Re: True Hegelian Truth Eonic Effect, + adios (almost)
Thanks a lot for the gesture, and to Michael also. I will be on my way soon, hounded off the list--nope, I am never hounded, I am done for the nonce. Doesn't matter. This kind of hostility wears off. I must remember just how hard it is to really deal with issues of ideology and evolution. I hope you will be able to see the point of the argument, which is fairly complex, but the basic structure is elegant and beautiful although Darwinists prefer their hogswill history, like Darwin himself. This 'eonic analysis' of the 'eonic effect' voids all claims of sociobiological analysis applied ot history. Nota Bene. That's my claim. And I know the bigwigs are afraid of this book. The work deserves to be properly studied and reviewed, and the public informed of the orginal version behind R. Wright's pathetic effort of preemption, not so pathetic high roller propaganda game. Brace yourself, don't flunk ideology 101 at the last moment. What the work deserves it obviously won't get, so I will continue to butt in my statements on these matters, where possible. Keep at it, and I can answer any questions. But if you find it overwhelming, patience, unless it is not for you. But there are very few ways evolution can operate on the surface of a planet, and Darwininism didn't get it straight. I think the eonic effect clarifies the picture considerably. Thanks alot. John In a message dated 6/3/2001 5:07:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'll take the free download. Where do I go? Andrew --Original Message Text--- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 19:54:18 EDT In a message dated 6/2/2001 1:57:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hegel is definitely a believer in conflict. He dared to undertake a consummation of Philosophy, Western and Eastern. He embraced the resulting conflict despite finding it disturbing. Maybe his search for the Absolute was a process of reconciliation, a bereavement over the ideals lost by the contemptible philosophes. The acorn becomes the oak, but the oak must die. And so Tennyson wrote, almost as a true Hegelian: Someone just offered you a free download of a study of asocial sociability and an approach to history that might resolve it. You refuse even a free copy, strange. But I get the message. You seem to prefer conflict, the nutty core of modern ideology. John Landon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website on eonic effect http://eonix.8m.com http://www.eonica.net
Re: Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
If truth is whole, Hegelian truth would do well to be studied in the context of the whole of German philosophy, if not world philosophy. The sudden re-start, in medias res, in the wake of Kant and the mysterious decade of the 1790's as Kant's system is a) transcended b) plundered of the mummy starting with Fichte (take your pick a la carte) by the Hegelian system, followed by the Marxist transposition, generates a subset of a subset in the name of the whole, and is insidious. Tom Rockmore's Before and After Hegel gives a good account, though slanted toward Hegel (cf. also the recent Cambridge German Idealism on all the less known figures here). The left has suffered grievously from this process, and any future left needs to recast its foundations in a better disposition than the materialism-idealism duality, which serves only to drive theory into crypto-metaphysical positivist lowball, after the original Kantian balanced challenge and double whammy as to empricism and metaphysical rationalism. I was looking at Janeway's book on Schopenhauer where he opens by noting the similarity with the early Marx (?!) as the mystery self induces the struggle with the Kantian legacy here. Remarkable, but all is soon lost and the confusing reversal of Hegel makes the latter almost seem a mirror image reversal as 'materialism'. If there really is a Geist he must have been quite a devil and had a lot of fun making fun of the victims of this over-complexified legedermain. John Landon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website on eonic effect http://eonix.8m.com http://www.eonica.net
Re: Re: Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
Hi Ian, Ken and Andrew, What is the whole? How could we possibly test/verify/falsify Hegel's assertion? It was Protagoras who said man is the measure... Ian True enough, Protagoras said it. Aristotle just wrote it down. Kinda like Socrates and Plato, I would've thought. Ken, I take no responsibility for the interpretation I quoted! By neo-eleusinian I meant (what the guy I quoted said): borrowed from Parmenides of Elea. Andrew, I believe Hegel is as much of a Herakleitos fan (everything comes about by battling with its opposite) as he is a friend of the idealist Parmenides (being is one and indivisible). From the forward to the Phenom. of the Spirit: http://www.gutenberg.aol.de/hegel/phaenom/phavorr2.htm Das Wahre ist das Ganze. Das Ganze aber ist nur das durch seine Entwicklung sich vollendende Wesen. Es ist von dem Absoluten zu sagen, daß es wesentlich Resultat, daß es erst am Ende das ist, was es in Wahrheit ist; und hierin eben besteht seine Natur, Wirkliches, Subjekt, oder Sich-selbst-werden, zu sein. So widersprechend es scheinen mag, daß das Absolute wesentlich