Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 19:00:15 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere7.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Directionality in history


Hi Radha,

Thanks for these comments. I agree re the 'given context' and have tried
to incorporate that in the entry.

> Can progress be negative
>and still be "progress"?

Definitely. We must get away from a purely positive notion. Think
relatively. If current greenhouse gas emissions = 100 and you reduce
them to 80, you've made progress towards halting the melting of the
ice-caps etc.

>what needs
>to be clarified is: progress does not presuppose any specific or necessary
>preference for or elevation of any type of social form/structure/or
>organization in society and history.

I think this is right. There is a diversity of possible forms compatible
with universal human autonomy and this is something eudaimonian society
would celebrate. I'll try and work it in.

Mervyn

 r.dsouza <r.dsouza-AT-waikato.ac.nz> writes
>Mervyn
>On re-reading your draft entry on directionality, I wondered about your
>definition of "progress" in the human realm. I'd rather see "progress" as a
>movement towards greater freedom in a given context, including a
>socio-historical context and something that can be sustained when and to the
>extent freedom at the individual/immediate level in the spatio-temporalizing
>structure is at tandem with / synchronizes with freedom at the structural
>level (i.e. non-reifiying and consisitent with individual/immediate level
>freedom for a range of actors wthin a structure).
>And about the bit about : "Progress may  be negative, consisting merely in
>the slowing down of degeneration or  ENTROPY " etc. Can progress be negative
>and still be "progress"? Wouldn't it be retrogression then? I don't quite
>understand what you mean by that because progress would then subsume
>retrograde movement and render 'directionality' itself problematic and
>unilinear. Freedom is what makes tendential directionality rational in the
>human realm, and I'd say the current situation - war on terror etc that you
>speak of is a retrograde movement in that it takes us further away from
>freedom - (this is not to endorse the post-war era in anyway, but to point
>to the embedding of certain oppressive structures, war, racism, colonialism
>etc).
>And, while we are on the business of taking on board sensitivity of
>colonized peoples, with reference to Marx and Hegel in the entry, what needs
>to be clarified is: progress does not presuppose any specific or necessary
>preference for or elevation of any type of social form/structure/or
>organization in society and history. I think that is the nub of the colonial
>critique. Instead progress must be related  to P2 relations and evaluated on
>the basis of the extent to which it frees the slave types from the master
>types in a given context or the way we put it in the streets: "freedom from
>oppression" and "liberation".
>regards
>Radha
>
>
>



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