From ksd08 at aber.ac.uk  Mon May  4 02:56:25 2009
From: ksd08 at aber.ac.uk (ksd08 at aber.ac.uk)
Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 09:56:25 +0100 (BST)
Subject: [Critical-Realism] 'Structure' in Critical Realism
Message-ID: <2a4325650fb7c542f6675fbc4ab339f5.squirrel@webmail.aber.ac.uk>

Dear All,

I wonder if someone could clarify what a critical realist view of
structure looks like - I am reading a book by Alejandro Col?s that borrows
from critical realism but I am unsure of which aspects of his thesis are
based on critical realism and which ones are based on something else.

While he argues that not all structures are observable and that enduring
connections do not by themselves amount to a structure ? which appears to
be based on critical realism ? he further defines a structure as
"constituted by internal or necessary relations between their component
parts; they are 'deep' because without them other relevant entities could
not exist". Is this a critical realist view of structure?

If so, could a critical realist proceed to argue that "the two key
underlying structures that arguably reproduce the modern international
system are the capitalist mode of production and state sovereignty. These
entities are internally related in ways that produce an overarching system
? or a social totality ? we have come to identify as the modern
international system. [...] an internal or necessary relation exists
between capitalism and the modern form of sovereignty: the modern state
requires the existence of a differentiated sphere of civil society (the
capitalist market), while the latter presumes the existence of a distinct
public, political domain ? historically the territorially distinct public,
political domain." Does this in any way contradict critical realism (e.g.
is it too reductionist?)

Any clarifications would be much appreciated!

Thank you,

Katja Daniels
MScEcon International Relations Theory
Aberystwyth University





From rgroff at slu.edu  Mon May  4 04:51:05 2009
From: rgroff at slu.edu (Ruth Groff)
Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 05:51:05 -0500
Subject: [Critical-Realism] 'Structure' in Critical Realism
In-Reply-To: <2a4325650fb7c542f6675fbc4ab339f5.squirrel@webmail.aber.ac.uk>
References: <2a4325650fb7c542f6675fbc4ab339f5.squirrel@webmail.aber.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <6ad241360905040351w11b78876haeb959b0232c17fd@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Katja,

There are lots of people on this list who will be able to respond in useful
ways to your question.  I just thought I would pipe in with two very small
comments.  The first is that it seems to me important to distinguish between
the concept of a structure and the concept of an internal relation.  Some
structures may indeed fit the description of an internal relation, but I
think of the latter as just one *type* of relationship between relata.  The
second is only to recommend the piece by Doug Porpora on what a structure
is, the one that is in the big CRITICAL REALISM: ESSENTIAL READINGS
collection.

Warmly,
Ruth




On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 3:56 AM, <ksd08 at aber.ac.uk> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> I wonder if someone could clarify what a critical realist view of
> structure looks like - I am reading a book by Alejandro Col?s that borrows
> from critical realism but I am unsure of which aspects of his thesis are
> based on critical realism and which ones are based on something else.
>
> While he argues that not all structures are observable and that enduring
> connections do not by themselves amount to a structure   which appears to
> be based on critical realism   he further defines a structure as
> "constituted by internal or necessary relations between their component
> parts; they are 'deep' because without them other relevant entities could
> not exist". Is this a critical realist view of structure?
>
> If so, could a critical realist proceed to argue that "the two key
> underlying structures that arguably reproduce the modern international
> system are the capitalist mode of production and state sovereignty. These
> entities are internally related in ways that produce an overarching system
>  or a social totality   we have come to identify as the modern
> international system. [...] an internal or necessary relation exists
> between capitalism and the modern form of sovereignty: the modern state
> requires the existence of a differentiated sphere of civil society (the
> capitalist market), while the latter presumes the existence of a distinct
> public, political domain   historically the territorially distinct public,
> political domain." Does this in any way contradict critical realism (e.g.
> is it too reductionist?)
>
> Any clarifications would be much appreciated!
>
> Thank you,
>
> Katja Daniels
> MScEcon International Relations Theory
> Aberystwyth University
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Critical-Realism mailing list
> Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>

From mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk  Sun May 10 04:31:27 2009
From: mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk (Mervyn Hartwig)
Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 11:31:27 +0100
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Blogging meta-Reality
In-Reply-To: <56b3b1f80904171345n72e75b5fx9c1b1a87a664df41@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <mailman.39.1241951490.17122.critical-realism@lists.econ.utah.edu>

Hi Bryan

This is a bit late, as I've been travelling. 

The MELD(ARA)  schema is basically an attempt to express or refer to the
different aspects of the self-structuring of being. I try to spell out some
of the details in the entry for MELD in Dictionary of CR and also in the
Introduction to Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom, Routledge 2008.

I've enjoyed your blogs.

Mervyn


 

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Bryan
Tarpley
Sent: 17 April 2009 21:46
To: critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Blogging meta-Reality

Hello,

I'm new to this list and as such, forgive me if this is off-topic or
breaching protocol.  I just wanted to inform potentially interested parties
that I'm blogging my read-through of Roy Bhaskar's new book _meta-Reality:
Volume 1_ at this address:

http://thehopefulmidwife.blogspot.com

I also wanted to ask if anyone had any resources that broke down in layman's
terms the Critical Realism MELD(ARA) schema?

Regards,
Bryan Tarpley

--
Bryan Tarpley
Stephen F. Austin State University
936.468.6112 | btarpley at sfasu.edu
_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism

__________ NOD32 4016 (20090417) Information __________

This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system.
http://www.eset.com




From m.selby at qut.edu.au  Sun May 10 20:18:42 2009
From: m.selby at qut.edu.au (Mark Selby)
Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 12:18:42 +1000
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Introduction
Message-ID: <E524A5DAD5EE8F44A83C14CC5649844319FB8FEDF8@QUTEXMBX01.qut.edu.au>

To Critical Realism List:

I just wanted to introduce myself to this list. I'm a "hard: scientist with little or no background in philosophy or social science.

I joined the list because I wanted to gain some insight into why my discipline of chemistry seems to be on the decline in terms of appeal to students (and that this appears to be western-world-wide rather than just an Australian issue).

The line of enquiry that has led me to this point is whether chemistry (and maybe the other "enabling" sciences of physics and maths as well) are stuck in a kind of time bubble or Mobius loop in terms of a positivist orientation that is no longer attractive to many of the best and brightest students (or even the slower and dumber ones).

Chemistry academics, by my observation, generally seem unwilling to look forward because they see constructivism and relativism. So instead they tend to look backward to the good ol' positivist past

I would value your perspectives on whether critical realism offers a way forward.


(note: graduate salaries in chemistry aren't attractive either which explains why students don't seek chemistry as a career but they don't seek it as an elective or general interest either which is harder to explain)


Mark Selby, B.Sc (Hons) UNSW, PhD (Chemistry), UNSW
ph: 3138 2267 fax: 3138 1804
Lecturer, Physical & Chemical Sciences QUT, E413D (GP)


Critical Realism:
"that science should be understood as an ongoing process in which scientists improve the concepts they use to understand the mechanisms that they study"

CRICOS provider no. 00213J


From rgroff at slu.edu  Sun May 10 22:56:03 2009
From: rgroff at slu.edu (Ruth Groff)
Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 23:56:03 -0500
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Introduction
In-Reply-To: <E524A5DAD5EE8F44A83C14CC5649844319FB8FEDF8@QUTEXMBX01.qut.edu.au>
References: <E524A5DAD5EE8F44A83C14CC5649844319FB8FEDF8@QUTEXMBX01.qut.edu.au>
Message-ID: <6ad241360905102156x6d0dd8d7t95030c3f990001e@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Mark,

It's interesting, what you say.  I tend to imagine chemists as being not so
positivist, relatively speaking, in the sense that I imagine chemists to
have never really abandoned concepts of form, natural kinds and natural
necessity.  Chemists, or so I've always imagined, seem to think that there
is something ABOUT salt, and ABOUT water, that makes it be that, if it's
salt, then, all things being equal, it's going to dissolve in water.

This said, critical realism (and what is called scientific essentialism, and
sometimes dispositional realism, in the philosophy literature), while at
odds with positivism, is also at odds with various other non-positivist
positions currently on offer -- to which your students may be attracted.  So
while students may be running from "hard" science, they aren't necessarily
running to critical realism either.

I would actually suggest that you take a look at a recent book by Brian
Ellis, an Australian philosopher in fact, called THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE: A
GUIDE TO THE NEW ESSENTIALISM.  It's not too technical, and he is familiar
with chemistry, and while he is not a critical realist the core of his
position is entirely consistent with the position advanced by Bhaskar in his
first book, A REALIST THEORY OF SCIENCE (though Ellis' views on social
science are, unfortunately, woefully inadequate).  I'd start there.  Then
maybe, if you'd like, take a look at A REALIST THEORY OF SCIENCE.  Although
an intermediate step might be to look at Harre and Madden's book CAUSAL
POWERS.  Like Ellis, Harre and Madden are perhaps especially accessible for
a chemist, though again the account of social science (and some other things
too) are a little different from Bhaskar.  But it's in the general ball
park.

The Ellis book is a relatively short paperback, and as I say is not
technical.  The earlier, technical book is called SCIENTIFIC ESSENTIALISM.

It may seem weird that I am recommending that you go off and read something
not by Roy Bhaskar, but I really think that it will quickly gain you a lot
of insight into this corner of social science-philosophy of science/social
science-metaphysics.

Warmly,
Ruth




On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 9:18 PM, Mark Selby <m.selby at qut.edu.au> wrote:

> To Critical Realism List:
>
> I just wanted to introduce myself to this list. I'm a "hard: scientist with
> little or no background in philosophy or social science.
>
> I joined the list because I wanted to gain some insight into why my
> discipline of chemistry seems to be on the decline in terms of appeal to
> students (and that this appears to be western-world-wide rather than just an
> Australian issue).
>
> The line of enquiry that has led me to this point is whether chemistry (and
> maybe the other "enabling" sciences of physics and maths as well) are stuck
> in a kind of time bubble or Mobius loop in terms of a positivist orientation
> that is no longer attractive to many of the best and brightest students (or
> even the slower and dumber ones).
>
> Chemistry academics, by my observation, generally seem unwilling to look
> forward because they see constructivism and relativism. So instead they tend
> to look backward to the good ol' positivist past
>
> I would value your perspectives on whether critical realism offers a way
> forward.
>
>
> (note: graduate salaries in chemistry aren't attractive either which
> explains why students don't seek chemistry as a career but they don't seek
> it as an elective or general interest either which is harder to explain)
>
>
> Mark Selby, B.Sc (Hons) UNSW, PhD (Chemistry), UNSW
> ph: 3138 2267 fax: 3138 1804
> Lecturer, Physical & Chemical Sciences QUT, E413D (GP)
>
>
> Critical Realism:
> "that science should be understood as an ongoing process in which
> scientists improve the concepts they use to understand the mechanisms that
> they study"
>
> CRICOS provider no. 00213J
>
> _______________________________________________
> Critical-Realism mailing list
> Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>

From alex.clark at ualberta.ca  Sun May 10 23:25:36 2009
From: alex.clark at ualberta.ca (Alex Clark)
Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 23:25:36 -0600
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Introduction
References: <E524A5DAD5EE8F44A83C14CC5649844319FB8FEDF8@QUTEXMBX01.qut.edu.au>
	<6ad241360905102156x6d0dd8d7t95030c3f990001e@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <D6AAFFC90CB00C45840F39D6897ED909010B9AC9@nsg19.nurs.ualberta.ca>

Mark - you might also find use in looking at Ray Pawson and Steve Tilley's work: Realist Evaluation (Sage, 1997) and some of Ray's later work on meta-analysis.

I work in cardiology - a field not without its basic scientists - and at our main European Prevention conference in Sweden even yesterday it struck me how comfortable bench scientists are in looking beyond outcomes to examine and speculate on underlying mechanisms and conditions conducive to the activation of these mechanisms. This sense - ironically - is almost absent in epidemiologists, trialists and ostensibly wise practitioners who seem far more based on describing outcomes and very simple causal reasoning.

Glad to have you involved in the discussion - agree that many of the patterns we see tend to cross disciplines.

Alex

AM Clark PhD BA (Hons) RN 
Associate Professor, AHFMR Population Health Investigator, CIHR New Investigator
International Institute Qualitative Methodology (IIQM) Affiliate Scholar

Room CSB 4-112
Faculty of Nursing University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB. Canada 
T6G2G3 
Tel:  001 780 492 8347 
Fax: 001 780 492 2551



-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu on behalf of Ruth Groff
Sent: Sun 5/10/2009 10:56 PM
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Introduction
 
Hi Mark,

It's interesting, what you say.  I tend to imagine chemists as being not so
positivist, relatively speaking, in the sense that I imagine chemists to
have never really abandoned concepts of form, natural kinds and natural
necessity.  Chemists, or so I've always imagined, seem to think that there
is something ABOUT salt, and ABOUT water, that makes it be that, if it's
salt, then, all things being equal, it's going to dissolve in water.

This said, critical realism (and what is called scientific essentialism, and
sometimes dispositional realism, in the philosophy literature), while at
odds with positivism, is also at odds with various other non-positivist
positions currently on offer -- to which your students may be attracted.  So
while students may be running from "hard" science, they aren't necessarily
running to critical realism either.

I would actually suggest that you take a look at a recent book by Brian
Ellis, an Australian philosopher in fact, called THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE: A
GUIDE TO THE NEW ESSENTIALISM.  It's not too technical, and he is familiar
with chemistry, and while he is not a critical realist the core of his
position is entirely consistent with the position advanced by Bhaskar in his
first book, A REALIST THEORY OF SCIENCE (though Ellis' views on social
science are, unfortunately, woefully inadequate).  I'd start there.  Then
maybe, if you'd like, take a look at A REALIST THEORY OF SCIENCE.  Although
an intermediate step might be to look at Harre and Madden's book CAUSAL
POWERS.  Like Ellis, Harre and Madden are perhaps especially accessible for
a chemist, though again the account of social science (and some other things
too) are a little different from Bhaskar.  But it's in the general ball
park.

The Ellis book is a relatively short paperback, and as I say is not
technical.  The earlier, technical book is called SCIENTIFIC ESSENTIALISM.

It may seem weird that I am recommending that you go off and read something
not by Roy Bhaskar, but I really think that it will quickly gain you a lot
of insight into this corner of social science-philosophy of science/social
science-metaphysics.

Warmly,
Ruth




On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 9:18 PM, Mark Selby <m.selby at qut.edu.au> wrote:

> To Critical Realism List:
>
> I just wanted to introduce myself to this list. I'm a "hard: scientist with
> little or no background in philosophy or social science.
>
> I joined the list because I wanted to gain some insight into why my
> discipline of chemistry seems to be on the decline in terms of appeal to
> students (and that this appears to be western-world-wide rather than just an
> Australian issue).
>
> The line of enquiry that has led me to this point is whether chemistry (and
> maybe the other "enabling" sciences of physics and maths as well) are stuck
> in a kind of time bubble or Mobius loop in terms of a positivist orientation
> that is no longer attractive to many of the best and brightest students (or
> even the slower and dumber ones).
>
> Chemistry academics, by my observation, generally seem unwilling to look
> forward because they see constructivism and relativism. So instead they tend
> to look backward to the good ol' positivist past
>
> I would value your perspectives on whether critical realism offers a way
> forward.
>
>
> (note: graduate salaries in chemistry aren't attractive either which
> explains why students don't seek chemistry as a career but they don't seek
> it as an elective or general interest either which is harder to explain)
>
>
> Mark Selby, B.Sc (Hons) UNSW, PhD (Chemistry), UNSW
> ph: 3138 2267 fax: 3138 1804
> Lecturer, Physical & Chemical Sciences QUT, E413D (GP)
>
>
> Critical Realism:
> "that science should be understood as an ongoing process in which
> scientists improve the concepts they use to understand the mechanisms that
> they study"
>
> CRICOS provider no. 00213J
>
> _______________________________________________
> Critical-Realism mailing list
> Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>
_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism



From bptarpley at gmail.com  Mon May 11 08:38:48 2009
From: bptarpley at gmail.com (Bryan Tarpley)
Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 09:38:48 -0500
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Blogging meta-Reality
In-Reply-To: <7o4dbq$4e4sqj@ipo3smtp.cc.utah.edu>
References: <7o4dbq$4e4sqj@ipo3smtp.cc.utah.edu>
Message-ID: <E418104F-B3B7-46DA-A3DA-E1F0130BCFF6@gmail.com>



On May 10, 2009, at 5:31 AM, "Mervyn Hartwig"  
<mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi Bryan
>
> This is a bit late, as I've been travelling.
>
> The MELD(ARA)  schema is basically an attempt to express or refer to  
> the
> different aspects of the self-structuring of being. I try to spell  
> out some
> of the details in the entry for MELD in Dictionary of CR and also in  
> the
> Introduction to Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom, Routledge 2008.
>
> I've enjoyed your blogs.
>
> Mervyn
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu
> [mailto:critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of  
> Bryan
> Tarpley
> Sent: 17 April 2009 21:46
> To: critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> Subject: [Critical-Realism] Blogging meta-Reality
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm new to this list and as such, forgive me if this is off-topic or
> breaching protocol.  I just wanted to inform potentially interested  
> parties
> that I'm blogging my read-through of Roy Bhaskar's new book _meta- 
> Reality:
> Volume 1_ at this address:
>
> http://thehopefulmidwife.blogspot.com
>
> I also wanted to ask if anyone had any resources that broke down in  
> layman's
> terms the Critical Realism MELD(ARA) schema?
>
> Regards,
> Bryan Tarpley
>
> --
> Bryan Tarpley
> Stephen F. Austin State University
> 936.468.6112 | btarpley at sfasu.edu
> _______________________________________________
> Critical-Realism mailing list
> Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>
> __________ NOD32 4016 (20090417) Information __________
>
> This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system.
> http://www.eset.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Critical-Realism mailing list
> Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism


From agent.redstone at yahoo.com  Mon May 11 21:19:15 2009
From: agent.redstone at yahoo.com (Fred Zaman)
Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 20:19:15 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
In-Reply-To: <49B9491A.2030202@gmx.net>
Message-ID: <28247.55132.qm@web63605.mail.re1.yahoo.com>

A merger of Bhaskar and Nietzsche can result in an Nietzschean Emergent 
Powers Materialism (NEPM): NEPM then refers to the (historical) materialism of 
powers whose emergence is fundamentally Nietzschean in character--meaning the 
materialism of powers out of which emerges the ?will to power? of a Nietzschean 
Ubermensche or Overman. The following essay on American capitalism now in 
review provides an informative exemplar:?America?s Nietzschean Power Elite: An ?berman Political Theory of Capitalism Can the collective exercise of Friedrich Nietzsche?s universal ?will to power? by 
capitalism?s elite upper class create ideological equivalents of his anti-democratic, 
amoral ?Overman?? In this essay a political theory of America?s ??berman,? 
which rethinks Nietzsche?s principle collectively in the terms of ?class war? in the 
United States, an elitist, avaricious ?will to power? engages class-differentiated, 
unconscious agents of capitalist political ideology in class warfare. ?berman 
Political Theory validates in American capitalism the Marxist concepts of ?class 
struggle? and historicist ?laws of motion.? Other Marxist principles however, 
?proletarian revolution? and ?class consciousness? for example, are superseded by 
?ideology,? ?interpellation,? and ?political unconscious? in Althusserian political 
theory. Expressing its fundamentally anti-democratic character throughout history 
by continually waging ?class war? on the underclasses, behind the scenes 
unconsciously, ??berman?s elitist ?berKlasse is the class-differentiated, 
collective, amoral ?will to power? of a Nietzschean capitalist class ruling America 
behind the scenes through society?s political unconscious.?Critical Realism it seems can provide basic philosophical concepts for framing the 
investigation and theoretical explanation of Nietzsche?s universal ?Will to Power? 
principle, as it may be manifested in nature and by humankind socially, 
economically, and politically. And Nietzsche?s principle, conversely, may be able 
to do the same for CR--provide a unified philosophical framework for applying 
CR principles to the diversity of emergent powers observed in nature and society. 
A ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism,? in providing a materialist basis 
for Nietzsche?s Will to Power that is opposed in principle to Bhaskar?s Pulse of? 
Freedom but nevertheless grounded on the same ?Possibility of Naturalism,? may 
be able to greatly increase the conceptual power of both ideas. Bhaskar?s Pulse of 
Freedom and Nietzsche?s Will to Power are complementary principles?one 
provides the background for explaining the other. In a comprehensive approach to 
the Possibility of Naturalism, Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom is very much the yin to 
the yang of Nietzsche?s Will to Power.Fred Zaman



      

From mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk  Tue May 12 11:38:50 2009
From: mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk (Mervyn Hartwig)
Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 18:38:50 +0100
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
In-Reply-To: <28247.55132.qm@web63605.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <mailman.43.1242149934.17122.critical-realism@lists.econ.utah.edu>

 Hi Fred/Agent Redstone,

You have an unerring instinct for marrying Bhaskar with the devil. Bhaskar's
whole later philosophy can be viewed, not as complementary to or capable of
being merged with Nietzscheanism, but as a decisive rejoinder to it. I asked
Bhaskar about this during my interviews for Bhaskar with Hartwig, The
Formation of CR: A Personal Perspective (Routledge, forthcoming 2009). Not
from any wish to enter into dialogue with you here but for the record on
this important topic, I paste in below the current version of what
transpired. NB: It is still subject to revision. The reference to Dominc
Losurdo is: Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico. Biografia intellettuale e
bilancio critico (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002). See the review essay
by Jan Rehmann, Historical Materialism 15 (2) (2007): 173-93.

