sitcom "Seinfeld"--It's just a matter of taking everything
> > ironically. D replied that if you want to know anything about
> > deconstruction, you need to do some reading. The interview was pretty
> > much over at that point.
> >
> > On Wed, 21 Oct 2009, Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
> >
> >> I don't know what people read that Heidegger has written. I personally
> >> have not met a person who has read Sein und Zeit to the end, people
> >> appear to read secondary literature rather than the primary. Moreover,
> >> nobody appears to be talking/writing about Unterwegs zur Sprache
> >> (David K., this should be of interest to you), or about Holzwege and
> >> other works. First, I can't see anything that would fit the political
> >> ideas of Nazism, for one, and I can't see anything that would be
> >> understandable in terms of the quote that Steve contributes below.
> >>
> >> I do understand that Heidegger is difficult to read---I had to take
> >> repeated stabs since I first purchased Sein und Zeit in 1977.
> >>
> >> Heidegger, by the way, does very close readings of some ancient Greek
> >> philosophers. And when you pay attention to his writing, and do the
> >> same with Derrida, for example, then you begin to realize that the
> >> latter has learned a lot from the former.
> >>
> >> Now that my English is better than my German ever has been (although
> >> it was my main language for 25 years) I personally know about the
> >> problems of translations. Above all, any of the mechanical
> >> translations that have been proposed on this list won't do even the
> >> simplest of texts. And it is about more than literal content.
> >>
> >> We can learn from both of them, Heidegger and Derrida, that things are
> >> more difficult than they look, and even more difficult than reading
> >> their texts.
> >>
> >> Michael
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On 21-Oct-09, at 7:37 PM, Steve Gabosch wrote:
> >>
> >> I appreciate Martin's insights on Heidegger, as I do those of others.
> >> I for one don't really know that much about Heidegger's ideas.  I am
> >> glad to learn from those that have studied him.
> >>
> >> Here is an interesting glossary entry on Heidegger in a book of
> >> Marxist essays by George Novack (1905-1992), Polemics in Marxist
> >> Philosophy: Essays on Sartre, Plekhanov, Lukacs, Engels, Kolalkowski,
> >> Trotsky, Timpanaro, Colletti (1978).  The glossary to the book was
> >> written by Leslie Evans and edited by Novack.
> >>
> >> "Heidegger, Martin (1889-1976) - German existentialist philosopher.
> >> His ideas were best expounded in Sein un Zeit (Being and Time, 1927).
> >> A philosopher of irrationalism.  Heidegger maintained that the chief
> >> impediment to human self-development was reason and science, which led
> >> to a view of the world based on subject-object relations.  Humans were
> >> reduced to the status of entities in the thing-world which they were
> >> thrown (the condition of "thrownness").  This state of inauthentic
> >> being could be overcome neither through theory (science) nor social
> >> practice, but only by an inward-turning orientation toward one's self,
> >> particularly in the contemplation of death. Heidegger was influenced
> >> by Kierkegaard and Husserl (see entries), and in turn deeply affected
> >> the thought of Sartre, Camus, and Marcuse.  He was himself a chair of
> >> philosophy at the University of Freiburg in 1928 after his mentor,
> >> Edmund Husserl, had been forced to relinquish it by the Nazis.
> >> Heidegger supported Hitler, which led to his disgrace at the end of
> >> World War II and his retirement in 1951 to a life of rural
> >> seclusion."  (pg 307-308)
> >>
> >> - Steve
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Oct 21, 2009, at 5:04 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
> >>
> >>> I think Martin is completely right in the proposition that (taking
> >>> account of the continuing fascination the academy has with Heidegger)
> >>> his works should be read to understand why and how Fascism and
> >>> Heidegger's philosophy supported each other and what should be done
> >>> about it.
> >>>
> >>> As Goethe said "The greatest discoveries are made not by individuals
> >>> but by their age," or more particularly every age is bequeated a
> >>> certain problematic by their predecessors, but the different
> >>> philosophers confront that problematic in different ways. To say that
> >>> those on either side of the battle lines in the struggle of a
> >>> particular times have something in common, seems to be in danger of
> >>> missing the point.
> >>>
> >>> Also, in my opinion, Husserl and Heidegger may have been responding
> >>> to Hegel, but between them they erected the gretest barrier to
> >>> understanding Hegel until Kojeve arrived on the scene. But that's
> >>> just me. A grumpy old hegelian.
> >>>
> >>> Andy
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Martin Packer wrote:
> >>>> A few days ago Steve made passing reference to an article that
> >>>> apparently Tony had drawn his attention to, titled "Heil Heidegger."
> >>>> I Googled and found that it is a recent article in the Chronicle of
> >>>> Higher Education.
