From: "Colin Wight" <Colin.Wight-AT-aber.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: BHA: Realism and latent theology
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 10:30:19 +0100


Hi jan,

I can't figure out where the irony ends and serious stuff begins. Too much
Zizek methinks. And yes, I would love to talk Heidegger with you and Zizek
actually; I have loads of issues re the latter that I will contact you off
list about (if that's ok).

Anyway, on FEW, or is it FEtW?

Freedom, well his remedy (although why it should be seen as a remedy escapes
me since this implies a prior defect when I think there was none in CR) in
DCR may be along those lines, but in his talk (Alethia) he very much does
present this kind of unproblematic thing, "freedom"; he talk of all of us
having our "own freedom....what you have to do is access it". Read this as
you want, but to argue that "absence is ubiquitous" does not help me much;
not least because whatever human freedom is presence (of others at least)
will always also be ubiquitous. In FEW, it is possible to see him positing
freedom as the absolute absence of absence and presence when we become what
we are - ultimata/God. Complete and utter unity. Be one with the divine.

Anyway, on FEW, Erik is surely entitled to his opinion and I am sure he is
not the only one feeling that way. The new book does have the potential to
problematise the whole of the corpus from CR>CN>CR>DCR. Speaking personally,
I'm not that bothered about it because my CR has always been a rather
eclectic beast encompassing the arguments of a range of other thinkers. In
my discipline I'm considered a dangerous postmodern by the more empirically
minded and a hopeless positivist by the postmoderns! What can I say.

My main problem with the book is not the effect it will have on CR as a
community or a movement, but the fact that it is very poor (and I am being
very careful with my words here). I find it arrogant in the 2nd part and
weak philosophically in the 1st.

Nick wants to examine it philosophically, Mervyn sociologically, I'm not
sure what you want, and as I say I can't figure out if you are being ironic,
serious or both. Me, well I just don't actually think the book is good
enough to deserve close analysis (although I've read it many times now).
(and Ruth stop sniggering and Muttering to yourself "I told you, I told you,
Alethia...Alethia :-))

I suspect that there will be a fairly clear demarcation along lines that
would make any postmodern smile (i.e. it is going to be almost impossible to
a be objective in any meaningful sense about it). Those with some religious
or spiritual leanings will either embrace it or accept it, those with none
will be horrified. They will also be a third category of the horrified but
loyal. But then, after all, we are "Human, all too human".

Whatever, the conference this year promises to be most interesting, I'm just
sorry I will miss it (my niece is getting married that weekend).

Cheers,

>



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