Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 11:21:07 GMT
Subject: Re: BHA: Recovering ontology


Dear Victor, 

It is true that some intellectuals have rejected ontology and ideas of 
the real. But so too have many more ordinary folk. They express a 
widespread feeling that claims about the nature of reality made by 
those in positions of authority, economic, political and scientific, are 
more to do with sustaining those positions than the pursuit of truth. 
The idea that the Neitzschean will to power is what underlays 
claims to truth is extremely widespread. Scepticism is more often 
about the actual claims to know reality, and those who make them, 
than it is about whether or not the world is real. Such sceptism is 
part of a 'common sense' attitude towards the world which has good 
cause. 

CR/DCR holds that all discourse contains some idea of the real, 
some kind of ontology. The problem that CR/DCR engages with is 
the precise character of that ontology. It holds that the nature of 
implicit ontologies tells us about the nature of specific social 
formations, i.e. ontologies are symptomatic of social ills. It also 
holds that discourses which reroduce implicit ontologies help to 
reproduce those ills. 

Take another aspects of common sense, like the idea that it is 
possible to earn a fair wage. The idea of a fair wage is based on 
the idea that an amount of labour is exchanged for wages. The 
ontological assumption is that labour is something that can be given 
over in an exchange. Once we change that assumption, and see 
that what really happens is that our labour power is put at someone 
else's disposal, our entire understanding changes. Those others use 
our powers to create social value, which they appropriate, and then 
they give us only a portion of the value we create. No exchange of 
any kind takes place even takes place. The idea that there could be 
a fair exchange is simply nonsense. There is only the alienation of 
our labour power to others and their appropriation of the social 
values our labour creates. The nonsense idea of a fair wage is 
based on an ontological error, or untruth about our reality. 

Bringing back ontology means taking on board the sceptism that 
power rests on false accounts of what is real AND the idea that we 
can challenge those accounts with better ones grounded in superior 
understandings of ontology and reality.

Nick.


---------------------------------
Nick Hostettler,
Department of Political Studies,
SOAS (University of London),
Thornaugh Street,
Russell Square,
London WC1H 0XG
---------------------------------


     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---