>> Jim heartfield <jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> 10/21/99 04:02PM >>>
That said, I'm surprised that one enduring conceptual distinction of Kant's intrinsic to the Marxist tradition is not recognised: The difference between the 'in-itself' and the 'for-itself', as in 'class- in-itself' and class-for-itself'.
>Kant's liberalism was close to Humboldt's in that he was primarily
>interested in moral and philosophical argumentation concerning moral
>respect for individuals as ends-in-themselves. What this means in
>political practice is unclear so he becomes *everyman* for thinkers with
>individualist bent.
Don't you agree that individuals ought to be ends in themselves? I know I do. Isn't that the same idea as 'to each according to his needs'? What other end ought individuals exist for?
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Charles: Yes, a major bourgeois contribution to progress, summarized in Kant, is individuals as ends-in-themselves. Communism sublates the bourgeois contribution ( overcomes and preserves it) by conceiving of individuals as ends- for-us. The individual is really respected most when conceived of as , not only an end in itself, but an end FOR-US, us being all of society, all of us in the species. I am surprised that Jim doesn't go beyond Kant to Engels' sublation of Kant's things-in-themselves to things-for-us, upon analogy to his comment above. The thing-in-itself is knowable, but most validly as a thing-for-us. This is a unity of the is and the ought, transcending Kant's conception of it that Jim alludes to.The working class for-itself is the agent most capable of fully realizing the individual as an end in itself. Marx and Engels emphasized that communism would provide for the fullest realization of the individual that is only abstract and artificial under capitalism. For t! he human individual is a social being.
CB