[Marxism] why did Marx reject moral?

[James Daly]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Calvin Broadbent" <calvinbroadbent at hotmail.com>
To: <marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 1:33 PM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] why did Marx reject moral?


: James- does this mean that you uphold Aristotelianism in the natural
: sciences?
********************

Calvin -- 

There is no such thing as Aristotelianism in the natural sciences, and 
I only spoke of an Aristotelian *understanding* (i.e. realist 
*philosophy*) of science (seeing it as the discovery of essences 
behind appearances) such as that of Roy Bhaskar.
Russell Keat and John Urry's *Social Theory As Science* is a realist 
understanding of Marx's science, such as I think Marx indicated in 
rare passages.
Patrick Murray's "Enlightenment Roots of Habermas' Critique of Marx" 
in *The Modern Schoolman* 57 (1979), reprinted in the the worthwhile 
*Marx*, edited by Scott Meikle (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, 461-84, 
shows that Marx did not presuppose Cartesianism.
Realism is a countercurrent to mainstream and popular understanding of 
science which is empiricist and positivist and mechanistic.  It is 
waterproof against post-modernism.
As far as I can see, an Aristotelian approach to psychology would be 
infinitely more adequate than mechanistic approaches such as 
behaviourism.  For that matter, I think medieval psychology was pretty 
insightful -- but that's another project.

-- Comradely, James