File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2001/bhaskar.0102, message 8


From: "Martti Puttonen" <maputto-AT-saunalahti.fi>
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2001 10:57:27 +0200
Subject: Re: BHA: Delivered up to the world



Hi Mervyn, Jan, and all,

One issue in dialectics related to and apart from occultism: 

Mervyn, in my mind you elaborated quite accurately Adorno's main 
attept to have 'realist philosophy' , but your elaboration seems to 
me to be quite an idealist one. That is so, because you very nicely 
posed Adorno's attempts to  overcome subjective and objective  
idealisms and to avoid transcendental idealism. In negative 
dialectics Adorno mainly has a search whether realist philosophy  
is possible at all. And Adorno did not have it because of his 
dialectics, as very broad and narrow at the same time, that is 
under confusion.  

When Adorno could not have differentiation of occultism and other 
structures, his solution is so far from Bhaskar. This you seem to 
neglect. Adorno did not accept transcendental realism, quite a 
contrary, when this is the basics in DCR.  

I am pondering quite a lot, how to take Adorno's dialectics, 
because he did not had ontological world in Bhaskar's terms. This 
is required in philosophy in order to evaluate, is Adorno's negation 
radical, transformative or subject negation. Without these 
differentiations it is not possible to have absence, and Adorno did 
not have it as a primary category of the world.

When reading Adorno it seems that he implicitly changes his 
conception about dialectics. One my attempt to understand 
Adorno's dialectics of subjective and objective is to have a reflective 
'process': at first ontic (or factual) and its negation in concepts as 
radical differentiation (negation) in thinking, then to that concept in 
mind subject negation (negation's negation), which is constellation. 
And this whole selfreflection is somehow latently under 
transformative negation but only in mind. Somewhat like 
transcendental silent argument, without having transcendental 
argument at all. 

But Adorno did not had any process in DCR sense at all. Adorno 
could not get rid of identities although he tried that very hardly. 

I am pondering is this thinking above philosophically relevant in 
some sense?

