BHA: exciting threads!

[Ruth Groff <rgroff@xxxxxxxx>]

Hey guys,

I really want to get into the ontological stratification discussion, but
can't do it today.  So don't all go away!

On Adorno.  I wanted to respond to the text that Mervyn posted.


I've snipped (horrors!) the part that I wanted to focus on:

"To gain such perspectives without velleity or violence, entirely from
felt contact with its objects - this alone is the task of thought.

...

But it is also the utterly impossible thing, because it presupposes a
standpoint removed, even though by a hair's breadth, from the scope of
existence, whereas we well know that any possible knowledge must not
only be first wrested from what is, if it shall hold good, but is also
marked, for this very reason, by the same distortion and poverty which
it seeks to escape."

To me, this passage sums up the fundamental difference between Adorno and
Bhaskar.  Adorno, it seems to me, sees a problem -- indeed, THE problem --
where Bhaskar does not. Even before we get to the point in Bhaskar's
thinking at which he introduces the notion of "alethic truths" that we can
know, Bhaskar seems to take for granted as possible, indeed as relatively
unproblematic (as Colin has argued, and I agree) that which Adorno is
compelled to regard as impossible.

This is at the heart of why I have always thought of Adorno as THE thinker
that one has to be able to deal with, if one is to defend Bhaskar's thought
from serious criticism.

But it doesn't sound as though any of those who have posted are much
bothered by what I see as such a profound difference between the two.  If
this is so, and you're not much bothered, or you don't see any big divide,
would any of you guys mind helping me to see why?

Warmly,
Ruth





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