Re: [xmca] LSV and Kant

[Larry Purss <lpurss@shaw.ca>]

Andy and Martin
Thank you for your answers. 
Andy, thanks for your answechaper that Hegel covered the topic of Kant, so others did not have to elaborate further.  However, when reading Martin's attachment I believe rich insights are gained by reading these ideas through a historical lens as capturing current debates that continue today. My reading of Martin's chapters is that sociocultural theory can be read as a response to Kant.
Martin thanks for the new attachment on Kant. I appreciate  your guidance in expanding my historical awareness of the geneology of ideas. Martin, from your article it seems Kant's influence is still dominant even to day as it frames so many debates that continue even today. I learn so much about one side of a debate when people argue and critique people who they view as villans. Critiquing Kant gives me new insights on sociocultural theory ( DIALOGICALITY)
 
So for that reason I'm going to read the posted article on Kant's continuing dominance in how we frame our sociocultural theories as reactions to Kant.
 
Martin, one more quick question. Your elaboration of the notion of intersubjective CONSTITUTION seems to be a critical way of elaborating sociocultural positions in reaction to Kant. Has your framing of the notion of constitution been debated on XMCA in previous years.
 
If not, I hope others have downloaded your attachment and are introduced to your ideas on the centrality of this notion for our understaning of the human enterprise
Larry

----- Original Message -----
From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
Date: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 5:06 pm
Subject: [xmca] LSV and Kant
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>

> On LSV and Kant ... In the early 80s I remember asking a 
> Marxist/professor type what Marx had had to say about Kant 
> because everyone was saying bad things about Kantianism and 
> I wanted to know more.  (In those days it never occurred to 
> us to read Kant to know about Kant, or Feuerbach to know 
> about Feuerbach!) He replied that Marx wrote nothing about 
> Kant (and this is true, not a word!) because "everything 
> that needed to be said about Kant had already been said by 
> Hegel."
> 
> That pretty much characterizes how Marxists have dealt with 
> Kant. Ilyenkov's book (you know where to get that) concisely 
> explains the Marxist critique of Kant, abstracted from 
> Fichte/Schelling and Hegel, and my guess is that LSV who had 
> read all the people leading up to Kant (Descartes, Spinoza, 
> Locke, Hume, Rousseau), and people like Plekhanov and Lenin, 
> would find that Ilyenkov accurately reflects his view.
> 
> As it happens I have since discovered that Critique of Kant 
> was not solely the privilege of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel 
> (as suggested by Hegel and picked up by every Marxist since, 
> including Ilyenkov), and Luria and LSV were big fans of 
> Goethe, so it just maybe that LSV got part of his Kant 
> critique from that quarter, possibly.
> 
> What I recall reading in LSV is condemnation of the 
> "unknowable thing-in-itself" and in Chapter 5 of "Crisis" 
> you will find a criticism to the effect that Kant held that 
> laws of Nature were "dictated" by reason. His famous 1925 
> speech tells me that LSV had read Kant, as he makes a subtle 
> point about Kant's conception of the subject which I don't 
> recall other Marxists making, only Fichte.
> 
> Does that help?
> 
> Andy
> 
> Martin Packer wrote:
> > On LSV's treatment of Kant, I have to duck. I don't have LSV's 
> texts to hand to look for direct references. I know virtually 
> nothing about the state of Kant studies in the USSR at that 
> time. One could, however, make the sweeping generalization that 
> all philosophy since then has been a response to Kant (I'm 
> attaching an article that makes that point about a collection of 
> 20th century scholars). And to drift away from your question 
> temporarily, to me the most interesting readings of Kant see him 
> as having captured (in his dualism between things as they are 
> and as they appear; in his separation of thought, action, and 
> judgment) the state of human being of a particular time and 
> place, and they then respond by trying to revolves these splits 
> either in theory, or in practice, or both. I'm going to go out 
> on a limb and say that both Habermas and Foucault, despite their 
> obvious differences, read Kant that way.
> > And that leads me to one of my few disappointments with LSV: 
> that he was not able to criticize the society of his time. His 
> essay "The Socialist Formation of Man" shows very well that he 
> was certainly capable of this. His biography suggests he had 
> every reason to do so. Obviously it was the state of society 
> that itself made any criticism impossible, but it sure would 
> have been fascinating to read!
> > Martin
> -- 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> -------
> 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
> 
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca