Subject: Re: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, etc.
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 22:28:52 -0000


Marvyn

Interesting, but is slavery versus freedom based on the Spartan example a
paradigmal case of the issues? The real problerm in modern societies is
surely modes of freedom or the situated nature of ethical practice - isn't
this one important thread in how many Muslims take issue with Bush?

Jamie

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mervyn Hartwig" <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 11:27 AM
Subject: Re: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, etc.


>
> Hi Carrol,
>
> Earlier in this thread I referred to SRHE 209 where Bhaskar asserts  the
> '*existence* of rights (and goods) for all human beings *qua* human
> beings, in virtue of their possession of a common (although always
> historically mediated) human nature, ultimately grounded in their
> biological unity as a species ... ' and suggests that 'To collapse a
> right to the historical conditions of its recognition, realization or
> exercise is to commit some ethical form ... of the epistemic fallacy,
> grounded in the actualist collapse of anthropology.'
>
> It's certainly possible to take issue with this, and since Althusser
> it's been pretty fashionable to attack the 'ridiculous concept of man'
> [sic], but I agree with it. Just because a right is not recognized or
> actualized doesn't mean it's not real; it has to be discovered and its
> recognition struggled for. That said, while the Spartacists may not have
> consciously struggled against the instution of slavery, there never have
> been a class of slaves who did not feel in their hearts that their
> unfreedom wasn't worthy of their human nature and resent and resist it
> in one way or another. If everything is reducible to the struggle, as
> you say, how do you *explain* your modern struggle for freedom? Why
> freedom? Why don't people struggle to be more heteronomous or dominated
> and exploited?
>
> It is a necessary presupposition of emancipatory discourse, including
> your own, that people are essentially and therefore ought actually to be
> free.
>
> Mervyn
>
>
>
>
>  Carrol Cox <cbcox-AT-ilstu.edu> writes
> >
> >
> >Mervyn Hartwig wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> . . .in virtue of our
> >> common biology and our practical, embodied encounter across history and
> >> cultures with the same laws of nature, all people have in common basic
> >> potentials (powers), liabilities and needs (hence rights), including
the
> >> need  for autonomy and free flourishing, however these get culturally
> >> construed and mediated in myriad ways.
> >
> >Libilities and needs do _not_, historically viewed, entail rights. Hence
> >the "hence" in this sentence is unjustified and, I think, unjustifiable.
> >Rights are an emergent quality [I'm not sure of the word I need here] of
> >social struggle, and their content is defined in that struggle. For
> >example, "free speech" as a "right" would have been meaningless to the
> >Athenian peasantry whose struggles created the possibility of democratic
> >rights as an object of human thought. Free speech came to exist as a
> >practice in the Athenian democracy, but it was not until hundreds, or
> >thousands, of years later that free speech as an independent entity came
> >into existence. Rights as an object of thought or discussion emerge only
> >_after_ they have been at least partly created by the struggles of those
> >who, prior to the struggles, would not have recognized those rights
> >because those right did not yet exist to be recognized.
> >
> >Only in retrospect, for another example, does the Sparticist rebellion
> >in ancient Rome become a struggle against slavery, for no one in that
> >rebellion condemned slavery as an institution or human practice; had
> >they succeeded in fighting their way out of the Roman Empire they would
> >have been quite willing to own slaves themselves. It was the struggle of
> >slaves in the western hemisphere over several centuries that established
> >slavery as an essential wrong, and hence freedom from slavery as a
> >right.
> >
> >Carrol
> >
> >
> >
> >     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
>
>
>      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>



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