Re: BHA: causal bearers in the social world

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

howard Engelskirchen wrote:
>
> I agree with Ruth that social structures/relations are formal causes.  I
> guess I understand Bhaskar's point -- he wants to see them transformed like
> the bronze of a statute.  But formal causes are transformed too and that is
> how we get from one mode of production to another.  Anyway, insofar as he
> insists that social structures are material causes, I think he has got to
> be wrong.  But I do not agree that either he or Marx is wrong on society as
> an ensemble of social relations or in thinking of value as a social
> relation. Why not value as a real kind, Hans?
>

The phrase "ensemble of social relations" was first used by Marx in
reference to the "human essence," in contrast to Feuerbach's "abstract
individual," not in reference to society, which would be more or less
redundant. I do not _have_ a history -- I _am_ my history: i.e., I have
no human existence prior to or autonomously from the ensemble of social
relations which constitute that history. (This is the fact that makes
all doctrines of immortality incoherent.) This inseparability of agent
from relations is perhaps one reason so many causal propositions lack
coherence.

Carrol


     --- from list bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---