als Resultat zu begreifen sei, so stellt doch eine geringe Überlegung diesen Schein von Widerspruch zurecht. Der Anfang, das Prinzip, oder das Absolute, wie es zuerst und unmittelbar ausgesprochen wird, ist nur das Allgemeine. My rough xlation: The True is the whole. But the whole is only the [being / creature / nature / essence] fulfilling itself through its development. It should be said of the Absolute that it is essentially result, that it is not what it is in truth until the end; and this is precisely what its nature to be [actual / real (thing)], subject, or [self-realisation / self-becoming] consists in. However contradictory it may seem, that the Absolute should be understood essentially as result, a little pondering will make sense of this apparent contradiction [lit: put it right]. The beginning, the principle, or the Absolute, as it is first and immediately expressed, is only the [general / universal / common]. Aristotle probably contributes the idea of entelechy (purpose and realisation of purpose), here, with his acorn-to-oak example. In any case it looks as though, in this paragraph, the whole-true is something like the entelechy of the thing-that-is (*das Wesen*): the oak to the acorn. And that the same thing can be said of the general and the absolute. But I don't know where that gets us, politically speaking. Unless perhaps we can use it to remind ourselves that the end is not independent of the means, that abstractions are after the facts that they're derived from, and that therefore absolutes (if we want to posit them) are no more important than the elements we put into their conception. cheers, Joanna - my site www.overlookhouse.com news from down under www.smh.com.au
Re: True Hegelian Truth
Ian Murray wrote: LARGE CLIP] What is the whole? How could we possibly test/verify/falsify Hegel's assertion? It was Protagoras who said man is the measure... There are multiple answers to this. One is that you can't not believe it. You see the line you are now reading as a part of a monitor, and you have to know (in some sense) that whole, the monitor, to see the line in front of you. It is partly that larger context that allows you to see these little black squiggles as letters rather than as little black squiggles. A second answer possibly will emerge from neuroscience (learning theory). That is, we _do_ see / 'see' (know) things as wholes not as Hume's All things are entirely loose and separate, and that is how we know parts whether we think that is how we know or not, and the real question is the neurological one of _how_ it happens that we learn that way, not whether we learn that way. (Almost all 'problems' labelled as epistemology are fake questions: that is in order to ask them we have to deny that we know what in fact we can't help knowing. That is why Timpanaro can suggest that epistemological questions properly belong to neurology rather than philosophy and/or logic.) And here is one of the explanations Ollman gives. (On the whole /-: Ollman does not offer 'proofs' that something is but explanations of how it is that it is, that it is being taken for granted.) In abstracting capital, for example, as a process, Marx is simply including primitive accumulation, accumulation, and the concentration of capital, in sum its real history, as part of what capital is. While abstracting it as a relation brings its actual ties with labor, commodity, value, capitalists, and workers -- or whatever contributes to its appearance and functioning -- under the same rubric as its constituting aspects. All the units in which Marx thinks about and studies capitalism are abstracted as both processes and relations. Based on this dialectical conception, Marx's quest -- unlike that of his commonsense opponents -- is never for why something starts to change but for the various forms this change assumes and why it selected may appear to have stopped. Likewise, it is never for how a relation gets established, but again for the different forms it takes and why aspects of an already existing relation may appear to be independent. Marx's critique of the ideology that results from an exclusive focus on appearances, on the footprints of events separated from their real history and the larger system in which they are found, is also of this order. Besides a way of viewing the world, Marx's dialectical method includes how he studied it, how he organized what he found, and how he presented these findings to his chosen audience. But how does one inquire into a world that has been abstracted into mutually dependent processes? Where does one start and what does one look for? Unlike non-dialectical research, where one starts with some small part and through establishing its connections tries to reconstruct the larger whole, dialectical research begins with the whole, the system, or as much of it as one understands, and then proceeds to an examination of the part to see where it fits and how it functions, leading eventually to a fuller understanding of the whole from which one has begun. Capitalism serves Marx as his jumping-off point for an examination of anything that takes place within it. As a beginning, capitalism is already contained, in principle, within the interacting processes he sets out to investigate as the sum total of their necessary conditions and