To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
cc: ccw94-AT-aber.ac.uk
Subject: Re: BHA: Bhaskar on Adorno 
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 16:18:31 +0100


Hi Ruth,

I take your points about RB's treatment of Adorno, but don't myself see the 
problem. On this I fear we will simply have to disagree.

You write: 

> Now, my *suspicion* is that by "Bhaskar does not believe in `the primacy 
> of the object'" you mean something like "Bhaskar is not an empirical 
> realist," or maybe "Bhaskar is not a reductionist"  -- since you cite 
> emergence, and a concern for subjectivity as the counter-examples.  
> 
> But neither of these were ever suggested.  I mean, at a certain level, I 
> was simply referring to the Bhaskar passage that you had cited, in which 
> he writes:
> 
> >"...it seems intuitively, scientifically and philosophicaly
> >unsatisfying and indeed refutable not to see subjectivity as grounded
> >in _some sense_ , or over-reached, by objectivity, if only in a 
> >meta-reflecive totalising situation of the couple." (Dialectic, p. 50.)
> 
> Subjectivity is over-reached by objectivity, Bhaskar says.  
> 
> [Or, in Adorno's terms, while subjects are mediated by objects and 
> objects are mediated by subjects, there is an asymmetry.  Subject is not 
> mediated by object in quite the same way as object is mediated by 
> subject.  I tried to point to a few of the implicit differences in 
> Bhaskar and Adorno's respective formulations.]
> 
> And this, of course, by itself is not to say much -- only that Bhaskar, 
> like Adorno, is some sort of materialist.
> 
> Is that any better?

It is but then I now fail to see what the point of critique is other than a
concern with RB's treatment of Adorno.

Anyway, surely the point can't be simply glossed over by saying both Adorno
and RB are materialists of some kind. Materialists, much like other positions
come in all shapes and sizes.

Thanks,




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