Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 15:05:55 -0800 (PST)
From: Patrick Crosby <pfcrosby-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [BOU:] Re: c'mon everyone & Pascal


Not exactly sure which "he" you're referring to here, but my best guess is that it's Bourdieu, and that the book you threw away was Pascalian Meditations. Sadly, it's been a few years since I read it and my copy of it is temporarily misplaced. So I am unable at the moment to make even a cursory review.  But I can imagine why Bourdieu would be hostile to a thinker like Husserl who wanted to reduce everything to the ego (as opposed to the social), and who saw transcendental phenomenology as a sort of metaphysics of the future. Bourdieu, of course wants to assign sociology rather than philosophy to that role. In fact, Bourdieu doesn't see much use for a "pure" philosophy of any sort at all anymore.As such, I suppose one could say that he was echoing Marx here in this respect, but also, clearly, Durkheim. Max Weber had he lived even a decade or so longer might have had some sympathy for Husserl, the problem of intersubjectivity and "constituting the other," and so forth; but what Husserl
 so desperately sought to prove Durkheim had no problem at all in simply taken for granted--- as a matter of faith one could say. Pascal too was very much a man of faith. Could this be why Bourdieu felt drawn to him? When I find my copy of the book, I'll try to answer that question.

j laari <jlaari-AT-cc.jyu.fi> wrote:Greetings

On Mon, 6 Dec 2004, Patrick Crosby wrote:

"If you're referring to my defense against the vicious and unfounded
slander made against me, I'm just terribly sorry. The fact of the
matter is that neither of the two names I was called are even remotely
true."

When it comes to me, I wasn't referring to any individual post or
writer. I don't think ad hominem attacks can serve anything positive
or constructive. Sorry if you got the impression I was attacking on
you.

In another post you wrote:

"As it turned out, Bourdieu doesn't mention Husserl or his
transcendental phenomenology in the Pascalian Meditations, even once.
But if you consider the work of the later Husserl, the Crisis
especially, you just might find a hint of a polemic lurking not too
far beneath the surface."

Now that's interesting! I remember that he did wrote something quite
"blockheadish" about phenomenology. That's why I threw the book away
with the idea of returning to it someday next spring. I must have
confused the book with some other book I took a glance at at around
the same time. However, that kept disturbing me, because I've thought
that he'd been quite well informed about (if not phenomenology per se,
then) transcendental philosophy in general. Wasn't it after all his
great achievement in his early "Outline" to outline social theory in
more or less (more quasi- than really) transcendental
Simmelian-Durkheimian fashion, I keep telling myself, so why now this
mockery of critical reflection?

Another thing that I remember was giving me a turn-off while turning
the pages and glancing the book through was the one Jon mentioned
earlier. Repetitiveness.

Sincerely, Jukka L
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