Several Questions From the Massif Idiot put to the Learned
Can anyone who knows this material confirm/deny/enlighten me/my reading of this point:
Zizek's use of the formulation/logic of "les non dupe erant" (the words are Lacan's) speaks to the same point (even precisely?) as the Marxist/Neo-Marxist (?) formulation "correct false consciousness."
2. When Lenin/Stalin give the decision between idealism and materialism as the fundamental choice of philosophy is it that materialism means that the metaphysical discussion concerning essence/existence is nullified/made obsolete and that "what you see is what you get" is therefore the given state of materialist epistemology? If so are we to understand this to imply finitude and also the possibility of attaining an absolute empirical/inductive knowledge base (extending even of the universe as a whole?)
3. When we read in wikipedia's Jacques Alain Miller page "After having read everything Lacan had thus far published, he asked him, "Does your notion of the subject imply an ontology?" and an entente was made with him." What is then the answer? At a basic level is one to understand psychoanalysis to have taken up (at least in some sense) the metaphysical discussion (adding the 'gravity' of positivism/empiricism) in a way (at least somewhat) analogous to the transition alchemy/chemistry, astrology/astronomy or, for the sake of confusion/mumps, philosopher(non-Hegelian:))/scientist?
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1) No, it's not the same point. See the quote aboutcommodity fetishism
2) Lenin in his MAEC and Engels in some places, did claim materialism was 'what you see is what you get', i.e. a reflection theory of perception. Marx never did (I can't discuss here the problems with a reflection theory of perception).
But in Lenin's MAEC there is also a defense of a correspondence theory of knowledge, and that's what the book's prime focus is on. This theory IS valid and was the one held by Marx. The problem with Lenin was that he mixed the two theories. If you want to know more on this point you raised, this review of David-Hillel Rubin's 'Marxism and Materialism: A Study in Marxist Theory of Knowledge' is helpful. On that site there are also some good extracts from the book.
Lukacs after he wrote HCC, also accepted (Lenin's) correspondence theory of knowledge, with honest conviction.
Yes, the decision between idealism and materialism is the fundamental choice of philosophy.
3) Yes, Lacan's psychoanalysis strives to be a science, though one problem it faces is that the unconscious does not seem to exist.