On Sat, 24 Mar 2001 07:39:59 -0500 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
writes:
> James Farmelant wrote to Dennis B.:
>
>
> Though Justin says I am becoming a budding Analytical Marxist [!],
> having grown out of what he probably thinks of as a dialectoid
> infancy, I think Hegel's cunning of reason has a rational kernel
> worth preserving:
In fairness to Justin, he has a much higher opinion of Hegel, and of Hegelian Marxism than do most Analytic Marxists. Hegel in turn as the passage that Yoshie quotes below was apparently not innocent of engaging in micro-explanations too.
>
> Hegel says in _The Philosophy of History_:
>
> ***** The special interest of passion is thus inseparable from the
>
> active development of a general principle: for it is from the
> special
> and determinate and from its negation, that the Universal results.
> Particularity contends with its like, and some loss is involved in
> the issue. It is not the general idea that is implicated in
> opposition and combat, and that is exposed to danger. It remains in
>
> the background, untouched and uninjured. This may be called the
> cunning of reason, -- that it sets the passions to work for itself,
> while that which develops its existence through such impulsion pays
> the penalty and suffers loss. For it is phenomenal being that is so
>
> treated, and of this, part is of no value, part is positive and
> real.
> The particular is for the most part of too trifling value as
> compared
> with the general: individuals are sacrificed and abandoned. The
> Idea
> pays the penalty of determinate existence and of corruptibility, not
>
> from itself, but from the passions of individuals.
>
<http://www.ets.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/texts/Hegel%20-%20Philosophy%20of%20
History.htm>
>
> *****
>
> The rational kernel here is that history is not a "social
> experiment"
> or "social engineering" & that individuals are compelled to go about
>
> our business of making history without quite knowing what fruits, if
>
> any, our actions bear. Historical meanings of our actions are
> grasped in hindsight. The owl of Minerva only flies at dusk.
>
Jim Farmelant
> Yoshie
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