File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2002/bhaskar.0201, message 22


From: "Phil Walden" <phil-AT-pwalden.fsnet.co.uk>
Subject: RE: BHA: on Hegel, Bhaskar, Descartes
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 03:45:59 -0000


Hi Mervyn and listers,

It seems that the lines between you (Mervyn) and me are starting to be more
clearly drawn.  My responses are interspersed with your text below.  But I
note that you do not dispute some of the claims in my earlier post, such as
that Roy has failed to take on board the materialist aspects of Hegel's
work - some of which, but only some of which, were taken over by Marx.  (See
below).
>
>
> Hi Phil
>
> > Typically, for
> >Roy, a practice is alienated because it violates an axiological
> commitment
> >or moral imperative.  For me, this is a regression from Hegel, because it
> >relies upon a weak Kantian *Sollen* (ought), and fails to
> connect practice
> >to theoretical reason.
>
> No, I think this is very wrong. An axiological commitment for Roy
> derives not from a Kantian 'Sollen' but from our essential human needs
> (for food and drink, sex, de-alienation, recognition and autonomy) in
> the establishment of which theoretical reason is centrally involved e.g.
> the theory of alienation.

No Mervyn.  Alienation is not a needs-based thing, that is to remain at the
level of Kantian practical reasoning or the world of appearance.  We are not
just creatures of instinct - this is an illusion that Descartes blew apart,
much to the chagrin of all those who want to think of humanity as *fallen*.
Alienation is an ideology-based thing.  The root cause of our species'
alienation lies at the level of ideology - alienated ideology, such as
religion or bourgeois reformism.
>
> >For me, Hegel is better on all this because he saw
> >(perhaps dimly) that alienation is the result of alienated ideology. In
> >other words, the root of humanity's alienation lies at the level of
> >unresolved epistemological problems,
>
> I can't vouch for what Hegel thought, but certainly in the later Bhaskar
> ideology is the result of alienation (from God, from ourselves, from our
> fellow humans, from the products of our labour etc), from which
> perspective what you say looks like a complete tautology. There seems to
> be something deeply regressive (and bourgeois!) in sourcing our problems
> to epistemology.

In my view Roy has grasped some aspects of alienation, but not the most
important ones.  Yes, we are alienated from the products of our labour -
fine, this is Marx, and it is still as important as ever.  Yes, we are
alienated from other humans.  But that is because of alienated ideology.
Bourgeois ideology fails to grasp the true essence of humanity, whereas
materialist ideology comes closer to grasping this because it understands
that we are material beings both in a bodily sense and in a mental sense
(ideas are matter).  Yes, we are alienated from ourselves.  I am actually
not uncomfortable with Roy's view that "all individuals are potentially God"
(even if I would not express it in that way) because for Roy this is linked
to the idea that revolution starts with doing work on your self.  But when
Roy says that "all we need to do is to shed our illusions" I have to come
back to my point about alienation lying at the level of ideology.  We are
all trapped within alienated ideology at an epistemological and a
philosophical level, because idealist ideas are so dominant over materialist
ones.  Thus ALIENATION IS ACTUALLY MUCH MORE PROFOUND THAN ROY THINKS IT IS.
In my view Sartre started to approach a better view of alienation (than Roy)
in the CRITIQUE OF DIALECTICAL REASON, but even Sartre doesn't grasp the
full import of alienated ideology (and like Roy, Sartre does not understand
Hegel's epistemology).
>
> >Whereas absolute
> >reason, as I think Hegel came to understand, implies a constant
> challenge to
> >all alienated ideology - such as religion.
>
> Whoaaa! Hegel was deeply religious, but certain institutionalised forms
> of religion no doubt...

