Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 11:33:32 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael Rooney <rooney-AT-tiger.cc.oxy.edu>
Subject: RE: dialectic




On Thu, 7 Jan 1999, Paul Bains wrote:

> 'Things' (distinguished within the 'objects' of experience) are not 'nothing
> but their relations' .
> 
> The things involved in relations are not relations, they are _relative_
> beings. This distinction is easily occluded and seems to have been with
> Nietzsche and pomo.
> 
> Hegel seems to get close to this but it gets lost in the complexities of his
> own system. At least he recognized the mind indep. reality of relations (in
> distinction to the essentially nominalist modern philosophies (with Kant as
> their apotheosis). But he lacks a semiotic analysis of the common ground of
> mind-indep and mind dependent relations, or their interrelation in
> knowledge. The problem is to show how categorial schemes can be derived from
> experience.

Paul, 

You've mentioned the distinction between mind-dependent
and mind-independent entities several times in the past,
but your particular usage continues to puzzle me.  It did
so earlier when you somewhat blithely dissed Aristotle,
and it does so now in reference to Nietzsche, Hegel and
Kant.

Here I would point out that Hegel's entire project can
be reconstructed as "showing how categorial schemes are
derived from experience" -- this is one way of describing
the Begriff.  However, quite a bit hinges on what you
mean by "mind".  Please explain further.


Cordially,

M.