Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 23:30:50 +0000
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Down with theocracy!


Hi Phil,

I don't of course support theocracy or the Inquisition and like Gary
have no truck with organised religion, which by and large historically
has been a pillar of the status quo - only with progressive movements
and people within it. (I don't know from first hand, but would expect
that Bhaskar's libertarianism and his 'theosophical upbringing' will
have inclined him in the same direction).

Re pre-class societies not being alienated, I have to thank Jonathan for
indicating some anthropological evidence. But isn't non-alienation from
the natural world implied by Hegel's position re a 'primitive' identity
of reason and nature, and in all other respects (i.e. except religion as
alienated human essence) by Marx's 'primitive' *communism*?

> Marx
>regarded it as an anthropomorphic fallacy to believe that there is something
>in early man's nature which entitles him to survival. 

Nobody's talking re early 'man' surviving, we're all 21st C people. At
issue is whether the species can come to see themselves again, and act,
like early humans, but in their 21stC way, as part of the cosmic whole
and unalienated in other respects too.

>I can make no sense of Bhaskar's (?)
>concept of "pluriverse", which seems to concede a great deal of ground to
>split, dualism, and alienation.

Bhaskar does deploy the concept, in DPF and FEW. My understanding is
that science has pretty well established that there are multiple
universes, and that it sometimes postulates an infinity of universes in
order to explain how 'ours' happens by chance to be 'just right' for the
emergence of self-conscious life. Such a conception imo has nothing to
do with dualism etc - Totality is still One; God is '*an* open absent
Totality' (FEW).

>if God is "established" by an ontological argument
>for the existence of God, what role is left for human beings?

Bhaskar's argument is not an ontological one - "[t]he proof of God's
existence is experiential and practical" (FEW 43). If you mean arguments
about ontology, or seeking to establish its contours, then as a critical
realist you've got a problem: why dismiss or prohibit transcendental
arguments about the reality of God (a realist theory of God), but not of
everything else (e.g. the class structure)? Either you take the 'lid'
that the 17th C philosophical revolution placed on ontology off, or you
don't; there's no non-arbitrary stopping point to ensure that you stop
short of 'God'.

Since God = the intrinsic structuring principles and causal powers of
the world (categorial plus dispositional realism), there is just as much
room left for people as if you didn't use the metapahor of God to
describe these aspects of Being. Everything is open, 'free will' is
real.

>Hegel admitting the
>existence of God as alienated ideology, but arguing that through the use of
>reason this alienated ideology can be overcome.

As Taylor suggests (Hegel 485) 'one can see a possible line of argument,
based on Hegel's categories, which would leave [religion] no place in
the full flowering of Spirit'. But Hegel didn't take it: 'in the nature
of the case, the state discharges a duty by affording every assistance
and protection to the church in the furtherance of its religious ends'
(*Philosophy of Right*, para 270 - the mature Hegel).

>What I am saying is that Hegel got it right when he argued for prioritizing
>reason over instinct, will, emotion, and faith.  I don't find theories of
>human nature edifying.  I prefer theories of human potential.

Our human nature includes our reason. Bhaskar's view of it is precisely
a theory of human potential (the Real = the realm of possibility).

Re spirit (Geist) you say:

>The term is not used at all in his magnum opus THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC which
>was written about a decade after THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT. 

?Are you sure, Phil?! I don't have SL on my shelves, so can't quote
chunks at you. But Geist is certainly mentioned in The Enclyclopedia of
the Philosophical Sciences (Enc.), Part 1 (the Shorter Logic) which
recapitulates the SL. It's not a central concept in either of the Logics
because logic for Hegel is the science of the pure Idea (Idee), and not
of spirit as such (Geist). Part 3 of the Enc. is entitled and about *The
Philosophy of Spirit* (Geist). This too of course postdates the SL; the
latest edition was 1830, revised by Hegel himself. Since he died the
following year, how more 'mature' can you get?

>> >I'm really puzzled by this formulation. If alienation is ideology-based,
>> >what are we alienated *from*?
>
>We are alienated from our human potential if we are religious.

I see what you mean now, and the Bhaskar of FEW seems to agree -
ideology is the more fundamental. It was your concept of 'alienated
ideology' that foxed me - 'alienating ideology'? I'm not questioning of
course that there are alienating elements in religion, especially
institutionalised religion.

