File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1999/bhaskar.9902, message 25


Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1999 08:33:40 -0500 (EST)
From: Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca>
Subject: BHA: to be fair...


Hi Mervyn,

I know I said I'd be quiet about this, but I thought that your post was a
bit unfair.

At 10:37 PM 2/12/99 +0000, you wrote:
>Hi Tobin, Michael
>
>The difficulty with Tobin's view for some of us who are also non-
>philosophers is that we prefer and admire Bhaskar's writing the way it
>is (apart from some confusing typos and things of that ilk), not broken
>up into bite-sized bits etc for "the average PhD" (which is not what I
>at any rate meant by editing) - and the same would go for Kant, Hegel,
>Heidegger etc.

It is not just Tobin's view.  A number of regular contributors to the list
hold the view that Bhaskar, profoundly important though his work may be,
doesn't happen to write well.  (And outside of the list, of course, it's
pretty much the consensus.)

>A philosopher operating at a high level by definition
>writes in the first instance for other philosophers, and uses their
>language, just as, in Michael's example, a biochemist writes for
>biochemists. 

The issue is not whether Bhaskar uses technical language, or addresses
questions the formulation of which presumes specialized knowledge.  I'm
surprised that the nature of the criticism (and I of course would have
called it merely an unexceptional observation!) is still not clear.  
  
>Had DPF been written according to Tobin's
>prescriptions it would have been a very *different book*, and arguably
>*not nearly so effective*. 

What about both my and Tobin's view that RTS, for example, though technical
(and to my mind lacking any particular stylistic value), is not poorly
written.  Do you find that it is less effective, *in virtue of its style*,
than DPF?  Plato, Etc., for that matter, is better written than DPF (in my
opinion).  And for that reason *more*, rather than less, effective, I would
argue.
 
>The aesthetic moment in significant philosophy, it seems to me, is
irreducible. 

I agree with you.  And on two very different levels.  On the one hand, most
really significant ideas are, in my view, aesthetically compelling in and of
themselves.  That this is the case is one of the more important things about
philosophy.  Different from this, sometimes a philosopher presents ideas in
a way which is itself aesthetically compelling.  

But it does not follow from the above that all significant philosophy falls
into the latter category.  For me, what we have of Aristotle's work, for
example, falls into the former category only; Plato's into both.  I'd put
Kant into the former category too, and Nietzsche into both.  The charge is
not that Bhaskar's ideas are insignificant, or that he is not a great
philosopher, etc., etc. etc. Just that *some*, not even *all*, of his books
are not well written.  

It seems to me that either we ought to shift this debate onto the question
of whether there can be objective aesthetic standards, or we need to live
with the fact that there are some readers of Bhaskar who think highly of his
writing style, and at the same time there are other, equally sensitive,
readers who don't care for the style in which some of the books are written
-- and who think that there are reasons internal to Bhaskar's thinking that
he should care about this.  


Ruth   



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