DOCSLIB.ORG

Dialectical Materialism

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

DIALECTICAL HENRI LEFEBVRE Preface by Stefan Kipfer Translated by John Sturrock MATERIALISM DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM Dialectical Materialism Henri Lefebvre Preface by Stefan Kipfer Translated by John Sturrock IN UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS NE MINNEAPOLIS SO LONDON iTA Originally published in French as Le Materialisme dialectique. Copyright 1940 by Presses Universitaires de France. This English translation was first published in 1968. Copyright 1968 by Jonathan Cape Ltd. Reprinted by arrangement with Jonathan Cape Ltd. First University of Minnesota Press edition, 2009 Preface copyright 2009 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press III Third A venue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Lefebvre, Henri, 1901-1991. Dialectical materialism I Henri Lefebvre; Preface by Stefan Kipfer; Translated by John Sturrock. p. cm. Distinctive title: Materialisme dialectique Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8166-5618-9 (pb : alk. paper) I. Dialectical materialism. I. Title. II. Title: Materialisme dialectique. B809.8.L34132009 146' .32-dc22 2009004874 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. 16 15 14 13 12 II 10 09 10 987654321 The life of the Spirit is not that life which shrinks from death and seeks to keep itself clear of all corruption, but rather the life which endures the presence of death within itself and preserves itself alive within death. HEG EL, The Phenomenology of Mind Contents TRANSLATOR 'S NOTE ix CODE TO REFEREN CES xi PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION Xlll Stefan Kipfer Dialectical Materialism Foreword to the Fifth Edition I. THE DIALECTICAL CONTRADICTION 9 A critique of Hegel's dialectic 34 Historical materialism 48 Dialectical materialism 67 U nity of the doctrine 88 II. THE PRODUCTION OF MAN 102 Analysis of the Product I07 The activities of integration II2 The controlled sector and the uncontrolled sector 120 Physical determinism 129 Social determinism 133 The total man 136 Towards the total content 154 SELECTED BIBLIO GRAPHY 157 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE Professor Lefebvre's text contains many references to the writings of Hegel and Marx, and where pos­ sible the source of these is given in the form of a note in the text itself. Since the original French edition of Le Materialisme dialectique refers only to specific works, and not to specific editions of these works, and since also Professor Lefebvre's own papers relating to the book were destroyed during the I939- 45 war, we have simply carried over the references as they are given in the French edition from which the translation was made. ix CODE TO RE FE RE NCES Hegel: ED =Erste Druckschriften E =Enzyklopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (tr. Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences) GP =Geschichte der Philosophie (tr. History of Philosophy) P = Phanomenologie des Geistes (tr. The Phenomenology of Mind) PR =PhiIosophie des Rechts (tr. The Philosophy of Right) WL = Wissenschaft der Logik (tr. Science of Logic) Marx: DI =Die deutsche Ideologie (tr. German Ideology) HF =Die heilige Familie (tr. The Holy Family) K =Das Kapital (tr. Capital) KPO=Zur Kritik der politischen Okonomie (tr.Critique of Political Economy) M = Okonomische-philosophische Manu­ skripte (1844, 1857-8) Man=Manifest der kommunistischen Partei (tr. The Communist Manifesto) MP = La Misere de la philosophie (tr. The Poverty of Philosophy) N = Nachlass xi PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION Stefan Kipfer By the time Dialectical Materialism was published in 1939, Henri Lefebvre had already lived through twenty rich years of intellectual and political engagement.! In the 1920s, after arriving in Paris from Aix-en-Provence to study philosophy at the Sorbonne, Lefebvre joined a proto-existentialist student group (Jeunes Philosophes) and critically engaged works by Schelling, Proust, Pascal, Nietzsche, and his two main university teachers (Maurice Blondel and Leon Brunschvicg). Influenced by rebellious avant-gardes and some of their expo­ nents-Dada (Tristan Tzara) and Surrealism (Andre Breton) -Lefebvre became politically active. He faced mili tary confinement after protesting the French army's campaign against the Moroccan Rif in 1925 and joined the French Communist Party (PCF) in 1928. He subse­ quently developed his understanding of Marx and Hegel in debates with his fellow travelers (Breton, Jean Wahl, Paul Nizan, Norbert Guterman, Georges Politzer) in such journals as La Revue Marxiste and Avant-Paste. Of great intellectual importance was Lefebvre's col- I For more details on this period, see Remi Hess, Henri Lefebvre