Suggestions for Topics

 

MARX:

Lawrence Wilde           Marx and Contradiction, Avebury, 1989                                                        sdsu

Ian Hunt                       Analytical and Dialectical Marxism, Avebury, 1993                                      sdsu

Jindrich Zeleny  The Logic of Marx, Rowman, 1980                                                                 sdsu

John Rees                     The Algebra of Revoluton, Rougledge, 1998                                                   sdsu

L. Colleti,                     Marxism and Hegel, NLB, 1973                                                                     sdsu

J. Rosenthal                  The Myth of Dialectics, Macmillan, 1998                                                        ucsd

R. Norman & Sean Sayers       Hegel, Marx, and Dialectic: A Debate, Harverter, 1980

H. Marcuse,                 Reason and Revolution, Beacon Books, date?

A. Schaff,                     "Marxist Dialectics and the Principle of Contradiction," Journal of Philosophy, vol. 57, Issue 7, Polish Number, March 31, 1960.

E. Marquit, P. Moran, W. Truitt, Dialectical Contradictions: Contemporary Marxist Discussions, Marxist Educational Press. Several good articles

Smith, Tony,                 Dialectical social theory and its critics : from Hegel to analytical Marxism and postmodernism, Albany : State University of New York Press, 1993.

 

HEGEL:

Errol Harris                  An Interpretation of Hegel’s Logic, UPA, 1983                                             sdsu

______,                       Formal, Transcendental, and Dialectical Thinking: Logic and Reality, SUNY, 1987, defense of dialectic, attack on formal logic.

G. Mure                       A Study of Hegel’s Logic, Oxford, 1950                                                         sdsu

W. Desmond, ed.,        Hegel & His Critics, SUNY, 1989, has some stuff on logic, reflection.

 

Michael Inwood           A Hegel Dictionary, Blackwell’s, 1992                                                            sdsu

J. McTaggert                A Commentary on Hegel’s Logic, Cambridge, 1910                                       sdsu

J. Burbidge                   On Hegel’s Logic, 1981                                                                                  sdsu.

G. della Volpe,             Logic as  Positive Science, New Left Books, 1980

A. Anthony Smith,        "Hegelianism and Marx: A Reply to Lucio Colleti,: Science and Society, vol 50, no 2, 1986, pp. 148-176

 

 

SOVIET PHILOSOPHY

V. Lenin,                      Philosophical Notebooks, Collected Works, vol. 38, Moscow, 1960             

N. Bukharin                  Historical Materialism, U. of Michigan, 1969 (1921)                          sdsu

N. S. Narskii,               "On Discussions of Contradiction," Soviet Studies in Philosophy, Winter 1965-6, Vol IV, no. 3, pp. 24ff, ucsd

M. Shirokov,                Marxist Philosophy, John Lewis, trans. Left Book Club, 1937.

 

OTHER

S. Kofman,                   Nietzsche et la scène philosophique, 2nd ed., Paris: Galilée, 1986. This does not seem to have been translated, but the material she refers to in F. Neitzsche, The Will to Power, New York:Vintage, 1968, around pages 279-280, and perhaps elsewhere. (look up Aristotle in index). This may well be too short for a paper, but there may be a secondary literature on it, too.

Feuerbach, L., Essay in on Hegel's dialectic in The Fiery Brook, and parts of Principles of Philosophy of the Future

 

