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>> Marx "appropriates" Greek drama in the same way:
>
>
> This is where I would disagree. Even though you put it in quotation
> marks, I think appropriate misses the mark. Marx *studied*
> Shakespeare and philosophy and his immersion in such things helped
> make the sentences he wrote as full of multiple meaning as lines
> from Shakespeare.
>
I've been putting it in quotation marks to indicate that I'm using it with the meaning Marx gives it. It's the meaning found in the idea of "revolutionary practice" working as an "educational" process to develop the intellectual and other "powers" required to "appropriate" the degree of "universality" objectified in developed capitalist "productive forces" understood as objectifications of developed "mind".
He distinguishes “appropriating” from "possessing", "having", in “Private Property and Communism.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
“the perceptible appropriation for and by man of the human essence and of human life, of objective man, of human achievements should not be conceived merely in the sense of immediate, one-sided enjoyment, merely in the sense of possessing, of having. Man appropriates his comprehensive essence in a comprehensive manner, that is to say, as a whole man. Each of his human relations to the world – seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, observing, experiencing, wanting, acting, loving – in short, all the organs of his individual being, like those organs which are directly social in their form, are in their objective orientation, or in their orientation to the object, the appropriation of the object, the appropriation of human reality. Their orientation to the object is the manifestation of the human reality."
The “appropriation,” in this sense, of the finest aesthetic objects requires fully developed “essential powers,” Thus the "appropriation" of Shakespeare requires “a sense for the finest play”.
"it is only when the objective world becomes everywhere for man in society the world of man’s essential powers – human reality, and for that reason the reality of his own essential powers – that all objects become for him the objectification of himself, become objects which confirm and realise his individuality, become his objects: that is, man himself becomes the object. The manner in which they become his depends on the nature of the objects and on the nature of the essential power corresponding to it; for it is precisely the determinate nature of this relationship which shapes the particular, real mode of affirmation. To the eye an object comes to be other than it is to the ear, and the object of the eye is another object than the object of the ear. The specific character of each essential power is precisely its specific essence, and therefore also the specific mode of its objectification, of its objectively actual, living being. Thus man is affirmed in the objective world not only in the act of thinking, but with all his senses.
"On the other hand, let us look at this in its subjective aspect. 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 ofhumanised 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.
"<Just as through the movement of private property, of its wealth as well as its poverty – of its material and spiritual wealth and poverty – the budding society finds at hand all the material for this development, so established society produces man in this entire richness of his being produces the rich man profoundly endowed with all the senses – as its enduring reality.>"
This, in fact, is the point Shakespeare is himself quoted to support in the passage I quoted.
"Assume man to be man and his relationship to the world to be a human one: then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc. If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you want to exercise influence over other people, you must be a person with a stimulating and encouraging effect on other people. Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return – that is, if your loving as loving does not produce reciprocal love; if through a living expression of yourself as a loving person you do not make yourself a beloved one, then your love is impotent – a misfortune.| XLIII||"
It's an elaboration of the idea Marx associates with Aeschylus, namely, that "human self-consciousness" is "the highest divinity". This, in turn, is elaborated by Marx in terms of Hegel's idea of the "Divine Being" as "the unity of the universal and individual".
The development of this "richness of subjective human sensibility" is “a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present”.
So, according to Marx, there is a "meaning" to Shakespeare's plays, but it "can only exist for me insofar as my essential power exists for itself as a subjective capacity". This is "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)".
Ted