>I strongly suspect that Roy holds a biological determinist view, 

Nonsense.

>> >Cf his November 2001 talk on 'Who am I?' in which he said that he
>> >doesn't reject [ontological] materialism, but doesn't accept it either:
>> >either mind is implicitly enfolded in matter or matter is enfolded in
>> >mind.
>
>Dialectics rejects such metaphysical either/ors.  It's not matter over there
>and mind over here, or vice versa.  Rather, matter and mind are in a
>dialectical relationship 

But Phil that's exactly what I go on to assert:

>>idealism and materialism are seen (by valid perspectival switch)
>>to be distinct but inter-enfolded aspects of the one ultimate reality.

>oseph Dietzgen, a worker contemporary of Marx, made the advance
>to seeing ideas as matter in THE POSITIVE OUTCOME OF PHILOSOPHY.

Not as in 'positivism' by any chance?

>I didn't use the term "materialist ideology", and I don't understand the
>point you are making.

Yes you did:

>>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).

>Is there a Western equivalent of *maya*?

As Roy uses it at any rate, yes: the web or structure of illusion, i.e.
ideology. 

>i.e. ideology is the
>> >more fundamental, though of course they reinforce each other.
>
>Hmmm.  I am inclined to agree. 

I thought you might - a good historical idealist, rather than historical
materialist, position. History is about philosophers making category
mistakes... I disagree with Bhaskar here (but I confess to sending his
position up a bit).

>In FEW
>> >what gives rise to alienation is categorial error resulting from the
>> >exercise of free will,
>
>In what sense is will free here?  And why isn't Roy arguing for constraining
>it through the power of reason?

Roy has prided himself for some time on his 'solution' to the problem of
free will. Roughly: He must and does as a dispositional realist uphold
'ubiquity determinism' (everything has a cause). In a closed world
presupposed by the Humean account of a causal law, there could be no
free will, everything would be determined in advance; in an open world,
in which reasons are causes, my arm can go up because I intend it - the
going up is caused, but not in advance of my intention, I am free to do
other things with my arm (in the absence of overriding constraint).

At the meta level, if the cosmos is so structured (as, by transcendental
argument it must be) that the evolution of self-conscious, fully
rational life is possible, then the reality of free will 'explains' why
something like the Eden-Fall-Redemption dialectic (in FEW, relative
being/ demi-relative being/ eudaimonia) is contingently necessary
('contingently' because we're dealing with open possibility which may or
may not be actualised), as I suggested to John: in 'Eden' (pre-class
society) we are at home with nature and ourselves in an immediate
identity (Bhaskar would I think say 'unity') of reason and nature etc;
we are enlightened but we can't be self-consciously aware of who we are,
i.e. emergent forms of 'God' in the Bhaskarian sense. We can only become
aware of this, of the true nature of ourselves, if we're free to make
mistakes and do in fact make mistakes, because you can't become
enlightened unless you're first ignorant.

I find that the best way to understand this is to think about attempts
to develop A.I. - clearly the machine you want to become intelligent
could never achieve anything like full human self-conscious awareness
unless it is free to make mistakes and learn from them. On this kind of
analogy the process of biological evolution is wonderfully tailored for
the development of self-conscious life.

>However, at the level of
>epistemology Roy fails to combat actualism, because he thinks a rich
>ontology will make up for the analyticist formalism, linearity, and
>rationalist compartmentalization of his reasoning. 

In DPF the analytical problematic is only a moment, albeit a vital one,
within the overall *dialectic* of analytical and dialectical reason (the
epistemological dialectic).

>This is in complete contrast to the way Hegel deals with
>opposites - he usually tries to see how they are internally related to each
>other. 

Hegel can only do this because ultimately he deals exclusively in
concepts which are internally related - the intrinsic structure of the
word is a structure of concepts which unfolds, he's a pan-logicist.
Bhaskar has always insisted by contrast that the world and its
fundamental causal powers and structures is not exhausted by concepts.
As a materialist you would seem to have no option here but to prefer
Bhaskar.

>the last thing
>you could accuse Hegel of is mechanism or atomism, I would have thought.

His philosophy of nature arguably cedes the study of nature to science
positivistically construed.

>> >Yes, Phil. But a metaphor for what?
>
>For dialectical reason.

