Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 13:45:32 -0400 (EDT)
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: BHA: Science, theology and witchcraft


Dear all


I have been re-reading many of the postings on this list and have been struck
at how often debates centre upon the ideal of coming an agreement about what
is count as a correct understanding of one of RB's paragraphs etc, as
distinct from them testing out RB's account against something outside of the
intertextual sphere. This has perhaps only a little directly to do with
witchcraft, but does it have some analogies to the mofus operandi of
discussions in protestant theology?

On the subject of the hermeneutics of reading Bhaskar, am I only the only one
on this list who has experienced the ambiguity of being more and more
impressed with what RB says about a topic that she or he has already worked
upon, and less and less impressed with RB's actual interpretative treatment
of alternative theorists. The two writers with whom I can cross reference his
interpretation re Dialectics with my own are Hegel and Adorno. Getting into
the abuses performed on Hegel's texts in Dialectic would amount (at least) to
a PhD thesis in its own right; those brief references to Adorno could be more
easily countered. A classic example of an unscientifically cavalier reading
of Adorno occurs when RB chastigates a quote from Adorno re
subjective/objectivity for apparently equivocating rather than immediately
adopting a materialist position, when - of course - the whole point of
dialectics is to overcome the grip of either/or thinking in dualisms/ As it
turns out the very "remedy" which RB offers for Adorno, is rather close to
that offered by Adorno in the self-same text which he quotes, i.e., the need
to give relative priority to the object in the subject/object dialectic. The
lesson here is that Adorno's texts are thenselves far more dialectical than
are RB's, the process of thinking towards and coming to a conclusion is
demonstrated step by step in the course of the argument - as distinct from
simply telling one's reader's the reasons why only one's own approach is
uniquely adequate, why it amounts to the first ever adequate formulation of
dialectical negation etc etc. Bhaskar writes that dialectics did not start
nor end with Hegel, the reply is well yes, nor with RB either, in which case
lets forget "fresh starts" in dialectics, and accept that scholarship is
conversation to which we at best carry forward only collobratively, partially
and without full insight into the very mistakes which we are unable really
appreciate at the time.

Michael Salter
law dept
Lancaster Univ
UK


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