Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2001 21:46:48 +0100 Subject: Re: BHA: metaphors (e.g. ills) on 2/10/01 10:20 am, Hans Puehretmayer at hans.puehretmayer-AT-univie.ac.at wrote: > Hi all, > > can somebody explain why Bhaskar permanently uses the medical word > "ills" for every non-ideal social and individual process (see f.e. SRHE > 191: cognitive ills, practical ills, psycho-social ills, socio-economic > ills, communicative ills, etc.)? > There are two questions: > a: Does it make sense to have only one concept (which is not even a > theoretical concept) for qualitatively very different processes? > b: Isn't it problematic to use a medical metaphor (the picture of > society as an organism?!) for social injustices and individual > difficulties? > I don't think "ill" is used here in a medical sense at all. As the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has it: B. substantive (the adjective used absolutely) 1. = EVIL, sb. (i)a the opposite of good ... This is followed by a number of other more particular senses. One has economic and social ills just as one can speak of economic and social goods. Bhaskar does have a very particular sense of the good, connected to his idea of human flourishing, which far from being untheorised is at the heart of his project. Surely a great deal (most, all?) of Bhaskar's later argument is precisely intended to show that there is something that unites different ills, which for him are absences and constraints on human action (and flourishing)? That they share similar structures, and are generated (some of them) by the same structures? If I were more confident of my own grasp, I should simply say "Read on, all will become clear!" But then it mightn't... Dafydd Roberts --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005