OK. But if you accept that the inner structure of the world is
dialectical reason, doesn't that make you an absolute idealist?

>I do not understand what Andrew means
>when he says that stones are good.  It seems like an anthropomorphic fallacy
>to me.  For why should the structure of reality be invested with our moral
>categories?

Andrew (Collier) is making a claim about the way reality objectively is
in the intransitive dimension. Of course he does this by resort to human
theories, arguments, and evidence etc. But isn't this how we necessarily
make any such claims?

I don't know about 'good'. Here is Ted Benton's summary of Andrew's
position from the latest JCR:

>He follows St. Augustine and Spinoza in recognising positive value in
>all beings, but distributed hierarchically. Beings have a greater
>degree of value, from the most lowly viruses and bacteria up to the
>higher vertebrates, in virtue of their capacity to interact with and
>acquire objective information about more of nature. Humans have the
>greatest capacity for objectivity, and it is their capacity for
>rationality in this sense which grounds both recognition of the
>intrinsic value of other beings and their own position at the top of
>the scale.

I should say that Ted agrees with you that this is 'anthropocentric'.

>Why should the postulation of an infinity
>of universes affect what really happened in the one, unique, real, material,
>universe that we are in? 

The universe has to be 'just right' in zillions of ways for the
evolution of self-conscious life to occur - consider, e.g. the existence
and position of the large planets which absorb asteroids, preventing
them from hitting the earth. For this and all the other necessary
conditions to happen by sheer chance, and not because there is an
intrinsic structure of possibility, would require an infinity of trial
runs.  So if you don't accept 'God', it's transcendentally necessary to
postulate an infinity of universes to account for the 'just rightness'
of this one. (Hegel btw thought that it was necessarily (logically)
impossible for an asteroid to hit the earth, which was brilliant given
that he didn't know what we now know from astronomy about the role of
the larger planets in absorbing asteroids, but wrong because he equated
possibility with necessity.)

