On Feb 14, 2010, at 7:32 PM, Joanna wrote:
> Shane wrote:
>
> "The philosophical essence of Hegel and Marx is not "the self-
> deification of mankind" (whatever that can mean) but the view of
> human history as not only an organic stage in natural history but as
> a crux in that history, a "prehistory," opening the possibility (but
> far, far, from the certainty) of a new, higher, stage in the
> development of planetary consciousness (called "communism" [Marx] or
> "objective spirit" [Hegel])."
>
> I don't know if we're on the same page here, but for me, Marx takes
> eastern philosophy one crucial step forward.
> (The dialectic is the western equivalent of the east's awareness of
> the falseness of duality.)
We are, but I think the step was taken by Hegel. The "East" also recognizes that duality, while false, is first of all real. Sunyata of sunyata. Hegel projects that contradiction into *time*, learning from the historical dynamism of "Western" technological and social Enlightenment. Spirit, in Hegel, is collective consciousness and Marx concretizes the agency of that consciousness in the class whose alienation from attachment to the bonds of social domination and exploitation frees them to realize that collective self consciousness of the needs of spirit, the class he calls the "proletariat." (In Rome the definition of "proletariat" was the class of those too poor to own even one slave.)
>
> Eastern philosophy requires a coming to consciousness through
> awareness of social and other conditioning. That is, you cannot be
> free until you become aware of all that binds you, of all that has
> shaped you. To that, Marx adds the variable of history as a material
> force that must be factored into that coming to consciousness. That
> is we must understand what history is and how it shapes those forces
> that shape us.
>
I would add that our past shapes the way in which we conceive our present, and a correct understanding of our past must comprehend our understanding of our future if we are ever to understand our present. "We" also shape the forces that shape "us."
Shane Mage
"L'après-vie, c'est une auberge espagnole. L'on n'y trouve que ce qu'on a apporté."
Bardo Thodol