Sacrificed
21st October 2007, 23:31
"Man's consciousness is determined by his social being."
This is good. It is also verifiable.
" Human thought is founded in activity and labor."
This is not.
Marx's economic reductivism (for that is what hard Marxism, which wants to make of itself a philosophy, is at the end of the day) forgets that labour - and even survival - are not at all the 'originary' or initial state of man; rather, communicability must inevitably exist before any production or socialization can transpire. For instance:
"The problem of consciousness (more precisely, of becoming conscious of something) confronts us only when we begin to comprehend how we could dispense with it; and now physiology and the history of animals place us at the beginning of such comprehension (it took them two centuries to catch up with Leibniz's suspicion which soared ahead). For we could think, feel, will, and remember, and we could also "act" in every sense of the word, and yet none of all this would have to "enter our consciousness" (as one says metaphorically). The whole of life would be possible without, as it were, seeing itself in a mirror. Even now, for that matter, by far the greatest portion of our life takes place without this mirror effect; and this is true even of our thinking, feeling, and willing life, however offensive this may sound to older philosophers. For what purpose, then, and why consciousness at all when it is in the main superfluous?… it seems to me as if the subtlety and strength of consciousness always were proportionate to a man's (or animal's) capacity for communication, and as if this capacity in turn were proportionate to the need for communication. But this last point is not to be understood as if the individual human being happens to be a master in communicating and making understandable his needs must also be most dependent on others in his needs. But it does seem to me as if it were that way when we consider whole races and chains of generations: Where need and distress have forced men for a long time to communicate and to understand each other quickly and subtly, the ultimate result is an excess of this strength and art of communication - as it were, a capacity that has gradually been accumulated and now waits for an heir who might squander it… Supposing that this observation is correct, I may now proceed to surmise that consciousness has developed only under the pressure of the need for communication; that from the start it was needed and useful only between human beings (particularly between those who commanded and those who obeyed); and that it also developed only in proportion to the degree of this utility."
(Nietzsche, The Gay Science V, aphorism 354)
Communication precedes production.
This is good. It is also verifiable.
" Human thought is founded in activity and labor."
This is not.
Marx's economic reductivism (for that is what hard Marxism, which wants to make of itself a philosophy, is at the end of the day) forgets that labour - and even survival - are not at all the 'originary' or initial state of man; rather, communicability must inevitably exist before any production or socialization can transpire. For instance:
"The problem of consciousness (more precisely, of becoming conscious of something) confronts us only when we begin to comprehend how we could dispense with it; and now physiology and the history of animals place us at the beginning of such comprehension (it took them two centuries to catch up with Leibniz's suspicion which soared ahead). For we could think, feel, will, and remember, and we could also "act" in every sense of the word, and yet none of all this would have to "enter our consciousness" (as one says metaphorically). The whole of life would be possible without, as it were, seeing itself in a mirror. Even now, for that matter, by far the greatest portion of our life takes place without this mirror effect; and this is true even of our thinking, feeling, and willing life, however offensive this may sound to older philosophers. For what purpose, then, and why consciousness at all when it is in the main superfluous?… it seems to me as if the subtlety and strength of consciousness always were proportionate to a man's (or animal's) capacity for communication, and as if this capacity in turn were proportionate to the need for communication. But this last point is not to be understood as if the individual human being happens to be a master in communicating and making understandable his needs must also be most dependent on others in his needs. But it does seem to me as if it were that way when we consider whole races and chains of generations: Where need and distress have forced men for a long time to communicate and to understand each other quickly and subtly, the ultimate result is an excess of this strength and art of communication - as it were, a capacity that has gradually been accumulated and now waits for an heir who might squander it… Supposing that this observation is correct, I may now proceed to surmise that consciousness has developed only under the pressure of the need for communication; that from the start it was needed and useful only between human beings (particularly between those who commanded and those who obeyed); and that it also developed only in proportion to the degree of this utility."
(Nietzsche, The Gay Science V, aphorism 354)
Communication precedes production.