Dialectical materialism, which Marx created, is by no means a triumph of matter over mind, but a victory for mind creatively interacting with matter and conquering it, although all the time disingenuously insisting on matter’s unquestionable superiority, and claiming for itself to be toiling on her (matter’s) behalf.
Marx, however, can in no way be called a bona fide idealist as, in his vision, "matter" (Dasein) does affect the mind (Bewußtsein) in a substantial manner (whereas in idealism, the Spirit is always fully independent of matter, and its interaction with the latter is always a one-way street), but, rather, a philosophical dualist, in whose thought the mind and the matter are mutually affecting each other, in a kind of creative interaction. He cleverly avoids calling an obvious spade a spade, by disguising this otherwise self-evident mind-matter interaction as a dialectical struggle between a thesis and an antithesis, which is, in fact, an active interaction between a subject and an object. In thus shaping his argument, Marx manages to bring it somewhat down to earth, from the realm of metaphysics to the more tangible world of physics, in which endeavor, though, he is not altogether original. In the following excerpt from Leviathan, Hobbes uses physics to illustrate his point concerning human perception. There is a whole wide world of difference, of course, between Plato’s notion of perception, where our senses are overwhelmed and, we may say, tricked, by the shadows of their royal highnesses, ideas, and, say, Bishop Berkeley’s opposite-case situation, where our senses are the real royalty, producing concepts according to their whim. (I believe that we can reduce Berkeley’s brand of idealism to this rather unorthodox interpretation.) In Hobbes, however, we find an example of interaction between the subject and the object, and, as long as he introduces physics to make his case, we are in our rights to apply the Newtonian laws of physics to Hobbes’s theory of perception, thus making his philosophical version of perception interactive, rather than reactive. (Otherwise, our senses will meekly surrender all action to their pesky irritants.) So, here is the promised Hobbesian passage:
“When a body is once in motion, it moves (unless something hinders it) eternally; and whatsoever hinders it, cannot in an instant, but in time, and by degrees, extinguish it. As we see in the water, though the wind may cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after; so also it happens in that motion which is made in the internal parts of a man, when he sees, dreams, etc. For, after the object is removed, or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing seen, though more obscure than when we see it. And this is what the Latins call imagination, from the image made in seeing, and apply the same, though improperly, to all the other senses. But the Greeks call it fancy, which means ‘appearance,’ and is as proper to one sense as to another. Imagination thus is nothing but decaying sense found in men and many other living creatures, as well sleeping as waking." (From Hobbes’s Leviathan: I, 2.)
There are at least two major points of interest here. The very first one is the question of subjectivity versus objectivity of perception and understanding. In defense of subjectivity, it is obvious that our impressions of all objects are not some objective vibes produced by the objects (in which case, they easily become subjects themselves, and the vibes, in turn, become subjective), but our subjective interest in what we wish to extract from our object. Perception in this case is like opening a large refrigerator filled with food, whose content is familiar to us. We pick and choose only what we want at this moment, not an hour ago, not one minute from now. Even better, we may not as much as notice some of the choicest foods there, if our mind is prefixed on a particular item. Our resolution to get exactly what we want and to pay no attention at all to anything else may not even be deliberate, but involuntary: we just fail to see what we had not expected to see. How would Nietzsche, for instance, define “contemplation,” so vehemently criticized by him in Rénan and, generally, in the human race? How would he see his object of derision in our context? Would he look at the food, or just pick up what he wants, and shut the door on the rest? I admit that Nietzsche’s perception is a special case, of course. He would see everything of significance to him inside that refrigerator, everything, that is, worth seeing, to him. But in lesser men such essential ability to observe, and selectively absorb, would be possible only through contemplation, rather than through the illuminating lightning of discernment. Some individuals are quicker, others are slower, and that slowness of the mind might be called “contemplation.” According to Nietzsche, he thinks without wording his thoughts and he words only as he writes, while most people are not so lucky.
The second major point of interest confronts us with the same refrigerator metaphor, only, in this case, we are not familiar with the food contents of our refrigerator, and ready to be surprised. As we get acquainted with the foods within, we make our own choice of what we want, thus affecting the foods inside. But, prior to making our choice, we are affected by the specific selection of the available foods, and our subsequent choice cannot, therefore, be called an independent one. So, here is a perfect example of interaction!
