blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 81
Today's Topics:
New Book with Blake Prints
Re: Blake vs traditional Christianity
Re:Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c.
Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c.
Re: New Book with Blake Prints
Quest Literature, Sci-Fi, etc.
Re: Experiment Pictures
Blake sighting/citing
Blake and Me
Re: Experiment Pictures
Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c.
REFLEXIVITY & PETTY BOURGEOIS PRECIOSITY
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1996 13:51:12 +0200 (MSZ)
From: Michael Anderson
To: Blake Discussion
Subject: New Book with Blake Prints
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Hello!
I'm new to this discussion group, so I'll give a bit of an introduction
before getting to this new book.
I'm an American studying at the Universitaet Tuebingen, Germany for a
MA. I first read Blake in a "Romantic Poets" course at Brooklyn
College--City University of New York and have been fascinated by him ever
since. My understanding of Blake is in no way near that which I see in
the postings here. However, I do feel like I'm getting something out of
eavesdropping on you.
Now about this book.
Alexander Roob. _Das hermetische Museum: Alchemie & Mystik_. Cologne:
Taschen, 1996. (ISBN: 3-8228-8803-6)
The book deals mostly with the symbolism of the images used in alchemical
texts to describe the process (not the lead to gold process!). There are
about 40 plates from various poems (mostly the late works) and paintings
of Blake's. The quality is outstanding compared to the Oxford editions
and those 1$ editions from Dover. The better part of the plates are
taken from _Jerusalem_ and _The Book of Urizen_, but there are a few from
_Milton_ also. I haven't had the time to read the book from cover to
cover, yet (it's 702 pages of German long!) and I don't believe Roob
intended it to be read that way. Unfortunately, there is no index,
so using it as a reference work is difficult. Granted, the alchemical
stuff is difficult to get through, but I think Roob achieves a lot with
the simple juxtaposition of Blake works with others. For example, The
Arlington Court Picture (pg. 433) is next to an image on the cycle of
reincarnation from the Bhaktivendanta Book (granted that one is much
later than Blake's). Also, The Frontpiece to _America: A Prophecy_ (202)
is next to Duerer's _Melancolia_, which I find leads to some interesting,
though melachonly, thoughts.
Roob is working on a translation of Blake's later works and started
assembling an archive of images to aid in his translation. I assume that
he's in need of money, so he put this book together and Tashen, known for
its well-made but inexpensive art books, decided to release it.
So, if anyone out there is interesting in this Blake-Alchemy idea, this
book may prove interesting, if not helpfull. Naturally, knowing German
is necessary.
That's all for now,
Michael Anderson
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 96 17:57 EDT
From: "Elisa E. Beshero 814 862-8914"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake vs traditional Christianity
Message-Id: <9607052200.AA23897@uu6.psi.com>
I don't think the concept of Jesus meant the same thing to Blake as it does for
traditional Christians. I think he was appropriating Jesus for his own
purposes in his late mythology-- that he was using "Jesus" as a metaphor for
the human imagination. Jesus as imagination can function in Blake's mythology
in the same way that Jesus works in the Christian myth: God, the Eternal,
descends on earth to experience mortality, finiteness, limitation. The Eternal
in human form then works in opposition to the laws that set limits on human
existence and experience by encouraging people to think in a new way about
themselves and each other. --This embodiment of the Eternal saves humanity from
sin and death, and calls himself "The Son of Man" -- the idea is that he
is one of us -- Blake simply appropriates this concept as a trope for how the
imagination can redeem us-- give us fourfold vision, etc. (I don't think that
Blake underwent any big conversion experience; I just think he came up with
a new way to use an old, highly respected name.) --elisa
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 1996 03:35:42 -0400
From: WaHu@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re:Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c.
Message-Id: <960706033542_149851811@emout09.mail.aol.com>
Of course the Splendid Troglodytes of George le Troisiemme weren't Left-Wing.
The Subject Was Roses, er, Nietzsche! The subject was Nietzsche and his
treatment by the late lamented (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) Socialist Govts.
Although I agree with Dr. Johnson about the American Revolutionaires
(Hanging was too good for them! Lot of slave owning real estate speculators!
