[lbo-talk] Self-Consciousness (was Re: Shakespeare)

Charles Brown charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Wed Dec 12 08:27:09 PST 2007


--- Chris Doss wrote:


>
> I would provisionally define having a first person
> POV as experiencing the world from a particular, though
> usually moving, vantage point in space and time.
> What some people call Geworfenheit. :)

^^^

CB: Another point on this: the above is only in the passive voice. Make it first person, active subject of the sentence. A subject , speaking of Hegel, who acts affirmatively on the world, doesn't just contemplate it, as in experience it. A subject practices as well as experiences.

_The Riddle of the Self_ by Feliks Mikhailov may be available in Russian where you are.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mikhailov/works/riddle/index.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mikhailov/works/riddle/riddle4.htm

In the Theses on Feuerbach, Marx activates the materialist subject, noting the subject had only been active in idealism up to that point.

1 The main defect of all hitherto-existing materialism — that of Feuerbach included — is that the Object [der Gegenstand], actuality, sensuousness, are conceived only in the form of the object [Objekts], or of contemplation [Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice [Praxis], not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in opposition to materialism, was developed by idealism — but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects [Objekte], differentiated from thought-objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective [gegenständliche] activity. In The Essence of Christianity [Das Wesen des Christenthums], he therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish ( sic) form of appearance [Erscheinungsform]. Hence he does not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary’, of ‘practical-critical’, activity.



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