File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9802, message 698


Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 14:31:41 +1100
From: Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Critical Realism?


G'day Yoshie,

>With an intervention like Ralph's, it would be hard to get any discussion
>going. I have little patience for aggression born out of ressentiment or
>slighted feelings or bruised ego. Do you still want to discuss Bhaskar here?

Okay, Ralph was out of order - but there's some meat in that CR post and
I'd like it if we could have a go at it.

>>critical realism is the ontology of choice for left academics seeking a way
>>out of pomo and positivism and needing to consolidate their respectability
>>and viability in hackademia.  They spend an inordinate amount of time
>>(online anyway) on social ontology--causality, the issues of methodological
>>individualism, the ontological status of supraindividual entities, and so
>>on.  A respectable philosophical task, but one that only addresses the most
>>elementary of ontological issues and doesn't advance substantive social
>>theory.

Bill Cochrane has posted us stuff to do eith Reg. Schooler Bob Jessop.  His
'method of articulation' is a variety of critical realism, I'm told, and
sounds useful and plausible to me.  I'll try to expand later if Bill
resists the temptation to engage.

>>They're also very defensive and insecure about their status and
>>can't really absorb any criticisms of Bhaskar.  This is because they
>>themselves feel very insecure in the realm of philosophy and Bhaskar is
>>their main foothold.  And they're all academic wimps.  Aside from the actual
>>truth content of the philosophy, there is the issue of the type of people
>>who have rallied around Bhaskar.  They have excommunicated me (but still
>>keep using my thoughts), and I have written them off.

Never mind 'types of people' - that won't get us anywhere.  It seems CR and
Bhaskar necessarily always come up in the same sentence.  Does the latter
define the former to that degree?

>>Bhaskar comes out of the philosophy of science.  His earlier works are more
>>accessible.  He suggests that Marx was probably a critical realist but now
>>he's going to improve on Marx.  As his writings become more obscure, his
>>descriptions of Marx's shortcomings become indecipherable.  Now to say that
>>Marx was probably a critical realist is like saying Marx was probably a
>>dialectical materialist, even though he didn't use that lingo.  I think
>>critical realism is basically a logical elaboration of dialectical
>>materialism, dressed up with new terminology, fleshed out and made more
>>logically precise, with some of Bhaskar's own conceits thrown in.  My
>>impression of the early Bhaskar is that he makes explicit much of what I
>>always implicitly thought.  As such, I welcomed this development.

Yeah, the bits I thought I'd grasped sounded like regurgitated Marx.  That
stuff about the centrality of 'absence' gets a long run.  I sense this is
to do with historical change - but still don't know what advantage there is
in seeing such as the disappearance or appearance of absentnesses.  Why not
the coming and going of presences?  What's he on about?

And, on Bhaskar's take on morality and ethics, Louis Irwin tells us this:

'Ethical naturalism is at the level of moral rules designed to guide
actions, and these change over time with changes in our ethical concepts
(for example, "slave", "person"). Underlying these is a moral realism which
grounds our ethics and which can be rationally discovered via analysis of
the changing nature of ourselves, our needs and our society. Bhaskar speaks
of "ethical alethia, ultimately grounded in conceptions of human nature."
(DPF 211) It is moral realism that prevents ethical naturalism from being
an arbitrary matter internal to a culture.'

I guess I go along with this as I understand it.  But if I do understand
it, it's hardly a new insight, is it?

>>Later Bhaskar branches out and tries to capture the attention of people who
>>have been brought up with different stuff than stodgy analytical philosophy
>>and philosophy of science.  His audience contains people who've been exposed
>>to pomo, critical theory, etc., and so he has to capture this "sophisticated
>>market".  Finally, he made a leap into the next stage, "dialectical critical
>>realism", and here is where he becomes most unreadable just as his
>>"originality" takes off.

Well, I suppose the question is, what does Bhaskar purport to offer here
that historical materialism does not?

>>I still have reams of commentary in scrawled format on PLATO ETC. which I
>>never got around to posting.

Please lay it on us!

>>Death to all English Departments!

I suspect you won't have too long to wait, Ralph.  Whilst you deride their
use value (which was great before the pomos got there and threw out a canon
they'd never read so they could justify watching soap operas and reading
marvel comics), I fear it is their moot exchange value that will kill 'em.

Cheers,
Rob.



************************************************************************

Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia.

Phone:  02-6201 2194  (BH)
Fax:    02-6201 5119

************************************************************************

'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day's toil of any human being.'    (John Stuart Mill)

"The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
the form of capital."                                    (Karl Marx)

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