Washington & Franklin and their ilk had ignited two world wars in the space
of twenty years--real world wars, with combat from the coast of Norway to the
Hindu Kush, and all points in between-- just so a consortium of Founding
Fathers could sell land in Ohio), I will always support Napoleon. But I
digress....Digression is good for the Soul.
I've always thought that the Blake reference to the Ohio in America was at
least partly refering to the Big Land Deal that fell through--can't remember
the name of the proposed thing in Ohio, I want to say Vala (he,he) but that's
not it....it did start with a V.
The above comments about two world wars were originally made by Gen. Gage
years
after the war. A poor military commander, but an astute political analyst.
What? You think I'm making this up? You don't think America is ruled by
slave owning real estate speculators to this day? (Actually 92percent. of
american legislators are lawyers--something like 100percent of their spouses
have real estate licenses) Can I show you an attractive Cape Cod?
Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 1996 09:33:17 -0500
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c.
Message-Id: <9607061439.AA07865@uu6.psi.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>The Captain of the Guard of the Tower through his
>binoculars watches Blake die and turns to remark to the Lord of the Tower, Aes
>theticus, "My Lord, this one was brave and came nearer us than most." "A
>little nearer, but just as dead. Send a patrol to strip the armor from the
>corpse, and display it in the great hall with the rest....
Why am I visualizing Darth Vader and the old wizened Emperor Whatshisname
camped out on the Death Star just before the rebels blow it up?
JM
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 1996 14:28:07 -0400
From: TomD3456@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: New Book with Blake Prints
Message-Id: <960706142806_428620777@emout07.mail.aol.com>
Thank you for this extremely interesting information. Welcome to the
discussion, Michael!
--Tom Devine
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 1996 21:34:46 -0400
From: WaHu@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quest Literature, Sci-Fi, etc.
Message-Id: <960706213444_232217348@emout08.mail.aol.com>
Excellent Jennifer! Of course the Spencerian Landscape is identical with the
Lurid Comic Book. The Violence is unrelenting, the Sex is indistinguishable
from the violence....to be commercially viable it must be toned done and a
good guy seen to win. "Here comes Jesus! You'll be sorry you started this
war now, Mr. Satan!" is the whole of Milton's Overt Intention. But of course
the poem would be unreadable if Satan did not rebel. A moralistic veneer
must be applied --children might be watching! There are of course rare
instances in popular entertainment where this breaks down--the Peckinpaugh
(sic?) film Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.
Blake's characters aren't any more developed than comic book oafs, which puts
him squarely in league with Ariosto & Spencer; not Chaucer or Shakespeare or
Milton. Blake's most skillful and sustained use of the nightmare landscape
is The Mental Traveler where Blake plays to his strength--he is one of the
four or five greatest song writers in the english language.
Welcome to the Dark Side, Luke.
Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 15:17:55 -0500
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Experiment Pictures
Message-Id: <9607072023.AA06213@uu6.psi.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
What do people make of the last line of _The Four Zoas_:
"The dark Religions are departed & sweet Science reigns"
?
(I know what Bloom says about it in his footnote, and I know that "science"
formerly referred to "knowledge" more generally, but I thought this might
be an interesting morsel to toss into the Christianity/Experiment stew.)
JM
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 16:46:58 -0500
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake sighting/citing
Message-Id: <9607072152.AA13979@uu6.psi.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
For those interested, Ellen Douglas's collection of short stories, _Black
Cloud, White Cloud_, has as its epigraph the text of "Little Black Boy" in
full. The book was published first in the 60s and has recently been
reissued with illustrations (not by Blake). I haven't read it.
JM
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 18:23:36 -0400
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake and Me
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Wow! I just got back from a 4th of July extravanganza and found that there
has been some interesting discussion beyond that one guy that Tom
Dillingham thought had monopolized this group!
Kudos!