results. Conversely, to begin with the supposedly independent part or parts is to assume a separation with its corresponding distortion of meaning that no amount of later relating can overcome. Something will be missing, something will be out of place, and, without any standard by which to judge, neither will be recognized. What are called interdisciplinary studies simply treat the sum of such defects coming from different fields. As with Humpty Dumpty, who after the fall could never be put together again, a system whose functioning parts have been treated as independent of one another at the start can never be reestablished in its integrity. The investigation itself seeks to concretize what is going on in capitalism, to trace the means and forms through which it works and has developed, and to project where it seems to be tending. As a general rule, the interactions that constitute any problem in its present state are examined before studying their progress over time. The order of inquiry, in other words, is system before history, so that history is never the development of one or two isolated elements with its suggestion, explicit or implicit, that change results from causes located inside that particular sphere (histories of religion, or of culture, or even of economics alone are decidedly
Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
What is the whole? How could we possibly test/verify/falsify Hegel's assertion [that the truth -- or the true -- is the whole]? I liked Carrol's answer, but I have my own. Hegel's assertion is more a way of testing/verifying/falsifying theories than it is an assertion of truth. If someone proposes a theory, there are at least three major ways of criticizing it (in terms of truth or falsity): (1) is it internally consistent, logically speaking, following classic Aristotelian logic? (2) does it fit the known facts, so that it's consistent with perceived empirical reality? and (3) is it complete, or does it leave important things out? The last is what people refer to when they quote Hegel. For example, consider neoclassical economics. That economics often passes test #1 (since that's their emphasis) and sometimes passes test #2, but usually fails test #3. The emphasis of NC economics is on how individuals choose, creating the social world, given various natural constraints. But they ignore the way in which the social world shapes individual preferences, so that the world creates the individuals. They typically ignore the relations among individuals except for purely market relations, while considering only small pieces of the whole (the totality of social relations). They also ignore historical time (the dynamic and disequilibrium interaction between the individuals and the whole) and focus on merely logical time. Etc. Thus, we see pen-l's resident neoclassical superstar putting forth the proposition that the leaders of those countries that get IMF loans really want them, so that all else constant it's better to have the IMF there to make the loans. This is true (as far as I can tell), since it makes logical sense (those who go to loan-sharks really need the loans) and fits with empirical data that I've seen. However, it is untrue in the sense that it leaves a lot of stuff out, specifically the fact that the IMF is a crucial part of the imperialist system of power that creates the situations that make the leaders want the loans in the first place. It also leaves out the way in which the IMF exploits the leaders' desperation in order to impose its one-size-fits-all neoliberal solution. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
Jim Devine wrote: What is the whole? How could we possibly test/verify/falsify Hegel's assertion [that the truth -- or the true -- is the whole]? I liked Carrol's answer, but I have my own. Hegel's assertion is more a way of testing/verifying/falsifying theories than it is an assertion of truth. I also like Jim's answer. In fact, I think one could rewrite my 'answers' as exemplifications of this perspective. I would add further that Ian's question What is the whole? is not exactly germane. The researcher has to select the whole which initially interests her, and a critique of that whole would not be in a denial that it _is_ a whole but in making a contrasting abstraction. The results would differ but not necessarily contradict (in a logical sense) each other. To some extent I think the recent debate over the origins of capitalism might have been more useful had all parties agreed that different abstractions (wholes) were being used, and the problem was not to prove one or another wrong but to find ways of relating them. Different vantage points give different but not mutually incompatible pictures. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