No Mervyn.  Certainly at one level Hegel was trying to reconcile
Christianity with reason.  But I think that if you read Hegel carefully you
will see that in all his mature writings the word *God* is used by him
merely as a metaphor, and to take on board Christian ideas (and
Christians!).  The mature Hegel had no religious commitment.  He sought
secular answers to the real, material problems he saw in the world.  He saw
that that meant trying to assimilate backward and reactionary Christianity
into progressive secularism.  (Instead of what some critical realists seem
to be trying to do, which is to regress back a few centuries and assimilate
secularism into religion).
>
> >I confess to being
> >astonished at the unremitting ire that Roy directs at Descartes.
>  Was it not
> >the great Frenchman who established the philosophical subject in modern
> >philosophy?  Was it not primarily Descartes who opened up the field of
> >epistemology and lifted humanity out of the shackles of medieval
> religious
> >ideology?  But then I'm forgetting, aren't I, that these achievements of
> >Descartes - and epistemological advance in general - represent a
> threat to
> >the plausibility of religion.  We can't have that, now, can we?!
>
> You're right, Roy detests Rene - I think he calls him a philosophical
> onanist at one stage, meaning in particular I take it a 'self-abuser' in
> Roy's specific sense of the 'self'. I love it, and to persuade you to my
> point of view, the best I can suggest is a reading of James Daly, *Deals
> and Ideals*, the main arguments of which are summarised in my review in
> the current JCR. From James' perspective you are operating within the
> paradigm of bourgeois enlightenment, whereas Roy (and Marx and Hegel for
> the most part) is operating within the earlier tradition of dialectical
> and spiritual enlightenment. All we can do is choose. There are only
> (complex, holsitic) arguments to help us in this. I take my stance
> ultimately with the poet Adrian Mitchell: 'Shake your money and shut
> your mouth, bourgeois!' (not you, Phil, the real one, and certainly
> Descartes.). I think this a particularly appropriate slogan because
> money for the bourgeois is the measure of all value.

I will read James Daly's book.  I don't agree with anything you have said
above, Mervyn, so it looks like life is going to get quite lively!
Descartes is not "up-himself", that is to fail to credit Descartes with
opening up vistas in philosophy that the pre-bourgeois and bourgeois
medieval and Renaissance religious "thinkers" were closing off all the time
through their own obtuseness and conformism.  It is the religious thinkers
of old and today who are "up-themselves".  Their reading of the history of
philosophy is instrumentally designed to fit their pre-existing views (in
other words, closed-minded), and because of that they have to attack the
most open-minded figures in the history of philosophy such as Descartes and
Hegel.

For freedom of thought,

Phil
>
> Mervyn
>
>
>
>
> Phil Walden <phil-AT-pwalden.fsnet.co.uk> writes
> >Hi Mervyn and listers,
> >
> >Thanks for that Mervyn.  I am not going to argue with your
> summary of Roy's
> >views on theoretical reason and practical reason, which I find conveys
> >faithfully the sense of original.  I also think it is greatly to Roy's
> >credit that he set this down in words, thus widening the possibility for
> >fruitful debate about the relationship between Kant and Hegel.  But I
> >disagree with you and Roy about the relationship between theory and
> >practice, and I will briefly try to say why.
> >
> >My basic disagreement with the passage that you cite from DPF is that Roy
> >situates alienation as the result of alienated practice.  Typically, for
> >Roy, a practice is alienated because it violates an axiological
> commitment
> >or moral imperative.  For me, this is a regression from Hegel, because it
> >relies upon a weak Kantian *Sollen* (ought), and fails to
> connect practice
> >to theoretical reason.  For me, Hegel is better on all this
> because he saw
> >(perhaps dimly) that alienation is the result of alienated ideology.  In
> >other words, the root of humanity's alienation lies at the level of
> >unresolved epistemological problems, and cannot be resolved - as
> Roy seems
> >to think - by pointing out theory-practice inconsistencies (which remains
> >within the realm of practical reasoning and suffers from the flaws of
> >actualism, positivism, and the moralism of Kantian categorical
> reasoning).
> >
> >I think Roy got into this flawed way of thinking about
> alienation because he
> >either didn't investigate Hegel's epistemology deeply enough, or
> he saw its
> >brilliance but just couldn't accept it for some reason.  One problem Roy
> >seems to have in coming to grips with Hegel's epistemology is that Roy
> >continues to hold the view that ideas are not matter (in the
> philosophical
> >sense of matter - Engels - the universe is matter in motion).
> If one holds
> >that ideas are not matter (in the philosophical sense) then most of the
> >imperative to tackle alienated ideology falls away.  Whereas absolute
> >reason, as I think Hegel came to understand, implies a constant
> challenge to
> >all alienated ideology - such as religion.
> >
> >Allied to these problems in Roy's reading of the history of philosophy is
> >what I believe to be his misreading of Descartes.  Descartes is seen as a
> >solipsist, the one who sold the pass to empiricism (??), and
> generally as a
> >regressive figure in the history of philosophy.  I confess to being
> >astonished at the unremitting ire that Roy directs at Descartes.
>  Was it not
> >the great Frenchman who established the philosophical subject in modern
> >philosophy?  Was it not primarily Descartes who opened up the field of
> >epistemology and lifted humanity out of the shackles of medieval
> religious
> >ideology?  But then I'm forgetting, aren't I, that these achievements of
> >Descartes - and epistemological advance in general - represent a
> threat to
> >the plausibility of religion.  We can't have that, now, can we?!
> >
> >Phil
> >
>
>
>      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>



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

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005