----- Original Message ----- From: "Greg Schofield" <g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au>
>
> Ian it is decades since I last read Russell, but from what I
remember of the British rejection of Hegelianism it was mostly based
on a very incomplete and superficial understanding of the most
idealist version - the form of rejection was on the basis of a fairly
niave form of empiricism. In otherwords unless I am mistaken I don't
think this amounts to much and Russell's History of Philosophy is too
light wieght for most purposes (though a good introduction to the
field - a Cook's Tour more than a thorough exploration).
============
It had a lot more to do with Frege and Russell's advances in logic and the theories of reference and predication that flowed from them. One need only look at some of Russell's works other than his popular history to see that it was *far more* than a naive empiricism.
> Hegel's Science of Logic is not the least mathematical, though the
mistake is often made because it is associated with formal logic
(which is completely and mechanically mathmatical) which it bears no
relation. But I don't think this is what you are saying.
===========
I know it isn't which is precisely why Hegel should have called it something else.
>
> Completeness in a concept does not mean that it has all the answers
(if this is what you mean as I suspect) a complete concept is one
which contains all the concept necessary for comprehending a subject
(ie not the comprehension itself much less the complexity of the
reality) - these necessarily have to be concepts capable of
self-development (that is changing and adapting to new questions
without breaking the conceptual interrelations).
=========
As analytic philosopher's assert; a concept's intensionality and extensionality.
> Completeness can be found readily in the natural sciences (Newtonian
Physics, Darwin's Origin or Einstien's Relativity as well known
examples) - refinement and even displacement (Newtonian physics being
reassigned within Relativity for instance) but such changes occur
within the original logic of the science. Science is not the
accumulation of discreet theories but the integration of theories into
a complete and singular concept (of course uneven development between
the sciences and fields within a science lead to all soughts of
half-way conditions).
========== Sorry, I can't make heads or tails out of the last proposition. As far as I can tell, all the sciences remain incomplete and many may be incompleteable.
>
> The process of refinement and integration sometimes leads to a set
of theories ending up very differently from where the author placed
them, but if they were sound in the first place rather then simply
being thrust aside they merely reappear in a different form (Kepler,
Galilio, Coperinicus - the eseence of their discoveries lingers on
though they don't now appear as they were first cast).
=========== Their theories had/have no essence. Essence does not refer.
>
> The Science of Logic puports to be complete for it presents a single
concept of interrelated concepts which express the instance of logic
(its inner workings).
==========
It's sentences like that that led Russell and others to abandon Hegelianism.
>Unlike any system of philosophy before or since (Kant was getting
there but was blocked by his Materialism). I am unaware that anyone
has done to Hegel what Hegel did to Kant - as far as I know Hegel's
Logic stands in near prestine condition, hardly touched by any
substantial criticism for nearly 200 years (Marx being careful to
avoid criticising the Logic though he made merry hell with much of the
rest of Hegel's philosophy).
> The real criticism of Hegel's Logic has been to ignore it - a
tradition which has served the bourgeoisie immensely well in my
opinion.
==============
Lot's of philosophers have ignored it because it's irrelevant. Same with scientists. What can one do with the following:
241
[a] Something, therefore, is immediate, self-related determinate being, and has a limit, in the first place, relatively to an other; the limit is the non-being of the other, not of the something itself: in the limit, something limits its other. But the other is itself a something in general, therefore the limit which something has relatively to the other is also the limit of the other as a something, its limit whereby it keeps the first something as its other apart from it, or is a non-being of that something; it is thus not only non-being of the other, but-non-being, equally of the one and of the other something, consequently of the something as such.
244
[b] Now in so far as something in its limit both is and is not, and these moments are an immediate, qualitative difference, the negative determinate being and the determinate being of the something fall outside each other. Something has its determinate being outside (or, as it is also put, on the inside) of its limit; similarly, the other, too, because it is a something, is outside it. Limit is the middle between the two of them in which they cease. They have their determinate being beyond each other and beyond their limit; the limit as the non-being of each is the other of both.
