BHA: A paper on Eastern turn available for comments

[Heikki Patomaki <user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear listers,

my interest in From East to West is not only due to
Bhaskar himself. I try to read it also as a possible
post-colonial turn towards the East, which have been
preceded by similar (quasi)turns by Nietzsche,
Derrida and Galtung, among others.

Is a truly global philosophical discourse possible?
What a critical realist could learn from Nietzsche,
Derrida and Galtung? I argue that yes, global philosophy
is possible and that Derrida and Galtung, in particular,
have explicated some of the crucial conditions
for it. Hence a critical realist, too, could learn a
lot from these turns.

Below is the conclusion of the paper. If you would
like to see the paper as a whole, please send me a
message. It is now in a review process of a journal,
but all comments would be more than welcome!

Regards,

		Heikki



-------------------------------------------------

>From East to West: Emergent Global Philosophies - Beginnings of the End of
the Western Dominance?



Heikki Patomki



Conclusion: what a critical realist can learn from Nietzsche, Derrida and
Galtung?

Bhaskar is not alone in his aspiration "to begin to construct a dialogue,
bridge and synthesis" between traditions of both radical libertarian
Western thought and mystical Eastern thought. Nietzche preceded the late
20th century, post-colonial discussions by Derrida and Galtung, among
others, later joined by Bhaskar. The way has been opened up for still
Others to join the discourse.

What could a critical realist learn from earlier attempts by Nietzsche,
Derrida and Galtung? It is interesting that all of these radicals have
turned to Buddhism, instead of other Eastern religions and world-views.
Orient is readily equated with Buddhism. With every Buddhist turn, novel
pitfalls have been revealed, but also new possibilities have been opened up.

Nietzsche has taught us not only healthy suspicion about any particular
grandiose claims, but also the possibility of building bridges between
cultures and creating more ambiguous and interesting identities. However,
Nietzsche's understanding of Buddhism was superficial, and his
appropriation of the search for Nothingness and the doctrine of eternal
recurrence, owe more to positivist (Humean) origins of his radical
scepticism than to any genuine attempt at transcultural dialogue.

Derrida's notion that meaning is always complexly mediated not only gives
an interesting interpretation of the meaning of karma, but it also helps us
to appreciate the multifarious and often ambiguous threads in any attempt
to come to terms with different/other philosophical systems or world-views.
Also Derrida's more recent ethico-political texts with discussions on
Europe and its Otherness or "democracy-to-come" have implications for any
attempt to articulate a global philosophy. In particular, they point to the
need for a constant dialogical openness to Others (themselves in the
process of becoming), and at least point towards the idea that instead of
varying turns of dominance and subordination, global philosophies should be
discussed in the non-violent space made possible by mutual recognition and
the promise of justice and democracy to come, in the context of deep mutual
interconnectedness.

Many readings of Derrida (including many of his own claims and constant
disclaimers) are irrealist and can easily lead to disempowerment of
practices or, in some cases, to a nihilist dead-end. Yet, the idea that
"democracy-to-come" recognises the aporia of being and thereby opens itself
up for the possibility of ever further transformations, for taking up other
directions, for becoming its Other, also by means of dialogue and
interactions with concrete Others, is important. This may become a basis
for global democracy. It is equally important, however, that global
democracy is not discussed only at the highly abstract level of
deconstructionism. Justice and democracy must also mean something more
concrete  - and more immediate.

Since the mid-1950s, Galtung spent years on the false emancipatory promise
of positivist social sciences. After he had finally realised that knowledge
is not only not neutral but also constitutive of social worlds; and that,
from a global perspective, there are limitations to both liberalism and
Marxism; he started to look to non-Occidental social cosmologies. In
contrast to Derrida, Galtung has actually studied and discussed Oriental
systems of thought in some detail. Moreover, instead of merely focussing on
minimisation of abstractly and non-precisely defined violence, he has
proposed visions of change towards universalisable positive peace,
including blueprints for concretely and institutionally specified models of
global democracy (e.g. Galtung 1999).

But Galtung too has his limitations. In practice, his explorations of the
Orient look more like a monologue with himself than like a dialogue with
any concrete Others. Further, the lack of real causal analysis has detached
his blueprints from reality and made them excessively normative and
sermon-like. There is a need for a realist social science and real dialogue
with concrete Others.

