File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2002/bhaskar.0201, message 34


From: "John Roberts" <msrssjmr-AT-man.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 11:49:36 -0000
Subject: RE: BHA: on Hegel, Bhaskar, Descartes


Richard

That is a fair point. My own concern was just that your account of 
alienation might be too specific i.e. too western (though I 
appreciate that I was somewhat wrong in parts here - although the 
Islamic interpretation of similar Christian narratives [e.g. Moses and 
Jesus as prophets] are still vastly different), but also too general. 
Feeling the empirical effects of alienation at work, in my own 
experience anyway, has more to do with the intensification of work 
practices over the last 15 years or so than it does with the narrative 
about Adam. Indeed, how would we make the move from the high 
level of abstraction about the fall of Adam to me sitting in my office 
now feeling alienated? 

Obviously this is not to discount the idea that human beings are 
unique beings who have a *sense* of spirituality. As Marx said, 
religion is "the sigh of the soul in a soulless world" i.e. there is 
something different and special about human beings in their 
conscious appreciation of themselves and the suffering they 
sometimes endure. But I do not think that this unique sense of 
consciousness which we have as human beings (a sense of 
spirituality) should necessarily be explained by resorting to religion 
or to ideas of God. 

All the very best,
John


On 12 Jan 02, at 17:42, Richard Moodey wrote:

John,

I suspect that the notion of alienation is as Eurocentric as is the story 
of the fall of Adam and Eve (which is Middle Eastern in origin, and that 
the Azande and the Maori have their own stories to tell explaining why life 
is not a bed of roses.  I am not sure that I can be anything but 
Eurocentric, given my background.   Insofar as I can appreciate the stories 
and philosophies of non-European people, some of them seem to me to be 
getting at something very similar to what we are groping towards with our 
concepts of alienation and the fall of humankind.

Dick

At 04:43 PM 01/11/2002 +0000, John Roberts wrote:
>Hi Dick
>
>Many thanks for your warm welcome. Yes, I have also often found
>mailing lists to be full of great info, etc. People feel free to express
>their ideas in a way that is not constrained by the numbing effects
>of normal academic discourse/language (the worse crime of
>academic discourse in my opinion is that it's so boring - my own
>little bits of writing included of course!).
>
>I am interested in your concept of alienation. Obviously alienation
>carries normative baggage with it and is usually applied this
>manner. However your concept of alienation seems a bit
>eurocentric to me. I wonder how it would fit with the beliefs of, say,
>the Azande tribe in Africa? (In fact I wonder if the Azande know
>how their everyday lives have established countless of debates
>within the philosophy of science...).
>
>On 11 Jan 02, at 11:25, Richard Moodey wrote:
>
>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)
>
>
>
>
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>
>
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