Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 09:44:17 +0100
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
From: Socialist Future Group <sfg-AT-sfuture.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: DCR2


Reply to Gary's post of 3.0.16.

I seem to have missed reading DCR part 1.... when was that posted? Was
it a long time ago? 

Too tied up just this moment to do justice to your important
contribution and being new to the discussion group, I can't comment. But
hope to do so in future.... Just to let you know yours is a refreshing
approach! 

In message <3.0.16.19970615122457.3cc7fba0-AT-pop.qut.edu.au>, Gary
MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au> writes
>Reading DCR: Part 2
>
>I] Introduction
>
>The imperatives of academic life have caught up with us here at QUT in a
>rather brutal way but we are still struggling through the Introduction.
>Jeezuss alone knows when or even if we will get this book finished but we
>are deriving considerable satisfaction out of the close reading of the text.
>
>This post concerns section 6 on the Hegelian dialectic.  A major problem is
>that none of us are philosophers and so we simply do not have the
>background to judge and respond to Bhaskar's reading of Hegel. Perhaps
>someone else on the list can help us here.
>
>II] On the sources and General Character of the Hegelian Dialectic (DCR:
>15-22) : Section 6
>
>Firstly the rather commonplace observation that to use the word "dialectic"
>at all is to sound distinctly unrespectable.  I still remember a colleague
>who taught philosophy at the then College smiling indulgently at a paper I
>wrote in the 70s about the dialectics of the Strong State in Queensland.  
>
>Bhaskar however has revived and substantially redefined the term.  He
>begins by telling us that for Hegel the dialectic is how reason operates
>and it is also the motor force that drives reason on.  There are it seems
>two sources for the dialectic.  The first and best known is Zeno of Elea
>which gives us the Eleatic component of Hegel's dialectic.  There is also
>an Ionian tradition. (:17)
>
>Firstly the Eleatic tradition.  (BTW there are remarks here (:15) about
>Zeno's paradoxes and Eleatic cosmology which I do not even begin to
>understand. As is so often the case in DCR, they serve not to illustrate
>but to demoralise the uninitiated.  It is important though not to be side
>tracked.)
>The principal feature of the Eleatic component of the dialectic is the
>notion of "conversational interplay and exchange, involving the assertion,
>contradiction, distinction and qualification of theses" (:16)  
>
>When attempting to give my students some sort of hold on the concept of
>dialectic I ask them to think of "dialogue". Dialectic then is two elements
>in conversation/argument/dispute with each other.
>
>There follows in DCR a little potted history of the fate of the dialectic :- 
>
>with Socrates/Plato the dialectic is regarded as the supreme method;  
>with Aristotle its prestige declines and we get the beginning of the
>analytical versus dialectical reasoning distinction, where dialectical
>reasoning is seen as inferior;  
>this is carried on in Kant who also leaves us with a world which is
>dominated by a series of key splits which cannot be resolved unless through
>Aesthetics. Some of the splits mentioned are knowledge and thought,
>knowledge and faith, theory and practical reason, duty and inclination,
>this world and the next. (:17) 
>
>However for Bhaskar what is really important is what happens to the
>dialectic after Kant. Hegel includes a second strand drawn from the Ionian
>idea of dialectic as an automatic self generating process. This is the
>aspect of the dialectic that Marxists such as Brecht turned to when
>confronted with the monstrosities of Nazism or that I take up when in my
>cups (occasionally) I refer to the dialectic as "remorseless" and express
>the hope that I will live to see it bite the powerful on the arse.  This
>use of the dialectic is fine as aesthetic consolation but it rather tends
>to negate the concept of agency.
>
>The Ionian strand has two forms.  It consists of the descent from the
>perfect higher reality to the imperfect actuality, or the ascent from the
>imperfect to the higher perfect form.  So with Hegel we begin with the
>perfect Idea or Absolute.  Then this is imperfectly realised and the trick
>is to see how the dialectic will somehow get us back to the perfect Absolute.
>
>Bhaskar next gives us the three basic keys to Hegel's thoughts.  these are
>1. spiritual monism, 2. realised idealism and 3. immanent teleology
>
>1. Spiritual Monism
>
>Monism is a general name for those philosophies which deny the duality of
>matter and mind.  Marxism dissolves the duality on the matter side whereas
>with Hegel's system the duality is replaced by a spiritual or idealist unity.
>2. Immanent teleology
>
>For "immanent" substitute internal.  Teleology has of course to do with
>goal or end.  With Hegel the entity x has within it at the beginning its
>ultimate goal or destination. How this can be reconciled with change or
>development I am not at all clear.  But as I understand him one of
>Bhaskar's key criticisms of Hegel is that his dialectic does not allow for
>change or emergence.
>
>The following quotation from Hegel makes clearer, I think, what Hegel means:-
>
>"The bud disappears in the bursting forth of the blossom, and it may be
>said that the one is contradicted by the other;  by the fruit, again, the
>blossom is declared to be a false existence in the plant, and the fruit is
>judged to be its truth in the place of the flower.  These forms not only
>distinguish themselves from one another, but likewise displace one another
>as mutually incompatible.  But the transient and changing condition
>converts them into moments in an organic unity in which not alone do they
>not conflict, but in which one is as necessary as the other; and this very
>necessity first constitutes the life of the whole." (in Rogers, A.K. A
>Student's History of Philosophy, New York: MacMillan, 1963:409-10)
>
>A key problem in translating such a view of the dialectic from the natural
>into the social world is surely that there is a tendency to see everything
>as pre-planned.  In this way of thinking the current social formation can
>be viewed as the logical and necessary end or outcome of previous social
