File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/bhaskar.9705, message 13


Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 12:40:43 +0100
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
From: COLIN WIGHT <ccw94-AT-aber.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Startingg DCR


Gary,

I don't have my copy of Dialectic here but will bring it in. But some prelim
comments. This is all great BTW, and a real help.



>Section 2. Dialectic: An initial Orientation
>
>Here the plot thickens. Bhaskar distinguishes his dialectic from the
>familiar Hegelian :- thesis - anti-thesis and synthesis triadic dialectic.
>Though one should note that he does not use these terms!  

yes, this threw me at first too.

But this clash of
>opposites leading to transcendence is what one normally means by dialectic.
> So how is Bhaskar's dialectic different?   Well the processes involved in
>Bhaskarian dialectics do not always lead to 'sublation'.  This is a
>difficult word to come to grips with. It is a translation of aufhebung
>which according to my dictionary means in Hegel both to destroy and
>preserve. 

By way of a footnote the Professor in the office next to me is a Hegelian
specialist who doesn't think that sublation does justice to aufhebung. I'm
not sure how he suggests an improvement, but will get back to you.
Apparently Spivak discusses some problems with her translation in the Intro
to Grammtology.

>
>Having established something of what he means by the dialectic
>Bhaskar next deals with types of dialectics.  He lists four types.
>Ontological, epistemological, relational, practical, ethical, aesthetic and
>meta-epistemological dialectics. 

Sorry, you have confused me here doesn't this list add up to 7 not four. I'm
sure this would be clear in the book, but, as I say....

>
>He labels the doctrine of Parmenides as "ontological monovalence" and says
>that the "chief result of ontological monovalence in mainstream philosophy
>is to erase the contingency of existential questions and to despatialise
>and detemporalise (accounts of) being" (p 7). 

What do you think he is claiming here: despatialise and detemporalise?

>
>Some of us in the QUT reading group are interested in the question of the
>"grunge realists".  

Sorry, I don't understand what "grunge realists" means?


>
>b. Bhaskar next deals with three types of negation :- real, transformative
>and radical.  The real contains the transformative which contains the
>radical.  Real negation represents absence.  It has what Bhaskar terms a
>"four-fold polysemy."  I have to confess here that I have been reading and
>re-reading this passage and still don't quite get it.  I do though
>understand that he wishes to use 'absent' as both a verb and an adjective,
>both as a process and a product.  The other aspects of the polysemy are
>process-in-product and product-in-process.

I seem to remember that this did make sense to me when I read it, but as I
don't have my copy in the office I will hold back on comment.
>
>Other interesting aspects of this section are that radical negation
>represents the process of self-emancipation and that we can refer to
>non-being.
>
>The section concludes with a real flurry of 16 synonyms for the verb
>"negate".  I hope he had to consult a thesaurus, but I fear he may not have
>had to.
>
>Section 4
>
>This section deals specifically with the changes to Critical Realism.  I
>think the trick here is not to get over excited.  We now are dealing with a
>four stage/level model. ( At some stage we need to take into account that
>in Plato Etc a firth stage is added.) The levels/stages are termed 1M -
>first moment, 2E -second edge, 3L - third level, and 4D -fourth dimension.
>I do not detect any significance to the choice of the words 'edge',
>'dimension' or 'level'.  What has happened is that CR now deals with
>absence, totality and agency as well as non-identity.

But couldn't it be claimed that these were all, especially agency, already
in CR? Non identity is prefigured in the relation between the transitive and
intransitive; absence in the intransitive yet to be known; and totality is
clearly, at least to me a necessary concept for society. Isn't it better to
say that DCR, more than changing CR deepens and extends it, that is, makes
explicit and develops more fully what was already there? Is this what you
mean by not getting over excited?

  On p 15 we have a
>declaration that science is not a "supreme or overriding value".  

Again, I have always taken this to be the case. Science is not the only form
of knowledge we require to go about our activities. On the contrary it is a
very specific form of knowledge, marked by its explanatory power (I know
some on the list are not happy with my personal reading of what constitutes
scientific knowledge, that is, I argue that what makes a piece of knowledge
scientific is its explanatory potential not some method of its acquisition.)
but this power does derive a special status due to its relationship to
truth, which might be a supreme or overriding value.

 My reaction to Bhaskar's politics here is to jump up and down and
>bellow "moderate", which as some of you may be aware is a serious insult
>among us Irish.

But I am unsure as to why you should be reading this as a form of moderate
politics? To critique a particular form of socialism is not to deny the
possibilty of any form of socialism.

Looking forward to really getting to grips with this.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----

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

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