Mervyn

# MH: In From Science to Emancipation you explicitly link the question of
what is to be done, and the necessary change in our conception of our
selves, to 

"'the politics of disenchantment", the politics of Nietzsche and Weber and
the politics of social democracy 
 which has so profoundly influenced the
politics of the Left. We need to produce a different conception of ourselves
in the world. The revolution will be nothing less than this: the
transformation of our understanding of ourselves and of the whole world in
which we live, our situation in the cosmos.'  

It could be then that one of the ways forward at the level of philosophy is
a closer engagement with Nietzsche. Of course, at one level, in terms of
political implications, as in other ways, there could not be a greater
contrast. In a definitive recent study, the Italian Hegelian scholar,
Dominico Losurdo,  has shown pretty convincingly that, contrary to the
fashionable view that he was above politics, Nietzsche was through and
through a philosopher of the right, the great modern antagonist of Rousseau,
Marx and generalised human emancipation. Thus Nietzsche?s consistent basic
concern was to nip the modern revolutionary tradition in the bud, whereas
yours has been to rejuvenate and enrich it. Nietzsche?s perspective is that
of the unmediated domination of a revitalised master-class, yours is the
transcendence of master?slavery in all its forms. Where Nietzsche thematises
will to power and egoism unbridled by altruism, you thematise moral alethia
and the pulse of freedom. Yet arguably, precisely because Nietzsche is such
a great champion of the master-classes, he has much to teach us from an
emancipatory point of view: the impossibility of founding a eudaimonian
politics on resentment, for example, and the need to move beyond slavery and
any kind of overmanliness as such, as well as diagnostic clues to the real
basis of the current round of the ?imperialism of human rights?, which he
exposes as a sham.

RB: It is important to have an understanding and a good critique of
Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism. The first thing I would like to say is that
what has been called the hermeneutics of suspicion is extremely valuable and
is an important part of critical realist emancipatory axiology, because what
it draws attention to are precisely the heteronomous elements in human life:
the power and efficacy of what has not been resolved. This links in to my
second point, which is a critical one: that Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism is
a philosophy based on the repression, denial and forgetting of what has not
been included in the totality; it is a philosophy of split in which some
values and some human beings are privileged over other human beings, issuing
in a politics of split. The whole thrust of Nietzscheanism is to forget what
you must forget, which of course in our world is that the masters exist in
virtue of the slaves and their activity. Freud has shown that the strategy
of forgetting is untenable. The conscious exists in virtue of the
unconscious, you cannot just forget about the unconscious. What you have to
do is redress the imbalance, the asymmetry, between the top component and
the bottom component. If you forget about it, you are excluding it from the
totality of your concerns and will pay the price of this omission. The
strategy of forgetting is however invariably the position of masters, of
course; it is what the neo-conservatives around Bush did: they forgot about
the culture and traditions of Iraq, and the vibrant Iraqi human beings ? all
became just part of the project.

MH: The neo-conservatives are incarnations of the Nietzschean philosophy.

RB: Absolutely. So the Achilles? heel of Nietzscheanism is that it draws
attention to heteronomy, and then the impossible answer is forget about it ?
do not bother about it, rise above it. Of course, this is the standpoint of
radical split and master?slave society, it is very dualistic. So what we
have to do is embed it in the structures of dialectical critical realism and
meta-Reality, within a moving conceptual formation that will incorporate the
repressed and resolve this aporia. What Nietzscheanism overlooks or neglects
is not only that what has been forgotten, denied or repressed is actually
part of a totality with, and bound eventually to be causally efficacious on,
the unforgotten, affirmed part, but also ? and this is my third point ? the
dialectics of co-presence, namely, that what is excluded is just the
unrecognised or undeveloped part of yourself. Such exclusion is the basis of
all oppositions according to the philosophy of meta-Reality. The person you
are fighting with is just bringing out or developing aspects of yourself
that you have not acknowledged. That is at the deepest level. Of course, at
more superficial levels you can apply other modes of criticism and
understanding, but at the end of the day that is what the repressed is. The
repressed is what you yourself have not developed. And when you have
developed it ? this is the thrust of Freud ? there is then no need to
repress it at all because it will now be part of your moral economy in
sublated or sublimated form. It is of course very difficult actually to
achieve a society that incorporates all the slaves such that there are no
longer any master?slave-type distinctions and oppressions, but that is the
only position that is tenable. Sooner or later this process of sublating and
radically incorporating will yield joy, you will experience those bits of
yourself that you have left out as enjoyable and rewarding and wonder why
you did not think about and acknowledge this before. 

MH: So in fundamental ways your philosophy could be viewed as a response to
Nietzsche: if you think in terms of thesis, antithesis, synthesis you have
something like Hegel/Marx, Nietzsche, Bhaskar. But I take it you did not
consciously intend this; you do not engage with Nietzsche in detail, it is
mostly implicit.

RB: I am not sure whether I will have time to get round to it but of course
it might be that this way of looking at my work is the best way, in which
case I will have to make time. There is no doubt that Nietzsche together
with Heidegger, who is a combination of Nietzsche and hermeneutics, are the
most influential philosophers in the vogue part of the academy at any rate,
because they are the thinkers the poststructuralists are mainly indebted to.




-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Fred
Zaman
Sent: 12 May 2009 04:19
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche

A merger of Bhaskar and Nietzsche can result in an Nietzschean Emergent
Powers Materialism (NEPM): NEPM then refers to the (historical) materialism
of powers whose emergence is fundamentally Nietzschean in character--meaning
the materialism of powers out of which emerges the ?will to power? of a
Nietzschean Ubermensche or Overman. The following essay on American
capitalism now in review provides an informative exemplar:?America?s
Nietzschean Power Elite: An ?berman Political Theory of Capitalism Can the
collective exercise of Friedrich Nietzsche?s universal ?will to power? by
capitalism?s elite upper class create ideological equivalents of his
anti-democratic, amoral ?Overman?? In this essay a political theory of
America?s ??berman,? 
which rethinks Nietzsche?s principle collectively in the terms of ?class
war? in the United States, an elitist, avaricious ?will to power? engages
class-differentiated, unconscious agents of capitalist political ideology in
class warfare. ?berman Political Theory validates in American capitalism the
Marxist concepts of ?class struggle? and historicist ?laws of motion.? Other
Marxist principles however, ?proletarian revolution? and ?class
consciousness? for example, are superseded by ?ideology,? ?interpellation,?
and ?political unconscious? in Althusserian political theory. Expressing its
fundamentally anti-democratic character throughout history by continually
waging ?class war? on the underclasses, behind the scenes unconsciously,
??berman?s elitist ?berKlasse is the class-differentiated, collective,
amoral ?will to power? of a Nietzschean capitalist class ruling America
behind the scenes through society?s political unconscious.?Critical Realism
it seems can provide basic philosophical concepts for framing the
investigation and theoretical explanation of Nietzsche?s universal ?Will to
Power? 
principle, as it may be manifested in nature and by humankind socially,
economically, and politically. And Nietzsche?s principle, conversely, may be
able to do the same for CR--provide a unified philosophical framework for
applying CR principles to the diversity of emergent powers observed in
nature and society. 
A ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism,? in providing a materialist
basis for Nietzsche?s Will to Power that is opposed in principle to
Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom but nevertheless grounded on the same
?Possibility of Naturalism,? may be able to greatly increase the conceptual
power of both ideas. Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom and Nietzsche?s Will to
Power are complementary principles?one provides the background for
explaining the other. In a comprehensive approach to the Possibility of
Naturalism, Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom is very much the yin to the yang of
Nietzsche?s Will to Power.Fred Zaman



      
_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism



From agent.redstone at yahoo.com  Wed May 13 21:47:23 2009
From: agent.redstone at yahoo.com (Fred Zaman)
Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 20:47:23 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
Message-ID: <287266.67592.qm@web63607.mail.re1.yahoo.com>

Responding to Mervyn:
MH: You have an unerring instinct for marrying Bhaskar with 
the devil.
FZ: A Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism (NEPM), 
Nietzsche?s Will to Power to be recast within a 
Critical Realist framework, rather than ?marrying 
Bhaskar with the devil,? is more of a civil union that 
brings the diametrically opposed and intrinsically 
incompatible social philosophies of Nietzsche (the 
Will to Power) and Bhaskar (the Pulse of Freedom) 
together in an unified meta-Reality whose ground is 
more social science theory rather than just more 
social philosophy. And in this accomplishment of NEPM 
does social science then rise above and causally 
explain the relationship between Nietzschean (will to 
power) and Bhaskarian (pulse of freedom) social 
philosophies that are incommensurable--social science 
thereby becoming an underlaborer in the 21st century 
integration and advancement of social philosophy.
There is no reason to suppose that Nietzsche?s ?Will 
to Power? in any way is incompatible with Bhaskar?s 
?Possibility of Naturalism,? even though Bhaskar 
evidently prefers to not address this possibility (see 
RB below). I have no quarrel with Bhaskar?s position 
on this, only with those who would claim that 
Bhaskar?s Possibility of Naturalism somehow cannot or 
should not provide a theoretical justification for 
Nietzsche?s Will to Power. It certainly is not 
difficult to see humanity?s ?Will to Power? clearly 
manifested in human affairs worldwide, indeed much 
more so than its ?Pulse of Freedom.?
----------
MH: So in fundamental ways your [Bhaskar?s] philosophy 
could be viewed as a response to Nietzsche: if you think in 
terms of thesis, antithesis, synthesis you have something 
like Hegel/Marx, Nietzsche, Bhaskar. But I take it you did 
not consciously intend this; you do not engage with 
Nietzsche in detail, it is mostly implicit.
RB: I am not sure whether I will have time to get round to 
it but of course it might be that this way of looking at my 
work is the best way, in which case I will have to make 
time. There is no doubt that Nietzsche together with 
Heidegger, who is a combination of Nietzsche and 
hermeneutics, are the most influential philosophers in the 
vogue part of the academy at any rate, because they are the 
thinkers the poststructuralists are mainly indebted to.
FZ: NEPM, Nietzsche?s Will to Power recast as an 
oftentimes result of Critical Realism?s Emergent 
Powers Materialism in human affairs, is an 
?underlaborer? in social science for a theoretical 
unification of Nietzsche?s ?will to power? and? 
Bhaskar?s ?pulse of freedom.? NEPM thus in essence is 
a science-philosophy inversion of the Critical 
Realist?s philosophical underlaboring of social 
science. That is NEPM is an underlaborer in social 
science for a meta-Reality unification of social 
philosophy.
----------
MH: So in fundamental ways your philosophy could be viewed 
as a response to Nietzsche: if you think in terms of 
thesis, antithesis, synthesis you have something like 
Hegel/Marx, Nietzsche, Bhaskar. But I take it you did not 
consciously intend this; you do not engage with Nietzsche 
in detail, it is mostly implicit.
RB: I am not sure whether I will have time to get round to 
it but of course it might be that this way of looking at my 
work is the best way, in which case I will have to make 
time. There is no doubt that Nietzsche together with 
Heidegger, who is a combination of Nietzsche and 
hermeneutics, are the most influential philosophers in the 
vogue part of the academy at any rate, because they are the 
thinkers the poststructuralists are mainly indebted to.
FZ: To hold that ?The Possibility of Naturalism? 
concerns the Pulse of Freedom alone flies in the face 
of a reality readily observed. The Will to Power is a 
phenomenon of human nature readily observed by anyone 
willing to see the truth; so that both the Pulse of 
Freedom and the Will to Power must be affirmed in 
social science that is grounded on ?The Possibility of 
Naturalism.?
IMO Bhaskar, in not coming to terms with the Will to 
Power as a very real possibility in the Possibility of 
Naturalism, has greatly and unnecessarily complicated 
the foundations of Critical Realist Philosophy. The 
Pulse of Freedom (that which individuals feel but is 
largely suppressed by society) and the Will to Power 
(which is seen and felt everywhere one turns) arguably 
are truly the yin and yang of Critical Realism?s 
underlaboring of the social sciences--one cannot be 
understood or explained without the other.
----------
MH: The revolution will be nothing less than this: the 
transformation of our understanding of ourselves and of the 
whole world in which we live, our situation in the 
cosmos.'... It could be then that one of the ways forward 
at the level of philosophy is a closer engagement with 
Nietzsche...precisely because Nietzsche is such a great 
champion of the master-classes, he has much to teach us 
from an emancipatory point of view.
RB: It is important to have an understanding and a good 
critique of Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism.
FZ: And perhaps the best way to accomplish this, 
indeed maybe the only way, is a ?Possibility of 
Naturalism? that encompasses both humanity?s Pulse of 
Freedom and Will to Power.

Fred Zaman/Agent Redstone
?

--- On Tue, 5/12/09, Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk> wrote:


From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
To: "'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'" <critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 11:38 AM


Hi Fred/Agent Redstone,

You have an unerring instinct for marrying Bhaskar with the devil. Bhaskar's
whole later philosophy can be viewed, not as complementary to or capable of
being merged with Nietzscheanism, but as a decisive rejoinder to it. I asked
Bhaskar about this during my interviews for Bhaskar with Hartwig, The
Formation of CR: A Personal Perspective (Routledge, forthcoming 2009). Not
from any wish to enter into dialogue with you here but for the record on
this important topic, I paste in below the current version of what
transpired. NB: It is still subject to revision. The reference to Dominc
Losurdo is: Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico. Biografia intellettuale e
bilancio critico (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002). See the review essay
by Jan Rehmann, Historical Materialism 15 (2) (2007): 173-93.

Mervyn

# MH: In From Science to Emancipation you explicitly link the question of
what is to be done, and the necessary change in our conception of our
selves, to 

"'the politics of disenchantment", the politics of Nietzsche and Weber and
the politics of social democracy ? which has so profoundly influenced the
politics of the Left. We need to produce a different conception of ourselves
in the world. The revolution will be nothing less than this: the
transformation of our understanding of ourselves and of the whole world in
which we live, our situation in the cosmos.'? 

It could be then that one of the ways forward at the level of philosophy is
a closer engagement with Nietzsche. Of course, at one level, in terms of
political implications, as in other ways, there could not be a greater
contrast. In a definitive recent study, the Italian Hegelian scholar,
Dominico Losurdo,? has shown pretty convincingly that, contrary to the
fashionable view that he was above politics, Nietzsche was through and
through a philosopher of the right, the great modern antagonist of Rousseau,
Marx and generalised human emancipation. Thus Nietzsche?s consistent basic
concern was to nip the modern revolutionary tradition in the bud, whereas
yours has been to rejuvenate and enrich it. Nietzsche?s perspective is that
of the unmediated domination of a revitalised master-class, yours is the
transcendence of master?slavery in all its forms. Where Nietzsche thematises
will to power and egoism unbridled by altruism, you thematise moral alethia
and the pulse of freedom. Yet arguably, precisely because Nietzsche is such
a great champion of the master-classes, he has much to teach us from an
emancipatory point of view: the impossibility of founding a eudaimonian
politics on resentment, for example, and the need to move beyond slavery and
any kind of overmanliness as such, as well as diagnostic clues to the real
basis of the current round of the ?imperialism of human rights?, which he
exposes as a sham.

RB: It is important to have an understanding and a good critique of
Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism. The first thing I would like to say is that
what has been called the hermeneutics of suspicion is extremely valuable and
is an important part of critical realist emancipatory axiology, because what
it draws attention to are precisely the heteronomous elements in human life:
the power and efficacy of what has not been resolved. This links in to my
second point, which is a critical one: that Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism is
a philosophy based on the repression, denial and forgetting of what has not
been included in the totality; it is a philosophy of split in which some
values and some human beings are privileged over other human beings, issuing
in a politics of split. The whole thrust of Nietzscheanism is to forget what
you must forget, which of course in our world is that the masters exist in
virtue of the slaves and their activity. Freud has shown that the strategy
of forgetting is untenable. The conscious exists in virtue of the
unconscious, you cannot just forget about the unconscious. What you have to
do is redress the imbalance, the asymmetry, between the top component and
the bottom component. If you forget about it, you are excluding it from the
totality of your concerns and will pay the price of this omission. The
strategy of forgetting is however invariably the position of masters, of
course; it is what the neo-conservatives around Bush did: they forgot about
the culture and traditions of Iraq, and the vibrant Iraqi human beings ? all
became just part of the project.

MH: The neo-conservatives are incarnations of the Nietzschean philosophy.

RB: Absolutely. So the Achilles? heel of Nietzscheanism is that it draws
attention to heteronomy, and then the impossible answer is forget about it ?
do not bother about it, rise above it. Of course, this is the standpoint of
radical split and master?slave society, it is very dualistic. So what we
have to do is embed it in the structures of dialectical critical realism and
meta-Reality, within a moving conceptual formation that will incorporate the
repressed and resolve this aporia. What Nietzscheanism overlooks or neglects
is not only that what has been forgotten, denied or repressed is actually
part of a totality with, and bound eventually to be causally efficacious on,
the unforgotten, affirmed part, but also ? and this is my third point ? the
dialectics of co-presence, namely, that what is excluded is just the
unrecognised or undeveloped part of yourself. Such exclusion is the basis of
all oppositions according to the philosophy of meta-Reality. The person you
are fighting with is just bringing out or developing aspects of yourself
that you have not acknowledged. That is at the deepest level. Of course, at
more superficial levels you can apply other modes of criticism and
understanding, but at the end of the day that is what the repressed is. The
repressed is what you yourself have not developed. And when you have
developed it ? this is the thrust of Freud ? there is then no need to
repress it at all because it will now be part of your moral economy in
sublated or sublimated form. It is of course very difficult actually to
achieve a society that incorporates all the slaves such that there are no
longer any master?slave-type distinctions and oppressions, but that is the
only position that is tenable. Sooner or later this process of sublating and
radically incorporating will yield joy, you will experience those bits of
yourself that you have left out as enjoyable and rewarding and wonder why
you did not think about and acknowledge this before. 

MH: So in fundamental ways your philosophy could be viewed as a response to
Nietzsche: if you think in terms of thesis, antithesis, synthesis you have
something like Hegel/Marx, Nietzsche, Bhaskar. But I take it you did not
consciously intend this; you do not engage with Nietzsche in detail, it is
mostly implicit.

RB: I am not sure whether I will have time to get round to it but of course
it might be that this way of looking at my work is the best way, in which
case I will have to make time. There is no doubt that Nietzsche together
with Heidegger, who is a combination of Nietzsche and hermeneutics, are the
most influential philosophers in the vogue part of the academy at any rate,
because they are the thinkers the poststructuralists are mainly indebted to.




-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Fred
Zaman
Sent: 12 May 2009 04:19
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche

A merger of Bhaskar and Nietzsche can result in an Nietzschean Emergent
Powers Materialism (NEPM): NEPM then refers to the (historical) materialism
of powers whose emergence is fundamentally Nietzschean in character--meaning
the materialism of powers out of which emerges the ?will to power? of a
Nietzschean Ubermensche or Overman. The following essay on American
capitalism now in review provides an informative exemplar:?America?s
Nietzschean Power Elite: An ?berman Political Theory of Capitalism Can the
collective exercise of Friedrich Nietzsche?s universal ?will to power? by
capitalism?s elite upper class create ideological equivalents of his
anti-democratic, amoral ?Overman?? In this essay a political theory of
America?s ??berman,? 
which rethinks Nietzsche?s principle collectively in the terms of ?class
war? in the United States, an elitist, avaricious ?will to power? engages
class-differentiated, unconscious agents of capitalist political ideology in
class warfare. ?berman Political Theory validates in American capitalism the
Marxist concepts of ?class struggle? and historicist ?laws of motion.? Other
Marxist principles however, ?proletarian revolution? and ?class
consciousness? for example, are superseded by ?ideology,? ?interpellation,?
and ?political unconscious? in Althusserian political theory. Expressing its
fundamentally anti-democratic character throughout history by continually
waging ?class war? on the underclasses, behind the scenes unconsciously,
??berman?s elitist ?berKlasse is the class-differentiated, collective,
amoral ?will to power? of a Nietzschean capitalist class ruling America
behind the scenes through society?s political unconscious.?Critical Realism
it seems can provide basic philosophical concepts for framing the
investigation and theoretical explanation of Nietzsche?s universal ?Will to
Power? 
principle, as it may be manifested in nature and by humankind socially,
economically, and politically. And Nietzsche?s principle, conversely, may be
able to do the same for CR--provide a unified philosophical framework for
applying CR principles to the diversity of emergent powers observed in
nature and society. 
A ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism,? in providing a materialist
basis for Nietzsche?s Will to Power that is opposed in principle to
Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom but nevertheless grounded on the same
?Possibility of Naturalism,? may be able to greatly increase the conceptual
power of both ideas. Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom and Nietzsche?s Will to
Power are complementary principles?one provides the background for
explaining the other. In a comprehensive approach to the Possibility of
Naturalism, Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom is very much the yin to the yang of
Nietzsche?s Will to Power.Fred Zaman



? ? ? 
_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism


_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism



      

From agent.redstone at yahoo.com  Fri May 15 07:39:01 2009
From: agent.redstone at yahoo.com (Fred Zaman)
Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 06:39:01 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
Message-ID: <595769.57448.qm@web63603.mail.re1.yahoo.com>

?The Possibility of Naturalism? in political theory to be 
presented in a forthcoming ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers 
Materialism? (NEPM) will require an emergent powers 
materialism (both synchronic and diachronic) in which the 
political Left and political Right are sociologically both 
?natural phenomena.? In this there is no ?marrying Bhaskar 
with the devil.? Mervyn?s statement (as his always are) is 
a complete mischaracterization of what I am proposing. NEPM 
is a theoretical unification in social science that shows 
how Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom and ?the devil?s? 
(Nietzsche?s) Will to Power both are a Possibility of 
Naturalism. Both are ?natural? phenomena of human nature 
and thus--according to Critical Realism--can be explained 
in naturalist terms. And just how both may be integrated 
into a single critical-realist Possibility of Naturalism, 
is indicated in the Nietzschean political structure below:
-
unterW?hler--political constituency of the oppressed 
(manifests an egalitarian Pulse of Freedom): the 
unterW?hler?s Pulse of Freedom endeavors to? shift the body 
politic Leftward.
-
?berW?hler--the political constituency of an elitist master 
class (manifests the Will to Power of a collective 
Nietzschean overman): the ?berW?hler?s Will to Power 
endeavors to maintain the body politic positioned toward 
the Right.
-
ubenW?hler--the political constituency of master class 
underlaborers (they man or support the master class ?state 
apparatuses?): the ubenW?hler?s underlaboring publicly 
defends society?s status quo (against the unterW?hler?s 
Pulse of Freedom), while at the same time behind the scenes 
underlaboring in the service of the ?berW?hler?s Will to 
Power.
-
Based on this Nietzschean model of the ?historical 
materialism? of politically-differentiated ?emergent 
powers,? an emancipatory axiology of the political Left vs. 
the political Right becomes one such Possibility of 
Naturalism in the social sciences. And in NEPM thus 
formulated, in complete agreement with Mervyn and Roy on 
Nietzsche: ?The neo-conservatives [absolutely] are 
incarnations of the Nietzschean philosophy.? NEPM concurs 
with everything said below regarding Nietzschean 
philosophy, and thus absolutely entails no marriage of 
Bhaskar and the devil. Mervyn?s characterization of NEPM is 
a (possibly intentional) mischaracterization of a 
Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism.
-
More to follow, Agent Redstone
--------------------------


--- On Tue, 5/12/09, Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk> wrote:


From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
To: "'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'" <critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 11:38 AM


Hi Fred/Agent Redstone,

You have an unerring instinct for marrying Bhaskar with the devil. Bhaskar's
whole later philosophy can be viewed, not as complementary to or capable of
being merged with Nietzscheanism, but as a decisive rejoinder to it. I asked
Bhaskar about this during my interviews for Bhaskar with Hartwig, The
Formation of CR: A Personal Perspective (Routledge, forthcoming 2009). Not
from any wish to enter into dialogue with you here but for the record on
this important topic, I paste in below the current version of what
transpired. NB: It is still subject to revision. The reference to Dominc
Losurdo is: Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico. Biografia intellettuale e
bilancio critico (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002). See the review essay
by Jan Rehmann, Historical Materialism 15 (2) (2007): 173-93.

