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