  1. Rosental, attacks on Hegel's (and Marx's) dialectic
  2. Della Volpe, chapt 2, a confrontation between Aristotle and Hegel, where Hegel gets the worst of it.
  3. Colletti, critiques of Hegel's logic, kicking Hegel out of Marxism
  4. Smith, replies to Coletti.
  5. Rees, a Trotskite take on dialectics, that is, a left social-democratic view.
  6. Norman & Sayers: A debate over Hegelian/Marxist dialectics
  7. Zelenyi, a scholarly treatment of Marx's logic
  8. Hunt, has papers on analytical treatments of Marx's dialectics
  9. Wilde, treatment of Marx's dialectics, denies the dialectics of nature
  10. Bukharin, a mechanical interpretation of contradiction as the conflict of opposing forces, not an organic unity of opposites. This view was very influential in Soviet philosophy in the 20s. Engels attacks such an interpretation in Anti-Duhring (we will read some of this). B. defends a theory of equilibrium, according to which contradictions tend to die out on their own. B. got this theory from Herbert Spencer's book First Principles, (1860). A number of social theorists assert some form of equilibrium theory for social or biological systems: Dewey, Freud, Piaget, etc. This equilibrium theory was much attacked in Soviet philosophy. Some of this is in English, e.g., Shirokov, Marxist Philosophy. I have translated some of a book by M.M. Rozental that criticizes it, and will type it up if someone wants to follow this line. Ditto for a book by Bukharin that gives further defense of his mechanical view.
  11. Lenin, fragmentary, but very interesting comments on dialectics. Contains his conspectus of Hegel's Science of Logic, with interesting comments. K. Anderson, Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism: A Critical Study, U. Illinois, 1995, studies this.
  12. Schaff has an interesting and comprehensible treatment on Marxist theory of contradiction.
  13. Another Soviet topic is non-antagonistic contradiction, contradiction that can be managed out of existence, similar to Bukharin's theory of equilibrium, an essentially political category. Material on my non-academic web page translates several Soviet sources on this. Marcuse attacks this distinction in his book Soviet Marxism.
  14. Narski: a review of a number of papers in Russian (most are translated in earlier issues of the journal) on the question of whether mechanical motion involves a contradiction, a topic inherited from Zeno via Engels. Worth a look.
  15. Feuerbach: an interesting critique of Hegel's dialectic that had some influence on Marx.

 

More Topics on Contradiction

 

 

1.                  The Dialectics of Nature Controversy: claims that Marx did not intend dialectics of apply to nature, but that this ideas was invented by Engels. Classic sources for this: Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, Merleau-Ponty, Adventures of the Dialectic, Northwestern U. Press, 1973.  The basic idea of all of these is that dialectical development results from the contradiction between subject and object, or put differently, from the contradiction of self-consciousness with itself. It would follow that if atoms are not self-conscious, they can't have contradictions whose resolution leads to new contradictions, etc. A phenomenological approach: R. W. Bologh, Dialectical Phenomenology: Marx's Method, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979, chap 6.

 

2.                  Althusser's attack on negativity in contradiction: E. Balibar, "Structural Causality, Overdetermination, and Antagonism," in A. Callari, and D. Ruccio, Postmodern Materialism and the Future of Marxist Tradition: Esssays in the Althusserian Tradition, Wesleyan U. Press, 1996. The article by Gibson Graham in that book might also work. A. Callinicos, Althusser's Marxism, Pluto Press, 1976, pp. 39 ff.

 

3.                  Analytical Marxist Attacks on Contradiction: J. Elster, Making Sense of Marx, Cambridge U. Press, 1985, Chap I. See also his dismissal in Introduction to Karl Marx, Cambridge U. Press, 1986, p. 34. Response to this: J. McCarney, "Elster, Marx and Methodology," in Analyzing Marxism, R. Ware and K. Nielsen, eds, Univ. of Calgary Press, 1989.

 

4.                  Hegel: M. Hardimon, Hegel's Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation, Cambridge U. Press, 1994. The problem with this is that it talks about conflict, rather than contradiction. Might still work out, however. R. Berki, "Perspectives in the Marxian critique of Hegel's political philosophy," in Z. Pelczynski, Hegel's Political Philosophy, Cambridge U. Press, 1971. 

 

5.                  Adorno: I looked through his Negative Dialectics, trying to find a topic. Problem is, it is too negative. He doesn't seem to see a positive, constructive side of contradiction. Maybe some other book by him is different, but I don't think this one works.

 

6.                  Other Stuff: D. Coole, Negativity and Politics: Dionysus and Dialectics fro Kant to Postmodernism, Routledge, 2000, Chapter 2. B. Ollman, Dialectical Investigations, Routledge, 1993, (look in index under "contradiction")