Talk:Karl Marx/Hegelian Infleunces

Sir, with all respect, contributions to an article about Karl Marx requieres some familiarity with his theory. Hegel's is insufficient. Knowing that Marx was influenced by Hegel is insufficient as well. You need to demonstrate a grasp for how Marx was influenced by Hegel. I reverted a number of your most recent changes simply because I was struck by the first addition as being intellectually-vulgar: calling Marx's theory a 'metaphysic.' Marx denounced metaphysics, he called aspects of Hegel's theory that he did not approve of either metaphysical or (epistemologically) idealistic. So it is very strange, and I argue, POV, to title his "theory" as such. With best intentions, El_C


 * I disliked the reference to "Marx's theory" because by itself the phrase is vague -- in the context, though. it references Marx's views on those matters specifically treated within metaphysics, such as materialism versus idealism, and some more specific term for Marx's theory of such matters seemed, and seems, called for. --Christofurio 13:55, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

That is what it is, a theory, that you dislike it is; for our pruposes, irrelavent. If it is vague, perhaps there is a reason for that (I argue, partially, your unfamiliarity with Marx and Marxism is the culprit). A contradistiction Marx often made was between mataphysics and dialectics &mdash; it is certainly is not treated within metaphysics per se. The contradiction he made between matreialism and idealism is -not- encompassed by metaphysics, but rather epistemology. I argue that your edits on this front are, in fact, uncalled for and I am more than willing to defend my position in this respect. But not through reverts – through discussion. El_C

Addendum: I just noticed your latest comment in the talk page, but they seem to be mostly limited to aesthetics, then the few changes in the "influences" is alluded to almost as an aside. Again, I think it would be productive for you to present these here in talk a priori to editing. El_C

I see that you have chosen to ignore the above, which is unfortunate. I reverted your suplanting of theory-cum-metaphysic-cum-ontology. Marx addresses ontology and he does not view his -theory- (which he called Communist theory) as ontological. Or telological. Or deontological (just trying to eliminate the possibilities ahead of time). As this goes on, sir, it increasingly reflects poorly on you. Now, I have left myself open to discussion, but I am not willing to engage serious edits in this manner. Submit these to discussion first. Please read closely. El_C

You disapproved of "ontology" also. I await your suggestion. But we do need some less sweeping phrase than "Marx's theory" to suggest the specific arena of theorizing that involves matter, ideas, dialectics, etc. Also, we definitely need to beef up the discussion of what Hegel's dialectic as a view of human society and its development was all about. Or else there is no real significance to the fact that Marx was a "Young Hegelian" and the reader doesn't know WHAT he was "turning upside down." The key to remember about that famous phrase is that when one turns something upside down, one keeps it intact. A concave arc and a convex arc are both arcs! I'm trying to describe Hegel's convexity, and you keep deleting that without offering a better suggestion. What we have here now is plainly inadequate on this point. We should convey some sense of what it meant for a Hegelian to discuss, say, Napoleon as a "world-historical figure". Sidney Hook once devoted a fine book to the Young Hegelian group. We might mention it here. --Christofurio 21:37, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, ontology is a flawed not to mention confusing way to describe to the reader his theory (sure it has ontological elements, but it has many other elements as well). We do not need something less sweeping because the theory is, in and of itself, sweeping: in economics, philosophy, political-science, sociology, history, anthropology, etc., and each of these dsciplines uses different terms. I will address your other additions when you bring them forth to discussion, but when I see an intellectually-vulgar change (submitted without consultation in talk), I will revert wholesale, sorry. We cannot let Youn Hegelianism overshadow the account of the mature Marx and his theory. Certainly all this (and Marx's role thereof) could be depicted in its own Young Hegelian article. That said, I have not even looked at your additions beyond the changes to the word theory. If you wish for me to give these serious consideration, submitt these here first and the discussion can then move forward in a manner which I approve of &mdash; thus far, your edits are proceeding in a manner I disapprove of, I want to make that clear. El_C


 * I'll take your points in sequence.

