Explananda Re: Psycho-sexual explanation

Ted Winslow egwinslow at rogers.com
Mon Mar 31 18:09:29 PST 2003


BrownBingb at aol.com wrote wrote:


> The idea is that politics and economics are social phenomenon, and
> that therefore must have social , not individual explanations.  This
> is not vulgar materialism or economism. It is applying Marx's famous
> maxim that the human individual is a social individual. or even
> Aristotle's "man is the social animal',

The idea of the "social" individual is not an abandonment of "individual explanations". Such an individual is a "universally developed individual", an individual who, among other things, embodies "the richness of subjective human sensibility". This individual is "social" for two reasons: (1) her development requires particular social relations - the development of a subjective capacity for beautiful music, for instance, requires beautiful music as an object, in general the development of subjective aesthetic capacities requires a relation to beautiful objects - universal development also requires a relation to universally developed subjects; (2) her self-realizing activity as a universally developed individual, activity in "the realm of freedom", is also necessarily "social", as in Marx's conception of "art" as "production through freedom," as how we would produce if "we carried out production as human beings."

"Just as only music awakens in man the sense of music, and just as the most beautiful music has no sense for the unmusical ear - is [no] object for it, because my object can only be the confirmation of one of my essential powers - it can therefore only exist for me insofar as my essential power exists for itself as a subjective capacity; because the meaning of an object for me goes only so far as my sense goes (has only a meaning for a sense corresponding to that object) - for this reason the senses of the social man differ from those of the non-social man. Only through the objectively unfolded richness of man's essential being is the richness of subjective human sensibility (a musical ear, an eye for beauty of form - in short, senses capable of human gratification, senses affirming themselves as essential powers of man) either cultivated or brought into being. For not only the five senses but also the so-called mental senses, the practical senses (will, love, etc.) in a word, human sense, the human nature of the senses, comes to be by virtue of its object, by virtue of humanised nature. The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present. The sense caught up in crude practical need has only a restricted sense. For the starving man, it is not the human form of food that exists, but only its abstract existence as food. It could just as well be there in its crudest form, and it would be impossible to say wherein this feeding activity differs from that of animals. The care-burdened, poverty-stricken man has no sense for the finest play; the dealer in minerals sees only the commercial value but not the beauty and the specific character of the mineral: he has no mineralogical sense. Thus, the objectification of the human essence, both in its theoretical and practical aspects, is required to make man's sense human, as well as to create the human sense corresponding to the entire wealth of human and natural substance." (Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Collected Works, vol. 3, pp. 301-2)

"Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings. Each of us would have in two ways affirmed himself and the other person. 1) In my production I would have objectified my individuality, its specific character, and therefore enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also when looking at the object I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective, visible to the senses and hence a power beyond all doubt. 2) In your enjoyment or use of my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need by my work, that is, of having objectified man's essential nature, and of having thus created an object corresponding to the need of another man's essential nature. 3) I would have been for you the mediator between you and the species, and therefore would become recognized and felt by you yourself as a completion of your own essential nature and as a necessary part of yourself, and consequently would know myself to be confirmed both in your thought and your love. 4) In the individual expression of my life I would have directly created your expression of your life, and therefore in my individual activity I would have directly confirmed and realized my true nature, my human nature, my communal nature.

"Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature.

"This relationship would moreover be reciprocal; what occurs on my side has also to occur on yours." (Marx, "Comments on James Mill", Collected Writings, vol. 3, pp. 227-8)

Ted



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