Hegel is definitely a believer in conflict. He dared to undertake a consummation of Philosophy, Western and Eastern. He embraced the resulting conflict despite finding it disturbing. Maybe his search for the Absolute was a process of reconciliation, a bereavement over the ideals lost by the contemptible philosophes. The acorn becomes the oak, but the oak must die. And so Tennyson wrote, almost as a true Hegelian: Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower -- but *if* I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is. The flower dies in the hand of its admirer just as if God struck it down. If there is some supreme purpose, however, it is bearable. Thus, the grandest conception is needed to cope with the world's evil, for we must subsume the suffering of humanity into something beneficent. The fork in the road Hegel faced is one common to the memory of the oppressed, but also one that must be faced alone. Should I turn inward, to seek the spirit, in mythopoesis? Or should I hold my breath in the vast, dark cave with nothing to grasp, turn, and reach for an unseen hand, to seek the grasp of another, perhaps one who shares my predicament, in an act of courageous realism? Hegel chooses the former over the latter. He foments the fear of the not known and the uncanny, and resigns such to the unknowable. For all the grandeur of his Wissenschaft, he could never suffer a foray into externality. Andrew Hagen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clam.rutgers.edu/~ahagen/ On Sat, 02 Jun 2001 18:20:25 +1000, Joanna Sheldon wrote: Andrew, I believe Hegel is as much of a Herakleitos fan (everything comes about by battling with its opposite) as he is a friend of the idealist Parmenides (being is one and indivisible). From the forward to the Phenom. of the Spirit: http://www.gutenberg.aol.de/hegel/phaenom/phavorr2.htm Das Wahre ist das Ganze. Das Ganze aber ist nur das durch seine Entwicklung sich vollendende Wesen. Es ist von dem Absoluten zu sagen, daá es wesentlich Resultat, daá es erst am Ende das ist, was es in Wahrheit ist; und hierin eben besteht seine Natur, Wirkliches, Subjekt, oder Sich-selbst-werden, zu sein. So widersprechend es scheinen mag, daá das Absolute wesentlich als Resultat zu begreifen sei, so stellt doch eine geringe berlegung diesen Schein von Widerspruch zurecht. Der Anfang, das Prinzip, oder das Absolute, wie es zuerst und unmittelbar ausgesprochen wird, ist nur das Allgemeine. My rough xlation: The True is the whole. But the whole is only the [being / creature / nature / essence] fulfilling itself through its development. It should be said of the Absolute that it is essentially result, that it is not what it is in truth until the end; and this is precisely what its nature to be [actual / real (thing)], subject, or [self-realisation / self-becoming] consists in. However contradictory it may seem, that the Absolute should be understood essentially as result, a little pondering will make sense of this apparent contradiction [lit: put it right]. The beginning, the principle, or the Absolute, as it is first and immediately expressed, is only the [general / universal / common]. Aristotle probably contributes the idea of entelechy (purpose and realisation of purpose), here, with his acorn-to-oak example. In any case it looks as though, in this paragraph, the whole-true is something like the entelechy of the thing-that-is (*das Wesen*): the oak to the acorn. And that the same thing can be said of the general and the absolute. But I don't know where that gets us, politically speaking. Unless perhaps we can use it to remind ourselves that the end is not independent of the means, that abstractions are after the facts that they're derived from, and that therefore absolutes (if we want to posit them) are no more important than the elements we put into their conception. cheers, Joanna - my site www.overlookhouse.com news from down under www.smh.com.au
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
In a message dated 6/2/2001 1:57:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hegel is definitely a believer in conflict. He dared to undertake a consummation of Philosophy, Western and Eastern. He embraced the resulting conflict despite finding it disturbing. Maybe his search for the Absolute was a process of reconciliation, a bereavement over the ideals lost by the contemptible philosophes. The acorn becomes the oak, but the oak must die. And so Tennyson wrote, almost as a true Hegelian: Since everyone hates me (my fault), let me be the one to try, once again, to sink Hegel and be done with hegelian pomposities. Want conflict? here it is. (??? I quite like Hegel, but it is not easy to understand him, and fatal not to. You will, as Schopenhauer warned, lose your power to think if you muck about Marxist upside down hegelianism) By the way, this conflict starts with Kant, and his asocial sociability, as brought to fore in his "Idea for a Universal History". You might be interested in the firestorm of attack and counterattack at me at Kant-l over this and Robert Wright's Non Zero in which our classical liberal Kantians closed in silence around the issue. You might compare the two versions of this in Non Zero and World History and the Eonic Effect (cf. http://eonix.8m.com/introduc2.htm#Kant's Challenge). The dates of publication are strange, if not suspicious. I have to conclude that everyone likes conflict, seems to be good for business, and a guilt-stopper for drones in Plato's Cave. The eonic effect shows the resolution of Kant's Challenge, and the way history bypasses conflict as the process of evolution. The point, if asocial sociability or generally conflict is seen as the mechanism, then how derive the opposite, etc... The concordance of Darwinism and economic thinking is of course close. Here Marxism fails to be able to debrief the question, it