From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gwi.net>
Subject: BHA: Essential matters
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 1996 15:02:51 -0500


Oh god, "essentialism."  Sometimes I think it's just a scare word for Things
We Don't Like, whatever they may be.  But as I understand it, the term refers
to at least two different issues, generally but not always seen in
combination or as identical.  1) The idea of inherent natures to things,
including people.  Objects have many properties, but some of them are
secondary or "accidental," whereas others make the object what it is and so
define its essence.  2) The idea that all members of a category (e.g., women)
share at least one fixed property unique to that category: this is the
doctrine that there are natural kinds which can be determined objectively
(positivistically).  Howard, notice that the defense of essentialism you
quoted combines these ideas.

I don't think these two claims are identical (I suspect most posties believe
they are).  Thesis 2 is, I think, increasingly understood as demonstrably
false: categories are human, social constructs, and often are comprised of
members which do *not* possess any one unique set of properties in common. 
However, there are a number of important constraints to our ability to make
up categories (for example, identification of focal colors like "red" is
evidently cross-cultural, whereas non-focal colors like "brown" vary).  The
rejection of Thesis 2 essentialism is, I believe, entirely compatible with
CR; in fact CR probably requires a notion of fuzzy categories.

Thesis 1 is more difficult, mostly because it's ambiguous.  Whether a cat is
skinny or fat, it's still a cat, yes?  A bird with clipped wings is still a
bird, even though it can't fly, no?  A man who eats quiche is still a man,
right?  (Don't answer that!)  I think it's possible to have fuzzy categories
(like these) yet still believe in inherent properties of some sort.  But how
do we define these things?  Is there a set "human nature"?  If the proposed
human nature is an extrapolation from present-day life ("It's human nature to
be greedy and vicious"), I sure hope not.  On the other hand, if we claim
that "humans are social beings," we've asserted an essence of sorts.  In the
latter sense, essentialism is tantamount to realism and is similarly
inexorable.  But a lot obviously depends on what powers, susceptibilities and
so forth we claim are definitive in a real definition of human beings (or any
subcategory).

I think the crucial question to ask regarding Thesis 1 essentialism concerns
the relationship between (a) powers, properties, susceptibilities, etc, and
(b) behaviors and states of affairs.  This is clearly a CR question about the
connection between generative machanisms and actualities.  Positivism seeks
laws about behavioral regularities, and so can easily slide into essentialist
claims that certain behaviors directly express the nature of such-and-such
group of people.  Since CR recognizes that some powers and susceptibilities
may be developed while others may never be manifested, become disabled, etc,
it can reject such analyses.  Moreover, when analyzing the behaviors of some
group or object, CR emphasizes the importance of *interactions* with other
groups or objects, the *conditions* under which they act, and so forth:
behaviors do not and *cannot* arise strictly from within the object ("object"
in the positivistic sense of discrete and observable entities), without
outside circumstances.  This is true even within classical mechanics: our
favorite example, gravity, requires the presence of at least two points of
mass, and they attract each other because *both* have gravitational powers
and susceptibilities.  Likewise, a jack-in-the-box pops up because of its
spring, but what it actually does depends on the strength of local gravity,
the presence or absence of a box outside the toy, etc.  (So, Howard, in the
defense of essentialism you quoted, I think the point about real natures and
necessities is fine, but I question the idea that one can explain something
solely by reference to "its" own nature.)  CR's rejection of closure as a
possibility in the social world strengthens this point.  So I would argue
that CR is "essentialist" in the (narrow) sense of (a), but completely
anti-essentialist in the sense of (b).

Thus, for my money, the proper answer to people who charge CR with
essentialism is to ask them what the hell they're talking about.  Chances are
they don't know, and don't distinguish between structures, events, and
experiences.

Other stuff: Howard, when I wrote that "transitive/intransitive is really
perspectival," I meant exactly what you meant in writing that "the activity
of science is transitive, but ... science as an object of study, as in the
sociology of science, is an intransitive object."  From the perspective of
*doing* science, science is transitive; from the perspective of *studying*
science, it's intransitive.  Hans--your suggestion that this question of
perspective actually concerns an existentially real ambiguity is interesting;
I'll have to chew on it.

It would be good for us to keep making forays into left scholarship, such as
the Socialist Scholars conference.  As for a journal, I think we should
discuss the idea some more.  The one Howard mentioned sounds like it may be
defined too narrowly: for example, I'd hesitate to send work I do in cultural
theory there.  And the title gives no clue about CR: we could think about
something brassier.  We might consider an on-line journal (but I'll admit
that I'm dubious about their value).  Anyway I think there are some options.

In the meantime, we might also think about developing a CR Web site.  I
discussed this briefly with Hans D at the end of the conference.  There are
lots things we could do with Web pages--give brief explanations of major
issues, have a link to the Bhaskar-list archive, directions for joining the
list, info about CR conferences and panels at conferences, etc.  (Now what
*I'd* like is to have a picture of Bhaskar, and if you click it, you'll hear
Bhaskar reading his award-winning world's worst sentence!)

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-gwi.net
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce


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