Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 18:51:22 +0000
Subject: Re: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, etc.


Hi Ganes,

>Merlyn could perhaps help out

'a spirituality within the bounds of secularism, consistent with all 
faiths and no faith'.

>Doesn't it call
>for more cage-rattling, Merlyn

After rattling the cages, I was hustled into one myself, along with my 
laptop, and hoisted high over the Thames where I've been setting a world 
record for leading a purely virtuous oops virtual existence. The record 
is mine tomorrow. I've lost twenty kilos and when I come out I ain't 
rattling no more cages for a bit.

Merlin


James Daly <james.irldaly-AT-ntlworld.com> writes
>Hi Dick
>
>You write:
>
>I really don't think I understand your following two sentences:
>
>"Faith is the line along which we proceed in the making of self,
>becoming an individual, by integrating the particular and the
>universal in us. On either side are abysses of despair: despair of the
>particular finite in conformism, despair of the universal infinite in
>fantasy and abstraction."
>
>You go on to ask:
>
>In what sense can "faith" be a "line"? There are a number of different
>theories about the process by which we learn to become individuals,
>but I can't connect saying that it involves "integrating the
>particular and the universal in us" with any of them. Do children
>learning to become individuals really have to balance between these
>"abysses of despair"? These sound much more like adolescent or adult
>terrors, experienced (by some) well after quite self-conscious
>individuation has taken place.
>
>My reply:
>
>There is never enough time to make these posts explicit enough! My
>metaphor was of walking a straight line (actually on a mountain
>ridge!) and not deviating (or falling) to either side.
>
>Faith for Kierkegaard meant Christianity, in what many would see as a
>very narrow -- if traditional -- way. Like Roy, I think we should be
>looking for a spiritual understanding which (I can't remember his
>exact phraseology -- Merlyn could perhaps help out :-)  can be
>enlightening both for those who believe and those who do not believe
>in (a) God.
>
>I find the terms finite particular and infinite universal helpful --
>and I suppose one could see faith as the belief that these two
>opposites can be reconciled. If in reality they cannot, wouldn't that
>be despair? The mention of adolescent terrors (neutralised (?) by "or
>adult") seems to *reduce* this problem to a psychological one, but it
>is ontological. That's why I am not fazed by the invoking of
>psychological theories of "individuation". I prefer a pre-Cartesian
>approach, as I do in the case of Kohlberg, whose Habermas-endorsed
>theory is just a psychologisation of the Whig interpretation of
>history. But of course our being takes place in history, and in a
>social milieu: *some* "children learning to become individuals really
>have to balance [if they are lucky] between these 'abysses of despair'
>". (How about dementia *precox*; cf. R.D. Laing's interpretation).
>
>Finally, I suppose there are degrees of becoming an individual; which
>is of course not becoming an individualist -- that is the parallel
>with nation/nationalist ("my country right or wrong").
>
>I take your point that you were not referring to personalisation as a
>rhetorical device, but what would be the exact status of race, nation,
>and state, in critical realist terms? I for one don't know, and it
>would be a difficult question, but worth taking up.  (Doesn't it call
>for more cage-rattling, Merlyn :-). Terms like nation and race are
>tricky. Charles Kingsley wrote "We English are a Protestant race".
>That, in those days, was seen as including the Irish as honorary
>members in a kind of apprenticeship; The London Times editorialised
>that in making Archbishop Cullen of Dublin a cardinal, the Pope was
>paying tribute to the Anglo-Saxon race.  I read in a post today about
>19th century reference to "the Christian race".
>
>All the best
>
>Gaines :-)
>
>
>
>----- Original Message ----
>From: "Moodey, Richard W" <MOODEY001-AT-gannon.edu>
>To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
>Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 10:29 PM
>Subject: RE: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, etc.
>
>
>> Hi James,
>>
>> The analogy of being is a very useful heuristic concept, because it
>alerts us both to the similarities and differences between things.
>And, of course, things are more like some other things and less like
>other things -- thus we have superordinate categories with subordinate
>categories within them.  A child's becoming an adult is more like a
>pupply becoming a grown dog, and even more like an acorn becoming an
>oak, than it is like a piece of wood becoming a table.
>>
>> I really don't think I understand your following two sentences:
>>
>> "Faith is the line along which we proceed in the making of self,
>becoming an individual, by integrating the particular and the
>universal in us. On either side are abysses of despair: despair of the
>particular finite in conformism, despair of the universal infinite in
>fantasy and abstraction."
>>
>> In what sense can "faith" be a "line"?  There are a number of
>different theories about the process by which we learn to become
>individuals, but I can't connect saying that it involves "integrating
>the particular and the universal in us" with any of them.  Do children
>learning to become individuals really have to balance between these
>"abysses of despair"?  These sound much more like adolescent or adult
>terrors, experienced (by some) well after quite self-conscious
>individuation has taken place.
>>
>> Finally, I see personification in rhetoric as being a minor point,
>but not personification of collectivities within any serious attempt
>at social theory.  Going back to what I said about the analogy of
>being, the similarities between a person and a collectivity of persons
>impress me much less than the differences.  A collectivity does not
>have a mind or a brain, and can act only through agents or
>representatives.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Dick
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: James Daly [mailto:james.irldaly-AT-ntlworld.com]
>> Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2003 12:07 PM
>> To: bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>> Subject: Re: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, etc.
>>
>>
>> Hi Dick
>>
>> Sorry for not getting back to you sooner -- computer trouble. Thank
>you for looking up the stuff I put on the net. I tend to agree with
>what I understand of the answers Mervyn posts, although my knowledge
>of Bhaskar is a small fraction of his.
>>
>> To reply to your post: I think our bodies and our finite embodied
>minds particularise us in the Aristotelian sense you mention. But
>being is analogical: to take Kierkegaard as the most graphic
>example -- there is a difference between a piece of wood's becoming a
>table and a child's becoming an adult -- or as Kierkegaard would say a
>self. That requires truth to our particularity, but also truth to our
>universality. I find *The Sickness unto Death* the clearest
>Kierkegaardian statement. Faith is the line along which we proceed in
>the making of self, becoming an individual, by integrating the
>particular and the universal in us. On either side are abysses of
>> despair: despair of the particular finite in conformism, despair of
>the universal infinite in fantasy and abstraction. He is giving his
>own twist to Hegel's ontology of the individual as the particular who
>has taken his (sic) place in the universal, the ethical, the state.
>>
>> I agree with Howard who refers us to the introduction to the
>Grundrisse, where Marx says "man" is a zoon politicon in the sense
>that humans can become individuals only in society. That is also the
>meaning of the sixth thesis on Feuerbach: "the human essence is the
>ensemble of human relations" (not only " political" as the Young
>Hegelians thought, but "economic", or in general "class" -- along with
>gender etc.). Hence flourishing is not an activity going on in our
>particular selves, like acquiring a musical skill. It is a relation to
>the universe of being, and especially to all humanity. There are
>degrees of flourishing -- Americans and their coalition would flourish
>better in relations of mutual trust and cooperation with Iraqis, to
>take a single example. This doesn't mean they or their corporations
>would have more money, but flourishing precisely does not mean that.
>>
>> You ask: But doesn't the problem of "too big" or "too absract"
>emerge with the Stoic ideal? How can there be more than a
>"pseudo-solidarity" among "all humans"? How can we speak realistically
>of right-duty relationships among those who have no real social
>relationhips?
>>
>> Yes, stoicism arose with the end of the citystate and the rise of
>the Hellenistic empire, and was developed in the Roman Empire. But
>Stoics were not just atoms in the void. There was something to the
>relationship between a Marcus Aurelius and an Epictetus. Before J. C.
>they referred to God as father, and saw justice as natural law.
>>
>> Which brings me to the last point. You say: "... I march to the tune
>of a different drummer? But, admitting the last alternative seems to
>put is all into the chaos of the relativism of the Sophists."
>>
>> This reminds me of a line in Alistair MacIntyre's extremely generous
>and friendly review of my libellus, but one with which I disagree. The
>Stoics, like Hume, were sceptical about reason but dogmatic about the
>senses and passions, unlike Plato and all in his tradition, who were
>the opposite. Saying that one way of life (which was how the ancients
