H O M E E X H I B I T I O N S G A L L E R Y M A N I F E S T O A R T  T H E O R Y L I N K S

ARMANDO ALEMDAR - A DIALECTICAL PHILOSOPHY OF ART CONCLUSION Logic demands attention for Marx's suggestion that Communism would first emerge in the most developed capitalist countries (England was predicted) because communistic elements already exist within the capitalist system and thought must be acknowledged as a part of a dialectical processes of existence and is not to be treated autonomously. If as Hegel believed, life precedes from the Ideal to mankind it is the mature Marx that insisted life growing upwards from mankind towards the Ideal. Mankind and his earthly existence are the products of his concepts and ideas; Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life is what Marx says. “We set out from real active men, and on the basis of their real life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of the life process. The phantoms formed in the human brain, are also, necessarily, sublimates of the material life process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality ,religion. metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence, They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking.”71 How could Marx’s real active man become real? Certainly he did not mean that the material is primary to the Ideal nor could he have meant the opposite. Marx thought thought - he did a lot of thinking himself - integral to our life on earth. For him every human activity is infused with consciousness. Our ideas have to be analysed in the context of our environment. They demand a continuous everyday interaction between thought and matter. Can we assume confidently that there is no such a thing as a progress in art? Yes, must be the answer. Truth is one and universal, forever in motion . A Marxist view would not necessarily refute this idealistic premise. It would seek to situated it within the appropriate ontological conditions. A Marxist wants to know where, when, why and how did this one timeless truth come in to being. A Marxist view would seek to build the material body of life parallel to a spiritual life developing both symbiotically. The two enter into a dialectical process borrowing from each other like the Yin and Yang symbol, twins within a circle. It would be unwise to deny the potential of human action to transform or even transfigure our human predicament. We should instead emphasise that all human activity is a dialectical process between thought and action in the same way that day and night proceed and follow each other. We have not refuted praxis, but analysed dialectically its content and realised that we could work for life itself, not motivated by mammon. Although it has been important to insist on Hegel’s influence on Marx, we have not ignored their divergences and differences. Hegel writing volumes of essays on his philosophy of fine art, aloof in his philosophical tower, believed we could obtain the Idea by thought alone. Marx wanted to take hold of the world and the Idea by striving for it practically. For the material dialectician, Hegel had stripped us to the bone and did not feel constrained by the limitations of ceaseless theoretical contemplation. For art’s sake we have said that Marx agreed with Hegel to the extent that there is an objective meaning in history, and progressive history is our creation. Art is intrinsically involved in mankind and simultaneously detached. Sometimes a mirror, on occasion a catalyst. Is there progress in art. No. Only change. A dialectical process. Copyright@Armando Bayraktari, London 2001 BACK   FORWARD