Mervyn



Phil Walden <phil-AT-pwalden.fsnet.co.uk> writes
>Hi Mervyn and listers,
>
>Mervyn, first some prior comments before I respond to your posts below.
>
>You claim that there is evidence that an earlier "society" you call a
>hunter-gatherer society was not alienated.  Surely this is simply wrong.
>Where is the evidence for your assertion?
>
>You seem to hold something similar to Rousseau's idea of the "noble savage".
>Engels had some sympathy with this but Marx completely rejected it.  Marx
>regarded it as an anthropomorphic fallacy to believe that there is something
>in early man's nature which entitles him to survival.  (This is also
>relevant to John Roberts's posts).
>
>Descartes's ontology was clearly wrong because he thought the mind was an
>immaterial substance.  This seems to imply that ideas are not matter, and
>thus sets up an illicit dualist ontology and split in the universe between
>the material and the (illusory) immaterial.  The idea of one, unitary,
>monistic universe cannot be defended if we accept Descartes's ontology.  In
>this sense the truth is the whole.  I can make no sense of Bhaskar's (?)
>concept of "pluriverse", which seems to concede a great deal of ground to
>split, dualism, and alienation.
>
>However, Descartes's epistemology looks like a philosophical breakthrough to
>me.  "I am thinking, therefore I am" seems to establish the philosophical
>subject as an object to itself and thus makes possible a process of
>reflection which is closed off if one relies on an ontological argument
>about the existence of God in order to try to situate oneself in the
>universe.  And anyway, if God is "established" by an ontological argument
>for the existence of God, what role is left for human beings?  This is also
>connected to what I said in my earlier post about Hegel admitting the
>existence of God as alienated ideology, but arguing that through the use of
>reason this alienated ideology can be overcome.
>
>Best regards (and more below),
>
>Phil
>
>
>> >Hi Phil,
>> >
>> >Well, there's nothing wrong with a bit of liveliness.
>
>Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
>> >
>> >>We are not
>> >>just creatures of instinct
>> >
>> >IMO Bhaskar's theory of human nature doesn't imply that we are; it is
>> >profoundly historical and social.
>
>What I am saying is that Hegel got it right when he argued for prioritizing
>reason over instinct, will, emotion, and faith.  I don't find theories of
>human nature edifying.  I prefer theories of human potential.  And you are
>quite wrong, Mervyn, to suggest that the mature Hegel believed in spirit.
>The term is not used at all in his magnum opus THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC which
>was written about a decade after THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT.  I am not a
>German speaker, but I believe the term "Geist" does not have as many
>religious connotations as the word "Spirit" does in English, and they can
>both clearly be used in a secular sense.  It seems that at least part of the
>motivation of the PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT was to appeal to Christians to
>accept the light of reason into their lives.  The mature Hegel stopped
>making so many accommodations to Christianity.
>> >
>> >>Alienation is not a needs-based thing,
>> >>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.
>> >
>> >I'm really puzzled by this formulation. If alienation is ideology-based,
>> >what are we alienated *from*?
>
>We are alienated from our human potential if we are religious.
>
>Religion as ideology is alienation from our
>> >essential human nature. Cf Bhaskar's definition at DPF114: '
>> >"Alienation" ... means *being something other than*, (having been)
>> >separated, split, torn or estranged from, oneself, or *what is essential
>> >... to one's nature* or identity.'
>
>Here everything hangs on what we understand by "one's nature or identity".
>I strongly suspect that Roy holds a biological determinist view, missing the
>main role of ideas - development.  Ideas are matter, but they are not
>subject to biological laws.  Rather, ideas are a product of the "unity and
>conflict of opposites".  It seems to me that some version of reflection
>theory needs to be defended - something similar to Adorno's version in
>NEGATIVE DIALECTICS.
>> >
>> >>Bourgeois ideology fails to grasp the true essence of humanity,
>> >
>> >Bhaskar certainly agrees with that
>> >
>> >>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).
>> >
>> >and if you'd said 'ideas are an expression of an emergent power of
>> >matter, i.e. mind' Bhaskar could come close to agreeing with this too.
>
>Here we have Roy's alienated split and dualism for all to see.  There is
>matter over here, and over there (emergent) are ideas.  No.  The
>relationship is more intimate and intertwined than that, and the
>relationship is monistic, not dualist like Roy's.  Ideas are not "an
>expression" of matter, ideas *are* matter.
>
>> >Cf his November 2001 talk on 'Who am I?' in which he said that he
>> >doesn't reject [ontological] materialism, but doesn't accept it either:
>> >either mind is implicitly enfolded in matter or matter is enfolded in
>> >mind.
>
>Dialectics rejects such metaphysical either/ors.  It's not matter over there
>and mind over here, or vice versa.  Rather, matter and mind are in a
