Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes XIX: Difference between revisions

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=== Psychology and Ideology (3) ===
=== Psychology and Ideology (3) ===
{{Question}}
{{Page |n°=70}} P. will have something published soon on sociology and is getting something into shape he did ten years ago. This is on the question of institutional change and how strain causes change. What kind of strains are these and in what sens can one follow this?
{{Page |n°=70}} P. will have something published soon on sociology and is getting something into shape he did ten years ago. This is on the question of institutional change and how strain causes change. What kind of strains are these and in what sens can one follow this?
   
   

Revision as of 17:28, 4 August 2017

Weekend Notes (Overview)


Text in English to type

Freedom and Technology (3)

[27] The whole question of the loss of freedom hinges on "compelled to compel". However, this is only an illustration. Just like Jesus used the illustration that the one with no sins should throw the first stone.

He […]

[28] Fromm didn't get this point. He forgets something which didn't become apparent in the Old Testament and Jesus made this [29] point: it is not the crowd who is going to stone her. That's all right, but what about you? What are you going to do? Give your coat to the poor? There is probably the same thing in the Dead Sea Scroll, and Christianity made vast propaganda with theology and paid no heed to the teaching of Christ. Everyone knows in his hearts that these things make for life.

Fromm… […]

[30] With Hegel there is the coming up of economic life but there is no intimation of technology.

With Smith it has a pseudo presence. […]

P. doesn't know if he found the machine in Hegel. Hegel didn't miss much. Also Marx to 1844 is the same story. […]

Already in Comte there is no history, bu the structure of society under the laws.

[31] We follow the story of freedom where freedom is seen to exist (German idealism) and technology − which begins with Owen.

[…] Technology is Owen. Under the reality of society, one takes necessity as a counter to freedom.

Hegel discovered it because the French Revolution failed and he believed in it. Therefore he thought it was necessity that made it fail and made Napoleon follow on Robespierre.

Marx never relinquished necessity but placed it in the material aspect of society. […]

P. has a lecture which he gave on the emergence of reform of consciousness in 1927 or '29. P. gave this lecture to a small group including Kolnyai, Ernst Karl Winter, and Otto Bauer. Winter wanted to build up an anti-Gascist group in Vienna. P. was interested only on his own ideas.

[32] The essential thing in the reform of consciousness was the acceptance of the reality of society. […]

The lecture was called "Reformietes Bewusstsein”. It maintained that first there was conscious religious consciousness and second to take upon oneself the burden of society with unalterable alternatives. Thirdly, the reform of consciousness was not absolute but it is a reform of consciousness which receives in itself the need for compromise as resignation, and turns without any qualification to the reaching of these ideals: … […]

P. got the idea of ineluctable alternatives from Ulysses which he read in 1922 in the 'Westbarstrasse'.[1] This lecture was an advance and gave a more definite subject [33] but we didn't have definite criteria.

Rousseau

Owen

[34] If one goes on from Owen to Hegel or Marx one cannot assume a very great interest in the subject. There is a prejudice against Hegel that it is some empty metaphysics. And for Marx that it is just some materialism which has been disproved.

[…]

This is a peculiar thing, living in two or three worlds and not realizing that they are not separate e. g., the Christian interpretation of freedom and Marx on history is not unrelated. Communism is a Christian heresy. These are not values which are distinct and different. Freedom is to follow in the trail of [35] history. Engels said that if we follow history we are free.

[…] The two greatest events of our age were Fascism and Bolshevism.

[35] In Christianity there is a dogma that God can't do the impossible (that is the inconceivable or self-contradictory) but the possible he can do.

[…]

Hegel wanted …

Marx made a double movement. He moved to reality and discovered …

[37] It is much easier to deal with the question as the young Hegel and the young Marx (usually called early). Perhaps he will call it Hegel and Marx, and using "young" for both might imply that we are dealing with infants otherwise known as 'Hegel and Marx in the Nursery'.

Owen

[38] Marcuse is very well usable for our outline of Hegel but he didn't know the young Hegel.

Marx (3)

[40] But this is not really Christian freedom, the care for your salvation of fear of eternal death. Otherwise the modern reader wouldn't understand.

Ultimately, Mary the virgin, is the new Eve − she bears the son of God. Man is conscious and by an act of will raises himself to a higher level of freedom. In Jesus Christ the Saviour this is obscure. But there is some idea of this in Hegel and Marx: consciousness is freedom and the higher consciousness is higher freedom. It has nothing to do with political freedom.

Wetter says that Eve stepped on the head of the serpent and …

Hegelian theory that nature

Engels

Mannheim

Hegel

Lenin said exactly the same thing as the early Hegel (see quotation in Hegel section). If the volonté de tous cannot transcend [42] the volonté générale but can bring the volonté générale at its best. P.'s idea of limits is the Hegelian idea. It is also like Owens “childish unavailing complaints will cease”.

[…] P. sees much more the tremendous power and grandeur of Hegel and why he was such an overpowering figure.

[…] The Marxian is the nearest to Catholic philosophy and is purely authoritarian (whether the authorities say so or not).

But what Marxism did was to project the absolute into history. Insofar as you serve history you are free.

Isaiah Berlin is a good book. He really knows things well.

[44]

Myself: What about Marxist economics?

It was all nonsense. Marx was a journalist and Capital was a pamphlet, but it ended up as a complete failure.

… Keynes

Marx believed in Say's Law and Keynes disproved it. P. isn't even interested in good economics, much less bad economics.

In Marx the illusions come in through history. The working class would have to shoulder the mission and he had never thought [45]

Lenin

Feuerbach … but Thurnwald showed it wasn't true. trade is earlier than the division of labour among individuals. Marx had nothing on these matters.

Hegel

Rousseau (2)

Robert Owen (5)

Business and Economics

Comments on my "Freedom's Quandary, Draft #1

Notes

Paul Medow

Politics

[67] Eisenhower

He thought he could achieve it. Both his pacifism and his sound money comes from the Jehovah's Witnesses.

America (3)

Sputnik

Pearson

Kierkegaard

[69] Kierkegaard is a Christian and tests the position of the relation to Christian faith. But it is not the relationship which is the most topical today. His description of freedom is like P.'s − unless you fear something you can't maintain it. What is the anxiety about? Also K's Christian dogmatism can't be maintained today. With Abraham the specific thing doesn't come up but commands [t]o come up and put us in the position of to trust or not to trust.

P's interpretation of freedom is existentialist and never was any other since man reached his peculiar state. P. is not opposed to existentialism. He accepts the challenge and tries to answer it. He goes beyond.

Psychology and Ideology (3)

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[70] P. will have something published soon on sociology and is getting something into shape he did ten years ago. This is on the question of institutional change and how strain causes change. What kind of strains are these and in what sens can one follow this?

Ideology is a picture of motives which is normative and valuational. If the strain is very big it will have consequences.

One of the reasons value systems work or don't work is how they are related to motives.

The Great Transformation (6)

Money (3)

Greece (2)

Interdisciplinary Project (7)

Otto Bauer

[71] When he was in New York. P. spoke to Otto Bauer − the founder of the socialist Christian movement.

K.P. Personal (5)

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Losing Emmet made a big difference. P. couldn't work but he got into subjects of is interest, e. g., the freedom question.

Twenty years ago P. didn't know English economic history and he learned it in three to four years − 1937-40, by teaching it continuously. In that way you really get to know it.

Editor's Notes

  1. Must be the Vorgartenstrasse… Cf. Felix Schafer, First Memoirs (1964-1966)

Text Informations

Date: December 21, 1957 (Interview)
KPA: 45/14