Ted Winslow
Charles Brown wrote:
> You should hear the names Marx called people, like philistines,
> fishblood petty bouorgeois. Read _Capital_ and you'll see Marx was
> tougher
> than Lenin on people.
In Marx's case though, this is evidence of failure to actualize his own idea of human "species-being." This requires magnanimity.
This is an aspect of Hegel's idea of an "educated" person, an idea sublated by Marx.
"Man, as an individual, stands in relation to himself. He has two aspects: his individuality and his universal essence. His Duty to Himself consists partly in his duty to care for his physical preservation, partly in his duty to educate himself, to elevate his being as an individual into conformity with his universal nature.
"Explanatory: Man, is on the one hand, a natural being. As such he
behaves according to caprice and accident as an inconstant, subjective being. He does not distinguish the essential from the unessential. Secondly, he is a spiritual, rational being and as such he is not by nature what he ought to be. The animal stands in no need of education, for it is by nature what it ought to be. It is only a natural being. But man has the task of bringing into harmony his two sides, of making his individuality conform to his rational side or of making the latter become his guiding principle. For instance, when man gives way to anger and acts blindly from passion he behaves in an uneducated way because, in this, he takes an injury or affront for something of infinite importance and seeks to make things even by injuring the transgressor in undue measure." Hegel, Philosophical Propaedeutic, pp.41-2
"individuals can attain their ends only in so far as they themselves determine their knowing, willing, and acting in a universal way"
"By educated men, we may prima facie understand those who without the obtrusion of personal idiosyncrasy can do what others do. It is precisely this idiosyncrasy, however, which uneducated men display, since their behaviour is not governed by the universal characteristics of the situation. Similarly, an uneducated man is apt to hurt the feelings of his neighbours. He simply lets himself go and does not reflect on the susceptibilities of others. It is not that he intends to hurt them, but his conduct is not consonant with his intention. Thus education rubs the edges off particular characteristics until a man conducts himself in accordance with the nature of the thing." http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pr/prcivils.htm
This failure also finds expression in, and is connected to, Marx's thinking, e.g. in the role assigned to "the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation" in generating conditions conducive to the "education" of a subject able to transform capitalism into the penultimate social form from which all barriers to full human development have been removed.
Ted
^^^^^^ CB; His own idea of species-being or you own idea of his idea of species-being and your idea of Hegel's idea ?
Yea, we should be nice and love each other, sure. Hegel presents his philosophy as a Chrisitianty. On the other hand, beyond a certain point educated magnanimity can become too soft on the bourgeoisie.