Karl Seldon's Sagacious Sayings Series -- #2. The 'present-ce' of the Past and the Future in the Present.

Dear Reader,




From time to time, I like to share with you some of the gems of insight that leap from out of the '''multilogues''', among Karl Seldon and other members of the Foundation, and from the transcribed versions, published internally, including of those '''multilogues''' in which I did not happen to participate, once those transcripts are cleared for public sharing by the Foundation's General Council.


Here's a recent such '''jewel''' --



[Karl Seldon]:

"If you describe the 'present-ce' of something present deeply enough, then you will describe not just its present condition, but something of its past condition, and also something of its predictable future condition as well.

I think that this is part of what is implicit in Marx's remarkable methodological mentioning in his Grundrisse, regarding the interconnexion of his version of [Meta]Systematic Dialectics, with his version of [Psycho]Historical Dialectics, as follows --

“...our [F.E.D.:  systematic-dialectical] method indicates the points where historical investigation must enter in, or where bourgeois economy as a merely historical form of the production process points beyond itself to earlier historical modes of production.”

“In order to develop the laws of bourgeois economy, therefore, it is not necessary to write the real history of the relations of production.”

“But the correct observation and deduction of these laws, as having themselves become in history, always leads to primary equations -- like the empirical numbers e.g. in natural science -- which point towards a past lying behind this system.”

“These indications [Andeutung], together with a correct grasp of the present, then also offer the key to the understanding of the past -- a work in its own right which, it is hoped, we shall be able to undertake as well.

[F.E.D.:  alas, not!].”

“This correct view likewise leads at the same time to points at which the suspension [i.e., at which the «aufheben» -- F.E.D.] of the present form of production relations gives signs of its becoming -- foreshadowings of the future.”

“Just as, on one side the pre-bourgeois phases appear as merely historical, i.e. suspended [i.e., as ‘«aufheben»-ed’ or as ‘«aufheben»-ated’ -- F.E.D.] pre-suppositions, so do the contemporary conditions of production likewise appear as engaged in suspending themselves [i.e., in ‘«aufheben»-ating themselves’ -- F.E.D.] and hence in positing the historic presuppositions for a new state of society.”

[Karl Marx, Grundrisse:  Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), translated by Martin Nicolaus, Penguin Books [Middlesex:  1973], pp. 460-461, emphases added by F.E.D.].

-- although, clearly enough, this statement by Marx, both explicitly and implicitly, also goes far beyond my immediate point here. ..."



For Your Continued Cognitive Enjoyment and Expansion!




Regards,

Miguel