Date: Fri, 09 Jan 1998 12:44:50 -0800
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: test


I replied to your other one before reading this one, which has made me want to read the RP piece straight away.  But I can't, alas... too much else to do.  However, I must tell you your e-mail was nearly unreadable, certainly unprintable.  I have never had such a funny one.  Most of it was one long line which I had to scroll across many imagined pages... I lack the skill to sort it, but it was a good quest.  Bye for now. C

Colin Wight wrote:

> Ok,
>
> I just got my test message so I will resend the one I sent yesterday. My apologies for any duplication.
>
> Hi all,
>
> I don't know if anyone has seen it yet, but in the latest edition of Radical Philosophy, Jonathan Ree has an article on Rorty. I don't have my copy in the office hence what follows will be from memory.
>
> He begins by attacking those poor old deluded stalwart leftie "realists" (of which Bhaskar is named as one, Geras as another) for not understanding the gist of Roty's arguments. (In their quest for acedemic seriousness they neglect the fact that Rorty is joking a lot of the time, according to Ree. However, if he is joking, then critics of Roty are correct philosophically, but guilty of a lack of sense of humour perhaps, non?)
>
> Now in relation to Bhaskar Ree takes a tone of barely disguised superiority, claiming that RB has simply missed the point of Rorty's argument (Ree, of course, gets it).
>
> According to Ree, RB's arguments that a famine, a dying baby, food etc, are real and can't be described in pragmatic terms are besides the point=2E Ree goes on and argues that Rorty's argument would be perfectly consistent and that the pragmatist would be even-handed about his pragmatism. That is that they would be a pragmatist, and thus anti-realist, about famine and about food. Ree claims that these two anti-realisms would cancel each other. Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't this cancelling out of two anti-realisms imply a realism? After all, if not, what's left? Dare I say an absence? A real absence at that. Ree clearly wants to leave naive old realism behind, along with truth (his attack on Geras) etc. But I fail to see his argument, in fact, I don't fail to see it, I don't think he has one. Has anyone else seen the piece and can they enlighten me? His piece is really about Nationalism, and to be honest I don't think Ree is any better on this subject either.
>
> Thanks
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Colin Wight
> Department of International Politics
> University of Wales, Aberystwyth
> Tel: (01970) 621769
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>
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