et l'aventure du siec1e (Paris: Metailie, 1988); Bud Burkhard, French Marxism between the Wars: Henri Lefebvre and the "Philosophies" (New York: Humanity, 2000); Stuart Elden, Understandin8 Henri Lefe­ bvre: Theory and the Possible (London: Continuum, 2004); Andy Mer­ rifield,Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2006). X111 DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM laborative work with Norbert Guterman, with whom he published generously commented translations of Hegel, Lenin's Hegel Notebooks, and Marx's early work, including the 1844 Manuscripts.1 These transla­ tion projects were key for the intellectual genesis not only of Dialectical Materialism2 but Hegelian Marxism in France more generally.3 Dialectical Materialism was the culmination of Lefebvre's interwar activities, which were brought to an end by World War II and the Resistance against the Vichy regime. In this can text, the book had to highligh t the tension-fraught relationship between Lefebvre and the rCF. Even though he served as a Communist munic­ ipal councilor in the mid-1930s, Lefebvre found him­ self still in the periphery of the rCF before the war (in comparison to roli tzer, for example). This was partly because, for Lefebvre, marxism was above all a dynamic movement of theory and practice, not a fixed doctrine and instrument for party strategy.4 Despite the identi­ cal title, Lefebvre's Dialectical Materialism is thus not to be confused with the Dialectical Materialism of the Comintern. Rather, it is best seen as an implicit but "pesky rejoinder to Joseph Stalin's Dialectical and Historical Materialism. "5 In this article, which was I Morceaux choisis de Karl Marx (P aris: Gallimard, 1934); G. W. F. He8el: Morceaux choisis (P aris: Gallimard, 1938); Cahiers de U'nine sur la dialectique de He8el (Paris: Gallimard, 1938). 2 Two fragments of Dialectical Materialism were coauthored with Guterman and published in 1935 as "Qu'est-ce que la dialectique?" in Nouvelle Revue Fram;aise issues 264 and 265 (1935). See Burkhard, French Marxism between the Wars, 224, 232. 3 Elden, Understandin8 Henri Lefebvre, 68. 4 Hess, Henri Lefebvre et l'aventure du siec1e, 75-76. 5 Andy Merrifield, Metromarxism: A Marxist Tale of the City (New York: Routledge, 2002), 76. XIV PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION published a year before Lefebvre's book, Stalin had declared dialectical materialism "the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist Party." ! Based on a narrow and schematic reading of Engels's Dialectics of Nature and Anti-Dilhring, Stalin's dialectical materialism com­ bined a nominally dialectical philosophy of nature with a mechanical conception of materialism, com­ plete with a reflection theory of consciousness. Diamat was meant to furnish a "science of the history of soci­ ety" akin to the natural sciences (historical material­ ism) that could provide party leaders with an unerring approach to policy.2 Implicit as it was, Lefebvre's response to official par­ ty doctrine brought him "heat from party bigwigs and from sectarian dogmatists" for indulging in Hegelian idealism and neglecting the influence of French social­ ism and British political economy on the development of Marx's thought.3 Before publishing Dialectical Materialism, Lefebvre had already garnered criticism from other Communist intellectuals for some of his theoretical activities. Most controversial among these were Lefebvre's and Guterman's comments on Lenin's Hegel Notebooks, which demonstrated the importance of Hegel's dialectical method for Lenin.4 Both this exe­ gesis of Lenin and Dialectical Materialism underlined I Joseph Stalin, "Dialectical and Historical Materialism," The Essential Stalin: Major Theoretical Works, 1905-52, ed. Bruce Franklin (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1972), 300. This article was origi­ nally published in 1938 as part of Stalin's History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 2 Stalin, "Dialectical and Historical Materialism," 312. 3 Merrifield, Metromarxism, 76; Michael Kelly, Modern French Marxism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 35-39. 4 Kevin Anderson, Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism: A Critical Study (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 87-97. xv DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM the continued if thoroughly transformed presence of Hegel in the mature works of Marx and Lenin. They had to ruffle feathers among party officials, both in France and in the Comintern, who were trained to believe, fol­ lowing Stalin's reduction of marxism to the doctrinaire diamat, that Marx, Engels, and Lenin had to be rigor­ ously shielded from the
Recommended publications
  • SCHILLER, NOVALIS, and the CONCEPT of AUFHEBUNG Hammam Aldouri