Mervyn

# MH: In From Science to Emancipation you explicitly link the question of
what is to be done, and the necessary change in our conception of our
selves, to 

"'the politics of disenchantment", the politics of Nietzsche and Weber and
the politics of social democracy ? which has so profoundly influenced the
politics of the Left. We need to produce a different conception of ourselves
in the world. The revolution will be nothing less than this: the
transformation of our understanding of ourselves and of the whole world in
which we live, our situation in the cosmos.'? 

It could be then that one of the ways forward at the level of philosophy is
a closer engagement with Nietzsche. Of course, at one level, in terms of
political implications, as in other ways, there could not be a greater
contrast. In a definitive recent study, the Italian Hegelian scholar,
Dominico Losurdo,? has shown pretty convincingly that, contrary to the
fashionable view that he was above politics, Nietzsche was through and
through a philosopher of the right, the great modern antagonist of Rousseau,
Marx and generalised human emancipation. Thus Nietzsche?s consistent basic
concern was to nip the modern revolutionary tradition in the bud, whereas
yours has been to rejuvenate and enrich it. Nietzsche?s perspective is that
of the unmediated domination of a revitalised master-class, yours is the
transcendence of master?slavery in all its forms. Where Nietzsche thematises
will to power and egoism unbridled by altruism, you thematise moral alethia
and the pulse of freedom. Yet arguably, precisely because Nietzsche is such
a great champion of the master-classes, he has much to teach us from an
emancipatory point of view: the impossibility of founding a eudaimonian
politics on resentment, for example, and the need to move beyond slavery and
any kind of overmanliness as such, as well as diagnostic clues to the real
basis of the current round of the ?imperialism of human rights?, which he
exposes as a sham.

RB: It is important to have an understanding and a good critique of
Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism. The first thing I would like to say is that
what has been called the hermeneutics of suspicion is extremely valuable and
is an important part of critical realist emancipatory axiology, because what
it draws attention to are precisely the heteronomous elements in human life:
the power and efficacy of what has not been resolved. This links in to my
second point, which is a critical one: that Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism is
a philosophy based on the repression, denial and forgetting of what has not
been included in the totality; it is a philosophy of split in which some
values and some human beings are privileged over other human beings, issuing
in a politics of split. The whole thrust of Nietzscheanism is to forget what
you must forget, which of course in our world is that the masters exist in
virtue of the slaves and their activity. Freud has shown that the strategy
of forgetting is untenable. The conscious exists in virtue of the
unconscious, you cannot just forget about the unconscious. What you have to
do is redress the imbalance, the asymmetry, between the top component and
the bottom component. If you forget about it, you are excluding it from the
totality of your concerns and will pay the price of this omission. The
strategy of forgetting is however invariably the position of masters, of
course; it is what the neo-conservatives around Bush did: they forgot about
the culture and traditions of Iraq, and the vibrant Iraqi human beings ? all
became just part of the project.

MH: The neo-conservatives are incarnations of the Nietzschean philosophy.

RB: Absolutely. So the Achilles? heel of Nietzscheanism is that it draws
attention to heteronomy, and then the impossible answer is forget about it ?
do not bother about it, rise above it. Of course, this is the standpoint of
radical split and master?slave society, it is very dualistic. So what we
have to do is embed it in the structures of dialectical critical realism and
meta-Reality, within a moving conceptual formation that will incorporate the
repressed and resolve this aporia. What Nietzscheanism overlooks or neglects
is not only that what has been forgotten, denied or repressed is actually
part of a totality with, and bound eventually to be causally efficacious on,
the unforgotten, affirmed part, but also ? and this is my third point ? the
dialectics of co-presence, namely, that what is excluded is just the
unrecognised or undeveloped part of yourself. Such exclusion is the basis of
all oppositions according to the philosophy of meta-Reality. The person you
are fighting with is just bringing out or developing aspects of yourself
that you have not acknowledged. That is at the deepest level. Of course, at
more superficial levels you can apply other modes of criticism and
understanding, but at the end of the day that is what the repressed is. The
repressed is what you yourself have not developed. And when you have
developed it ? this is the thrust of Freud ? there is then no need to
repress it at all because it will now be part of your moral economy in
sublated or sublimated form. It is of course very difficult actually to
achieve a society that incorporates all the slaves such that there are no
longer any master?slave-type distinctions and oppressions, but that is the
only position that is tenable. Sooner or later this process of sublating and
radically incorporating will yield joy, you will experience those bits of
yourself that you have left out as enjoyable and rewarding and wonder why
you did not think about and acknowledge this before. 

MH: So in fundamental ways your philosophy could be viewed as a response to
Nietzsche: if you think in terms of thesis, antithesis, synthesis you have
something like Hegel/Marx, Nietzsche, Bhaskar. But I take it you did not
consciously intend this; you do not engage with Nietzsche in detail, it is
mostly implicit.

RB: I am not sure whether I will have time to get round to it but of course
it might be that this way of looking at my work is the best way, in which
case I will have to make time. There is no doubt that Nietzsche together
with Heidegger, who is a combination of Nietzsche and hermeneutics, are the
most influential philosophers in the vogue part of the academy at any rate,
because they are the thinkers the poststructuralists are mainly indebted to.




-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Fred
Zaman
Sent: 12 May 2009 04:19
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche

A merger of Bhaskar and Nietzsche can result in an Nietzschean Emergent
Powers Materialism (NEPM): NEPM then refers to the (historical) materialism
of powers whose emergence is fundamentally Nietzschean in character--meaning
the materialism of powers out of which emerges the ?will to power? of a
Nietzschean Ubermensche or Overman. The following essay on American
capitalism now in review provides an informative exemplar:?America?s
Nietzschean Power Elite: An ?berman Political Theory of Capitalism Can the
collective exercise of Friedrich Nietzsche?s universal ?will to power? by
capitalism?s elite upper class create ideological equivalents of his
anti-democratic, amoral ?Overman?? In this essay a political theory of
America?s ??berman,? 
which rethinks Nietzsche?s principle collectively in the terms of ?class
war? in the United States, an elitist, avaricious ?will to power? engages
class-differentiated, unconscious agents of capitalist political ideology in
class warfare. ?berman Political Theory validates in American capitalism the
Marxist concepts of ?class struggle? and historicist ?laws of motion.? Other
Marxist principles however, ?proletarian revolution? and ?class
consciousness? for example, are superseded by ?ideology,? ?interpellation,?
and ?political unconscious? in Althusserian political theory. Expressing its
fundamentally anti-democratic character throughout history by continually
waging ?class war? on the underclasses, behind the scenes unconsciously,
??berman?s elitist ?berKlasse is the class-differentiated, collective,
amoral ?will to power? of a Nietzschean capitalist class ruling America
behind the scenes through society?s political unconscious.?Critical Realism
it seems can provide basic philosophical concepts for framing the
investigation and theoretical explanation of Nietzsche?s universal ?Will to
Power? 
principle, as it may be manifested in nature and by humankind socially,
economically, and politically. And Nietzsche?s principle, conversely, may be
able to do the same for CR--provide a unified philosophical framework for
applying CR principles to the diversity of emergent powers observed in
nature and society. 
A ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism,? in providing a materialist
basis for Nietzsche?s Will to Power that is opposed in principle to
Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom but nevertheless grounded on the same
?Possibility of Naturalism,? may be able to greatly increase the conceptual
power of both ideas. Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom and Nietzsche?s Will to
Power are complementary principles?one provides the background for
explaining the other. In a comprehensive approach to the Possibility of
Naturalism, Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom is very much the yin to the yang of
Nietzsche?s Will to Power.Fred Zaman



? ? ? 
_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism


_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism



      

From bptarpley at gmail.com  Fri May 15 08:35:19 2009
From: bptarpley at gmail.com (Bryan Tarpley)
Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 09:35:19 -0500
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
In-Reply-To: <595769.57448.qm@web63603.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
References: <595769.57448.qm@web63603.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <56b3b1f80905150735k790595e6u267d8275656e51d6@mail.gmail.com>

Fred,
While I agree with you that there is a kind of dialectic or feedback loop
that occurs between the Left and the Right, I think it might be a
misidentification to label the leftward shift of the body politic the Pulse
of Freedom.  It is my understanding that Bhaskar is seeking freedom from
precisely these kinds of dichotomies.  In other words, I think the Pulse of
Freedom would seek to _transcend_ the Left/Right dichotomy rather than to be
an ingredient for its perpetuation.  But I could be completely wrong!

In humility,
Bryan Tarpley


On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 8:39 AM, Fred Zaman <agent.redstone at yahoo.com>wrote:

> ?The Possibility of Naturalism? in political theory to be
> presented in a forthcoming ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers
> Materialism? (NEPM) will require an emergent powers
> materialism (both synchronic and diachronic) in which the
> political Left and political Right are sociologically both
> ?natural phenomena.? In this there is no ?marrying Bhaskar
> with the devil.? Mervyn?s statement (as his always are) is
> a complete mischaracterization of what I am proposing. NEPM
> is a theoretical unification in social science that shows
> how Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom and ?the devil?s?
> (Nietzsche?s) Will to Power both are a Possibility of
> Naturalism. Both are ?natural? phenomena of human nature
> and thus--according to Critical Realism--can be explained
> in naturalist terms. And just how both may be integrated
> into a single critical-realist Possibility of Naturalism,
> is indicated in the Nietzschean political structure below:
> -
> unterW?hler--political constituency of the oppressed
> (manifests an egalitarian Pulse of Freedom): the
> unterW?hler?s Pulse of Freedom endeavors to  shift the body
> politic Leftward.
> -
> ?berW?hler--the political constituency of an elitist master
> class (manifests the Will to Power of a collective
> Nietzschean overman): the ?berW?hler?s Will to Power
> endeavors to maintain the body politic positioned toward
> the Right.
> -
> ubenW?hler--the political constituency of master class
> underlaborers (they man or support the master class ?state
> apparatuses?): the ubenW?hler?s underlaboring publicly
> defends society?s status quo (against the unterW?hler?s
> Pulse of Freedom), while at the same time behind the scenes
> underlaboring in the service of the ?berW?hler?s Will to
> Power.
> -
> Based on this Nietzschean model of the ?historical
> materialism? of politically-differentiated ?emergent
> powers,? an emancipatory axiology of the political Left vs.
> the political Right becomes one such Possibility of
> Naturalism in the social sciences. And in NEPM thus
> formulated, in complete agreement with Mervyn and Roy on
> Nietzsche: ?The neo-conservatives [absolutely] are
> incarnations of the Nietzschean philosophy.? NEPM concurs
> with everything said below regarding Nietzschean
> philosophy, and thus absolutely entails no marriage of
> Bhaskar and the devil. Mervyn?s characterization of NEPM is
> a (possibly intentional) mischaracterization of a
> Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism.
> -
> More to follow, Agent Redstone
> --------------------------
>
>
> --- On Tue, 5/12/09, Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
> To: "'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'" <
> critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
> Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 11:38 AM
>
>
> Hi Fred/Agent Redstone,
>
> You have an unerring instinct for marrying Bhaskar with the devil.
> Bhaskar's
> whole later philosophy can be viewed, not as complementary to or capable of
> being merged with Nietzscheanism, but as a decisive rejoinder to it. I
> asked
> Bhaskar about this during my interviews for Bhaskar with Hartwig, The
> Formation of CR: A Personal Perspective (Routledge, forthcoming 2009). Not
> from any wish to enter into dialogue with you here but for the record on
> this important topic, I paste in below the current version of what
> transpired. NB: It is still subject to revision. The reference to Dominc
> Losurdo is: Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico. Biografia intellettuale e
> bilancio critico (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002). See the review essay
> by Jan Rehmann, Historical Materialism 15 (2) (2007): 173-93.
>
> Mervyn
>
> # MH: In From Science to Emancipation you explicitly link the question of
> what is to be done, and the necessary change in our conception of our
> selves, to
>
> "'the politics of disenchantment", the politics of Nietzsche and Weber and
> the politics of social democracy ? which has so profoundly influenced the
> politics of the Left. We need to produce a different conception of
> ourselves
> in the world. The revolution will be nothing less than this: the
> transformation of our understanding of ourselves and of the whole world in
> which we live, our situation in the cosmos.'
>
> It could be then that one of the ways forward at the level of philosophy is
> a closer engagement with Nietzsche. Of course, at one level, in terms of
> political implications, as in other ways, there could not be a greater
> contrast. In a definitive recent study, the Italian Hegelian scholar,
> Dominico Losurdo,  has shown pretty convincingly that, contrary to the
> fashionable view that he was above politics, Nietzsche was through and
> through a philosopher of the right, the great modern antagonist of
> Rousseau,
> Marx and generalised human emancipation. Thus Nietzsche?s consistent basic
> concern was to nip the modern revolutionary tradition in the bud, whereas
> yours has been to rejuvenate and enrich it. Nietzsche?s perspective is that
> of the unmediated domination of a revitalised master-class, yours is the
> transcendence of master?slavery in all its forms. Where Nietzsche
> thematises
> will to power and egoism unbridled by altruism, you thematise moral alethia
> and the pulse of freedom. Yet arguably, precisely because Nietzsche is such
> a great champion of the master-classes, he has much to teach us from an
> emancipatory point of view: the impossibility of founding a eudaimonian
> politics on resentment, for example, and the need to move beyond slavery
> and
> any kind of overmanliness as such, as well as diagnostic clues to the real
> basis of the current round of the ?imperialism of human rights?, which he
> exposes as a sham.
>
> RB: It is important to have an understanding and a good critique of
> Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism. The first thing I would like to say is that
> what has been called the hermeneutics of suspicion is extremely valuable
> and
> is an important part of critical realist emancipatory axiology, because
> what
> it draws attention to are precisely the heteronomous elements in human
> life:
> the power and efficacy of what has not been resolved. This links in to my
> second point, which is a critical one: that Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism is
> a philosophy based on the repression, denial and forgetting of what has not
> been included in the totality; it is a philosophy of split in which some
> values and some human beings are privileged over other human beings,
> issuing
> in a politics of split. The whole thrust of Nietzscheanism is to forget
> what
> you must forget, which of course in our world is that the masters exist in
> virtue of the slaves and their activity. Freud has shown that the strategy
> of forgetting is untenable. The conscious exists in virtue of the
> unconscious, you cannot just forget about the unconscious. What you have to
> do is redress the imbalance, the asymmetry, between the top component and
> the bottom component. If you forget about it, you are excluding it from the
> totality of your concerns and will pay the price of this omission. The
> strategy of forgetting is however invariably the position of masters, of
> course; it is what the neo-conservatives around Bush did: they forgot about
> the culture and traditions of Iraq, and the vibrant Iraqi human beings ?
> all
> became just part of the project.
>
> MH: The neo-conservatives are incarnations of the Nietzschean philosophy.
>
> RB: Absolutely. So the Achilles? heel of Nietzscheanism is that it draws
> attention to heteronomy, and then the impossible answer is forget about it
> ?
> do not bother about it, rise above it. Of course, this is the standpoint of
> radical split and master?slave society, it is very dualistic. So what we
> have to do is embed it in the structures of dialectical critical realism
> and
> meta-Reality, within a moving conceptual formation that will incorporate
> the
> repressed and resolve this aporia. What Nietzscheanism overlooks or
> neglects
> is not only that what has been forgotten, denied or repressed is actually
> part of a totality with, and bound eventually to be causally efficacious
> on,
> the unforgotten, affirmed part, but also ? and this is my third point ? the
> dialectics of co-presence, namely, that what is excluded is just the
> unrecognised or undeveloped part of yourself. Such exclusion is the basis
> of
> all oppositions according to the philosophy of meta-Reality. The person you
> are fighting with is just bringing out or developing aspects of yourself
> that you have not acknowledged. That is at the deepest level. Of course, at
> more superficial levels you can apply other modes of criticism and
> understanding, but at the end of the day that is what the repressed is. The
> repressed is what you yourself have not developed. And when you have
> developed it ? this is the thrust of Freud ? there is then no need to
> repress it at all because it will now be part of your moral economy in
> sublated or sublimated form. It is of course very difficult actually to
> achieve a society that incorporates all the slaves such that there are no
> longer any master?slave-type distinctions and oppressions, but that is the
> only position that is tenable. Sooner or later this process of sublating
> and
> radically incorporating will yield joy, you will experience those bits of
> yourself that you have left out as enjoyable and rewarding and wonder why
> you did not think about and acknowledge this before.
>
> MH: So in fundamental ways your philosophy could be viewed as a response to
> Nietzsche: if you think in terms of thesis, antithesis, synthesis you have
> something like Hegel/Marx, Nietzsche, Bhaskar. But I take it you did not
> consciously intend this; you do not engage with Nietzsche in detail, it is
> mostly implicit.
>
> RB: I am not sure whether I will have time to get round to it but of course
> it might be that this way of looking at my work is the best way, in which
> case I will have to make time. There is no doubt that Nietzsche together
> with Heidegger, who is a combination of Nietzsche and hermeneutics, are the
> most influential philosophers in the vogue part of the academy at any rate,
> because they are the thinkers the poststructuralists are mainly indebted
> to.
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu
> [mailto:critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Fred
> Zaman
> Sent: 12 May 2009 04:19
> To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
> Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
>
> A merger of Bhaskar and Nietzsche can result in an Nietzschean Emergent
> Powers Materialism (NEPM): NEPM then refers to the (historical) materialism
> of powers whose emergence is fundamentally Nietzschean in
> character--meaning
> the materialism of powers out of which emerges the ?will to power? of a
> Nietzschean Ubermensche or Overman. The following essay on American
> capitalism now in review provides an informative exemplar: America?s
> Nietzschean Power Elite: An ?berman Political Theory of Capitalism Can the
> collective exercise of Friedrich Nietzsche?s universal ?will to power? by
> capitalism?s elite upper class create ideological equivalents of his
> anti-democratic, amoral ?Overman?? In this essay a political theory of
> America?s ??berman,?
> which rethinks Nietzsche?s principle collectively in the terms of ?class
> war? in the United States, an elitist, avaricious ?will to power? engages
> class-differentiated, unconscious agents of capitalist political ideology
> in
> class warfare. ?berman Political Theory validates in American capitalism
> the
> Marxist concepts of ?class struggle? and historicist ?laws of motion.?
> Other
> Marxist principles however, ?proletarian revolution? and ?class
> consciousness? for example, are superseded by ?ideology,? ?interpellation,?
> and ?political unconscious? in Althusserian political theory. Expressing
> its
> fundamentally anti-democratic character throughout history by continually
> waging ?class war? on the underclasses, behind the scenes unconsciously,
> ??berman?s elitist ?berKlasse is the class-differentiated, collective,
> amoral ?will to power? of a Nietzschean capitalist class ruling America
> behind the scenes through society?s political unconscious. Critical Realism
> it seems can provide basic philosophical concepts for framing the
> investigation and theoretical explanation of Nietzsche?s universal ?Will to
> Power?
> principle, as it may be manifested in nature and by humankind socially,
> economically, and politically. And Nietzsche?s principle, conversely, may
> be
> able to do the same for CR--provide a unified philosophical framework for
> applying CR principles to the diversity of emergent powers observed in
> nature and society.
> A ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism,? in providing a materialist
> basis for Nietzsche?s Will to Power that is opposed in principle to
> Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom but nevertheless grounded on the same
> ?Possibility of Naturalism,? may be able to greatly increase the conceptual
> power of both ideas. Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom and Nietzsche?s Will to
> Power are complementary principles?one provides the background for
> explaining the other. In a comprehensive approach to the Possibility of
> Naturalism, Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom is very much the yin to the yang of
> Nietzsche?s Will to Power.Fred Zaman
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Critical-Realism mailing list
> Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Critical-Realism mailing list
> Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Critical-Realism mailing list
> Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>



-- 
Bryan Tarpley
Stephen F. Austin State University
936.468.6112 | btarpley at sfasu.edu

From mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk  Sat May 16 04:54:01 2009
From: mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk (Mervyn Hartwig)
Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 11:54:01 +0100
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
In-Reply-To: <56b3b1f80905150735k790595e6u267d8275656e51d6@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <mailman.60.1242471246.17122.critical-realism@lists.econ.utah.edu>

Hi Bryan

I think this is completely right, and it's confirmed a little earlier in my
discussion with Bhaskar:

MH: The question of the political implications of critical realism, if any,
recently surfaced ? as it does from time to time ? on the Critical Realism
List, and was discussed at some length. Some feel that critical realism is
above politics, or at any rate indifferent in its implications as between
left and right; others feel that critical realism has no political
implications but that dialectical critical realism does; others that it is a
philosophy of the left. How would you summarise this matter? Would you
describe yourself as a philosopher of the left?

