Re: "Ideas have a life of their own" (Origin of Quote?)

From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Sun 07 Mar 2004 - 10:38:06 GMT

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    ----- Original Message ----- From: "Keith Henson" <hkhenson@rogers.com>
    > "In none of these cases was there any likelihood, as the Chicago
    > Tribune noted, of the actors in life having read the books they were
    > spiritedly staging. "Ideas have a life of their own," the Daily News
    > interviewer tentatively ventured, but he may have been surprised as G.K.
    > "agreed heartily" in the words, "I am no dirty nominalist." "

    Keith,

    " It may be an illusion to believe that ideas are the esssence of social life; but it is not an illusion to believe that they are relatively autonomous of it, since this is itself a material fact with particular social determinations . "

    Terry Eagleton, Ideology, An Introduction 1991 page 75.

    He says this in relation to what Marx (1818- 1883) and Engels ( 1820- 1895) had to say. They don 't say that ideas have a life of their own, not at least in so many words but I am pretty sure that if we read Das Kapital ( Marx) and the communist Manifest ( Engels/ Marx) in German that references to the quote will pop up.

    So, in essence the idea/ assumption that " ideas " had a life of their own was pretty much part of the social discourse ' round that period...thus even before your 1910. Or is that too much too far from the intented search....

    Regards though,

    Kenneth

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