Скачать или смотреть Siyaves Azeri and Martin Küpper - Reclaiming the Reflection Theory of Truth

During the 20th century two front lines have emerged in Marxism between proponents and opponents of the concept of reflection. “Reflection” was linked to “Eastern Marxisms” in the Soviet Union, as it became a central principle in philosophy, political theory, and scientific methodology. Attacks on “reflection” were seen as attacks on historical socialism. On the other hand, reflection was identified with the physical process of mirroring. Both led to various attempts to refine “reflection” so precisely that it became a concept for “objective activity”, which has its origins in Marx's view of Hegel's philosophy.

Differentiating his materialist dialectical method, Marx states that in contrast to Hegel “the ideal is nothing but the material world reflected in the mind of man” (1992, 102). But “reflection” does not signify forming a mental mirror-image. Conceptualizing “reflection” requires grasping the concept of objective activity and labour and its role in cognition. Labour emerges in human society while at the same time is its constituting condition, that amounts to emergence of knowledge. Therefore, knowledge emerges only in and as the knowledge of social reality. As the purposeful activity of changing reality, labour is the continuous process of mutual transformation of thinking and reality. The objectivity of activity is rooted in the existence of the objective world as the condition and material of objective activity. Activity and thinking as one of its specific forms, is the mode of existence and the manifestation of the contradictory unity of thinking and being. The knowledge of objectivity, the knowledge of its existence as well as other properties of the world of objects is the “reflection” of the ideal as schema of activity in the world and the reflection of the form of objects in the schema of human activity. Hence, reflection signifies opening up to and accessing reality.

Our presentation shows how "reflection" can be seen as objective activity, discussing different approaches from 20th-century Marxist thought (e.g. E. Ilyenkov and H. H. Holz) that tried to interpret “reflection” in a productive manner.