I see lot's of Leibnizian non-compossibilities in the above *assertions.* Further, how could anything possibly refute them or verify them or test them? Sorry, I'm having a Humean moment, but metaphysics and ontology have changed too significantly in the past century in trying to make sense of nature, thought-language etc. that the above doesn't seem to get us anywhere in coming to terms with the problems of human ignorance and knowledge. As one of those decadent empiricists, Bas Van Fraasen puts it: "there is a reason why metaphysics sounds so passe, so vieux ju, today; for intellectually challenging perplexities and paradoxes it has been far surpassed by theoretical science. Do the concepts of the Trinity, the soul, hacceity, universals, prime matter, and potentiality baffle you? They pale beside the unimaginable otherness of closed space-times, event horizons, EPR correlations, bootstrap models." And, one hastens to add, all the human behaviors that generate so much suffering in the world today.
>
>
> > As for HIstorical Materialism being a science, well that depends
on
> what is meant by science - it is certainly not the science as most
> scientists would have it - which is what our heritage of Marxism
tries
> so superficially to imitate, but then again there is science and
there
> is "science".
>
> IAN:
> "The above does not help."
>
> Well I would differ as my proceeding paragraphs tried to show that
the normal idea of science is primitive and ideological (the one the
socialist movement has so badly emulated) but that a scientific
understanding of science (that is a proper philosophical one) is not
so misled (the science Marx claimed for himself was not a Victorian
afflication as a simple statemnent by someone who understood the
concept of science philosophically).
=========
What's primitive about molecular biology, fractal modeling of plate tectonics, quantum optics? What's *the* proper philosophical understanding of science?
> Ian pluralism is a lot better then dogmaticism but no closer to the
truth. There is a single concept that is Historical Materialism, not
that all parts of it are equally developed and there exists no great
exposition of it outside Capital. However if you want to see some of
its main workings then the Grundrisse has lots of leads (where the
so-called younger Marx and older meet and show no great division but
just a development of the concept).
==========
Read all those works and loved them. I'm having problems with your first sentence. I also thought HM is a *theory* with lot's of assertions some true, some false, like lot's of other theories. How is a *theory* a single concept?
>
> If you look closely at Marx's critiques of idealism (which save
Hegel from himself and all turn on the central position of the Science
of Logic) and follow this back to the Science of Logic you gain a
starting point - what stands out is the relationship of early concepts
(from 1844) onwards with their latter articulation of which Capital
stands as an exposition in practice (Tony Smith's work on the
underlying Logic of Capital being Hegel's Science of Logic is perhaps
the most important contribution in this field in the 20th century -
alas largely unread).
>
> What has got to be remembered is that we stand at the end of a long
saga where nearly everything Marx committed to paper has finally been
published, however the hard swot on where this all leads us has hardly
begun, let alone a proper exposition of what is Historical
Materialism. There is only one version of Historical Materialism,
unfortunately it has not been fully unearthed.
==============
How is the last assertion any different from 'there is only one version of Christianity' or 'there is only one version of Confucianism'?
>
> Yes a complete system! Marx and Engels were in no doubt about this,
nor Lenin after he read Hegel's Science of Logic and finally
understood the dialectic (not until 1914!). Our movement however
descends only indirectly from this rich source via two characters who
never read Hegel and never understood the dialectic - Stalin and
Trotsky.
=========== Ah yes, the comfort of certitude in an uncertain and indeterminate world. I wonder what Marx would have thought about nuclear weapons, aids, global warming and the state of class struggle at the dawn of the 2nd year of the 21st century. Me thinks he'd think a little differently about Hegel's Logic, let alone all the other developments in science, philosophy etc. given the problems of contemporary societies and the intellectual strategies available for solving them.
> The very fact we are having this debate shows the depth of the
problem. None of things I have said should be the least unusual (it is
all caged from elsewhere), yet the vast majority of Marxists will find
all this very obtuse and strange (complete systems, ontology -
logic!).
==========
Well that's because a lot has happened since Hegel and Marx walked the earth.
>
> Ian when you protest pluralism, it is understandable becuase it is a
healthy response to the twin histories of our movement (Trotskite and
Stalinist) whose non-dialectical ways are only matched by their
"scientific" pretensions (really no-more than an expressxion of a
sect-like outlook). What I am trying to say is something very
different.
>
>
> Rigour before all things!
>
>
> Greg Schofield
> Perth Australia
> g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au
============
Billions live without the dialectic and apart from the horrors of the current human condition, could probably continue to live without it once those conditions were ameliorated. Nor, it would seem, does understanding the dialectic in the slightest get us anywhere in terms of alleviating the suffering of those same billions.
Ian