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BHA: negativity wins/Negativity and Conflict

Negation: What is the difference/relationship between Negativity and Conflict

In the opening words of DPF:2 Bhaskar states that it is "real negation or the absent ... that drives the Hegelian dialectic on, and will drive the dialectic past him" (38).

I am not sure how to square this idea with the approach to the dialectic announced in DPF:1. There, Bhaskar considers a number of dialectical processes: there may be a clash of diametric oppositions, although a "dialectic" can operate in "interconnection and change" as well as in conflict. Moreover, Bhaskar (perhaps cognizant of the conflictual aspect of human relationships and wary of idealist rationalizations) cautions us that, in contradiction to the Hegelain aufhebung, dialectical processes "are not always sublatory ... let alone preservative ... Nor, finally, are they invariably triadic in form" (3).

The Hegelian triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis does not hold. I.e. there may be conflicts in which

Reading some of the recent posts about the relationship between abscence and presence, I became unsure about how to describe conflict between opposing forces. To fully understand practical dialectics, it seems necessary to understand the nature of conflict. I don't see how this is possible if Bhaskar defines "Real negation" as "presence in some more or less determinate rgion of space-time ... of an abscenece at some specific level or context or being of some more or less determinate entity" (38)

For example, at the level of social structure there is (in the U.S.A.) the lack of universal medical coverage. I am tempted to describe the conflict surrounding universal health care as initated by an abscence, but the actual "dialectic" seems to be taking place between to (more or less) positive agents (or clusters of agents): a coalition in favour of establishing universal coverage, and a coalition seeking to prevent such an institution from being established. Any liberal or Hegelain pre-disposition towards synthesis or compromise will of course be disappointed by the actual outcome of the process -- the pro side has been defeated (for the forseeable future). So a real negation of an determinate abscence failed to take place -- but in explaining this history of failure, are we not compelled to discuss the fate of 2 positive agents and not the abscence that was the objects of the conflict.

Yes, one could argue that the prior abscence made possible the arisal of a positive entity (there would have been no "pro" coalition if there hadn't been an abscence in the first place).

I suppose that you could talk about the abscences that permitted one side to fail (abscence of cash, media presence, political hegemony, co-ordinated leadership).

But could a preference for the negative ('the negative wins') lead to an idealist disregard for causal explanations of the positive reasons for the outcome of a particular dialectical process?

I am aware that I have also conflated two ontological layers -- social institutions and human agency. I am aware that these layers should not be confused, and the social should not be depiced as either the excrecence or the prima mater of individual or collective agents.



