Pill Pod 190 - Althusser against Humanism
Added 2024-11-16 01:58:36 +0000 UTCWe read Althusser's Marxism and Humanism, an Essay from his 1965 collection "For Marx" in which he declares the two fundamentally incompatible. We didn't make it far into the essay because we were having terminological disputes, but we shall return in finer detail soon.
Find the paper attached!
Comments
Althusser’s second autobiography informative on this incident. Also, Burroughs killed his wife. Althusser born 1918, Lacan 1901. Deleuze 1925. Maybe ask Victor what he means by ‘story’ since he uses it in just about every sentence he speaks.
Zachary Manenti
2024-12-08 17:40:05 +0000 UTCIkr how doesn’t he understand that human nature assumptions are different from observable functions? Still, tbf he was correct in saying that Pills is projecting his level of intelligence and education onto a largely willfully ignorant mass.
anacidcommie
2024-12-02 13:57:24 +0000 UTCCould it simply come down to Method vs sentimentality?
Khemith
2024-11-25 22:03:37 +0000 UTCYeah, the -Schaft particle does denote a kind of system
Florian F.
2024-11-24 21:18:07 +0000 UTCVictor needs to speak less!!! 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼 Omg this one is just unlistenable… what an idiot
Das Boy
2024-11-23 03:40:50 +0000 UTCOnly scientists and nihilists have the obsessive self-criticism necessary to kill a hero from within
Alex B
2024-11-22 10:04:28 +0000 UTCThe German word for "science" doesn't align in an exact way with the Anglo word, which usually refers to empirical science. In the German sense, "Wissenschaft", it refers mostly to a system of knowledge.
Matthew B.
2024-11-22 02:15:18 +0000 UTCIt’s not that they deny any human experiences, it is that they affirm experiences which are in-human in the traditional sense. In the sense of becomings which are inhuman as deleuze would say
Guillermo Garrido-Lestache Vidal
2024-11-20 13:04:38 +0000 UTCWhat would be an example of an experience they deny?
Khemith
2024-11-20 09:39:38 +0000 UTCYou cannot escape the human perspective by being psychotic. The body produces the "human" as a matter of ontology. What they escape is our ability to interrogate them. Capitalist logic goes beyond human perspective and yet was a human perspective at one point.
Khemith
2024-11-20 09:37:46 +0000 UTCGood point. Determining "essence" is not what science does anyway.
Khemith
2024-11-20 09:33:09 +0000 UTCI used to watch Alex Jones alot, esp before he went MAGA. The thing that Alex Jones presents is a feeling of being on the right track. That the system is against us. It doesn't have a class appearance because it has been stripped from us. Jones is so effective at giving this feeling, because nearly every other media outlet lies to your face. But when Trump ascended he lost what made him fun to watch.
Khemith
2024-11-20 09:26:57 +0000 UTCMarxism to me is the continuation of the word of Jesus and St Paul. But using a scientific (in that it seeks to be reproduceable and empirical) method. So basically a wizard. What was I talking about?
Khemith
2024-11-20 09:22:57 +0000 UTCMaybe it's useful, but I think it's likely misleading. I don't see the problem as being about rare exceptions. I see the problem as over generalizing from a very small data set. To infer somethings nature from it behavior requires you to understand the parameter space basically exhaustively (which is practically impossible). History shows us that humans thought and acted very differently in different times and places. Often when people say things like "humans are utility maximizes" or "humans are self interested" they are really projecting their own narrow conception. Perhaps you could say the animal drives (to eat, reproduce etc) are universal, but I wouldn't go much beyond this.
Alex Shook
2024-11-19 01:39:43 +0000 UTCThat's a fair point. And some of those rules of thumb might be legitimately useful, but it's important to always keep in the back of the mind that they're just that, rules of thumb, in order to not be surprised by some black swan event that disproves them.
