Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 21:38:27 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Bhaskar and God


Hi Gary, Phil

Gary wrote:
>If there is a god then he is not an idealist.
I would have thought the contrary follows, since Roy conceives God both
as ultimate reality and as the Word in some sense, consciousness,
concepts, really real categories, spirit... What does follow negatively
is 'If there is [such] a god then he is not mistaken in his idealism'.
(This however also makes him an ontological irrealist, in that
ontological realism as defined within his own system cannot be sustained
insofar as we are God and have beginningless souls.)

Such *philosophical* idealism often (though by no means always) goes
hand in hand with a rejection of historical materialism, whose primacy
thesis was once espoused by Roy, and indeed this is just what one finds
in EW which, with its emphasis on category mistakes and ideological
illusion, and its 'reassessment of the role of ideas in history', in
effect asserts the primacy of ideas in human history, rather than
material conditions (which include ideas), thereby embracing what might
be called *historical* idealism.

I think you're quite right, Gary, that such positions can't be
demonstrated to be valid or invalid in some definitive sense. I think a
strong case can be made out, however, that they are radically
inconsistent with previous positions - ie that you've got important
developmental inconsistencies within TDCR as a system. (And the
historical idealism of course must pose rather grave problems for your
own Marxism.)


>The very ambitious and courageous nature of this attempt should 
>be acknowledged.  
I'm fully prepared to acknowledge that it is very brave, and I admire,
and deem important, the attempt to synthesise religion and science (but
I'm not quite sure what is supposed to follow from this; certainly,
bravery is no guarantee of truth...) However, every fibre of my being
registers that it is *also* simultaneously a surrender, a defeat, a
regression, a succumbing to siren voices...

Mervyn


Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au> writes
>Phil I am still re-working my response to FEW.  I have to try and integrate 
>the insights of the series of very incisive and often  brilliant anti-FEW 
>papers that you, Alan, Nick and Mervyn gave at the conference.
>
>For me, though it may sound ridiculous, all the charges against Bhaskar as 
>an idealist fail if he happens to be correct in his radically new 
>ontology.If there is a god then he is not an idealist. As things stand this 
>can neither be proved or disproved.
>
>The central problem seems to me what weight do we give to religious 
>experience - defined broadly as the intuitive or that which cannot be 
>subsumed under the rational?  Clearly Bhaskar has had a range of such 
>experiences and he is now attempting to integrate them into critical 
>realism.  The very ambitious and courageous nature of this attempt should 
>be acknowledged.  Most people I know who have had a 'religious' experience 
>(and BTW very few of us have not) prefer to bracket them off and not try 
>and follow through logically their full meaning. Certainly that was my own 
>path.   Bhaskar however is made from a different mold. Perhaps that is why 
>he appears as the 'world historical individual'.
>
>The problem of proofs from religious experience is, 'How does one 
>distinguish the genuine from the pathological?' For personal reasons I have 
>an ongoing interest in schizophrenia.  Many sufferers report 
>hallucinations, voices, divinations etc.  If we administer a neuroleptic 
>then such phenomena often disappear.  But what of the mystics like 
>Kierkegaard, Swedenborg, Blake and so on?  What indeed of the great 
>philosopher Thomas Aquinas who had a mystical experience and fell into 
>silence?
>
>Can we explain everything by an excess of dopamine?  I do not think so but 
>neither do I know a way to make a distinction.  It is the price one pays 
>for abandoning rational scepticism.  Karen Armstrong suggests that the 
>genuine mystic is quiet rather than hysterical.  I am not at all sure that 
>this is a good solution.
>
>Howard in his post raised an analogous question.  When one allows for a 
>depth ontology where does one draw the line?  Again I do not have a ready 
>answer.  My own response is that one has a commitment to the truth and one 
>follows that wherever it leads one, even it be to a god. At which juncture 
>I am *still* inclined to mutter 'God forbid'.
>
>warmest of regards
>
>Gary
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Mervyn Hartwig
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Tel: 020 7 737 2892
Email: mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk


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