>From: lynne engelskirchen
>Reply-To: bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>To: bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Re: BHA: negativity wins
>Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 01:18:21 -0500
>
>Gary --
>
>I'm glad you make the reference to Heidegger. Bhaskar refers to this
>point, but I know it not at all. Anyway, I don't think I can support the
>proposition that you have quoted from my last post. I abandon that. But I
>don't want to abandon the challenge to either "negativity wins" or "The
>great void . . . is still out there waiting to reclaim us." I don't think
>there is any warrant for those assertions. Here's Bhaskar's argument:
>
>DPF 46 "If a totally positive material object world -- a packed world
>without absences -- is impossible, there is no a priori reason to exclude
>the opposite -- namely a total void, literally nothing. Negativity is
>constitutively essential to positivity, but the converse does not follow.
>Leave aside the Heidegerrian question of why there is something rather than
>nothing. There could have been nothing rather than something. Of course
>this is a counterfactual. Beings exist. But by transcendental argument,
>non-being is constitutively essential to being. Non-being is a condition
>of possibility of being. No non-being is a sufficient condition of
>impossibility of being. But there is no logical incoherence in totally no
>being. Dialectical arguments establish the condition of possibility (dr')
>of the conditions of impossibility (dc') of some initially established
>result or posit. Now, employing a strategy of 'dialectical detachment'
>from our initial premises -- positive existence -- in the metacritical
>end-game, we can argue that not only is a total void possible, but if there
>was a unique beginning to everything, it could only be from nothing by an
>act of radical autogenesis. So that if there was an originating Absolute,
>nothing would be its schema or form, constituted at the moment of
>initiation by the spontaneous disposition to become something other than
>itself. Similarly, if there was a unique ending to everything it would
>involve a collapse to actualized nothingness, absolutely nothing. In sum,
>complete positivity is impossible, but sheer indeterminate negativity is
>not." DPF 47
>
>I think this is an idealist argument. Also, I think the converse does
>follow: positivity is constitutively essential to negativity. Negativity
>expresses positivity's limits. Without positivity there is nothing
>negativity is a negation of.
>
>The question is whether dialectics is a matter of the way the world is or a
>matter of logic. That is why the issue is one of idealism. Marx is
>important here. In the "Method of Political Economy," Marx insists the the
>scientific method starts with things as they present themselves and then
>proceeds by means of narrower and narrower abstraction s, simpler ones,
>ones that abstract to fewer essential elements, to the simplest
>determinations of things. Then from these simple determinations you
>reconstruct the concrete in thought. This process of abstraction can
>certainly be considered retroductive or transcendental in Bhaskar's sense.
>You start with the question, what must be the case for this to exist.
>Then, having answered that question by saying , well xyz must exist, you
>ask,. well what must be the case for xyz to exist, and so on.
>
>But as Marx makes clear elsewhere in the Introduction to the Grundrisse,
>there is a limit to the process. You cannot abstract to, for example,
>"production in general." There is no production in gneral. Production
>occurs only in historically specific social forms. So as a logical matter
>you can abstract to features shared by all modes of production, but this is
>a logical abstraction, not abstraction as a tool to identify simple
>features of the world that exists.
>
>The lesson works here. You cannot abstract to Absolute Nothing because
>that is not the world as it presents itself to us and there is nothing
>about the world as it presents itself to us that suggests that as a real
>inference. I can imagine a prime minister with bananas growing out of his
>ears, but my imagining it doesn't make it a real possibility. We can and
>must abstract to the positivity of being and to the negativity of being.
>But abstracting to Absolute NOthing is a pure logical exercise. It does
>not and cannot explain the world. There is "no logical incoherence to
>totally no being." Granted. But that establishes nothing except the
>facility of our mind to manipulate logical abstractions.
>
>The real presents itself as a unity of opposites -- as a unity of the
>positive and the negative. Acknowledging this means contradiction is an
>essential starting point for the self-movement of the real and to any
>analysis. But contradiction is not essential to "absolutely nothing."
>
>There's another way to approach this. RB says, "employing a strategy of
>'dialectial detachment' from our initial premises -- positive existence . .
>. "
>
>Why is "positive existence" our initial premise? This would be so only if
>we adopt an ontologically monovalent view of the world. In other words if
>we start from the premise that what exists is the actual, and only the
>actual, then we have idealism in an empiricist form and I suppose we can
>get to the great void as its negation, still operating on the terrain of
>idealism. But our initial premise is the real as a unity of positive and
>negative existence as opposites, and this expresses the limit of our
>ability to abstract to simpler and simpler determinations of the real. We
>can negate this, sure, but it is to negate the real itself, and to come up
>with idealist speculation.
>
>What do you think?
>
>All the best,
>
>Howard
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>At 08:24 AM 2/18/01 +1000, you wrote:
> >At 10:30 16/02/01 -0500, you wrote:
> >
> >>I'm with Ruth on this. I'd like to explore, in particular, "negativity
> >>wins." I've been wondering whether this isn't a positive presentation of
> >>negativity. But I want to get my thoughts together a bit.
> >>
> >>Howard
> >
> >
> >Howard this is exactly the problem Heidegger deals with when he asks the
> >question, 'How goes it with the nothing?' From memory, as I do not have
> >the article with me, he points out the problem that once we touch upon a
> >notion such as 'nothing' or negativity or absence we render them
> >positive. However that I suppose is an epistemic operation. The great
> >void or whatever is still out there waiting to reclaim us.
> >
> >regards
> >
> >Gary
> >
> >
> >
> > --- from list bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
> >
>
>
> --- from list bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---

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