File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2002/bhaskar.0201, message 42


Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 18:15:23 +0000
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: on Hegel, Bhaskar, Descartes


Hi Viren

I found this very thought-provoking.

>I wonder
>whether talking about a pre-bourgeois enlightenment doesn't risk making
>the term "Enlightenment" meaningless, precisely because such an
>application of the term does not historically analyze its emergence. I
>wonder what is gained  by lumping Aristotle, Aquinas, Plato and Plotinus
>with Descartes, Kant, Mill and Voltaire and calling them all Enlightenment
>thinkers.

What is going on imo is a ('life-and-death') struggle for the mantle of
Enlightenment. James Daly (hi James! - in case he's lurking) doesn't
think the bourgeois Enlightenment (he uses a range of terms including
the Anglo-French Enlightenment, mechanistic and materialist
enlightenment) really is Enlightenment. It's anti-Enlightenment. Very
roughly, from his perspective there is only one tradition of
Enlightenment, the dialectical and spiritual one originating in ancient
Greece (but replicated to some extent elsewhere). Until the Anglo-French
Enlightenment it is the dominant philosophical outlook. With the Anglo-
French Enlightenment, it is 'overthrown' as the dominant outlook and its
title *usurped*. This dominance is then challenged in turn by
dialectical Enlightenment (Hegel, in a flawed way, and Marx, who got it
pretty right).

>In your review, you mention that elements of pre-bourgeois
>thinking continue to exist in Enlightenment thinkers, such as Kant.  I
>agree and would add that such elements exist in Mill and Montesquieu as
>well.  If this is the case, then there is no need to prefer the
>"pre-bourgeois enlightenment" to the bourgeois Enlightenment.

'Pre-bourgeois' is your term, not mine. Historically, it's an earlier
tradition but it *continues* in modernity (so yes, there are elements of
it in the thinkers you mention and others - Rousseau definitely) and is
taken up again in a big way by Hegel and Marx. Think of it dialectically
- one tradition is dominant, with the other subordinate, then this
relation is inverted. Now we are trying to stand it right way up again!

It's important to note that James's discussion is in terms of the 'ideal
type'. Things aren't nearly so neat 'on the ground'. He's discussing two
different outlooks or orientations, two 'claims' (his term) to
Enlightenment.

By 'bourgeois Enlightenment' James basically means mechanism, dualism,
the underlying Cartesian theory of the subject and the dominance of
instrumental rationality and the analytical problematic. I raise in my
review the question of whether this is not a restricted view of the b.
E. - I think it is, but also that it is a *valid* one i.e. a valid
perspectival take on the conventional view of 'the' Enlightenment (i.e.
your sort of view) i.e., in terms of Weber's ideal type, a 'one-sided
accentuation of reality'.

There is a sense however in which I think it's not so 'one-sided' (and
this bears on your question of how 'capitalist' the b. E. is.) I think
it is quite valid to speak with Charles Taylor (*Hegel*, 9) of 'a
transformation of philosophical outlook', a 'philosophical revolution'
in the seventeenth century. When you examine what Taylor says about the
'content' of this transition, it is very similar to James's account -
there's essentially a movement from one of James's ideal types to the
other. Neither Taylor nor James (I think) link this *causally* to the
rise of capitalism - for James that would smack too much of mechanism,
he's a rationalist and idealist and so I think doesn't look at history
like this, and I don't think has latched onto Bhaskar's account of
causes yet. (He does however link the mechanistic tradition to the
market, viz., 'deals', whether in Greece or 17th C Europe, and sees it
as 'compatible' with capitalism, and dialectical enlightenment as
'incompatible' with it.) So if I've been giving the impression that
there is a causal link it's more me than James - I certainly think the
philosophical revolution (and the scientific and religious one) are
causally (in Bhaskar's and Marx's sense of 'cause') bound up with the
17th C crisis, the rise of capitalist agriculture, the expansion of
merchant capital, etc etc.  But I don't want to get into a debate here
whether a 'materialist primacy' thesis holds good or an 'idealist' one
(maybe neither!). It's sufficient that the revolution in the mode of
production and in the orientation of ideas are bound up together, and
that the future dominance of a genuinely Enlightened outlook would
presuppose a change of system, since capitalism both generates and
'requires' anti-Enlightenment values - inequality, exploitation,
atomisation, alienation and the dominance of the values of having and
possessing, greed and growth, success and power. These are diametrically
opposed to the values of being and loving and communality and service
and autonomy of the Enlightenment tradition. 