Let me react to some of the more interesting stuff, off the top of my head:
BLAKE AGAINST SCIENCE
Mark Trevor Smith made an impassioned and, I believe, flawed attempt to
defend Blake's "imagination" against the evil empiricists. For one thing,
Blake's own logic is flawed. If you look at plate a5G for "There is No
Natural Religion" in Erdman's _The Illuminated Blake_, it goes even further
in trying to insult reasoning's power by saying "Man by his reasoning power
can only compare & judge of what he has already perceiv'd." If this were
true, we'd all still be in a crib. Locke explicitly states that as we grow,
the realm of what is known increases, too. Again, I know it's "limiting"...
but it's alot better than the AbraCadabra of Christianity's nets and
snares. And it doesn't DENY imagination, either!
Then talk about "faulty reasoning".... or should I say inspired missed
connections? I have been amused to read and re-read plate 52 of "Jerusalem"
which is addressed TO THE DEISTS. I mean, really, connecting Greek
philosophy with the Druids is... creative! But the more I think about
"natural religion", the more I think people DO have it, everywhere around
the world. And despite Washington and Adams being more hush-hush, and
Jefferson more overt... as were the evil Voltaire and Rousseau (and to
think they got birds flying over their names in "The Song of Los")... what
were these people really fighting? IGNORANCE. Something that Christianity
had pulled a big dark age over the Western World and which Blake, by still
insisting that it is the "only" way, is limiting himself. His understanding
of Hindu-Buddhism is virtually non-existent... prove me wrong. His "Asia"
within "Song of Los" is largely a vehicle to talk BACK at events in his own
myopic Europe.
BLAKE'S CHRISTIANITY
Elisa Beshero says it succinctly:
>I don't think the concept of Jesus meant the same thing to Blake as it does for
> traditional Christians. I think he was appropriating Jesus for his own
>purposes in his late mythology-- that he was using "Jesus" as a metaphor for
>the human imagination. Jesus as imagination can function in Blake's mythology
>in the same way that Jesus works in the Christian myth: God, the Eternal,
>descends on earth to experience mortality, finiteness, limitation.>>>>>
And yet, Elisa, this to me a double bind for Blake. He's sucking in
Christianity into his own "late mythology", as you say... but he's
neglecting the Dark Ages that Christianity kept us in for centuries until
the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment movements finally started
pushing the curtain back. He's using its finger pointing to try to shoot
down the forces that are truly protecting his right of free speech, which
is funny, because he's a heretic from a Christian point of view as I've
said many times before. He uses Michelangelo-like depictions of people...
but in his writing he's saying, again from TO THE DEISTS plate (I just love
this one in "Jerusalem"):
"You O Deists profess yourselves the enemies of Christianity (really? did
Jefferson? did Paine?) and you are so: you are also the Enemies of the
Human Race & of Universal Nature (gee, Blake, there's no "natural religion"
but there IS a universal nature??? But here's a punchline:) Man is born a
Spectre or Satan & is altogether an Evil, & requires a New Selfhood
continually...."
Hey, and Avery Gaskins was saying that I was using fundamentalist jive!
We're born a mere spectre or Satan and need to constantly be renewed by
Los... I mean... Jesus... thanks alot, Mr. Blake! Needless to say, I am not
a convert to your church! But I love your IMAGINATION!
This isn't a song. It's a tirade. And the "inspiration" muses are fried.
TIM KITCHEN'S AND HUGH WALTHALL'S BLAKE
Let me try a fusion theory. Hey, it can't be any worse than Druidism being
the same as Greek philosophy... or can it?
Thank you, Tim Kitchen, for further talking about what I discussed in
"America" and "Europe". The enduring qualities of Blake, for me, are the
sealing power in his visual art for the larger, prophetic books. In his
earlier "songs" through "Marriage of Heaven and Hell", which are
ultra-genius to me, they add a power and complexity is extraordinary.
Without the visuals, you lose ALOT. The fact is, he's one of the greatest
imaginative VISUAL artists of all time as well as VERBALLY. Particularly
amazing for me are how he can take prints and imply so many different
meanings on them with his watercolors. Also, the difference between a color
copy of Blake and a black and white is night and day, even if you know it's
only "one" of the ways he would have done it.
