Marxist Philosophy and the Problem of Value
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The Embattled Political Aesthetics of José Carlos Mariátegui and Amauta
A Realist Indigenism: The Embattled Political Aesthetics of José Carlos Mariátegui and Amauta BY ERIN MARIA MADARIETA B.A., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 THESIS Submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Art History in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Chicago, 2019 Chicago, Illinois Defense Committee: Blake Stimson, Art History, Advisor and Chair Andrew Finegold, Art History Nicholas Brown, English Margarita Saona, Hispanic and Italian Studies TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1 BEYOND THE “SECTARIAN DIVIDE”: MARIÁTEGUI’S EXPANSIVE REALISM………..9 TOWARD A REALIST INDIGENISM: PARSING MARXISM, INDIGENISM, AND POPULISM………………………………………………………………………………………33 “THE PROBLEM OF RACE IN LATIN AMERICA”: MARIÁTEGUI AND INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISTS…………………………………………………………...53 “PAINTING THE PEOPLE” OR DEMYSTIFYING PERUVIAN REALITY?: AMAUTA’S VISUAL CONTENT…………………………………………………………………………….65 CONCLUSION…………………………….…………………………………………………….88 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………..92 ii SUMMARY This thesis focuses on José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930), a Peruvian critic and Marxist political activist who founded the Peruvian Socialist Party. Mariátegui also edited the journal Amauta, which featured literature, visual art, and theoretical and political texts from 1926 to 1930. This project aims to contribute an original understanding of the thought and editorial practice of this historically significant figure by recuperating his endorsement of realist -
Oppositions and Paradoxes in Mathematics and Philosophy
OPPOSITIONS AND PARADOXES IN MATHEMATICS AND PHILOSOPHY John L. Bell Abstract. In this paper a number of oppositions which have haunted mathematics and philosophy are described and analyzed. These include the Continuous and the Discrete, the One and the Many, the Finite and the Infinite, the Whole and the Part, and the Constant and the Variable. Underlying the evolution of mathematics and philosophy has been the attempt to reconcile a number of interlocking oppositions, oppositions which have on occasion crystallized into paradox and which continue to haunt mathematics to this day. These include the Continuous and the Discrete, the One and the Many, the Finite and the Infinite, the Whole and the Part, and the Constant and the Variable. Let me begin with the first of these oppositions—that between continuity and discreteness. Continuous entities possess the property of being indefinitely divisible without alteration of their essential nature. So, for instance, the water in a bucket may be continually halved and yet remain wateri. Discrete entities, on the other hand, typically cannot be divided without effecting a change in their nature: half a wheel is plainly no longer a wheel. Thus we have two contrasting properties: on the one hand, the property of being indivisible, separate or discrete, and, on the other, the property of being indefinitely divisible and continuous although not actually divided into parts. 2 Now one and the same object can, in a sense, possess both of these properties. For example, if the wheel is regarded simply as a piece of matter, it remains so on being divided in half. -
Kant on Empiricism and Rationalism
HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY Volume 30, Number 1, January 2013 KANT ON EMPIRICISM AND RATIONALISM Alberto Vanzo his paper aims to correct some widely held misconceptions concern- T ing Kant’s role in the formation of a widespread narrative of early modern philosophy.1 According to this narrative, which dominated the English-speaking world throughout the twentieth century,2 the early modern period was characterized by the development of two rival schools: René Descartes’s, Baruch Spinoza’s, and G. W. Leibniz’s rationalism; and John Locke’s, George Berkeley’s, and David Hume’s empiricism. Empiricists and rationalists disagreed on whether all concepts are de- rived from experience and whether humans can have any substantive a priori knowledge, a priori knowledge of the physical world, or a priori metaphysical knowledge.3 The early modern period came to a close, so the narrative claims, once Immanuel Kant, who was neither an empiri- cist nor a rationalist, combined the insights of both movements in his new Critical philosophy. In so doing, Kant inaugurated the new eras of German idealism and late modern philosophy. Since the publication of influential studies by Louis Loeb and David Fate Norton,4 the standard narrative of early modern philosophy has come increasingly under attack. Critics hold that histories of early modern philosophy based on the rationalism-empiricism distinction (RED) have three biases—three biases for which, as we shall see, Kant is often blamed. The Epistemological Bias. Since disputes regarding a priori knowledge belong to epistemology, the RED is usually regarded as an epistemologi- cal distinction.5 Accordingly, histories of early modern philosophy based on the RED tend to assume that the core of early modern philosophy lies in the conflict between the “competing and mutually exclusive epis- temologies” of “rationalism and empiricism.”6 They typically interpret most of the central doctrines, developments, and disputes of the period in the light of philosophers’ commitment to empiricist or rationalist epistemologies. -
