Date: Wed, 11 Feb 1998 22:37:05 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-TH: Re: free will (Spinoza, platitudes & a Grundrisse invitation)


Just a couple of points in relation to Justin's remarks.

I wrote:

>> Well, actually, Hegel fuses Spinoza (weakly) and Kant (strongly), and Marx
>> so to speak reverses the polarity by re-fusing Hegel and Spinoza.

and Justin kvetched:

>I'd like some textual evidence that Marx relies much, if at all, on
>Spinoza. Surely he got a trace of Spinoza through Hegel, but in a very
>Hegelized version of it, which works far more transformation on Spinoza
>than Hegel's reworkong of Rousseau, whom we _know_ Marx read because he
>actually comments on his work.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. II. Saint Bruno:

	In [The Holy Family] ... Hegelian philosophy was represented as a
union of
	Spinoza and Fichte and at the same time the contradiction involved
in this
	was emphasised.
	(Collected Works of Marx and Engels, vol 5 p 98)

The Holy Family ch VI "Absolute Critical Criticism", sec 3(f):

	In Hegel there are *three* elements, *Spinoza's substance*, *Fichte's
	Self-Consciousness* and *Hegel's* necessarily antagonistic *unity*
of the
	two, the *Absolute Spirit*. The first element is metaphysically
disguised
	*nature separated* from man; the second is metaphysically disguised
	*spirit separated* from nature; the third is the metaphysically
disguised
	*unity* of both, *real man* and the real *human species*.
	[All emphasis M&E's, and the following para (with a reference to
	Feuerbach) is brilliant too]
	(Coll Works vol 4 p 139)

This  constitutes actual comment on Spinoza's work, and high-relief
comment, too. Not extensive, but central. Marx uses Spinoza (often along
with Aristotle, Macchiavelli, Descartes, Hobbes and others) as one of his
reference points in the great developments of human thought.

Spinoza had an intangible intensity and wholeness, the whitehot crucible of
his mind, so to speak, fusing the component elements of his philosophy. He
had an intense and lifelong capacity for concentration and an enormous
sense of navigation -- he always knew exactly where he with respect to his
main ideas, regardless of the thread he was actually pursuing in any
particular piece of work and navigated his world of ideas like a sailor
alone with the starlit night sky, viewing everything sub specie
aeternitatis (in the perspective of eternity. All these things can be found
in Marx as a kind of spiritual heir to Spinoza's mode of attack. Both were
amazingly subtle, a difference however being Marx's love of contradiction
and ferocious desire to hunt ideas to their deepest lair however
labyrinthine the tunnels in which they go to ground like badgers, whereas
Spinoza has a limpid simplicity that makes him one of the nicest
philosophers to read I know of.

Enough of this!

Notice that M&E cite Hegel as being composed of elements from Spinoza and
*Fichte*, whereas I said he fused Spinoza and Kant. The reason I did so,
stressing Kant, was to emphasize the enormous effort Hegel made to
appropriate Kant's philosophical conquests and transcend them, most
particularly exemplified by the brilliant way he resolves the antinomies in
the Logic.

I'd better qualify the "weak" and "strong" distinction I made, however.
Spinoza's significance to Hegel was more than just a pervasive aura, given
that it informed the whole of his treatment of nature. What I was getting
at was the materialist (though metaphysically disguised) insistence on the
wholeness and oneness of nature, which Hegel spiritualized more than
Spinoza. The "strong" Kantian influence I referred to was the fundamental
insistence on idealist universals underpinning everything.

Another exchange was:

>> The recognition of necessity thing is important in the sense I took up
>> recently with the quotes from the opening fanfare of 18 Brumaire: "Men make
>> their own history, but they do not make it just as they please;
>
>But the passage contradicts the line that freedom is the recognition of
>necessity. On that slogan, it would read: Men donot make their own
>history, and recognizing that is freedom. In fact Marx nods to necessity,
>we do no not make our history as we please, but he starts from freedom, we
>do make our own history.

No way. Neither Marx nor Engels say anything that can be interpreted this
way, as if freedom was just determinedly recognizing that everything you do
is determined. Nor does Marx start from freedom as such, but from a
conditioned freedom in the sense I discussed.

>> This is not cryptic in the least. Once you recognize  what is constraining
>> you, and how much of it is changeable (or not), you can act consciously to
>> change the bits that *are* changeable. The more people and the better
>> organized "you" are, the more "you" can achieve. This is the only freedom
>> that matters.
>
>If the slogan that freedom is the recognition of necessity is no more than
>this platitude, it is shallow indeed. I would think that the concept of
>feeddom hasa  lot moree content that matters than that. What about, for
>example, Marx's claim that real freedom is acting according to laws we
>give to ourselves in labor?

Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest. Simple, but not easy. What I
wrote isn't a platitude, it's a condensed resume of the history of
civilization!


After kvetching a bit more over points on which we have very different
positions, Justin adds:

>Don't worry, Hugh,
>I'm a hard-boiled atheist.

Glad to hear it, but so was Plato, but he was a died-in-the-wool idealist
for all that (damn good writer though...).

And a final kvetch was:

>Hugh, I've been reading and rereading the Grundrisse for 20 years, and it
>gets harder, not easier, for me. I have my own guess about why you find it
>easy, but out of politeness I'll keep it to myself. You can probably
>surmise what it is anyway.

Well, let's see who's a superficial poseur, then! En garde, Justin! Tell us
what you think are the difficult bits and why. Try taking it a bit at a
time and we might get some others adding their particular illumination (or
not, as the case may be). And please, if you're quoting passages, tell us
where they are by chapter and section as well as your page number, we
haven't all got the same edition.

Bog,

Xju




     --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---