Now, in the light of the intellectual journeys of exploration of Nietzsche,
Derrida and Galtung, Bhaskar's turn to East looks even more suspicious than
in mere critical realist terms alone. Yes, the unsustained existential
claims; ontic fallacies; and the ever more obvious speculative illusion
undermine the grounds for Bhaskar's attempt to subsume critical realism
under an unspecified and fuzzy New Age synthesis of "mystical Eastern
thought". But it is the examples of Nietzsche, Derrida and Galtung that
demonstrate how it would be possible to construct more critically a
"dialogue, bridge and synthesis between" traditions of both radical
libertarian Western thought and mystical Eastern thought.

Moreover, it would be an illusion to think that any grand concept or
master-signifier, not even that of "realism", can "save the planet" and
thereby our interconnected being(s). Simple stories of salvation or, for
that matter, Russian fairy tales won't do. Deconstruction of those texts is
all too easy.

My assessment of Nietzsche, Derrida and Galtung has also indicated the
dangers of simplifications, reifications and mystifications of the East. It
is not only that Orient is not one but many, but also that for many
allegedly Oriental positions there are in fact Occidental counterparts.
Nietzsche revealed that positivist science, with its characteristic search
for invariances as conjunctions that do not change, and its tendency to
destroy meanings and purposes, can plausibly give grounds for the doctrine
of eternal recurrence. On the other hand, since Heraclitus, the idea that
everything is in a state of flux has been thematised by a number of
dialectical philosophers. They have also explored something roughly
equivalent to the Buddhist and Derridean "neither/nor"-thinking. The
dialectical scheme is: neither the thesis, nor the antithesis, but a third
possibility, a synthesis. But as Bhaskar (1994, 336-344) has shown in his
brilliant critique of Hegel, a synthesis is neither unique and unilinear,
nor does it - typically - preserve all aspects of the thesis and its
negation. There are other possible syntheses; and any of them would entail
a loss of some, possibly valuable aspects of thesis and its negation. In
this sense, aporia will persist: there can be neither total affirmation nor
denial of both X or not-X and a synthesis, even if synthesis is seen as
development.

Finally, let us consider God. In From East to West, Bhaskar argues that
although God is real, only a culturally mediated access to God is possible.
However, he does not specify why we should believe that God is real. Like
any experience, religious experiences may be false, or indicative of
something else than God  - however specified. Nietzsche, Derrida and
Galtung have shown that a turn towards the East is possible without an
explicit belief in God. It is well known that Nietzsche's European Buddhism
verges on despair in its nihilism. However, at times, Derrida seems to be
hinting at a possibility of something equivalent to Nirvana, yet does not
explicate God. Galtung maintains that humanity would actually do better
without a conception of an all-ecompassing or omnipotent God (yet, in his
analogy between deity and axioms in theories, Galtung (1996, 20) urges us
to "prefer poly- and pan-theistic to mono- and a-theistic theories"). If
there can be neither total affirmation nor denial of God and not-God; and
if in this field the prospects for development by means of a better
synthesis are dim, except as an ecumenical exercise; there seems to be no
reason why global philosophical discourse(s) should necessarily focus on God.

Last but not least, it has been a central theme and argument of this paper
that any attempt forward in specifying the conditions for a genuine
trans-cultural dialogue and its underpinnings, global justice and
democracy, would seem to also presuppose at least some of the basic tenets
of realist social sciences. Actors have the socio-historically conditioned
power to make a difference, also by means of institutional transformations;
and social sciences can create and produce knowledge which is causally
efficacious in open systems where the existing structures and complexes are
also causally efficacious, yet predictions are doomed to failure. Global
"democracy-to-come" may have to recognise the aporia of being, but also it
has to be able to explain, critically, the reproduction and transformation
of causally efficacious relational practices and structures in an
increasingly global context.




----------------------------------

Heikki Patomaki

Network Institute for Global Democratisation (NIGD)
http://www.nigd.u-net.com
Helsinki & Nottingham
e-mail: heikki@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
tel: 	+358 - (0)40  - 558 2916  (GSM)
	+44  - (0)774 - 711 24 35 (GSM)

ALSO:

Department of International Studies
Nottingham Trent University
Clifton Lane
Nottingham NG11 8NS
The United Kingdom
e-mail: heikki.patomaki@xxxxxxxxx
tel:	+44 - (0)115 - 848 6610
fax: 	+44 - (0)115 - 848 6385



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