File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2002/bhaskar.0202, message 54


Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 01:13:41 +0000
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: On the question of how to read


Hey Ruth!

>I will leave aside the question of my dialectic credentials, but 
>will say that it is just as important not to rush to explain away every 
>inconsistency by saying that it fits into a larger, developing unity.  

Yes, I agree one shouldn't rush to explain away, it should be a genuine
resolution.

I'm not sure you should leave aside your dialectical credentials. I am
genuinely puzzled as to how you (among others) can espouse such a full-
blooded marxist position e.g. on the issue of alienation and yet seem to
operate within the analytical rather than the dialectical problematic in
some/many? other respects. If ever there was a dialectician it was Marx!
(You didn't comment on my point that your espousal of Marx's account -
admittedly not consistently carried through - of species being and
social being and their interrelationship is at odds with your rejection
of the fundamentally similar Bhaskarian account of the interrelationship
of core universal human nature and four-planar nature, or psychology and
social science, (distinctions within a unity)).

Best,

Mervyn




Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca> writes
>Hiya Mervyn,
>
>You wrote:
>
>> > When an important thinker seems to be drawing an odd conclusion, I think a
>> > wise rule is to consider seriously whether the fault is not in oneself.
>
>Yes.  I think that this is true, and that many, especially in academia, where 
>points are so often awarded for arrogance and cleverness, would do well to take 
>it to heart.
>
>But listen, it is also good to consider that an important thinker may actually 
>get stuff wrong from time to time, or change his or her mind about things, or 
>try out formulations that don't quite work, or whatever.  Whenever I point to 
>what seems to me to be a tension or contradiction in Bhaskar's work -- the 
>exploration of which might reveal something interesting about what is going on 
>with the theory -- you tell me that I only see a tension because I do not think 
>dialectically.  I will leave aside the question of my dialectic credentials, 
>but 
>will say that it is just as important not to rush to explain away every 
>inconsistency by saying that it fits into a larger, developing unity.  
>
>[For what it's worth, I actually tend toward the latter fault, in my off-line 
>thinking.  I always want to reconstruct the person's position in as coherent a 
>way as possible.   Adorno's Lectures on the Critique of Pure Reason helped me 
>to 
>see this.  He talks there in a way that really made an impression on me about 
>how important it is to not ... well, rush in an explain away every glitch.  
>Whether his insight will reform me in this regard is yet to be seen, however.]   
>
>Warmly,
>Ruth
>
>
>>I'm not sure the above pearl of wisdom takes us very far!! :)
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Andy
>>
>>
>>      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- 
>
>
>
>     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

-- 
Mervyn Hartwig
Editor, Journal of Critical Realism (incorporating 'Alethia')
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Herne Hill
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United Kingdom
Tel: 020 7 737 2892
Email: <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>

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