Re: [xmca] Help? - Microgenesis, Microgenetic, Microgeny?

[Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>]

David, as you know, I take Vygotsky as a Marxist-Hegelian. I would go so 
far as to say that he is the most important interpreter of Hegel of his 
time (i.e., including Lukacs). My observation that he never read Hegel 
is simply an empirical one. If those annotations on the Pheneomenology 
do eventually turn up in the family archives I will happily concede. I 
know that you were around a different Trotskyist group than I was in 
those days, David, but in my group we ALL read Lenin's Philosophical 
Notebooks, asiduously, and could quote chapter and verse from them. We 
also all read Dialectics of Nature and Anti-Duhring, all the books 
Vyvgotky cites. I am the only member of that group apart from a handful 
of "designated Party intellectuals" (the Deborins of our group) who 
actually read the Science of Logic. I kept this fact secret at the time 
because I knew that if it became known that I was reading Hegel (rather 
than Lenin's annotations) I would be regarded as "dangerous". All the 
passages Vygotsky cites barring one or two I immediately recognise from 
one of the books by Lenin, Marx or Engels. Mao is the same. "On 
Practice" for example, never cites Hegel directly, but repeatedly cites 
Lenin citing Hegel. Lenin, PLekhanov, Deborin, Lukacs, Lewin all read 
Hegel. No doubt. There was no shortage of Russian Hegelians for Vygotsky 
to learn off.

It is nothing to do with Vygotsky's Hegel credentials, which are 
impeccable. I find it an interesting historical fact, that's all. Also, 
Lenin read the History of Philosophy, the Shorter and Larger Logic by 
Hegel and annotations of his reading were published in Russian in 
Vygotsky's day. But Lenin never left any annotations on the 
Phenomenology. Unsurprising to me. Kojeve was only 13 and Sartre was 
only 10, when Lenin was reading Hegel. There were Russian translations 
of the PhG available in Vygotsky's day, and I think people like Shpet 
probably were reading it, but not the Marxists.

But I quite open to being persuaded otherwise, this is not a matter of 
principle for me. The only matter of principle is the use of evidence in 
historiography.

Andy


kellogg wrote:
> b) Andy insists that Vygotsky never read Hegel. Why would he not read 
> Hegel? Almost everybody else in his generation did (Spet, Volosinov, 
> Mevedev, even Bakhtin who hardly ever read anything). To me, the way 
> Vygotsky re-interpreted the Ach experiments is simply a working out of 
> the categories we find in the Logic on the basis of Sakharov's data.
>
>  
>
> Vygotsky was fully literate in German from his mother. We know that in 
> Thinking and Speech Chapter Two he is reading Lenin's Philosophical 
> Notebooks, in whch Lenin remarks that one cannot understand the first 
> volume of Capital without reading the whole of Hegel's "Logic". The 
> Philosophical Notebooks are, largely, Lenin's marginal notes to 
> Hegel's Logic. We know that Vygotsky wanted to understand and 
> assimilate the whole of Marx's method in Capital. Why would Vygotsky 
> read the marginal notes and not the actual Logic? (See also Vygotsky's 
> discussion of ways of translating Hegel iinto Russian on p. 81 of Vol. 
> 4, Andy!)
>
>  


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