As Hugh Walthall notes, Blake's strength is as a songwriter. I particularly
loved this quote, Hugh:
>Blake's characters aren't any more developed than comic book oafs, which puts
>him squarely in league with Ariosto & Spencer; not Chaucer or Shakespeare or
>Milton. Blake's most skillful and sustained use of the nightmare landscape
>is The Mental Traveler where Blake plays to his strength--he is one of the
>four or five greatest song writers in the english language.
Absolutely. Orc in "America" and "Europe"? A well-developed mythological
figure that can stand up next to Pandora or Prometheus? Oh yeah... right...
he's like a fireball and once he's out of the box, it doesn't matter how
many IDEAS or even personality development are necessary down in our mortal
land! And Enitharmon? Cartoon character is the right word. What IS the
connection between her sleeping when Christ died and this "new" Christ that
has as much brain as... (Orc)... nothing! He's simply fire. More cartoon
book characters: Washington et al, merely looking sternly east! And the
dragon that the Prince of Albion sends! Perfect description, Hugh. Now the
omens in the Plates of starvation/plague of Europe stand better to me,
maybe because they're left SIMPLY as visual images for me to ponder.
NIETZSCHE AND BLAKE
What about Nietzsche and... Albert Camus? _The Plague_ is a novel about
people helping people in the face of great adversity. When Blake in
"Jerusalem" says that we shouldn't need to wait for Christ, that we have
Christ within us to act, isn't he sending a similar message out that Camus
gives in _The Plague_?
Camus died with a copy of Nietzsche's _The Gay Science_ in his crashed
automobile. Nietzsche has inspired ANTI-totalitarian thought as much as
Blake. As seen in the reading list from DW Doerrbecker, many HAVE drawn a
connection between the two.
Both Blake and Nietzsche are flawed. But both exalt the imagination and
defend freedom, if you read the sunny sides to their views.
On the other hand, if you want to simply dismiss Nietzsche as a mysoginist,
right-wing pig, talk about someone else and Blake. Make your own
connections, Mr. Dumain and indeed to all members of this group. I
personally was thinking of Blake's free love doctrine today as I played
dear Trent Reznor's song, "Closer":
"You let me penetrate you...
Help me!
You bring me closer to God!"
PROBLEMS WITH ARTISTS AND PATRONS
How much did Blake keep the veneer of Christianity to satisfy his few
patrons, who loved the Christian stuff? I think he enjoyed the mythology. I
think it went to his head. But a problem that occurs around this time
period is... patrons. Who supports your art?
Keep up the fireworks, my friends.
I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your
right to say it!
Long live the American Revolution et vive La Revolution Francaise! (Despite
its excesses, Roland Barthes sometimes says things like, "Before the
Revolution, this never could have happened..." I'm sure he's just
romanticizing things, but hey... this is a group about a premier romantic,
am I not correct?)
-Randall Albright
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 96 19:36 EDT
From: "Elisa E. Beshero 814 862-8914"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Experiment Pictures
Message-Id: <9607072339.AA22282@uu6.psi.com>
Blake must have some ideas about the scientific method-- Wonder if we can
uncover from his poetry and pictures what constitutes good, sweet science, and
what constitutes tyrannical malpractice? As with the religion issue, Blake
doesn't throw out the idea of Eternity or of Jesus; yet he doesn't approve of
priests. I don't think Blake was confused; I think he saw Newton and Locke as
Urizenic priests, priests who exalted reason inappropriately and marginalized
the possibilities offered by the imagination. What kind of science does Blake
advocate instead? About what in particular did Blake think Newton and Locke
were wrong? (I think priests/religion/churches in Blake's work always
represent distorted thinking. In representing "sweet science" as _different_
from "dark religion," Blake reveals that science to him does NOT necessarily
indicate close-mindedness -- so I'll close by again asking, what kind of
science would Blake advocate? Can we uncover it from his work?
- - The original note follows - -
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 15:17:55 -0500
To: blake@albion.com
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
Subject: Re: Experiment Pictures
Resent-From: blake@albion.com
Reply-To: blake@albion.com
What do people make of the last line of _The Four Zoas_:
"The dark Religions are departed & sweet Science reigns"
?
