On Mar 5, 2011, at 7:21 PM, Ted Winslow wrote:
If you mean "value" in the sense of the aesthetic value created by
the activity of a universally developed individual, that "value", as
elaborated by Marx, is not a "variable" capable of quantitative
variation. It's an objectification of the "laws of beauty".
"In creating a world of objects by his personal activity, in his
work upon inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species-
being, i.e., as a being that treats the species as his own essential
being, or that treats itself as a species-being. Admittedly animals
also produce. They build themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees,
beavers, ants, etc. But an animal only produces what it immediately
needs for itself or its young. It produces one-sidedly, whilst man
produces universally. It produces only under the dominion of
immediate physical need, whilst man produces even when he is free
from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom. An
animal produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole of
nature. An animal’s product belongs immediately to its physical
body, whilst man freely confronts his product. An animal forms only
in accordance with the standard and the need of the species to which
it belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accordance with the
standard of every species, and knows how to apply everywhere the
inherent standard to the object. Man therefore also forms objects in
accordance with the laws of beauty."
Unfortunately, Marx was completely wrong (understandably, because he
had yet to hear of Darwin)--not in affirming the existence of
objective "laws of beauty" (an "idealist" view with which I am totally
comfortable), but in counterposing "man" and "animal," in failing to
understand that all human activities derive directly from our evolving
*animal* nature as a particular species of ape. Worse yet, he showed
no grasp of the fact that our *human* appreciation of beauty in the
forms and creations of "animals" proves that, there being laws of
beauty, the animal kingdom (including us, though only occasionally)
lives and functions in ways governed by those very "Laws of Beauty."
And whence comes that astounding, astoundingly absurd, phrase "man
reproduces the whole of nature?"
Shane Mage
This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
kindling in measures and going out in measures."
Herakleitos of Ephesos
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