Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 11:18:22 -0400
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: BHA: Science, theology and witchcraft


Hi guys,

Maybe this is a bit of home-teamism on my own part, but I wanted to say 
that I looked over the archives of some of the other lists the other 
day, and one of the things that I was really, really struck with was how 
basically principled and respectful the discussion is on this list -- at 
least in the year since I've joined.  I'm not sure what makes for the 
culture of a list, probably some mix of the participants and the 
material, but I turned off my computer feeling very protective of our 
conversation here on the Bhaskar list.  I do appreciate the feeling that 
a number of people have had, of being mis-read, misconstrued, 
misunderstood, misrepresented -- I expressed a version of it myself a 
few weeks back -- and I would also be happy to benefit from any effort 
to attain even greater rigour in the discussions than we've got at 
present.  But I found the climate on a few of our fellow lists so 
unappealing --  I guess I just wanted to put in a plug for the 
good-faith dialogue which, seemingly against all odds, we've managed 
more or less to maintain thus far.

R.
p.s., For what it's worth, as a person who expressed agreement with 
Michael's original intervention regarding Adorno, my own view is that RB 
doesn't give enough credit to A (and in at least one place claims to 
improve upon A. but then essentially re-states A.'s position). What I 
mean by not giving enough credit is both (1) that for my taste he 
under-respresents, if I can put it that way, the richness of A.'s 
thought (i.e., that A.'s thought cannot be `reduced' to the 
"non-identity" of Bhaskar's 1M) and (2) that there is no recognition 
that an effort to produce a Marxist, or neo-Marxist, "negative 
dialectics", itself worked out via an encounter (of some kind) with 
Hegel -- well, that this was exactly Adorno's project, and so it ought 
not be done again without a serious acknowledgement of this. (Sorry 
about the syntax problems here).  But you know, I mean, no one's 
perfect.



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