(I know what Bloom says about it in his footnote, and I know that "science"
formerly referred to "knowledge" more generally, but I thought this might
be an interesting morsel to toss into the Christianity/Experiment stew.)
JM
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 17:37:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Cc: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu
Subject: Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c.
Message-Id: <199607080037.RAA16381@igc2.igc.apc.org>
I find anger to be a most salubrious stimulant to my impetus to
write, and so Avery Gaskins' feeble whining in response to my
nasty remarks about Nietzsche and postmodern professors (I am
neither a student nor faculty member of any academic department,
thank you) riled me enough to begin to set down some of my
thoughts. Sorry for confusing people about my affiliations due to
my past cross-postings, but I must continue to cross-post, as my
harangues concern a number of online constituencies.
To set the stage, I will first upload a post on reflexivity, which
does not directly address Blake, but it is related to my ultimate
goals in comparing Blake to various German and other thinkers.
Then I shall rewrite for public consumption one or two of my
private postings on the tradition of petty bourgeois
self-consciousness (taking Bruno Bauer as a convenient starting
point), of which Nietzsche is only one manifestation. Finally, I
shall suggest that any formal similarities between this malodorous
tradition and Blake's project are outweighed by their differences.
I will begin to explore the implications of these differences if I
get a sufficiently intelligent response to make it worth the
bother to continue.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 17:41:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com, marxism2@jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Cc: rdumain@igc.org
Subject: REFLEXIVITY & PETTY BOURGEOIS PRECIOSITY
Message-Id: <199607080041.RAA16717@igc2.igc.apc.org>
ON UNREFLECTIVE REFLEXIVITY, OR THE PRECIOSITY OF THE
SELF-CONSCIOUS PETTY BOURGEOIS
The following academic exercise gives me the pretext to begin to
summarize many of the ideas I have been working on for the past
few years. One must have some raw material to digest, however
unedifying, and the following book proves as good as any:
Lawson, Hilary. REFLEXIVITY: THE POST-MODERN PREDICAMENT. La
Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1985. 132 pp.
It would seem this book exists to justify the ways of Nietzsche,
Heidegger, and Derrida to analytical philosophers. The author
recounts familiar logical paradoxes and the ways analytical
philosophers have attempted to deal with them, through the banning
of self-reference, metalevels of logical types, restrictions on
the extension of (anti-)metaphysical claims, etc. Philosophers
such as the three who form the subject of this book, however, not
only do not attempt to avoid the negative consequences of
self-referential paradoxes, but embrace and revel in them. In
what ways, then, do these philosophers manage to still make sense
and keep their own philosophies from becoming self-refuting or
meaningless? The central role reflexivity plays in the
philosophies of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida is what this
book is about.
What is not addressed, however, is why the project of opposing
metaphysics and avoiding any affirmative statement about reality
is a worthwhile one, or in fact, why historically it exists at
all. Thus the anti-metaphysical project of the three philosophers
becomes as formalist as any logic-chopping analytical philosopher
could be. The only alternative presented to the various views in
the book, that the relativization of knowledge claims implied by
reflexivity could be incorporated into theory itself as a moment
in a historically evolving grasp of objective truth, a la Hegel
and Marx, is considered only in passing (p. 21). On the other
hand, as we "progress" from Nietzsche to the other two, the
philosophies presented become ever more obscure, incomprehensible,
claustrophilic, and ultimately pointless.
What is most ironic in all this folderol about reflexivity is how
limited in scope and character this precious self-consciousness of
the petty bourgeois is, and how unconscious it is of so many
things. One would never know, in a world where we know more about
the natural world, the nature of society, human psychology and the
workings of our own minds than our forbears could ever have
imagined possible, that our precious reflexive philosophers become
more and more convinced that affirmative knowledge is impossible,
that we are imprisoned behind a wall of language, unable to make
contact with anything outside. That thousands of so-called
intellectuals could convince themselves that such a paltry,
narcissistic view of the world shows any common capacity of
intellect at all, let alone genius -- the apotheosis of all of
reflective thought -- should tip us off that something has gone
terribly wrong.
