Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 05:16:11 -0400 (EDT)
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: BHA: new dialectics and CR


Ralph, it is certainly for the best we leave Althusser aside.  He is by no
means of any great interest for me, nor necessarily this list.  And since
this was not your main contention, lets not bother with such a debate on this
forum.

Your concern over words like naturalism, realism and critical realism are
very superficial.  This also has little concern for me, i could once again
restate where this hybrid term "critcal realism" comes from, but i have
already stated specifically to you a number of times and won't repeat it now,
but it did not come from Bhaskar himself.  With respect to your other
critiques of Bhaskar, well pick up a text, read him and make your own call!
 But there are much more interesting critiques of Bhaskar and critical
realism then the shallow whinning about how difficult he is to decipher,
especially Ralph, for someone who is rehearsed in Marxian philosophy.

Now, more interesting concerns Marx.  Yes i am saying that Marx did not, and
does not offer all the answers, espeically in method and philosophy of
science.  First, Marx himself relied heavily one Hegel, and i know how
suspect you are of Hegel.  Second, Marx was never, and i mean never explicit
about his mode of presentation, let alone his method, just determining what
Marx in fact was up to methodological  has taking over 120 years to begin to
piece together.  But determining what exactly were Marx's philosophical
commitments toward the production of knowledge and the process of science may
never be know, Marx himself my not have been all together clear about this
himself.

So, again as a naive snot nose academic, i believe more contemporary
philosophy and history of science has added *something* to the work of Marx,
incredible possibility ... surely it is my flirtation with post-modernism
which has led me astray.

Less sarcastic, Marx does very much seem to adopt the categories of political
economy and re-orders them, i think Smith is correct about this, although he
is certainly not the first to understand simply this.  What Smith's
contribution is, is to show how closely Marx mode of presentation is to
Hegel's book of essence in Logic.  I am suspect about this, i mean toward
Marx, at least methodologically.

Now, once again more sarcastic, it is not simply my "overestimation" of
Althusser, nor merely my "highfalutin though unsubstantiated claims" of
critical realism, but this text, actually a three ... well actually more like
a six volume set (counting *Theories of Surplus Value* ) a text called
*Capital* which i am using to try and understand Marx and his philosophical
commitments.  Certainly my commitments toward critical realism have
influenced by interpretation, nonetheless, at least i know what is to be
found within the text of *Capital*.  So though i may be trapped within the
fetish of scientism which buttresses the dismal science in which i was
housebroken,  at least i do not wallow in the well of the uninformed.


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