[AS]

Greetings,As a newcomer to this site I start this with the intention of not blundering in with a Berlin Wall of text – which  believe me – will take an uncharacteristic degree of self control which may not last  //make that 'will not last'I will simply first say that I am encouraged and thank the hosts for a space which allows so many topics to be explored more fully: because of this there is the possibility of sequential progress even in disagreement.I have spent many hours reading yesterday and today.***40 years ago Marx's Material Conception of History the premises for this, the radical basis for cutting through the overgrowth of of all previous 'off the world' starting points of the philosphers,moralists, theologians and starting with 'man, real man on this earth breathing in and out' ..reasonably swiftly after all manner of 'hi falutin' (mis)education gave me a veritable swiss army knife of a tool which still never seems to fail me in cutting through the jungle of Bourgeois chaos.Now I mean Marx's Materialist Conception of History: not the various what I call 'Daily Mail' misrepresentations of it (and even in Left Communist mileux it seems that there are those who – even unwittingly – accept such)****Speaking of 'ghosts' et alia above:Only now, after having considered four moments, four aspects of the primary historical relationships, do we find that man also possesses “consciousness,” but, even so, not inherent, not “pure” consciousness. From the start the “spirit”  is afflicted with the curse of being “burdened” with matter, which here makes its appearance in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short, of language. Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men,[A] and for that reason alone it really exists for me personally as well; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men.Now leaving for later the distinction necessary between 'consciousness' as used here to 'ground' Hegel's 'pure' consciousness (german: 'reines' as in 'immaculate' as in 'immaculate conception') and many other uses, I always smile at Marx's almost compassionate snipe at Hegel that alas! 'Spirit' from the very beginning was 'burdened' with 'matter' ( all the inverted commas are Marx's AS)The radical re-write of all former 'assumed' starting points is specifically making the fundamental and radical shift in clarity that 'consciousness' is no more and no less than 'their' or 'our' consciousness : it isn't 'up there ' waitng to be attained by some philosphical astronaut. :@}Just a quick wildcard about 'matter' with no agenda here: the Tibetan Buddhist teaching (and for Buddha there was only one 'science') is of 'interdependant arising':The classically useed example being: You see a rainbow: it appears to be 'really' there: oh…..now it isn't….er…AS

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