[OPE-L:5834] Re: form and content re value-form and abstractlabour

From: Gerald_A_Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@email.msn.com)
Date: Fri Jun 08 2001 - 08:21:43 EDT


Re Chai-on's [5828]:

> In Hegel's Logic(pp. 189-190), CONTENT has > its own form, which I must
call an internal  form,
> in distinction from the external FORM.
> Content's he external  FORM. Content's
> own  form and its external form.

Thanks for the reference, but I think it tends to support (at least on
Hegelian terms) the VFT
interpretation against Fred's interpretatation.

Starting at the top of p. 189:
"Outside one another as the phenomena in this phenomenal world are, they
form a totality, and
are wholly contained in their self-relatedness. In this way the
self-relation of the phenomenon is
completely satisfied; it has the *Form* in itself:
and because it is in this identity, has it as external
substance. So it comes about that the form is *Content*: and in its mature
phase is the
*Law of the Phenomenon* .  When the form, on the contrary, is not reflected
into self, it is
equivalent to the negation of the phenomenon,
to the non- independent and changeable: and that sort of form is the
indifferent or External Form.

The essential point to keep in mind about the opposition of Form and Content
is that the
content is not formless, but has as the form in its own self, quite as much
as the form external to
it. There is thus a doubling of form. At one point it
is reflected into itself; and then is identical with the
content. At another point it is not reflected into itself, and then is the
external existence, which
 does not at all affect the content. We are here in
presence, implicitly, of the absolute
correlation of content and form: viz. their reciprocal
revulsion, so that content is nothing but the
revulsion of form into content, and form
nothing but the revulsion of content into form. This mutual revulsion is one
of the most important laws
of thought. But it is not explicitly brought
out before the relations of Substance and Causality." (emphasis in original,
JL)

Substance and Causality are then developed later in "The Doctrine of
Essence" beginning with section 150 (p. 213).

Fred: how would you make sense of the above from your interpretation?

Mike W, Geert, Chris, or Nicky:  would you say that this confirms your
interpretation of  the relationships of content and form? If so, how?

In solidarity, Jerry



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