    SCHILLER, NOVALIS, and the CONCEPT of AUFHEBUNG Hammam Aldouri

    Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, vol. 15, no. 1, 2019 BEFORE HEGEL: SCHILLER, NOVALIS, AND THE CONCEPT OF AUFHEBUNG Hammam Aldouri ABSTRACT: Philosophical explorations of the concept of Aufhebung (sublation, supersession) immediately prior to its formulation in Hegel’s work have remained relatively absent within the context of both Hegel scholarship and German Idealism studies. Hegel is often simply represented as the originator of the concept and the latter is understood almost exclusively within his oeuvre. This essay addresses this lack by offering an exposition of the notion as it unfolds in two works from 1795-1796: Friedrich Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man and Novalis’ Fichte Studies. In these works, we find distinctive examinations of Aufhebung understood as the name of a process in which a subject comprehends itself in relation to its own processual development. My guiding premise is that without an adequate comprehension of the way in which Aufhebung is constructed and comprehended in the last years of the eighteenth century, we cannot establish the vantage point from which to reconstruct Hegel’s early conception of the notion, a conception which begins to emerge in his earliest Frankfurt writings in 1797, as a contribution to the constellation of post-Kantian conceptions. Keywords: Aufhebung, Schiller, Novalis, Aesthetic Education, Fichte Studies INTRODUCTION The concept of Aufhebung (sublation, supersession) is, without question, one of the most contested and discussed concepts of Hegel’s philosophical enterprise th th 1 and its critical reception in the 19 and 20 centuries. One distinctive 1 So much so, in fact, that it has led philosopher’s such as Jean-Luc Nancy to state that there is “no great study of Hegel that is not a study on the Aufhebung.” Nancy 2001, 158n7.
  • The Marxist Vol

    The Marxist Vol

    The Marxist Vol. XII, No. 4, October-December 1996 On the occasion of Lenin’s 125th Birth Anniversary Marxism Of The Era Of Imperialism E M S Namboodiripad The theoretical doctrines and revolutionary practices of Vladymir Illyich Lenin (whose 125th birth anniversary was recently observed by the Marxist-Leninists throughout the world), have well been called “Marxism of the Era of imperialism.” For, not only was Lenin a loyal disciple of Marx and Engels applying in practice their theory in his own homeland, but he also further developed the theory and practices of the two founders of Marxism. EARLY THEORETICAL BATTLES Born in Tsarist Russia which was seeped in its feudal environment, he noticed that capitalism was slowly developing in his country. He fought the Narodniks who advocated the doctrine of the irrelevance and no-applicability of Marxism to Russian conditions. His first major theoretical work was the Development of Capitalism in Russia where he proved that, though in feudal environment, capitalism was rapidly developing in Russia. He thus established the truth of Marxist theory of the working class being the major political force in the development of society. Further, an alliance of peasantry under working class leadership will form the core of the revolutionary forces in the conditions of backward feudal Russia. Having thus defeated the Narodniks, he proceeded to demolish the theory of “legal Marxists” according to whom Marxism was to be applies in perfectly legal battles against capitalism. He asserted the truth that the preparation for the social transformation in Russia should be based on the sharpening class struggle culminating in the proletarian revolution.
  • The Critique of Real Abstraction: from the Critical Theory of Society to the Critique of Political Economy and Back Again

    The Critique of Real Abstraction: from the Critical Theory of Society to the Critique of Political Economy and Back Again

