The Origins of Cultural Historical Activity Theory Talk by Andy Blunden, April 2010

Descartes and Consciousness Rene Descartes ( )

“I think, therefore I am!” ?

Mind/matter: Ontological distinction Subject/Object: Epistemological relation Descartes

Herder and Culture The Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment Johann Gottfried Herder ( )

God/Nature is Active Everyone has their Schwerpunkt ! Herder

Goethe and Romantic Science Gestalt ( )

Urphänomen Goethe

Hegel ( ) Thought-object / Artefact Subject-Object

Way of thinking Way of Life Constellation of artefacts The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) Formation of Consciousness

Concept

“I/Me dialectic “I/Me dialectic ” Hegel’s Psychology Hegel’s Idealism

Readings The full text of this talk can be found at Recommended readings are at: Ilyenkov, E., (2009) “Dialectical Logic,” The Ideal in Human Activity, Erythrós Press andErythrós Press Hegel (2009), “Hegel’s Logic” with a Foreword by Andy Blunden, Erythrós Press.Erythrós Press Selections from Classical German Philosophy are at Questions and discussion with the author are welcome with Andy Blunden:

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

Marx’s Critique of Hegel ( )

Feuerbach and Hegel

Theses on Feuerbach Herder – Fichte - Hess

“Practical-critical Activity” Theses on Feuerbach

The German Ideology The Real Individuals Their Activity, and the Material Conditions

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.”

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.”

The Commodity

18 th 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. *

In Conclusion

Readings The full text of this talk can be found at The recommended readings from Marx are at Questions and discussion with the author are welcome with Andy Blunden: Further reading on these ideas are found in “An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity,” by Andy BlundenAn Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity