To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
cc: ccw94-AT-aber.ac.uk
Subject: Re: BHA: Bhaskar on Adorno 
Date: Sat, 23 Aug 1997 10:07:25 +0100


Hi Ruth,

You will have to excuse this email, I still can't get into my normal email
handler. Basically it seems that there probably isn't really much to
disagree about here. I react less to Bhaskar's "but", because, as you say,
the position Adorno arrives at is indeed similar to that Bhaskar wants to 
argue for. However, and again, as you say, it is possible to read Adorno in
a different way so maybe RB wanted to stress the point. Also, insofar as Adorno
is concerned:

> `objects', for Adorno, tend (when they are not 
> directly social phenomena) to be things that have been produced or 
> appropriated by human beings in some way, while for Bhaskar the 
> `objects' which are key are mechanisms (not that manifest 
> events/products are ignored). 

I think you can probably see the problem that RB might have with this. 
Clearly, it seems to suggest an empirical realism, whereas RB is strongly
against any form of anthropocentricism.

 Thus Adorno, like Marx, is concerned to 
> point out the subjective aspect of a chair, i.e., the social conditions 
> of its production (and also to distinguish this kind of "mediation" from 
> that of the embodied [objective] character of actual living breathing 
> subjects) while Bhaskar is concerned with the human-independence of, 
> say, the molecular structure of the wood. 

Here I disagree, RB too is concerned with the subjective aspects, but he simply
refuses to reduce being to these. Rb can't be solely concerned with the 
molecular structure of the wood, for this would imply a lack of depth. In order
to understand chairs we need all of the levels, including the subjective one. 
>

> I might be able to be convinced that in this respect Adorno, like Marx, 
> really, lacks an explicitly stratified ontology, but not that it falls 
> to Bhaskar to posit the primacy of the object.

I have this discussion time and time again with my supervisor. I just don't see
Rb positing the primacy of the object. To put this simply, both the transitive
and intransitive dimensions are necessary and it is impossible to attempt to
push these into a a priori staighjacket which attempts to privilege one over
the other.

Anyway I think that we don't really disagree. Have you managed to read PON yet
BTW? I'm sure if you did it would dispel any fears you might have that RB
priviledges the object over subject.



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