    The Critique of Real Abstraction: from the Critical Theory of Society to the Critique of Political Economy and Back Again Chris O’Kane John Jay, CUNY [email protected] There has been a renewed engagement with the idea of real abstraction in recent years. Scholars associated with the New Reading of Marx, such as Moishe Postone, Chris Arthur, Michael Heinrich, Patrick Murray, Riccardo Bellofiore and others,1 have employed the idea in their important reconstructions of Marx’s critique of political economy. Alberto Toscano, Endnotes, Jason W. Moore and others have utilized and extended these theorizations to concieve of race, gender, and nature as real abstractions. Both the New Reading and these new theories of real abstraction have provided invaluable work; the former in systematizing Marx’s inconsistent and unfinished theory of value as a theory of the abstract social domination of capital accumulation and reproduction; the latter in supplementing such a theory. Yet their exclusive focus on real abstraction in relation to the critique of political economy means that the critical marxian theories of real abstraction -- developed by Alfred Sohn- Rethel, Theodor W. Adorno and Henri Lefebvre -- have been mostly bypassed by the latter and have largely served as the object of trenchant criticism for their insufficient grasp of Marx’s theory of value by the former. Consequently these new readings and new theories of real abstraction elide important aspects of Sohn-Rethel, Adorno and Lefebvre’s critiques of real abstraction; which sought to develop Marx’s critique of political economy into objective-subjective critical theories of the reproduction of capitalist society.2 However, two recent works by 1 Moishe Postone’s interpretation of real abstraction will be discussed below.
  • Marxist Philosophy and Organization Studies: Marxist Contributions to the Understanding of Some Important Organizational Forms by Paul S

    Marxist Philosophy and Organization Studies: Marxist Contributions to the Understanding of Some Important Organizational Forms by Paul S

    1 Marxist philosophy and organization studies: Marxist contributions to the understanding of some important organizational forms by Paul S. Adler Dept. of Management and Organization Marshall School of Business University of Southern California Los Angeles 90089-0808 Draft chapter for: Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Special Volume on Philosophy and Organization Theory, 2010, Guest editors: Haridimos Tsoukas and Robert Chia Version date: Feb 2, 2010 Author bio: Paul S. Adler is currently Harold Quinton Chair in Business Policy at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California.. He received his PhD in economics and management at the University of Picardie, France. His research and teaching focus on organization design, with a particular focus on technical, professional, and manufacturing operations. Acknowledgments Earlier drafts benefited from research assistance from Jade Lo and from comments by Michael Burawoy, Richard Delbridge, Steve Jaros, Martin Kenney, David Levy, Richard Marens, Mark Mizruchi, Craig Prichard, Mick Rowlinson, Paul Thompson, and Matt Vidal, even if there is much with which they still disagree. 2 Marxist philosophy and organization studies: Marxist contributions to the understanding of some important organizational forms Abstract This essay aims to how Marx’s ideas and subsequent Marxist-inspired scholarship have contributed to the analysis of the various forms of work organization. It summarizes Marx’s basic philosophy, theory of history, and critique of political economy; it distinguishes more critical and more optimistic variants of Marxist theory; and it then shows how these ideas have been used in the analysis of key organizational forms, contrasting Marxist versus non-Marxist approaches and critical versus optimistic versions of Marxism.
  • On Hegel on Buddhism Mario D'amato Rollins College, Mdamato@Rollins.Edu

    On Hegel on Buddhism Mario D'amato Rollins College, [email protected]

