Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 22:27:50 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Religious sensibility??


Dear Tobin (Gary etc.)

Yes, well, why *do* we do it? Gary says we're on the road to Damascus,
but speaking for myself, I ain't seen that light, and do it basically
because I think it would be a tragedy if the non-religious were to
dismiss TDCR (and possibly DCR and CR with it) *because* it presents a
theory of God, for it has much to offer. I think you agree.

>I don't think Bhaskar has demonstrated that any such
>unity exists -- I don't mean that God exists (though he hasn't proved that
>either), but rather that if there is divinity it should ultimately be
>unified.  It's conceivable that there is diversity without unity.  RB's
>definition of God as the "unconditioned condition of possibility of all
>conditions and all possibility" (FEW 31) practically begs the question of
>whether there is such a unity.  If there were, where would diversity come
>from -- a process which, as he argued quite ably in DCR, depends on
>*absence* and hence an originary diversity.  An ultimate unity requires
>positing, even hypostatizing, an absolute monovalence.

I don't think Bhaskar has departed from his DPF position where he argues
(45), as you imply, that difference, like change, is irreducible, and
explictly rejects 'a single unique origin of everything'.  In FEW God -
i.e. being (not of course a person with a white beard) - is ultimately
diverse as well as unified - 'an open *absent totality*', 'empty or a
void qua absence, but "full and beyond emptiness and fullness
(plenitude)" qua totality. 

So imo there can be no question of 'monovalence', absolute or otherwise. 

Why must God also be a unity? - I guess because there is unity,
coherence, boundedness, bonding (even love!) in the world as well as
diversity, change and openness.

>it
>does seem to me that there are elements of Judaism that can strongly
>contribute to liberatory activities (religious and otherwise),

I'm sure that's right. Benjamin - who would know far better than me -
pays Judaism a very handsome liberatory tribute at the end of Theses on
the Philosophy of History.

>Hm, I take it we're supposed to ignore his statement (wherever it is in FEW)
>that we who haven't accepted the existence of God have strayed from the true
>path of DCR?

What Bhasar says (e.g. FEW 10) is that to be sceptical (or agnostic)
about, inter alia, God is to destratify [difference], deprocessualise
[absence], and detotalise [totality] being, i.e. to be alienated or
split from it. This is wholly logical on his premise that God exists and
has the qualities he attributes to him/her/it (though I don't think it's
particularly politic of him to say so). If you and I speak, instead of
of God, of being as a stratified and differentiated, processualised,
open totality, we can agree with him! Or perhaps if *he* were to speak
of Being instead of of God....

>for if we have the inner
>conviction, what more does adding God achieve?

Nothing (for all I know) (I take it we're talking about the possibility
of pervasive love and trust). But many people share the same conviction
on the basis of (at least in part) religious experience. I don't think
the difference is any big deal. I have the conviction on the basis of
decades of struggling, reading, teaching, thinking, loving, hating etc,
they have it on the basis of ditto plus religious experience; we both
agree that the "ultimate" source of the pulse to human freedom, truth
and morality must lie in the recesses of being/Being (as possibility),
such that the "ideal" is indeed "necessarily possible" (as Nick and Alan
argue Bhaskar thinks) in some, at least inchoate, sense. 

Unity-in-diversity!

Mine's on the rocks.

Yours kicking against the pricks,

Mervyn

PS. On 'pricks', from the shorter OED:

'This little prick of a world (for surely the earth is nothing else in
comparison of the whole).' HOLLAND.

'*To kick against the pricks*', said of oxen ... (after Acts 9:5).







