Re: BHA: Re: starting up DPF readings again.

[Colin.Wight@xxxxxxxxxx (Colin Wight)]

Hi Gary (and fellow Dialectic travellers),

Thanks for taking the time to restart the Dialetic reading. I've been
re-reading it myself of late and would even venture to speculate that I am
beginning to understand it. I will go over your post at greater length, but
I want to first register a point of difference with the way you explain
'real negation'. You argue that:

>I understand "real negation" as simply meaning that everything that is will
>not be. Or to put it in Bhaskarian terms, everything that is present now
>will be absent.

But surely it doesn't mean this, because construed this way 'real negation'
seems to imply a form of determinism/teleology where every present is
_predestined_, that is to say must, become an instance of real negation.
Unfortunatley, I don't have my copy of Dialectic at hand but I'm fairly sure
this can't be the case - at least not in an open world. In Plato he argues
that real negation is consistent with spatio-temporal distanciation without
transformation (p. 56). Nothing here implies that everything that is present
now will be absent. It seems to me that there is nothing pre-determined
about whether presences become absences, hence the need for transformative
negation and radical negation. As I understand real negation it simply means
the real negation (the making absent) of a present, nut it doesn't imply
that every present will be an absent. Just a minor point.

Thanks,


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Dr. Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Tel: (01970) 621769

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