> On Sep 26, 2007, at 11:32 PM, John Thornton wrote:
>
>> Can someone please explain why a material human explanation is
>> insufficient?
>
> Nureyev was very vain and wanted to identify with god!
These claims are “materialist” in the sense of Marx’s “historical materialism.” That sense sublates Hegel.
Hegel, himself sublating the tradition in thought to which he and Marx belong and “translating the language of religion into the language of thought,” translates “God” – “the Divine Being” – into the “Unity of the Universal and Individual.” http:// hegel.marxists.org/works/hi/history4.htm#(3) § 51
So, in so far as individuals in their activity realize “unity” with the “universal,” i.e. actualize the “universal will,” they become “God” in this sense. In this, they realize “freedom” in Hegel’s sense, i.e. “freedom” is the “Unity of the Universal and Individual.”
“Freedom can exist only where Individuality is recognised as having its positive and real existence in the Divine Being.” § 52
The truly beautiful realizes this “unity” and so realizes “freedom,” "autonomy," in this sense.
“In caprice it is involved that the content is not formed by the nature of my will, but by contingency. I am dependent upon this content. This is the contradiction contained in caprice. Ordinary man believes that he is free, when he is allowed to act capriciously, but precisely in caprice is it inherent that he is not free. When I will the rational, I do not act as a particular individual but according to the conception of ethical life in general. In an ethical act I establish not myself but the thing. A man, who acts perversely, exhibits particularity. The rational is the highway on which every one travels, and no one is specially marked. When a great artist finishes a work we say: ‘It must be so.’ The particularity of the artist has wholly disappeared and the work shows no mannerism. Phidias has no mannerism; the statue itself lives and moves. But the poorer is the artist, the more easily we discern himself, his particularity all caprice. If we adhere to the consideration that in caprice a man can will what he pleases, we have certainly freedom of a kind; but again, if we hold to the view that the content is given, then man must be determined by it, and in this light is no longer free.” Philosophy of Right, Introduction, § 15, Addition http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/index.htm
Marx’s idea of the “universally developed individual” sublates this idea i.e. such an individual is the “Unity of the Universal and Individual.” In the Grundrisse he points an artisitic activity – “composing” – to indicate what he means by the “fully free” activity that defines “the true realm of freeom,” activity that requires, he claims, fully developed “powers,” the powers that define the universally developed individual.
Ted