would seem. There is no doubt that conflict is crucial in history. But a close look at Kant's version shows his reluctance to close on this answer, and for good reason. My pattern of the eonic effect shows independent value macroevolution as the dynamic, rendering asocial sociability secondary. Fatal counterevidence. Take a close look at the timing of history. Finally, natural selection in this form is being promoted as a socially necessary process in the mystique of theories reapplied as action (The Oedipus Effect). That was, and should be, what Marx meant by the critique of political economy. As to Hegel, his gesture is just that, but to claim the resolution of philosophy east and west with the dialectic is a bit much. This started with the refusal to accept the noumenal, phenomenal categories of Kant. The 'solution' is an idealism, now a Marxism materialism. All I could say it's not surprising Schopenhauer spent his whole life upset at Hegel. Conflict anyone? Good for the economy. The winners will have more babies. It's Non Zero sum. puke. Is the left with it? John Landon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website on eonic effect http://eonix.8m.com http://www.eonica.net
Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
As I recall, Thrasymachus says that justiice is the interest of the stronger not the right of the stronger. Why would you read it as a statement about the right of the peasantry and artisans to participate in politics. Surely Thrasymachus did not take them as the stronger. Thrasymachus and Protagoras are quite divergent in their political views though both are Sophists. Thrasymachus's argument is that the the powerful determine the rules and define justice and Plato's arguments against him appear to me as sophistic idealistic twaddle...successful only because Thrasymachus lacks the skills to combat Socrates critical questioning. This is not surprising since Thrasymachus is more or less a creature of Plato's making in the Republic. CHeers, Ken Hanly. Incidentally, Protagoras was probably making a political rather than metaphysical or epistemological point in that remark. It was a defense of democracy vs. oligarchy. This is really what Thrasymachus is saying (or rather should be saying if Plato was honest in writing dialogue for the opposition) in the first book of the _Republic_. Wood comments that In this dialogue [_Protagoras_, perhaps foir the last time in his work, Plato gives the opposition a reasonably fair hearing, presenting the sophist Protagoras in a more or less sympathetic light as he constructs a defence of the democracy, the only systematic argument for democracy to have survived from antiquity (_Democracy against Capitalism_, p. 192). If you read justice is the right of the stronger as a statement about the right of the peasantry and artisans to participate in politics, Thrasymachus's argument rises from the ashes Plato consigned it to. Carrol Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
In a message dated 6/2/2001 1:57:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hegel is definitely a believer in conflict. He dared to undertake a consummation of Philosophy, Western and Eastern. He embraced the resulting conflict despite finding it disturbing. Maybe his search for the Absolute was a process of reconciliation, a bereavement over the ideals lost by the contemptible philosophes. The acorn becomes the oak, but the oak must die. And so Tennyson wrote, almost as a true Hegelian: Someone just offered you a free download of a study of asocial sociability and an approach to history that might resolve it. You refuse even a free copy, strange. But I get the message. You seem to prefer conflict, the nutty core of modern ideology. Goodbye then. John Landon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website on eonic effect http://eonix.8m.com http://www.eonica.net
Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
(Coming in on this thread late, here, sorry, just got back on the list this morning) Die Wahrheit ist die Ganze will translate as The truth is the whole. I am pretty sure that is how Miller does it. --jks Actually, Hegel's phrase is Das Wahre ist das Ganze, meaning the true is the whole. Which is one of those Pythian aphorisms that you can figure just about any way you want, furs I can tell, but I see ( http://sti1.uni-duisburg.de/Luhmann/msg02502.html ) that it has been interpreted as Hegel's (neo-eleusinian -- see Parmenides) counter to Aristotle's Man is the measure of all things -- the banner of humanism; Hegel's phrase lending itself to a Marxian interpretation of man as the expression of the whole of social relations. I gather Adorno's Das Ganze ist das Falsche (the whole is the false), is supposed to represent the synthesis of the whole and the particular, but I don't get it. cheers, Joanna - my site www.overlookhouse.com news from down under www.smh.com.au
Re: Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
