The Origins of Cultural Historical Activity Theory

1
The Origins ofCultural Historical Activity Theory
Talk by Andy Blunden, April 2010
2
Descartes and Consciousness
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
3
I think, therefore I am!
?
4
Mind/matter Ontological distinction
Subject/ObjectEpistemological relation
Descartes
5
Herder and CultureThe Romantic reaction to the
Enlightenment
Johann Gottfried Herder(1744-1803)
6
God/Nature is Active
Everyone has their Schwerpunkt !
Herder
7
Goetheand Romantic Science
(1749-1832)

• Gestalt

8
Urphänomen
Goethe
9
Hegel(1770-1831)
Subject-Object
Thought-object / Artefact
10
Formation of Consciousness
The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)

• Way of thinking
• Way of Life
• Constellation of artefacts

11
Concept
12
I/Me dialectic
Hegels Idealism
Hegels Psychology
13
Readings

• The full text of this talk can be found at
  http//home.mira.net/andy/works/origins-chat.htm
• Recommended readings are at
• Ilyenkov, E., (2009) Dialectical Logic, The
  Ideal in Human Activity, Erythrós Press and
• Hegel (2009), Hegels Logic with a Foreword by
  Andy Blunden, Erythrós Press.
• Selections from Classical German Philosophy are
  at http//www.marxists.org/subject/philosophy/germ
  an.htm
• Questions and discussion with the author are
  welcome with Andy Blunden ablunden_at_mira.net

14
Marx and Activity

• Part Two of talk by Andy Blunden on the Origins
  of Cultural Historical Activity Theory, April 2010

15
Marxs Critique of Hegel
(1818-1883)
16
Feuerbach and Hegel
17
Theses on Feuerbach
Herder Fichte - Hess
18
Practical-critical Activity
Theses on Feuerbach
19
The German Ideology

• The Real Individuals
• Their Activity, and
• the Material Conditions

20
The Method of Political Economy
The concrete is the concentration of many
determinations ...It appears in the process of
thinking, therefore, as a process of
concentration, as a result, not as a point of
departure, even though it is the point of
departure in reality.
21
Preface to Capital
In bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the
product of labour or value-form of the
commodity is the economic cell-form.
22
The Commodity
23
18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Men make their own history, but under
circumstances given and transmitted from the
past. The tradition of all dead generations
weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the
living. ... they anxiously conjure up spirits of
the past, borrowing from them names, battle
slogans, and costumes.
24
In Conclusion
http//lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Paper/Genealogy-CHAT.htm
25
Readings

• The full text of this talk can be found at
  http//home.mira.net/andy/works/origins-chat.htm
  marx
• The recommended readings from Marx are at
  http//marx.org/archive/marx/works/sw/course/xmca.
  pdf
• Questions and discussion with the author are
  welcome with Andy Blunden ablunden_at_mira.net
• Further reading on these ideas are found in An
  Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity, by Andy
  Blunden