File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9802, message 477


Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 19:20:13 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: free will (Spinoza, platitudes & a Grundrisse invitation)



Hugh,

OK, I'll buy that Spinoza was more important toMarx than I has thought.
I'll have to think about this sonetime when I can, not now. I still think
that Hegel was a lot more imporatnt, and Rousseau through Hegel and directly.

Not only do you find the Grundrisse transparent, you think that Spinoza is
clear and lucid. Obviously you, and not I, should have been the philosophy
professor.

On Wed, 11 Feb 1998, Hugh Rodwell wrote:
> Spinoza has a limpid simplicity that makes him one of the nicest
> philosophers to read I know of.
> 

Freedom and necessity.

> >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 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.
> 
I agree that Marx does not think that freedom is just recognizing that one
is determined. (Spinoza may have thoughts omething like this, though.) And
I said nothing about freedom "as such."

Hugh said that freedonm is the recognition of necessity reduced to
Reinhold's Niebuhr's Cold War platitude, "Give me the courage to change
what can be changed, the serenity to accept what cannot, and the wisdom to
recognize the difference." I said:


> >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
> >freeddom 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!
> 

Bah. It's still a shallow platitude.

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...).

What makes you think that Plato was an atheist? And if the suggestion is
that I'm an idealist, that's pretty funny. I will take the compliment
about being a damn good writer, however. 

> 
--jks




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