Russell's Paradox in Appendix B of the Principles of Mathematics
HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC, 22 (2001), 13± 28 Russell’s Paradox in Appendix B of the Principles of Mathematics: Was Frege’s response adequate? Ke v i n C. Kl e m e n t Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA Received March 2000 In their correspondence in 1902 and 1903, after discussing the Russell paradox, Russell and Frege discussed the paradox of propositions considered informally in Appendix B of Russell’s Principles of Mathematics. It seems that the proposition, p, stating the logical product of the class w, namely, the class of all propositions stating the logical product of a class they are not in, is in w if and only if it is not. Frege believed that this paradox was avoided within his philosophy due to his distinction between sense (Sinn) and reference (Bedeutung). However, I show that while the paradox as Russell formulates it is ill-formed with Frege’s extant logical system, if Frege’s system is expanded to contain the commitments of his philosophy of language, an analogue of this paradox is formulable. This and other concerns in Fregean intensional logic are discussed, and it is discovered that Frege’s logical system, even without its naive class theory embodied in its infamous Basic Law V, leads to inconsistencies when the theory of sense and reference is axiomatized therein. 1. Introduction Russell’s letter to Frege from June of 1902 in which he related his discovery of the Russell paradox was a monumental event in the history of logic. However, in the ensuing correspondence between Russell and Frege, the Russell paradox was not the only antinomy discussed. -
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. -
MARXISM and the ENGELS PARADOX Jeff Coulter Introduction
MARXISM AND THE ENGELS PARADOX Jeff Coulter Introduction FOR MARXIST philosophy, in so far as it still forms an independent reflection upon the concepts that inform a Marxist practice, dialectics involves the conscious interception of the object in its process of developmentY1where the object is man's production of history. The ultimate possibility of human self-liberation is grounded in the postu- late that man is a world-producing being. For Hegel, from whom Marx derived the dialectic, philosophy remained a speculative affair, a set of ideas remote from human praxis. Marx sought to actualize the philosophical interception as a practical interception, to abolish concretely the historical alienation of man from his species nature, an alienation viewed speculatively by the Helgelians. In the practical abolition of historical alienation, philosophy as the expression of abstract propositions pertaining to the human condition would also be abolished. In the formulation adduced by Friedrich Engels, however, dialectics are situated prior to the anthropological dimension. A set of static tenets drawn from Hegelian metaphysics, they are "located" in physi- cal nature. It is the purpose of this paper to investigate what Gustav Wetter has described as "the curse put upon the dialectic by its trans- ference to the realm of Nat~re."~ This problem has been discussed before by non-Marxist writers.' The main reason for the present approach is that it endeavours to assess the relationship of Marxism to science from within a Marxist perspective, and it further attempts to demonstrate some of the con- sequences for Marxist philosophy that arise out of a commitment to what I term the "Engels paradox". -
Interlacing of Times: the 'Althusser Effect'
Chapter 2 Interlacing of Times: the ‘Althusser Effect’, Temporality and Transition The unorthodox Marxist Ernst Bloch opined that the communists’ inability to galvanise the historically restive German peasantry issued from their unaware- ness of unfulfilled aspirations sprawled across history. The institutions of the past towered over their worldview; thus, the longing for equality and commu- nity over the land was susceptible to reactionary ends as well as progressive ones. It was not that capitalist modernisation left the peasantry behind as a historical curiosity, figuring in the political scene only as rural fodder to metro- politan reactionary politics. In Bloch’s (1977: 26) words, ‘superstructures that seemed long overturned right themselves again and stand still in today’s world as whole medieval city scenes’, signifying not only an outdated prejudice, but