(Coming in on this thread late, here, sorry, just got back on the list this morning) Die Wahrheit ist die Ganze will translate as The truth is the whole. I am pretty sure that is how Miller does it. --jks Actually, Hegel's phrase is Das Wahre ist das Ganze, meaning the true is the whole. Which is one of those Pythian aphorisms that you can figure just about any way you want, furs I can tell, but I see ( http://sti1.uni-duisburg.de/Luhmann/msg02502.html ) that it has been interpreted as Hegel's (neo-eleusinian -- see Parmenides) counter to Aristotle's Man is the measure of all things -- the banner of humanism; Hegel's phrase lending itself to a Marxian interpretation of man as the expression of the whole of social relations. I gather Adorno's Das Ganze ist das Falsche (the whole is the false), is supposed to represent the synthesis of the whole and the particular, but I don't get it. cheers, Joanna What is the whole? How could we possibly test/verify/falsify Hegel's assertion? It was Protagoras who said man is the measure... Ian
Re: Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
As I recall, it is Protagoras who claims that man is the measure of all things rather than Aristotle. What is neo-eleusinian?Concepts of change and progress are crucial to Hegel's views as far as I can make any sense of them whereas Parmenides denies the reality of change. Although a rationalist Parmenides seems to be a materialist even though reality is in some sense identical with what is thought or thinkable. Non-being cannot be thought or insofar as it is thinkable it must be and hence is being. Parmenides rejects the atomists' concept of space as it would be non-being. Reality is a whole, or plenum, probably spherical. The truth is the whole or the One but there are no holes in it! It is certainly not the Absolute Mind or Whatever...it just is or BE's .to say anything else gets you into the realm of opinion... Cheers, Ken Hanly Actually, Hegel's phrase is Das Wahre ist das Ganze, meaning the true is the whole. Which is one of those Pythian aphorisms that you can figure just about any way you want, furs I can tell, but I see http://sti1.uni-duisburg.de/Luhmann/msg02502.html ) that it has been interpreted as Hegel's (neo-eleusinian -- see Parmenides) counter to Aristotle's Man is the measure of all things -- the banner of humanism; Hegel's phrase lending itself to a Marxian interpretation of man as the expression of the whole of social relations. I gather Adorno's Das Ganze ist das Falsche (the whole is the false), is supposed to represent the synthesis of the whole and the particular, but I don't get it. cheers, Joanna - my site www.overlookhouse.com news from down under www.smh.com.au
Re: Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
Actually, Hegel's phrase is Das Wahre ist das Ganze, meaning the true is the whole. There is no beginning in Hegel's philosophy. To grasp one part is to grasp, by necessity, all of it. My German is too patchy to make sense of the article without Babelfish. I'd have to agree, though, on the Parmenidean influence in Hegel. Take this passage for example: And what need would have impelled it, later or earlier, to grow--if it began from nothing? Thus, it must either altogether be or not be. . . . For that reason Justice has not relaxed her fetters and let it come into being or perish, but she holds it. Decision in these matters lies in this: it is or it is not. But it *has* been decided, as is necessary, to leave the one road unthought and unnamed (for it is not a true road), and to take the other as being and being genuine. . . . Hence, it is all continuous. . . . The writing style gives it away as the ancient Greek, but otherwise it would pass for the crusty Teuton. (At least his precursor.) We're sent on a journey from questions of existence to those of ethics, choice, change, and ultimately, we return to the truth, or the whole, from where we started. Between these moments, the human sciences spring up only to splice together explanations for our conflicted world, manufactured to soothe aching feet and sedate travelers. The wend of the road forsook us. They never considered the battles fought along the way, or that their physic was incompetent to redress the crimes perpetrated upon the countless generations. Ironically, all in the pursuit of wholeness. Andrew Hagen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clam.rutgers.edu/~ahagen/ On Sat, 02 Jun 2001 13:09:03 +1000, Joanna Sheldon wrote: Which is one of those Pythian aphorisms that you can figure just about any way you want, furs I can tell, but I see ( http://sti1.uni-duisburg.de/Luhmann/msg02502.html ) that it has been interpreted as Hegel's (neo-eleusinian -- see Parmenides) counter to Aristotle's Man is the measure of all things -- the banner of humanism; Hegel's phrase lending itself to a Marxian interpretation of man as the expression of the whole of social relations. I gather Adorno's Das Ganze ist das Falsche (the whole is the false), is supposed to represent the synthesis of the whole and the particular, but I don't get it. cheers, Joanna - my site www.overlookhouse.com news from down under www.smh.com.au
Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
- Original Message - From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] How do you interpret this distinction? A guess: Diesing's translation emphasizes that the truth as a static entity does not exist but is rather a constantly changing process, with which it is possible (more or less) to align the mind, but that alignment will be more or less untrued just as it occurs. Or is it nonsense to try for an interpretation of the difference? it's nonsense.
