PDM Report May 2014

The Critical + Meta-Realist Critique of the Philosophical Discourse of Modernity

Critical Realism12 May 2014

References

Bhaskar, R. (2012) 2002. Reflections on MetaReality: Transcendence, emancipation and everyday life. London: Routledge.!Hartwig, M. (2011). “Roy Bhaskar’s critique of the philosophical discourse of modernity.” Journal of Critical Realism. Volume 10, No. 4.!Hartwig, M (ed.) (2007). Dictionary of Critical Realism. London: Routledge.

The Philosophical Discourse of ModernityModernism: the ‘very pure ideology of the capitalist mode of production’. (Bhaskar, 2002)!‘Philosophical Discourse of Modernity’ (PDM): the philosophical discourse that has accompanied the rise & consolidation of the capitalist system (17th century to present globalising phase) - displaced a philosophical discourse in which we defined ourselves in relation to an ‘enchanted’ cosmic order (intrinsically meaningful, valuable, and sacred) - justifies capitalism (‘the remorseless logic of nascent capitalist mode of production & exploitation of nature & human beings alike.., a drive to accumulation’ (Bhaskar 2007)

Modernism(1) Classical Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (CM)(2) High-Modernism (HM)(3) The Theory & Practise of Modernism (M)

(4) Post-Modernism (PM)(5) Western Triumphalism & Fundamentalism (T/F)!The phases form a DIALECTICAL TOTALITY: The phases are distinct, but each phase is partially a critique of previous phases, unwittingly a deepening of them, & constellationally contain what was implicitly present in them:

T/F > PM > M > HM > CM

5 Phases of PDM

Social Upheavals

Each phase of the discourse reflects some broader change in the social order, marked by revolutionary or counter-revolutionary transitions/upheavals:

CM English Civil War (1640-60) French Revolution (1789-99)

HM The European Revolutions of 1848 Russian Revolution of 1917

MThe defeat of Fascism

The Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949, The onset of the Cold War & post-WW 2 de-colonisation

PM The revolutionary upsurges of 1968 & early 1970s Vietnam War

T/FThe collapse of the Soviet Bloc (1989-1991)

2nd phase of the globalisation of capital

From Critical Realism to the Philosophy of MetaReality: from a philosophy of science to a philosophy of ‘universal self-realisation’!The development of Critical Realism situated explicitly within the wider context of the PDM serving as critique of Western philosophical tradition.!A process of ‘double immanent critique’: a critique of PDM and a critique of its own previous phases.

The Critical + Meta-Realist Critique of PDM

Modernism Classical Modernism

High ModernismModernization Theory & Practice

Basic Critical Realism Transcendental Realism

Critical NaturalismExplanatory Critique

Dialectical Critical Realism

Philosophyof MetaReality

Postmodernism

Triumphalism/ Endism

Transcendental Dialectical

Critical Realism

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PDM CRITICAL REALISM

* Each phase in the PDM (accompanying change in the social order & social upheaval/transition) & defining characteristics

* The critical & meta-realist critique: The embedded errors in the capitalist ideology and how they serve to preserve/promote the capitalist agenda!

* The critical & meta-realist account of Being

Report

EGOCENTRICITY: The Modern Ego vs. & > Pre- / Non-Modern Other ! The Modern Ego (individual, group, class, etc.) is: (a) contrasted to the Pre- and Non-Modern Other, and (b) presented as the centre and goal of the universe (to justify the Ego’s manipulation & exploitation of the Other)!ABSTRACT UNIVERSALITY: ‘Everything else’ (as distinguished & contrasted from the Modern Ego) ! Explicitly excluded from the Modern Ego, but tacitly included as: (a) the object of the Modern Ego’s exploitation (b) the basis for the ego’s self-identity

CLASSICAL MODERNISM (CM)

English Civil War (1640-60) + French Revolution (1789-99)

A false duality: What is projected as Other is essential to & constitutive of the Modern Ego.

E Dussel: The experience of the conquest & exploitation of other peoples is ‘essential to the constitution of the modern ego as subjectivity that takes itself to be the centre or end of history.!A self-contradictory/self-refuting universality: Explicitly excludes the Other (logic of centrism vs. universality) but tacitly includes it (logic of abstract universality; vs. centrism)— the figure of the ‘intrinsic exterior or past’ as the necessary condition of the discourse (the first hint of the TINA form)Impossible to maintain because either the Ego is part of the world (resulting in the disappearance of the non-/pre-modern Other) or the Ego is not part of the world (de-totalising itself from the world)

!



Bhaskar’s critiqueAgainst the Isolated, Atomistic Ego: The Self is social & interrelated with the cosmos. People are not disconnected egos but embodied personalities with transcendentally real selves or ground-states—therefore, interrelated.Against abstract universality: DIALECTICAL UNIVERSALITY - The universal does not exist apart from the singular. The individual is concretely singularised: A human being consists in a core universal human nature, particular mediations and the rhythmics of his world line ‘uniquely individuating him…as in effect a natural kind sui generis’

HIGH MODERNITY (HM)

The European Revolutions of 1848 + Russian Revolution of 1917

Critiqued the INCOMPLETE TOTALITY + LACK OF REFLEXIVITY OF CM: * its misrepresentation of the interests of a sector as those of all humanity.* its incapacity to sustain itself due to its false & self-contradictory claims to dualism & universalityHM’s PRONENESS TO SUBSTITUTIONISM + ELITISMRelying on some agent other than self to effect the desired social change.

The intellectuals, artists, & leaders who expressed the HM standpoint did not articulate or represent the views of the masses on whose behalf they claimed to speak.

HIGH MODERNITY (HM)

HM culpable of its own critique of CM: What is being claimed as universal is but the vested interests of an ‘elite’ class that substituted itself for the totality!Bhaskar’s critiqueTHE PRIMACY OF SELF-REFERENTIALITY (the self-transformation or self-realisation of the nature of the human subject): Emancipatory social change begins with self-change. We cannot rely on others (working class or elites/experts) to do it for us.

M’s desire to ‘bring up the Pre-/Non-Modern to their level’!UNILINEARITY: the assumption that history should unfold in a deterministic way—specifically, the same stages of economic & political growth as the Western World. Denies the multiplicity of the causes of development. JUDGEMENTALISM: Not only is the West/Modern superior to the non-West/non-Modern, but there is only one correct route to progress.

THE THEORY & PRACTICE OF MODERNISM (M)

The defeat of Fascism + The Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949 + The onset of the Cold War & post-WW 2 de-colonisation

Bhaskar’s critique

The deterministic cast is marked with actualism. No laws of historical development that determine a unique sequence. Geo-history is not an inescapable process of development towards a pre-ordained goal, but is radically open, contingent and uneven. !The world is an OPEN SYSTEM.


DISENCHANTMENT: Denial of the intrinsic meaning, significance, & value of reality, which, as a result, becomes arbitrary & subjective. Meaning & value is sourced at the self-defining modern subject.!Bhaskar’s critiqueRE-ENCHANTMENT of the world: Rediscovery of the world as intrinsically meaningful and valuable, obscured only by the disenchanted gaze of the DEMI-REAL because of ignorance, error, illusion in all master-slave-type societies, reaching its fullest expression in capitalist modernity. Need to shed the DEMI REAL and see the world as enchanted

A TOTALITY characterised by: (a) INTERNAL RELATIONALITY: Relations are not merely external and mechanical, but internal, organic, holistic, totalising; and (b) HOLISTIC CAUSALITY: The mode of operation of a complex totality in which the form/structure of elements causally determines the elements as well as the whole.


POST MODERNISM (PM)

The revolutionary upsurges of 1968 & early 1970s

A backlash vs. the entire tradition of the PDM A reaction against the ‘abstractly (actualising) universalising tendency’ of PDM, which obliterates identity & difference (which peaked in M theory & practice) Founded on the aspiration to speak on behalf of the excluded!Critique of FORMALISM: the glorification of formal, analytical, abstract, quantitative modes of reasoning & modes of being; & the prioritisation of discursive modes of reasoning over intuitive modes of reasoning

Critique of FUNCTIONALISM: the resulting instrumentalist mode of manipulating nature (plasticity of nature or the non-ego) and of treating human beings as objects of instrumental reasoning & practice.

