From: "james.daly" <james.daly-AT-ntlworld.com>
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Re:James Daly's piece 
Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 22:14:51 +0100


Hi Ruth---    I fully agree with you when you say :

I do always think that RTS, at least, is a kind of Aristotle versus Kant and
Hume saga. (On the other hand, I see Marx too as in some way spelling out
what the historical conditions of possibility are for an Aristotelian kind
of flourishing to be universally
possible.

You ask:

So are you saying that once we establish (or re-establish)
that efficient causality is about the exercise of *some* sort of real power,
then the way is open to assert that the bearers of such powers (I don't mean
for this to sound as external a relationship as it sounds -- I just can't
think of the right words to express it) are also bearers of final causes?
Or, once natural necessity is back on the table, then it's just another step
to add that it's a certain kind of teleological necessity?

I would say: if that means "Is it good for, the telos of, a being to
exercise the powers of which it is capable, to fulfil its potentiality? ", I
suppose the Aristotelian answer would be yes.

At the risk of being naive and simplistic, I would say that to know the
nature of anything is to know what is good for it, and what a good example
of its kind is, within a hierarchical totality.  The nature of the human
being is not to be an isolated pleasure or utility seeking mechanism (the
source of modern ruthless relativism), but to be a rational animal within
community -- rational in the Aristotelian universalising and totalising
sense, not in the modern instrumental sense, nor in its bifurcated polar
opposite Kantian legalistic and logicistic sense of not contradicting
oneself (e.g. I (sic) must not make a lying promise, since universalising
that would contradict itself).  The existence of differing opinions, or of
hard cases such as Sartre's conflict of national and family duty, should not
lead to a rejection of the possibility of rational understanding of natural
values (goods).

Thank you for the reference to Salkever.  Thanks also for relieving me from
my embarrassment.  The maudlin bit was about the war here for the past 30
years.
My book *Marx: Justice and Dialectic* was published by Greenwich Exchange
Press, London 1996.  Things I have written are available at

Hi Ruth---    I fully agree with you when you say :

I do always think that RTS, at least, is a kind of Aristotle versus Kant and
Hume saga. (On the other hand, I see Marx too as in some way spelling out
what the historical conditions of possibility are for an Aristotelian kind
of flourishing to be universally
possible.

You ask:

So are you saying that once we establish (or re-establish)
that efficient causality is about the exercise of *some* sort of real power,
then the way is open to assert that the bearers of such powers (I don't mean
for this to sound as external a relationship as it sounds -- I just can't
think of the right words to express it) are also bearers of final causes?
Or, once natural necessity is back on the table, then it's just another step
to add that it's a certain kind of teleological necessity?

I would say: if that means "Is it good for, the telos of, a being to
exercise the powers of which it is capable, to fulfil its potentiality? ", I
suppose the Aristotelian answer would be yes.

At the risk of being naive and simplistic, I would say that to know the
nature of anything is to know what is good for it, and what a good example
of its kind is, within a hierarchical totality.  The nature of the human
being is not to be an isolated pleasure or utility seeking mechanism (the
source of modern ruthless relativism), but to be a rational animal within
community -- rational in the Aristotelian universalising and totalising
sense, not in the modern instrumental sense, nor in its bifurcated polar
opposite Kantian legalistic and logicistic sense of not contradicting
oneself (e.g. I (sic) must not make a lying promise, since universalising
that would contradict itself).  The existence of differing opinions, or of
hard cases such as Sartre's conflict of national and family duty, should not
lead to a rejection of the possibility of rational understanding of natural
values (goods).

Thank you for the reference to Salkever.  Thanks also for relieving me from
my embarrassment.  The maudlin bit was about the war here for the past 30
years.
My book *Marx: Justice and Dialectic* was published by Greenwich Exchange
Press, London 1996.  Things I have written are available at





Yours, James.
Hi Ruth---    I fully agree with you when you say :

I do always think that RTS, at least, is a kind of Aristotle versus Kant and
Hume saga. (On the other hand, I see Marx too as in some way spelling out
what the historical conditions of possibility are for an Aristotelian kind
of flourishing to be universally
possible.

You ask:

So are you saying that once we establish (or re-establish)
that efficient causality is about the exercise of *some* sort of real power,
then the way is open to assert that the bearers of such powers (I don't mean
for this to sound as external a relationship as it sounds -- I just can't
think of the right words to express it) are also bearers of final causes?
Or, once natural necessity is back on the table, then it's just another step
to add that it's a certain kind of teleological necessity?

I would say: if that means "Is it good for, the telos of, a being to
exercise the powers of which it is capable, to fulfil its potentiality? ", I
suppose the Aristotelian answer would be yes.

At the risk of being naive and simplistic, I would say that to know the
nature of anything is to know what is good for it, and what a good example
of its kind is, within a hierarchical totality.  The nature of the human
being is not to be an isolated pleasure or utility seeking mechanism (the
source of modern ruthless relativism), but to be a rational animal within
community -- rational in the Aristotelian universalising and totalising
sense, not in the modern instrumental sense, nor in its bifurcated polar
opposite Kantian legalistic and logicistic sense of not contradicting
oneself (e.g. I (sic) must not make a lying promise, since universalising
that would contradict itself).  The existence of differing opinions, or of
hard cases such as Sartre's conflict of national and family duty, should not
lead to a rejection of the possibility of rational understanding of natural
values (goods).

Thank you for the reference to Salkever.  Thanks also for relieving me from
my embarrassment.  The maudlin bit was about the war here for the past 30
years.
My book *Marx: Justice and Dialectic* was published by Greenwich Exchange
Press, London 1996.  Things I have written are available at

http://www.oru.se/org/inst/sam/sociolog/ccr/papers/JamesDaly.rtf


http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Poli/PoliDaly.htm


Yours, James.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ruth Groff" <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca>
To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 3:41 PM
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Re:James Daly's piece





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