    Rollins College Rollins Scholarship Online Student-Faculty Collaborative Research 1-1-2011 The pS ecter of Nihilism: On Hegel on Buddhism Mario D'Amato Rollins College, [email protected] Robert T. Moore Rollins College Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.rollins.edu/stud_fac Part of the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Published In D'Amato, Mario and Moore, Robert T., "The peS cter of Nihilism: On Hegel on Buddhism" (2011). Student-Faculty Collaborative Research. Paper 28. http://scholarship.rollins.edu/stud_fac/28 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Rollins Scholarship Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in Student-Faculty Collaborative Research by an authorized administrator of Rollins Scholarship Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Specter of Nihilism: On Hegel on Buddhism ∗ Mario D’Amato and Robert T. Moore Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) is renowned as one of the most complex and comprehensive modern philosophers. The goal of his philosophical system is nothing less than to explain the interrelationships among all the multifarious aspects of the whole of reality, including the entire array of historical religions. But Hegel’s dialectical method has been criticized as being speculative and idealistic, and his interpretation of religion has been written off by some as an overly ambitious attempt to force the historical religions into the confines of a predetermined hierarchical scheme. As for his perspective on Buddhism, Hegel interprets it as a form of nihilism, stating that for Buddhism, “the ultimate or highest [reality] is…nothing or not- being” and the “state of negation is the highest state: one must immerse oneself in this nothing, in the eternal tranquillity of the nothing generally” (LPR 253).1 Hegel’s interpretation of Buddhism has of course been appropriately criticized in recent scholarship, most ably by Roger-Pol Droit in his work The Cult of Nothingness: The Philosophers and the Buddha (2003).
  • The Generation of Higher Mental Functions in Vygotsky's Concepts of Development and Contradiction

    The Generation of Higher Mental Functions in Vygotsky's Concepts of Development and Contradiction

    Research on Humanities and Social Sciences www.iiste.org ISSN 2224-5766 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0484 (Online) Vol.7, No.18, 2017 The Generation of Higher Mental Functions in Vygotsky’s Concepts of Development and Contradiction Ahmed Alnajjar, Ph.D. Mohamed Elhammoumi, Ph.D. Department of Psychology and Counseling, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain City, UAE To study something historically means to study it in the process of change; that is the dialectical method's basic demand” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 64-65). “Dialectics covers nature, thinking, history-it is the most general, maximally universal science. The theory of the psychological materialism or dialectics of psychology is what I call general psychology” (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 330). “It is dialectics that has given psychology its stability and its meaning … Through dialectics psychology is able to be at once a natural science and a human science …. dialectics has enabled psychology to comprehend the organism and its environment, in constant interaction, as a single, unified whole” (Wallon, 1951, p. 34). Abstract In this paper we argue that Vygotsky’s psychological research paradigm is a research epistemology, methodology, and ontology of theory and practice that attempts to build a psychology grounded within the social historical and cultural setting in which he/she evolved. Vygotsky’s whole enterprise was to establish a concrete human psychology committed to investigate how human nature changes, conceiving human development not just as quantitative, cumulative and linear, but also as qualitative, transformative change. In this outlook, contradiction leads to new contradictions, not necessarily “equilibrium”. The dialectical concepts of contradiction, development and transformation were fundamental to Vygotsky’s psychology.
  • Bataille and Derrida's Reading Of

    Bataille and Derrida's Reading Of

    HeyJ XLIII (2002), pp. 295–310 ‘TARRYING WITH THE NEGATIVE’: BATAILLE AND DERRIDA’S READING OF NEGATION IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY RAPHAEL FOSHAY St Michael’s Abbey, Farnborough, UK/ Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, UK Derrida’s endorsement, in his early essay ‘From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism Without Reserve’ (1967), of Bataille’s critique of Hegelian dialectic joins many such early self-positionings in Derrida’s work within the Nietzschean–Heideggerian critique of dialectic. It is only quite recently that accumulated critical attention has been turned on the conspicuous continuity of Derrida’s work with this central tenet of the post-idealist critique of metaphysics.1 Recent work on Nietzsche’s understanding of Hegel finds serious deficiencies in his grasp of Hegelian dialectic,2 and Heidegger, while making frequent lapid- ary dismissals, is even more than usually elusive in his avoidance of explicit treatment of the role of the dialectical moment in the Hegelian speculative idealist dilation of reality as rational. The present article queries the understanding and workings of dialectic both in Hegel’s Phenomenology3 and in Derrida’s enthusiastic alignment with Bataille’s critique of that text. This latter critique takes issue with Hegel’s portrayal in the Phenomenology of negation as it finds phenomenal expression in the dialectic of the Master and the Bondsman. In Bataille’s view, in elid- ing the material difference between negation and death, Hegel’s treatment of the master–slave dialectic is seen to be exemplary of the fundamental incoherence of speculative idealism, its failure fully to think the material, embodied conditions of any possible speculative self-appropriation.
  • Engels, Trotsky and the Natural Sciences: a Case Study in Cosmology

