File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/bhaskar.9711, message 94


From: MSalter1-AT-aol.com
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 16:53:58 -0500 (EST)
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Michael on Hegel


Some responses to Alans careful dissection and commentary, much of which I
think goes to the heart of the matter:

1/. Findlay's notes, although very clearly written, do tend to give a far
more analytical philosophy focus to Hegel; and I think need to be used with
extreme care, particularly with respect to specifically dialectical aspects
which is, in part, what is at stake in our different interpretations of the
Hegel / Bhaskar relation. In the movement from "the understanding" to
"reason" - analytical approaches get left at the middle. In Hegel the very
struggle involved in wrestling with the language is part of the struggle to
conceptualise the thought-content being expressed. Many of those who have
worked closely with hegel's texts over many decades (such as Adorno's "Hegel:
Three Studies" point to a dialectical relationship between thought-expressed
and the expression of thought. Findlay's notes - even if we ignore their
analytical philosophy twist - tend to by-pass this dialectic, akin to being
told the "answer" to a mathematical problem when the point is to grasp what
we need to understand in order to first work it out.

2/. I think we're in broad agreement over the spiralling rather than strictly
circular movement of the hegelian version of dialectic, although I'm not sure
that the "idea" (often more of an overall ideological worldview such as
liberalism) which gets developed via the internal play of its contradictions
is itself strictly "logical". As observers we may have to understand its
progression in terms of a non-formal/subtantive progression (e.g., from the
neo-liberal world view of "abstract righr" or "legal formalism" to more
contextual approaches) whose intelligible pattern exhibits (perhaps only in
retrospect) a certain "logic". The point for hegel is that there is no basis
for predicting the future, no pre-destined internal "logic" of history from
capitalism through socialism onto communism. Any dialectic
progression,insofar as it is intelligible at all to us, can be grasped only
in retrospect; and must - in this particular sense - "terminate" in the
present day of the dialectician. However, since what is identified as "the
present" moves forward on a daily basis, then so to does the dialectic where
it is heading we simply have no way of really knowing; its pretty hard to
fully figure out what was really going on in the transition from feudalism to
early capitalism, even in a specialism as well-recorded and text-based such
as property law. My point is that the "logic" involves rather loose "if X
then Y", or No Y without first X"  relationships, not because X then Y must
eventually happen in any linear movement. In this important sense the spiral
unfolds in an open-ended unpredictable movement which is really not closed at
all. Lets be concrete, how many of us could - in the mid-late 1970's - have
predicted - let alone grasped - the direction that the thatcherite/reagonite
movements were about to take us, even with reference to the social policy
imperatives underlying privatisation of property, right-to-buy etc. At the
time, the time any "logic" of historical development seemed to be heading
towards a more socialist direction driven on by the internal tensions and
contradictions of both earlier liberal and welfare statist models.

3/. I think we both agree on the need to get clearer on both the differences
and family resemblances between the hegelian and CR dialectics. Now it is
true that Hegel's ontology is not that of RB. But Hegel certainly has an
ontology that is highly stratified between natural forces, socially worked
objects, social  relations unreflfctively misrepresented by alienated /
reified thought as "Natural", social relations addressing their
self-alienation, those which aim at reflexive self-determination etc. Indeed
Hegels discussion of the difference between positive laws and laws of nature
in the preface and para 211 to Hegel's "Philosophy of Right / Law" (recht right and/or law) reveals certain "realist" strains in hegel that might come
as a surprise to anyone who relies on RB's account of the supposedly
one-dimensional, idealist view of hegel as an idealist in a monist, even
reductionist, sense. A similarly stratified ontology between the socially
constructed (geist-like) and naturally given appears in the Encylopedia para
529, whereas the social realm is itself highly differentiated between civil
society/state/family life and between aesthetic / political /constitutional
and legal realms

3/. My point is that whereas RB addresses THE empirical / actual / real, as
perhaps already fixed (non-variant0 ontological categories for each and every
conceivable dialectical analysis, this lack of reflexive historical
self-delimitation is quite alien to the hegelian dialectic which locates
itself firmly within the very historical flux which it seeks to analyse. My
point about whether DCR has given - or even could - give as much empirical
attention to the specifically socio-economic, ideological,
historically-emergent social policy and historical factors as are found
throughout Hegel's work on, say, the socio-legal invention of the
significance of property thus still remains pertinent. I have no doubt that
DCR provides a better basis for a purely philosophical "realism" than
Hegelianism. My issue is that there is a sociologically specific sense of
realism (including "political realism" over issues such as the possibility of
the welfare state have the capacity to eliminate poverty or avoiding new
forms of alienation, so-called "underclass" etc,) in much of the concrete
analysis of constitutional/legal/property issues that it is hard ever to
imagine emerging from DCR. My suspicion is that DCR still sees dialectic too
undialectically, i.e., as akin to a self-sufficient scientific "method" with
fixed concepts - and hence to one side of the dialectic of its subject /
object.

4/. I welcome this debate but would like to see it played on more concrete
socio-legal and constitutional issues, say over the dialectic between
liberal/negative and social and economic positive "rights". The issue then
could include the question of how much a contemporary hegelian legal theory
would need to "stand on the shoulders" of DCR, or vice-versa or both
together?. 

I will comment on the other points when I'm less tired.

Michael


In a message dated 17/11/97 15:35:04 GMT, Alanwrites:

<< 
 Dear Michael,
 
 I've been trying to find the time to respond to the enclosed mail of 2
 November.  I asked you for a section of the Phenomenology of Mind to read
 because I think this is the best way of pinning down differences rather than
 making general and loose comments about Hegel or Bhaskar.  I have now had a
 read of the section on Legal Status in PM (paras 477-483 - not quite what
 you suggested, but it seemed relevant for us to look at; you can perhaps
 point me to further passages if you think it important), and read it
alongside Findlay's introduction to the work.


