Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 14:23:10 GMT
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: "A.W.Norrie" <A.W.Norrie-AT-qmw.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Dialectic- second Posting.


Dear Gary,

I've now gone back to Point Alpha on pp 15-19 of DPF.  I don't however have
anything to add to your excellent summary of the main points.  I noticed, by
the way, that the argument here is substantially repeated in Plato Etc on
pp1-7 and 115-124.  There is a little more expansion of some points there.

One question: on p.16, Bhaskar talks about the vice between Plato and Hume
in which Aristotle is caught.  In Plato Etc (p.5), he refers to the
'Platonic Aristotelian faultline', expressing the same thing slightly
differently.  My question is not about what the vice or faultline is, but
about what Bhaskar means when he describes the trajectory of western
philosophy as 'historical determination by rationalist epistemology,
structural domination by empiricist ontology' (DPF 16).

Does he mean here that western _philosophy_ understands historical
development as a matter of rationalist epistemology, and that western
_society_ achieves domination (in part) through a philosophy of ontological
empiricism?  And that the combination of the two is important because a
rationalist account of epistemology is (only?) sustained by an ontology that
lacks depth?

This is how I understand it, but it just struck me as so compressed a
comment that it was worth unpacking a bit.  

I would be happy to summarise some sections in ch.2, Gary.

Alan
At 04:01 PM 28/10/97 +1000, you wrote:
>Reading DCR: Part 2
>
>I] Introduction
>
>This post concerns section 6 on the Hegelian dialectic.  A major problem is
>that none of us are philosophers and so we simply do not have the
>background to judge and respond to Bhaskar's reading of Hegel. Perhaps
>someone else on the list can help us here.
>
>II] On the sources and General Character of the Hegelian Dialectic (DCR:
>15-22) : Section 6
>
>Firstly the rather commonplace observation that to use the word "dialectic"
>at all is to sound distinctly unrespectable.  I still remember a colleague
>who taught philosophy at the then College smiling indulgently at a paper I
>wrote in the 70s about the dialectics of the Strong State in Queensland.  
>
>Bhaskar however has revived and substantially redefined the term.  He
>begins by telling us that for Hegel the dialectic is how reason operates
>and it is also the motor force that drives reason on.  There are it seems
>two sources for the dialectic.  The first and best known is Zeno of Elea
>which gives us the Eleatic component of Hegel's dialectic.  There is also
>an Ionian tradition. (:17)
>
>Firstly the Eleatic tradition.  (BTW there are remarks here (:15) about
>Zeno's paradoxes and Eleatic cosmology which I do not even begin to
>understand. As is so often the case in DCR, they serve not to illustrate
>but to demoralise the uninitiated.  It is important though not to be side
>tracked.)
>The principal feature of the Eleatic component of the dialectic is the
>notion of "conversational interplay and exchange, involving the assertion,
>contradiction, distinction and qualification of theses" (:16)  
>
>When attempting to give my students some sort of hold on the concept of
>dialectic I ask them to think of "dialogue". Dialectic then is two elements
>in conversation/argument/dispute with each other.
>
>There follows in DCR a little potted history of the fate of the dialectic :- 
>
>with Socrates/Plato the dialectic is regarded as the supreme method;  
>with Aristotle its prestige declines and we get the beginning of the
>analytical versus dialectical reasoning distinction, where dialectical
>reasoning is seen as inferior;  
>this is carried on in Kant who also leaves us with a world which is
>dominated by a series of key splits which cannot be resolved unless through
>Aesthetics. Some of the splits mentioned are knowledge and thought,
>knowledge and faith, theory and practical reason, duty and inclination,
>this world and the next. (:17) 
>
>However for Bhaskar what is really important is what happens to the
>dialectic after Kant. Hegel includes a second strand drawn from the Ionian
>idea of dialectic as an automatic self generating process. This is the
>aspect of the dialectic that Marxists such as Brecht turned to when
>confronted with the monstrosities of Nazism or that I take up when in my
>cups (occasionally) I refer to the dialectic as "remorseless" and express
>the hope that I will live to see it bite the powerful on the arse.  This
>use of the dialectic is fine as aesthetic consolation but it rather tends
>to negate the concept of agency.
>
>The Ionian strand has two forms.  It consists of the descent from the
>perfect higher reality to the imperfect actuality, or the ascent from the
>imperfect to the higher perfect form.  So with Hegel we begin with the
>perfect Idea or Absolute.  Then this is imperfectly realised and the trick
>is to see how the dialectic will somehow get us back to the perfect Absolute.
>
>Bhaskar next gives us the three basic keys to Hegel's thoughts.  these are
>1. spiritual monism, 2. realised idealism and 3. immanent teleology
>
>1. Spiritual Monism
>
>Monism is a general name for those philosophies which deny the duality of
>matter and mind.  Marxism dissolves the duality on the matter side whereas
>with Hegel's system the duality is replaced by a spiritual or idealist unity.
>2. Immanent teleology
>
>For "immanent" substitute internal.  Teleology has of course to do with
>goal or end.  With Hegel the entity x has within it at the beginning its
>ultimate goal or destination. How this can be reconciled with change or
>development I am not at all clear.  But as I understand him one of
>Bhaskar's key criticisms of Hegel is that his dialectic does not allow for
>change or emergence.
>
>The following quotation from Hegel makes clearer, I think, what Hegel means:-
>
>"The bud disappears in the bursting forth of the blossom, and it may be
>said that the one is contradicted by the other;  by the fruit, again, the
>blossom is declared to be a false existence in the plant, and the fruit is
>judged to be its truth in the place of the flower.  These forms not only
>distinguish themselves from one another, but likewise displace one another
>as mutually incompatible.  But the transient and changing condition
>converts them into moments in an organic unity in which not alone do they
>not conflict, but in which one is as necessary as the other; and this very
>necessity first constitutes the life of the whole." (in Rogers, A.K. A
>Student's History of Philosophy, New York: MacMillan, 1963:409-10)
>
>A key problem in translating such a view of the dialectic from the natural
>into the social world is surely that there is a tendency to see everything
>as pre-planned.  In this way of thinking the current social formation can
>be viewed as the logical and necessary end or outcome of previous social
>formations and so we can arrive at the "end of history" thesis. Bhaskar by
>contrast argues for the radical openness of the social and so avoids making
>the kind of conservative conclusions that are implied in the Hegelian
>dialectic.
>
>Bhaskar next introduces a dialectical figure - "constellational identity".
>Here in the case of two terms one of them (the major) "over reaches
>envelops and contains the other term (the minor).  I think that this is a
>very interesting way to escape certain dualistic traps.  Bhaskar gives the