>formations and so we can arrive at the "end of history" thesis. Bhaskar by
>contrast argues for the radical openness of the social and so avoids making
>the kind of conservative conclusions that are implied in the Hegelian
>dialectic.
>
>Bhaskar next introduces a dialectical figure - "constellational identity".
>Here in the case of two terms one of them (the major) "over reaches
>envelops and contains the other term (the minor).  I think that this is a
>very interesting way to escape certain dualistic traps.  Bhaskar gives the
>examples of causes and reasons.  In stead of seeing these as opposed
>reasons can be contained with causes.
>
>If in Cultural Studies we take the very vexed instance of the clash between
>the subjective and the objective we might be able to argue that
>"constellational identity" helps us resolve the endless arguments about the
>possibility or otherwise of objectivity.  Here the objective would over
>reach, envelop and contain the subjective, and thus act as a guarantor of
>the possibility of the subjective.  Subjectivity after all has to be about
>something. Just as if there is no truth there can be no lies, so if there
>is no objectivity there can be no subjectivity.
>
>Bhaskar now gets to the Hegelian dialectic proper.  I will try and make a
>more general summary here (:19-22) rather than follow him paragraph by
>paragraph.
>
>Within the Hegelian system we have
>
>1. Pre- reflective understanding.  
>
>This is the "reasonableness of ordinary life which tolerates contradictions
>without finding anything problematic about them".(:21) In many ways it
>parallels the Gramscian notion of "common sense".  Gramsci described this
>as :-
>
>"the 'philosophy of non-philosophers' or in other words the conception of
>the world which is uncritically absorbed by the various social and cultural
>environments in which the moral individuality of the average man in
>developed." ( Hoare, Q & Smith, G. N. (eds) Selections from the Prison
>Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, New York: International Publishers, 1971 :419)
>
>It should be noted here that for Gramsci "common sense", though incoherent
>and fragmentary, is still a kind of philosophy and it does contain what he
>calls a "healthy nucleus". (:328) This is the recognition for the necessity
>to control the passions and give a "conscious direction to one's
>activities." (:328)
>
>For my purposes the notion of PRT is a very useful insight. Pre-reflective
>thought is what I like to think of as the defence mechanism of the organism
>- the source of bad faith if you like.  We exist in this state for most of
>the time and we attempt to return to it as soon as possible, largely
>because the price of agency/freedom can be very high. To put this another
>way pre-reflective thought is a bad way of resolving theory-practice
>inconsistency.
>
>I line the notion of pre-reflective thought up with reflective thought and
>then meta-reflective self-totalising thought and use this as a means of
>critiquing whether a particular documentary film helps us get to the truth
>of the problem field it is addressing or whether it is facilitating the
>resurgence of pre-reflective thought.
>
>To get from  Reflective thought to Understanding we have the ro(r) transform.
>
>2. Understanding
>
>This is an advance on 1 (PRT). Rogers defines Understanding as "the mental
>temper which insists upon taking things in their isolation, which cannot
>see more than one side of a truth at a time, and which will always have it
>either that a thing is so or that it is not so without compromise or
>limitation..." (op cit:409)
>
>As Bhaskar puts it Understanding is analytical thought.
>
>3. Dialectic. This is the process and method which get us beyond
>Understanding.  Bhaskar here is careful to insert the notion of agency.
>Thus we have the dialectician ans an observer and then a commentator. The
>dialectic process is dividing into two.  First is the sigma (s) transform.
>Here the dialectician discovers contradictions, anomalies or inadequacies
>in the category. 
>
>Second is the taf(t) transform.  In this case the anomalies etc are
>resolved and the category is folded into Reason.
>
>3. Reason. 
>
>Bhaskar has a very good sentence here (!) which I feel precludes for once
>the need for paraphrase :-
>
>"Dialectical...thought grasps concepts and forms of life in their
>systematic interconnections, not just their determinate differences, and
>considers each development as a product of a previous less developed phase,
>whose necessary truth or fulfilment it...is; so there is always some
>tension, latent irony or incipient surprise between any form and what it is
>in the process of becoming." (:22)
>
>4. Post-philosophic Wisdom (PPW) 
>
>This is the state we reach after the dialectic. It entails a "return to
>life". Bhaskar posits an epsilon (u) transform between Reason and PPW. The
>diagram on page 22 is puzzling here. (Surprise, surprise!) What does the
>dotted line mean as opposed to the full line?  How can we return or slip
>back into Pre-Reflective thought (PRT) if we have been through the
>dialectic?  Shouldn't there be some notion here of a spiral or an accretion
>of wisdom?  
>
>On page 27 Bhaskar does say that "Linear radical negation...is clearly
>untypical." and much of his critique of the Hegelian dialectic is indeed
>over its linear nature. Moreover in Section 9 he radically transforms the
>picture set out in fig 1.1 p 22.
>
>My own thoughts are that the notion of wisdom is a useful counter to
>conservative thought to the extent that it indicates another moment of
>stratification.  If we look for instance at the absolute mess that nuclear
>scientists have left us with, we can see that there is indeed a very good
>case for making a distinction between knowledge (Understanding or Reason)
>and Wisdom.
>
>III] Signing Off
>
>So much for section 6. Only 363 pages to go.
>
>Chris Butler of the QUT group will tackle a summary/commentary on 7 & 8.
>And section 9 should enable us to get the Introduction into a coherent
>perspective.  Hopefully it will not detain us too long. 
>
>Thanks to Colin for the response to the first post.  What did Ruth or John
>think?  Who else is reading DCR with us? It would be great if we could get
>someone from the list to read a particular section and write up a response. 
>
>
>
>
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