Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 19:23:14 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Marx, Bhaskar and self-consciousness


Hi Tobin,

Thanks for your challenging comments.

>Interpret this religiously if you
>want, but I don't see anything here that makes such an interpretation more
>likely to be correct. 

I take your point. What I meant (and this is why I put 'religious' in
scare quotes) is that the transcendental realist and emergentist view
Sean attributes (correctly I think) to the later Marx is more compatible
with a religious outlook than the anthropocentric view he attributes (on
the whole incorrectly, I would argue) to the young Marx.

Re the sexualization of popular culture, I wouldn't say that this is so
much either 

>wholeheartedly and
>unabashedly adopted by the modern working class

or 

>merely ideology foisted upon the working class.

Rather, it is an aspect of the culture into which modern wage-slaves are
'thrown', whose central dynamic is set by the system of
production/consumption which finds a complement in the dominant reading
of Darwinian theory according to which evolution is fundamentally a
struggle among individual organisms to pass more of their genes on to
future generations; the individual is not designed for the benefit of
their species but for the maximisation of their own individual pleasure
and power. We make ourselves immortal, godlike, through sexual activity,
and 'sexy' = 'powerful' and 'successful'. This whole outlook is of
course what the dialectical tradition of spiritual enlightenment seeks
to transcend in a new synthesis in which love ultimately means infinite
care for being as such. (Cf Marx's concept of 'species-being' in which
individual and species are distinct aspects of a unity or totality and
justice is the good both of the community and of all its members
equally).

I wouldn't of course say that the individualistic, competitive view
originated with capitalism, just that it finds its fullest expression
there. One can argue with James Daly that both tendencies have been
around since the birth of master-slave-type societies, one taking its
orientation from the market and commerce ('deals', 'having',
'surviving', 'hedonia' - the hedonistic society (for them that 'have')),
the other from the experience of community among the master classes
('ideals', 'being', 'transcending', 'eudaimonia') and from enduring
myths of community from pre-slave times.

I wouldn't want to contest your notion that the sexualisation of popular
culture contains positive dimensions that are perhaps part of the
dialectical learning process of the species... 


Mervyn





Tobin Nellhaus <nellhaus-AT-gis.net> writes
>Hi Mervyn--
>
>I'm not keen to get in the middle of this discussion, but I think a couple
>of your rejoinders are a bit unfair, drawing lines where they don't
>necessarily exist.
>
>> >Now Marx recognises that, far from natural laws being harmonised with
>> >humanity, 'natural laws cannot be superseded  only the form in which the
>> >laws prevail in historically different circumstances'
>>
>> This makes his view *more* 'religious', not less. 'Natural laws' that
>> 'cannot be superseded' are for all we know 'God'.
>
>Or, for all we know, not.  The impossibility of supersession is a condition
>of *emergence*.  Emergent levels and entities can manipulate entities at
>lower levels, but not to the point of changing the laws constituting the
>lower levels.  We may "escape" the earth's gravity by using fuel to power a
>rocket, but that doesn't change the laws of gravity.  If at some point we
>learn to change gravity itself, it will be on the condition of some lower
>level's laws (pardon the alliteration).  Interpret this religiously if you
>want, but I don't see anything here that makes such an interpretation more
>likely to be correct.  (Please note, my objection is to the reasoning you're
>applying here -- not necessarily the conclusions, on which I remain and
>probably will ever remain undecided.)
>
>> >However, if you wish to define 'idealism' as 'defining
>> >things critically  in terms of their ideal', fine, Marx is an idealist
>too.
>>
>> Are you sure, because this seems to me to concede everything. What,
>> after all, is their 'ideal'?
>
>You're both trading on the multiple meanings of the word "ideal.:  Which is
>okay, if you plan to make a philosophical point about it, but otherwise you
>two will just draw circles around each other.
>
>> >Love is rather a particular quality of
>> >these emergent properties, and one reserved for particular known others.
>> >Even in communism, it is difficult to imagine how the quality and
>intensity
>> >of attachment and trust associated with (for example) the parent-child
>> >relationship can be generalised to the whole of humanity.
>> snip
>> >This isn't the kind of bond
>> >that generally exists in the context of close interpersonal relations,
>>
>> One of the main problems with the modern (bourgeois) human being is that
>> they cannot conceive of love independently of mating of one kind or
>> another.
>
>Sean, is your claim that the parent-child relationship isn't the foundation
>stone for other kinds of love?  That the childhood experience of being cared
>for and of giving care (to a sibling, a pet, even a parent) doesn't provide
>the building blocks of friendship, and eventually more generalized
>compassion and charity?  Does abstraction or anonymity disqualify a feeling
>or action as loving?  Mervyn, I readily grant that the modern idea of
>romantic love is an historical one (which, I should mention, began with the
>troubadours in the 13th century, well before there was much bourgeoisie to
>speak of), but are you suggesting that it wasn't wholeheartedly and
>unabashedly adopted by the modern working class?  Popular music of almost
>every genre -- rock, country, blues, you name it -- surely says something
>different.  Even gospel music toys with sexualizing the relationship between
>the individual and Jesus.  I'd be very careful about suggesting that this is
>merely ideology foisted upon the working class.
>
>Meanwhile, perhaps some of you caught the news story a few days ago that a
>scientist says he is finding evidence that the mind may still operate even
>when the brain has stopped functioning, and that the "out of body"
>experience that such people have of seeing everyone in a room (including
>oneself) is rather frequent....
>
>Mulling over, as always, the meaning of my signature line,
>
>T.
>
>---
>Tobin Nellhaus
>nellhaus-AT-mail.com
>"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Mervyn Hartwig
13 Spenser Road
Herne Hill
London SE24 ONS
United Kingdom
Tel: 020 7 737 2892
Email: mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk


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