[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [xmca] Classical German Philosophy



Although many others played a role, it was Hegel who taught us how to finally overcome dichotomies and conceive things as a whole. In his anatomy of Mind, Hegel has two cross-cutting triangles, not just the usual series of triangles-within-triangles that are more widely known.

(1) Hegel makes the concept the unit of a social formation, not the individual person, and expends a lot of heat and lots of triads-within-triads tracing how the forms of practice and their representation emerge, independently of the will and awareness of individuals. First create your concept, then people can think it.

(2) The subject itself (still not an individual mind) has three "moments" Individual, Universal and Particular. The Universal is what we call "artefact" (well not necessarily a token, but what it is that makes the artefact what it is, the whole class of things). The Particular are the social practices (forms of practice, institutions and their instantiation) in which the Universal is (as Michael says) *constituted*. The Individual is an actual existent thing or person which implements the actvity. As CEOs like to say "an organisation is only as good as it people."

Hegel knew, like everyone else knows, that only individual human beings, with skulls, think. There is no such thing (except metaphorically) as "collective consciousness" - only shared artefacts and social practices/activities and a lot of individuals thinking and acting in concert.

So I make no apology for talking about individuals, or asserting that without individual people and material tokens of artefacts and practices, there would be no mind.

Andy

PS. I know nothing of Heidegger.

Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
Hi Mike,
the issue I want to highlight is the mutual constitution. It makes no sense to talk about tools as if they could be isolated and talked about independent of the concrete practical object/motive oriented activity. You cannot talk about subjectivity/identity independent of activity, and yet people do it all of the time. Take, for example, all those scholars who use interviews to get at "identity," and do not make thematic the fact that the interview is the activity, and its object/motive is the production of the interview/text. Whether the text has anything to do with the activity of a teacher at school, or a student at school, never (hardly every) is asked.

The same, we observe scholars who are looking for and writing about the tools, as if the nature of the tool could be identified independent of the activity---

This is precisely the point Heidegger makes, and – sorry Andy, you are NOT right on this point in your commentary – Heidegger says precisely in many instances what Leont'ev also says, and Heidegger did it a few years before Leont'ev.

((And again, sorry Andy, Heidegger works out precisely the issue of consciousness in activity, and the relation of the subject to the tool, which is at the heart of Leont'ev))

Mike, what we are getting to, then, is cognition separate from life, cognition that makes no sense because it is not connected to the senses in sensual practical activity.
Precisely when we substantialize the things that are part of the activity --- for Leont'ev, only those things are relevant that are relevant to the subject, and this point is brought out by Klaus Holzkamp ---- not the kind of stuff outside researchers bring to the situation when they take the triangle as the grid through which they look at situations, at activities. For the subject it is totally irrelevant what the researcher sees and thinks, and this is another form of breaking things out of an integrated and dynamic whole.

Cheers,
Michael


On 2010-03-07, at 8:28 AM, mike cole wrote:

Thanks Andy, and Michael for the section ref to Leontiev.

Could I repeat a second part of my question which appears to have gotten
lost in the multiple threads?

Michael wrote: "you have been breaking out individual (constitutive) moments
of activity and treated them as elements, much like others take the YE
triangle and then break out the object, the subject, the division of labor,
the tools..."

I asked about how one talks about how one breaks out "moments of activity"
(that is how I phrase the matter when I am thoughtful enough to do so), and,
having highlighted them, given the impression that they are
elements in a static sense. What sort of language does one use to be able,
for example, to talk about a particular division of labor, without at least
deep backgrounding, say, the tools being used or the web of social rules
that are recruited in this instance?

Even to say that "everything is connected to everything else" implies some
notion of "things/processes" that are connected. How to avoid
misunderstanding and distinguish it from disagreement?
mike

On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 2:50 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

If anyone is interested in exploring the German Idealists, and the roots of
Activity Theory and Cultural Psychology in their writings, I have put
together a page :
http://www.marxists.org/subject/philosophy/german.htm
where you can browse as you wish ...


_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca



--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, Ilyenkov $20 ea

_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca