Re: BHA: on Bhaskar on Hegel on Parmenides

[Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Phil,

>"The effects of monovalence are easy to demonstrate.  If thought is included
>within being, no change is possible; if it is excluded from being, epistemic
>but not ontic change is possible and so the world must be assumed to be
>*closed*."

You've omitted the context of these sentences - he's considering the
effects of the 'unholy trinity of irrealism'. Monovalence only has these
consequences when combined with the epistemic/ontic fallacies and the
squeeze on natural necessity. Bhaskar himself of course includes thought
within being (everything is real).

> why
>he is talking about multiple universes (pluriverse)

But, Phil, according to modern science, there *are* multiple universes.
But this doesn't entail the fragmentation of being if I can put it that
way. For Bhaskar there is still only one stratified and differentiated
Totality (*a* pluriverse), one Absolute.

>for Hegel, thought arises from nature

It depends what you mean. Nature precedes the emergence of (human)
spirit (Geist), but nature itself emerges from the logical idea.

>And historical spirit resides
>in the general intellect.  This suggests a big problem for Bhaskar's
>ontology, since for Bhaskar spirit resides at the level of phenomenal forms,
>in terms of people's reaction to their immediate surroundings, and in terms
>of immediate information.

I think it's a mistake to conflate Hegel's 'Geist' and Bhaskar's
'spirit'. 'Spirit' in Bhaskar's treatment resides at the level of the
absolute or ultimata, not of phenomenal forms, though it is co-present
in and underpins the world of relative or finite being.

>Bhaskar comments at p141 of DPF that:
>"One could develop a concept of 'strong negative presence' in the case of
>causally efficacious memory, but as the remembered is always liable to play
>a causal role and we are no longer dealing with purely Hegelian dialectic I
>would prefer not to embark on that road."  Now, I do not accept that Bhaskar
>has a more inclusive dialectics than Hegel (I think it is the other way
>around), but I am interested in what you think about this quote.

He certainly doesn't mean what you claim - that 'it doesn't matter what
is remembered by society', and that it's unimportant to comprehend the
past - because the passage explicitly warns that 'No one should
underestimate the causal grip that the past exercises on *any* present'
(and if I remember correctly he elsewhere takes issue with Marx for
underestimating the weight of the past, even though Marx notoriously
thought it weighed 'an alp'). He then mentions Hegel's concept of
'negative presence' and says that causally efficacious memory is a
candidate for being considered as '*strong* negative presence'. But he's
not going to develop that idea because... - I think he's implying it
would be misleading because memory is always involved (among other
things) in the causal explanation of human action, so invoking it would
be a bit like explaining X's action by saying that she had reasons and
reasons are causes. I don't know why he thinks this would mean 'that we
are no longer dealing with purely Hegelian dialectic' but if I knew
Hegel better I reckon I would (I have always found Bhaskar very clear if
you can bring the right information to bear on what he's written). [my
emphases in the above].

Mervyn




Phil Walden <phil@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
>Hi Ruth, Dick, Martti, Mervyn, Gary, listers
>
>In DPF p111 when introducing his concept of "monovalence" Bhaskar writes:
>
>"The effects of monovalence are easy to demonstrate.  If thought is included
>within being, no change is possible; if it is excluded from being, epistemic
>but not ontic change is possible and so the world must be assumed to be
>*closed*."
>
>Just above this Bhaskar writes that (the alleged error of) monovalence
>derives ultimately from Parmenides.  Now what is involved in Bhaskar's
>statement that "If thought is included within being, no change is
>possible..."?  The idea seems to be that thought must be 'outside' being in
>some way, in order for change to be possible.  And the alleged error of
>Parmenides is therefore that his 'universe as a plenitude' unduly restricts
>thought, because, after all, Bhaskar might say, if there is only one
>universe then there must only be a limited number of things to think about.
>This could be one reason why Bhaskar has taken his 'spiritual turn', and why
>he is talking about multiple universes (pluriverse), because he finds it
>psychologically intolerable that we start from where we are in this
>universe.  Having said that, it must also have been a dismal and shocking
>experience for Bhaskar when a work on the scale of DPF received almost no
>comment, and no serious polemic, from the professional philosophical
>community in Britain.  It might also have helped if Bhaskar had discussed
>his major theses more with other philosophers.
>
>So how is change possible if thought *is* included within being?  Well
>Parmenides (cited by Hegel in LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, volume
>one, University of Nebraska Press, 1995) suggests:
>
>"Thought, and that on account of which thought is, are the same.  For not
>without that which is, in which it expresses itself, wilt thou find Thought,
>seeing that it is nothing and will be nothing outside of that which it is."
>
>Thus for Parmenides, and for Hegel, thought arises from nature.  Thought
>does not have any autonomy from nature, despite what Sartre tried to
>maintain (and Sartre has influenced Bhaskar in this).
>
>Now to come to my question to Dick about where to put spirit, which I grant
>exists.  Hegel, again citing Parmenides in the same book, writes:
>
>"The dead do not feel light or warmth or hear voices, because the fire is
>out of them; they feel cold, stillness and the opposite, however, and,
>speaking generally, each existence has a certain knowledge."
>
>Hegel comments: "In fact, this view of Parmenides is really the opposite of
>materialism, for materialism consists in putting together the soul from
>parts, or independent forces (the wooden horse of the senses)."
>
>So here we find Hegel referring to materialism.  And perhaps this is Roy's
>understanding of materialism when he comments "metaphysical materialism is
>not very well developed".  To both Hegel and Bhaskar it appears to be
>intolerable that a human being should in any way be a sum of parts.  Rather,
>to Hegel and Bhaskar, a human being contains a soul and it is this that
>makes a human being a sacred whole.  But if Hegel is right in his commentary
>on Parmenides, the "fire" that is in us is brought about mainly by the
>senses, and not by the reflection of the intellect, which is not touched on
>by Parmenides according to Hegel.  I would suggest that spirit resides
>precisely here, in the intellect, for Hegel.  And historical spirit resides
>in the general intellect.  This suggests a big problem for Bhaskar's
>ontology, since for Bhaskar spirit resides at the level of phenomenal forms,
>in terms of people's reaction to their immediate surroundings, and in terms
>of immediate information.  The question of the mediations in the mediated
>development of the general intellect is glossed over in Bhaskar.  From a
>Hegelian perspective, Bhaskar has a greatly impoverished conception of the
>movement of spirit in history.  From this we can see that Freedom in history
>comes from Man's self-consciousness of her/his true position in the
>universe.  This Hegelian stance is not, contra Bhaskar and Mervyn, anything
>to do with a logicist reduction of reality to logical forms, rather it is
>the result of philosophical reflection on reality by the general intellect.
>
>Does that mean that Hegel is beyond criticism?  If we return to the above
>quote from Hegel we find Hegel saying "...for materialism consists in
>putting together the soul from parts".  This appears to be a derogatory
>comment by Hegel - he seems to be saying: "How could the soul possibly be
>dependent in any way on the base and mere material?".  In other words, we
>can see here that Hegel, even though he has comprehended the essence of
>historical spirit (which Bhaskar has not), has an illicit split between soul
>(the intellect) and matter.  This split is addressed in the dialectical
>materialism of Joseph Dietzgen, who put forward the view that spirit exists
>as part of matter, and that we have a natural tendency to think that spirit
>is autonomous from matter, but this is an illusion which we must oppose.
>Dietzgen's philosophy can be found in THE POSITIVE OUTCOME OF PHILOSOPHY,
>(Charles H. Kerr, Chicago, 1906).
>
>Finally, Mervyn, on co-presence.  Bhaskar comments at p141 of DPF that:
>"One could develop a concept of 'strong negative presence' in the case of
>causally efficacious memory, but as the remembered is always liable to play
>a causal role and we are no longer dealing with purely Hegelian dialectic I
>would prefer not to embark on that road."  Now, I do not accept that Bhaskar
>has a more inclusive dialectics than Hegel (I think it is the other way
>around), but I am interested in what you think about this quote.  It seems
>that Bhaskar is saying that it does not matter what is remembered by
>society - note the "always" in that "the remembered is always liable to play
>a causal role" - here we find Bhaskar in a Heideggerian fashion appealing to
>an abstract future to spare us from the problems of (generally)
>intellectually comprehending the presence of the past in the present.
>
>Phil
>


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