Another striking feature is how thin and pale the abstractions
employed by these philosophers are to explain their predicament
and the society that produces them. For out of the dense, complex
interweaving of the social, economic, political, and other
historical factors that have created our lives as well as our
thoughts, we see our precious reflexive philosophers engaging only
the most isolated and idealized of abstractions -- the genealogy
of morals, the alleged metaphysical biases of language, the
uniform, underlying assumptions of all of "western thought," or,
when it finally comes to something material, the influence of
"technology" (as an impersonal, abstracted entity) on our life and
thought. That our most educated intellectuals should take such
infantile, naive, and limited intellectual rubbish seriously,
shows how serious the debilitating influences of alienation are on
the human mind, how crippling alienated existence is on the most
refined intellects as on the average Janes and Joes who plod
mechanically through the dull, mind-numbing routine of each day.
In fact, the debilitation comes from one and the same source,
meaning that the professional intellectual can no longer pose as
the repository of universality.
What is most galling is how old all this is. For Marx (with the
assistance of Engels) disposed of the precious self-consciousness
of the petty bourgeois intellectual in THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY in
1845-1846, his biggest mistake being in not getting this work
published in his lifetime. For in disposing of the pretensions of
Bruno Bauer and especially Max Stirner, Marx pointed out that
reflexive consciousness can only be the result of objective
circumstances, which lie in a many-sided engagement with the wide
world under material conditions that encourage the drive toward
universality, and not with formalistic declarations that one is
too self-aware and sophisticated to be taken in by anything. In
fact, such individualistic world-beaters always prove, in the
final analysis, to be the most gullible individuals of all.
Another sad observation that can be made by anyone who chooses to
actually think through the history of thought in social
development, is how utterly counterrevolutionary the development
from Nietzsche to Derrida is. For the expose of the alienated,
religious character of "philosophy" came not from Nietzsche but
from Ludwig Feuerbach, representing a moment in the progressive
and affirmative development of a social and intellectual project.
That the philosopher could finally come to know the
extra-philosophical preconditions and determinants of his own
thoughts was not the end of affirmative intellectual engagement
with the objective world but the beginning. Feuerbach initiated
but could not follow through on a new conception and new social
role for the philosopher, rusticating himself in a _social world_
as well as a world-view that remained abstract and one-sided,
unable to progress beyond the formalities of philosophical
anthropology.
Ultimately, it was Marx who pulled together the various threads of
philosophical, economic, and sociological knowledge to create a
total picture of the development and maldevelopment of human
powers under the hierarchical organization of society and the
division of labor. The culmination of this process was the
now-famous economic-philosophical manuscripts of 1844, beside
which the philosophical droppings of Derrida, Heidegger, and
Nietzsche, lie upon on the historical highway of thought as
dried-up dog turds whose monumental significance in the vast
scheme of things is minuscule in the extreme.
Marx's 1844 manuscripts themselves were not published for decades
and decades, and were not available in English for even longer.
Nonetheless, now that we have had them for a few decades, we ought
to conceive of the place of intellectual life in social life in a
different manner. Sadly, none of the proper lessons have been
learned, because the work of that period has been misinterpreted
as a call to abandon thought for political practice or to narrow
theoretical activity to the scope of "political" tasks. Rather
than the end of an intellectual adventure, it could and should be
the beginning, for our relationships with our material world, with
each other, and even with our own selves are manifold, and the
unity of theory and practice involves every sphere and endeavor of
human existence, and the prospects for de-alienating every aspect
of our existence is what ought to interest us, and has in certain
times and places proceeded in actuality with or without the
participation of this or any other philosophies or philosophers.
The possibility for the human race to become more and more
conscious of itself, of its fundamental assumptions and
presuppositions of existence and thought, has grown, not because
of formalistic gimmicks, but because of objective processes in
social life that have enabled greater self-consciousness, if so
far only for those who have been able and/or willing to take
advantage of such increased possibilities. The adventure of human
thought is not at an end, but has only begun to come into its own,
espcially for those who see both the possibility and desperate
need for same instead of contenting themselves with wallowing in
their own boredom and moral exhaustion.
(Ralph Dumain, 7 July 1996)
--------------------------------
End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #81
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