 
> Hi Jan,
> 
> Many thanks for your comments on Adorno, Bhaskar and occultism. While I
> disagree on some points, you've forced me to think deeper...
> 
> >it's an ur-old phenomenon that's still abundantly
> >flourishing today
> 
> Is it really the same today, in any significant sense, as it ur-was?
> Gary implicitly made the same suggestion, to which I thought Heikki gave
> a good reply. These are examples, I think (sorry!), of identity thinking
> (fundamental to the analytical problematic with its 'law of identity')
> and ahistoricality (identities are fixed and self-contained). The key
> opposing DCR (dialectical) concepts are 'entity relationism'  and
> 'processuality'(which come together in the concept of a 'rhythmic') -
> or, more fundamentally, 'emergence' and 'totality', 'absence' and
> 'contradiction'. Entities (including of course occult practices and
> experiences) are what they are in virtue of their relations with other
> entities, and the whole interrelated show changes and develops over
> time:
> 
> ****
> To grasp totality is ... to see things _existentially constituted_, and
> permeated, _by their relations with others_; and to see our ordinary
> notion of identity as an _abstraction_ not only from their existentially
> constitutive processes of formation (geo-histories), but also from their
> existentially constitutive inter-activity (internal relatedness)....
> [The passage goes on to consider explicitly when it can be said that the
> nature of an entity has changed, and suggests that only science, not
> philosophy, can provide the answer in each particular case. It ends:]
> ... in the domain of totality we need to conceptualize _entity
> relationism. - DPF 125. Cf 126-7, which conceptualizes the causality at
> work within a totality as 'holistic'.
> ****
> 
> Experience of say Bach's music today is therefore in principle non-
> identical with experience of it in the seventeenth century - ditto with
> 'occult' experiences and practices. There will be continuity, ranging
> all the way from the superficial to the developmentally significant, but
> also (often radical) discontinuity. Witchcraft in the twenty-first
> century is very different from witchcraft in the Middle Ages (to go no
> further back...)
> 
> >its adherents and practioneers can
> >be found throughout all classes
> 
> Yes, but its practice is *concentrated* in the (lower) middle classes,
> at least insofar as it is associated with New Age (of which my
> sociologist partner Rachel Sharp has made a study.) It is all very
> marketised and user pays. 
> 
> 
> >but whence Adorno's attack on (fear for) occultism ?
> 
> I think what you say about this is fine as a sketch, except that (as the
> quote from my article indicated) Adorno explicitly relates it to
> commodity fetishism in our own times (and I think the Bhaskar of DPF
> might well have done too). Adorno dislikes it because it is entangled
> with the 'dialectic of enlightenment', the will to mere survival
> (Bhaskar's dialectic of desire) through dominating and controlling
> nature (including humans) which under capitalism is essentially the
> process of commodification, the logic of which is totalising and
> absolute (aspiring to liquidate even the possibility of an alternative),
> and perpetuates domination and heterology, militating against a
> reconciliation of culture and nature.
> 
> This can be linked to your own theme of surveillance, though not
> necessarily in the way you have in mind - the logic of commodification
> is production for the sake of production, hence to increase surveillance
> in order to increase the productivity of labour (of which control is an
> aspect).
> 
> A healthy antidote to, an escape from, surveillance and transparency? -
> No, I think Adorno's right that, on the contrary,  it locks people right
> into it. Cf 'the transparency exercise' in UK academia!
> 
> >all in all, the verdict seems clear: occultism is bad and should
> >be abolished !
> 
> [snip]
> 
> >- and from a basic CR perspective: the refutation of uccultism
> >is not only a matter of ideology critique a la Adorno, but also,
> >and even more so imho, a matter of the concrete scientific study
> >of (apparent) occult phenomena and the subsequent explanation,
> >or renouncement, of them in/on acceptable scientific terms: i mean,
> >to claim f.i. that "astral bodies are nonsense" only makes good
> >sense if you can scientifically proof that "astral bodies" are
> >*necessary impossible to exist*, and not because the believe in
> >them is in some from of regression or alienation: in the end a CRst
> >needs hard (empirical & conceptual) evidence !
> 
> Ideology critique shows that something is misleading, distorted or
> inaequate, but necessary. It is never wholly false ('essence must
> appear') and can't be abolished without abolishing everything else that
> it is related to, which is impossible. For that kind of reason Adorno
> (and I think Bhaskar) would never speak of 'abolishing' it - one can
> never wipe the slate clean, one always moves on from what is.
> 
> Re scientific studies: I agree. I don't think science can ever
> demonstrate definitively that something does not exist, so I would never
> say that 'astral bodies are nonsense' even though I can give an
> explanatory account of beliefs in them which does not need to suppose
> their reality. But by the same token science hasn't (yet) shown that the
> astral world does exist, so that if 'hard evidence' is a CR desideratum,
> those who assert its existence are also in breach of it. That's why I'm
> agnostic in the strict sense on such issues - I'm all for keeping an
> open mind, and pushing on with scientific inquiry wherever possible.
> 
> So no, the case isn't closed (cases never really are, even in law). In
> particular, we need to do some hard thinking re the late Bhaskarian
> project of 're-enchanting' the world and I think Adorno can shed light
> on this. Like the later Bhaskar, Adorno thinks that the logic of
> instrumental reason, of surivival, of (Bhaskar) attachment, of de-
> mythologization and disenchantment, which reaches its species-
> threatening apogee under capitalism, has split us off from nature and
> from each other, and sees the possibility of and yearns for a
> 'reconciliation of culture and nature' within a differentiated whole.
> 
> Certainly, it seems impossible to imagine a reconciliation with nature
> (including ourselves) without 'enchantment'. But given the dialectical
> considerations above, I don't think this can occur via a necessarily
> superficial and eclectic mimicry of past practices, as in the regressive
> strand within New Age, which lock us into rather than frees us from the
> logic of the commodity and identity (and mis-identity).... Adorno thinks
> that there is no route back, and I expect that Bhaskar would agree,
> really. It is important to note, with Simon Jarvis (211) that Adorno
> himself deployed 'magical, mystical and theological terms ... to
> designate the possibility of an escape from pure immanence or from self-
> preservation' ('redemption', 'salvation', 'breaking the spell' etc.) and
> that his insistence on the ineliminability of the thought of this
> possibility has a 'kinship with the absolute' - it's a conditional
> absolute (213). 
> 
> All will be revealed when Alan Norrie (hi Alan - hope you don't mind)
> completes his next project for the CR Interventions series - a study of
> Adorno and Bhaskar...
> 
> Mervyn
> 
> >
> >his line of critique -as you excerpt nicely summarizes out- is
> >quite straight forward and runs roughly as follows: occultism is
> >at base a vulgar kind of spiritualist/idealist monism, deeply anti-
> >ratio and anti-materialism, implying the rejection of both objective
> >science and political democracy, and subsequently the whole
> >emancipatoric project of Enlightment philosophy; in this sense it
> >is both regressive and oppressive, leading to various forms of
> >alienation like conformism, defeatism, political apathy and
> >ultimately nihilism (i.e."not-being" is the "qualitas occulta"):
> >occultism is opium for/of the dummies of (late-)capitalism !
> >
> >   [rephrased in DCR-lingo: the ideology of occultism is an
> >   irrealist ensemble, producing defencive shields and TINA
> >   formations, which in the end blocks off our (individual and
> >   collective) awareness and consciousness of a possible
> >   Eudaimonia] 


> >yours,
> >Jan
> >
Adorno did not have other than Newtonian conception of having 
scientific inquiries on idealisms? For Adorno there was not a real 
possibility to have scientific  research about occultisms but there 
comes the his aestethic philosophy. 


Regards,

Martti Puttonen 


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