Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 21:26:02 +0000
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: A paper on Eastern turn available for comments


I'd very much like to see the full paper, Heikki.

Thanks, 

Mervyn

Heikki Patomaki <user-AT-nigd.u-net.com> writes
>Dear listers,
>
>my interest in From East to West is not only due to 
>Bhaskar himself. I try to read it also as a possible 
>post-colonial turn towards the East, which have been
>preceded by similar (quasi)turns by Nietzsche,
>Derrida and Galtung, among others. 
>
>Is a truly global philosophical discourse possible? 
>What a critical realist could learn from Nietzsche, 
>Derrida and Galtung? I argue that yes, global philosophy
>is possible and that Derrida and Galtung, in particular,
>have explicated some of the crucial conditions
>for it. Hence a critical realist, too, could learn a
>lot from these turns.
>
>Below is the conclusion of the paper. If you would
>like to see the paper as a whole, please send me a
>message. It is now in a review process of a journal,
>but all comments would be more than welcome!
>
>Regards,
>
>               Heikki
>
>
>
>-------------------------------------------------
>
>From East to West: Emergent Global Philosophies - Beginnings of the End of
>the Western Dominance?
>
>
>
>Heikki Patomki
>
>
>
>Conclusion: what a critical realist can learn from Nietzsche, Derrida and
>Galtung?
>
>Bhaskar is not alone in his aspiration "to begin to construct a dialogue,
>bridge and synthesis" between traditions of both radical libertarian
>Western thought and mystical Eastern thought. Nietzche preceded the late
>20th century, post-colonial discussions by Derrida and Galtung, among
>others, later joined by Bhaskar. The way has been opened up for still
>Others to join the discourse.
>
>What could a critical realist learn from earlier attempts by Nietzsche,
>Derrida and Galtung? It is interesting that all of these radicals have
>turned to Buddhism, instead of other Eastern religions and world-views.
>Orient is readily equated with Buddhism. With every Buddhist turn, novel
>pitfalls have been revealed, but also new possibilities have been opened up. 
>
>Nietzsche has taught us not only healthy suspicion about any particular
>grandiose claims, but also the possibility of building bridges between
>cultures and creating more ambiguous and interesting identities. However,
>Nietzsche's understanding of Buddhism was superficial, and his
>appropriation of the search for Nothingness and the doctrine of eternal
>recurrence, owe more to positivist (Humean) origins of his radical
>scepticism than to any genuine attempt at transcultural dialogue.
>
>Derrida's notion that meaning is always complexly mediated not only gives
>an interesting interpretation of the meaning of karma, but it also helps us
>to appreciate the multifarious and often ambiguous threads in any attempt
>to come to terms with different/other philosophical systems or world-views.
>Also Derrida's more recent ethico-political texts with discussions on
>Europe and its Otherness or "democracy-to-come" have implications for any
>attempt to articulate a global philosophy. In particular, they point to the
>need for a constant dialogical openness to Others (themselves in the
>process of becoming), and at least point towards the idea that instead of
>varying turns of dominance and subordination, global philosophies should be
>discussed in the non-violent space made possible by mutual recognition and
>the promise of justice and democracy to come, in the context of deep mutual
>interconnectedness.
>
>Many readings of Derrida (including many of his own claims and constant
>disclaimers) are irrealist and can easily lead to disempowerment of
>practices or, in some cases, to a nihilist dead-end. Yet, the idea that
>"democracy-to-come" recognises the aporia of being and thereby opens itself
>up for the possibility of ever further transformations, for taking up other
>directions, for becoming its Other, also by means of dialogue and
>interactions with concrete Others, is important. This may become a basis
>for global democracy. It is equally important, however, that global
>democracy is not discussed only at the highly abstract level of
>deconstructionism. Justice and democracy must also mean something more
>concrete  - and more immediate.
>
>Since the mid-1950s, Galtung spent years on the false emancipatory promise
>of positivist social sciences. After he had finally realised that knowledge
>is not only not neutral but also constitutive of social worlds; and that,
>from a global perspective, there are limitations to both liberalism and
>Marxism; he started to look to non-Occidental social cosmologies. In
>contrast to Derrida, Galtung has actually studied and discussed Oriental
>systems of thought in some detail. Moreover, instead of merely focussing on
>minimisation of abstractly and non-precisely defined violence, he has
>proposed visions of change towards universalisable positive peace,
>including blueprints for concretely and institutionally specified models of
>global democracy (e.g. Galtung 1999).
>
>But Galtung too has his limitations. In practice, his explorations of the
>Orient look more like a monologue with himself than like a dialogue with
>any concrete Others. Further, the lack of real causal analysis has detached
