Reviews for The Scholastic Philosophy Considered in Its Relation to Christian Theology: In a Course of L...

The average rating for The Scholastic Philosophy Considered in Its Relation to Christian Theology: In a Course of L... based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-08-17 00:00:00 Steven Dornacker Marx and Engels frequently complained about the empiricist tradition and its influence especially on the English speaking people (Engels has a funny little chapter in Dialectics of Nature about it, for example). Pilling here sets out to destroy the positivist distortions and misreadings of Capital (and Marx's crtique of political economy in general) that have only become more frequent after the death of the founders of Marxism. To this end he relies primarily on the work of Rosdolsky, Ilyenkov (who's influence permeates the entire book, even when he's not directly referred to), Rubin and importantly Lenin's studies of Hegel (it is a pity how little use Marxists have made of them still). In the course of this book Pilling does a good job of explaining Marx's method (he makes the limitations of classical political economy (its empiricism) and how Marx was able to overcome it thanks to dialectical materialism very clear), the commdity form and its contradictions from the most simple to the most complex and mediated and especially its intimate connection to commidity fetishism (here he relies on Ilyenkov and even more so on Rubin). Along the way he polemicizes a fair amount, like every good Marxist book does. His targets are Althusserian readings, a bit on the Straffa guys and Neo-Keynesians like Joan Robinson (here he often relies on Rosdolsky), Sweezy and Baran, etc.. Sure enough there will be a fair amount of stuff people will disagree with (he would have failed if it were not so). It's too bad that he was a Trot (at one poit he praises Trotsky as a great dialectician which can only seem unwillfully funny to anyone who's familiar with what a shit dialectician he actually was, as Lenin already pointed out), so there's some (not a lot) typical whining about super-villain Stalin. Kind of a waste that such a powerful thinker wasted his life away on Trotskyism. Dense as a motherfucker and very illuminating.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-06-11 00:00:00 Hakon Nottveit Review forthcoming, but it's the best book on Marx's critique of political economy produced to date with virtually no competition. As another review states, it's dense as a motherfucker, so it's going to take some time to get a worthwhile review out, I just wanted to go ahead and give this my full endorsement!