>rather
>than posing an alternative the bourgeois Enlightenment, I would claim that
>Marx, and Bhaskarians continue this tradition.  In continuing this
>tradition, they point out that many of the fundamental ideals of the
>bourgeois Enlightenment, such as freedom and liberty, are incompatible
>with capitalism, which perpaps the original members of the bourgeois
>enlightenment would not have accepted.

As I suggest in my review, James thinks (and I agree) that on the
contrary what we have with Hegel, Marx and Bhaskar is a *dialectical
development of* the earlier tradition which sublates - turns the tables
on - the usurper (at the level of ideas), incorporating those
developments within modernity that are compatible with it (including
realist *science*). As I'm sure you'll agree, they are certainly not
continuing the Anglo-French Enlightenment as defined by James - that was
continued by Kautsky and Plekhanov, in the Soviet bloc, and in a good
deal of Western Marxism (e.g. the analytical 'Marxists'). This kind of
Marxism is just a sub-plot within the paradigm of bourgeois
enlightenment, with no prospect of moving beyond it.

But I can see what you're perhaps getting at. There's a school of
thought according to which liberalism carried to its logical conclusion
would issue in a vision of socialism or eudaimonia, and I think there's
a good deal of truth in this. The trouble is even the best liberals
(e.g. Mill, e.g. Hegel, e.g. Rawls) never do carry it to its logical
conclusion, compromising with the established order - endorsing private
property and class, justifying injustice by 'progress' and accepting a
mechanistic account of nature. And of course liberalism at its best
draws on both of James's traditions, and the ideals of genuine equality
and liberty didn't originate with the b. E.

Mervyn



viren viven murthy <vvmurthy-AT-midway.uchicago.edu> writes
>Hi Mervyn:
>
>I just read your review of Daly's book and I think it gave me enough of a
>background to jump in to this discussion, or at least part of it.
>
>I am now quite confused about the pre-bourgeois Enlightenment.  I agree
>with the thrust of Daly's (and your) attempt to provide an ethical
>grounding for Marxist thought.  Many Marxists interpret him as a radical
>historicist and as having no room for ethical universalism.  Against this
>trend, you, Daly and Bhaskar argue that Marxism is at least compatible
>with a modern Aristotelianism.  The trick however seems to be to maintain
>Marx's historical sensitivities without lapsing into relativism.  I wonder
>whether talking about a pre-bourgeois enlightenment doesn't risk making
>the term "Enlightenment" meaningless, precisely because such an
>application of the term does not historically analyze its emergence. I
>wonder what is gained  by lumping Aristotle, Aquinas, Plato and Plotinus
>with Descartes, Kant, Mill and Voltaire and calling them all Enlightenment
>thinkers.  In your review, you mention that elements of pre-bourgeois
>thinking continue to exist in Enlightenment thinkers, such as Kant.  I
>agree and would add that such elements exist in Mill and Montesquieu as
>well.  If this is the case, then there is no need to prefer the
>"pre-bourgeois enlightenment" to the bourgeois Enlightenment.
>
>This brings me to another question, namely how capitalist is the bourgeois
>Enlightenment?  The answer to this question hinges on when we conceive of
>capitalism as emerging in Europe.  Ellen Wood <<Pristine Culture of
>Capitalism>>) argues that while Locke and
>others in the English liberal tradition theorize in the context of
>agrarian capitalism, Rousseau and other French liberals were theorizing
>with the threat of feudal fragmentation.  Hence, while Locke stresses the
>rights of the individual, Rousseau stresses the importance of
>community.  Clearly, elements of Rousseau can be retrieved today as we
>criticize the atomization related to capitalism as well.  Moreover,
>Rousseau speaks highly of the ancients, especially when he contrasts them
>to the moderns.
>
>Although Bhaskar may disagree, I tend to be more sympathetic to the 
>bourgeois
>Enlightenment, or at least, some of versions of it.  Mill and Rousseau,
>for example, drew on classical sources to combat some of the problems of
>their time ( commodification, fragmentation).  I would say that this is
>precisely what Daly is doing with Acquinas and Aristotle.  So,  rather
>than posing an alternative the bourgeois Enlightenment, I would claim that
>Marx, and Bhaskarians continue this tradition.  In continuing this
>tradition, they point out that many of the fundamental ideals of the
>bourgeois Enlightenment, such as freedom and liberty, are incompatible
>with capitalism, which perpaps the original members of the bourgeois
>enlightenment would not have accepted.
>
>Viren
>


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