Hegel, Marx, Knowledge

[Justin Schwartz <jschwart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris is right that there are many interpretations of Hegel's absolute
knowledge. But I think the upshot of most of them, pace Scott, is that
there is an end point of the self-unfolding of Spirit at which it attains
complete knowledge of things as they actually are. Hegel seems to think
that the Phenomenology of Spirit actually states this point of view. This
is a bit inconsistent of him, because, as Scott correctly recalls, Hegel
also thinks that finite beings like Hegel himself do not have AK: Spirit
does, and we're not It. Or Her. We're just moments in Her.

I do not think that Marxism has a single theory of knowledge. Marx's
theory is one thing. I have tried to explain and defend at least part of
my understanding of it in my paper "The Paradox of Ideology," Canadian
Journ of Phil., Dec 1993. My reading is contested. For a very differenat
and more othodox Hegelian Reading, see Pat Murray's Marx's Theory of
Scientific Knowledge. Other Marxists have maintainedother views. Lenin, as
is well known, urged two very different stories, one, a fairly flat-headed
sort of realism, in Materialism and Empiriocritism, the other, more
Hegelian, in the Notebooks on Hegel. Gramsci and the early Sidney Hook
advocated a fairly pure form of classical pragmatism. Lenin's targets in
M&EC were empiricists. So was Otto Neurath and so is G.A. Cohen. Most
modern analytical Marxists are some sort of scientific realist. ANd so forth.

Hegel's own theoiry of knowledger, the claims about AK aside, is very
difficult. My favorite interpretation is Ken Westphal's Hegel's
Epistemological Realism, in which he argues that H was a realist, not an
idealist, at least about the ordinary objects of the external world and
science.

Chris claims that if H thinks that we can know everything, that is
undialectical. I agree. But what if the claim is that Spirit can know
everything? This may not matter to us if we do not believe in Spirit,
except insofar as we want to understand Hegel.

--Justin

On Fri, 23 Feb 1996, Scott Marshall wrote:

> At 02:14 PM 2/23/96 -0500, you wrote:
> >On Thu, 22 Feb 1996, Justin Schwartz wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> I hate to be a pedant, Chris, but didn't Hegel maintain that there was
> >> something called absolute knowledge, and suggest that he had it?
> >>
> >> --Justin
> >
> >I think there are many interpretations of this Justin... but truthfully,
> >I think that this is precisely what is UNdialectical about Hegel, and in
> >some respects, a materialist theory of history -- the kind of
> >intellectual hubris that assumes that one can have knowledge of the
> >ultimate goals of human history.
>
> Here I go where angels etc. My understanding of Hegel's theory of knowledge,
> maintained by Marxism - is that while he aknowledges something called
> absolute truth (that all is knowable to put it another way) he also
> maintains that we will never get there because for every problem we solve
> and 'know' others are opened up expanding the universe of what is knowable -
> thus we never finally arrive at the truth - but we can know truth in big
> though limited ways. Hegel never put it quite this way but in essence...its
> been a long time since I cracked Hegel.
>
> Scott
>
>
>
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