File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2001/bhaskar.0102, message 53


Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 10:17:19 -0500 (EST)
From: Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca>
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Diffraction Post two


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>Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 17:04:34 +1000
>From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au>
>Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Diffraction Post two
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>Tonjimen,
>
>I am sorry that this has spawned two posts and I am about to give birth to
>a third!
>
>Gary
>
>Diffracting the Dialectic Post two.
>
>Part three.
>
>Having had a fairly hefty swipe at Marx in Part Two, Bhaskar returns to the
>critique of Hegel.  I have, as indicated in my first post, ending Part
>Three on page 96 after the sentence:  'I am proleptically interpreting here
>in my terms… and entailing endist closure).'
>
>This is the place of the  'triple inversions'. There are even 'inversions
>of inversions' it seems. Hmmm! Still each to their own, I say.
>
>Seriously though, mention of subject and predicate simply confused me in
>this part. I will take a stab at it, but it is not much more than a guess.  
>
>The Inversions: Hegel and Marx
>
>I. Hegel: absolute idealist ontology
>Marx:     universals as properties of particular things
>
>II. Hegel: speculative rationalist epistemology
>Marx:      knowledge as irreducibly empirical
>
>III. Hegel: substantive idealist sociology 
>Marx:       civil society (modes of production) as the foundation of the
>state.
>
>We are now at the top of page 94. Bhaskar rehearses inversions I and II.
>For Inversion I turn to Marx's The Holy Family and the "The mystery of
>Speculative Construction" (Marx, 1956: 78-83). I will quote at length from
>this, because it gives the general thrust of Marx's method and also because
>of its wit.
>
>'If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general
>idea "Fruit," if I go further and  *imagine* that my abstract idea "Fruit,"
>derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the
>*true* essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then, in the language of
>speculative philosophy I am declaring that "fruit" is the substance of the
>pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be a pear
>is not essential to the pear, that to be an apple is not essential to the
>apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real being,
>perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have extracted from them
>and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea --""Fruit". I therefore
>declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of existence, modi,
>of "Fruit." My finite understanding supported by my senses does, of course,
>distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond; but my
>speculative reason declares these sensuous differences unessential,
>indifferent.  It sees in the apple the same as in the pear, and in the pear
>the same as in the almond, namely "Fruit." Particular real fruits are no
>more than semblances whose true essence is 'the Substance" - "Fruit".
>(Marx, 1956: 78-9)
>
>The second inversion has Marx as believing in empirically controlled
>investigations instead of the speculative mysticism of Hegel.   There is an
>interesting aside here about 'preservative dialectical sublation'.  I
>understand this to refer to the conservatism of Hegel's dialectic, where
>nothing is absented, but is rather sublated and preserved. I am currently
>studying Benjamin's 'Theses on the philosophy of history', and it is
>striking to see the parallels between the Hegelian dialectic and Benjamin's
>notion of the 'weak messianic hope' that future generations will redeem the
>past through memory. I am thinking especially of the Third Thesis:
>
>'A chronicler who recites events without distinguishing between major and
>minor ones acts in accordance with the following truth: nothing that has
>ever happened should be regarded as lost for history.  To be sure, only a
>redeemed mankind receives the fullness of its past - which is to say, only
>for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments. Each
>moment it has lived becomes a citation a l'ordre du jour - and that day is
>Judgement Day.' (Benjamin, 1977: 256)
>
>The remainder of this part is devoted to a four point development of Marx's
>Third Inversion:
>
>III. Hegel: substantive idealist sociology 
>Marx:       civil society (modes of production) as the foundation of the
>state.
>
>The first of the criticisms has to do with Marxism's practical materialism.
>This is fairly uncontroversial.
>The second criticism is more complex, at least for me.  It is that Hegel
>does not distinguish between objectification and alienation. The stakes are
>very high here and Bhaskar's reading of Marx's reading of Hegel would
>certainly be controversial. It also has to be said that the discussion is
>rather 'brisk' to use an expression of Outhwaite's. Presumably in the
>forthcoming book on Marx and Hegel the issues will be canvassed at a deeper
>level. Again this is where one's sense of the inadequacy of one's personal
>grasp of the issues is painfully strong.  