    Engels, Trotsky and the Natural Sciences: a Case Study in Cosmology

    LA ÚLTIMA MORADA DE TROTSKY GABRIELA PÉREZ NORIEGA http://dx.doi.org/10.23925/1982-6672.2020v13i38p19-49 Engels, Trotsky and the natural sciences: a case study in cosmology Alex Steinberg1 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2842-5687 Abstract: The topic of this essay is Trotsky’s approach to dialectical philosophy and the natural sciences. We will first summarize the tradition whose mantle Trotsky inherited as it was developed by Engels. We will then consider Trotsky’s relationship to the natural sciences. Trotsky, echoing Engels proclamations decades earlier, maintained that a dialectical philosophy is an essential guide to the work of the scientist while at the same time granting the autonomy and 19 freedom of scientists to pursue their research. Trotsky had a lifelong interest in following the developments in the natural sciences. He also had an intuitive grasp of some important developments in the natural sciences that would only come to fruition decades after his death. We will then present a case study of how a dialectical approach to nature can assist in overcoming a crisis that is plaguing contemporary physics. Specifically we will discuss how a dialectical approach to nature can inform cosmology in the 21st century and avoid the philosophical pitfalls and dead–ends that mark the contemporary crisis in physics. Keywords: Human Sciences; Marxism; Social History; Dialectical Materialism; Philosophy of Nature. 1 Alex Steinberg has taught classes on Hegel, Marxist philosophy, the dialectics of nature, and other topics at the Brecht Forum, the New Space and the Marxist Education Project. He has been a presenter and panelist at Socialist Scholars Conference, the Left Forum and Historical Materia- lism.
  • Dialectical Materialism: Marx's Method in Human Geography?

    Dialectical Materialism: Marx's Method in Human Geography?

    Dialectical materialism: Marx’s method in human geography? Ipsita Chatterjee Department of Geography and the Environment University of North Texas [email protected] Waquar Ahmed Department of Geography and the Environment University of North Texas [email protected] Abstract Dialectical materialism, we argue is a philosophical praxis that guided Marx’s critique of capitalist political economy. In this article, we have attempted a self- critique of human geography by explicating that dialectical materialism has been largely used as a metaphor within the discipline. The article has been inspired by the over-whelming use of the terms ‘dialectics’ and ‘dialectical’ in human geography. The purpose has been to lay down some of the basic tenets of dialectical materialism in Marx’s work, and then lay down some human geography research that engages with dialectical materialism. We believe that philosophical introspection on methodology, particularly within the Marxist circles, is scarce. We argue that to develop a truly dialectical materialist human geography we must push dialectal materialism from metaphor to methodology. We also think that methodology and philosophy are inseparably tied and therefore, choice of research methodology is a reflector of the researcher’s philosophy about reality and hence research praxis should be an important matter of discussion and introspection. Published with Creative Commons licence: Attribution–Noncommercial–No Derivatives ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2019, 18(2): 364-393 365 Keywords Materialism; human geography; radical geography; methodology; praxis Introduction The beliefs upon which we rest the objectives of our study form our philosophy, our own individual view of life and living.
  • Aufheben Civilization and Its Latest Discontents

