From: "Howard Engelskirchen" <howarde-AT-twcny.rr.com>
Subject: Re: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, etc.
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 03:20:27 -0500


Hi Tobin,

I take the opportunity to withdraw my use of the term "individualist" in my
last post and to clarify.  I look at the issue from two perspectives -- (1)
from each, (2) getting beyond bourgeois right.

First, the object of Marx's analysis is "individuals producing in
society" -- this is the second sentence of the Grundrisse.  Remember that it
is only individuals that do anything, and society exists in virtue of the
activity of individuals.

Second, the idea is to get beyond the idea of the autonomous individual
marked off by private property and bourgeois right and thereby reduced to
undifferentiated and homogeneous abstractions of equality.  From each, to
each places a radical emphasis on concrete individuals -- it looks to the
unlimited unfolding of the capacity and potential of each.  It is this
wealth that is the foundation of social wealth.

But you are right.  If association generates more wealth than the simple
aggregate sum of its parts, then social wealth is not just a question of
individual unfolding but a question of more or less rich social arrangements
as well.  So this too has to be taken into account in thinking of the
flourishing of all as a condition for the flourishing of each.

Howard


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gis.net>
To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 8:36 PM
Subject: Re: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, etc.


> > In urging that we 'follow our daimon' I'm not of course invoking a
> > bourgeois individualistic attitude but rather the rich kind of
> > individuality presupposed by 'the free development of each as a
> > condition of the free development of all' which fully recognizes our
> > social interconnection but insists on the right (need) to freely
> > flourish providing it doesn't interfere with the free flourishing of
> > others.
>
> Hm, it's interesting that Marx conceptualized free development in terms of
> individuals.  I wonder, does this perhaps run athwart his social analyses?
> In other words, is it not also true that the free develoment of all is the
> condition for the free development of each?  Or that my own development is
> freer if I contribute to the development of someone else?  (Would that be
a
> "dialectic of love"?)  Why exactly is it that each individual's own
personal
> self-development is the foundation, and is this not methodologically
> individualistic?
>
> Jus' askin'.
>
> T.
>
> ---
> Tobin Nellhaus
> nellhaus-AT-mail.com
> "Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce
>
>
>
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