Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 03:18:56 +0100 From: Jan Straathof <janstr-AT-chan.nl> Subject: Re: BHA: negativity wins Hi Ruth, forgive me for focusing only on a detail of your interesting post, viz. the stuff on the so-called 'de-onts', you wrote: >1. I still don't understand why I have to grant the positive existence of >entities called "de-onts." Would someone be willing (hopefully one last >time) to explain this to me in very plain language? (To me, it still just >seems like so much re-description and making-thing-like of "things" that are >either states of affairs or abstractions.) what does Bhaskar say about 'de-onts' ? "I want to differentiate within the class of ontics - understood as the intransitive objects of specific epistemic inquiries - positive existences or presences, which i shall dub 'onts', from negative existences or absences, which i shall nominate 'de-onts'." [DPF:40] " 'Is' and 'real' discharge the burden of ontology; 'not' and 'absent' denote negativity. To admit that real absence exists and real absenting occur is tantamount to concede that non-beings, i.e. de-onts, are, happen etc. We thus have the theorem: ontology > ontics > de-onts." [DPF:47] as far as i understand this, Bhaskar defines 'de-onts' as "negative existences", "absences" and "non-beings"; but OK, what are real examples of this negative presence in very plain language ? well, personally, the more or less prosaic images that come into my dialectical mind-set are such as: - the absence of gravity in a space station - the hole in the ozon layer - the absence of my dead father - the lost final of the Dutch soccer team at the World Cup in 1974 - the fallen Berlin Wall - the lack of proper health care, education somewhere - fascism, racism, sexism as negative presences (blocking Eudaimonia) - the absence of a solution to a mathematical problem - a perloined letter - a telephone off the hook - a lurker on a mailing-list - the experience of phantom limbs - a clock that runs slow - paintings of Rene Magritte hmm Ruth, don't know if this list clarifies any, but actually i've never had much problem with Bhaskar's 'de-onts' etc: must be my heidegger past ;-) yours, jan ps. and isn't the term "de-ontology" not also used in the context of normative and moral philosophy, or am i very wrong here ? --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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