Hi Alex,

I haven't heard much from you recently and I miss that. Having found two people here in Melbourne with whom I can discuss philosophy at a high level, has of course made me feel much less isolated - but I still miss hearing from you.

I have deliberately stayed out of the "dialectics of nature" discussion for a while, because I feel that I have learnt a lot out of the discussion, Cyril has, in the end, produced statements on the subject which I find consistent with what I hold, but I know that if I push the matter any future, we are likely to get into an unproductive "circle". I want to pursue my view by means of the project I discussed with you earlier this year - formulating a notion of the development of philosophy since Marx and finding out what the current state of philosophy tells us about the current world political and economic crisis and a way out.

Still, I never responded to your last input, in response to Annette, and I think I owe you that, so here goes:

Firstly, as I remarked to the new Americans joining our discussion, Cyril has said the "last word" on the distance between Hegel and Marx, and likewise your comments on whether Hegel saw a "dialectic of nature" I have to accept as completely correct. As Ilyenkov (among many others) says, Hegel is talking about thought forms, not Nature. And I still find it astounding how "non-dialectical" was Hegel's view of Nature.

But Hegel's discovery has more significance than Hegel thought. Logicians may have different views on the source of logic, of its ontological status. For me, it remains the case that whatever we say about "triangle" we must also say about "negation-of-the-negation".

In a similar vein, "teleology" is not present in evolution other than in the sense you say. However, it is a fact that it is methodologically valid for us to ask "why does the peacock have beautiful tail-feathers?" without implying that their is a Great Architect in the Sky designing Nature.

Further, I question whether we can blandly say "there is no direction in evolution". True, the Positivistic conceptions of Progress most notable in the late nineteenth century are wrong, but evolution is in the strict physical sense of the word: irreversible. Species may "degenerate", and occasionally "revert", but homo sapiens evolving into an ape by adaptation and natural selection is hard to conceive.

While still holding these residual positions in relation to the natural foundations of human thought, I have come to understand through the discussion the problematic nature of this question. Rather than endlessly disputing the Hegel-Marx relation, at the moment, I want to test out the ideas in tackling 20th Century philosophy. In the course of doing this, I will doubtless be driven constantly to revisit the Hegel-Marx question again and again.

I am keeping http://home.mira.net/~andy/txt/know&val.htm up to date as my "working document".

I attach the flyer I am using to advertise the next Hegel seminar. I'm not speaking - I will be operating the tape recorder!

keep in touch

Comradely,

Andy