Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 00:47:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: re: Hegel's idealism


On Thu, 2 Oct 1997, j laari wrote:

> OK. I once read in one article (written by some U.S. American
> philosopher to U.S. audience) that in "continental tradition"
> 'methodology' includes 'epistemological' questions. I conclude you
> Americans don't think so. On that basis I understand you're
> differentiating methodology drastically from epistemology. I'm used to
> do so with methodical issues, not with methodological ones.

Don't draw conclusions about what "Americans" think from what I say.
Anyway I certainly think that a lot of what Marx discusses under "method"
is epistemology. I just have been insisting that notoriously says rather
little and that not systematically.

> " You slide from "determines" to"constitutes." There's a big
> difference. Marx's claim that social being determines thinking is not
> an ontological claim about what Social Being Is or indeed what
> Thinking Is. "
> 
> (1) I slide because I'm not certain how to talk about it in English.
> He uses 'determine' and 'determination' often in a sense which means
> determinations of concept, as in 'walls and roof are determinations of
> house', where 'roof' is (one) determination of 'house'. Conceptual,
> not causal, determination. Surely Marx isn't saying that 'Being'
> causes thinking in its every nuance. That much he has learned from
> idealists.

Marx's use of bestimmen is something that could use careful analysis. It is
not simple. Certainly it doesn't always mean cause. But I don't think he
uses it in the sense that you ascribe to him, on which it would mean
constitution. When he says the forces of production determine the economic
base, the social relations, I do think think that can be understood in the
way you suggest. Forces of production do not make social relations the way
walls and a roof make up a house. I think G.A. Cohen's story about how the
productive forces functionally explain the social relations in virtue of
the causal properties of a certain set of social relations being
efficiency promoting is a good reading of that particular determination.

Incidentally Marx sometimes says in the German Ideology that thought is
entirely determined by social being, so much that philosophy, morality,
etc. are mere reflexes of social relations and have no history or
independence. I regard this an indefensible overstatement, and not
something he does or can consistently maintain, but he does say it.   

> Nothing against such determinations in general, but I'm afraid that
> somehow specific meaning of ontology gets lost. Namely, 'what is the
> nature of being that is', or more generally, 'what is the nature of
> Being'. And again, Marx surely didn't wrote pamphlets about it. Yet,
> such questions are to be found in his writings and manuscripts. For
> sure, he was too careless with his words, but he was writing to
> audience that (if ever read his writings) knew and understood his
> points very well, not to 20th century marxologists and marxists of
> different breed.

Actually I don't think that Marx himself knew very well what he meant
because he didn't bother to think it through. It wasn't important to him. I
think he thought that Feuerbach basically settled the ontological issue
and there wasn't anything else to be said.

> You really think so? In these 'postmodern times', when talk about
> societal issues is hush-hush and only chat about Values and Culture
> and Rights is accepted? You could fill several concert halls with more
> or less hegelian social scientists only.

Maybe in Finland, not in America.

 Today, when empiricism has
> incarnated as postmodernism and most 'non-pomos' seem to concentrate
> around Hegel and idealism in general, it surely isn't insignificant to
> concentrate on problems of idealism in its most powerful form. 

Well, Hegelian idealism of a serious sort would be a more worthy opponent.
But Hegel is too smart and too hard for the pomos and too demanding to
the degraded intellectual climate of our times.

To put
> it bluntly: I'm afraid that hegelian idealism, in slightly modified
> form though (as in hermeneutics), is rapidly becoming the only
> significant alternative to 'pomo'.

I know zip about hermeneutics, except maybe in the form of people like
Peter Winch or Clifford Geertz. I've tried Gadamer, but I find him boring. 

ANyway, you are not describing the intellectual scene I know here.

> 
> Now, back to business:
> 
> " Marx's claim that social being determines thinking is not an
> ontological claim about what Social Being Is or indeed what Thinking
> Is. "
> 
> Right, it isn't an ontological claim of what Thinking Is. But if it
> isn't a claim of social ontology, then I surely can't grasp your
> reasoning at all.

It's a claim about explanatory priority, not ontology.

> Reread Herrschaft und Knecht and tell me
> with a straight face that Hegel downplays the significance of human
> activity in the world. "
> 
> With a straight face: he truly does so. My point doesn't concern that
> one  particular instance in Ph. The point is that H concentrates
> exclusively on 'activity of Spirit' (see above).

But the activity of the spirit is embodied in real people in concrete
social relations acting upon each other in the world. The point about the
slave's discovery of himself in transforming the world and the master's
dead end because he doesn't do this is central, not an isolated moment in
Hegel's thought. It's the fundamental transition to self-consciousness,
which for Hegel is practical and not contemplative activity.

> In somehow different words; point is that what is left unsaid also
> counts. If I define 'human being' by intelligence, reason, emotion,
> and self-consciousness, but drop the bodily dimension, 

Hegel is the _last person_ who would do such a thing. I cannot imagine a
notion more foreign to Hegel. 

then I'm an
> idealist despite I've succeeded to give some of its correct
> determinations. 

He is an idealist, though not for this reason.

--Justin Schwartz




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