File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2000/bhaskar.0010, message 6


Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 01:08:29 +0100
From: Jan Straathof <janstr-AT-chan.nl>
Subject: Re: BHA: Hegel, dialectics, etc


Hi Phil,

yes, when we are reasoning such as "no X without Y" (or "if Y then X")
we -in fact- are focussing on the roll a linear or a singural causality plays
in the development and unfolding of histories, but looking at history i
see host of plural (causal) mechnisms and agents that are at work (or at
lack).

for me - and let me speculate a bit here - there seems a problematic in
your somewhat focal attention to the influence of key figures/thinkers,
one similarly found in the historicism of Nietzsche and Marx, i.e. that
they seem to reduce the 'historical process' solely to one generative
mechanism viz. "the will to power" or "class struggle"; this imo is a
too flat and ontological monovalent conception of history --- there is
more ontological layering to/in history then only will to power or class
struggles, f.i. multiple and demi-temporalities, geo-cosmic rhythmics,
physical limits and thresholds, strange mediators, exotic teleologies ...

ok - and this is my point- i think that key thinkers (and their systems)
can/will only play an exidental or coincidental roll in the shaping of
history, what is causally as much (or maybe even more) important is
the existence of socalled "windows of opportunity" e.g. those free
and creative spaces which emerge in chaotic situations of bifurcation,
and -of course- at those moments philosophers, or any other human
being, can make a significant difference and offer a lasting and hope-
fully a valuable contribution to progress; but the emergences of these
'windows of opportunity' are very difficult to detect or predict and
even more difficult to evoke (if possible at all), because they catergo-
rically fall outside the realm of human causal powers --- maybe this
sounds too pessimistic for you, but it's my simple version of TDCR
at the moment :-)

yours,
Jan




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