the chronological presence of the non-synchronous. While Marxists’ exposi- tion of the roots of social issues was unparalleled, this ‘cold stream’ of reason and disenchantment fell short of inflaming the passion and hope of the ‘warm stream’, made up of sedimented folk tales of struggles against the powerful (Bloch, 1996: 595). The discussion below builds on this notion of temporal dif- ferentiation to explain its modalities as part of a temporally stratified social formation, a task for which Althusserian and Gramscian branches of Marxist theory have been path-breaking. To illustrate Bloch’s commingling temporalities, this chapter investigates the theme of temporality, and develops Marx’s earlier discernment that non- contemporaneous elements survive in a permutation of distinct modes of pro- duction. This defies a model of neatly legislated historical epochs, and rein- forces the complexity of history as lived praxis. -
Definition and Construction Preprint 28.09
MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE Max Planck Institute for the History of Science 2006 PREPRINT 317 Gideon Freudenthal Definition and Construction Salomon Maimon’s Philosophy of Geometry Definition and Construction Salomon Maimon's Philosophy of Geometry Gideon Freudenthal 1. Introduction .........................................................................................................3 1.1. A Failed Proof and a Philosophical Conversion .................................................8 1.2. The Value of Mathematics ..................................................................................13 2. The Straight Line.................................................................................................15 2.1. Synthetic Judgments a priori Kantian and Aristotelean Style.............................15 2.2. Maimon's Proof that the Straight Line is also the shortest between Two Points ............................................................................................23 2.3. Kant's Critique and Maimon's Answer................................................................30 2.4. Definition, Construction, Proof in Euclid and Kant............................................33 2.5. The Construction of the Straight Line.................................................................37 2.6. The Turn to Empircial Skepticism (and Rational Dogmatism)...........................39 2.7. Synthetic a priori and proprium ..........................................................................46 2.8. Maimon's -
Educational Philosophy: from Classical Marxism to Critical Pedagogy
Marxian Perspectives on Educational Philosophy: From Classical Marxism to Critical Pedagogy By Douglas Kellner (http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/) It is surely not difficult to see that our time is a time of birth and transition to a new period. The spirit has broken with what was hitherto the world of its existence and imagination and is about to submerge all this in the past; it is at work giving itself a new form. To be sure, the spirit is never at rest but always engaged in ever progressing motion.... the spirit that educates itself matures slowly and quietly toward the new form, dissolving one particle of the edifice of its previous world after the other,.... This gradual crumbling... is interrupted by the break of day that, like lightning, all at once reveals the edifice of the new world. Hegel 1965 [1807]: 380. The theory associated with Marxism was developed in mid-19th century Europe by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Although Marx and Engels did not write widely about education, they developed theoretical perspectives on modern societies that have been used to highlight the social functions of education and their concepts and methods have served to both theorize and criticize education in the reproduction of capitalist societies, and to support projects of alternative education. In this study, I will first briefly sketch the classical perspectives of Marx and Engels, highlighting the place of education in their work. Then, I lay out the way that Marxian perspectives on education were developed in the Frankfurt School critical theory, British cultural studies, and other neo- Marxian and post-Marxian approaches grouped under the label of critical pedagogy, that emerged from the work of Paulo Freire and is now global in scope. -
A KANTIAN REPLY to BOLZANO's CRITIQUE of KANT's ANALYTIC-SYNTHETIC DISTINCTION Nicholas F. STANG University of Miami Introdu
