[PEN-L:1216] "Without History"

["Ricardo Duchesne" <RDUCHESN@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Date:          Tue, 18 Aug 1998 13:57:36 -0400
To:            pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From:          Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject:       [PEN-L:960] Re: Re: sell-out Indians and western arrogance
Reply-to:      pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ricardo:
>Simply the Hegelian term for the so-called peoples "without history".
>

Oh, why didn't you say that you take Hegel's racist crap seriously. That
explains everything.

RD:
No more than you take seriously Marx's own "racist crap" - still
after 1848.

Collective self-reflection is not something that comes
naturally. It happens only when a community has created a set of
institutions in which their own independence and self-determination
is affirmed. This  requires a rational (normative) understanding of
one's own practices. If you merely accept the norms of your group (as
revealed truth, or as the way things are just done)
then there is no self-reflection. For Hegel, any appeal to anything
outside reason as a way of justification for one's practices is
against self-determination. But this is a "European" story, and so it
raises a multicultural problem.

ricardo


Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)