POST MODERNISM (PM)

Critique of MATERIALISM (reductionist in theory, mechanical in practice): Denying or underestimating the role of ideas, consciousness, & human intentionality & agency in geo-historyHinges on the sense of an absolute separateness of the Modern Ego from the rest of the world & thus underwrites the establishment of the master-slave relationship between the Modern & Non-Modern,and the manipulative treatment of people & objects!Bhaskar’s critique The PM critiques of Modernism are necessary, but inadequate & misleading because of the following: PM’s ONTOLOGICAL IRREALISM, EPISTEMOLOGICAL RELATIVISM, & JUDGEMENTAL IRRATIONALITY, its PROXIMITY TO THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY & DIFFERENCE, its HEIGHTENED BUT UNSUSTAINABLE SENSE OF REFLEXIVITY, as well as its LACK OF UNIVERSALITY, TOTALITY, & A CONCEPTION OF EMANCIPATION.

POST MODERNISM (PM)

ONTOLOGICAL IRREALISM: the denial of ontology (also by Modernism) & the denial of the possibility of saying anything about the true nature of reality. Vs. 1Moment of ontology (Ontological Realism as a commitment to a real world)!EPISTEMOLOGICAL RELATIVISM + JUDGEMENTAL IRRATIONALITY: PM’s emphasis on difference, relativity, & pluralism due to a perceived incompatibility between Ontological Realism & Epistemological Relativism, and between both and Judgemental Rationalism (which is a commitment to the rationality of choice). The result is Judgemental Irrationality (the denial of the possibility of giving better or worse grounds for a belief)!PROXIMITY TO THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY & DIFFERENCE: the denial of anything universal as a reaction to HM elitism; and as a result, its LACK OF UNIVERSALITY & inability to come to terms even with its own universality.

POST MODERNISM (PM)

HEIGHTENED BUT UNSUSTAINABLE SENSE OF REFLEXIVITY: Improvement over Modernism, but ‘baby thrown out with the bathwater’: Loss of all interconnectedness & unity of humanity & living forms.Vs. CR’s DIALECTICAL UNIVERSALITY: Every universal is always concretely singularised, and every being as a concrete singular can only be universalised dialectically. ≠ CM’s ABSTRACT ACTUALIST UNIVERSALITY

LACK OF A CONCEPTION OF EMANCIPATION: Due to its incapacity for Judgemental Rationality, to give better or worse grounds for a belief.!LACK OF TOTALITY: Incapacity to sustain a coherent totality & a notion of itself: It duplicates the Modern Ego vs. Pre-Modern duality by positing its own Post-Modern vs. Modern duality.!By mistaking Epistemological Relativism as mutually exclusive with Ontological Irrealism and Judgmental Rationality, PM undermines its own capacity to sustain itself, unable to provide ground for its own discourse.

TRIUMPHALISM + FUNDAMENTALISM (T/F)

Emphatic reassertion of bourgeois TRIUMPHALISM and ENDISM!TRIUMPHALISM: exaggeration of human powers (or those of a class, group) to know, to possess, to control… !ENDISM: Alleged attainment of the end of history & denial of the ongoing nature of geohistoricity: No more qualitative social & institutional change or ideologies of change—thus: no alternative to capitalism (as exemplified by Francis Fukuyama)Hegel: ‘World history travels from east to west; for Europe is the absolute end of history, just as Asia is the beginning’

The collapse of the Soviet Bloc (1989-1991) 2nd phase of the globalisation of capital

FUNDAMENTALISM or (Market or Religious or Epistemological) FOUNDATIONALISM: the regressive, fear-based & often religiously inspired forms of Fundamentalism bred by Western Triumphalism.

One’s knowledge is incorrigible or certain because it is based on indubitable principles, resulting in an egocentricity that splits reality into 2: those that conform and those that do not.!Like PM, Fundamentalism rejects universality and unity and accepts the essentiality of difference. But unlike PM, it claims that “I’m right; you’re wrong” vs. PM’s “There is no right or wrong.” (A denial of Epistemological Relativism?)!In bourgeois TRIUMPHALISM and ENDISM, the ideology of neoliberalism and neoconservatism proclaims the end of ideology. The infallibility of the market is the means to solve all forms of problems and crises.



