Explananda Re: Psycho-sexual explanation

[Ted Winslow]

BrownBingb at aol.com wrote:

> CB: I'm not sure how the quotes from Marx suggest "individual 
> explanations", except in the sense that they are "social individual" 
> explanations. ( sorry that gets to be convuluted). These passages , 
> and a lot of the EPM are pretty thick to think through, I always find.
>
> The five senses as products of (human) history are senses as social 
> products. They are different from the senses of animals which much 
> less social products and much more products of biology. The human 
> social includes the social connection to dead generations in the form 
> of history.
>
> Doesn't universally developed mean many sided social development ? The 
> _richness_ of the subjective human sensibility is socio-historical in 
> origin, no ?
>
> I don't mean to contradict your assertions. I just see them as more 
> supporting the notion of  "social explanations" rather than individual 
> in the senses these are used on  this thread.

To begin with, as Marx uses the term "social", the social individual is 
a particular kind of individual.  Thus "the senses of the social man 
differ from those of the non-social man".  The social individual is 
that individual for whom the "essential powers" (whose existence as a 
potential define all human individuals) exist "for themselves" as 
realized "subjective capacities". This idea of "human nature" as a set 
of "essential powers" and of history as a process through which this 
"in itself" is realized (becomes "for itself") is taken from Hegel.  
This human "in itself" is elaborated by Marx, on the basis of Hegel's 
idea of an "educated person", as "the universally developed individual".

"That man is free by Nature is quite correct in one sense; viz., that 
he is so according to the Idea of Humanity; but we imply thereby that 
he is such only in virtue of his destiny - that he has an undeveloped 
power to become such; for the "Nature" of an object is exactly 
synonymous with its "Idea".  ...  Freedom as the ideal of that which is 
original and natural, does not exist as original and natural.  Rather 
must it be first sought out and won; and that by an incalculable medial 
discipline of the intellectual and moral powers.  ...  To the Ideal of 
Freedom, Law and Morality are indispensably requisite; and they are in 
and for themselves, universal existences, objects and aims; which are 
discovered only by the activity of thought, separating itself from the 
merely sensuous, and developing itself, in opposition thereto; and 
which must on the other hand, be introduced into and incorporated with 
the originally sensuous will, and that contrarily to its natural 
inclination." (Hegel, Philosophy of History, pp. 40-1)

Such individuals have developed "senses" which are able to perceive 
things as the actually are.  Thus they have a "sense" both for "the 
most beautiful music" and for "the finest play".

This enables them to truly perceive human products as human products.  
In particular, they perceive their "social structure" - their social 
relations - as their own product.  This is true of all social 
relations, but where these are incompatible with "social man", the 
"non-social man" associated with them will reify them i.e. fail to see 
what is in fact a human product as a human product.  Indeed, they may 
reverse the subject/object relation and see themselves as the creature 
of what is in fact their creature e.g. as the creature of language or 
of the social structure.

"Hence the rule of the capitalist over the worker is the rule of things 
over man, of dead labour over the living, of the product over the 
producer.  For the commodities that become the instruments of rule over 
the workers (merely as the instruments of the rule of capital itself) 
are mere consequences of the process of production; they are its 
products.  Thus at the level of material production, of the 
life-process in the realm of the social - for that is what the process 
of production is - we find the same situation that we find in religion 
at the ideological level, namely the inversion of subject into object 
and vice versa.  Viewed historically this inversion is the 
indispensable transition without which wealth as such, i.e. the 
relentless productive forces of social labour, which alone can form the 
material base of a free human society, could not possibly be created by 
force at the expense of the majority.  This antagonistic stage cannot 
be avoided, any more than it is possible for man to avoid the stage in 
which his spiritual energies are given a religious definition as powers 
independent of himself.  What we are confronted by here is the 
alienation [Entfremdung] of man from his own labour." (Marx, Capital, 
vol. 1 [Penguin ed.], p. 990)

The idea of the "social structure" as an independent entity working in 
accordance with iron "laws" to produce the ideal society is, among 
other things, a secularized version of Providence.

In the case of the "social" individual, the social structure is a human 
product in a very particular sense.  It is the rationally 
self-determined creation of universally developed individuals.  As 
such, social relations in both the realm of necessity and the realm of 
freedom are the self-conscious realization of the ethical ideal; they 
are relations of "mutual recognition".

In so far as we mean by "individual explanations" the explanation of 
social phenomena as the product of rational fully self-determined 
individuals, such explanations encompass all the products of a 
community of "social" individuals.

Ted