RB: This is a very interesting question. What I would like to say is that in
one sense I agree with the claim that critical realism is above politics,
and in another sense I clearly am a philosopher of the left. The sense in
which critical realism is above politics is a *synchronic* one. It is above
politics in that ex ante, before it does its work, it does not take sides
but typically seeks to show how apparently contradictory philosophical
positions leave out a crucial feature of the domain ? and this actually
holds true of many human conflicts ? and then of course ex post, after the
philosophical work of critical realism, you have a more inclusive totality.
And so critical realism attempts to usher in a more inclusive conceptual
totality that can inform transformative praxis and make it more rational,
ceteris paribus, in open systems. In transcending oppositions in this way it
does of course have practical implications. This is the way it seeks to be a
practically efficacious philosophy. *Diachronically*, however, one has to
say that, adopting the standpoint I have sketched, which is roughly that of
dialectical critical realism, developmentally and genealogically critical
realism is a philosophy of the left in so far as it favours more inclusive
totalities and what it is doing is isolating absences that include social
inequities and imbalances that exist in social life, and it is this that
powers the system. 

Of course, what I have said so far does not really get us very far if you
have two bodies of armed human beings confronting each other, for example.
However, meta-Reality suggests a technique for resolving oppositions. To
take the case of armed conflict, what the critical realist peace worker
would basically try to do is to get the warring parties to sit down with
each other in their ground-states and talk to each other; and on the basis
of that hermeneutic they would, at least in the ideal case, come to see that
they had a common interest in tackling relevant common problems and
constraints ? it might be a common bully or a structure of master?slave
relations or a natural constraint. The value of the hermeneutic encounter
and the exchange of positions is that, when you are talking with someone in
this way, you cannot in general any longer be afraid of them, and if you are
to go on in transcendental identification with them, empathetically talking
to them,  you cannot at the same time beat them up (you would be beating up
what is now experienced as part of yourself). Just being in a situation in
which you have to talk to someone means that you have to empathise with them
a little, and so you begin to see their point of view. Of course, it is
easier to get the two parties to move to common ground that allows them to
see how a practical reconciliation could be achieved if you are armed with
an explanatory critical theory. This will give them a clear conception of
the ground of their opposition and their mutual interest in removing it.
Very often it will also involve a crucial moment of concrete utopianism in
which the parties, having perhaps concluded that there is no way they can do
anything about the ground now, imagine a possible future. They will then
need a third thing, which is a theory of transition ? how you actually get
to it. All of this might allow some good strategic action oriented to the
removal of the ground and the construction of the concretely utopianly
imagined and envisioned realm. Now you cannot actually get this hermeneutic
off the ground unless you get them both in or moving towards their
ground-states. They are then in a state of maximal negentropy, maximally
alert and maximally flexible ? and many peace negotiations go astray because
the parties are just re-stating well-rehearsed positions. An instance of
something like this in practice was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
established by Nelson Mandela in South Africa after the ending of Apartheid
(the full experience of which has to be looked into). 

MH: Arguably what it fundamentally achieved was a reconciliation to the
existing class structure, the alethic untruth of which is currently becoming
apparent.

RB: Yes, rather than the isolation under explanatory critical theory of the
ground that had to be removed. But you see, at the end of the day capitalism
is not kept in business by anything other than people, including all the
soldiers, and when they walk away, then it will go, just as actually
existing socialism in the Soviet Union went. Change is ineluctable.

MH: Even considered diachronically, then, although it comes out of the
tradition of the left, there is a sense in which critical realism wants to
go beyond left and right. That is the overall trajectory: transcending the
big oppositions.

RB: When it stops moving towards that goal, the left becomes ostracised and
part of the problem. 


-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Bryan
Tarpley
Sent: 15 May 2009 15:35
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche

Fred,
While I agree with you that there is a kind of dialectic or feedback loop
that occurs between the Left and the Right, I think it might be a
misidentification to label the leftward shift of the body politic the Pulse
of Freedom.  It is my understanding that Bhaskar is seeking freedom from
precisely these kinds of dichotomies.  In other words, I think the Pulse of
Freedom would seek to _transcend_ the Left/Right dichotomy rather than to be
an ingredient for its perpetuation.  But I could be completely wrong!

In humility,
Bryan Tarpley


On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 8:39 AM, Fred Zaman <agent.redstone at yahoo.com>wrote:

> ?The Possibility of Naturalism? in political theory to be presented in 
> a forthcoming ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism? (NEPM) will 
> require an emergent powers materialism (both synchronic and 
> diachronic) in which the political Left and political Right are 
> sociologically both ?natural phenomena.? In this there is no ?marrying 
> Bhaskar with the devil.? Mervyn?s statement (as his always are) is a 
> complete mischaracterization of what I am proposing. NEPM is a 
> theoretical unification in social science that shows how Bhaskar?s 
> Pulse of Freedom and ?the devil?s?
> (Nietzsche?s) Will to Power both are a Possibility of Naturalism. Both 
> are ?natural? phenomena of human nature and thus--according to 
> Critical Realism--can be explained in naturalist terms. And just how 
> both may be integrated into a single critical-realist Possibility of 
> Naturalism, is indicated in the Nietzschean political structure below:
> -
> unterW?hler--political constituency of the oppressed (manifests an 
> egalitarian Pulse of Freedom): the unterW?hler?s Pulse of Freedom 
> endeavors to  shift the body politic Leftward.
> -
> ?berW?hler--the political constituency of an elitist master class 
> (manifests the Will to Power of a collective Nietzschean overman): the 
> ?berW?hler?s Will to Power endeavors to maintain the body politic 
> positioned toward the Right.
> -
> ubenW?hler--the political constituency of master class underlaborers 
> (they man or support the master class ?state
> apparatuses?): the ubenW?hler?s underlaboring publicly defends 
> society?s status quo (against the unterW?hler?s Pulse of Freedom), 
> while at the same time behind the scenes underlaboring in the service 
> of the ?berW?hler?s Will to Power.
> -
> Based on this Nietzschean model of the ?historical materialism? of 
> politically-differentiated ?emergent powers,? an emancipatory axiology 
> of the political Left vs.
> the political Right becomes one such Possibility of Naturalism in the 
> social sciences. And in NEPM thus formulated, in complete agreement 
> with Mervyn and Roy on
> Nietzsche: ?The neo-conservatives [absolutely] are incarnations of the 
> Nietzschean philosophy.? NEPM concurs with everything said below 
> regarding Nietzschean philosophy, and thus absolutely entails no 
> marriage of Bhaskar and the devil. Mervyn?s characterization of NEPM 
> is a (possibly intentional) mischaracterization of a Nietzschean 
> Emergent Powers Materialism.
> -
> More to follow, Agent Redstone
> --------------------------
>
>
> --- On Tue, 5/12/09, Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
> To: "'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'" < 
> critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
> Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 11:38 AM
>
>
> Hi Fred/Agent Redstone,
>
> You have an unerring instinct for marrying Bhaskar with the devil.
> Bhaskar's
> whole later philosophy can be viewed, not as complementary to or 
> capable of being merged with Nietzscheanism, but as a decisive 
> rejoinder to it. I asked Bhaskar about this during my interviews for 
> Bhaskar with Hartwig, The Formation of CR: A Personal Perspective 
> (Routledge, forthcoming 2009). Not from any wish to enter into 
> dialogue with you here but for the record on this important topic, I 
> paste in below the current version of what transpired. NB: It is still 
> subject to revision. The reference to Dominc Losurdo is: Nietzsche, il 
> ribelle aristocratico. Biografia intellettuale e bilancio critico 
> (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002). See the review essay by Jan 
> Rehmann, Historical Materialism 15 (2) (2007): 173-93.
>
> Mervyn
>
> # MH: In From Science to Emancipation you explicitly link the question 
> of what is to be done, and the necessary change in our conception of 
> our selves, to
>
> "'the politics of disenchantment", the politics of Nietzsche and Weber 
> and the politics of social democracy 
 which has so profoundly 
> influenced the politics of the Left. We need to produce a different 
> conception of ourselves in the world. The revolution will be nothing 
> less than this: the transformation of our understanding of ourselves 
> and of the whole world in which we live, our situation in the cosmos.'
>
> It could be then that one of the ways forward at the level of 
> philosophy is a closer engagement with Nietzsche. Of course, at one 
> level, in terms of political implications, as in other ways, there 
> could not be a greater contrast. In a definitive recent study, the 
> Italian Hegelian scholar, Dominico Losurdo,  has shown pretty 
> convincingly that, contrary to the fashionable view that he was above 
> politics, Nietzsche was through and through a philosopher of the 
> right, the great modern antagonist of Rousseau, Marx and generalised 
> human emancipation. Thus Nietzsche?s consistent basic concern was to 
> nip the modern revolutionary tradition in the bud, whereas yours has 
> been to rejuvenate and enrich it. Nietzsche?s perspective is that of 
> the unmediated domination of a revitalised master-class, yours is the 
> transcendence of master?slavery in all its forms. Where Nietzsche 
> thematises will to power and egoism unbridled by altruism, you 
> thematise moral alethia and the pulse of freedom. Yet arguably, 
> precisely because Nietzsche is such a great champion of the 
> master-classes, he has much to teach us from an emancipatory point of 
> view: the impossibility of founding a eudaimonian politics on 
> resentment, for example, and the need to move beyond slavery and any 
> kind of overmanliness as such, as well as diagnostic clues to the real 
> basis of the current round of the ?imperialism of human rights?, which 
> he exposes as a sham.
>
> RB: It is important to have an understanding and a good critique of 
> Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism. The first thing I would like to say is 
> that what has been called the hermeneutics of suspicion is extremely 
> valuable and is an important part of critical realist emancipatory 
> axiology, because what it draws attention to are precisely the 
> heteronomous elements in human
> life:
> the power and efficacy of what has not been resolved. This links in to 
> my second point, which is a critical one: that Nietzsche and 
> Nietzscheanism is a philosophy based on the repression, denial and 
> forgetting of what has not been included in the totality; it is a 
> philosophy of split in which some values and some human beings are 
> privileged over other human beings, issuing in a politics of split. 
> The whole thrust of Nietzscheanism is to forget what you must forget, 
> which of course in our world is that the masters exist in virtue of 
> the slaves and their activity. Freud has shown that the strategy of 
> forgetting is untenable. The conscious exists in virtue of the 
> unconscious, you cannot just forget about the unconscious. What you 
> have to do is redress the imbalance, the asymmetry, between the top 
> component and the bottom component. If you forget about it, you are 
> excluding it from the totality of your concerns and will pay the price 
> of this omission. The strategy of forgetting is however invariably the 
> position of masters, of course; it is what the neo-conservatives 
> around Bush did: they forgot about the culture and traditions of Iraq, 
> and the vibrant Iraqi human beings ? all became just part of the 
> project.
>
> MH: The neo-conservatives are incarnations of the Nietzschean philosophy.
>
> RB: Absolutely. So the Achilles? heel of Nietzscheanism is that it 
> draws attention to heteronomy, and then the impossible answer is 
> forget about it ? do not bother about it, rise above it. Of course, 
> this is the standpoint of radical split and master?slave society, it 
> is very dualistic. So what we have to do is embed it in the structures 
> of dialectical critical realism and meta-Reality, within a moving 
> conceptual formation that will incorporate the repressed and resolve 
> this aporia. What Nietzscheanism overlooks or neglects is not only 
> that what has been forgotten, denied or repressed is actually part of 
> a totality with, and bound eventually to be causally efficacious on, 
> the unforgotten, affirmed part, but also ? and this is my third point 
> ? the dialectics of co-presence, namely, that what is excluded is just 
> the unrecognised or undeveloped part of yourself. Such exclusion is 
> the basis of all oppositions according to the philosophy of 
> meta-Reality. The person you are fighting with is just bringing out or 
> developing aspects of yourself that you have not acknowledged. That is 
> at the deepest level. Of course, at more superficial levels you can 
> apply other modes of criticism and understanding, but at the end of 
> the day that is what the repressed is. The repressed is what you 
> yourself have not developed. And when you have developed it ? this is 
> the thrust of Freud ? there is then no need to repress it at all 
> because it will now be part of your moral economy in sublated or 
> sublimated form. It is of course very difficult actually to achieve a 
> society that incorporates all the slaves such that there are no longer 
> any master?slave-type distinctions and oppressions, but that is the 
> only position that is tenable. Sooner or later this process of 
> sublating and radically incorporating will yield joy, you will 
> experience those bits of yourself that you have left out as enjoyable 
> and rewarding and wonder why you did not think about and acknowledge 
> this before.
>
> MH: So in fundamental ways your philosophy could be viewed as a 
> response to
> Nietzsche: if you think in terms of thesis, antithesis, synthesis you 
> have something like Hegel/Marx, Nietzsche, Bhaskar. But I take it you 
> did not consciously intend this; you do not engage with Nietzsche in 
> detail, it is mostly implicit.
>
> RB: I am not sure whether I will have time to get round to it but of 
> course it might be that this way of looking at my work is the best 
> way, in which case I will have to make time. There is no doubt that 
> Nietzsche together with Heidegger, who is a combination of Nietzsche 
> and hermeneutics, are the most influential philosophers in the vogue 
> part of the academy at any rate, because they are the thinkers the 
> poststructuralists are mainly indebted to.
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu
> [mailto:critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of 
> Fred Zaman
> Sent: 12 May 2009 04:19
> To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
> Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
>
> A merger of Bhaskar and Nietzsche can result in an Nietzschean 
> Emergent Powers Materialism (NEPM): NEPM then refers to the 
> (historical) materialism of powers whose emergence is fundamentally 
> Nietzschean in character--meaning the materialism of powers out of 
> which emerges the ?will to power? of a Nietzschean Ubermensche or 
> Overman. The following essay on American capitalism now in review 
> provides an informative exemplar: America?s Nietzschean Power Elite: 
> An ?berman Political Theory of Capitalism Can the collective exercise 
> of Friedrich Nietzsche?s universal ?will to power? by capitalism?s 
> elite upper class create ideological equivalents of his 
> anti-democratic, amoral ?Overman?? In this essay a political theory of 
> America?s ??berman,?
> which rethinks Nietzsche?s principle collectively in the terms of 
> ?class war? in the United States, an elitist, avaricious ?will to 
> power? engages class-differentiated, unconscious agents of capitalist 
> political ideology in class warfare. ?berman Political Theory 
> validates in American capitalism the Marxist concepts of ?class 
> struggle? and historicist ?laws of motion.?
> Other
> Marxist principles however, ?proletarian revolution? and ?class 
> consciousness? for example, are superseded by ?ideology,?
?interpellation,?
> and ?political unconscious? in Althusserian political theory. 
> Expressing its fundamentally anti-democratic character throughout 
> history by continually waging ?class war? on the underclasses, behind 
> the scenes unconsciously, ??berman?s elitist ?berKlasse is the 
> class-differentiated, collective, amoral ?will to power? of a 
> Nietzschean capitalist class ruling America behind the scenes through 
> society?s political unconscious. Critical Realism it seems can provide 
> basic philosophical concepts for framing the investigation and 
> theoretical explanation of Nietzsche?s universal ?Will to Power?
> principle, as it may be manifested in nature and by humankind 
> socially, economically, and politically. And Nietzsche?s principle, 
> conversely, may be able to do the same for CR--provide a unified 
> philosophical framework for applying CR principles to the diversity of 
> emergent powers observed in nature and society.
> A ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism,? in providing a 
> materialist basis for Nietzsche?s Will to Power that is opposed in 
> principle to Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom but nevertheless grounded on 
> the same ?Possibility of Naturalism,? may be able to greatly increase 
> the conceptual power of both ideas. Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom and 
> Nietzsche?s Will to Power are complementary principles?one provides 
> the background for explaining the other. In a comprehensive approach 
> to the Possibility of Naturalism, Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom is very 
> much the yin to the yang of Nietzsche?s Will to Power.Fred Zaman
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
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>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>



--
Bryan Tarpley
Stephen F. Austin State University
936.468.6112 | btarpley at sfasu.edu
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From m.selby at qut.edu.au  Sun May 17 19:04:48 2009
From: m.selby at qut.edu.au (Mark Selby)
Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 11:04:48 +1000
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Thank you
Message-ID: <E524A5DAD5EE8F44A83C14CC5649844319FBB1EE7C@QUTEXMBX01.qut.edu.au>

Hi All:

Thank you for welcoming me to this list. I'm looking forward to losing my naivety about critical realism. Thanks especially Ruth for your insights into chemistry and natural forms.

My enquiry is about critical realism and education in the cores sciences (chemistry mainly but also physics and maths). This was posted to Science in 2004:

Since publication of the AAAS 1989 report "Science for all Americans" (1), commissions, panels, and working groups have agreed that reform in science education should be founded on "scientific teaching,"  ... Given the widespread agreement, it may seem surprising that change has not progressed rapidly nor been driven by the research universities as a collective force. Instead, reform has been initiated by a few pioneers, while many other scientists have actively resisted changing their teaching. So why do outstanding scientists who demand rigorous proof for scientific assertions in their research continue to use and, indeed, defend on the basis of the intuition alone, teaching methods that are not the most effective?

Jo Handelsman, et al,  VOL 304 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org<http://www.sciencemag.org/>, pg 521

Given the strength of this entreaty it seems curious that reform has continued on the same slow course and that much of what was said in 2004 likely still applies in many areas in 2009. One insight into this apparent lack of progress in the area of chemical education is provided by Eric Scerri

... my aim is to concentrate on another aspect of research into chemical education that I and others believe to be harmful to the reputation of the field. I am referring to what can only be described as dubious and abstract theoretical issues revolving around the themes of constructivism, relativism and other philosophical -isms. I am referring in particular to the work of some chemical educators who call themselves constructivists ... I think that if one looks closely at the basic philosophical positions offered by some contemporary chemical constructivists one sees many radical themes that are not only open to serious questioning but can also be construed as being anti-scientific.

Eric Scerri, Journal of Chemical Education * Vol. 80 No. 5 468

So whilst there are numerous publications and continued advances in our understanding of chemical education there seems to be a fundamental blockage when it comes to actual application and benefit in actual classrooms.

In my own experience, I was involved in a project that introduced a problem-based learning module based upon the movie "Apollo 13" for teaching stoichiometry, moles, writing chemical equations and so on for 1st year chemistry. Despite positive learning evaluations and testimonials from students over a number of years it was condemned for essentially political reasons and dumped at the first opportunity and replaced by more didactic approaches that fail to engage students to the same extent.

Obviously, critical realism doesn't provide answers to such questions directly. However, I'm trying to use critical realism as a lens in which to gain further insight and, perhaps, find a more positive way forward.



