From: "James Daly" <james.irldaly-AT-ntlworld.com>
Subject: Re: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, etc.
Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 17:06:51 -0000


Hi Dick

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner -- computer trouble. Thank
you for looking up the stuff I put on the net. I tend to agree with
what I understand of the answers Mervyn posts, although my knowledge
of Bhaskar is a small fraction of his.

To reply to your post: I think our bodies and our finite embodied
minds particularise us in the Aristotelian sense you mention. But
being is analogical: to take Kierkegaard as the most graphic
example -- there is a difference between a piece of wood's becoming a
table and a child's becoming an adult -- or as Kierkegaard would say a
self. That requires truth to our particularity, but also truth to our
universality. I find *The Sickness unto Death* the clearest
Kierkegaardian statement. Faith is the line along which we proceed in
the making of self, becoming an individual, by integrating the
particular and the universal in us. On either side are abysses of
despair: despair of the particular finite in conformism, despair of
the universal infinite in fantasy and abstraction. He is giving his
own twist to Hegel's ontology of the individual as the particular who
has taken his (sic) place in the universal, the ethical, the state.

I agree with Howard who refers us to the introduction to the
Grundrisse, where Marx says "man" is a zoon politicon in the sense
that humans can become individuals only in society. That is also the
meaning of the sixth thesis on Feuerbach: "the human essence is the
ensemble of human relations" (not only " political" as the Young
Hegelians thought, but "economic", or in general "class" -- along with
gender etc.). Hence flourishing is not an activity going on in our
particular selves, like acquiring a musical skill. It is a relation to
the universe of being, and especially to all humanity. There are
degrees of flourishing -- Americans and their coalition would flourish
better in relations of mutual trust and cooperation with Iraqis, to
take a single example. This doesn't mean they or their corporations
would have more money, but flourishing precisely does not mean that.

You ask: But doesn't the problem of "too big" or "too absract" emerge
with the Stoic ideal? How can there be more than a "pseudo-solidarity"
among "all humans"? How can we speak realistically of right-duty
relationships among those who have no real social relationhips?

Yes, stoicism arose with the end of the citystate and the rise of the
Hellenistic empire, and was developed in the Roman Empire. But Stoics
were not just atoms in the void. There was something to the
relationship between a Marcus Aurelius and an Epictetus. Before J. C.
they referred to God as father, and saw justice as natural law.

Which brings me to the last point. You say: "... I march to the tune
of a different drummer? But, admitting the last alternative seems to
put is all into the chaos of the relativism of the Sophists."

This reminds me of a line in Alistair MacIntyre's extremely generous
and friendly review of my libellus, but one with which I disagree. The
Stoics, like Hume, were sceptical about reason but dogmatic about the
senses and passions, unlike Plato and all in his tradition, who were
the opposite. Saying that one way of life (which was how the ancients
saw philosophy, a bit like Ignatius's exercises) -- say,
Bhaskarian-ism -- is above and beyond any possibility of judgement by
another -- say Benthamism -- doesn't imply relativism; it doesn't mean
they have equal rational status, and that we are (rationally speaking)
equally free to choose either.

Parenthetically, great power chauvinism gives nationalism a bad name,
but Lenin in his criticism of Luxembourg's position on Polish
independence from Russia was able to draw on Marx's approach to the
anti-imperialist nationalism of the oppressed. The use of
personification in rhetoric seems a minor point.

All the best

James



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Moodey, Richard W" <MOODEY001-AT-gannon.edu>
To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 5:22 PM
Subject: RE: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, etc.


> Hi James,
>
> After having read ch 1 of "Deals and Ideals," and McIntyre's review
of the whole book, I have a much better sense of how to respond to
your post.
>
> You wrote:
>
> "It seems to me that "individualism" in the sense of MacPherson's
"possessive individualism" is egoism, selfishness, the hypertrophy of
the particular, and is what is intended in the term "methodological
individualism". But Marx and Kierkegaard followed Hegel (using
concepts which in this sense originate in Kant) in defining the
individual as the reconciliation of the particular and the universal."
>
> I ask:
>
> Do I misread you as attributing an ontological assertion to M, K,
and H?  If so, how do that assertion differ from the Aristotelian and
Thomistic notion of the particularization of universal forms by
matter?
>
> You wrote:
>
> Marx was in the classical philosophical tradition which saw (Isaiah
Berlin's "negative") freedom as the bourgeois "Right of Man" to
exploit, but (Berlin's) "positive" freedom as both individual and
communal self-government by (not instrumental but spiritual) reason,
directed to the common good (justice), which includes individual
rights. That would require Aristotle's philia or friendship between
the citizens. For Athenians that did not include metics (immigrants
from other Greek city states, often merchants), women or slaves. The
idea of total human inclusiveness in moral equality was a spiritual
(rational) achievement of stoicism, and the idea of justice as
requiring political equality for all (democracy) is a spiritual
achievement of modernity, but one corrupted by the very rights of
possessive individualism of capitalist property relations in terms of
which it arrived (and which Proudhon wished to extend and equalise
materially).
>
> I reply:
>
> This seems like a brief history of the expansion of the "civic
sphere."  But doesn't the problem of "too big" or "too absract" emerge
with the Stoic ideal?  How can there be more than a
"pseudo-solidarity" among "all humans"?  How can we speak
realistically of right-duty relationships among those who have no real
social relationhips?
>
> You wrote:
>
> "There is a parallel between the usage of the terms "individual" and
"individualism" and the terms "nation" and "nationalism". Competitive
nationalism was particularistic great power chauvinism, but Marx saw
the freeing of oppressed nations, of Poland from Russia and Ireland
from England (including of the Irish working class from domination by
the English working class -- even in the First International itself),
as particular parts of the universalist (spiritual) international
struggle for emancipation from capitalism."
>
> I reply:
>
> I think this is a dangerous parallel, often involving the false
attribution of the characteristics of persons to collectivities.
>
> You wrote:
>
> "Each individual's quest for discovery of the universal essence
which is our reality is part of the work and struggle for humanity's
enlightenment and emancipation which must include relations of
production from each according to ability and to each according to
need. Roy makes this clear in all his latest books."
>
> I reply:
>
> I do regard myself as having been, and being, on a "quest," but I
cannot agree that my quest has been for the discovery of the
"universal essence" which is "our reality."  Does this mean that I
suffer from false consciousness, that I am unenlightened, or just that
I march to the tune of a different drummer?  But, admitting the last
alternative seems to put is all into the chaos of the relativism of
the Sophists.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Dick
>
>
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