And, finally, in the title of this entry I have called my kind of interaction creative. This raises the question of whether there are different types of interaction: creative and non-creative, predictable and unpredictable (the list of such binary oppositions can go on and on, but you get the point). The laws of physics suggest a predictable pattern of interaction, like when two physical bodies in motion collide, the postmortem of their interaction can be mathematically calculated (but only if we treat them as abstract bodies), or predicted, if we have made a comprehensive prior analysis of both these bodies, and, from it, determined the end result of their collision (which is extremely difficult, but in most cases of purely physical bodies, with no “mind” of their own, at least theoretically possible).
Generally speaking, the end result is, then, either theoretically predictable or totally unpredictable at all. In the refrigerator metaphor, the first case, when the contents of the refrigerator are known to us beforehand, covers predictability, the second, when the contents are unknown, covers unpredictability. It is safe to say that in all interactions between mind and matter the results are unpredictable, no matter what Marx has to say about it.
What is creative? A chess game, as soon as (or as late as) it gets off the beaten path, a soccer match, as soon as the referee’s first whistle is blown-- all these become technically unpredictable either from a certain point on, or from the very beginning . But what is the real meaning of creative, and how does it substantially relate to being unpredictable. We talk about art being creative, so does creativity have to be aesthetic, or artistic? Was Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster, even though unaesthetic, a work of art?
All of this hardly depends on any substantial criteria, but only on how we define our terms. Creation of an automobile does not usually mean its manufacture on the production line, but, rather, a new design, a new concept, the technical implementation of which is no longer counted as part of the creation. But we would not know it, if our usage expands the meaning of creation to manufacture. By the same token, the word art has a variety of meanings, and it gets particularly confusing when we differentiate between the qualitative novelty and its aesthetic value. Also, creation can be a rational process, the result of a work of reason, or an irrational one, being the result of an intuitive passionate outburst, and we can proceed with this catalog ad infinitum, adjusting and readjusting our nuances and reinventing our definitions, until the pathetic futility of this lengthy process becomes too obvious to us, to continue.
But the bottom line of this discourse is that the meaning of creative, in our term creative interaction, boils down to the generation of a new quality or a new value, whether in physics, or metaphysics, or beyond them both.
Marx, however, can in no way be called a bona fide idealist as, in his vision, "matter" (Dasein) does affect the mind (Bewußtsein) in a substantial manner (whereas in idealism, the Spirit is always fully independent of matter, and its interaction with the latter is always a one-way street), but, rather, a philosophical dualist, in whose thought the mind and the matter are mutually affecting each other, in a kind of creative interaction. He cleverly avoids calling an obvious spade a spade, by disguising this otherwise self-evident mind-matter interaction as a dialectical struggle between a thesis and an antithesis, which is, in fact, an active interaction between a subject and an object. In thus shaping his argument, Marx manages to bring it somewhat down to earth, from the realm of metaphysics to the more tangible world of physics, in which endeavor, though, he is not altogether original. In the following excerpt from Leviathan, Hobbes uses physics to illustrate his point concerning human perception. There is a whole wide world of difference, of course, between Plato’s notion of perception, where our senses are overwhelmed and, we may say, tricked, by the shadows of their royal highnesses, ideas, and, say, Bishop Berkeley’s opposite-case situation, where our senses are the real royalty, producing concepts according to their whim. (I believe that we can reduce Berkeley’s brand of idealism to this rather unorthodox interpretation.) In Hobbes, however, we find an example of interaction between the subject and the object, and, as long as he introduces physics to make his case, we are in our rights to apply the Newtonian laws of physics to Hobbes’s theory of perception, thus making his philosophical version of perception interactive, rather than reactive. (Otherwise, our senses will meekly surrender all action to their pesky irritants.) So, here is the promised Hobbesian passage:
“When a body is once in motion, it moves (unless something hinders it) eternally; and whatsoever hinders it, cannot in an instant, but in time, and by degrees, extinguish it. As we see in the water, though the wind may cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after; so also it happens in that motion which is made in the internal parts of a man, when he sees, dreams, etc. For, after the object is removed, or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing seen, though more obscure than when we see it. And this is what the Latins call imagination, from the image made in seeing, and apply the same, though improperly, to all the other senses. But the Greeks call it fancy, which means ‘appearance,’ and is as proper to one sense as to another. Imagination thus is nothing but decaying sense found in men and many other living creatures, as well sleeping as waking." (From Hobbes’s Leviathan: I, 2.)