>dialectical relationship that reflects the unity and conflict of opposites.
>
> This also seems to mean that to refer to him as a metaphysical
>> >idealist, as I have done in print, isn't true to his own self-
>> >understanding - he doesn't reject or accept that either. I think he's
>> >claiming that both are sublated in his ontological realism, according to
>> >which idealism and materialism are seen (by valid perspectival switch)
>> >to be distinct but inter-enfolded aspects of the one ultimate reality.
>
>That is to see the materialism/idealism relation *externally*.  But if Hegel
>is right the relation is to be seen by us *internally*.  In other words, we
>are inside this relation - we are not some sort of detached observer lying
>outside this relation.
>
>> >While Hegel equally seems to have thought that mind is enfolded in
>> >matter and vice versa, you may have a point in regarding him as more
>> >(metaphysically) 'materialist' than Bhaskar in that he rejects any
>> >notion of a disembodied spiritual reality whereas Bhaskar seems to
>> >accept it in such notions that of discarnate souls; but this is not to
>> >say that for Hegel 'ideas *are* matter'.
>
>Maybe not, but for Hegel ideas and matter are in an internal relation to one
>another.  Joseph Dietzgen, a worker contemporary of Marx, made the advance
>to seeing ideas as matter in THE POSITIVE OUTCOME OF PHILOSOPHY.
>> >
>> >But why call 'materialist ideology' by the name of ideology? Surely you
>> >mean 'materialist or realist science'?
>
>I didn't use the term "materialist ideology", and I don't understand the
>point you are making.
>> >
>> >>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.
>> >
>> >I'm not quite sure how it could be more profound because Roy says once
>> >we've entered the web of *maya* there is 'scant chance of escape' (FEW
>> >9). 'All (!) we need to do is to shed our illusions' - he makes it very
>> >clear this is enormously difficult.
>
>Apologies, Mervyn, but I would need to re-read FEW before I could reply to
>this.  But I'm pretty sure that what Roy means by *maya* is a long way from
>what I mean by alienated ideology.  Is there a Western equivalent of *maya*?
>It seems to be similar to Kierkegaardian existentialism?  In other words, an
>alienated split off from the real material relations of humanity and nature.
>> >
>> >I said in my previous that ideology according to Roy is the result of
>> >alienation; actually I think it would be better if I put that the other
>> >way around - alienation is the result of ideology - i.e. ideology is the
>> >more fundamental, though of course they reinforce each other.
>
>Hmmm.  I am inclined to agree.  An originary alienation from nature (as
>some commentators have Adorno as holding) would seem to be subject to the
>criticism that we need religious ideas like redemption, reconciliation, etc.
>in order to "come back to nature".
>
> In FEW
>> >what gives rise to alienation is categorial error resulting from the
>> >exercise of free will,
>
>In what sense is will free here?  And why isn't Roy arguing for constraining
>it through the power of reason?
>
> above all the absenting of ontology in the
>> >doctrine of actualism;
>
>That seems fine to me at the level of ontology.  However, at the level of
>epistemology Roy fails to combat actualism, because he thinks a rich
>ontology will make up for the analyticist formalism, linearity, and
>rationalist compartmentalization of his reasoning.  Whether some of this is
>remedied in FEW I strongly doubt.
>
> and more fundamentally yet, the absenting of the
>> >concept of absence itself,
>
>I am suspicious of the concepts of "absence" and "presence" in Bhaskar.  If
>one asks what are the relations between the two answer comes there none from
>Bhaskar.  This is in complete contrast to the way Hegel deals with
>opposites - he usually tries to see how they are internally related to each
>other.  This is one of the many aspects of Hegel's epistemology that Roy
>seems not to have grasped.  Absence/presence seems to remain a metaphysical
>either/or in Roy's work.
>
> and therefore of God and the true nature of
>> >humans and their "social-natural Totality" (33), in the doctrine of
>> >ontological monovalence. I suppose getting things fundamentally wrong
>> >could be said to be an epistemological issue. But I take it that the
>> >reason why you're empasizing 'epistemology' is because the bourgeois
>> >Enlightenment was (inter alia) an epistemological revolution - which
>> >precisely endorsed the above 'errors' (and ended up with a mechanistic
>> >and atomistic theory of the human being and society based on them).
>
>I think my above comments suggest why it is not me who is uncritically
>upholding the Enlightenment (bourgeois or spiritual).  And the last thing
>you could accuse Hegel of is mechanism or atomism, I would have thought.
>
>> >
>> >>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!).
>> >
>> >Yes, Phil. But a metaphor for what?
>
>For dialectical reason.
>
>For the intrinsic structuring of the
>> >universe (the principle of *Geist* i.e. cosmic spirit) such that it
>> >necessarily produces and sustains self-conscious, eventually fully
>> >rational, life. I.e. such life is not some cosmic accident. History is
>> >'meaningful'.
>
>I would say that history started to become meaningful with Descartes's
