Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 22:22:54 -0700 (PDT)
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: BHA: BASIC QUESTION ON READINGS


I hate to ask dumb, elementary questions, but what the hell.

I have been mostly a passive lurker on this list, and except for one or two
rants, I was not moved to pipe up until this Bhaskar/Adorno business came
up.  That should give some clue as to where my priorities lie.  Last week I
read Tom Rockmore's IRRATIONALISM and now I'm getting a big kick out of
Lukacs' THE DESTRUCTION OF REASON.

Though I used to be much more involved in the philosophy of science than I
am now, my interests lie more towards the issue of philosophy and the
division of labor, the Young Hegelians, Feuerbach, the young Marx, Adorno
and the Frankfurt School, Sohn-Rethel and co., the critique of irrationalism
and lebensphilosophie, and such matters.  Thus this recent discussion of
Bhaskar, Adorno, and Heidegger caught my eye.

It would seem then, if I gather up the time and courage to tackle Bhaskar, I
should be reading the DCR stuff that goes beyond plain vanilla CR.  Is that
a fair assumption?  The critique of positivism and empiricism is not my main
priority these days, nor are ontologies for the natural and social sciences;
I'm much more interested in the critique of idealism--the shits like
Dilthey, Nietzsche, and Heidegger that nurse the monster of postmodernism.

In reorganizing my chaotic library, it seems that the Bhaskar books I have
are: A REALIST THEORY OF SCIECNE, THE POSSIBILITY OF NATURALISM, SCIENTIFIC
REALISM AND HUMAN EMANCIPATION, DIALECTIC: THE PULSE OF FREEDOM, and PLATO,
ETC.  I also have Andrew Collier's CRITICAL REALISM and I think I have a
book by William Outhwaite.

Given my interests and my libary, it looks like the Bhaskar texts I ought to
prioritize are DIALECTIC and PLATO, ETC.  Am I right?  Is there something
I'm missing elsewhere?  Do I need to go out and get texts by Bhaskar I don't
have?

Hope you all enjoyed Hegel's birthday.



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