Re: your mail

[J Laari <jlaari@xxxxxxxxx>]

Karl,

here's what I promised, something of what I had in my mind.  -Jukka L

On Fri, 23 Feb 1996, Karl Carlile wrote:

"Would you give some arguments in favour of what you say. If, as you
claim my posting consists almost exclusively of theses would you give
your comments on these theses."

[I skip the first ones]

#3. "This idolization of Hegel has an ideological character."

- Idolization? Who's doing it, and how?
- Ideological character? In what sense? As false consciousness or...?

#4. "It encourages the view that there is an objective philosophy that
embraces in thought reality as a totality."

According to some interpretations, yes. This is traditionally held view
about dialectics, at least in some philosophical sects.

On the other hand, it's another thing to say that, for example,
dialectical category system can either present the basic categories we
apply to reality (categories as kind of kantian transcendental
categories, except that dialectical system is historically made and
historically evolving) in order to 'make sense' of plain sensual data, or
presents just some basic sphere of reality (Hegel: 'spirit' as collective
consciousness or somesuch / Marx: basic principles of capitalist
economy). Neither of these cases "encourage view that there is a
philosophy that embraces in thought reality as a totality".

#5. "This logically leads to the view that human omniscience and
infallibility are possibilities."

It might do that only if we accept #4.

#6. "This in turn leads to the mistaken view that marxism, continuing the
legacy of Hegel, possesses the absolute authority to declare what is
true and what is false."

Perhaps, but just in case that your earlier items have been accepted.

By the way, there surely are some very arrogant hegelians and marxists who
act like they have some absolute authority, but then again that sort of
people are to be find in every phil. group. It's their personal problem,
not that of philosophies.

#7. "It is this kind of ideology, diamat, that ideologically guaranteed
Stalinist legitimacy whether in its crude naked form or in the guise of
some petit bourgeois organizations that misleadingly describe themselves
as trotskyist."

Well, remembering some earlier discussions on stalinism and
marxism-leninism I'm afraid I'm alone in this issue. However, I think
that it's not diamat but whole marxism-leninism (as diamat & histomat &
scientific socialism) that was philosophico-theoretical expression and
justification of stalinism. Despite of that there was something positive
with m-l. Besides, Soviet system wasn't sort of monolithic wholly
administered total system as western ideologues it usually represented.
Those hard-core commies surely fought with each others.

#8. "If, as Hegel and dialectical materialism claim, absolute knowledge is
possible it follows then that absolute certainty is also possible."

See Ludwig Wittgenstein's "On Certainty". I'd be very careful to present
the relationship between certainty and knowledge in that order. Ludwig W.
can be read so that certainty is necessary for ordinary life: it's
[socially constructed, I would add] certainty, that there is just this
kind of world and that it works just this way, that guarantees
fundamental intelligibility of world. Then comes knowledge and the like.
That is, if it comes.

#9. "Absolute certainty logically implies that one can never be wrong.
This is the ideological basis of both Stalinism in its many variegated
forms and some forms of Christianity."

And that's why we all stick to our own conceptions so eagerly?

#10. "My view, as a historical materialist as opposed to a dialectical
materialist, is that there can never be absolute knowledge."

Depends what you understand by 'absolute knowledge.'

#11. "No matter how developed our knowledge there is always novelty and
contingency. Reality is not subject to closure."

(Now you must have some 'absolute knowledge' to know that?) I don't know
who would deny, today, that there isn't novelty and contingency. But does
it mean that there isn't any laws (nor lawlikeliness)?


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