1) We do need less-sweeping terms than "theory" because we are trying to refer to a specific portion of that sweeping whole. Specifically, what would you propose we call the portion that most resembles what in any other thinker would be called his metaphysical theory?


 * It is not metaphysical. Those aspects of the theory could be called Philosophy. El_C

2) The title of the article is "Karl Marx," it is not "the mature Karl Marx."


 * In the final analysis, the mature works are more representative of his theory as he saw it. El_C

3) And it is only a very particular school of Marxian studies which draws a sharp distinction between his earlier and latter years.


 * Completely false. It accepted widely amongst non-Marxists, since Marx himself gave credence to the idea. El_C

4) My proposed addition to the material on Hegel's influence has been along these lines: "Hegel was a philosophical idealist who believed that the direction of human history has been from the fragmentary toward the complete and -- inferentially, toward the real. Sometimes, Hegel explained, this progressive unfolding of the Absolute involves gradual accretion but at other times requires discontinuous leaps -- violent upheavals of previously existing status quo. Marx accepted this broad conception of history, although he sought to rewrite it in materialist terms. He believed that Hegelianism stood on its head, and he wished to set it upon its feet."


 * It is a bit too adavanced in that it expects the reader to already be familiar with some of these concepts. How and why he wanted Hegelianism on its feet needs to be better clarified. Otherwise, that's fine. El_C

5) I must say I find your tone rather "vulgar" itself, but I'll try to retain my usual civil tone.


 * My tone is curt, it is not vulgar. What you find it to be is your preogrative. If I repeatedly make intellectually-vulgar edits in an article (let say, about Hegel), I challenge you to maintain the same composure. El_C


 * Your conception of composure sounds a bit like metaphysics, too! but thanks for the guuidance re: "philosophy"! The distinction between the young and mature Marx was mainly the creation of too-hip 1960s scholars who preferred the younger Marx for his concerns over alienation, etc. Most scholars now agree there is more continuity than dis.

Christofurio 01:02, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Heh, to you, it seems, everything is a metaphysic, a word which is an all encompassing ontology, if you will! But you misunderstood me, profoundly. I am not arguing there is more disprity than commonality &mdash; on the contrary! But the term the mature Marx is widely used and the distinction exists in that the theory have yet to be developed, with many important works and concepts to come. When this distinction is employed as a disparity, indeed, it is important to note that few thinkers maintain this, and that those that do, in my opinion at least, don't have a leg to stand on.

Changes I have made to your addition:


 * Marx philosophy is dialectical materialism, historical materialism pertains to aspects of his theory which tend to focus on history (wait that wasn't even you who wrote that, oh well). Other terms could be mentioned later on, philosophically, this is the most pertinent one.


 * Change philosophical idealist (too vague) into epistemological idealist.


 * direction of human history is charactarized in the movement from the fragmentary toward (italics are my additions to the sentence).


 * The complete and the realis sufficient, since the terms are presented obscurely enough (which is fine, the reader can venture to the Hegel article to find out about these).


 * Sometimes, Hegel explained, this progressive unfolding of the Absolute involves gradual accretion but at other times requires discontinuous – please consider rewording this: the ordinary reader will likely be confused by what is meant by the absolute (i.e. disambuguation is of little help here). For now, I just added evolutionary and revolutionary to better depict this (quantity-into-quality relationship) dialectic.


 * Violent is less pertinent words than episodal. I do believe this is what Hegel meant by this (i.e. not simply socio-political).


 * Supplanted and wiki'd materialist with historically materialist.


 * I decided to move some sentences around for better logical flow and coherence; likewise some rewording of the first sentence of the next paragraph, some portions of which became superfleous following your addition.