>saw philosophy, a bit like Ignatius's exercises) -- say,
>Bhaskarian-ism -- is above and beyond any possibility of judgement by
>another -- say Benthamism -- doesn't imply relativism; it doesn't mean
>they have equal rational status, and that we are (rationally speaking)
>equally free to choose either.
>>
>> Parenthetically, great power chauvinism gives nationalism a bad
>name, but Lenin in his criticism of Luxembourg's position on Polish
>independence from Russia was able to draw on Marx's approach to the
>anti-imperialist nationalism of the oppressed. The use of
>personification in rhetoric seems a minor point.
>>
>> All the best
>>
>> James
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Moodey, Richard W" <MOODEY001-AT-gannon.edu>
>> To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
>> Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 5:22 PM
>> Subject: RE: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, etc.
>>
>>
>> > Hi James,
>> >
>> > After having read ch 1 of "Deals and Ideals," and McIntyre's
>review
>> of the whole book, I have a much better sense of how to respond to
>your post.
>> >
>> > You wrote:
>> >
>> > "It seems to me that "individualism" in the sense of MacPherson's
>> "possessive individualism" is egoism, selfishness, the hypertrophy
>of the particular, and is what is intended in the term "methodological
>individualism". But Marx and Kierkegaard followed Hegel (using
>concepts which in this sense originate in Kant) in defining the
>individual as the reconciliation of the particular and the universal."
>> >
>> > I ask:
>> >
>> > Do I misread you as attributing an ontological assertion to M, K,
>> and H?  If so, how do that assertion differ from the Aristotelian
>and Thomistic notion of the particularization of universal forms by
>matter?
>> >
>> > You wrote:
>> >
>> > Marx was in the classical philosophical tradition which saw
>(Isaiah
>> Berlin's "negative") freedom as the bourgeois "Right of Man" to
>exploit, but (Berlin's) "positive" freedom as both individual and
>communal self-government by (not instrumental but spiritual) reason,
>directed to the common good (justice), which includes individual
>rights. That would require Aristotle's philia or friendship between
>the citizens. For Athenians that did not include metics (immigrants
>from other Greek city states, often merchants), women or slaves. The
>idea of total human inclusiveness in moral equality was a spiritual
>> (rational) achievement of stoicism, and the idea of justice as
>requiring political equality for all (democracy) is a spiritual
>achievement of modernity, but one corrupted by the very rights of
>possessive individualism of capitalist property relations in terms of
>which it arrived (and which Proudhon wished to extend and equalise
>materially).
>> >
>> > I reply:
>> >
>> > This seems like a brief history of the expansion of the "civic
>> sphere."  But doesn't the problem of "too big" or "too absract"
>emerge with the Stoic ideal?  How can there be more than a
>"pseudo-solidarity" among "all humans"?  How can we speak
>realistically of right-duty relationships among those who have no real
>social relationhips?
>> >
>> > You wrote:
>> >
>> > "There is a parallel between the usage of the terms "individual"
>and
>> "individualism" and the terms "nation" and "nationalism".
>Competitive nationalism was particularistic great power chauvinism,
>but Marx saw the freeing of oppressed nations, of Poland from Russia
>and Ireland from England (including of the Irish working class from
>domination by the English working class -- even in the First
>International itself), as particular parts of the universalist
>(spiritual) international struggle for emancipation from capitalism."
>> >
>> > I reply:
>> >
>> > I think this is a dangerous parallel, often involving the false
>> attribution of the characteristics of persons to collectivities.
>> >
>> > You wrote:
>> >
>> > "Each individual's quest for discovery of the universal essence
>> which is our reality is part of the work and struggle for humanity's
>enlightenment and emancipation which must include relations of
>production from each according to ability and to each according to
>need. Roy makes this clear in all his latest books."
>> >
>> > I reply:
>> >
>> > I do regard myself as having been, and being, on a "quest," but I
>> cannot agree that my quest has been for the discovery of the
>"universal essence" which is "our reality."  Does this mean that I
>suffer from false consciousness, that I am unenlightened, or just that
>I march to the tune of a different drummer?  But, admitting the last
>alternative seems to put is all into the chaos of the relativism of
>the Sophists.
>> >
>> > Best regards,
>> >
>> > Dick
>> >
>> >
>> >      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>>
>>
>>      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>>
>
>
>
>
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