Mark Selby, B.Sc (Hons) UNSW, PhD (Chemistry), UNSW
ph: 3138 2267 fax: 3138 1804
Lecturer, Physical & Chemical Sciences QUT, E413D (GP)

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to
earn one's living at it.
                        - Albert Einstein

CRICOS provider no. 00213J


From agent.redstone at yahoo.com  Thu May 21 12:02:01 2009
From: agent.redstone at yahoo.com (Fred Zaman)
Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 11:02:01 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Politics of the Soul: A Critical Realist Theory
Message-ID: <604100.76057.qm@web63602.mail.re1.yahoo.com>

?
Politics of the Soul: A Critical Realist Theory
-
Bryan,
-
I hope the following will clarify what I believe is the 
conceptual foundation of the disagreements consistently spawned 
by my attempts to contribute to critical realism, which 
disagreement in the past has been forcefully stated by several on 
this list. Here I speak with equal force in defense, but with no 
intent to offend. I hope only to enlarge the scope of critical 
realism, particularly as it pertains to political sociology where 
indeed I feel it will be most useful to humankind. In any event, 
whether it is accepted here or not, a CR approach to the 
?Politics of the Soul? motif will be the subterranean foundation 
of future articles I publish in political sociology. The Politics 
of the Soul?s philosophical connection to CR likely will not be 
stressed, however, because of considerable resistance to any such 
philosophizing of social science, which I have personally 
experienced in presentations given in social science conferences 
last year in Hawaii and Miami. In the immediate future I will 
employ CR concepts implicitly in publications, but not boldly 
promote their use by others. Perhaps that will come later, that 
is if my perennial critics (Hartwig et al.) relent in their 
uninformed criticism to virtually anything and everything I post 
on list.
-
With respect to your understanding that Bhaskar is seeking 
freedom from precisely the kinds of dichotomies (Left-Right, 
Liberal-Conservative, etc) that bedevil humankind, I agree that 
that is his objective; but in that objective I believe he 
nevertheless will fail so long as his Dialectic, in attending 
solely to humanity?s Pulse of Freedom, absents humanity?s Will to 
Power. The Will to Power and Pulse of Freedom I argue are the 
?yin-yang? of humanity?s true meta-Reality--one cannot be 
objectively considered independent of the other. The two, the 
light and darkness of humanity?s complete meta-Reality, make up a 
single whole that is both light and darkness?one simply does not 
exist without the other. Humanity?s yin, the Will to Power, 
cannot be philosophically transcended by its yang, the Pulse of 
Freedom, in an ultimate meta-Reality that is constituted by both. 
History clearly has shown this to be true, which IMO political 
sociology can do as well through the development of a Bhaskarian-
Nietzschean (light and darkness) ?Politics of the Soul.? The term 
soul here makes no reference to any supernatural concept of 
being. It refers only to the might, mind, and intentions--both of 
consciousness and (more importantly) the unconscious--of 
individuals as mortal beings, and collectives thereof.
--
The earlier ?Bhaskar and Nietzsche? postings, although not 
explicitly stated, point toward an ultimate Politics of the Soul 
in which Nietzsche?s ?Will to Power? and Bhaskar?s ?Pulse of 
Freedom? are the reverse (back side) and obverse (front side) 
sides of one and the same meta-Reality, which generally speaking 
in America today are the political Right and political Left 
(which perhaps is not always the case). In the Politics of the 
Soul, all phenomena of human nature both good and bad are 
theoretically grounded in a Bhaskarian-Nietzschean unification of 
the soul?s light and darkness. In this Politics of the Soul the 
suffix -kraft (plural -kr?fte) is German for strength, power, 
force; the power of muscle, words, ideas. The basic politically-
differentiated powers involved in the Politics of the Soul here 
introduced are:
-
?berkr?fte (?upper class powers? of the soul)--the synchronic 
emergent powers of an elitist master class politically manifested 
as the Will to Power of a collective ?Overman? acting behind the 
scenes.
-
unterkr?fte (?lower class powers? of the soul)--the synchronic 
emergent powers of a populist oppressed class politically 
manifested as the Pulse of Freedom of liberal democratic, 
populist movements.
-
Politically linked these two class-differentiated powers of the 
soul form a combined diachronic emergent power, in which the Will 
to Power of the ?berkr?fte (the soul?s upper class powers of 
darkness operating behind the scenes) endeavors to maintain the 
body politic positioned toward the Right while the Pulse of 
Freedom of the unterkr?fte (the soul?s lower class powers of 
light) endeavors to? shift the body politic Leftward.
-
nebenkr?fte (?middle class powers? of the soul)--underlaborer 
class of the Power Elite (here the soul?s ?berkr?fte) publicly 
(in the political light) defends the status quo against the 
opposed populist?s (the soul?s unterkr?fte) Pulse of Freedom, 
while at the same time facilitating behind the scenes (in the 
political darkness) the ?berkr?fte Will to Power.
-
The problem with Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom is that, taken alone, 
it abstains from addressing that totality of humanity?s political 
meta-Reality which includes Nietzsche?s Will to Power. 
Nietzsche?s Will to Power however, similarly abstains from 
addressing this same totality, which conversely includes 
Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom. However, both of these political 
abstentions, by Bhaskar and Nietzsche respectively, are 
themselves absented in the meta-Reality of a Politics of the Soul 
that, through a diachronic synthesis of synchronic ?emergent 
powers,? includes humanity?s meta-Realistic yin and yang?its Will 
to Power and opposed Pulse of Freedom.
-
According to this Politics of the Soul, grounded on the 
?materialism? of class differentiated ?synchronic emergent 
powers,? an ?emancipatory axiology? of the political Left vs. the 
political Right becomes a Bhaskarian ?Possibility of Naturalism? 
in sociology today. And thus formulated in critical realist 
terms, in absolute agreement with the substance of all discourse 
between Mervyn Hartwig and Roy Bhaskar thus far posted on the 
subject of Nietzsche: ?neo-conservatives are incarnations of the 
Nietzschean philosophy.?
-
With regard to Mervyn?s latest posting on this subject, however: 
the potential political implications of critical realism, however 
lengthy past discussion may have been on this, have yet to be 
addressed in any substantive way, simply because the yin 
(darkness) of the soul?s politics, humanity?s Will to Power, to 
date has been substantively absented by critical realist 
dialectic. Any and all ?techniques? suggested by Bhaskar?s meta-
Reality, insofar as they attempt to ?absent? the reality of 
humanity?s Will to Power, (IMO) is destined to fail because of an 
incomplete understanding of the fundamentals on which humanity?s 
meta-Reality necessarily are based. The ?explanatory critical 
theory? needed necessarily must include the Will to Power as a 
starting point. And indeed this is what the Politics of the Soul 
formulated above will take as its starting point.
-
Incidentally, the politically-differentiated powers defined in 
the Politics of the Soul here defined can be applied at many 
different levels in society, high and low. Critical Realism 
itself is one such example of the application of the Politics of 
the Soul to lower levels. The ?upper class powers? (power elite) 
of CR today--Roy Bhaskar, Margaret Archer, Andrew Collier, Tony 
Lawson, Alan Norrie and perhaps others (Critical Realism: 
Essential Readings)--compose the ?berkr?fte that are CR?s Will to 
Power (yin) today; the ?lower class powers? of CR?s ?populist 
oppressed?--such as myself for example--serving as agents of the 
Pulse of Freedom (yang) in CR itself, are then the unterkr?fte; 
and CR?s nebenkr?fte, which are ?middle class powers? that 
underlabor mightily for the discipline?s ?berkr?fte--Mervyn 
Hartwig clearly being a prominent example, largely defend the CR 
status quo (the scope and substance thereof) determined by the 
?berkr?fte. CR?s nebenkr?fte in its very nature opposes any Pulse 
of Freedom manifested by the unterkr?fte. There is no way to 
avoid the Politics of the Soul--as human being we are all thus 
engaged, at many different levels for many different purposes. 
The key to enhancing and strengthening the Pulse of Freedom, by 
whatever techniques IMO, lies in openly acknowledging and 
addressing not only meta-Reality?s yang (the soul?s Pulse of 
Freedom), but its yin (the soul?s opposed Will to Power) as well. 
The soul?s darkness and light, its yin-yang, are in essence 
everything. There is nothing that is not both at the same time. 
Surely there is no one in critical realism that will disagree on 
this point. And perhaps now is the time to expand critical 
realist efforts to address both, taken together as a whole. Only 
then, IMO, will critical realism become the actual force for 
change its adherents desire and hope to create.
-
Fred Zaman/Agent Redstone
?


--- On Fri, 5/15/09, Bryan Tarpley <bptarpley at gmail.com> wrote:


From: Bryan Tarpley <bptarpley at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List" <critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
Date: Friday, May 15, 2009, 8:35 AM


Fred,
While I agree with you that there is a kind of dialectic or feedback loop
that occurs between the Left and the Right, I think it might be a
misidentification to label the leftward shift of the body politic the Pulse
of Freedom.? It is my understanding that Bhaskar is seeking freedom from
precisely these kinds of dichotomies.? In other words, I think the Pulse of
Freedom would seek to _transcend_ the Left/Right dichotomy rather than to be
an ingredient for its perpetuation.? But I could be completely wrong!

In humility,
Bryan Tarpley


On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 8:39 AM, Fred Zaman <agent.redstone at yahoo.com>wrote:

> ?The Possibility of Naturalism? in political theory to be
> presented in a forthcoming ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers
> Materialism? (NEPM) will require an emergent powers
> materialism (both synchronic and diachronic) in which the
> political Left and political Right are sociologically both
> ?natural phenomena.? In this there is no ?marrying Bhaskar
> with the devil.? Mervyn?s statement (as his always are) is
> a complete mischaracterization of what I am proposing. NEPM
> is a theoretical unification in social science that shows
> how Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom and ?the devil?s?
> (Nietzsche?s) Will to Power both are a Possibility of
> Naturalism. Both are ?natural? phenomena of human nature
> and thus--according to Critical Realism--can be explained
> in naturalist terms. And just how both may be integrated
> into a single critical-realist Possibility of Naturalism,
> is indicated in the Nietzschean political structure below:
> -
> unterW?hler--political constituency of the oppressed
> (manifests an egalitarian Pulse of Freedom): the
> unterW?hler?s Pulse of Freedom endeavors to? shift the body
> politic Leftward.
> -
> ?berW?hler--the political constituency of an elitist master
> class (manifests the Will to Power of a collective
> Nietzschean overman): the ?berW?hler?s Will to Power
> endeavors to maintain the body politic positioned toward
> the Right.
> -
> ubenW?hler--the political constituency of master class
> underlaborers (they man or support the master class ?state
> apparatuses?): the ubenW?hler?s underlaboring publicly
> defends society?s status quo (against the unterW?hler?s
> Pulse of Freedom), while at the same time behind the scenes
> underlaboring in the service of the ?berW?hler?s Will to
> Power.
> -
> Based on this Nietzschean model of the ?historical
> materialism? of politically-differentiated ?emergent
> powers,? an emancipatory axiology of the political Left vs.
> the political Right becomes one such Possibility of
> Naturalism in the social sciences. And in NEPM thus
> formulated, in complete agreement with Mervyn and Roy on
> Nietzsche: ?The neo-conservatives [absolutely] are
> incarnations of the Nietzschean philosophy.? NEPM concurs
> with everything said below regarding Nietzschean
> philosophy, and thus absolutely entails no marriage of
> Bhaskar and the devil. Mervyn?s characterization of NEPM is
> a (possibly intentional) mischaracterization of a
> Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism.
> -
> More to follow, Agent Redstone
> --------------------------
>
>
> --- On Tue, 5/12/09, Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
> To: "'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'" <
> critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
> Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 11:38 AM
>
>
> Hi Fred/Agent Redstone,
>
> You have an unerring instinct for marrying Bhaskar with the devil.
> Bhaskar's
> whole later philosophy can be viewed, not as complementary to or capable of
> being merged with Nietzscheanism, but as a decisive rejoinder to it. I
> asked
> Bhaskar about this during my interviews for Bhaskar with Hartwig, The
> Formation of CR: A Personal Perspective (Routledge, forthcoming 2009). Not
> from any wish to enter into dialogue with you here but for the record on
> this important topic, I paste in below the current version of what
> transpired. NB: It is still subject to revision. The reference to Dominc
> Losurdo is: Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico. Biografia intellettuale e
> bilancio critico (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002). See the review essay
> by Jan Rehmann, Historical Materialism 15 (2) (2007): 173-93.
>
> Mervyn
>
> # MH: In From Science to Emancipation you explicitly link the question of
> what is to be done, and the necessary change in our conception of our
> selves, to
>
> "'the politics of disenchantment", the politics of Nietzsche and Weber and
> the politics of social democracy ? which has so profoundly influenced the
> politics of the Left. We need to produce a different conception of
> ourselves
> in the world. The revolution will be nothing less than this: the
> transformation of our understanding of ourselves and of the whole world in
> which we live, our situation in the cosmos.'
>
> It could be then that one of the ways forward at the level of philosophy is
> a closer engagement with Nietzsche. Of course, at one level, in terms of
> political implications, as in other ways, there could not be a greater
> contrast. In a definitive recent study, the Italian Hegelian scholar,
> Dominico Losurdo,? has shown pretty convincingly that, contrary to the
> fashionable view that he was above politics, Nietzsche was through and
> through a philosopher of the right, the great modern antagonist of
> Rousseau,
> Marx and generalised human emancipation. Thus Nietzsche?s consistent basic
> concern was to nip the modern revolutionary tradition in the bud, whereas
> yours has been to rejuvenate and enrich it. Nietzsche?s perspective is that
> of the unmediated domination of a revitalised master-class, yours is the
> transcendence of master?slavery in all its forms. Where Nietzsche
> thematises
> will to power and egoism unbridled by altruism, you thematise moral alethia
> and the pulse of freedom. Yet arguably, precisely because Nietzsche is such
> a great champion of the master-classes, he has much to teach us from an
> emancipatory point of view: the impossibility of founding a eudaimonian
> politics on resentment, for example, and the need to move beyond slavery
> and
> any kind of overmanliness as such, as well as diagnostic clues to the real
> basis of the current round of the ?imperialism of human rights?, which he
> exposes as a sham.
>
> RB: It is important to have an understanding and a good critique of
> Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism. The first thing I would like to say is that
> what has been called the hermeneutics of suspicion is extremely valuable
> and
> is an important part of critical realist emancipatory axiology, because
> what
> it draws attention to are precisely the heteronomous elements in human
> life:
> the power and efficacy of what has not been resolved. This links in to my
> second point, which is a critical one: that Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism is
> a philosophy based on the repression, denial and forgetting of what has not
> been included in the totality; it is a philosophy of split in which some
> values and some human beings are privileged over other human beings,
> issuing
> in a politics of split. The whole thrust of Nietzscheanism is to forget
> what
> you must forget, which of course in our world is that the masters exist in
> virtue of the slaves and their activity. Freud has shown that the strategy
> of forgetting is untenable. The conscious exists in virtue of the
> unconscious, you cannot just forget about the unconscious. What you have to
> do is redress the imbalance, the asymmetry, between the top component and
> the bottom component. If you forget about it, you are excluding it from the
> totality of your concerns and will pay the price of this omission. The
> strategy of forgetting is however invariably the position of masters, of
> course; it is what the neo-conservatives around Bush did: they forgot about
> the culture and traditions of Iraq, and the vibrant Iraqi human beings ?
> all
> became just part of the project.
>
> MH: The neo-conservatives are incarnations of the Nietzschean philosophy.
>
> RB: Absolutely. So the Achilles? heel of Nietzscheanism is that it draws
> attention to heteronomy, and then the impossible answer is forget about it
> ?
> do not bother about it, rise above it. Of course, this is the standpoint of
> radical split and master?slave society, it is very dualistic. So what we
> have to do is embed it in the structures of dialectical critical realism
> and
> meta-Reality, within a moving conceptual formation that will incorporate
> the
> repressed and resolve this aporia. What Nietzscheanism overlooks or
> neglects
> is not only that what has been forgotten, denied or repressed is actually
> part of a totality with, and bound eventually to be causally efficacious
> on,
> the unforgotten, affirmed part, but also ? and this is my third point ? the
> dialectics of co-presence, namely, that what is excluded is just the
> unrecognised or undeveloped part of yourself. Such exclusion is the basis
> of
> all oppositions according to the philosophy of meta-Reality. The person you
> are fighting with is just bringing out or developing aspects of yourself
> that you have not acknowledged. That is at the deepest level. Of course, at
> more superficial levels you can apply other modes of criticism and
> understanding, but at the end of the day that is what the repressed is. The
> repressed is what you yourself have not developed. And when you have
> developed it ? this is the thrust of Freud ? there is then no need to
> repress it at all because it will now be part of your moral economy in
> sublated or sublimated form. It is of course very difficult actually to
> achieve a society that incorporates all the slaves such that there are no
> longer any master?slave-type distinctions and oppressions, but that is the
> only position that is tenable. Sooner or later this process of sublating
> and
> radically incorporating will yield joy, you will experience those bits of
> yourself that you have left out as enjoyable and rewarding and wonder why
> you did not think about and acknowledge this before.
>
> MH: So in fundamental ways your philosophy could be viewed as a response to
> Nietzsche: if you think in terms of thesis, antithesis, synthesis you have
> something like Hegel/Marx, Nietzsche, Bhaskar. But I take it you did not
> consciously intend this; you do not engage with Nietzsche in detail, it is
> mostly implicit.
>
> RB: I am not sure whether I will have time to get round to it but of course
> it might be that this way of looking at my work is the best way, in which
> case I will have to make time. There is no doubt that Nietzsche together
> with Heidegger, who is a combination of Nietzsche and hermeneutics, are the
> most influential philosophers in the vogue part of the academy at any rate,
> because they are the thinkers the poststructuralists are mainly indebted
> to.
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu
> [mailto:critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Fred
> Zaman
> Sent: 12 May 2009 04:19
> To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
> Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
>
> A merger of Bhaskar and Nietzsche can result in an Nietzschean Emergent
> Powers Materialism (NEPM): NEPM then refers to the (historical) materialism
> of powers whose emergence is fundamentally Nietzschean in
> character--meaning
> the materialism of powers out of which emerges the ?will to power? of a
> Nietzschean Ubermensche or Overman. The following essay on American
> capitalism now in review provides an informative exemplar: America?s
> Nietzschean Power Elite: An ?berman Political Theory of Capitalism Can the
> collective exercise of Friedrich Nietzsche?s universal ?will to power? by
> capitalism?s elite upper class create ideological equivalents of his
> anti-democratic, amoral ?Overman?? In this essay a political theory of
> America?s ??berman,?
> which rethinks Nietzsche?s principle collectively in the terms of ?class
> war? in the United States, an elitist, avaricious ?will to power? engages
> class-differentiated, unconscious agents of capitalist political ideology
> in
> class warfare. ?berman Political Theory validates in American capitalism
> the
> Marxist concepts of ?class struggle? and historicist ?laws of motion.?
> Other
> Marxist principles however, ?proletarian revolution? and ?class
> consciousness? for example, are superseded by ?ideology,? ?interpellation,?
> and ?political unconscious? in Althusserian political theory. Expressing
> its
> fundamentally anti-democratic character throughout history by continually
> waging ?class war? on the underclasses, behind the scenes unconsciously,
> ??berman?s elitist ?berKlasse is the class-differentiated, collective,
> amoral ?will to power? of a Nietzschean capitalist class ruling America
> behind the scenes through society?s political unconscious. Critical Realism
> it seems can provide basic philosophical concepts for framing the
> investigation and theoretical explanation of Nietzsche?s universal ?Will to
> Power?
> principle, as it may be manifested in nature and by humankind socially,
> economically, and politically. And Nietzsche?s principle, conversely, may
> be
> able to do the same for CR--provide a unified philosophical framework for
> applying CR principles to the diversity of emergent powers observed in
> nature and society.
> A ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism,? in providing a materialist
> basis for Nietzsche?s Will to Power that is opposed in principle to
> Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom but nevertheless grounded on the same
> ?Possibility of Naturalism,? may be able to greatly increase the conceptual
> power of both ideas. Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom and Nietzsche?s Will to
> Power are complementary principles?one provides the background for
> explaining the other. In a comprehensive approach to the Possibility of
> Naturalism, Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom is very much the yin to the yang of
> Nietzsche?s Will to Power.Fred Zaman
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
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-- 
Bryan Tarpley
Stephen F. Austin State University
936.468.6112 | btarpley at sfasu.edu
_______________________________________________
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From bptarpley at gmail.com  Thu May 21 14:55:03 2009
From: bptarpley at gmail.com (Bryan Tarpley)
Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 15:55:03 -0500
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Politics of the Soul: A Critical Realist
	Theory
In-Reply-To: <604100.76057.qm@web63602.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
References: <604100.76057.qm@web63602.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <56b3b1f80905211355i3fb95706j1cc9fe710afdbb98@mail.gmail.com>

Fred,

I appreciate the time you have obviously invested in responding to me.
Because I am new to this list, I am hesitant to step foot into a
conversation that appears to have a history.  Setting my reluctance aside,
however, I'd like to take this opportunity to say something about the
conversation itself.  One of my areas of interest is in the ethics of
communication, and because of this, I find Bhaskar's insistence on the
importance of non-judmentalism very refreshing.  I think one of the
differences between a dialogue and a fight is the absence of ad hominem
attacks such as your claim that Hartwig's criticism of you is uninformed, or
Hartwig's claim that you have an unerring instinct for marrying Bhaskar with
the devil.  I'm sure both of you have your reasons for disagreeing, and
don't get me wrong, I enjoy academic spectacle as much as the next guy.  I
just think your modus operandi might by inconsistent with what Bhaskar is
preaching!

Since you have been presenting in places like Miami and Hawaii, I am
assuming you are on my side of the Atlantic, and as such you know that
awareness of CR in the States is rather poor.  In hopes of raising
awareness, I have been presenting at conferences where I explicitly mention
CR, and have started a blog ( http://thehopefulmidwife.blogspot.com ) where
I am currently processing through Bhaskar's _meta-Reality:  Volume 1_.  I
have also purchased the domain http://www.criticalrealism.net, where I'd
like to promote a network of CR bloggers.  If we've learned anything from
Obama's presidential campaign, it is that movements in this country gain
downhill momentum via the web.  Would you be willing to start a blog on this
topic?  Your detractors would likely be happy to keep you in line!  If so,
let me know -- I am alarmed by the dearth of online resources for CR.