Tobin Nellhaus <nellhaus-AT-gis.net> writes
>Hi Mervyn--
>
>I agree that the Pinkard/Hegel account attempts to provide a "real
>definition" of religion.  I just don't think it's a satisfactory one -- and
>there's nothing actualist about saying that a better one might be possible.
>On the other hand, it's possible that attempting a "real definition" in this
>manner is entirely wrongheaded: many social categories don't work that way.
>Who is a child's mother?  A woman who provided genetic material in the form
>of an egg?  A woman who carried a child to term?  A woman who takes care of
>a child on a daily basis?  A woman married to a child's father?  A woman who
>has legal custody over a child?  Nowadays, these could be five entirely
>different women yet all the "mother" of one and the same child.  We may
>perhaps share a certain idea of a "paradigmatic" or "prototypical" mother,
>but we admit many women into that category who don't have all five of the
>above qualifications (and there are others).  My point is that some things
>don't *have* real definitions, because they are not coherent entities or
>systems in themselves, but instead are flexible sociocultural assemblages of
>things that do have real definitions.  (In other words, some "categories"
>are really systems of "family resemblances" -- pardon the pun.)  If religion
>is such a beastie (and I suspect it is), then the actualist shoe is in
>effect on the other foot, namely on the attempt to provide religion with a
>real definition.
>
>> I think 'monotheistic' without qualification is misleading. Bhaskar
>> speaks (FEW 137) of 'the essential unity-in-*diversity* of God.... This
>> *unity* underlay *different* forms of manifestation, a multiplicity of
>> different experiences of God. So we have ontological realism and
>> experiential (or epistemological) relativism about God ....' [my
>> emphasis]. We have, if you like, divinities and religious traditions, as
>> well as divinity.
>
>But my point is that I don't think Bhaskar has demonstrated that any such
>unity exists -- I don't mean that God exists (though he hasn't proved that
>either), but rather that if there is divinity it should ultimately be
>unified.  It's conceivable that there is diversity without unity.  RB's
>definition of God as the "unconditioned condition of possibility of all
>conditions and all possibility" (FEW 31) practically begs the question of
>whether there is such a unity.  If there were, where would diversity come
>from -- a process which, as he argued quite ably in DCR, depends on
>*absence* and hence an originary diversity.  An ultimate unity requires
>positing, even hypostatizing, an absolute monovalence.
>
>(And for anyone who may have forgotten: I am not setting out to disprove the
>existence of God.  I remain thorough agnostic.  I *am*, however, trying to
>make head or tail of FEW, which to my reading is logically incoherent.)
>
>> I'm sure you're right that Bhaskar's discussion of Judaism could have
>> been better informed and more sensitive.
>
>Well, yeah, but I really meant something more than that.  The crack at the
>end of my post was only half joking: I'm not a very good Jew myself, but it
>does seem to me that there are elements of Judaism that can strongly
>contribute to liberatory activities (religious and otherwise), and that by
>neglecting his soul's beginnings Bhaskar also neglects its ends or goals.
>Maybe I just take history more seriously (or understand it more deeply) than
>Bhaskar, whose abilities as an historian are not the greatest.
>
>(I hope it's understood that I don't agree with *everything* in Judaism --
>there's a lot in the Torah that I find, well, let's say ugly.  Not that I
>think the New Testament is any better.  But since Bhaskar's arguments do not
>rest on scriptural matters, I don't see these issues as crucial for the
>present discussion.)
>
>>             According to this,
>> Judaism, like Freudian psychoanalysis, accepts 'that our lives involve a
>> traumatic kernel beyond redemption, that there is a dimension of our
>> being which forever resists redemption-deliverance'. (The Fragile
>> Absolute, 98). The Law (Decalogue) has its origins in this 'trauma' but
>> can't resolve it - Law and its founding Transgression (Sin) are mutually
>> implicated - indeed, 'Law itself invites its own transgression, ...
>> generates the desire for its own violation
>
>I suppose one of these days I'll have to read Zizek, but I have no idea what
>he's talking about.  It's Christianity that came up with an "Original Sin"
>that accurses us from the moment we are born (not to mention ever having
>sex) -- in contrast, Judaism says we are born good.  And when we screw up,
>we should make amends as best we can and are expected to do so at least once
>a year, on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), when incidentally we are
>reminded that the most important thing is to make amends and seek
>forgiveness from the people we have wronged -- God can take care of himself.
>(I paraphrase.)  Anyway, I have yet to read a Lacan-influenced discussion
>that doesn't make me puke my guts out.
>
>> Bhaskar's position seems to me (for reasons indicated above) tolerant re
>> specific religious beliefs and differences; diversity is irreducible in
>> his philosophy and celebrated. When he speaks of inner commitment, he's
>> imo not at all thinking of particular personal beliefs -
>
>Hm, I take it we're supposed to ignore his statement (wherever it is in FEW)
>that we who haven't accepted the existence of God have strayed from the true
>path of DCR?
>
>>                on the contrary
>> of the spirituality and rationality we all share as emergent forms of
>> God. Thus we should love our neighbour as ourselves not *just* because
>> we believe that is the will of God (externally imposed injunction) but
>> also because we rationally will it for our own flourishing (inner
>> conviction). Such a view has nothing to do with 'thought control',
>> rather with being true to our essential natures, including our capacity
>> to think critically.
>
>Well, this clearly asks for Ockham's razor; for if we have the inner
>conviction, what more does adding God achieve?  Does it make us love our
>neighbor any more deeply or act on that feeling any more effectively?
>
>In any case you seem to have shifted the issue to inner conviction, when my
>point concerned others'
>calls for people to adopt a particular religious belief (a sociological
>feature of most "major" religions; Judaism, by the way, does not
>proselytize), and the use of God to wield power when making such a call.
>
>Anyway, I think it's high time someone explain the Mystery of the Week: why
>this theological debate is being conducted by a couple of agnostics.
>
>Spiritedly (preferably vodka), T.
>
>---
>Tobin Nellhaus
>nellhaus-AT-mail.com
>"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce
>
>
>
>
>     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---



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