Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 19:49:29 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Pythic pithiness (was Form and Essence)


Hugh wrote:

>Yoshie might be skating on thin ice here -- or not. I'd like a less
compact

>version of this to see which it is:

>

>>Well, you might want to go through the discipline of English, once in
a

>>while. What English (or Literature in general) teaches us is the art
of

>>close reading, that is, attention to forms. Essence resides in and
only in

>>forms, not behind or beneath them. What marxists ought to look at is
forms

>>of exploitation, forms of ideology (including morality), conceived
as

>>historical products and subject to contestation.

>

>The sentence at the heart of it is:

>

>>Essence resides in and only in forms, not behind or beneath them.

>

>There could be a hidden corridor here leading us into Hegel's logic
again.

>

>Otherwise it's good to see Yoshie's flair for epigram and pithy
statements

>of principle developing by the day. "She speaks with authority, and
not as

>the Pharisees." But occasionally the pithiness runs the risk of
turning

>Pythic, if she misses out a few links in the argument that are obvious
to

>her (and that Carrol pretends are obvious to him) but need spelling
out for

>the rest of us.


I have read _The Poverty of Philosophy_, if that's what you are worried
about. By forms, I don't mean "logical categories" of the kind
criticized in that text.


When I wrote of essence and form, I was thinking of _Theses on
Feuerbach_, especially the following:


<paraindent><param>right,left</param>Feuerbach resolves the religious
essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction
inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is *the ensemble
of the social relations*.


Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence, is
consequently compelled:


1.To abstract from the historical process and to fix the religious
sentiment as something by itself and to presuppose an abstract --
isolated -- human individual.


2.Essence, therefore, can be comprehended only as "genus", as an
internal, dumb generality which naturally unites the many individuals.
(emphasis added)

</paraindent>

Yoshie






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