To address your ideas, I wanted to reiterate that I agree with you that the
Left/Right are symbiotic, that to focus on one at the exclusion of the other
is unhealthy, and that a more complete picture arises when you see them as a
system.  I really like your (and Bhaskar's) claim that neo-conservatism is
the culmination of the Will to Power.  I only have two qualms with what you
have stated:

1.  While the Will to Power may be an accurate description for what
motivates the Right, the Pulse of Freedom is not the most accurate
descriptor for what naturally arises out of the Left.  Yes, Bhaskar is a
philosopher of the Left.  Yes, he has explicitly stated that one of his
goals is to address the hegemony the Right holds over the spiritual
dimension of human life by promoting it from the Left.  Critical Realism,
however, is a model specifically designed to understand TINA formations like
the Left/Right dichotomy.  From Bhaskar's FETW:  "This  results  in  its
wake,  when  what  is  split  off  (alienated),  supressed  or  excluded
is  nevertheless categorially  or axiologically  necessary,  in
denegation,  namely  the  expression  or affirmation of what is denied
(despite or even in its denial) in what I have called a  tina  compromise
form, and  thence  to  reflexive  inconsistency  and performative
contradiction. This chain of avidya secretes a veil or veils, which together
form  an  interlocking  web  or  meshwork  of  illusions. This  (irrealist)
web  (or ensemble)  holds  contemporary  thought  in  thrall,  generating
aporiai, contradictions, lacunae, conflicts, splits, anomalies, crises and
many other modes of  oppositionality within  it" (5).  In other words, CR is
a good model for understanding what you're describing (not sublimated by
it), and you might want to find different terminology for that which the
Left is emanating.  Perhaps some of you Marxists could help him out?

2.  This yin-yang formation you're describing appears to be at the ground
level of your ontology.  The ground level of Bhaskar's meta-Reality,
however, is non-dual -- it sustains dualistic illusions, but ultimately the
goal is to "expand the zone of non-duality in our lives," and thus transcend
something like the Left/Right dochotomy.

Thanks again for the engagement -- I hope you find what I've written
constructive.
Bryan



On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 1:02 PM, Fred Zaman <agent.redstone at yahoo.com>wrote:

>
> Politics of the Soul: A Critical Realist Theory
> -
> Bryan,
> -
> I hope the following will clarify what I believe is the
> conceptual foundation of the disagreements consistently spawned
> by my attempts to contribute to critical realism, which
> disagreement in the past has been forcefully stated by several on
> this list. Here I speak with equal force in defense, but with no
> intent to offend. I hope only to enlarge the scope of critical
> realism, particularly as it pertains to political sociology where
> indeed I feel it will be most useful to humankind. In any event,
> whether it is accepted here or not, a CR approach to the
> ?Politics of the Soul? motif will be the subterranean foundation
> of future articles I publish in political sociology. The Politics
> of the Soul?s philosophical connection to CR likely will not be
> stressed, however, because of considerable resistance to any such
> philosophizing of social science, which I have personally
> experienced in presentations given in social science conferences
> last year in Hawaii and Miami. In the immediate future I will
> employ CR concepts implicitly in publications, but not boldly
> promote their use by others. Perhaps that will come later, that
> is if my perennial critics (Hartwig et al.) relent in their
> uninformed criticism to virtually anything and everything I post
> on list.
> -
> With respect to your understanding that Bhaskar is seeking
> freedom from precisely the kinds of dichotomies (Left-Right,
> Liberal-Conservative, etc) that bedevil humankind, I agree that
> that is his objective; but in that objective I believe he
> nevertheless will fail so long as his Dialectic, in attending
> solely to humanity?s Pulse of Freedom, absents humanity?s Will to
> Power. The Will to Power and Pulse of Freedom I argue are the
> ?yin-yang? of humanity?s true meta-Reality--one cannot be
> objectively considered independent of the other. The two, the
> light and darkness of humanity?s complete meta-Reality, make up a
> single whole that is both light and darkness?one simply does not
> exist without the other. Humanity?s yin, the Will to Power,
> cannot be philosophically transcended by its yang, the Pulse of
> Freedom, in an ultimate meta-Reality that is constituted by both.
> History clearly has shown this to be true, which IMO political
> sociology can do as well through the development of a Bhaskarian-
> Nietzschean (light and darkness) ?Politics of the Soul.? The term
> soul here makes no reference to any supernatural concept of
> being. It refers only to the might, mind, and intentions--both of
> consciousness and (more importantly) the unconscious--of
> individuals as mortal beings, and collectives thereof.
> --
> The earlier ?Bhaskar and Nietzsche? postings, although not
> explicitly stated, point toward an ultimate Politics of the Soul
> in which Nietzsche?s ?Will to Power? and Bhaskar?s ?Pulse of
> Freedom? are the reverse (back side) and obverse (front side)
> sides of one and the same meta-Reality, which generally speaking
> in America today are the political Right and political Left
> (which perhaps is not always the case). In the Politics of the
> Soul, all phenomena of human nature both good and bad are
> theoretically grounded in a Bhaskarian-Nietzschean unification of
> the soul?s light and darkness. In this Politics of the Soul the
> suffix -kraft (plural -kr?fte) is German for strength, power,
> force; the power of muscle, words, ideas. The basic politically-
> differentiated powers involved in the Politics of the Soul here
> introduced are:
> -
> ?berkr?fte (?upper class powers? of the soul)--the synchronic
> emergent powers of an elitist master class politically manifested
> as the Will to Power of a collective ?Overman? acting behind the
> scenes.
> -
> unterkr?fte (?lower class powers? of the soul)--the synchronic
> emergent powers of a populist oppressed class politically
> manifested as the Pulse of Freedom of liberal democratic,
> populist movements.
> -
> Politically linked these two class-differentiated powers of the
> soul form a combined diachronic emergent power, in which the Will
> to Power of the ?berkr?fte (the soul?s upper class powers of
> darkness operating behind the scenes) endeavors to maintain the
> body politic positioned toward the Right while the Pulse of
> Freedom of the unterkr?fte (the soul?s lower class powers of
> light) endeavors to  shift the body politic Leftward.
> -
> nebenkr?fte (?middle class powers? of the soul)--underlaborer
> class of the Power Elite (here the soul?s ?berkr?fte) publicly
> (in the political light) defends the status quo against the
> opposed populist?s (the soul?s unterkr?fte) Pulse of Freedom,
> while at the same time facilitating behind the scenes (in the
> political darkness) the ?berkr?fte Will to Power.
> -
> The problem with Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom is that, taken alone,
> it abstains from addressing that totality of humanity?s political
> meta-Reality which includes Nietzsche?s Will to Power.
> Nietzsche?s Will to Power however, similarly abstains from
> addressing this same totality, which conversely includes
> Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom. However, both of these political
> abstentions, by Bhaskar and Nietzsche respectively, are
> themselves absented in the meta-Reality of a Politics of the Soul
> that, through a diachronic synthesis of synchronic ?emergent
> powers,? includes humanity?s meta-Realistic yin and yang?its Will
> to Power and opposed Pulse of Freedom.
> -
> According to this Politics of the Soul, grounded on the
> ?materialism? of class differentiated ?synchronic emergent
> powers,? an ?emancipatory axiology? of the political Left vs. the
> political Right becomes a Bhaskarian ?Possibility of Naturalism?
> in sociology today. And thus formulated in critical realist
> terms, in absolute agreement with the substance of all discourse
> between Mervyn Hartwig and Roy Bhaskar thus far posted on the
> subject of Nietzsche: ?neo-conservatives are incarnations of the
> Nietzschean philosophy.?
> -
> With regard to Mervyn?s latest posting on this subject, however:
> the potential political implications of critical realism, however
> lengthy past discussion may have been on this, have yet to be
> addressed in any substantive way, simply because the yin
> (darkness) of the soul?s politics, humanity?s Will to Power, to
> date has been substantively absented by critical realist
> dialectic. Any and all ?techniques? suggested by Bhaskar?s meta-
> Reality, insofar as they attempt to ?absent? the reality of
> humanity?s Will to Power, (IMO) is destined to fail because of an
> incomplete understanding of the fundamentals on which humanity?s
> meta-Reality necessarily are based. The ?explanatory critical
> theory? needed necessarily must include the Will to Power as a
> starting point. And indeed this is what the Politics of the Soul
> formulated above will take as its starting point.
> -
> Incidentally, the politically-differentiated powers defined in
> the Politics of the Soul here defined can be applied at many
> different levels in society, high and low. Critical Realism
> itself is one such example of the application of the Politics of
> the Soul to lower levels. The ?upper class powers? (power elite)
> of CR today--Roy Bhaskar, Margaret Archer, Andrew Collier, Tony
> Lawson, Alan Norrie and perhaps others (Critical Realism:
> Essential Readings)--compose the ?berkr?fte that are CR?s Will to
> Power (yin) today; the ?lower class powers? of CR?s ?populist
> oppressed?--such as myself for example--serving as agents of the
> Pulse of Freedom (yang) in CR itself, are then the unterkr?fte;
> and CR?s nebenkr?fte, which are ?middle class powers? that
> underlabor mightily for the discipline?s ?berkr?fte--Mervyn
> Hartwig clearly being a prominent example, largely defend the CR
> status quo (the scope and substance thereof) determined by the
> ?berkr?fte. CR?s nebenkr?fte in its very nature opposes any Pulse
> of Freedom manifested by the unterkr?fte. There is no way to
> avoid the Politics of the Soul--as human being we are all thus
> engaged, at many different levels for many different purposes.
> The key to enhancing and strengthening the Pulse of Freedom, by
> whatever techniques IMO, lies in openly acknowledging and
> addressing not only meta-Reality?s yang (the soul?s Pulse of
> Freedom), but its yin (the soul?s opposed Will to Power) as well.
> The soul?s darkness and light, its yin-yang, are in essence
> everything. There is nothing that is not both at the same time.
> Surely there is no one in critical realism that will disagree on
> this point. And perhaps now is the time to expand critical
> realist efforts to address both, taken together as a whole. Only
> then, IMO, will critical realism become the actual force for
> change its adherents desire and hope to create.
> -
> Fred Zaman/Agent Redstone
>
>
>
> --- On Fri, 5/15/09, Bryan Tarpley <bptarpley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> From: Bryan Tarpley <bptarpley at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
> To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List" <
> critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
> Date: Friday, May 15, 2009, 8:35 AM
>
>
> Fred,
> While I agree with you that there is a kind of dialectic or feedback loop
> that occurs between the Left and the Right, I think it might be a
> misidentification to label the leftward shift of the body politic the Pulse
> of Freedom.  It is my understanding that Bhaskar is seeking freedom from
> precisely these kinds of dichotomies.  In other words, I think the Pulse of
> Freedom would seek to _transcend_ the Left/Right dichotomy rather than to
> be
> an ingredient for its perpetuation.  But I could be completely wrong!
>
> In humility,
> Bryan Tarpley
>
>
> On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 8:39 AM, Fred Zaman <agent.redstone at yahoo.com
> >wrote:
>
> > ?The Possibility of Naturalism? in political theory to be
> > presented in a forthcoming ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers
> > Materialism? (NEPM) will require an emergent powers
> > materialism (both synchronic and diachronic) in which the
> > political Left and political Right are sociologically both
> > ?natural phenomena.? In this there is no ?marrying Bhaskar
> > with the devil.? Mervyn?s statement (as his always are) is
> > a complete mischaracterization of what I am proposing. NEPM
> > is a theoretical unification in social science that shows
> > how Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom and ?the devil?s?
> > (Nietzsche?s) Will to Power both are a Possibility of
> > Naturalism. Both are ?natural? phenomena of human nature
> > and thus--according to Critical Realism--can be explained
> > in naturalist terms. And just how both may be integrated
> > into a single critical-realist Possibility of Naturalism,
> > is indicated in the Nietzschean political structure below:
> > -
> > unterW?hler--political constituency of the oppressed
> > (manifests an egalitarian Pulse of Freedom): the
> > unterW?hler?s Pulse of Freedom endeavors to  shift the body
> > politic Leftward.
> > -
> > ?berW?hler--the political constituency of an elitist master
> > class (manifests the Will to Power of a collective
> > Nietzschean overman): the ?berW?hler?s Will to Power
> > endeavors to maintain the body politic positioned toward
> > the Right.
> > -
> > ubenW?hler--the political constituency of master class
> > underlaborers (they man or support the master class ?state
> > apparatuses?): the ubenW?hler?s underlaboring publicly
> > defends society?s status quo (against the unterW?hler?s
> > Pulse of Freedom), while at the same time behind the scenes
> > underlaboring in the service of the ?berW?hler?s Will to
> > Power.
> > -
> > Based on this Nietzschean model of the ?historical
> > materialism? of politically-differentiated ?emergent
> > powers,? an emancipatory axiology of the political Left vs.
> > the political Right becomes one such Possibility of
> > Naturalism in the social sciences. And in NEPM thus
> > formulated, in complete agreement with Mervyn and Roy on
> > Nietzsche: ?The neo-conservatives [absolutely] are
> > incarnations of the Nietzschean philosophy.? NEPM concurs
> > with everything said below regarding Nietzschean
> > philosophy, and thus absolutely entails no marriage of
> > Bhaskar and the devil. Mervyn?s characterization of NEPM is
> > a (possibly intentional) mischaracterization of a
> > Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism.
> > -
> > More to follow, Agent Redstone
> > --------------------------
> >
> >
> > --- On Tue, 5/12/09, Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk>
> > Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
> > To: "'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'" <
> > critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
> > Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 11:38 AM
> >
> >
> > Hi Fred/Agent Redstone,
> >
> > You have an unerring instinct for marrying Bhaskar with the devil.
> > Bhaskar's
> > whole later philosophy can be viewed, not as complementary to or capable
> of
> > being merged with Nietzscheanism, but as a decisive rejoinder to it. I
> > asked
> > Bhaskar about this during my interviews for Bhaskar with Hartwig, The
> > Formation of CR: A Personal Perspective (Routledge, forthcoming 2009).
> Not
> > from any wish to enter into dialogue with you here but for the record on
> > this important topic, I paste in below the current version of what
> > transpired. NB: It is still subject to revision. The reference to Dominc
> > Losurdo is: Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico. Biografia intellettuale
> e
> > bilancio critico (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002). See the review
> essay
> > by Jan Rehmann, Historical Materialism 15 (2) (2007): 173-93.
> >
> > Mervyn
> >
> > # MH: In From Science to Emancipation you explicitly link the question of
> > what is to be done, and the necessary change in our conception of our
> > selves, to
> >
> > "'the politics of disenchantment", the politics of Nietzsche and Weber
> and
> > the politics of social democracy ? which has so profoundly influenced the
> > politics of the Left. We need to produce a different conception of
> > ourselves
> > in the world. The revolution will be nothing less than this: the
> > transformation of our understanding of ourselves and of the whole world
> in
> > which we live, our situation in the cosmos.'
> >
> > It could be then that one of the ways forward at the level of philosophy
> is
> > a closer engagement with Nietzsche. Of course, at one level, in terms of
> > political implications, as in other ways, there could not be a greater
> > contrast. In a definitive recent study, the Italian Hegelian scholar,
> > Dominico Losurdo,  has shown pretty convincingly that, contrary to the
> > fashionable view that he was above politics, Nietzsche was through and
> > through a philosopher of the right, the great modern antagonist of
> > Rousseau,
> > Marx and generalised human emancipation. Thus Nietzsche?s consistent
> basic
> > concern was to nip the modern revolutionary tradition in the bud, whereas
> > yours has been to rejuvenate and enrich it. Nietzsche?s perspective is
> that
> > of the unmediated domination of a revitalised master-class, yours is the
> > transcendence of master?slavery in all its forms. Where Nietzsche
> > thematises
> > will to power and egoism unbridled by altruism, you thematise moral
> alethia
> > and the pulse of freedom. Yet arguably, precisely because Nietzsche is
> such
> > a great champion of the master-classes, he has much to teach us from an
> > emancipatory point of view: the impossibility of founding a eudaimonian
> > politics on resentment, for example, and the need to move beyond slavery
> > and
> > any kind of overmanliness as such, as well as diagnostic clues to the
> real
> > basis of the current round of the ?imperialism of human rights?, which he
> > exposes as a sham.
> >
> > RB: It is important to have an understanding and a good critique of
> > Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism. The first thing I would like to say is that
> > what has been called the hermeneutics of suspicion is extremely valuable
> > and
> > is an important part of critical realist emancipatory axiology, because
> > what
> > it draws attention to are precisely the heteronomous elements in human
> > life:
> > the power and efficacy of what has not been resolved. This links in to my
> > second point, which is a critical one: that Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism
> is
> > a philosophy based on the repression, denial and forgetting of what has
> not
> > been included in the totality; it is a philosophy of split in which some
> > values and some human beings are privileged over other human beings,
> > issuing
> > in a politics of split. The whole thrust of Nietzscheanism is to forget
> > what
> > you must forget, which of course in our world is that the masters exist
> in
> > virtue of the slaves and their activity. Freud has shown that the
> strategy
> > of forgetting is untenable. The conscious exists in virtue of the
> > unconscious, you cannot just forget about the unconscious. What you have
> to
> > do is redress the imbalance, the asymmetry, between the top component and
> > the bottom component. If you forget about it, you are excluding it from
> the
> > totality of your concerns and will pay the price of this omission. The
> > strategy of forgetting is however invariably the position of masters, of
> > course; it is what the neo-conservatives around Bush did: they forgot
> about
> > the culture and traditions of Iraq, and the vibrant Iraqi human beings ?
> > all
> > became just part of the project.
> >
> > MH: The neo-conservatives are incarnations of the Nietzschean philosophy.
> >
> > RB: Absolutely. So the Achilles? heel of Nietzscheanism is that it draws
> > attention to heteronomy, and then the impossible answer is forget about
> it
> > ?
> > do not bother about it, rise above it. Of course, this is the standpoint
> of
> > radical split and master?slave society, it is very dualistic. So what we
> > have to do is embed it in the structures of dialectical critical realism
> > and
> > meta-Reality, within a moving conceptual formation that will incorporate
> > the
> > repressed and resolve this aporia. What Nietzscheanism overlooks or
> > neglects
> > is not only that what has been forgotten, denied or repressed is actually
> > part of a totality with, and bound eventually to be causally efficacious
> > on,
> > the unforgotten, affirmed part, but also ? and this is my third point ?
> the
> > dialectics of co-presence, namely, that what is excluded is just the
> > unrecognised or undeveloped part of yourself. Such exclusion is the basis
> > of
> > all oppositions according to the philosophy of meta-Reality. The person
> you
> > are fighting with is just bringing out or developing aspects of yourself
> > that you have not acknowledged. That is at the deepest level. Of course,
> at
> > more superficial levels you can apply other modes of criticism and
> > understanding, but at the end of the day that is what the repressed is.
> The
> > repressed is what you yourself have not developed. And when you have
> > developed it ? this is the thrust of Freud ? there is then no need to
> > repress it at all because it will now be part of your moral economy in
> > sublated or sublimated form. It is of course very difficult actually to
> > achieve a society that incorporates all the slaves such that there are no
> > longer any master?slave-type distinctions and oppressions, but that is
> the
> > only position that is tenable. Sooner or later this process of sublating
> > and
> > radically incorporating will yield joy, you will experience those bits of
> > yourself that you have left out as enjoyable and rewarding and wonder why
> > you did not think about and acknowledge this before.
> >
> > MH: So in fundamental ways your philosophy could be viewed as a response
> to
> > Nietzsche: if you think in terms of thesis, antithesis, synthesis you
> have
> > something like Hegel/Marx, Nietzsche, Bhaskar. But I take it you did not
> > consciously intend this; you do not engage with Nietzsche in detail, it
> is
> > mostly implicit.
> >
> > RB: I am not sure whether I will have time to get round to it but of
> course
> > it might be that this way of looking at my work is the best way, in which
> > case I will have to make time. There is no doubt that Nietzsche together
> > with Heidegger, who is a combination of Nietzsche and hermeneutics, are
> the
> > most influential philosophers in the vogue part of the academy at any
> rate,
> > because they are the thinkers the poststructuralists are mainly indebted
> > to.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu
> > [mailto:critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Fred
> > Zaman
> > Sent: 12 May 2009 04:19
> > To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
> > Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
> >
> > A merger of Bhaskar and Nietzsche can result in an Nietzschean Emergent
> > Powers Materialism (NEPM): NEPM then refers to the (historical)
> materialism
> > of powers whose emergence is fundamentally Nietzschean in
> > character--meaning
> > the materialism of powers out of which emerges the ?will to power? of a
> > Nietzschean Ubermensche or Overman. The following essay on American
> > capitalism now in review provides an informative exemplar: America?s
> > Nietzschean Power Elite: An ?berman Political Theory of Capitalism Can
> the
> > collective exercise of Friedrich Nietzsche?s universal ?will to power? by
> > capitalism?s elite upper class create ideological equivalents of his
> > anti-democratic, amoral ?Overman?? In this essay a political theory of
> > America?s ??berman,?
> > which rethinks Nietzsche?s principle collectively in the terms of ?class
> > war? in the United States, an elitist, avaricious ?will to power? engages
> > class-differentiated, unconscious agents of capitalist political ideology
> > in
> > class warfare. ?berman Political Theory validates in American capitalism
> > the
> > Marxist concepts of ?class struggle? and historicist ?laws of motion.?
> > Other
> > Marxist principles however, ?proletarian revolution? and ?class
> > consciousness? for example, are superseded by ?ideology,?
> ?interpellation,?
> > and ?political unconscious? in Althusserian political theory. Expressing
> > its
> > fundamentally anti-democratic character throughout history by continually
> > waging ?class war? on the underclasses, behind the scenes unconsciously,
> > ??berman?s elitist ?berKlasse is the class-differentiated, collective,
> > amoral ?will to power? of a Nietzschean capitalist class ruling America
> > behind the scenes through society?s political unconscious. Critical
> Realism
> > it seems can provide basic philosophical concepts for framing the
> > investigation and theoretical explanation of Nietzsche?s universal ?Will
> to
> > Power?
> > principle, as it may be manifested in nature and by humankind socially,
> > economically, and politically. And Nietzsche?s principle, conversely, may
> > be
> > able to do the same for CR--provide a unified philosophical framework for
> > applying CR principles to the diversity of emergent powers observed in
> > nature and society.
> > A ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism,? in providing a materialist
> > basis for Nietzsche?s Will to Power that is opposed in principle to
> > Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom but nevertheless grounded on the same
> > ?Possibility of Naturalism,? may be able to greatly increase the
> conceptual
> > power of both ideas. Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom and Nietzsche?s Will to
> > Power are complementary principles?one provides the background for
> > explaining the other. In a comprehensive approach to the Possibility of
> > Naturalism, Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom is very much the yin to the yang
> of
> > Nietzsche?s Will to Power.Fred Zaman
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Critical-Realism mailing list
> > Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Critical-Realism mailing list
> > Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Critical-Realism mailing list
> > Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Bryan Tarpley
> Stephen F. Austin State University
> 936.468.6112 | btarpley at sfasu.edu
> _______________________________________________
> Critical-Realism mailing list
> Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Critical-Realism mailing list
> Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>