>examples of causes and reasons.  In stead of seeing these as opposed
>reasons can be contained with causes.
>
>If in Cultural Studies we take the very vexed instance of the clash between
>the subjective and the objective we might be able to argue that
>"constellational identity" helps us resolve the endless arguments about the
>possibility or otherwise of objectivity.  Here the objective would over
>reach, envelop and contain the subjective, and thus act as a guarantor of
>the possibility of the subjective.  Subjectivity after all has to be about
>something. Just as if there is no truth there can be no lies, so if there
>is no objectivity there can be no subjectivity.
>
>Bhaskar now gets to the Hegelian dialectic proper.  I will try and make a
>more general summary here (:19-22) rather than follow him paragraph by
>paragraph.
>
>Within the Hegelian system we have
>
>1. Pre- reflective understanding.  
>
>This is the "reasonableness of ordinary life which tolerates contradictions
>without finding anything problematic about them".(:21) In many ways it
>parallels the Gramscian notion of "common sense".  Gramsci described this
>as :-
>
>"the 'philosophy of non-philosophers' or in other words the conception of
>the world which is uncritically absorbed by the various social and cultural
>environments in which the moral individuality of the average man in
>developed." ( Hoare, Q & Smith, G. N. (eds) Selections from the Prison
>Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, New York: International Publishers, 1971 :419)
>
>It should be noted here that for Gramsci "common sense", though incoherent
>and fragmentary, is still a kind of philosophy and it does contain what he
>calls a "healthy nucleus". (:328) This is the recognition for the necessity
>to control the passions and give a "conscious direction to one's
>activities." (:328)
>
>For my purposes the notion of PRT is a very useful insight. Pre-reflective
>thought is what I like to think of as the defence mechanism of the organism
>- the source of bad faith if you like.  We exist in this state for most of
>the time and we attempt to return to it as soon as possible, largely
>because the price of agency/freedom can be very high. To put this another
>way pre-reflective thought is a bad way of resolving theory-practice
>inconsistency.
>
>I line the notion of pre-reflective thought up with reflective thought and
>then meta-reflective self-totalising thought and use this as a means of
>critiquing whether a particular documentary film helps us get to the truth
>of the problem field it is addressing or whether it is facilitating the
>resurgence of pre-reflective thought.
>
>To get from  Reflective thought to Understanding we have the ro(r) transform.
>
>2. Understanding
>
>This is an advance on 1 (PRT). Rogers defines Understanding as "the mental
>temper which insists upon taking things in their isolation, which cannot
>see more than one side of a truth at a time, and which will always have it
>either that a thing is so or that it is not so without compromise or
>limitation..." (op cit:409)
>
>As Bhaskar puts it Understanding is analytical thought.
>
>3. Dialectic. This is the process and method which get us beyond
>Understanding.  Bhaskar here is careful to insert the notion of agency.
>Thus we have the dialectician ans an observer and then a commentator. The
>dialectic process is dividing into two.  First is the sigma (s) transform.
>Here the dialectician discovers contradictions, anomalies or inadequacies
>in the category. 
>
>Second is the taf(t) transform.  In this case the anomalies etc are
>resolved and the category is folded into Reason.
>
>3. Reason. 
>
>Bhaskar has a very good sentence here (!) which I feel precludes for once
>the need for paraphrase :-
>
>"Dialectical...thought grasps concepts and forms of life in their
>systematic interconnections, not just their determinate differences, and
>considers each development as a product of a previous less developed phase,
>whose necessary truth or fulfilment it...is; so there is always some
>tension, latent irony or incipient surprise between any form and what it is
>in the process of becoming." (:22)
>
>4. Post-philosophic Wisdom (PPW) 
>
>This is the state we reach after the dialectic. It entails a "return to
>life". Bhaskar posits an epsilon (u) transform between Reason and PPW. The
>diagram on page 22 is puzzling here. (Surprise, surprise!) What does the
>dotted line mean as opposed to the full line?  How can we return or slip
>back into Pre-Reflective thought (PRT) if we have been through the
>dialectic?  Shouldn't there be some notion here of a spiral or an accretion
>of wisdom?  
>
>On page 27 Bhaskar does say that "Linear radical negation...is clearly
>untypical." and much of his critique of the Hegelian dialectic is indeed
>over its linear nature. Moreover in Section 9 he radically transforms the
>picture set out in fig 1.1 p 22.
>
>My own thoughts are that the notion of wisdom is a useful counter to
>conservative thought to the extent that it indicates another moment of
>stratification.  If we look for instance at the absolute mess that nuclear
>scientists have left us with, we can see that there is indeed a very good
>case for making a distinction between knowledge (Understanding or Reason)
>and Wisdom.
>
>III] Signing Off
>
>So much for section 6. Only 363 pages to go.
>
>Chris Butler of the QUT group will tackle a summary/commentary on 7 & 8.
>And section 9 should enable us to get the Introduction into a coherent
>perspective.  Hopefully it will not detain us too long. 
>
>Thanks to Colin for the response to the first post.  What did Ruth or John
>think?  Who else is reading DCR with us? It would be great if we could get
>someone from the list to read a particular section and write up a response. 
>
>
>
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>
>
Alan Norrie



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