Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 11:25:51 -0500
From: Richard Moodey <moodey001-AT-mail1.gannon.edu>
Subject: RE: BHA: on Hegel, Bhaskar, Descartes


Welcome, John Roberts.  I am a relatively new member of the list, and also 
find the current discussion very interesting.  I seldom get into these 
discussions, primarily because I am a dabbler than a scholar in Bhaskar's 
writings.  I have probably learned more about Bhaskar from the list than I 
have from Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (affectionately known as DPF on 
the list), the book I am currently dabbling in.  I also consider myself a 
Christian, a rather "heretical" Catholic, to be precise, and thus cannot 
avoid being influenced by my religious beliefs, however critical I might be 
of some of them.  Thus, I tend to interpret discussions of "alienation" as 
an secularized attempt to get at the same dimension of the human condition 
that is expressed mythologically in the story of the fall of Adam.

Dick Moodey


At 02:39 PM 01/11/2002 +0000, you wrote:
>Hi everyone
>
>This is my first time on the list (I'm a new member). The discussion
>between Mervyn and Phil is very interesting. I would just like to add
>one quick note on the subject of alienation. It seems to me that
>Marx viewed alienation is a very restricted way i.e. he believed that
>alienation was specific only to capitalism where human interaction
>becomes mediated through things. Alienation is thus intrinsically
>associated with the fetishism of commodities. Obviously in other
>social systems such as feudalism people were subject to various
>forms of ideology, etc., but I would not want to say that they were
>alienated. Marx is fairly clear about his restricted definition in most
>of his works. Therefore, and for what it's worth, I think that the
>discussion of alienation by both Mervyn and Phil is somewhat
>transcendental insofar that both seem to define alienation beyond
>the remit of any real historical social relations.
>
>All the best,
>John Roberts (Manchester)




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