Putting aside judgments of an individual's integrity or intellect, I would say that all intellectual productions of society reveal something about its current state and the discourse that is possible or impossible at a given historical moment. Aside from judging intellectual and cultural productions in a strictly utilitarian fashion, isn't the reading of the implications of the kind of public discourse one can and cannot have symptomatic of the state of society, and thus more than merely an object of yet more intellectual masturbation? What I see going on around me in a number of different social circles reflects to me an historical impasse, and inability to move ahead. I see a further and further falling behind, and I see the whole society falling to pieces. And while many younger people are smarter than their parents, a preponderance seems to be getting dumber, and this is a bad sign.<< Reply When you write: >What I see going on around me in a number of different social circles reflects to me an historical impasse, and inability to move ahead. I see a further and further falling behind, and I see the whole society falling to pieces.< I think . . . hey . . . this describes awareness of the dialectic of the leap. The word leap - as a theory and not philosophic construct, means transition in American English. There is a certain retrogressive movement and motion in society but this retrogressive motion is in relationship to something. We are not getting dumber but inside the leap. An incredible polarization in society is taking place and people - as individuals, are in fact attempting to adjust their thinking to our emerging new realities of life. Every individual is a philosopher on one level of another and that is much of the problem. What we face are extremely practical issues and questions and everyone believes to varying degree that somehow we can think ourselves into human happiness with the right ideas. We are in a very dangerous period of time. Yet we cannot avoid and not skillfully deal with the built up ideological categories in folks head. We cannot defeat ideology by fighting ideology. When I advocate socially necessary health care for all, even and especially those who have no money, I am often asked "How will we pay for the service." I answer, "why the fuck you care, the war is being paid for." "But where are we going to get the money?" "The same place the money for the war came." Now some people are receptive to this logic and others are not. I am only interested in those moving in moral opposition to the system. On another note, what many understand as Marxist Philosophy, I understand to be Marx theory grid or approach. Didn't Marx write something about the proletariat making philosophy material and abolishing philosophy as philosophy? Everytime I hear the word Philosophy I reach for my materialist conception, which basically states the world is what it is and not dependent upon your understanding of it at a given moment. To disclose motion and the patterns of social life - its logic (not formal logic) requires studying the specific thing and engaging it. To get things to go your way or in the direction you desire you have to apply yourself and build associations to push things in your desired direction. The problem - as I see it, is that we still use a lot of terms rooting in our philosophic heritage. Melvin P.
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