Date: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 04:49:02 -0400 (EDT)
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: BHA: Science, theology and witchcraft


In a message dated 15/08/97 23:53:44 GMT, Ralph writes:

<< Salter's commentary on Bhaskar and Adorno was brilliant.  If only we could
 get more juicy details.  

1/. The textual details are: Bhaskar's "Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom"
1993, p. 250 where RB objects - on supposedly dialectical grounds - to
Adorno's criticism of attempts to either reduce objectivity to subjectivity
or vice-versa. RB retorts that subjectivity must "in some sense" be seen as
"grounded" or "overreached" by objectivity. Adorno's consistent position in
his Negative Dialectics 1973 and "Subject/Object" and elsewhere is that
reductionism is the main counter-tendency to dialectics, in that it
represents an eradication of mediation who consequences are as undialectical
as undialectical thinking can ever get. Examples of reductionism include
vulgar materialism, exclusively theological explanations of natural events,
positivism/empiricism and racism. For RB to object to Adorno's objection to
reductionism - under the guide of being a better and more radical
dialectician - is, of itself, to fall back into what amounts to a
pre-dialectical position. 

2/. Bhaskar's position does not appear to mediate between the equally
one-sided claims of unmediated (reductionist?) versions of materialism and
idealism in a manner which is as receptive to the half-truths of the latter
as it is to those of the former. Adorno's line is that the priority of the
object depends upon the subject recognising the truth that we can at least
imagine the existence of an object without the continued presence of a
subjectivity to be conscious of its presence, but we cannot even imagine a
subjectivity which is not already "consciousness of an object". This
priority, however, exists in and for the imagination; not in the dense social
reality which we wake up to every morning.

3/. Here we need to recall Husserl's phenomenological influence upon Adorno,
(Against Epistemology: A Metacritique. Studies in Husserl and the
Phenomenological Antinomies, 1994 ) and then contrast it with that of
Heidegger's influence upon Bhaskar in Plato Etc where Heidegger is described
as one of the greatest 20th cent philosophers (1994 p.15,).


RALPH:   >>Ruth's project also sounds fascinating; I hope she
 will pursue it. 

I agree Ralph. Ruth's comparison could, perhaps, also draw upon the critique
of the specifically political appeal that Heidegger's "existential" work had
during the 1930s, (and again since the late 1970's) and question why the more
rationalistic and scientific phenomenology of Husserl became eclipsed by
Heidegger -  for ideological reasons that owed little to either reason or
science. These are Adorno's incisive questions in his "Jargon of
Authenticity" as well as in the first part of "Negative Dialectics." 

Bhaskar is surely right to incorporate a specifically phenomenological
dimension into dialectics, one that seeks out, respects and gives voice to
those qualitative differences (potential as well as already-realised) that
are repressed by subsumptive identity-thinking. Yet why should CR want to
give priority to that specific version of phenomenology of Husserl's
right-wing, famously unrepentently National Socialist student, whose overall
work - as Adorno once famously put it - is fascistic to its very core, rather
than the critical rationalism of Husserl himself? Surely, the neo-marxist
critique of the Heideggerian influence produced by Gillian Rose "Dialectic of
Nihilism" 1984 and (less impressively) Habermas, (Philosophical Discourse of
Modernity ) needs to be at least addressed before we give Heidegger too much
house room, lauditory acclamations etc.
 
Michael Salter
Law dept
Lancaster Univ




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