File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2000/bhaskar.0008, message 13


Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 19:27:24 -0500 (CDT)
From: viren viven murthy <vvmurthy-AT-midway.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: religion and politics: My prolog to a pamphlet by a


Dear Gary,

Thanks for your paper.

I find your comments about  Bhaskar's ethical theory quite helpful, but I
think it may be helpful to underline that although B does not believe that
everyone should be responsible for
everything, he does seem to defend an idea of universal obligations.  This
comes out clearly when he deals with ethical theory:

A malaise is an ill and a constraint.  Insofar as it is unwanted and
unneeded, we are rationally impelled, ceteris paribus. . .to a commitment
to absent it, and thus an absenting practice.  And thence into absenting
all dialectically similar ills, and thus to absent all the causes of such
constraints, and thence their explanatory critically identified causes,
precisely insofar as, in constituting ills or constraints, they are
dialectically similar.  And from here it is a short hop to the free
society, which satisfies or approximates or approaches the formal
criterion of the free flourishing of a each and all, as substantiated by
four-planar theory of human nature in society.(287)

Now reading this passage along with your comments forces one to clarify
the relation between obligations and responsibility.  Are we responsible
for our obligations and, if we are, does the mode of that responsibility
differ from our responsibility for a crime we have committed? I think this
question revolves around the relation between negative rights, positive
rights and obligations.  Bhaskar clearly claims that everybody has both
positive and negative rights and seems to imply that everyone also has
obligations to realize those rights.  So insofar as there is injustice in
the world, would it be wrong to say that , according to Bhaskar, everyone
has a responsibility (not related to guilt) to transform the social
relations that reproduce the conditions of that injustice?

Best,

Viren

On Sun, 13 Aug 2000, Gary MacLennan wrote:

> Dear Tobin,
> 
> Thank *you* for taking the trouble to read and reply to my 
> posts.  Hopefully I will be able to complete the series on Kierkegaard 
> soon.  Will you be in Lancaster?? I hope so.  It would be good to share a 
> beer.  Your shout I belive.
> 
> 
> Now  I will deal with what I think are three key points in your 
> post.  Forgive me and correct me if I get them wrong.
> 
> Firstly the Universal guilt problem.  You write beautifully about  Reform 
> Judaism and the notion of responsibility for the sin of any member of the 
> community. This for me means giving concrete expression to the idea that I 
> am my brother's keeper.  I am very sympathetic to this and certainly it is 
> worth meditating on.  But how far does one stretch the notion of 
> community?  Do we include the bourgeoisie in this?  For me absolutely not. 
> The hour for universal love may have struck for Roy but for me there is to 
> be no sympathy with the master class. Always, always with 
> Spartacus.  Never, never with Crassus.
> 
> The point about My Lai, Billy Graham and universal guilt comes from Bertell 
> Ollman's On Teaching Marxism.  I do not have it with me at present, but his 
> argument concerns the problem of dealing with bourgeois thought which can 
> only go from the individual to the universal and cannot conceive of the 
> mediation by groups or classes.  Thus either one person is to blame or we 
> all are. It might be difficult to recast that insight in terms of Critical 
> Realism which is fundamentally a class free model. Bhaskar's notion of 4D 
> agency and or the concrete universal would be useful though. I suppose the 
> concepts of ideological fusion and fission would also prove a help.
> 
> However basically it is the concept of totality (3L) which forms the basis 
> of Critical Realist opposition to the universal guilt hypothesis, if I 
> might term it that. Let me give what I think are the relevant quotes. The 
> first comes from p321 of Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom:
> 
> "Detotalization at 3L is symptomatic of an alienated world. Its sign is 
> split, and is clearly connected, as cause and effect, to 2E opposition. 
> thus: the hypostatization of thought, whether in Platonic, Cartesian or 
> Kantian forms; or, at a metacritically identifiable level, the generation 
> of surds, such as the demi-actual (in Hegel), *individual responsibility 
> for everything (in Kant)* or backgammon as response to the problem of 
> induction (in Hume). (emphasis added)
> 
> The second quote also from DPF pp 323-4
> 
> Kant's concept of a Willkur, or the executive aspect of practical reason, 
> combined with his thoroughgoing determinism, makes each individual 
> responsible for anything that ever has or will happen - a doctrine that is 
> surely the Liebestod of morality, and , pace Weber, a recipe for 
> inactivism, the displacement of geo-history onto a heavenly Jenseits, where 
> a benevolent god will dispense happiness in accordance with virtue. But on 
> the basis of what principles?  For if we are all responsible for 
> everything, we must all be equally so.  Morality thus loses its 
> agent-directing power, along with its rationale.
> 
> 
> Your other points had to do with the complexity of religion and what our 
> attitudes should be to it.  I could not agree more when you say we need to 
> be subtle.  This is especially so since Bhaskar's turn to 
> transcendentalism. This turn has been the occasion for quite extreme 
> reactions on this list IMHO, one not justified by a reading of From East to 
> West at least not  by my reading.
> 
> With religion I believe the crucial dialectic is that between modernity and 
> conservativism. Here it is crucial to understand that modernity has come to 
> us in the guise of capitalist modernity.  It has proved most corrosive of 
> religion which perhaps inevitably has been most closely tied to 
> conservative values.  Capitalism destroys conservativism, even though 
> conservatives vote for pro-capitalist parties.  It is business which has 
> killed god not communism. This is  a development brilliantly captured by 
> Marx in the Manifesto (All that is solid, melts into air. All that is holy 
> is profaned).
> 
> So where does Critical Realism stand on the question of modernity?   I am 
> inclined to think that Bhaskar himself has a large element of 
> conservativism in his makeup.  That might seem strange to say of a man who 
> is the most daring and original of thinkers. One moreover who continually 
> plunges the movement he founded into confusion and change. Be that as it 
> may I think Critical Realists should clearly distinguish between capitalist 
> Modernity and as an yet unrealised non-capitalist modernity.
> 
> There is plenty more to say of course, but I might leave it there Tobin and 
> set about celebrating what is after all my birthday!!
> 
> Warm regards
> 
> Gary
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> At 09:26  12/08/00 -0400, you wrote:
> >Hi Gary--
> >
> >Thanks you for the recent, quite interesting posts, which provide food for
> >thought.  While I'm still chewing over most of what you say, I do want to
> >respond to one passage.  You wrote:
> >
> > >                 I do not agree that we all sinned
> > > in East Timor.   Those who sinned were those who had power to prevent what
> > > happened.  The sinners were those who mobilised the butchers.
> > > To talk of universal guilt and the need for universal repentance here is
> >to
> > > draw attention away from those who have blood on their hands. Similarly I
> > > believe Bill Graham talked of universal sin at the massacre in My Lai to
> > > cover over the crimes of the US military in Vietnam.  The people
> > > responsible for the rapes and massacres in My Lai were the leaders of the
> > > American Military-Industrial Complex. As always, it was the powerful who
> > > gave the go ahead for rampant evil.
> >
> >I agree that this is one way of understanding and applying the idea of
> >"universal sin" -- to diffuse attention from the perpetrators, and so defuse
> >opposition to them.  There is however another take on it (which, for what
> >it's worth, I have heard expounded at many a Yom Kippur sermon, at least in
> >Reform congregations), a take which I personally view with respect, my basic
> >non-religiousity notwithstanding.  Roughly, it's that a sin performed by any
> >member of our community falls on the shoulders of the entire community --
> >and hence all of us have a social responsibility to strive to prevent such
> >acts, and attempt to make restitution whenever possible (not simply
> >repentance).  One might say, it is that sin is a public and social issue,
> >more than a personal and theological one.  Doubtless this difference is
> >connected to different understandings of "sin": in the major Christian
> >faiths, sin is innate (we're born in sin and remain inherently sinful),
> >whereas for many other faiths it is more of an act and the person could have
> >chosen otherwise.  If sinfulness is innate, then the horrors performed by
> >some are less surprising, more acceptable, and ultimately only reflect on
> >those individuals' spiritual hopes.  If it is an act of social agency,
> >however, then as someone wrote, all it takes for evil to succeed is for good
> >people to do nothing.  I should note that the "social responsibility" view
> >seems to be what many Catholic Worker have in mind (at least in my
> >encounters), and of course that plenty of Reform Jews fail to uphold their
> >social responsibilities, not to mention the other branches of Judaism (by
> >the way, Reform Judaism is not officially recognized in Israel).
> >
> >My point is two-fold.  First, the complexity of these matters should not be
> >underestimated.  Given your comments in previous posts, I don't accuse you
> >of this Gary -- there's only so much one can say in one or two thousand
> >words.  Nevertheless without grasping these complexities it becomes
> >difficult to understand, or at least to articulate, how something like the
> >Catholic Worker movement could have arisen.  Second, and closely tied to the
> >first, there are nodes of conceptual ambiguity or polysemy in religious and
> >political ideologies (such as universal sin in religion, and democracy in
> >politics) which are open to various constructions and interpretations.  As a
> >result they can potentially be used as "levers" to pry open a space for
> >progressive views, and it is incumbent upon us to try to find and develop
> >these if we hope to persuade a larger public to reject the current power
> >relations.  In this sense, I might note that insisting on an alethic meaning
> >of a particular concept, outside of its context -- that is, assuming that
> >there can be but a single, fixed significance of an ideological nexus point,
> >taken in the abstract -- can have unfortunate results by leading us to a
> >faulty understanding of discourse (both in general and in the particular)
> >and by stripping us of some of the powers at our disposal.  Again, I think
> >your own analysis is more nuanced than that, but it's an area that I think
> >many of us on the left have neglected.  And that, perhaps, should be counted
> >a sin.
> >
> >---
> >Tobin Nellhaus
> >nellhaus-AT-mail.com
> >"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> 
> 
> 
>      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> 



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