> >>>> <http://www.chroniclecareers.com/article/Heil-Heidegger-/48806/>
> >>>> The focus of the article is Heidegger's links with and support of
> >>>> the Nazis, and its principal recommendations are that we should stop
> >>>> paying attention to Heidegger, stop translating and publishing his
> >>>> writing, and "mock him to the hilt."
> >>>> I feel I should comment on this, since I have occasionally drawn on
> >>>> Heidegger's work in these discussions. I certainly have no intention
> >>>> of apologizing for Heidegger, who seems to have been a very nasty
> >>>> person, who was responsible for some deplorable actions. I do want
> >>>> to question, however, the proposal that because of these facts we
> >>>> all would be better off ignoring his writing.
> >>>> I was introduced to Heidegger by a Jewish professor of philosophy
> >>>> who shared his last name (coincidentally as far as I know) with one
> >>>> of the best-known victims of antisemitism. At that time less was
> >>>> known about Heidegger's Narzism, but by no means nothing, and I
> >>>> recall discussion in the classroom of the issue. I came to feel that
> >>>> the last thing one should try to do is separate the man's work from
> >>>> his life. Perhaps if he had been working on some obscure area of
> >>>> symbolic logic, say, that would have been possible, but Heidegger
> >>>> had written a philosophy of human existence, and this would seem to
> >>>> *demand* that there be consistency between what he wrote and how he
> >>>> lived. Indeed, perhaps it would be important to study the man's
> >>>> writings to try to understand where he went wrong; at what point in
> >>>> his analysis of human being did Heidegger open the door to the
> >>>> possibility of fascism? I think in fact that it is in Division II of
> >>>> Being and Time, where Heidegger is describing what he called
> >>>> 'authentic Dasein,' which amounts to a way that a person relates to
> >>>> time, specifically to the certainty of their own death, that the
> >>>> mistake is made and the door is opened to evil.
> >>>> Carlin Romano, the author of the article, doesn't seem to know
> >>>> Heidegger's work very well. Dasein ("being there," i.e. being-in-
> >>>> the-world) is not a "cultural world," nor do "Daseins intersect," as
> >>>> he puts it. (But I suppose that he is mocking Heidegger.) And that
> >>>> brings me to my other reason for recommending that we continue to
> >>>> read Heidegger, his politics and (lack of) ethics notwithstanding.
> >>>> It is that his analysis throws light on issues that have been raised
> >>>> in this group, and were important  to LSV and others. I am sure it
> >>>> seems odd to link a Nazi philosopher to a socialist psychologist,
> >>>> but I am hardly the first to see connections. Lucien Goldmann wrote
> >>>> "Lukacs and Heidegger," a book in which he acknowledged the
> >>>> incongruity but argued that there are "fundamental bonds" between
> >>>> the two men's work, that at the beginning of the 20th century "on
> >>>> the basis of a new problematic first represented by Lukacs, and then
> >>>> later on by Heidegger, the contemporary situation was slowly
> >>>> created. I would add that this perspective will also enable us to
> >>>> display a whole range of elements common to both philosophers, which
> >>>> are not very visible at first sight, but which nevertheless
> >>>> constitute the common basis on which undeniable antagonisms are
> >>>> elaborated" (p. 1).
> >>>> What is this common basis? It is that of overcoming the separation
> >>>> between subject and object in traditional thought, overcoming
> >>>> subject/object dualism, by recognizing the role of history in
> >>>> individual and collective human life, and rethinking the relation
> >>>> between theory and practice. As Michael wrote, Heidegger reexamined
> >>>> the traditional philosophical distinction between an object (a
> >>>> being) and what it *is* (its Being), and rejected both idealism and
> >>>> essentialism to argue that what an object is (and not just what it
> >>>> 'means') is defined by the human social practices in which it is
> >>>> involved, and in which people encounter it. These practices, of
> >>>> course, change over historical time, so the conditions for an object
> >>>> to 'be' are practical, social, and historical. And since people
> >>>> define themselves in terms of the objects they work with, the basis
> >>>> of human being is practical, social, and historical too.
> >>>> I continue to believe that this new kind of ontological analysis,
> >>>> visible according to Goldmann in the work of both Lukacs and
> >>>> Heidegger, influenced in both cases by Hegel, is centrally
> >>>> important. If we can learn from studying Heidegger how to
> >>>> acknowledge these cultural conditions without falling into a
> >>>> valorization of the folk, without dissolving individuals in the
> >>>> collective (a failing of the Left just as much as the Right), then
> >>>> we will have gained, not lost, by reading his texts.
> >>>> Martin
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>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
> Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov,
> Ilyenkov $20 ea
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