Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 18:52:20 +0000
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, etc.


Hi Ruth,

I agree entirely re theorizing rich individuality. That would be an 
interesting discussion to embark on, but myself, I'm out of time! Of the 
stuff I've read lately, I've found Kathryn Dean really interesting on 
this and Chris Arthur, The New Dialectics, Ch. 6 (a reconstruction of 
Marx's views).

I view flourishing as a need. In a society of rich individuals it would 
be recognized as a right, a right being just that which it is 
universally recognized a rich individual is entitled to (including 
unlimited personal choice except insofar as it interferes with the 
flourishing of others)... (I know, this leaves much to be discussed! 
Some might be tempted to urge that Bhaskar's prose interferes with 
flourishing, but I'm content to let him be... -:) )

I'm sure Aristotle did sometimes write beautiful dialogues, but I think 
there's something intrinsic to the systematic elaboration of concepts 
that militates against what most people might experience as a good read. 
However, qua systematic elaborators, both Aristotle and Bhaskar in my 
view write pretty well.

Mervyn

PS
Since writing the above I've been (re)reading Nick Hostettler and Alan 
Norrie, 'Are critical realist ethics foundationalist?' in Cruickshank, 
Justin, ed., 2003. Critical Realism: The Difference it Makes. London: 
Routledge, who gave me occasion to look up Bhaskar on the question of 
rights in SRHE 209. There he asserts (cited by N & A) the '*existence* 
of rights (and goods) for all human beings *qua* human beings, in virtue 
of their possession of a common (although always historically mediated) 
human nature, ultimately grounded in their biological unity as a species 
...  To collapse a right to the historical conditions of its 
recognition, realization or exercise is to commit some ethical form ... 
of the epistemic fallacy, grounded in the actualist collapse of 
anthropology.' I agree with this, and was indeed half committing my own 
version of the fallacy above, as are also I think Hostettler and Norrie, 
notwithstanding disclaimers they make. If that makes me foundationalist, 
too bad. (Note: the alleged foundationalism is not epistemological but 
ontological. I suspect we all build our theories on an ontological 
something; when N & A speak of their own (historically relative) 
something they 'more modest[ly]' use the words 'rooted' and 'grounded', 
'not founded', which looks to me like a quibble. Their own position can 
perhaps be named as 'historicism', though not in Popper's sense.)



rgroff-AT-yorku.ca writes
>Hi Mervyn, Tobin, all,
>
>I apologize for the mostly tangential nature of my response, here.  I was
>interested in your comment, Mervyn, when you said:
>
> I'm not of course invoking a
>> bourgeois individualistic attitude but rather the rich kind of
>> individuality presupposed by 'the free development of each as a
>> condition of the free development of all' which fully recognizes our
>> social interconnection but insists on the right (need) to freely
>> flourish providing it doesn't interfere with the free flourishing of
>> others.
>
>I've been reading some neo-Aristotelian political theorists this fall, as well
>as some serious liberals.  This particular circle to which you implicitly refer
>is ... well, it's THE one to square.  How to have something like what is
>protected by the negative liberty/rights-language of liberalism (i.e., I get to
>pick how I'm going to "freely flourish," provided it doesn't interfere with how
>you want to freely flourish) combined with some meaningful form of
>republicanism.  (I think that part of why it might not seem as hard to Marx is
>because he really does assume the whithering away of the state.  Even so,
>though, I don't think the problem goes away.  But this is a whole other
>conversation ...)
>
>Anyway, I think that I want to say something like: theorizing that 
>'rich kind of
>individuality' is really, really hard.  I know that you know this, but 
>something
>about how easily it rolls off of that sentence gave me pause.  There are all
>sorts of questions to be asked.
>
>In what sense is flourishing a "right"?  "Rights" are weird things.  I don't
>understand what they are, actually.  And if it's a right, where does it come
>from?  And does it work, do we think, to simply change the infinitive verb
>phrase from "to do what I want" to "to freely flourish," but retain the
>structure of the liberal conception?  Etc.
>
>[Meanwhile, isn't Aristotle thought to have written beautiful dialogues?  As
>they were lost, what we read are a mix of what is thought to be his lecture
>notes and notes that students took.  Yes?  So he's maybe not as good of an
>example as Plato of a writer whose rhetorical style is self-consciously
>connected to their philosophical views!  And it's interesting about 
>Adorno.  His
>lectures on Kant are as sophisticated as it gets.  But, in sharp 
>contrast to his
>prose, they are utterly comprehensible to one who has sufficient philosophical
>background.  Clear, but hard -- you can only read small amounts at a time,
>because the analysis is so complex.  It's an interesting case, though, because
>it's really and truly the ideas, there, that are difficult, and not the prose.]
>
>
>Ruth
>
>
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