Grazer Philosophische Studien 85 (2012), 33–61. A KANTIAN REPLY TO BOLZANO’S CRITIQUE OF KANT’S ANALYTIC-SYNTHETIC DISTINCTION Nicholas F. STANG University of Miami Summary One of Bolzano’s objections to Kant’s way of drawing the analytic-synthetic distinction is that it only applies to judgments within a narrow range of syn- tactic forms, namely, universal affi rmative judgments. According to Bolzano, Kant cannot account for judgments of other syntactic forms that, intuitively, are analytic. A recent paper by Ian Proops also attributes to Kant the view that analytic judgments beyond a limited range of syntactic forms are impossible. I argue that, correctly understood, Kant’s conception of analyticity allows for analytic judgments of a wider range of syntactic forms. Introduction Although he praised Kant’s (re)discovery of the analytic-synthetic distinc- tion as having great signifi cance in the history of philosophy,1 Bolzano was sharply critical of how Kant drew that distinction. His criticisms include: (1) Th e distinction, as drawn by Kant, is unclear. (NAK, 34) 1. In Neuer Anti-Kant Příhonský writes: “Wir bemerken, daß, obgleich wir die Eintheilung der Urtheile in analytische und synthetische für eine der glücklichsten und einfl ußreichsten Entdeckungen halten, die je auf dem Gebiete der philosophischen Forschung sind gemacht worden, es uns doch scheinen wolle, als wenn sie von Kant nicht mit dem nöthigen Grade von Deutlichkeit aufgefaßt worden sei” (NAK, 34; cf. NAK, xxii). I say rediscovery because Bolzano recognizes that the distinction is inchoately present in Aristotle and Locke, and is made by Crusius in much the same way as Kant (WL, 87). -
Hegel's Concept of Recognition As the Solution to Kant's Third Antinomy
Chapter 12 Hegel’s Concept of Recognition as the Solution to Kant’s Third Antinomy Arthur Kok 1 Introduction In his Lectures on the history of philosophy, when discussing Kant’s third antin- omy, Hegel reproaches Kant for having “too much tenderness for the things”.1 In this contribution, I endeavor to explain what Hegel means by this criticism, and why it makes sense. Hegel values very much about Kant’s doctrine of the antinomies that it exposes the fundamental contradictions of reason. He calls this “the interest- ing side” of the antinomies.2 What is ‘interesting’ about them is that we cannot conceive of the absolute (uncaused) spontaneous origin of things, i.e. tran- scendental freedom, right away. The thesis that every causal chain of events presupposes a cause that is itself not caused contains the contradiction that an absolute spontaneity cannot take place according to rules, and hence can- not be understood in terms of causality.3 The antithesis, which rejects absolute spontaneity, makes this explicit, but it results in contradiction too: it is undeni- able that every causal chain posits an uncaused origin. The complete problem of the third antinomy thus is that we are forced to accept the assumption of transcendental freedom, but by doing so we postulate a contradiction. Kant argues that his transcendental idealism can resolve this contradic- tion. We shall see that Hegel does not accept Kant’s solution. I argue, however, that Hegel’s refutation of transcendental idealism does not mean that he does not take seriously the distinction between appearances and the Thing-in-itself. -
PHIL 2201 Introduction to Marxist Philosophy
Ware (2201); 16/08/16; 1 PHIL 2201 Introduction to Marxist Philosophy Mondays & Wednesdays, 10:05 to 11:25; Fall term 2016; Southam Hall 316 Robert Ware Office: 3A56 Paterson Hall Office hours: Wednesdays, 9 to 10 am; or by appointment In this course we will engage in a philosophical study of the most important concepts and theories of Karl Marx (with attention to Frederick Engels, his co-worker). This will require special attention to Marx’s (and sometimes Engels’) texts, with investigation of some of the best philosophical analyses of his ideas. We will consider their coherence and plausibility in the 19th century and consider their applicability to the 21st century. Work will be assessed on the basis of philosophical skills with respect to Marxist ideas. Our main text is: Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition (New York & London: Norton, 1978) (Available at Octopus Books, 116 Third Ave.) This is cited below as “ME Reader”. All other reading materials are available on ARES or on Reserve. Week 1 7 September Marx and Philosophy Albert Einstein, “Why Socialism” Cohen, “How to Do Political Philosophy” Rec: G. A. Cohen, “Why Not Socialism?” Week 2 12 & 14 September Manifesto(s) Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, ME Reader, 469-500 Rec: Engels, Socialism: Scientific and Utopian, ME Reader, 683-717 Week 3 19 & 21 September Alienation and Religion Marx, ME Reader, 53-65, 70-81, 93-105, 278-293 Rec: Musto, “Revisiting Marx’s Concept of Alienation” Week 4 26 & 28 September Ideology and Dialectical Materialism First paper (800 words) due 26 September Marx, ME Reader, 143-175, 189-200 Marx, ME Reader, 299-302 Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History, Expanded Edition, xvii-xxviii Rec: Ware, Intro to Analyzing Marxism, 1-16 Lebowitz, “Is ‘Analytical Marxism’ Marxism?” in Michael Lebowitz, Following Marx Ware (2201); 16/08/16; 2 Week 5 3 & 5 October Historical Materialism Marx, Preface, ME Reader, 3-6; Engels, Letters, ME Reader, 760-768 Cohen, “Forces and Relations of Production”, 3-29 in G.