>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ted Winslow" <egwinslow at rogers.com>
>> Ian wrote:
>>
>>> So, the aesthetes of slave and feudal societies were more "in touch"
>>> with
>>> the "idea" of humanity than proletarians who go bowling or play video
>>> games? Please. Oh, and what's the use of the pomo framing/"scare"
>>> quotes
>>> of/around idea? Whose idea. Is there only one?
>>
>> I would think e.g. Aristotle was, he originated a great deal of its
>> content.
> ============================
>
> Well that says it all, don't it? Your antiquarian, eurocentric nickers
> are
> showing........
>
All "that" does is answer your question Ian.
> I don't think he had the techne required to build the
>> Parthenon though. You don't say enough about these "proletarians" to
>> indicate whether they do.
>
> ======================
>
> Who built the Pyramids yaddah yaddah yaddah........Do you really think
> the
> know-how for creative transformations of nature was even more
> concentrated
> amongst elites way back then than it is now?
>
I think Marx claimed that handicraft labour in precapitalist economies embodied greater techne in Aristotle's sense than labour characterized by "complete emptiness" (when measured against the labour of the "universally developed individual"). Marx claims the end result of capitalism ("the fully developed proletariat") will be the complete emptiness, in this sense, of labour. This claim is based, in my judgment, on a mistaken argument, but that doesn't invalidate the claim that precapitalist handicraft labour did not embody complete emptiness.
>
>
>
> You do say enough, though, to demonstrate
>> that you don't understand what Marx means by the "complete emptiness"
>> of the "fully developed proletariat".
>
> ========================
>
> As I never intended to make any exegetical comments on KM's terminology
> directly, how can you even make such an inferential leap, and perhaps
> more
> importantly, what/who gives you the authority to determine whether or
> not
> I'm capable of critical interpretation[s] of various aspects of KM's
> anthropology? You can no more control the interpretations of KM than
> you,
> me or the Federal Reserve can control the money supply............
>
When you take Marx's "complete emptiness" of the "fully-formed proletariat" to be adequately represented by "proletarians who go bowling or play video games" you're making an interpretive claim. I believe the claim is mistaken for the reasons I've given. That's all I said.
>>
>> The quotes around "idea" are meant to point to the Hegel/Marx idea of
>> humanity as the being with the potential to become a "universally
>> developed individual", the idea I've just again been elaborating.
>> This
>> isn't the only one. It's different from yours for example.
>>
>> Ted
> ================================
>
> Compressing the lives of 6 billion -currently living- persons into the
> term *humanity* as *universally developed individual* is an EXTREMELY
> problematic narrative/explanatory project, grammatical problems aside
> a la
> Wittgenstein. Why is it whenever you bring that issue up all I can
> think
> of as an example is the Borg from Star Trek?
>
Perhaps it's the same problem that leads you to think the sentence preceding the question is an argument.
Ted