From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Wed Jul 20 2005 - 11:36:41 EDT
In solidarity, Jerry Isle au Haut ---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: Re: [OPE-L] Marx: In Our Time From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <adsl675281@tiscali.nl> Date: Tue, July 19, 2005 9:48 pm -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The curious part is that Marx himself distanced himself from philosophical endeavours and at least in his mature years saw himself as somebody scientifically investigating modern society by means of a rational inquiry into the known facts. (The German Ideology: "one must leave philosophy aside... philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sexual love") Engels even claimed later that philosophy was now largely redundant except for logic and the theory of knowledge. Both men specifically rejected the idea of some kind of "philosophy of history". Also interesting how a thinker who had ""The philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways, the point is change it" engraved on his tombstone gets to have the status of "greatest philosopher". When I was a philosophy student, I was taught that philosophy concerns the most general questions about people and the world. The general tenor of Marx's approach would however appear to be that problems posed in a "general, speculative philosophical way" permit of no real solution; a real science would concern itself with limited truths and specifics; i.e. the real question concerned the processes by which we arrive at our generalisations. It could of course be argued that Marx could never really abandoned philosophy himself despite his criticisms of philosophers. Jurriaan
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