File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2000/bhaskar.0011, message 10


Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2000 10:09:40 +1000
From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au>
Subject: On replying to Phil on Roy's idealism was Re: BHA: Fw: To simper or to


Now Phil,

The header for this post is something of a provocation, comrade.  Who 
simpers? Really, Phil, it is bordering on the cruel and the macho to use 
that word of Kierkegaard's agony.  But we will leave that be.  I have just 
been on the Palestinian site <addameer.org/september2000> reading about the 
suffering of the Palestinian people and I am much less inclined to disagree 
with you, though what in the name of the Holy Ones you meant by "wholesome 
human love" I refuse to contemplate. You sound positively like that prude 
Lenin here.

So  where do we disagree? What am I prepared to die in a ditch over?

a) about Kierkegaard - obviously and including Adorno's estimation of 
him.  We will probably have to bracket that off.

b) FEW - specifically you challenge me to say whether the Roy Bhaskar of 
FEW is an idealist or not.  Well actually I have already answered that -  I 
said that if the ontology of FEW was true, i.e. if there was a god, then 
Roy could not be an idealist.

I think it is fair to say that that was not regarded as one of my more 
brilliant posts. Still what I had in mind was Georges Politzer's definition 
of idealism as the belief that it is "Thought that produces 
Being"(Politzer, 1950 : 29). For me it is a nonsense to believe that Roy 
has produced God out of his head in some Feurbachian frenzy.

Of course life is  always more complex and I have gone back to my Stalinist 
classics to try and get an understanding what Marxists meant by idealism 
(Cornforth thou shouldst be living at this hour!). Maurice Cornforth's 
paradigmatic cased of the idealist is Berkeley. He is quoted as saying "

"When I consider...the signification of the words 'material substance', I 
am convinced there is no distinct meaning annexed to them" and "If there 
were external bodies, it is impossible we should ever come to know it" (in 
Cornforth, 1955: 77-8).

Now none of this applies to FEW at all. So where is Bhaskar's idealism? I 
was about to claim victory - Gary 5 Phil 0 at this juncture until I opened 
yet another tome from the academy of  "actually existing socialism" - 
Rosenthal & Yudin's Dictionary of Philosophy. They tell us that

"Marxism-Leninism divides the varieties of I. into two groups: objective 
idealism which takes as the basis of reality a personal or impersonal 
spirit, some kind of superindividual mind; subjective idealism which 
construes the world on the basis of the distinctions of individual 
consciousness".

They then add not very helpfully "But the distinction between subjective 
and objective I. is not absolute (Y&R, 1967: 203)".

Still going by the subsequent definitions of these terms it is clear to me 
at least that Bhaskar is not a subjective idealist where this is understood 
as meaning that the "objective world cannot be regarded as existing 
independently of men's cognitive activity and means of cognition (Y&R, 
1967: 205)".

So is Bhaskar then an objective idealist like Plato ("the greatest 
objective idealist of antiquity") and Hegel ("its classical representative 
in the 19th century")?  Does he believe that "spirit is primary and matter 
secondary, derivative"?

I am inclined to say that the answer here must be a "yes",though this is 
surely very much complicated by what kind of notion we have of God. If say 
it is the God of Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven - the "tremendous 
Lover"- then surely it is something other than spirit.  But I cannot abide 
the notion of such a god and find Thompson's poem repulsive.   Although I 
have to be fair and say that I have known those who think the poem reflects 
brilliantly their own personal struggle for faith.  However I am much more 
sympathetic towards Plato and Hegel's objective idealism.

I would add though that I think that Nick is correct to say that when 
Bhaskar advanced the concept of a non-relational absence then he was on the 
path to objective idealism.  Mind you I think Nick is quite wrong to deny 
the possibility of a Nothing without a Positive.  For me it is obviously 
possible to have a Void but impossible to have a purely positive 
world.  Absence is primary.  Of course as Heidegger pointed out as soon as 
we talk of the Nothing we make it into an existent - something positive or 
at best we turn it into a relational notion.

I am thinking again of Pascal here:

"For what is man in nature?  A Nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an 
All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and 
everything.  Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the 
extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from 
in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing 
from which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is swallowed up. 
(Pascal in Commins & Linscott, 1947: 200).


This then gives way to Pascal's beautiful formulation

"All things proceed from the Nothing and are borne towards the Infinite."

This then is somewhat spoilt for me by the introduction of the Personal God 
as in

"Who will follow these marvellous processes?  The Author of these wonders 
understands them.  None other can do so (ibid: 201)."

However let me finish by saying that the distinction between subjective and 
objective idealism is an important one. For between objective idealists and 
Marxists there can be alliances. We can all work together to build the 
kingdom of god on earth. This by the way is what I take as the central 
message of FEW. We can all become concrete utopians to borrow a phrase from 
DPF.  Or as the great graffiti said at Essex University in the early 70s, 
together we Marxists and objective idealists can "Begin the Dialectic".

Moreover this is much more likely than in the case of the subjective 
idealism of the postmodern world, which constantly teeters on the verge of 
solipsism.  subjective idealists such as Rorty substitute the thought of a 
better world for the real thing.  Theirs is the ideology of the tenured in 
a world of suffering.

By contrast with the dissembling of the postmodernists Bhaskar continues to 
face the world with honesty and I would say clarity.  Besides what ever the 
criticisms of FEW advanced on this list none can honestly say that FEW is 
an attempt to hide or to minimise the extent of  human suffering.  That for 
me is the book's true nobility and redemptive quality.


warmest of regards

Gary


References

Cornforth,M., Science Versus Idealism, Lawrence & Wishart: London, 1955.
Cummins, S. & Linscott, R.N. (eds) Man and Spirit: the Speculative 
Philosophers, Random House: New York, 1947.
Politzer, G., An Elementary Course in Philosophy, Current Book 
Distributors: Sydney, 1950.
Rosenthal, M. & Yudin, P., A Dictionary of Philosophy,Progress Publishers: 
Moscow, 1967



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