From: michael a. lebowitz (mlebowit@SFU.CA)
Date: Mon Jul 25 2005 - 22:31:12 EDT
At 13:02 23/07/2005, you wrote:
>---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
>Subject: Marx: In Our Time
>From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <adsl675281@tiscali.nl>
>Date: Thu, July 21, 2005 4:18 pm
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Well comrades, don't get me wrong. I am personally not anti-philosophy, I am
>*pro-philosophy*; it gave me more intellectual freedom than I ever thought
>possible; consequently I believe in freedom for philosophy.
>
>Push come to shove, I might even argue that philosophical preoccupations are
>part of human nature, to the extent that *all* people ask "general questions
>about man and world" at some time or other. The more the working classes
>philosophize, the better it is really, in these days of professional
>cretinism, although if that is all they do, then we're not much further
>ahead either.
>
>Michael Lebowitz's reference to Marx/Dietzgen is apt. But I think I am
>correct in saying, as a generalization, that Marx himself believed the scope
>of philosophy was drastically reduced and supplanted by the modern sciences
>and empirical/practical investigation. This is proved incidentally by the 14
>January, 1858 letter by Marx itself, I think it goes like this:
>
>"...I am getting some nice developments. For instance, I have thrown over
>the whole doctrine of profit as it has existed up to now. In the method of
>treatment, in fact by mere accident I have again glanced through Hegel's
>Logic has been of great service to me--Freiligrath found some volumes of
>Hegel which originally belonged to Bakunin and sent them to me as a present.
>If there should ever be time for such work again, I should greatly like to
>make accessible to the ordinary human intelligence, in two or three
>printer's sheets, what is rational in the method which Hegel discovered but
>at the same time
>enveloped in mysticism.... What do you say to friend Jones?""
>
>In other words, there was a problem, and there was something rational in the
>mysticism, but it could be condensed in a few "sheets", and whether that was
>an instance of *philosophy* is a moot point.
'Sheets' were printer's sheets, and my understanding is that these
amounted to 16 printed pages; thus, 32- 48 pages in print, which
would have been quite a nice introduction to dialectical thought.
cheers,
michael
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Currently based in Venezuela. Can be reached at
Residencias Anauco Suites
Departamento 601
Parque Central, Zona Postal 1010, Oficina 1
Caracas, Venezuela
(58-212) 573-4111
fax: (58-212) 573-7724
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Jul 28 2005 - 00:00:01 EDT