There are at least two major points of interest here. The very first one is the question of subjectivity versus objectivity of perception and understanding. In defense of subjectivity, it is obvious that our impressions of all objects are not some objective vibes produced by the objects (in which case, they easily become subjects themselves, and the vibes, in turn, become subjective), but our subjective interest in what we wish to extract from our object. Perception in this case is like opening a large refrigerator filled with food, whose content is familiar to us. We pick and choose only what we want at this moment, not an hour ago, not one minute from now. Even better, we may not as much as notice some of the choicest foods there, if our mind is prefixed on a particular item. Our resolution to get exactly what we want and to pay no attention at all to anything else may not even be deliberate, but involuntary: we just fail to see what we had not expected to see. How would Nietzsche, for instance, define “contemplation,” so vehemently criticized by him in Rénan and, generally, in the human race? How would he see his object of derision in our context? Would he look at the food, or just pick up what he wants, and shut the door on the rest? I admit that Nietzsche’s perception is a special case, of course. He would see everything of significance to him inside that refrigerator, everything, that is, worth seeing, to him. But in lesser men such essential ability to observe, and selectively absorb, would be possible only through contemplation, rather than through the illuminating lightning of discernment. Some individuals are quicker, others are slower, and that slowness of the mind might be called “contemplation.” According to Nietzsche, he thinks without wording his thoughts and he words only as he writes, while most people are not so lucky.
The second major point of interest confronts us with the same refrigerator metaphor, only, in this case, we are not familiar with the food contents of our refrigerator, and ready to be surprised. As we get acquainted with the foods within, we make our own choice of what we want, thus affecting the foods inside. But, prior to making our choice, we are affected by the specific selection of the available foods, and our subsequent choice cannot, therefore, be called an independent one. So, here is a perfect example of interaction!
And, finally, in the title of this entry I have called my kind of interaction creative. This raises the question of whether there are different types of interaction: creative and non-creative, predictable and unpredictable (the list of such binary oppositions can go on and on, but you get the point). The laws of physics suggest a predictable pattern of interaction, like when two physical bodies in motion collide, the postmortem of their interaction can be mathematically calculated (but only if we treat them as abstract bodies), or predicted, if we have made a comprehensive prior analysis of both these bodies, and, from it, determined the end result of their collision (which is extremely difficult, but in most cases of purely physical bodies, with no “mind” of their own, at least theoretically possible).
Generally speaking, the end result is, then, either theoretically predictable or totally unpredictable at all. In the refrigerator metaphor, the first case, when the contents of the refrigerator are known to us beforehand, covers predictability, the second, when the contents are unknown, covers unpredictability. It is safe to say that in all interactions between mind and matter the results are unpredictable, no matter what Marx has to say about it.
What is creative? A chess game, as soon as (or as late as) it gets off the beaten path, a soccer match, as soon as the referee’s first whistle is blown-- all these become technically unpredictable either from a certain point on, or from the very beginning . But what is the real meaning of creative, and how does it substantially relate to being unpredictable. We talk about art being creative, so does creativity have to be aesthetic, or artistic? Was Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster, even though unaesthetic, a work of art?
All of this hardly depends on any substantial criteria, but only on how we define our terms. Creation of an automobile does not usually mean its manufacture on the production line, but, rather, a new design, a new concept, the technical implementation of which is no longer counted as part of the creation. But we would not know it, if our usage expands the meaning of creation to manufacture. By the same token, the word art has a variety of meanings, and it gets particularly confusing when we differentiate between the qualitative novelty and its aesthetic value. Also, creation can be a rational process, the result of a work of reason, or an irrational one, being the result of an intuitive passionate outburst, and we can proceed with this catalog ad infinitum, adjusting and readjusting our nuances and reinventing our definitions, until the pathetic futility of this lengthy process becomes too obvious to us, to continue.
But the bottom line of this discourse is that the meaning of creative, in our term creative interaction, boils down to the generation of a new quality or a new value, whether in physics, or metaphysics, or beyond them both.
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