Rousseau

1
Lecture

• Rousseau Marxism

2
Enlightenment versus Romanticism

• Kant on Enlightenment Mans emergence from his
  self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the
  inability to use ones intelligence without
  guidance from others.
• Romanticism Rejection of reason. Focus on
  intuition, emotion, imagination, and creativity.
  Rejection of industrialized society. Focus on
  nature.

3
Society versus individual

• Rousseau
• Marx

4
Dialectical Materialism

• Primacy of matter.
• Everything is in continual process of becoming,
  ceasing, and changing.
• Contradiction is the driving force of change.

5
Human nature

• 6th thesis on Feuerbach "But the human essence
  is not an abstract idea inherent in each specific
  individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of
  societal relations"
• Alienation Alienation from work. Alienation from
  oneself. Alienation from other human beings.

6
Historical materialism

• It is not the consciousness which determines
  existence it is social existence which
  determines consciousness.
• Different stages of production with capitalism as
  the dominant form to be followed by socialism or
  communism.

7
Social and Political Theory

• State Instrument through which the propertied
  class dominated other classes.

8
Economic theory

• Usage value
• Exchange value
• Surplus value

9
Revolutionary theory

• Class struggle

10
Epistemology

• In the social production that men carry on, they
  enter into definite relations that are
  indispensable and independent of their will,
  relations of production which correspond to a
  definite stage of development of their material
  forces of production. The sum total of these
  relations of production constitutes the economic
  structure of society, the real foundation, on
  which rises a legal and political superstructure,
  and to which correspond definite forms of social
  consciousness. The mode of production in material
  life determines the general character of the
  social, political, and intellectual processes of
  life. It is not the consciousness of men which
  determines their existence it is on the contrary
  their social existence which determines their
  consciousness.

11
Psychology The socio-historical character of
consciousness

• Consciousness is societal product.
• The consciousness of a single individual is not
  just the consciousness of a single person, as the
  consciousness is in connection with the whole of
  society and part of the whole of society.

12
Arguments

• Scientists should study concrete individuals.
• "The formation of the five senses is the work of
  the whole world history"
• In the objectified products of human labor ? we
  understand the nature of humans "One sees how
  the history of industry is the open book of
  human nature, of human psychology"
• "A psychology, for which this book, the sensously
  most tangible and accessible part of history, is
  closed, cannot become a real science with a
  genuine content
• Marx Darwins book on natural selection is "the
  natural-historical foundation for our view"

13
Consciousness and power Ideology

• The mind changes and develops historically, with
  production (labor) being the carrier for this
  development.
• Modes of production are power-laden as producing
  humans not only affect nature but also other
  human beings. They develop relations with other
  humans and production takes place under these
  societal relations.
• "The ideas of the ruling class are in each epoch
  the ruling ideas" and "morality, religion,
  metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their
  corresponding forms of the mind, thus no longer
  retain the appearance of independence

14
Ideology

• Metaphor of a camera obscura to describe ideology
  or false consciousness.
• Conclusion our mind has distorted views of the
  world (as in optical illusions), and our mind
  works upside down (as in the camera obscura).
• "Life is not determined by consciousness, but
  consciousness by life
• Ideas of freedom, education, right "are results
  of bourgeois production and property relations"

15
Methodology

• Non-experimental. Rather philosophical and
  historical.
• Marx projected a monistic view of science "The
  natural science will later subsume the human
  science as the human science will subsume the
  natural science There will be one science."
• Marx suggested a methodology in which one begins
  with active humans in order to understand their
  ideas and imaginations ?scientists must reflect
  upon and study the preconditions that make
  consciousness possible before they enter into
  experimentation.
• Abstraction and analysis.
• Designed a questionnaire for workers.

16
Critical Theory

• Frankfurt School Researchers associated with the
  Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt.
• Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm,
  Herbert Marcuse).
• Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) Traditional theory
  Theory is a sum-total of propositions, an
  enclosed system of propositions, logical,
  mathematical, deductive.
• Critical theory Fights the separation between
  individual and society, value and research,
  knowledge and action. Value Reasonable
  organization of society that meets the needs of
  the whole community. Abolition of social
  injustice.

17
J. Habermas Lifeworld and System

• The symbolic structures of our lifeworld are
  deformed and reified through the steering media
  of the system money and power.
• Money and power regulate the private and public
  sphere.
• Imperatives of subsystems of purposive-rational
  action (labor) invade domains in which
  consensus-oriented communication (interaction) is
  required. Colonization of our lifeworld.
• Experience of power -gt Loss of freedom and
  meaning.

18
L. S. Vygotsky

• Zone of Proximal Development Range of tasks too
  difficult for children to master alone, but which
  can be learned with the guidance and assistance
  of adults or more skilled children.