Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 02:44:20 +0000
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: question about ontological monovalence


Dear Richard,

>Would my belief that both good and evil are "really real" mean that I do
>not fall into the perilous pit of ontological monovalence?

That is a *very* good question! (With super onomatopoeia to boot.
Thinking about it, I'm tempted to hope you do fall into the pp - if
you're not already in it.)

I think Alan and Nick are right to argue in the last Alethia that (in
effect) Bhaskar thinks that the "really real" is God and the goodness of
God, and that it dwells in (is the essence of) us all, and that evil is
not "really real", it is only "demi-real" (Bhaskar's term - a human-made
web of illusion that prevents us from seeing the "really real", cuts us
off from it.) (In terms of the recent discussion, it is "real" - but it
cuts us off from the "really real").

So your question has Bhaskar himself falling into the pp, while - of
course - you (and I and all the rest of us cynics) escape in the belief
that evil, like goodness, goes 'all the way down'.

Bhaskar would try to respond by arguing that evil is real but good has
ontological priority over it (this probably explains - though it
probably shouldn't! -  why the point about the ontological priority of
absence has been such a sticking point in the recent discussion, even
though it's 'beyond the world as we know it'). I've suggested in
previous posts that, in terms of a modern scientific account of
biological evolution, Bhaskar's claim that the good is 'ontologically
prior' to evil fares well at the intra-specific and especially intra-
community level, but can't handle the inter-specific situation, where
nature is completely amoral. Unsurprisingly, that penultimate nihilist
and prophet of neo-liberalism, Friedrich Nietzsche, makes a great deal
of the amorality of the inter-specific situation in *The Genealogy of
Morals* etc (the eagle tears out the heart of the lamb, etc.)

The question arises, however, as to why inter-specific relations should
provide the model, as in Nietzsche's account, of the future of intra-
specific relations? Why not the converse, as in Bhaskar's account? At
the end of the day, Bhaskar is saying 'We can do it!' - 'Utopianism of
the intellect, optimism of the will!' - and he's offering you (and me) a
leg up out of the pp (which today is through and through Nietzschean).

Mervyn


PS. If you still want to put good and evil 'on a par', you deserve to
stay in the pp!


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