Re: BHA: Re: de-onts, etc.

[Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi James

I found this very interesting and useful.

Bhaskar does not, so far as I know, explicitly make the connection
between 'deontology' and 'de-onts', but that of course does not entail
that he is not aware of the connection.

>I always
>assume there is no etymological connection between ontology (from on, being,
>with which de-ont seems to be connected by the use of the prefix de-) and
>deontology (from dein, must)

I think this assumption is mistaken. According to Liddell and Scott's,
at any rate, the Greek word 'dein' (I cited the first person 'deo'), has
the two fundamental meanings I have previously indicated:

1) to bind, fasten, fetter etc ('must') [= constraint on being = de-on =
not-being]

2) to want, lack, need etc [= absence = de-on = not-being]

While the bits in square brackets are my gloss, I can't see how else
(unless by pure coincidence) one could account for the fact that the
*same* verb has the two meanings: 'dein' doesn't just mean 'must', it
also means to 'lack' or 'need'. One meaning gives us 'deontology', the
other 'deont' (or, if you like, 'de-ontology' and 'de-ont'). Moreover,
in explicitly equating 'constraint' with 'absence', Bhaskar himself
links the two meanings that the one Greek word has.

In the beginning 'there is completion (wholeness)' (FEW p74), in which
'being' and 'being as one should be' coincide. Now, in the fallen,
class-divided world, they are sundered. The eudaimonian project is to
bring them back together again.

Mervyn


james.daly <james.daly@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
>
>> I haven't paid a lot of attention to that part of Bhaskar's writing, but
>> I've been kind of surprised to hear it characterized as deontological.  I
>> would have thought that a focus on eudaimonistic flourishing would put
>> Bhaskar in with the other guys (I forget just now what they get called in
>> the literature - the non-deontological people).
>>
>> Any help with this?
>>
>> r.
>Dear Ruth -- -- hope your cold is getting better.  Talk of values brings me
>out of the woodwork, or wherever lurkers hide.  My understanding is that the
>misguided modern division into teleology and deontology is based on the
>Cartesian matter/mind dichotomy, and makes ethics exclusively either
>utilitarian hedonism or Kantian legalism.  The two aspects thus exclusively
>separated are dialectically united in the eudaimonistic approaches of
>Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel, Marx and Bhaskar.
>
>Although I am delighted to be learning so much from the list correspondence,
>I have not had time to reread DPF recently, and I don't know if RB himself
>makes an etymological connection between deontology and de-onts.  I always
>assume there is no etymological connection between ontology (from on, being,
>with which de-ont seems to be connected by the use of the prefix de-) and
>deontology (from dein, must); but I agree -- I hope -- with Mervyn that an
>ontological lack is a key to an understanding of values as the fulfilment of
>essence.  That lack is also an "ought" or "owed", Latin "debitum",
>duty(French "devoir").
>
>The lack is real, objective, "out there".  In that respect, it is like the
>absence of Peter from the cafe.  RB is thus challenging Sartre, for whom
>both values and "meanings" are subjective, "in here".
>
>Isn't there a connection between the negativity problematic and the
>empiricist problem of negative facts (the world is the sum of what is the
>case, which is the same as what can be sensibly experienced; but how can a
>negative fact cause a positive experience?) Phenomenology bypassed this; the
>relationship between the world and consciousness is not causal, at least in
>that mechanical positivist way; intentionality can be of non-existent
>things.
>
>Warmly -- James.
>
>james daly
>james.daly@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
>
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--
Mervyn Hartwig
13 Spenser Road
Herne Hill
London SE24 ONS
United Kingdom
Tel: 020 7 737 2892
Email: mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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