Bhaskar’s critique

ONTOLOGICAL MONOVALENCE: the third great error of Western Philosophy (aside from the Epistemic Fallacy and Actualism) ‘Being as purely positive, devoid of absence or negativity’ - underpinned ultimately by the fear of change on the part of the ruling elites - refuted by the transcendental deduction of the category of ABSENCE or REAL NEGATION & contrasts with ONTOLOGICAL POLYVALENCE which vindicates the reality of ABSENCE & ABSENTING & embraces CHANGE

Moment of the PDM

Defining Characteristics

Moment of CR/PMR ‘Being as…’

CM(1) egocentricity

(2) abstract universality

TR (1M) NON-IDENTITY

STRUCTURED, DIFFERENTIATED &

CHANGING

HM(3) incomplete

totality (4) lack of reflexivity

CN (2E) PROCESS

ABSENCE (or NEGATIVITY),

CONTRADICTION, EMERGENCE

M (5) unilinearity

- judgementalism - disenchantment

Exp Crit (3L) TOTALITY

INTERNAL RELATIONALITY,

HOLISTIC CAUSALITY

PM(6) formalism - functionalism (7) materialism

DCR (4D)TRANSFORMATIVE

AGENCY

TRANSFORMATIVE PRAXIS & REFLEXIVITY

T/F (8) ontological monovalence

TDCR (5A) SPIRITUALITY

PMR (6R) ENCHANTMENT

(7A/Z) !NON-DUALITY

TRANSCENDENCE!

INTRINSICALLY MEANINGFUL,

VALUABLE, & SACRED !

ABSOLUTE

The critique of the egocentricity & abstract universality corresponds to Transcendental Realism’s critique of the atomistic & actualistic world view of Empirical Realism, & the absence of the possibility of an account of ontology identified at 1M (‘Thinking Being as NON-IDENTITY’).

Moment of the PDM



CM(1) egocentricity




CHANGING

HM(3) incomplete


CN (2E) PROCESS



M (5) unilinearity




HOLISTIC CAUSALITY



AGENCY





(7A/Z) !NON-DUALITY

TRANSCENDENCE!



ABSOLUTE

The critique of incomplete totality & lack of reflexivity corresponds to Critical Naturalism’s critique of the splits & dichotomies of social thought, & the absence of a discourse on negativity, contradictions, change, & emergence (the positive bipolar of absence) as inherent features of social life identified on 2E (‘Thinking Being as PROCESS’).

Moment of the PDM



CM(1) egocentricity




CHANGING

HM(3) incomplete


CN (2E) PROCESS



M (5) unilinearity




HOLISTIC CAUSALITY



AGENCY





(7A/Z) !NON-DUALITY

TRANSCENDENCE!



ABSOLUTE

The critique of the fundamental features of Modernism—unilinearity, judgementalism, & disenchantment—corresponds to the Explanatory Critique of the fact-value split and remedies the exclusion of values at 3L (‘Thinking Being as TOTALITY’).

Moment of the PDM



CM(1) egocentricity




CHANGING

HM(3) incomplete


CN (2E) PROCESS



M (5) unilinearity




HOLISTIC CAUSALITY



AGENCY





(7A/Z) !NON-DUALITY

TRANSCENDENCE!



ABSOLUTE

The critique of formalism, functionalism, & materialism corresponds to 4D of Dialectical Critical Realism: ’Thinking Being as TRANSFORMATIVE REFLEXIVITY & PRAXIS’ oriented towards the ‘absenting of absences’ (the elimination of both negative and positive incompleteness) in the dialectic of desire to freedom.

Moment of the PDM



CM(1) egocentricity




CHANGING

HM(3) incomplete


CN (2E) PROCESS



M (5) unilinearity




HOLISTIC CAUSALITY



AGENCY





(7A/Z) !NON-DUALITY

TRANSCENDENCE!



ABSOLUTE

Ontological Monovalence is a distortion of that aspect of the absolute that we call the Ground State & the Cosmic Envelope at 5A, 6R, & 7A/Z (‘Thinking Being as Transcendent, Enchanted, & Absolute’).

Moment of the PDM


CR/PMR Concepts! & Critique


CM(1) egocentricity


the self as social & interrelated with cosmos;

dialectical universality



CHANGING

HM(3) incomplete


open totality, reflexivity; vs. HM’s substitutionism,

elitism, reductive materialism

CN (2E) PROCESS



M (5) unilinearity


multilinearity, open systems; dialogue;

re-enchantmentExp Crit (3L)

TOTALITY


HOLISTIC CAUSALITY


unity in diversity; vs. PM’s judgmental irrationalism &

lack of concept of emancipation


AGENCY



ontological polyvalence; the reality of absence; critique of materialism (consciousness

implicit in being); vs. subject-object duality; false absolute

of market & other fundamentalisms



(7A/Z) !NON-DUALITY

TRANSCENDENCE!



ABSOLUTE

PDM Report May 2014

Documents

Transcript of PDM Report May 2014