>his blueprints from reality and made them excessively normative and
>sermon-like. There is a need for a realist social science and real dialogue
>with concrete Others.
>
>Now, in the light of the intellectual journeys of exploration of Nietzsche,
>Derrida and Galtung, Bhaskar's turn to East looks even more suspicious than
>in mere critical realist terms alone. Yes, the unsustained existential
>claims; ontic fallacies; and the ever more obvious speculative illusion
>undermine the grounds for Bhaskar's attempt to subsume critical realism
>under an unspecified and fuzzy New Age synthesis of "mystical Eastern
>thought". But it is the examples of Nietzsche, Derrida and Galtung that
>demonstrate how it would be possible to construct more critically a
>"dialogue, bridge and synthesis between" traditions of both radical
>libertarian Western thought and mystical Eastern thought.
>
>Moreover, it would be an illusion to think that any grand concept or
>master-signifier, not even that of "realism", can "save the planet" and
>thereby our interconnected being(s). Simple stories of salvation or, for
>that matter, Russian fairy tales won't do. Deconstruction of those texts is
>all too easy.
>
>My assessment of Nietzsche, Derrida and Galtung has also indicated the
>dangers of simplifications, reifications and mystifications of the East. It
>is not only that Orient is not one but many, but also that for many
>allegedly Oriental positions there are in fact Occidental counterparts.
>Nietzsche revealed that positivist science, with its characteristic search
>for invariances as conjunctions that do not change, and its tendency to
>destroy meanings and purposes, can plausibly give grounds for the doctrine
>of eternal recurrence. On the other hand, since Heraclitus, the idea that
>everything is in a state of flux has been thematised by a number of
>dialectical philosophers. They have also explored something roughly
>equivalent to the Buddhist and Derridean "neither/nor"-thinking. The
>dialectical scheme is: neither the thesis, nor the antithesis, but a third
>possibility, a synthesis. But as Bhaskar (1994, 336-344) has shown in his
>brilliant critique of Hegel, a synthesis is neither unique and unilinear,
>nor does it - typically - preserve all aspects of the thesis and its
>negation. There are other possible syntheses; and any of them would entail
>a loss of some, possibly valuable aspects of thesis and its negation. In
>this sense, aporia will persist: there can be neither total affirmation nor
>denial of both X or not-X and a synthesis, even if synthesis is seen as
>development.
>
>Finally, let us consider God. In From East to West, Bhaskar argues that
>although God is real, only a culturally mediated access to God is possible.
>However, he does not specify why we should believe that God is real. Like
>any experience, religious experiences may be false, or indicative of
>something else than God  - however specified. Nietzsche, Derrida and
>Galtung have shown that a turn towards the East is possible without an
>explicit belief in God. It is well known that Nietzsche's European Buddhism
>verges on despair in its nihilism. However, at times, Derrida seems to be
>hinting at a possibility of something equivalent to Nirvana, yet does not
>explicate God. Galtung maintains that humanity would actually do better
>without a conception of an all-ecompassing or omnipotent God (yet, in his
>analogy between deity and axioms in theories, Galtung (1996, 20) urges us
>to "prefer poly- and pan-theistic to mono- and a-theistic theories"). If
>there can be neither total affirmation nor denial of God and not-God; and
>if in this field the prospects for development by means of a better
>synthesis are dim, except as an ecumenical exercise; there seems to be no
>reason why global philosophical discourse(s) should necessarily focus on God.
>
>Last but not least, it has been a central theme and argument of this paper
>that any attempt forward in specifying the conditions for a genuine
>trans-cultural dialogue and its underpinnings, global justice and
>democracy, would seem to also presuppose at least some of the basic tenets
>of realist social sciences. Actors have the socio-historically conditioned
>power to make a difference, also by means of institutional transformations;
>and social sciences can create and produce knowledge which is causally
>efficacious in open systems where the existing structures and complexes are
>also causally efficacious, yet predictions are doomed to failure. Global
>"democracy-to-come" may have to recognise the aporia of being, but also it
>has to be able to explain, critically, the reproduction and transformation
>of causally efficacious relational practices and structures in an
>increasingly global context.
>
>
>
>
>----------------------------------
>
>Heikki Patomaki
>
>Network Institute for Global Democratisation (NIGD)
>http://www.nigd.u-net.com
>Helsinki & Nottingham
>e-mail: heikki-AT-nigd.u-net.com
>tel:   +358 - (0)40  - 558 2916  (GSM)
>       +44  - (0)774 - 711 24 35 (GSM)
>
>ALSO:
>
>Department of International Studies
>Nottingham Trent University
>Clifton Lane
>Nottingham NG11 8NS
>The United Kingdom
>e-mail: heikki.patomaki-AT-ntu.ac.uk
>tel:   +44 - (0)115 - 848 6610
>fax:   +44 - (0)115 - 848 6385
>
>
>
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