Sabataí
2024-11-18 21:20:29 +0000 UTCI think that most infowar consumers believe at least some aspect of what’s presented by Alex Jones. Victor is correct. It’s worth remembering that the conspiracy theories of this outlet span multiple areas of interest, presenting an eclectic mix of “just so” stories. These disparate stories are unified by a common set of themes (1. “One world government” usually through the UN, China or WEF, 2. global domination by a small cadre of elites, or “cabal” 3. the idea that “traditional values” are being eroded by this elite.) So long as you identify with these themes, and accept at least one of the mythic “just so” stories, then you will like Alex Jones. This usually makes an audience member more open to other “just so” stories- but not necessarily. Jones will lean into this eclecticism in his audience and emphasize certain conspiracy theories and themes based on what generates buzz. One day the focus might be Covid, another it may be on China and it’s “infiltration” of the US, and yet another be about supposed pedophile rings among the elite (usually Q adjacent if not explicitly QAnon.) Most of his grand themes and conspiracy narratives are cribbed from less popular theorists or older theories, such as Bill Cooper and “Mystery Babylon” (ie the assertion that the global elite follows an ancient, antinomian mystical religious cult that seeks to overthrow Christianity and the US constitution- with elements of this mystical cult being presented in coded messages in mass media, like “2001 A Space Odyssey.”) Longstory short: Jones has a relatively broad conspiracy oriented audience- Jones’s content is unified by theme and common conventions of narrative members of this audience pick and choose what conspiracy theories are presented by Jones- Jones caters to whatever he perceives his audience wants. Since we are often alienated and feel powerless in modern life, people affirm their own experiences through Jones’s stew of mythic just so stories (missing the actual causal or material relations that produce their alienation even as they feel assured in their own false insight.)
Isaac Suárez
2024-11-18 07:19:02 +0000 UTCI come from a science background, and in my understanding there is a pretty straightforward distinction between function and nature. Function is context dependent. An object can function in different ways in different contexts because its behavior is necessarily involves interactions between the object at its environment. The nature of a thing is internal to it and definitionally true. When we say the change of an electron is 1.602e-19 C and its mass is 9.109e-31 kg, we mean that any particle that does not have these properties wouldn't be an electron by definition. To speak about human nature is tricky because you would either need to study it in a vacuum (impossible and not useful), or identify the features of humans that are universally true (see problems with induction). Possibly this doesn't exist. The things people call human nature are much more like "rules of thumb" or "tendencies" I think.
Alex Shook
2024-11-16 19:46:23 +0000 UTCI like Jerry Cohen's comments regarding the scientific status of Marxism, first that it was bad that the name Marxism stuck more than Scientific Socialism, and second that the whole Hegelian inspired dialectics were a perfectly suitable method for the social sciences in Marx's day and age, but if Marxism aspired to be scientific it should be willing to let go of methodologies that prove themselves outdated. I'm sometimes with Victor struggling with the idea of Marxism being so scientific, especially when sticking to the dialectical method. Sure, I think it's an interesting lens to analyze and reflect about social and economic phenomena, but I believe it lacks the explanatory power expected from a scientific methodology. Yeah, in the end it's all ideology, but there are methods that are more useful than others to achieve our goals in the end of the day.
Sabataí
2024-11-16 17:58:14 +0000 UTCPsychotics escape the human perspective on a daily basis. I feel like your collective neuroticism stops you from considering other experiences of reality. I’ve noticed it now on several of your episodes.
Guillermo Garrido-Lestache Vidal
2024-11-16 10:09:07 +0000 UTC@ minutes 54:00 Where's Althusser? This is housewives season x. Yes, it is reductive analysis. Nature of knowledge as being a reductive method is a right judgment. Like I hear often this podcast, Marx's text is not Marxism, Victor is talking about -ism of the human, an ideological position. Don't you think Althusser pushes the Marxist thesis into a post-humanist direction, hence the trouble in reconciliation? @ 1:08 Yes, this whole fucking podcast is built on ideology, including scientific investigation in a way. I hope there's a method to madness. Science as rational vs the hypothetical object called things, man being one interesting entity in the collection. There are courses in universities called 'home-science' which tells you how many spoon of sugar would make your partner happy the given day. A living endeavor indeed.
Mrityunjay Awasthy
2024-11-16 03:33:28 +0000 UTC
