Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 12:53:19 -0700 (PDT)
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU,
Subject: Re: BHA: new dialectics anyone?


At 12:20 PM 8/27/97 GMT, NURSAW wrote:
>Does anybody out there have an interest in the relation of critical 
>realism (dialectical or not) to 'new dialectics'?

I sure do.  I read your abstract, but it is a bit abstract, would love to
know more.  Won't be at the conference, so would like to see some dialogue
in this forum.

>Their true relation is disclosed through an immanent critique of
>critical realism conducted at the level of method in social science.
>The critical realist method, 'transcendental deduction', requires
>pre-conceptualised 'social forms' as its only premises so cannot
>sustain significant and immanent change of these forms, or
>transformation of the non-actual social structures and mechanisms
>deduced from them. Thus, if accepted, the critique contradicts
>critical realism's claim to provide a '*transformational* model of
>social activity' (Bhaskar (1979), Ch. 2). New dialectics overcomes
>this problem of sustaining social structural transformation, and
>related problems that are manifest in critical realism (and, it is
>argued, in much of Western philosophy and social theory). In this
>sense new dialectics constitutes the 'positive moment' of the critique
>of critical realism.

I can't make any sense out of this, so I hope you will explain one day.
 



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