language

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Carrol wrote:
>Part of the problem is in focusing on definition, ostensive, verbal,
>what have you. The question of defining concepts or anything
>else is a relatively recent development (not more than 2400
>years in the written record of the "west." -- i.e., the passage
>from Plato I quoted to set this off). So the first question should
>be, not "How can we define a concept?" but "Why, and under
>what historical condtions should we  want to define a concept?"
>or perhaps, even, "Under what historical conditions should the
>concept of defining itself become possible?"

Real abstraction must take place in the social world before mental
abstraction not only becomes possible and even necessary but seems natural
and a natural obsession of a thinking being. For instance, Marx writes in
_Capital, Vol. 1_:

If then we leave out of consideration the use-value of commodities, they
have only one common property left, that of being products of labour. But
even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands. If
we make abstraction from its use-value, we make abstraction at the same
time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a
use-value; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other
useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight.
Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the
joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive
labour. Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put
out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour
embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing
left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same
sort of labour, human labour in the abstract.

Marx is not saying that we merely do this abstraction in our heads only. He
is explaining that what actually happens with the development of
capitalism. All are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, not by
Marx's analysis or anyone else's, but by the real historical development of
capitalism (and its daily functioning). The primacy of practice before
ideas is at stake here.


>There is not so much as a remote echo in the *Odyssey* of
>such an odd idea. Two (or 3 or 4 -- chronology obscure) it
>suddently becomes the life passion of a Plato.

The development of polis, democracy, and free citizens (while Oikos receded
in importance) must have made a difference.

Yoshie
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 2559 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <../attachments/19990322/153e1c16/attachment.bin>