File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/97-05-14.000, message 21


Date: Thu, 01 May 1997 08:59:14 +0100
From: ccw94-AT-aber.ac.uk (COLIN WIGHT)
Subject: Re: BHA: HAS BHASKAR ADVANCED SOCIAL THEORY & SOCIAL ANALYSIS OF     


Ralph,

On the issue of the label "critical realism" this is not a label coined by
Bhaskar himself, and many within the, for the want of a better phrase,
'Bhaskarite camp' are not happy with it(see Collier's reservations about any
philosophy using the word critical to apply to itself). However, it is a
label that is used, hence, and unless we want to play Humpty Dumpty to Alice
("when I use a word it means exactly what I want it to mean") we are sort of
stuck with it until we have a conceptual discussion about it. This relates
to your other point. You argue:

 The problem is that one remains fixated
>on only the most elementary logical conceptions without
>productively elaborating them.  Suppose we were to endlessly
>debate over the definitions of time and space without ever
>discovering the rate at which objects fall to earth and that they
>reach the ground at the same time, barring wind resistance.  This
>is how I see the debate on methodological individualism and other
>debates conducted so far within the Bhaskarite camp.  I am still
>looking for new developments.

On the latter point. There are many examples of the application of critical
realism to more concrete phenomena. In my discipline Alexander Wendt, now a
major figure in international relations theory, began with an article on the
conceptual problem of the agent-structure issue and has shown how attention
to this issue radically alters the research process, particularly in
relation to how state identies are constructed. In the Collier book, there
are also examples of applied critical realist research. I think it would be
wrong to view all critical realists as orientated only to conceptual
discussion. 

The issue you raise, however, is one that is central to any philosophy that
uses the term 'realism'. John Lovering (a Bhaskarite geographer) took me to
task when he learnt I was planning to do an exclusively conceptual PhD. He
argued that given Bhaskar's insistence on the real, then critical realist
research much show how the abstract relates to the concrete.

So you have a point, but I do not totally agree with you. I also think that
the example you use neglects a central pillar of Bhaskar's philosophy; that
of stratification. And in the example you give one level of stratification
might be that between pure and applied research. You are right _we_ don't
have to endlessly debate over space and time, but somebody does.  And those
concerned with the rate at which objects fall to earth should not really
chastise the conceptual probing of space and time, since how objects fall is
intimately tied up with the conceptual problems. Moreover, the conceptual
probing of space and time can have real empirical payoffs at the level of
the rate of falling objects. Einstein, for, example.

  But the question is: is
>Bhaskar's philosophy supple enough to capture the dynamism of
>philosophy as a social-ideological phenomenon, and not just by
>exposing the duplicitous logical structures of idealist thought.

It seems to me that the two questions are not unrelated. Moreover, I am not
sure if Bhaskar would be a happy to accept the notion of philosophy as
simply a social-ideological phenomenon. Be that as it may, even if he did he
would certainly want to argue that some social-ideological phenomena are
better than others. However you want to describe it, and however
unfashionable such a view might be in the academy today, I don't think you
can get away from the fact that Bhaskar is basically engaged in what he sees
as a truth seeking enterprise. 

And to prove him wrong you one would have to engage his arguments at the
conceptual level. 


>
>I don't know the answer re Frankfurt School.  However, your
>argument is a red herring and has nothing to do with me.  Idealism
>is reactionary because it obscures the truth, not because of its
>political consequences, which can only flow from its falsification
>of reality.

It seems to me these two points say the same thing: the political
consequences flow from the way in which idealism falsifies reality ( is
reactionary because it obscures the truth). 

>The way to destroy postmodernism is to attack its very historical
>roots.  It is necessary to go back to the foundations of
>lebensphilosophie and hermeneutics and expose their lies, and
>postmodernism will come tumbling down as a consequence. 

This may be a necessary condition but is it sufficient? It is also massively
question begging, insofar as before we start attacking something we had
better examine its truth claims (anyone who knows me will know how strange
it is that I should be found defending postmodernism).

 Right now I am reading a little-known but
>instructive book called CRISIS CONSCIOUSNESS IN CONTEMPORARY
>PHILOSOPHY by Andras Gedo, which though issuing from the Stalinist
>camp, effectively trashes the entire history of both positivism
>and lebensphilosophie, while suggesting their ultimate
>interdependence as outgrowths of bourgeois culture.

There are, of course many roads to Rome, but you can find much the same
analysis in Bhaskar's Plato etc., and Dialectic to a certain extent.


>
>In sum, my aim is to expose how and why reality is falsified and
>where the corrupt delusions of bourgeois intellectuals come from.

This sounds like Bhaskar himself.

>Marketing an unoriginal philosophy under the name of "critical
>realism" (authored by somebody who intentionally writes unreadable
>prose) in the academic marketplace and engaging in microscopic
>professional debates on methodological individualism does not move
>me.  

That is fair enough, and a pefectly reasonable position to hold, but I take
it you are not suggesting that if microscopic professional debate does move
someone they should desist and research something that does move you. Just
as I would not suggest that regardless of whether such debates move you or
not you should engage in them.

Thanks,


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Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA

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