From: "Phil Walden" <phillwalden-AT-email.msn.com>
Subject: BHA: Fw: Bhaskar and Fichte
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 01:48:25 +0100



-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Walden <phillwalden-AT-email.msn.com>
To: bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Date: 16 September 2000 01:14
Subject: Bhaskar and Fichte


>Hi Ruth, Mervyn, Gary and listers
>
>I need more time to think about the relationship between Fichte's
philosophy
>and what has happened to Roy in FEW.  In particular I don't have my copy of
>Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre (in English) to hand.  But I will make some
>comments now.
>
>Firstly, however poor FEW may be what Bhaskar has produced in his earlier
>works puts him among the front rank of philosophers in the modern era.  For
>this reason I was reluctant to compare him to Fichte, who I regard as a bit
>doolally.
>
>However, I think there is some sense to the comparison.  It is not just
>Fichte's transcendental ego defining the world, which strikes me as similar
>to what Roy thinks he can do in parts of FEW.  It is also the emphasis that
>Fichte's ethical idealism puts upon action as opposed to contemplation,
>which seems to parallel Roy's anti-contemplative stance in FEW.  In the
>final analysis, both Fichte and Roy underestimate the importance of
>philosophy for changing the world.  There seems to me to be a pragmatic
>element in both Fichte's and Roy's world-view which contradicts genuine
>human emancipation.  Hegel never fell for the illusion that his ego was in
a
>one-way relationship to the world, and he would never have given an inch to
>the contemporary commonplace that philosophy is too passive and
>contemplative.
>
>Finally, it is intriguing to me that some commentators see the source of
>Marx's concept of praxis as lying in Fichte's activist philosophy.  I have
>long had doubts about the way Marx's concept of praxis is supposed to
>smoothly slot into the rest of his thought.  Praxis does not define the
>world, but many Marxists write as if it does.  I think this is possibly
>traceable to weaknesses in the way the Marxian concept was theorized.
>Whether it is indeed traceable back to Fichte is a separate question.
Again
>I suspect Hegel could help us.
>
>Sorry I can't offer more at the moment.
>
>Warmly,
>Phil
>
>




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