All in all, a good addition. Well done! Let me know what you think of my revisions. El_C

If I could "disambiguate" the Hegelian notion of the Absolute, there would have to be worshipful articles about ME in encyclopedias. Thus far, at any rate, such articles are few. --Christofurio

Marx has already done it. It takes a giant to disambiguate a giant. But at any rate, the qualification you provided is not nearly accessible enough to most readers. So, for now (as I am writing in haste) I reverted back to the original, except I switched from Absolute (disambiguation) into The Absolute (philosophy). El_C

It does, but Marx didn't. One might credit, say, Josiah Royce with disambiguating this aspect of Hegelianism, but that's another matter. --Christofurio 15:30, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

He most certainly did, as did Lenin, but this goes beyond the scope of our discussion here. El_C


 * Lenin's grasp of metaphysical questions was juvenile. His essay on Berkeleyan idealism and the "empirio-critics" was such a shoddy piece of work that any instructor of an undergraduate intro to phil. course would be hard put to it to give it better than a C-. Fortunately, some of his admirers have had the sense to point this out.

 --Christofurio 00:06, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)


 * You and Cyril Smith can use as many strong words and distortions as you see fit, at the end of the day, you fail to clearly explain yourselves – this is because you lack a clear understanding of the material. At any rate, we both seem provisionally satisfied with your addition (which was a good addition) and my changes to it. If we are merely going to waive our polemical swords around, it might as well be outside the article's general talk section. El_C

(Archiving) Not a tactical weapon
That was not the intention, I take exception to the insinuation, sir. As for the question why, exactly for the reasons stated. Do you user: Silverback have any comments to add as to Christofurio's addition? Because I was under the impression that any disputed portions of it (I was the only one disputing it) were resolved; the majority of his addition retained, and he seemed comfortable with my changes to it. Just trying to clear up space, you should refrain from assuming the worse about people. Also, you deleted my response to his last comment, but I, unlike others, will presume it was an honest mistake and not a tactical weapon. El_C


 * I did not delete your last comment, you made it on the other page you created, probably in the same session in which you archived it, since you think you have the recollection of making it here. It is available  at that other page.  The comment that you made there, an accusation of distortions, gave me the apparently false impression (I apologize) that you were using it as a tactical weapon.  Yes, I did not contribute to the discussion, but sense it dealt with Hegelianism, which seems strong in marxism than it was in the latter part of Marx's thinking, I had intended to think more thoroughly about the issues later.  It is not unusual for new people to contribute to discussions days or weeks later.  Archiving does not seem to save disk space anyway, since it is all recoverable from history, and now duplicated in a new place.  So, what is the rush?  That is why your action seemed abrupt and unnecessary.--Silverback 08:59, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Simply for readability. Before I created Archive2, this talkpage was 112KB, the KB-space is indeed not relevant, but it makes it difficult to read because even with the menu, it involves a lot of scrolling. The reason I wished to archive it is because the talk page is still 44KB (above the 32KB maximum recommended – again, the reason for this recommended maximum isn't due to disc space, but is geared towards easy readability/less scrolling). So, now that all the outstanding issues with the addition (issues only I raised: the reason I created this section, to which only myself and chirstofurio participated), and now that the discussion has shifted towards Lenin's Emperio-Criticism book (not so relevant, at least at this point, to the article), I thought I can continue to archive the talk page to bellow the recommended 32KB maximum. Fair enough though about me writing that last comment in the actual archive, I failed to correctly recollect that, so I apologize and retract that last acerbic comment. Also, fair enough with it being seen as abrupt (though as for unecessary, we will see). I asked chirstofurio whether he is comfortable with our discussion here being archived. But to be clear, I am just sick of scrolling (which, again, is why I created Archive2), I have no other motive. In fact, I am rather pleased with the outcome (editing-wise) of the discussion. El_C
 * Yes, scrolling can be a pain, I must dislike it even more than you. I seldom scroll, even on talk pages, I go to history and do a compare from the last point I recollect reading.  This way I see all the incremental changes, and then do searches to get myself to text I want to respond to or see within more context.  This way, I am often unaware of how long a page is, although sometimes subsections get too long for easy editing. 32kB is pretty small anyway even for the articles themselves, many are legitimately more substantial than that I think, and if well organized into sections, can be quite accessible. --Silverback 11:26, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Archiving again, this time with Christofurio's explicit consent. Which is relevant. El_C