Re: BHA: negativity wins

[Jan Straathof <janstr@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Ruth,

forgive me for focusing only on a detail of your interesting
post, viz. the stuff on the so-called 'de-onts', you wrote:

>1. I still don't understand why I have to grant the positive existence of
>entities called "de-onts."  Would someone be willing (hopefully one last
>time) to explain this to me in very plain language?  (To me, it still just
>seems like so much re-description and making-thing-like of "things" that are
>either states of affairs or abstractions.)

what does Bhaskar say about 'de-onts' ?

    "I want to differentiate within the class of ontics - understood
    as the intransitive objects of specific epistemic inquiries - positive
    existences or presences, which i shall dub 'onts', from negative
    existences or absences, which i shall nominate 'de-onts'." [DPF:40]

    " 'Is' and 'real' discharge the burden of ontology; 'not' and 'absent'
    denote negativity. To admit that real absence exists and real
    absenting occur is tantamount to concede that non-beings, i.e.
    de-onts, are, happen etc. We thus have the theorem: ontology >
    ontics > de-onts." [DPF:47]

as far as i understand this, Bhaskar defines 'de-onts' as "negative
existences", "absences" and "non-beings";

but OK, what are real examples of this negative presence in very
plain language ? well, personally, the more or less prosaic images
that come into my dialectical mind-set are such as:

- the absence of gravity in a space station
- the hole in the ozon layer
- the absence of my dead father
- the lost final of the Dutch soccer team at the World Cup in 1974
- the fallen Berlin Wall
- the lack of proper health care, education somewhere
- fascism, racism, sexism as negative presences (blocking Eudaimonia)
- the absence of a solution to a mathematical problem
- a perloined letter
- a telephone off the hook
- a lurker on a mailing-list
- the experience of phantom limbs
- a clock that runs slow
- paintings of Rene Magritte

hmm Ruth, don't know if this list clarifies any, but actually
i've never had much problem with Bhaskar's 'de-onts' etc:
must be my heidegger past ;-)

yours,
jan

ps. and isn't the term "de-ontology" not also used in the context
of normative and moral philosophy, or am i very wrong here ?




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