>discovery of the cogito, which overthrew the Thou-Thou way of thinking of
>the theologians and inaugurated the possibilities of an I-Thou way of
>thinking.
>
> Terry Pinkard has an excellent discussion of Hegel's
>> >philosophy of religion in his biography of Hegel. He insists that
>> >Hegel's own self-understanding is that this 'was a *religious* attitude
>> >... because it expressed itself in a reverential attitude towards life
>> >and divinity [the intrinsic structuring] in general
>
>Here I would disagree with Pinkard.  "A reverential attitude" suggests awe.
>I prefer to say open-minded and methodical - or something like what Adorno
>means by reflection.
>
> ... Faith in God was
>> >faith in the everlastingness of life (though not of one's own individual
>> >life) and the goodness of being, in the conviction that what was
>> >absolutely good in life was written into the structure of things
>
>For me, this is not Hegel.  However, it does seem to be close to what Andrew
>Collier argued in BEING AND WORTH.  I do not understand what Andrew means
>when he says that stones are good.  It seems like an anthropomorphic fallacy
>to me.  For why should the structure of reality be invested with our moral
>categories?
>
> and
>> >that we, humanity as a whole, were collectively capable of gradual
>> >realizations of that good and of substantial realizations in our own
>> >lives.' Chas Taylor 486 also unambiguously asserts that Hegel saw
>> >himself as a Lutheran Christian and dismisses the notion that he saw no
>> >role for religion (as defined above, ie basically the practice of
>> >devotion, of a reverential attitude to the structure of Being) in the
>> >reconciled society.
>
>Again, for me this has nothing to do with Hegel.  Taylor is just asserting
>that Hegel saw himself in this way, without evidence.  In fact the whole
>body of Hegel's work suggests pretty unambiguously that he was a secular
>campaigner against theological obscurantism.  The idea that Hegel practiced
>"devotion" is laughable in that it suggests that Hegel had an *external*
>relation to reality rather than an *internal* one.
>> >
>> >If Hegel's view isn't religious, then I think it follows Bhaskar isn't
>> >religious and you're tilting at windmills. For, while there are
>> >important differences between Bhaskar's philosophy of religion and
>> >Hegel's, it is of the essence of Bhaskar's position that the intrinsic
>> >structuring of the pluriverse is such that self-conscious rational life
>> >is possible. This is basically what Bhaskar means by 'God'. (NB.
>> >'possible' not 'necessary' - Bhaskar imo offers no cosmic guarantee, for
>> >the world is open; he is not, like Hegel, an expressivist or Platonic
>> >'absolute idealist' in the sense that the cosmos and human history -
>> >everything that exists - can be seen as an expression of rational
>> >necessity, of the Idea).
>
>Everything you say above about Bhaskar suggests that he sees himself as in
>an *external*, spectator, relation to reality.  Instead of the one universe
>to be in, Roy has to try to create more room for himself by conjuring up a
>*pluriverse*, so that he can flee from the universe.  And I don't read Hegel
>as reducing the possible to the necessary, rather I read him as carefully
>elaborating the tools you need to try  determine whether something is
>necessary or (merely) possible.  There may be more truth in your assertion
>that Hegel reduces reality to the Idea, because Hegel concludes THE SCIENCE
>OF LOGIC with the self-comprehending Notion.  But might this not be
>interpreted as an appeal for an *internal*, committed, approach to reality -
>which would seem to be different from Plato's more external, less committed,
>Idea.
>> >
>> >I should perhaps add that this is a position I myself have come to
>> >accept, so to that extent I suppose I'm no longer 'agnostic'. One of the
>> >main considerations that has moved me is that in order for the universe
>> >by sheer chance to be 'just right' for the production of self-conscious
>> >life, we need to postulate an infinity of universes.
>
>I don't understand this at all.  Why should the postulation of an infinity
>of universes affect what really happened in the one, unique, real, material,
>universe that we are in?  Or are you saying that self-conscious life has not
>yet arisen?  Either way, this *pluriverse* concept strikes me as both
>nonsense and an evasion.
>
> But in that case we
>> >are already into one of the attributes of 'God'.... There's a sense in
>> >which it can be said of course that it's precisely because the species
>> >has lost a sense of reverential awe for the structuring of the cosmos
>> >and stopped putting it into practice that we're heading for ecological
>> >disaster.
>
>If you are awed by something you adopt a passive and distanced stance
>towards it.  This sounds like Heidegger to me - stand back and try to deny
>your own essence.  Now of course there are problems with the Enlightenment
>instrumental stance towards nature, as Adorno has outlined, but when all is
>said and done we do have to get into an active relationship with nature
>simply in order to survive.  That seems to be Marx's view.
>> >
>> >>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).
>> >
>> >'Progressive', and 'secular answers', yes, but not 'secularism'. In fact
