From: Gerald A. Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Wed Feb 18 2004 - 10:07:26 EST
Re: (OPE-L) logical order and historical orderHello again Jairus:
>>> A possible way forward is to see how Hegel defines the relationship between the history of philosophy and the 'system' of philosophy in the introduction to his Lectures on the History of Philosophy. He provides a solution of sorts but one which involves writing 'essential histories'... <<<
What is the exact reference? I looked again through the
"Introduction" (116 pages in the Haldane and Simson translation),
along with my marginal notes, and couldn't find the section
you are alluding to.
In solidarity, Jerry
*PS on Hegel, Marx and History*:
For Hegel, the concept of history, in particular 'Universal History':
"is founded on the essential and actual aim, which actually is
and will be realized in it -- the plan of Providence; that, in short,
there is Reason in history, must be decided on strictly philosophic
ground, and thus shown to be essentially and in fact necessary"
(_Hegel's Philosophy of Mind_, Wallace translation, Oxford: 1971:
p. 277).
Clearly, Marx's conception of historical reason and necessity had
no place for Spirit and "the plan of Providence." An appeal to necessity
from a materialist perspective was reconstituted by Marx without an
appeal to Providence. Yet, aren't there problematic *teleological*
presuppositions in a vision which suggests that when the relations
of production block the further development of the forces of
production a revolution ensues and a historically more advanced mode
of production is ushered in? In both the "Introduction" to the
_Contribution_ and in other writings including _Capital_ there is an
assertion of historical *inevitability*. In what sense are the trajectories
and outcomes of social processes inevitable? In positing inevitability
Marx may have been influenced by Darwin, but one can not presume that
if there are necessary and inevitable outcomes in the theory of natural
selection and evolution (and, in any event, even Darwinian theory
allows for historically contingent events, like climatic change, to alter
the evolutionary process) then social history also has necessary and
inevitable outcomes.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Feb 21 2004 - 00:00:02 EST