True Hegelian Truth
Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. Michael K.
Re: True Hegelian Truth
How do you interpret this distinction? A guess: Diesing's translation emphasizes that the truth as a static entity does not exist but is rather a constantly changing process, with which it is possible (more or less) to align the mind, but that alignment will be more or less untrued just as it occurs. Or is it nonsense to try for an interpretation of the difference? Carrol Keaney Michael wrote: Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. Michael K.
True Hegelian Truth
Carrol asks: How do you interpret this distinction? A guess: Diesing's translation emphasizes that the truth as a static entity does not exist but is rather a constantly changing process, with which it is possible (more or less) to align the mind, but that alignment will be more or less untrued just as it occurs. Or is it nonsense to try for an interpretation of the difference? = That's pretty much the sense I've got from Diesing so far, whose clarity is exemplary. The book in question is Hegel's Dialectical Political Economy (Westview Press, 1999) which, so far, looks like a very good, accessible introduction to dialectical reasoning in social research. Diesing rejects the caricature of Hegel as a determinist, and he makes use of David MacGregor's interesting work which highlights the commonalities between Hegel and Marx in their respective methods and treatments of economic development. Michael K.
Re: True Hegelian Truth
At 11:19 AM 05/30/2001 +0300, you wrote: Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. Michael K. does it truly matter? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
Die Wahrheit ist die Ganze will translate as The truth is the whole. I am pretty sure that is how Miller does it. --jks At 11:19 AM 05/30/2001 +0300, you wrote: Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. Michael K. does it truly matter? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: True Hegelian Truth
Well, according to Tim Horton's the hole is the Timbit. Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. Michael K. Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Re: True Hegelian Truth
Keaney Michael wrote: Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. And of course Adorno said the whole is the false. Doug
Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
At 12:46 PM 5/30/01 -0400, you wrote: Keaney Michael wrote: Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. And of course Adorno said the whole is the false. I thought he said this bagel has a hole. But I could be wrong. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
Jim Devine wrote: At 11:19 AM 05/30/2001 +0300, you wrote: Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. Michael K. does it truly matter? And if the whole (the complex of micro and macro relations that make up existence) is all that's true, we must either put all in the care of God, gods, or the Hidden Hand, or make sure we're able to act on what we do know, act accordingly, conceive of those actions as learning, and act such that we can quickly change what we do if evidence arises that something's wrong with what we're doing. We've gone the Hidden Hand route, and the signals this particular deity is sending us ain't matching those the physical and social environment are sending us. Alas, our priests are able to see only the price signal, and conceive of time as only a mathematical abstraction. If they're wrong, and there actually is a reality outside their neat little airfix models, and there actually is a temporality above and beyond their dileated little abstractions, then we shall never know more of the whole, never be able to act differently (because we can't really *act* at all), never discern fundamental dynamics, and hence never respond to them. So Hegels Absolute would be calling us, but we wouldn't be able to hear it, and we wouldn't be coming. Mebbe the cockroaches will get it right next time 'round ... Cheers, Rob.