>
>(I had  more material on this aspect of the section but there is a danger
>of swamping the Bhaskar too much.  So I have tried to abbreviate it all.)
>
>
>
>The charge against Hegel would appear to be that he universalises a
>particular social phenomenon, rendering it as somehow an essential part of
>the human condition.  Marx's attack is that if we alter the historically
>specific mediations of Private property, Exchange, Division of Labour then
>we will have a less (non?) alienated society (Meszaros, 1978: 78-9).
>
>However Richard Schacht in his work on alienation takes a radically
>different tack. 
>He asserts that Hegel did not confuse alienation with objectification
>(Schacht, 1971: 54). Schacht's thesis was completed under the supervision
>of Walter Kaufmann at Princeton. As such it has a Cold War flavour to its
>conclusions which seem to point to the inevitability of alienation.
>Nevertheless it is an interesting work and deserves more attention than I
>have the time to give it at present.  
>
>Briefly then Schacht acknowledges that Hegel had two concepts of alienation
>(entfremdung) - one of alienation as 'separation' and the other of
>alienation as surrender (entausserung). As one would expect the discussion
>is very complex. According to Schacht alienation as separation has at least
>three senses. The principal one refers to alienation from the 'social
>substance'.  What Schacht means by 'social substance' is not immediately
>clear. The examples he gives though of non-separation are taken from the
>labour process.  Thus he speaks of 'roles' and 'groups'(1971: 38). There is
>also the sense in which alienation here is necessary for the development of
>individuality. (1971: 38-9). What Schacht translates as 'separation' is
>objectification for Bhaskar and externalisation for Mandel (1971; 78), I
>think!
>
>
>An additional complication is that alienation as separation has, according
>to Schacht, two features.  Firstly alienation is a process of becoming.
>The individual was at one with the Social Substance  then secondly *it*
>became alienated from her. 
>
>However there is more to come.  The social substance is the objectification
>of spirit. But the individual is also the objectification of spirit. Both
>the social substance and the individual have spirit has their true selves.
>So the individual's true self is really the social substance.  The solution
>to alienation as separation comes when the individual recognises that
>social substance is really its true self objectified and surrenders to it.
>
>I hope I have done justice to Schacht's discussion (1971: 40-52). The
>underlying conservative nature of his conclusions seem obvious to me.  More
>importantly, even if they constitute a correct reading of Hegel, and I am
>in no position to judge, they hardly discredit the Marx/Bhaskar criticism
>that alienation as it is presented in Hegel is given an ahistorical
>interpretation. As a result of which it can never be overcome. So the
>upshot of Kaufmann and Schacht's work for all their undoubted knowledge of
>the Hegelian texts is to prove that revolution is both unnecessary and
>impossible. QED as the CIA might have said and probably did.
> 
>>From this initial charge of Hegel's identification of alienation with
>objectification Bhaskar moves to Lukacs' critique of Hegel. For Lukacs,
>Marx always assumed a material substratum. As well the Marxian dialectic
>produced change.  In other words things could be finite. For Hegel life was
>'essentially "infinite" and he spoke of "single lives" as "organs" of the
>living whole world (Schacht, 1971: 43). (Interesting touch of the Gaia
>hypothesis there.) So the characteristics of the Marxian dialectic are that
>it has a base in the objective world. It is finitist in the sense that
>things get transformed or absented. Change and novelty are possibilities.
>It is also open and does not end in some putative closure such as a return
>to the Absolute.
>
>We are now half way down page 95 and have moved on to the third critique of
>the Triple Inversion (III. Hegel: substantive idealist sociology 
>Marx: civil society (modes of production) as the foundation of the state.)
>This accusation is that Hegel has a purely positive account of reality. He
>lacks a concept of absence and absenting and so is vulnerable to the charge
>of ontological monovalence. On page 200 Bhaskar claims the discovery of
>absence as one of the two great discoveries he has made in DPF. So there
>can be little doubt as to the importance of this charge.
>
>I am not quite sure that I understand the next two sentences:
>
>The very most a Hegelian could say is that he is only constellationally
>monovalent.  But as Hegel is not concerned with the demi-actual, the
>demi-present ( or i.e. the future) etc., this is a very weak response indeed.