 
 I shall respond to some of the points you made in your original email below:
 
 
 >the legend of the hegelian dialectic as closed,
 >pre-determined, circular (not spiralling), reconciliatory etc etc.
 
 Certainly the Hegelian dialectic is not circular in the sense that we are
 immediately brought back to our starting place.  The idea of sublation makes
 this clear, and it is also clear that legal personality will not be
 vindicated in itself.  It is a move beyond bare 'ethical substance' (para
 479), but a move to an 'abstract universality' (para 480).  It will
 therefore require further moves before the matter is resolved.  So, I agree
 that there is a 'spiral' of dialectical argument, a progressive enrichment
 as the logical idea becomes further instantiated in modern reality.
 
 But does this mean that Hegel is not elucidating a movement that is
 ultimately pre-determined or closed?  As Findlay puts it, Hegel's concern is
 'always with the Begriffe or universal notional shapes that are evinced in
 fact and history', and this involves  'the path ... actually taken in the
 past and terminating in the present' (p.vii and see ff).
 
 
 
 >my own view is that setting up hegel as a deficient foil against which
 >to establish the superiority of one's own version dialectic is quite
 >problematic, even by now hackneyed. This is partly because too often the
foil
 >recoils back, as in the "return of the repressed", and then subordinates
the
 >subordinator. My Adorno/Norrie paper at the 1997 CR conference addressed
both
 >these points. Rather than use Hegel as the perennial fall-guy for endless
 >inversion/conversion/perversion, it would be more promising for CR to
develop
 >the specific affinities between DCR and hegelianism, and then use these to
 >build upon the numerous deficiencies in and outdated aspects of hegel's
 >dialectic. One point of attack might be the dialectic analysis deploying an
 >immanent critique of both rational natural law (including perhaps aspects
of
 >Habermas) and (socio-legal) positivism/empiricism.
 
 I think these observations make sense if one assumes that roughly the same
 things are being attempted by different dialectical systems.  Obviously
 different systems will have important family resemblances, and a later
 system may learn from, if it is not regressive, 'stand on the shoulders of',
 an earlier one.  So there are affinities.   But DCR has deep seated
 differences too which are primarily related to its depth realist ontology.
 It is not just a question of 'numerous deficiencies' or 'outdated aspects'
 of Hegel, but the _qualitative_ difference that a critical realist starting
 point makes to an understanding of dialectic.  I am hoping that the current
 reading of DPF will clarify these issues for us all.
 
 
 
 >One question for any DCR critique of Hegel (particularly with reference to
 >law) is whether RB has given as much empirical attention to the
specifically
 >socio-economic, ideological, historically-emergent social policy and
 >historical factors as are found throughout Hegel's work on, say, the
 >socio-legal invention of the signifiance of property. The issue then would
 >then become who - in practice - is the least "realistic"?
 
 
 Doesn't this comment's 'edge' depend on what is meant by 'realistic'?
 Certainly the PM is concerned with elucidating the flux of historical
 experience, but from a CR perspective, one has to put this in the context of
 the threefold distinction between the empirical, the actual and the real.
 For Hegel, the empirical and the actual are tied to a version of the real
 that is idealist, that is the movement of the Idea.  For CR, a depth
 ontology takes one in a fundamentally different direction.  
 
 By the way, Bhaskar is hardly unaware of Hegel's 'remarkable analyses of the
 contradictions of civil society', contradictions he, Hegel, was eventually
 unable to sublate (DPF, p.64).  Rather, he credits them.
 
 
 >From memory, RB relies too
 >heavily on Hegel's "logic", and abstract this from the more contextual
 >socio-legal-constitutional writings of hegel, and then uses RB's own
 >abstraction to accuse Hegel of constructing a purely intellectualistic /
 >cognitivist / conceptualist dialectic which is closed to the more
 >sociological/material insights of realism. The "closure" in Hegel is thus
 >largely supplied by the principles that inform the selectivity of RB's
 >interpretation.
 
 
 This comment on DPF is you say 'from memory', but I think the main point is
 that it relies on a false dichotomisation of _Hegel_.  The 'closure' in
 Hegel is not a product of taking his logic abstractly or intellectually, but
 of the fundamental relationship of the idea, the conceptual, to the
 empirical and the actual.  'From first to last', says Findlay, 'Hegel
 conceived everything  in terms of the self-active Begriff and Idee' (p.xii)
 though this did not stop him from 'jump[ing] wildly from one factual
 empirical scene to the other' (p.viii).  It would be a real mistake to make
 this separation in any reading of Hegel.
 
 DCR as I read it is not concerned at all with what would be an 'abstraction
 of an abstraction', but rather the way in which the abstract and the
 concrete are interrelated within a critical realist framework.  Again, this
 lays great stress on the significance of the concepts of depth realism.  So
 I think this comment really misunderstands what DPF is about.
 
 
 >
 >Far from representing a classic instance of cognitive triumphalism that RB
 >accuses Hegel of, The PM - shaped as it is by a "logic of passion" to use
one
 >of Hegel's phrases - often resembles drunken ramblings peceived in a
 >dream-state and then recalled to a psychotic.
 
 
 Again this is a false dichotomy, as Findlay's introduction to PM makes
 clear.  The PM may involve a 'logic of passion', but it also involves
 another logic at the same time, the logic of the Idea or the Concept.
 
 Yours,
 
 Alan
 Alan Norrie >>



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