    Aufheben Civilization and Its Latest Discontents

    Aufheben Civilization and its Latest Discontents Against His-story, Against Leviathan! by Fredy Perlman (Detroit: Black & Red, 1983). from Aufheben #4 (1995) "I'm born in a certain age which has certain instruments of production and certain kinds of knowledge; I have the possibility to combine my ability with my knowledge, and can use the socially available means of production as instruments with which to realize an individual or collective project." R. Gregoire & F. Perlman, 1969[1] Civilization is under attack. A new critical current has emerged in recent years, united by an antagonism towards all tendencies that seem to include 'progress' as part of their programme. Perlman's book, described in the AK Distribution 1993 Catalogue as "One of the most significant and influential anarchic texts of the last few decades" (p. 30), is one of the key texts in this 'primitivist' current. In the U.S.A. and this country, it is in anarchist circles - particularly amongst those engaged in eco- struggles - that primitivism has become particularly popular. But Perlman used to be a Marxist (see the quote above), and he contributed usefully to the development of a libertarian version of Marx's theory for a number of years. The wholesale abandonment of Marx in favour of primitivism has touched the non-Leninist revolutionary milieu in this country too, with the recent conversion of Wildcat (UK)[2] to the anti-civilization position. One direction that the primitivist current points in is the need to develop a critique of technology. This is something the old left cannot grasp, and is one of the reasons why it is unable to connect properly with tendencies toward communism.
  • Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // … Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2011.07.32

    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // … Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2011.07.32

    Coll6/19/2019ege of Arts and LetEncyclopediaters of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline, Part I: Science of Logic // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // … Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2011.07.32 Everything Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline, Part I: Science of Logic Published: July 31, 2011 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline, Part I: Science of Logic, Klaus Brinkmann and Daniel O. Dahlstrom (eds., trs.), Cambridge University Press, 2010, 358pp., $95.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780521829144. Reviewed by Christopher Yeomans, Purdue University This new translation of what is commonly known as the Encyclopedia Logic is the third volume in the series of Cambridge Hegel Translations under the general editorship of Michael Bauer. It is a readable, accurate and sometimes surprisingly elegant translation with a minimum of editorial apparatus that presents the work as the "basic outline" that it is. As the full title suggests, the Encyclopedia Logic is the first part of Hegel's systematic but condensed presentation of his mature philosophy, which is followed by two additional parts covering the philosophies of nature and spirit (Geist). Mostly the Encyclopedia Logic covers the same ground as his earlier (and much larger) Science of Logic, though in a much more schematic form and sometimes in a slightly different order. But it also includes an extensive section -- almost 90 pages in this edition -- entitled the "Preliminary Conception", in which Hegel provides a historical introduction to his philosophy beginning with ancient Greek philosophy and continuing on through empiricism and Kant. This is the best introduction to his thought that Hegel himself wrote, both because of its relative brevity and the clarity of the historical references as compared to his official introduction, the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit.
  • Metaphysics, Dialectical Materialism, Maxine Greene, and Education

    Metaphysics, Dialectical Materialism, Maxine Greene, and Education

    Metaphysics, Dialectical Materialism, Maxine Greene, and Education Donald Vandenberg University of Queensland Some recent attempts made in the educational literature to revive metaphysics, to explicate dialectics, and to claim that Maxine Greene’s (1988) The Dialectic of Freedom presupposes a Deweyan metaphysics have either ignored, misjudged, or underestimated the value of her contribution to the study of education. A critical examination of the questions raised will try to show that their resolution lies in a dialecti cal materialism similar to the view embodied in Greene’s writings. An explication of her actual “metaphysics” will illuminate dialectics and lead to a fuller statement of the nature of education when it is viewed dialectically. This will consider morality and curriculum dialectically to complement Greene’s pedagogy. The dialectical perspective might help overcome the subjectivism to which phenomenological research in edu cation is exposed. It might also enable students to find the significance in living desired by the authors who would resuscitate metaphysics. Metaphysics The papers urging attention to metaphysics by Allen (1991) and Arcilla (1991) are primarily concerned with the meaning of human life. The search for its generic meaning, however, has to begin with evolution of human life from the higher primates through chance mutations and the chance union of the ovum with any one of the 300-400 million spermatozoa present at conception. Metaphysics is concerned with what exists, furthermore, and human life in general does not exist. It is always someone’s life: you and I and he and she exist. Allen alludes to this fact when he classifies the logical possibilities and lists proximate, individual, internal, immanent, and intrinsic meanings with their op posites (pp.