"Caudwell was an awesome Marxist philosopher."
"Facts."
On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 8:03 PM, Charles Brown <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Word ( Are you familiar with that slang ? It means "what you say it
> true", though I think it has changed, smiles)
>
> On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 6:33 PM, JOANNA A. <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> > Possibly true about Hegel.
> >
> > The other thing to keep in mind is that the vernacular changes extremely
> fast. Print has slowed down the rate of change, but it's still changing
> every day. What doesn't change as quickly is the language of the educated:
> the hochsprache of each country. That's one reason why intellectuals might
> notice that language gets more out of touch with reality.
> >
> > Dante actually argues this in De Vulgaria Eloquentia, when talking about
> the Tower of Babel.
> >
> > Joanna
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 1:49 PM, JOANNA A. <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> >> He was a smart, well educated, insightful guy. Even though he says
> print and Plato in the same sentence, a lot of what he describes is true
> for post-writing culture.
> >>
> >> Joanna
> >
> >
> > ^^^^^^
> > CB: uhhuh
> >
> > Another thought: Engels suggests that
> > Hegel's founding his dialectical logic in contradiction instead of the
> > principle of identity or non-contradiction as in formal logic is an
> > effort to reflect in language the change or fluidity of reality that
> > Caudwell describes here.
> >
> > Caudwell's formulation above is at the extreme of Heraclitus'
> > 'No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same
> > river and he's not the same man.' Somewhere Hegel says formal logic is
> > necessary as well or else we would never have any fixity or certainty.
> >
> > Also, Caudwell says, " "Reality constitutes for us our environment.
> > and our environment ,
> >> which is chiefly social, ..." , Social reality is largely made up of
> symbols in language and the semiotics of culture, tradition, customs (see
> structural anthropology). Well , symbols are fixed, as he points out in the
> other part of what he says. So, much of our reality _is_ fixed, and not
> changing. My mother remains my mother, because "mother" is a symbolic
> representation. The law against speeding remains fixed pretty much. It's
> objective reality that changes , not social reality - the ultimate fixity
> in social reality being things like God , the Eternal Individual Soul or
> maybe Platonic Ideals. Social reality only changes with revolutions in the
> mode of production a la Marx *
> >
> > Oh I just found this on the internet; Caudwell is an extraordinary
> > Marxist philosopher:
> >
> > http://www.marxists.org/archive/caudwell/1938/studies/index.htm
> >
> >
> >
> > * In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter
> > into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely
> > relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the
> > development of their material forces of production. The totality of
> > these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of
> > society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political
> > superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social
> > consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the
> > general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not
> > the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their
> > social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain
> > stage of development, the material productive forces of society come
> > into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this
> > merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property
> > relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto.
> > >From forms of development of the productive forces these relations
> > turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The
> > changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the
> > transformation of the whole immense superstructure. " ( the legal,
> > political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological
> > forms)
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >> "Reality constitutes for us our environment. and our environment ,
> >> which is chiefly social, alters continuously -sometimes barely
> >> perceptibly, sometimes at dizzy speeds. The socially accepted pictures
> >> we make in words of reality cannot change as if they were reflections
> >> in a mirror. An object is reflected in a mirror. An object is
> >> reflected in a mirror. If the object moves the reflection moves. But
> >> in language reality is symbolised in unchanging words which give a
> >> false stability and permanence to the object they represent. Thus they
> >> instantaneously photograph reality rather than reflect it. This frigid
> >> character of language is regrettable but it has utilitarian purposes .
> >> It is probably the only way in which man, with his linear
> >> consciousness, can get a grip of fluid reality. Language, as it
> >> develops, shows more and more of this false permanence, till we arrive
> >> at the Platonic Ideas, Eternal and Perfect Words. Their eternity and
> >> perfection are simply the permanence of print and paper. If you coin a
> >> word or write a symbol to describe an entity or event, the word will
> >> remain 'eternally' unchanged even while the entity has changed and the
> >> event is no longer present. This permanence is part of the inescapable
> >> nature of symbolism, which is expressed in the rules of logic. It is
> >> one of the strange freaks of the human mind that it is supposed that
> >> reality must obey the rules of logic, whereas the correct view is that
> >> symbolism by its very nature has certain rules, expressed in laws of
> >> logic,and these are nothing to do with the process of reality, but
> >> represent the nature of the symbolic process itself." - Christopher
> >> Caudwell from "A Study of the Bourgeois Artist" in _Studies in s
> >> Dying Culture_
> >> ___________________________________
> >> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >>
> >> ___________________________________
> >> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>