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Summary Of My Main Objections To Dialectical Materialism
Abbreviations Used At This Site
You guessed it, this numpty still thinks that it is appropriate to debate the ontology of the Tractatus in a thread about voter fraud in Tower Hamlets -- except he has now switched his fragile attention to the Investigations (I fear it'll be the Tokyo Telephone Directory next):
I find it sad that Rosa destroys the possibility of Marxists engaging seriously with Wittgenstein (refusing to engage and then posting slander about me on her own website which its not possible to reply to). I have to say that I resent being accused of being somehow responsible for this.
Yes, I am so almighty that I can, with a single flick of my gorgeous eye-lashes, end all discussion of the work of Wittgenstein, right across the planet. Alas for Mr G, I'm now working on the rest of the Solar System.
I would say though, to make a point more important then
this row, that this following passage from the second part of PI aptly describes
what Rosa is actually doing, as well as indicating why engagement with
Wittgenstein is interesting both for Marxists and those engaging with modern
social theory:
'The mind seems able to give a word meaning' -- Isn't
this as if I were to say "The carbon atoms in Benzene seem to lie at the corners
of a hexagon"? But this is not something that seems to be so; it is a picture.
The evolution of the higher animals and of man, and the
awakening of consciousness at a particular level. The picture is something like
this: Though the ether is filled with vibrations the world is dark. But one day
man opens his seeing eye, and there is light.
What this language primarily describes is a picture. What is to be done with
this picture, how it is to be used, is still obscure. Quite clearly, however, it
must be explored if we want to understand the sense of what we are saying. But
the picture seems to spare us this work: it already points to a particular use.
This is how it takes us in. [Spelling corrected.]
Unfortunately my awesome powers do not stretch as far as mighty mouth here, for he, despite my best efforts to prevent all of humanity discussing Wittgenstein, is intent on challenging my cosmic will.
But, why? What is the point of all this pretend interest in Wittgenstein -- a mock concern only prompted by my attempt to show that Wittgenstein's work spells the end of the sort of ruling-class trash to which he has sold his soul?
He is surely not aware of the incongruity of trying to unpick the inner thoughts of Wittgenstein (a fruitless task, I own, for one cerebrally-challenged as he) in a thread about Tower Hamlets and voter fraud. But, any weary soul alighting on this thread will judge him rightly to be the fool he is, just as she will understand why I treat him with such dismissive contempt.
Even this will sail over his empty head, and he will persist. Short of the moderators refusing to allow any more of his aimless ruminations, only American friendly fire can stop him churning out post after post of his randomly-typed prose.
Wait! Is that a cruise missile I hear?
If only...
And he has not yet noticed that no one (not a single visitor to Lenin's good site) has taken him up on his tempting offer to discuss Tractarian Ontology in between the rights and wrongs of voter fraud in a lesser London Borough (indeed, he did similarly loopy things two years ago) --, and even this will fail to register with him, so insensitive have his self-critical faculties become.
[How do I know this for sure? Well, I made somewhat similar points to him two years ago; right over his head they went. In fact, they made him go into waffle overdrive -- Waffle Level Seven, as he sped across his own little universe. His almost monomaniacal desire to advertise to one and all his tawdry witlessness surely rivals that of George W himself.]
Now he opines about my aims without, of course(!), the benefit of actually reading what I have to say, a winsome trait he shares with the vast majority of DM-fans:
What Rosa seems to be doing is presenting us with a set of 'pictures' from Hegel, to the history of modern philosophy. She is furious that anyone might want to explore these pictures (not excluding her own). I think, from the assumptions of modern liberal philosophy to Marxism itself its very important not to spare yourself work and not to be taken in.
It's extraordinary that Rosa presents herself as an anti-dogmatist. To me, and
I apologise if comrades think I'm out of order, Rosa is arguing straight-forward
modern bourgeois philosophy, and her failure in discussions of Wittgenstein to
distinguish between his personal beliefs and his philosophical writings, is
perhaps one reason why she can't adopt a critical stance to the pictures which
she regurgitates (whether these be liberal fairy tales about the modern versus
the traditional, superstition versus rationality, or indeed the Enlightenment
belief that false consciousness was the result of priest craft in the service of
vested interests). [Spelling corrected.]
Yes, there are nothing but pictures at my site; in fact, I will sell that rather nice Monet I have posted (instead of Essay Seven) for $5 to anyone who can tell me WTF this air-head is banging on about.
With no awareness of the spectacle he is making of himself, he then plumbs new depths of irrelevance with this LuLu:
Jonathan Hari today provides the superstructure of which
Rosa (unwittingly) provides the base (i.e., the transfer from philosophy of an
idea about transparency to an idea of social struggles as an a-historical battle
between religion and superstition). The reason ideas are important is precisely
because they can exert a hold on us without our realising they do so.
That's why comrades have a right to engage in philosophical polemic even if the
issues seem initially obscure. They're not. They're quite central to the
problems of our age because, contra Rosa, Philosophy does not only deal with
problems of philosophy. Whatever its self denying ordinances its part of a much
wider circuit of human practices and beliefs." [Spelling corrected.]
Still awake, dear reader? Have no fear! I guarantee there is plenty more on the way from this Inter-Galactic Waffle-Meister.
So, throw those sleeping pills away, and tune in to the voter fraud thread at Lenin's Tomb -- you are never going to need another artificial inducement to nod off with this numpty around.
[But, will Big Pharma put out a contract on him, I wonder?]
Word Count: 1370
Latest Update 22/01/20
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