>> >Hegel thought modern Protestant Christianity (as reinterpreted within
>> >his own philosophical framework) the first truly 'human' or universal
>> >religion. (Such 'imperialism' contrasts with the notion sustained I
>> >think by Bhaskar, that every religion is in Ranke's phrase 'immediate to
>> >God').
>
>Hmmm.  I found this quote: "...everything speculative [has] disappeared,
>being sublated in the relationship of the community.  The Reformed Church
>[is] therefore the place where divinity and truth collapse into the prose of
>the Enlightenment and of mere understanding, into the processes of
>subjective particularity.  Luther [was] fully justified in not yielding,
>however much he was assailed for it."  (HEGEL LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF
>RELIGION, vol III, University of California Press, 1998 paperback version,
>pp155-156).  This seems to be a defence of speculative reasoning and the
>reference to "divinity" seems to be an ironic comment on the Reformed Church
>more than a positive endorsement of Lutheran Christianity.  Also note that
>Hegel seems to position himself in opposition to the Enlightenment.
>> >
>> >As for 'regress', if everyone, including scientists, come to approach
>> >their work with the religious attitude (as above), that is not 'regress'
>> >in your terms, it's 'progress';
>
>See my comment above about Heideggerian passivity.
>
> we would have escaped your rightly
>> >dreaded 'bourgeois ideology'. Your own hero Hegel holds that as a
>> >species we necessarily move from the primitive identity of thought and
>> >life, reason and nature; to the divorce of the two as exemplified in the
>> >bourgeois Enlightenment; to their reconciliation in a higher unity as
>> >raw nature is made to be an expression of reason and as reason comes to
>> >see nature itself as part of a rational plan. (This from Chas. Taylor,
>> >Hegel, 86).
>
>True to form, this Taylor-type interpretation of Hegel is completely void of
>dialectics - which I see as at the heart of Hegel's mature work, especially
>THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC.  What has happened to the unity and (especially)
>conflict of opposites - Taylor has gutted it from Hegel.
>
> (I agree with James Daly though that there are problems
>> >about the idea of progress; may be one should speak instead of the
>> >'recuperation' or 'redemption' of our essential humanity, or of
>> >'reconciliation'. One can equally well view the bourgeois enlightenment
>> >as 'regressive' - back to the market-inspired views of the Sophists
>> >etc.)
>
>Hang on a minute Mervyn, when did I ever speak up for the "bourgeois
>Enlightenment", or for the Enlightenment for that matter?  It is possible,
>as Hegel did, to see the development of reason as happening despite the b.E.
>or the E.  I am not in favour of speaking of "redemption" or "recuperation"
>or "reconciliation" of our "essential humanity" because this implies that
>humanity needs to recapture a lost innocence - we are back to the
>anthropomorphic fallacy of the noble savage again.
>> >
>> >>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.
>> >
>> >I think you've got a big problem here because your two heroes are
>> >fundamentally at odds with one another. Descartes' theory of the
>> >subject, with its accompanying mind-body, spirit-nature dichotomy
>> >(dualism), underpins Enlightenment mechanism,
>
>Half true.  See my comments above about the breakthrough represented by
>Descartes's epistemology.  In my opinion Roy has a bigger spirit-nature
>alienated split than Descartes.
>
> whereas Hegel (while
>> >endorsing some aspects of this) basically rebels against it, opposing
>> >mechanism and reasserting the unity of the human and divine mind (anti-
>> >dualism).
>
>Hegel knew from Descartes that if you admitted the existence of the human
>mind then to postulate the existence of a divine mind was redundant.  It's
>all in the SCIENCE OF LOGIC.
>
> If one takes Charles Taylor's understanding of the essential
>> >difference between the modern enlightenment understanding of the subject
>> >and that which it displaced (the view of Plato, Aristotle, the neo-
>> >Platonists etc) - 'the modern subject is self-defining, where on
>> >previous views the subject is defined in relation to a cosmic order' -
>> >Descartes comes down on one side, Hegel (and Bhaskar and arguably Marx)
>> >on the other.
>
>Taylor's view fails to rise above Kantian scepticism, because he rejects
>dialectics and fails to draw out the interconnections and contradictions
>involved in the subject-object relationship.  Descartes lacks dialectics,
>but inaugurates reflection theory, and thus strikes a blow against theocracy
>in human affairs.  Bhaskar thinks you can have creation ex nihilo (a view
>put forward by that arch reactionary St Augustine).  Both Hegel and Marx
>disagree with this.  Here Parmenides's idea of reality as a plenitude is
>actually more ontologically viable than St Augustine or Roy, for if
>something can come from nothing why should we reflect or reason?
>> >
>> >>For freedom of thought,
>> >
>> >Indeed. *Think* then! (:-  (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
>
>It is you and the theocrats who need to do some reflecting, Mervyn.
>> >
>>
>>
>>      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


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