Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 17:05:55 -0700 (PDT)
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: BHA: lebensphilosophie/hermeneutics, Bhaskar, & Lukacs
Cc: frankfurt-school-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU


In reviewing some postings of several months back, at which I time I
enquired as to appropriate readings addressing my interests, it is evident
that I need to be reading Bhaskar's PLATO, ETC. first and foremost.  I
should also re-read Outhwaite, seeing as I enjoyed it immensely but can't
remember what I read.  I just took a gander at Collier's CRITICAL REALISM,
but it doesn't look like I need to begin there.  (The section on Chomsky
made a valid point though very thin.)

I also see that I failed then to follow up on some of the points I
introduced then and did not fully explain.

Two or three times a day I take PLATO, ETC. off the shelf to give it a brief
scrute, and I fear I will further get distracted from my real work should I
succumb to temptation.  Now I am avoiding my primary obligations by reading
a chapter of Lukacs' THE DESTRUCTION OF REASON, which is a real hoot.

I did notice a few paragraphs of interest in PLATO, ETC.  I think the
relevant argument is this: the problem with the hermeneutical/idealist
tradition is that it uncritically relies on a positivistic conception of the
natural sciences.  Hence it accepts a radical dualism between the natural
and human sciences.  Critical realism can help by showing that the
positivistic conception of natural science is false and that a unifying
ontology that connects the natural and human sciences while recognizing
their qualitative differences is the answer.

(BTW, another book I mentioned a few months ago, CRISIS CONSCIOUSNESS IN
CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY by Andras Gedo, addresses the historical
interdependence of positivism and lebensphilosophie in bourgeois philosophy,
which Gedo sees as constantly wavering between the two extremes.)

I agree with this position 1000%.  I have argued a similar viewpoint for
years on the various Marxist lists, although using my own language and not
referring to Bhaskar.  I would like to see a more in-depth analysis of
idealist philosophy.  Maybe re-reading Outhwaite will help; maybe there is
more published elsewhere, or maybe there should be.

Now what interests me about Lukacs, the same thing that everyone else
condemns him for, is that in THE DESTRUCTION OF REASON, Lukacs is interested
in connecting up the idealist tradition he detests to the evolution of
imperialism and the inability or unwillingness of philosophers to transcend
their alienated ideological preoccupations by scientifically facing up to
the social totality as it is and hence recognizing the validity of the
workers movement.  That is, Lukacs has a sociological and political
explanation for the evolution of subjective idealist philosphy itself.  And
this is why all the sophisticated exponents of Western Marxism detest this
book, since they are all infected with what Lukacs rejects.

It is true, however, that much is missing from this book, a remarkable
absence given that it is 865 pages in English translation.  Many of the
connecting links in the argument are missing.  Lukacs mostly assumes a
familiarity with the subject matter, and so he picks out certain aspects of
the subjectivist philosophies he criticizes and then links them up to a
certain stage of imperialism.  He is thus accused of being tendentious and
conspiratorial in his analysis of philosophical trends.  I would prefer to
think he is taking some short cuts, for I believe he is on the right track.

Curiously, I see some similarities in the projects of both Bhaskar and
Lukacs.  You might find this a remarkable statement, given their very
different intellectual trajectories and preoccupations.  In the western
Marxist tradition, 
Lukacs' later self-criticism of the anti-materialist prejudice embedded in
HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS is seen to be a regressive capitulation to
Stalinism rather than a step upward.  This is a happy consensus to which I
do not consent.  From what I know of Lukacs' aesthetic judgments in the
Stalinist period, I am appalled, but I think his later recognition of
materialism is philosophically all to the good.  One can see this in the
specific criticisms Lukacs makes of the reliance on intuition in the
subjectivist philosophers from Dilthey to Heidegger, and how they all fail
to incorporate an objective understanding of social structure into their
intuitionistic reductionism and hence fail to escape from the solipsism that
endangers their entire enterprise. Lukacs is basically supporting a sense of
scientific rationalism here, though of course Anglo-American analytical
tradition would not recognize it as such.  Note also that Lukacs goes beyond
the merely intellectual diagnosis of what is fallacious in their reasoning,
as a Bhaskar might, but he presses further on into their social motivations
behind their logical fallacies.

This is the dimension that feels missing from the Bhaskarite milieu.  It
exudes a certain technocratic ethos about itself, that tends to rouse my
suspicions of the world in which the Bhaskarites move, breathe, and have
their being.  Which is not to say that I reject their endeavors.  Perhaps my
impressions of their "woodenness" are exaggerated, but that is how I respond
to them at certain crucial junctures.

Now I am surprised that Hans Despain has not thrown back at me what could be
seen as an ambivalence or contradiction on my part.  Note that when others
introduce subjectivist thinking into their arguments, esp. those trained in
critical theory of the Frankfurt School type, I tend to pounce on them as
anti-scientific snobs too infected with the tradition of German idealism.
Then when the Bhaskarites go to town, I jump on them as soulless
intellectual bureaucrats, during which I defend the critical theory and
other western marxist types as being more in tune with the crucial
ideological issues that plague society.  I'm suprised nobody has tried to go
after me on this supposed contradiction.  Then again maybe y'all are so
sophisticated you already recognize that it need not be thought of as a
contradiction.  Time will tell.

I don't see these reactions on my part as indicating an ambivalence as to my
own philosophical commitments.  I've said for years on every relevant
discussion list that I never believed in this dichotomy of Western marxism
and Orthodox Marxism in the first place, nor in the ridiculous dichotomy of
the humanistic and scientific Marx promulgated through the years.  (I think
of Alvin Gouldner's bullshit among others'.)  My ambivalence concerns not my
own views but the authors I'm reading, who seem to embody both the positive
and negative traits of the traditions they have inherited.  I find the
Franks and Lukacs exasperating when I try to untangle what I like and don't
like about them.

(Recently, I also suggested, being impressed by the power of both axiomatic
methods and the techniques utilized by critical theory, that I would be
intrigued to see what would happen if one could bring these two worlds
together in the person of someone who understood both, say, mathematical
logic and negative dialectics. That is, I really do believe we live in one
world, though highly stratified ontologically, and with different methods
apropos to the field of study or the aspect in which it is studied.)

I am not asserting that Bhaskar himself is guilty of sitting on one side of
these dichotomies, the scientific, or to characterize it pejoratively, the
technocratic.  I think there is something about the Bhaskar milieu that
encourages that, but at this stage I can't blame Bhaskar, except maybe to
the degree he may have contributed to this problem by his terminology and
writing style.  (I say maybe, because his style may be no worse than the
pretentious and incomprehensible prose used by the pomo types.)  Au
contraire, it seems that Bhaskar himself is trying to transcend the old
dichotomies.  I would also concede that a precise rendering of the logical
fallacies embedded in a particular philosophy is a pre-requisite to a
sociological and political analysis which would round out a full
comprehension of a system of ideas as a living social entity.

So, in sum, I am not complaining about Bhaskar's position per se.  Rather I
am waiting to see what develops out of this project, with a hopeful if
critical eye turned to what the critical realists are up to.  I have always
shared their interests, but lately I have been more excited by the kind of
stuff that critical theory does, hence my impatience with the "wooden" vibes
I get from the Bhaskarians.

Maybe this will help to clear up my interests and my ambivalent reactions to
the various sources and ideas presented in recent discussions.



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