Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Ideology and Pantheism

One of Marx's important insights is into the Ideological grounds of intellectual systems, i. e. into how class characteristics and interests are encoded as apparently 'universal' and 'eternal'.  For example, while Theory and Idealism express the unconcern of the privileged class with need, Practice and Materialism signify the inescapability of  Labor for underclasses, with the priority of the former two over the latter two the entrenchment of power relations between them.  In other words, the Idealist privileging of Theory over Practice, common to most preceding Philosophical systems, are Ideological, according to Marx.   However, in Spinoza's Pantheism, Understanding and Will are identical, i. e. adequate knowledge is adequate causality, and Mind and Body, aside from an unnecessary digression in book V of the Ethics, are complementary.  Furthermore, the human world is embedded in a more comprehensive Nature, just as it is for Darwin.  So, if there is a latent Ideology in that system that is consistent with Marxist analysis, it is unclear what it entails.

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