>III. Hegel: substantive idealist sociology 
>Marx:       civil society (modes of production) as the foundation of the
>state.
>
>The Hegelian system as I understand it is The Absolute - Loss of union with
>Absolute - Return to the Absolute.  So the Absolute could function
>constellationally as overarching all that is i.e. the demi-actual. So in a
>sense the Absolute is absented in the  world.  But the return to the
>Absolute always seems to beckon, so the system is at heart positive.
>
>We have now got to the last criticism of the third inversion. We move back
>into controversial territory here.  Bhaskar argues that Marx has an element
>of the teleological in his work.  I think this is a fair criticism,
>especially of the polemical Marx of the Manifesto. Communism is presented
>there as the goal of humanity and the process of getting there does seem
>somewhat automatic. By the time of Capital, according to Bhaskar, Marx
>However what is especially interesting for me is that Bhaskar allows a weak
>teleology, and it is located within the Fourth Dimension 4D of his
>dialectic, that is, the level of agency.  On page 169 of DPF he puts this
>position thus: 
>
>'Definitionally then, there is a conatus to deconstraint or freedom, in a
>depth dialectic… and to the knowledge of the pwer2 relations constraining
>the satisfaction of wanted need. Absence will impose the geo-historical
>directionality that will usher in a truly humane human global society…
>(1993: 169)'.
>
>There is a more poetic version of this telos on page 98:
>'What is certain is that, so long as humanity survives, there will always
>be a conatus for freedom to become'.
>
>I think the latter sentence is why I am a Critical Realist.
>
>This criticism of the Third Inversion closes with a comparison of Hegelian
>thought with the Bhaskarian dialectic.  
>
>Bhaskar: ontological depth, structural change, open totality and
>transformative agency
>Hegel:    necessity, becoming,  actuality, infinity.
>
>Necessity and becoming are it seems close to ontological depth and
>structural change, but they revert to actuality (closure) and then the
>mystical unity with the absolute or the infinite. 
>
>All this critique of the Hegel - Marx relationship has been filtered
>through the Critical realist concepts of the epistemic fallacy, ontological
>monovalence and the speculative illusion.
>
>Some conclusions may be appropriate here.  However I feel inadequate to
>this task. However from the little I know, it does seem to me that Bhaskar
>has a unique spin on Hegel and on Marx  (to a less extent perhaps).  A
>comparison of Bhaskar with Ilyenkov and others from the Russian Academy
>would be interesting and I may get the time to pursue it.
>
>
>References
>
>Bakhtin, M., _Laughter and Freedom_ in Solomon, M. (ed), _Marxism and Art_,
>Detroit: Wayne State University, 1979: 295-300
>Benjamin, W., Illuminations, London: Fontana, 1977
>Bhaskar, R., _Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom_, London: Verso, 1993
>Fiske, J., _Television Culture_, New York: Routledge, 1987
>Ilyenkov, E.V., _Dialectical Logic: Essays on Its History and Theory_,
>Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977
>Mandel, E., The Causes of Alienation, in Mandel, E., & Novack, G., (eds)
>The Marxist Theory of Alienation, New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970
>Marx, K., & Engels, F., The Holly Family, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1956
>Marx, Engels, Lenin, _On dialectical Materialism_, Moscow: Progress
>Publishers, 1977
>Meszaros, I., Marx's Theory of Alienation, London: Merlin Press, 1978
>Novack, G., _Polemics in Marxist Philosophy: Essays on: Sartre  Plekhanov
>Lukacs Engels Kolakowski Trotsky Timpanaro  Colletti_  New York: Monad
>Press, 1978
>Piaget, J., _A brief tribute to Goldmann_, in Goldmann, L., Cultural
>Creation, St. Louis: Telos Press, 1979: 125-7 
>Ruben, D-H,  _Marxism and Dialectics_, in Mepham, J., & Ruben D-H. (eds)
>_Issues in Marxist Philosophy_, London: The Harvester Press, 1979: 37-87
>Schacht, R., _Alienation_, London: Allen & Unwin, 1971
>
>
>
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