From: "Howard Engleskirchen,WSU/FAC" <howarde-AT-wsulaw.edu>
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 15:35:33 -0800PST
Subject: Re BHA: Dialectic:the Pulse of Freedom Ch. 2.3






Thanks to both Alan and John for initiating the discussion around Contradiction.  
There seem to me significant points of difference between RB=92s presentation and the 
Marxist tradition with which I am familiar and within which I work, so I=92d appreciate 
some help clarifying differences or explaining why the presentation here is a more 
successful presentation of the tools necessary to advance the large research project 
of historical materialism.

Here are my questions

The possibility of internal contradictions, Bhaskar says,  is situated by the 
    phenomena of emergence.  I would have thought it was the other way 
    around.  Internal contradictions are the basis of the development of a thing.  
    Development is a process and gives rise to emergence.  Whether the section 
    on emergence is placed before or after the discussion of contradiction seems 
    to me a fundamental structural decision in the presentation of the argument.

I   think the Marxist tradition would unite with the idea of a world made up of  
    =93powerful particulars,=94 in the phrase of Harre and Madden reflected in RTS.  
    Particulars have a structure that accounts for the behavior of a thing.  The 
    idea would be to analyze that structure in terms of its contradictions and 
    locate in those contradictions the motive force driving a thing.  Particulars 
    are powerful, in other words, because of contradiction.  This lays the basis  
    for differentiating the different sciences, as  Mao suggests, on the basis of 
    the different contradictions which constitute their respective objects of 
    study.  But I don=92t get a sense in RB=92s presentation of struggle and 
    contradiction driving anything or serving as a basis of classification    Perhaps I am wrong on this.  John, for example, refers to the idea that 
    =93contradictions, because asymmetrical, drive the process on,=94 but I don=92t 
    really understand that in the context of the section.

Also,I don=92t understand why contradiction is not a present feature of all 
    things or what  difference is being suggested between a connection and a 
    contradiction.  What is a dialectical connection that is not contradictory?  
    John says contradiction only begins with action and that it thus is applicable 
    to organic processes rather than others and that the question of 
    contradiction on Pluto is not interesting to him.  What Bhaskar says is that 
    contradiction first acquires *clear meaning* in the context of human action.  
    This, I take it, is because action is the expression of our causal efficacy.  But 
    it is the nature of all powerful particulars that they are causally efficacious.  
    Thus under given conditions hydrogen explodes, and this happens in 
    locations much more remote than Pluto.  When hydrogen explodes there is 
    transformation and what was not comes into being.  So I don=92t see why 
    contradiction is not a feature of all things.  Because of finitude the only way 
    to understand anything is in terms of what it is not and any given thing is 
    always in relation to what it is not.  

Continuingthis idea, real negation at p. 5 has the primary meaning of real 
    determinate absence or non-being.  But that characterizes any two things in 
    the world and any two aspects of a thing.  If two things are distinct and 
    inseparable, so that they are bound in a dialectical connection, why is that 
    not also a contradiction?

And also related to this, Alan, why is contradiction restricted to the idea of  
    =93one end can only be satisfied at the expense of another.=94  If individuals are 
    in contradiction with one another insofar as they are distinct individuals 
    (expressing the finitude of each), that doesn=92t mean they are necessarily in a 
    zero sum game.  If the flourishing of each is a condition for the flourishing of 
    all, that means each benefits by the growth of another.  My abilities can 
    function so that they are antagonistic to those of another, e.g. peasant and 
    worker, but they can also reinforce one another, without the underlying 
    contradiction changing.  The contradiction between black and white 
    continues even if people make diversity as a positive thing rather than a 
    negative one.

I=92m not being polemical about this.  Bhaskar has made possible a depth realist reading 
of the Marxist tradition that is enormously important.  He has also committed himself, 
as I understand it, to the research project of historical materialism. =93Or something like 
it,=94 I guess is his qualification.  Anyway I have some understanding of the 
significance of contradiction within that tradition and have made use of it as a 
powerful tool in my own research.  I don=92t know how I could use contradiction as it is 
presented here, nor how it should alter my understanding of the tradition within which 
I work.  

Howard

Howard Engelskirchen











Date sent:      	Fri, 23 Oct 1998 22:31:08 +0800
To:             	bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
From:           	Alan Norrie <alan.w.norrie-AT-kcl.ac.uk>
Subject:        	Re BHA: Dialectic:the Pulse of Freedom Ch. 2.3
Send reply to:  	bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu

> Hello Everyone,
> 
> Herewith the posting promised by Gary as the first resumed reading of
> Dialectic: the Pulse of Freedom.  I hope that we can get a group of people
> to discuss the text in a reasonably focused way.
> 
> Looking forward to the debate,
> 
> Alan
> 
> 
> 
> Dialectic: the Pulse of Freedom, ch.2.3
> ---------------------------------------
> 
> 
> This is a 16 page section which I am going to divide into two, commenting
> on pp.56-65 in this mail and on pp.66-72 in a subsequent one.
> 
> 
> 
> A.	 TYPES OF CONTRADICTION
> 
> 1.	The section begins with an analysis of the different meanings of
> 'contradiction' before comparing contradiction in Hegel and Marx.  The
> nodal meaning of contradiction is (p56) that of  'a bind or constraint'
> which means that one end can only be satisfied at the expense of another

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