-- 
Bryan Tarpley
Stephen F. Austin State University
936.468.6112 | btarpley at sfasu.edu

From agent.redstone at yahoo.com  Sat May 23 15:47:14 2009
From: agent.redstone at yahoo.com (Fred Zaman)
Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 14:47:14 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Politics of the Soul: A Critical Realist
	Theory
Message-ID: <708810.42175.qm@web63607.mail.re1.yahoo.com>

Bryan,
-
Many thanks. Your comments are very constructive. I have 
attempted to address your qualms about shortcomings in previous 
posts in the below ?Critical Realist Axiology in Political 
Sociology.? ?CRAPS? in short :-)
-
The idea of a CR blog expressly for political sociology is 
certainly appealing, but at present the time I would have to keep 
it running probably would limit my weekly postings to a sum total 
of about 1000 (hopefully carefully chosen) words. I don?t have 
the temperament to engage in debate via a long running train of 
short, off the cuff postings pro and con; because I view my 
postings as much an opportunity to learn something myself as to 
inform others, which requires that my replies think things 
through.
-
Also, this blog, although it would promote a CR-framed political 
sociology that cannot avoid being highly political in its 
implications, nonetheless must be fundamentally academic in 
character and tone; and thus not allowed to become explicitly a 
platform for political activists of either the Left or Right. 
Because of my work, and my temperament as well, I must be able to 
block anyone attempting to turn the blog into a political 
activist platform. It certainly can and should (IMO) become an 
informal academic source book for CR explanatory theories of the 
political mechanisms employed by both Left and Right activists, 
consciously to some extent but largely by the political 
unconscious; but at the same time it cannot be allowed to become 
a direct public vehicle for such activism. Let other blogs 
fulfill this objective.
-
Bryan, is such possible on your new CR internet domain? Is my 
view of? a CR blog on political sociology consistent with your 
vision of the purposes of your internet domain? I view this 
prospect with trepidation, but the cause certainly is just.
-
Fred
-
PS. I live in Utah, that reddest of red states in the US; and 
thus am I a political outcast here, which does not bother me in 
the least however.
-
-
-----------------------------------------------------------
Critical Realist Axiology in Political Sociology:
?A Shotgun Marriage of Bhaskar and Nietzsche?
-
Critical Realist Axiology in Political Sociology is a political 
theory of value, agency and the Nietzschean ?Will to Power.? It 
is a study of power grounded in personality, social structure, 
and politics. It in a sense is a marriage of Bhaskar?s Pulse of 
Freedom and Nietzsche?s Will to Power through a dynamic triad of 
continually emerging, synchronic political powers called the 
??berkr?fte,? ?unterkr?fte,? and ?nebenkr?fte?:
-
?berkr?fte are a coercive, elitist ?Will to Power? possessed by 
and supporting an oppressive upper class aka power elite. In 
critical realist terms, ?berkr?fte are the ?synchronic emergent 
powers? of a Nietzschean master class qua collective Overman 
manifesting its ?Will to Power? coercively behind the scenes.
-
Unterkr?fte are the political powers of an egalitarian, populist 
?Pulse of Freedom? possessed by and supporting an oppressed lower 
class. In critical realist terms, unterkr?fte are the synchronic 
emergent powers of egalitarian democratic movements (whether they 
are explicitly manifested or exist unconsciously as political 
undercurrents). The unterkr?fte Pulse of Freedom in its essence 
is a political dialectic that absents the ?constraints on the 
absenting of absences? referenced below:
-
?Dialectic as the Pulse of Freedom...Dialectic is the absenting 
of constraints on the absenting of absences (ills, and causally 
lower-order constraints) and, since constraints, negatively 
generalized, are just the absence of freedom, dialectic is 
equally the axiology of freedom, the implications of the positive 
generalization of which I have only just begun to tap. Dialectic 
is the yearning for freedom and the transformative negation of 
constraints on it?The strength of its presence is the measure of 
the pulse of freedom -- of its health, or transformative power.? 
(Bhaskar, in Dialectic 1993: 378)
-
Nebenkr?fte are then the political powers of ?popular wisdom,? an 
Aristotelian ?phronesis? that refers to the kind of tacit wisdom 
acquired from engaging in practical action (notably in the 
governance of states or households), possessed by a middle class 
of executives, managers and supervisors. In critical realist 
terms, nebenkr?fte are the synchronic emergent powers of a middle 
class that underlabor in support of the ?berkr?fte?s coercive 
Will to Power; which thus at the same time oppose behind the 
scenes, in the dark politically to the extent possible, the 
unterkr?fte?s egalitarian Pulse of Freedom.
-
Politically linked through the middle class nebenkr?fte, the 
class-differentiated, synchronic powers of the upper class 
?berkr?fte and lower class unterkr?fte collectively form a 
combined diachronic emergent power, in which the Will to Power of 
the ?berkr?fte (elitist upper class powers) endeavors to maintain 
the body politic positioned toward the political Right while the 
Pulse of Freedom of the unterkr?fte (populist lower class powers) 
endeavors to shift the body politic toward the Left.
-
Bhaskar, in his formulation of dialectic as the Pulse of Freedom 
seeks freedom from precisely the kinds of dichotomies (Left-
Right, Liberal-Conservative, etc) that have always bedeviled 
humankind I agree. But as he defines it above, the Pulse of 
Freedom is more general than that because the dialectic thereof 
can be employed to absent constraints by anyone endeavoring to 
promote whatever political ideology. Although perhaps not 
accepted by Bhaskar, this is their version of the Pulse of 
Freedom, as a dialectic which absents the constraints they 
experience--which version still conforms to the general 
definition given by Bhaskar.
-
In the here described ?Critical Realist Axiology in Political 
Sociology,? the Nietzschean Will to Power and Bhaskarian Pulse of 
Freedom are the ?yin-yang? of humanity?s overreaching meta-
Reality: one cannot be objectively considered (i.e. without 
ideological pretensions, liberal or conservative) independent of 
the other. The two together, the darkness (the Will to Power) and 
light (the Pulse of Freedom) of humanity?s meta-Reality, make up 
a single whole that is both darkness and light intertwined?one 
does not exist without the other. History clearly has shown this 
to be true. Bhaskar?s seeming intention that humanity?s yang (its 
Pulse of Freedom) ultimately will overcome its yin (the Will to 
Power) IMO will never occur?the Light of the former in principle 
will never extinguish the Darkness of the latter. The only 
possibility is a dynamic balance between the two that will be 
satisfactory to most, intertwined in an ultimate meta-Reality 
that is both Light and Darkness. This is IMO the only objective 
that critical realism?s emancipatory critique can obtain, 
realistically; and it is the only one I am willing to pursue in 
both theory and practice.
-
Much of what critical realism offers, as a philosophical 
framework for emancipatory critiques, can be employed in a 
Critical Realist Axiology in/for Political Sociology, but the 
concepts thereof must be reformulated in terms most clearly 
relevant to today?s political realities (of which Nietzsche?s 
Will to Power certainly is one, as are Machiavellian political 
concepts as well). Critical realism?s arcane philosophical 
discourses (on Kant et al.) must be shelved in socially important 
applications. Otherwise the social sciences will neither 
understand nor accept as real the potential of critical realism 
as an explanatory framework for their subject matter.
?
?

--- On Thu, 5/21/09, Bryan Tarpley <bptarpley at gmail.com> wrote:


From: Bryan Tarpley <bptarpley at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Politics of the Soul: A Critical Realist Theory
To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List" <critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
Date: Thursday, May 21, 2009, 2:55 PM


Fred,

I appreciate the time you have obviously invested in responding to me.
Because I am new to this list, I am hesitant to step foot into a
conversation that appears to have a history.? Setting my reluctance aside,
however, I'd like to take this opportunity to say something about the
conversation itself.? One of my areas of interest is in the ethics of
communication, and because of this, I find Bhaskar's insistence on the
importance of non-judmentalism very refreshing.? I think one of the
differences between a dialogue and a fight is the absence of ad hominem
attacks such as your claim that Hartwig's criticism of you is uninformed, or
Hartwig's claim that you have an unerring instinct for marrying Bhaskar with
the devil.? I'm sure both of you have your reasons for disagreeing, and
don't get me wrong, I enjoy academic spectacle as much as the next guy.? I
just think your modus operandi might by inconsistent with what Bhaskar is
preaching!

Since you have been presenting in places like Miami and Hawaii, I am
assuming you are on my side of the Atlantic, and as such you know that
awareness of CR in the States is rather poor.? In hopes of raising
awareness, I have been presenting at conferences where I explicitly mention
CR, and have started a blog ( http://thehopefulmidwife.blogspot.com ) where
I am currently processing through Bhaskar's _meta-Reality:? Volume 1_.? I
have also purchased the domain http://www.criticalrealism.net, where I'd
like to promote a network of CR bloggers.? If we've learned anything from
Obama's presidential campaign, it is that movements in this country gain
downhill momentum via the web.? Would you be willing to start a blog on this
topic?? Your detractors would likely be happy to keep you in line!? If so,
let me know -- I am alarmed by the dearth of online resources for CR.

To address your ideas, I wanted to reiterate that I agree with you that the
Left/Right are symbiotic, that to focus on one at the exclusion of the other
is unhealthy, and that a more complete picture arises when you see them as a
system.? I really like your (and Bhaskar's) claim that neo-conservatism is
the culmination of the Will to Power.? I only have two qualms with what you
have stated:

1.? While the Will to Power may be an accurate description for what
motivates the Right, the Pulse of Freedom is not the most accurate
descriptor for what naturally arises out of the Left.? Yes, Bhaskar is a
philosopher of the Left.? Yes, he has explicitly stated that one of his
goals is to address the hegemony the Right holds over the spiritual
dimension of human life by promoting it from the Left.? Critical Realism,
however, is a model specifically designed to understand TINA formations like
the Left/Right dichotomy.? From Bhaskar's FETW:? "This? results? in? its
wake,? when? what? is? split? off? (alienated),? supressed? or? excluded
is? nevertheless categorially? or axiologically? necessary,? in
denegation,? namely? the? expression? or affirmation of what is denied
(despite or even in its denial) in what I have called a? tina? compromise
form, and? thence? to? reflexive? inconsistency? and performative
contradiction. This chain of avidya secretes a veil or veils, which together
form? an? interlocking? web? or? meshwork? of? illusions. This? (irrealist)
web? (or ensemble)? holds? contemporary? thought? in? thrall,? generating
aporiai, contradictions, lacunae, conflicts, splits, anomalies, crises and
many other modes of? oppositionality within? it" (5).? In other words, CR is
a good model for understanding what you're describing (not sublimated by
it), and you might want to find different terminology for that which the
Left is emanating.? Perhaps some of you Marxists could help him out?

2.? This yin-yang formation you're describing appears to be at the ground
level of your ontology.? The ground level of Bhaskar's meta-Reality,
however, is non-dual -- it sustains dualistic illusions, but ultimately the
goal is to "expand the zone of non-duality in our lives," and thus transcend
something like the Left/Right dochotomy.

Thanks again for the engagement -- I hope you find what I've written
constructive.
Bryan



On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 1:02 PM, Fred Zaman <agent.redstone at yahoo.com>wrote:

>
> Politics of the Soul: A Critical Realist Theory
> -
> Bryan,
> -
> I hope the following will clarify what I believe is the
> conceptual foundation of the disagreements consistently spawned
> by my attempts to contribute to critical realism, which
> disagreement in the past has been forcefully stated by several on
> this list. Here I speak with equal force in defense, but with no
> intent to offend. I hope only to enlarge the scope of critical
> realism, particularly as it pertains to political sociology where
> indeed I feel it will be most useful to humankind. In any event,
> whether it is accepted here or not, a CR approach to the
> ?Politics of the Soul? motif will be the subterranean foundation
> of future articles I publish in political sociology. The Politics
> of the Soul?s philosophical connection to CR likely will not be
> stressed, however, because of considerable resistance to any such
> philosophizing of social science, which I have personally
> experienced in presentations given in social science conferences
> last year in Hawaii and Miami. In the immediate future I will
> employ CR concepts implicitly in publications, but not boldly
> promote their use by others. Perhaps that will come later, that
> is if my perennial critics (Hartwig et al.) relent in their
> uninformed criticism to virtually anything and everything I post
> on list.
> -
> With respect to your understanding that Bhaskar is seeking
> freedom from precisely the kinds of dichotomies (Left-Right,
> Liberal-Conservative, etc) that bedevil humankind, I agree that
> that is his objective; but in that objective I believe he
> nevertheless will fail so long as his Dialectic, in attending
> solely to humanity?s Pulse of Freedom, absents humanity?s Will to
> Power. The Will to Power and Pulse of Freedom I argue are the
> ?yin-yang? of humanity?s true meta-Reality--one cannot be
> objectively considered independent of the other. The two, the
> light and darkness of humanity?s complete meta-Reality, make up a
> single whole that is both light and darkness?one simply does not
> exist without the other. Humanity?s yin, the Will to Power,
> cannot be philosophically transcended by its yang, the Pulse of
> Freedom, in an ultimate meta-Reality that is constituted by both.
> History clearly has shown this to be true, which IMO political
> sociology can do as well through the development of a Bhaskarian-
> Nietzschean (light and darkness) ?Politics of the Soul.? The term
> soul here makes no reference to any supernatural concept of
> being. It refers only to the might, mind, and intentions--both of
> consciousness and (more importantly) the unconscious--of
> individuals as mortal beings, and collectives thereof.
> --
> The earlier ?Bhaskar and Nietzsche? postings, although not
> explicitly stated, point toward an ultimate Politics of the Soul
> in which Nietzsche?s ?Will to Power? and Bhaskar?s ?Pulse of
> Freedom? are the reverse (back side) and obverse (front side)
> sides of one and the same meta-Reality, which generally speaking
> in America today are the political Right and political Left
> (which perhaps is not always the case). In the Politics of the
> Soul, all phenomena of human nature both good and bad are
> theoretically grounded in a Bhaskarian-Nietzschean unification of
> the soul?s light and darkness. In this Politics of the Soul the
> suffix -kraft (plural -kr?fte) is German for strength, power,
> force; the power of muscle, words, ideas. The basic politically-
> differentiated powers involved in the Politics of the Soul here
> introduced are:
> -
> ?berkr?fte (?upper class powers? of the soul)--the synchronic
> emergent powers of an elitist master class politically manifested
> as the Will to Power of a collective ?Overman? acting behind the
> scenes.
> -
> unterkr?fte (?lower class powers? of the soul)--the synchronic
> emergent powers of a populist oppressed class politically
> manifested as the Pulse of Freedom of liberal democratic,
> populist movements.
> -
> Politically linked these two class-differentiated powers of the
> soul form a combined diachronic emergent power, in which the Will
> to Power of the ?berkr?fte (the soul?s upper class powers of
> darkness operating behind the scenes) endeavors to maintain the
> body politic positioned toward the Right while the Pulse of
> Freedom of the unterkr?fte (the soul?s lower class powers of
> light) endeavors to? shift the body politic Leftward.
> -
> nebenkr?fte (?middle class powers? of the soul)--underlaborer
> class of the Power Elite (here the soul?s ?berkr?fte) publicly
> (in the political light) defends the status quo against the
> opposed populist?s (the soul?s unterkr?fte) Pulse of Freedom,
> while at the same time facilitating behind the scenes (in the
> political darkness) the ?berkr?fte Will to Power.
> -
> The problem with Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom is that, taken alone,
> it abstains from addressing that totality of humanity?s political
> meta-Reality which includes Nietzsche?s Will to Power.
> Nietzsche?s Will to Power however, similarly abstains from
> addressing this same totality, which conversely includes
> Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom. However, both of these political
> abstentions, by Bhaskar and Nietzsche respectively, are
> themselves absented in the meta-Reality of a Politics of the Soul
> that, through a diachronic synthesis of synchronic ?emergent
> powers,? includes humanity?s meta-Realistic yin and yang?its Will
> to Power and opposed Pulse of Freedom.
> -
> According to this Politics of the Soul, grounded on the
> ?materialism? of class differentiated ?synchronic emergent
> powers,? an ?emancipatory axiology? of the political Left vs. the
> political Right becomes a Bhaskarian ?Possibility of Naturalism?
> in sociology today. And thus formulated in critical realist
> terms, in absolute agreement with the substance of all discourse
> between Mervyn Hartwig and Roy Bhaskar thus far posted on the
> subject of Nietzsche: ?neo-conservatives are incarnations of the
> Nietzschean philosophy.?
> -
> With regard to Mervyn?s latest posting on this subject, however:
> the potential political implications of critical realism, however
> lengthy past discussion may have been on this, have yet to be
> addressed in any substantive way, simply because the yin
> (darkness) of the soul?s politics, humanity?s Will to Power, to
> date has been substantively absented by critical realist
> dialectic. Any and all ?techniques? suggested by Bhaskar?s meta-
> Reality, insofar as they attempt to ?absent? the reality of
> humanity?s Will to Power, (IMO) is destined to fail because of an
> incomplete understanding of the fundamentals on which humanity?s
> meta-Reality necessarily are based. The ?explanatory critical
> theory? needed necessarily must include the Will to Power as a
> starting point. And indeed this is what the Politics of the Soul
> formulated above will take as its starting point.
> -
> Incidentally, the politically-differentiated powers defined in
> the Politics of the Soul here defined can be applied at many
> different levels in society, high and low. Critical Realism
> itself is one such example of the application of the Politics of
> the Soul to lower levels. The ?upper class powers? (power elite)
> of CR today--Roy Bhaskar, Margaret Archer, Andrew Collier, Tony
> Lawson, Alan Norrie and perhaps others (Critical Realism:
> Essential Readings)--compose the ?berkr?fte that are CR?s Will to
> Power (yin) today; the ?lower class powers? of CR?s ?populist
> oppressed?--such as myself for example--serving as agents of the
> Pulse of Freedom (yang) in CR itself, are then the unterkr?fte;
> and CR?s nebenkr?fte, which are ?middle class powers? that
> underlabor mightily for the discipline?s ?berkr?fte--Mervyn
> Hartwig clearly being a prominent example, largely defend the CR
> status quo (the scope and substance thereof) determined by the
> ?berkr?fte. CR?s nebenkr?fte in its very nature opposes any Pulse
> of Freedom manifested by the unterkr?fte. There is no way to
> avoid the Politics of the Soul--as human being we are all thus
> engaged, at many different levels for many different purposes.
> The key to enhancing and strengthening the Pulse of Freedom, by
> whatever techniques IMO, lies in openly acknowledging and
> addressing not only meta-Reality?s yang (the soul?s Pulse of
> Freedom), but its yin (the soul?s opposed Will to Power) as well.
> The soul?s darkness and light, its yin-yang, are in essence
> everything. There is nothing that is not both at the same time.
> Surely there is no one in critical realism that will disagree on
> this point. And perhaps now is the time to expand critical
> realist efforts to address both, taken together as a whole. Only
> then, IMO, will critical realism become the actual force for
> change its adherents desire and hope to create.
> -
> Fred Zaman/Agent Redstone
>
>
>
> --- On Fri, 5/15/09, Bryan Tarpley <bptarpley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> From: Bryan Tarpley <bptarpley at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
> To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List" <
> critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
> Date: Friday, May 15, 2009, 8:35 AM
>
>
> Fred,
> While I agree with you that there is a kind of dialectic or feedback loop
> that occurs between the Left and the Right, I think it might be a
> misidentification to label the leftward shift of the body politic the Pulse
> of Freedom.? It is my understanding that Bhaskar is seeking freedom from
> precisely these kinds of dichotomies.? In other words, I think the Pulse of
> Freedom would seek to _transcend_ the Left/Right dichotomy rather than to
> be
> an ingredient for its perpetuation.? But I could be completely wrong!
>
> In humility,
> Bryan Tarpley
>
>
> On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 8:39 AM, Fred Zaman <agent.redstone at yahoo.com
> >wrote:
>
> > ?The Possibility of Naturalism? in political theory to be
> > presented in a forthcoming ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers
> > Materialism? (NEPM) will require an emergent powers
> > materialism (both synchronic and diachronic) in which the
> > political Left and political Right are sociologically both
> > ?natural phenomena.? In this there is no ?marrying Bhaskar
> > with the devil.? Mervyn?s statement (as his always are) is
> > a complete mischaracterization of what I am proposing. NEPM
> > is a theoretical unification in social science that shows
> > how Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom and ?the devil?s?
> > (Nietzsche?s) Will to Power both are a Possibility of
> > Naturalism. Both are ?natural? phenomena of human nature
> > and thus--according to Critical Realism--can be explained
> > in naturalist terms. And just how both may be integrated
> > into a single critical-realist Possibility of Naturalism,
> > is indicated in the Nietzschean political structure below:
> > -
> > unterW?hler--political constituency of the oppressed
> > (manifests an egalitarian Pulse of Freedom): the
> > unterW?hler?s Pulse of Freedom endeavors to? shift the body
> > politic Leftward.
> > -
> > ?berW?hler--the political constituency of an elitist master
> > class (manifests the Will to Power of a collective
> > Nietzschean overman): the ?berW?hler?s Will to Power
> > endeavors to maintain the body politic positioned toward
> > the Right.
> > -
> > ubenW?hler--the political constituency of master class
> > underlaborers (they man or support the master class ?state
> > apparatuses?): the ubenW?hler?s underlaboring publicly
> > defends society?s status quo (against the unterW?hler?s
> > Pulse of Freedom), while at the same time behind the scenes
> > underlaboring in the service of the ?berW?hler?s Will to
> > Power.
> > -
> > Based on this Nietzschean model of the ?historical
> > materialism? of politically-differentiated ?emergent
> > powers,? an emancipatory axiology of the political Left vs.
> > the political Right becomes one such Possibility of
> > Naturalism in the social sciences. And in NEPM thus
> > formulated, in complete agreement with Mervyn and Roy on
> > Nietzsche: ?The neo-conservatives [absolutely] are
> > incarnations of the Nietzschean philosophy.? NEPM concurs
> > with everything said below regarding Nietzschean
> > philosophy, and thus absolutely entails no marriage of
> > Bhaskar and the devil. Mervyn?s characterization of NEPM is
> > a (possibly intentional) mischaracterization of a
> > Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism.
> > -
> > More to follow, Agent Redstone
> > --------------------------
> >
> >
> > --- On Tue, 5/12/09, Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk>
> > Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
> > To: "'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'" <
> > critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
> > Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 11:38 AM
> >
> >
> > Hi Fred/Agent Redstone,
> >
> > You have an unerring instinct for marrying Bhaskar with the devil.
> > Bhaskar's
> > whole later philosophy can be viewed, not as complementary to or capable
> of
> > being merged with Nietzscheanism, but as a decisive rejoinder to it. I
> > asked
> > Bhaskar about this during my interviews for Bhaskar with Hartwig, The
> > Formation of CR: A Personal Perspective (Routledge, forthcoming 2009).
> Not
> > from any wish to enter into dialogue with you here but for the record on
> > this important topic, I paste in below the current version of what
> > transpired. NB: It is still subject to revision. The reference to Dominc
> > Losurdo is: Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico. Biografia intellettuale
> e
> > bilancio critico (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002). See the review
> essay
> > by Jan Rehmann, Historical Materialism 15 (2) (2007): 173-93.
> >
> > Mervyn
> >
> > # MH: In From Science to Emancipation you explicitly link the question of
> > what is to be done, and the necessary change in our conception of our
> > selves, to
> >
> > "'the politics of disenchantment", the politics of Nietzsche and Weber
> and
> > the politics of social democracy ? which has so profoundly influenced the
> > politics of the Left. We need to produce a different conception of
> > ourselves
> > in the world. The revolution will be nothing less than this: the
> > transformation of our understanding of ourselves and of the whole world
> in
> > which we live, our situation in the cosmos.'
> >
> > It could be then that one of the ways forward at the level of philosophy
> is
> > a closer engagement with Nietzsche. Of course, at one level, in terms of
> > political implications, as in other ways, there could not be a greater
> > contrast. In a definitive recent study, the Italian Hegelian scholar,
> > Dominico Losurdo,? has shown pretty convincingly that, contrary to the
> > fashionable view that he was above politics, Nietzsche was through and
> > through a philosopher of the right, the great modern antagonist of
> > Rousseau,
> > Marx and generalised human emancipation. Thus Nietzsche?s consistent
> basic
> > concern was to nip the modern revolutionary tradition in the bud, whereas
> > yours has been to rejuvenate and enrich it. Nietzsche?s perspective is
> that
> > of the unmediated domination of a revitalised master-class, yours is the
> > transcendence of master?slavery in all its forms. Where Nietzsche
> > thematises
> > will to power and egoism unbridled by altruism, you thematise moral
> alethia
> > and the pulse of freedom. Yet arguably, precisely because Nietzsche is
> such
> > a great champion of the master-classes, he has much to teach us from an
> > emancipatory point of view: the impossibility of founding a eudaimonian
> > politics on resentment, for example, and the need to move beyond slavery
> > and
> > any kind of overmanliness as such, as well as diagnostic clues to the
> real
> > basis of the current round of the ?imperialism of human rights?, which he
> > exposes as a sham.
> >
> > RB: It is important to have an understanding and a good critique of
> > Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism. The first thing I would like to say is that
> > what has been called the hermeneutics of suspicion is extremely valuable
> > and
> > is an important part of critical realist emancipatory axiology, because
> > what
> > it draws attention to are precisely the heteronomous elements in human
> > life:
> > the power and efficacy of what has not been resolved. This links in to my
> > second point, which is a critical one: that Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism
> is
> > a philosophy based on the repression, denial and forgetting of what has
> not
> > been included in the totality; it is a philosophy of split in which some
> > values and some human beings are privileged over other human beings,
> > issuing
> > in a politics of split. The whole thrust of Nietzscheanism is to forget
> > what
> > you must forget, which of course in our world is that the masters exist
> in
> > virtue of the slaves and their activity. Freud has shown that the
> strategy
> > of forgetting is untenable. The conscious exists in virtue of the
> > unconscious, you cannot just forget about the unconscious. What you have
> to
> > do is redress the imbalance, the asymmetry, between the top component and
> > the bottom component. If you forget about it, you are excluding it from
> the
> > totality of your concerns and will pay the price of this omission. The
> > strategy of forgetting is however invariably the position of masters, of
> > course; it is what the neo-conservatives around Bush did: they forgot
> about
> > the culture and traditions of Iraq, and the vibrant Iraqi human beings ?
> > all
> > became just part of the project.
> >
> > MH: The neo-conservatives are incarnations of the Nietzschean philosophy.
> >
> > RB: Absolutely. So the Achilles? heel of Nietzscheanism is that it draws
> > attention to heteronomy, and then the impossible answer is forget about
> it
> > ?
> > do not bother about it, rise above it. Of course, this is the standpoint
> of
> > radical split and master?slave society, it is very dualistic. So what we
> > have to do is embed it in the structures of dialectical critical realism
> > and
> > meta-Reality, within a moving conceptual formation that will incorporate
> > the
> > repressed and resolve this aporia. What Nietzscheanism overlooks or
> > neglects
> > is not only that what has been forgotten, denied or repressed is actually
> > part of a totality with, and bound eventually to be causally efficacious
> > on,
> > the unforgotten, affirmed part, but also ? and this is my third point ?
> the
> > dialectics of co-presence, namely, that what is excluded is just the
> > unrecognised or undeveloped part of yourself. Such exclusion is the basis
> > of
> > all oppositions according to the philosophy of meta-Reality. The person
> you
> > are fighting with is just bringing out or developing aspects of yourself
> > that you have not acknowledged. That is at the deepest level. Of course,
> at
> > more superficial levels you can apply other modes of criticism and
> > understanding, but at the end of the day that is what the repressed is.
> The
> > repressed is what you yourself have not developed. And when you have
> > developed it ? this is the thrust of Freud ? there is then no need to
> > repress it at all because it will now be part of your moral economy in
> > sublated or sublimated form. It is of course very difficult actually to
> > achieve a society that incorporates all the slaves such that there are no
> > longer any master?slave-type distinctions and oppressions, but that is
> the
> > only position that is tenable. Sooner or later this process of sublating
> > and
> > radically incorporating will yield joy, you will experience those bits of
> > yourself that you have left out as enjoyable and rewarding and wonder why
> > you did not think about and acknowledge this before.
> >
> > MH: So in fundamental ways your philosophy could be viewed as a response
> to
> > Nietzsche: if you think in terms of thesis, antithesis, synthesis you
> have
> > something like Hegel/Marx, Nietzsche, Bhaskar. But I take it you did not
> > consciously intend this; you do not engage with Nietzsche in detail, it
> is
> > mostly implicit.
> >
> > RB: I am not sure whether I will have time to get round to it but of
> course
> > it might be that this way of looking at my work is the best way, in which
> > case I will have to make time. There is no doubt that Nietzsche together
> > with Heidegger, who is a combination of Nietzsche and hermeneutics, are
> the
> > most influential philosophers in the vogue part of the academy at any
> rate,
> > because they are the thinkers the poststructuralists are mainly indebted
> > to.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu
> > [mailto:critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Fred
> > Zaman
> > Sent: 12 May 2009 04:19
> > To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
> > Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
> >
> > A merger of Bhaskar and Nietzsche can result in an Nietzschean Emergent
> > Powers Materialism (NEPM): NEPM then refers to the (historical)
> materialism
> > of powers whose emergence is fundamentally Nietzschean in
> > character--meaning
> > the materialism of powers out of which emerges the ?will to power? of a
> > Nietzschean Ubermensche or Overman. The following essay on American
> > capitalism now in review provides an informative exemplar: America?s
> > Nietzschean Power Elite: An ?berman Political Theory of Capitalism Can
> the
> > collective exercise of Friedrich Nietzsche?s universal ?will to power? by
> > capitalism?s elite upper class create ideological equivalents of his
> > anti-democratic, amoral ?Overman?? In this essay a political theory of
> > America?s ??berman,?
> > which rethinks Nietzsche?s principle collectively in the terms of ?class
> > war? in the United States, an elitist, avaricious ?will to power? engages
> > class-differentiated, unconscious agents of capitalist political ideology
> > in
> > class warfare. ?berman Political Theory validates in American capitalism
> > the
> > Marxist concepts of ?class struggle? and historicist ?laws of motion.?
> > Other
> > Marxist principles however, ?proletarian revolution? and ?class
> > consciousness? for example, are superseded by ?ideology,?
> ?interpellation,?
> > and ?political unconscious? in Althusserian political theory. Expressing
> > its
> > fundamentally anti-democratic character throughout history by continually
> > waging ?class war? on the underclasses, behind the scenes unconsciously,
> > ??berman?s elitist ?berKlasse is the class-differentiated, collective,
> > amoral ?will to power? of a Nietzschean capitalist class ruling America
> > behind the scenes through society?s political unconscious. Critical
> Realism
> > it seems can provide basic philosophical concepts for framing the
> > investigation and theoretical explanation of Nietzsche?s universal ?Will
> to
> > Power?
> > principle, as it may be manifested in nature and by humankind socially,
> > economically, and politically. And Nietzsche?s principle, conversely, may
> > be
> > able to do the same for CR--provide a unified philosophical framework for
> > applying CR principles to the diversity of emergent powers observed in
> > nature and society.
> > A ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism,? in providing a materialist
> > basis for Nietzsche?s Will to Power that is opposed in principle to
> > Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom but nevertheless grounded on the same
> > ?Possibility of Naturalism,? may be able to greatly increase the
> conceptual
> > power of both ideas. Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom and Nietzsche?s Will to
> > Power are complementary principles?one provides the background for
> > explaining the other. In a comprehensive approach to the Possibility of
> > Naturalism, Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom is very much the yin to the yang
> of
> > Nietzsche?s Will to Power.Fred Zaman
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Critical-Realism mailing list
> > Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Critical-Realism mailing list
> > Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Critical-Realism mailing list
> > Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Bryan Tarpley
> Stephen F. Austin State University
> 936.468.6112 | btarpley at sfasu.edu
> _______________________________________________
> Critical-Realism mailing list
> Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>



-- 
Bryan Tarpley
Stephen F. Austin State University
936.468.6112 | btarpley at sfasu.edu
_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism



      

From bptarpley at gmail.com  Thu May 28 10:43:57 2009
From: bptarpley at gmail.com (Bryan Tarpley)
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 11:43:57 -0500
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Politics of the Soul: A Critical Realist
	Theory
In-Reply-To: <708810.42175.qm@web63607.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
References: <708810.42175.qm@web63607.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <56b3b1f80905280943s67bfe944h9332c9fba88628a3@mail.gmail.com>

To Fred, and anyone else:

http://www.criticalrealism.net is up and running.  There are very few blogs
out there at the moment.  I'd like to encourage any of you that have the
time to set up a blog and register it on the site.  Here is my rationale:

For me personally, blogging serves as a goad, a nagging reminder to keep my
thoughts from becoming stale, to think critically about new things, and to
keep those thoughts accountable to an audience.

For something like Critical Realism, blogging raises awareness because it
takes something abstract, and instead of allowing it to collect dust, it
becomes manifest subjectively through your own words. It becomes lived
instead of just thought about. Also, as Michael Berube wrote, "To popularize
the more controversial academic inquiries of the past twenty years? is thus
only to take seriously the claims of our scholarship on the lived
subjectivities of ordinary people."  While I dislike language like "ordinary
people," as though scholars were prophets, the idea is that a good litmus
test for a belief is whether or not you are bold enough to share it.

In the past, there may have been better venues for sharing ideas, such as
opinion columns, etc. Unfortunately, printed mass media is a dying animal.
Scholarly books, articles, and conferences certainly have an important role
in that they are peer-reviewed and thus legitimized. But relying on the slow
gears of academia to promote an idea is like lying under a bee hive and
waiting for honey.

Finally, there is an aspect to blogging which is not necessarily evident
unless you have participated in writing or commenting on blogs: community.
Bloggers are initially quite lonely -- after all, they spend time crafting
posts, excitedly publish them, and wait, wondering if anyone is reading. It
turns out the best way to build blog readership is to find other blogs and
comment on them! Thus blogs become interconnected (literally through
hyperlinks), conversation oriented communities.

You're all no doubt extremely busy people.  But if you believe in
emancipatory projects, if you desire to affect social change, please
consider starting a blog.

How to set up a blog:
http://www.mahalo.com/How_to_Set_Up_a_Blog_for_Beginners

Thanks,
Bryan


On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 4:47 PM, Fred Zaman <agent.redstone at yahoo.com>wrote:

> Bryan,
> -
> Many thanks. Your comments are very constructive. I have
> attempted to address your qualms about shortcomings in previous
> posts in the below ?Critical Realist Axiology in Political
> Sociology.? ?CRAPS? in short :-)
> -
> The idea of a CR blog expressly for political sociology is
> certainly appealing, but at present the time I would have to keep
> it running probably would limit my weekly postings to a sum total
> of about 1000 (hopefully carefully chosen) words. I don?t have
> the temperament to engage in debate via a long running train of
> short, off the cuff postings pro and con; because I view my
> postings as much an opportunity to learn something myself as to
> inform others, which requires that my replies think things
> through.
> -
> Also, this blog, although it would promote a CR-framed political
> sociology that cannot avoid being highly political in its
> implications, nonetheless must be fundamentally academic in
> character and tone; and thus not allowed to become explicitly a
> platform for political activists of either the Left or Right.
> Because of my work, and my temperament as well, I must be able to
> block anyone attempting to turn the blog into a political
> activist platform. It certainly can and should (IMO) become an
> informal academic source book for CR explanatory theories of the
> political mechanisms employed by both Left and Right activists,
> consciously to some extent but largely by the political
> unconscious; but at the same time it cannot be allowed to become
> a direct public vehicle for such activism. Let other blogs
> fulfill this objective.
> -
> Bryan, is such possible on your new CR internet domain? Is my
> view of  a CR blog on political sociology consistent with your
> vision of the purposes of your internet domain? I view this
> prospect with trepidation, but the cause certainly is just.
> -
> Fred
> -
> PS. I live in Utah, that reddest of red states in the US; and
> thus am I a political outcast here, which does not bother me in
> the least however.
> -
> -
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> Critical Realist Axiology in Political Sociology:
>  A Shotgun Marriage of Bhaskar and Nietzsche?
> -
> Critical Realist Axiology in Political Sociology is a political
> theory of value, agency and the Nietzschean ?Will to Power.? It
> is a study of power grounded in personality, social structure,
> and politics. It in a sense is a marriage of Bhaskar?s Pulse of
> Freedom and Nietzsche?s Will to Power through a dynamic triad of
> continually emerging, synchronic political powers called the
> ??berkr?fte,? ?unterkr?fte,? and ?nebenkr?fte?:
> -
> ?berkr?fte are a coercive, elitist ?Will to Power? possessed by
> and supporting an oppressive upper class aka power elite. In
> critical realist terms, ?berkr?fte are the ?synchronic emergent
> powers? of a Nietzschean master class qua collective Overman
> manifesting its ?Will to Power? coercively behind the scenes.
> -
> Unterkr?fte are the political powers of an egalitarian, populist
> ?Pulse of Freedom? possessed by and supporting an oppressed lower
> class. In critical realist terms, unterkr?fte are the synchronic
> emergent powers of egalitarian democratic movements (whether they
> are explicitly manifested or exist unconsciously as political
> undercurrents). The unterkr?fte Pulse of Freedom in its essence
> is a political dialectic that absents the ?constraints on the
> absenting of absences? referenced below:
> -
> ?Dialectic as the Pulse of Freedom...Dialectic is the absenting
> of constraints on the absenting of absences (ills, and causally
> lower-order constraints) and, since constraints, negatively
> generalized, are just the absence of freedom, dialectic is
> equally the axiology of freedom, the implications of the positive
> generalization of which I have only just begun to tap. Dialectic
> is the yearning for freedom and the transformative negation of
> constraints on it?The strength of its presence is the measure of
> the pulse of freedom -- of its health, or transformative power.?
> (Bhaskar, in Dialectic 1993: 378)
> -
> Nebenkr?fte are then the political powers of ?popular wisdom,? an
> Aristotelian ?phronesis? that refers to the kind of tacit wisdom
> acquired from engaging in practical action (notably in the
> governance of states or households), possessed by a middle class
> of executives, managers and supervisors. In critical realist
> terms, nebenkr?fte are the synchronic emergent powers of a middle
> class that underlabor in support of the ?berkr?fte?s coercive
> Will to Power; which thus at the same time oppose behind the
> scenes, in the dark politically to the extent possible, the
> unterkr?fte?s egalitarian Pulse of Freedom.
> -
> Politically linked through the middle class nebenkr?fte, the
> class-differentiated, synchronic powers of the upper class
> ?berkr?fte and lower class unterkr?fte collectively form a
> combined diachronic emergent power, in which the Will to Power of
> the ?berkr?fte (elitist upper class powers) endeavors to maintain
> the body politic positioned toward the political Right while the
> Pulse of Freedom of the unterkr?fte (populist lower class powers)
> endeavors to shift the body politic toward the Left.
> -
> Bhaskar, in his formulation of dialectic as the Pulse of Freedom
> seeks freedom from precisely the kinds of dichotomies (Left-
> Right, Liberal-Conservative, etc) that have always bedeviled
> humankind I agree. But as he defines it above, the Pulse of
> Freedom is more general than that because the dialectic thereof
> can be employed to absent constraints by anyone endeavoring to
> promote whatever political ideology. Although perhaps not
> accepted by Bhaskar, this is their version of the Pulse of
> Freedom, as a dialectic which absents the constraints they
> experience--which version still conforms to the general
> definition given by Bhaskar.
> -
> In the here described ?Critical Realist Axiology in Political
> Sociology,? the Nietzschean Will to Power and Bhaskarian Pulse of
> Freedom are the ?yin-yang? of humanity?s overreaching meta-
> Reality: one cannot be objectively considered (i.e. without
> ideological pretensions, liberal or conservative) independent of
> the other. The two together, the darkness (the Will to Power) and
> light (the Pulse of Freedom) of humanity?s meta-Reality, make up
> a single whole that is both darkness and light intertwined?one
> does not exist without the other. History clearly has shown this
> to be true. Bhaskar?s seeming intention that humanity?s yang (its
> Pulse of Freedom) ultimately will overcome its yin (the Will to
> Power) IMO will never occur?the Light of the former in principle
> will never extinguish the Darkness of the latter. The only
> possibility is a dynamic balance between the two that will be
> satisfactory to most, intertwined in an ultimate meta-Reality
> that is both Light and Darkness. This is IMO the only objective
> that critical realism?s emancipatory critique can obtain,
> realistically; and it is the only one I am willing to pursue in
> both theory and practice.
> -
> Much of what critical realism offers, as a philosophical
> framework for emancipatory critiques, can be employed in a
> Critical Realist Axiology in/for Political Sociology, but the
> concepts thereof must be reformulated in terms most clearly
> relevant to today?s political realities (of which Nietzsche?s
> Will to Power certainly is one, as are Machiavellian political
> concepts as well). Critical realism?s arcane philosophical
> discourses (on Kant et al.) must be shelved in socially important
> applications. Otherwise the social sciences will neither
> understand nor accept as real the potential of critical realism
> as an explanatory framework for their subject matter.
>
>
>
> --- On Thu, 5/21/09, Bryan Tarpley <bptarpley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> From: Bryan Tarpley <bptarpley at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Politics of the Soul: A Critical Realist
> Theory
> To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List" <
> critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
> Date: Thursday, May 21, 2009, 2:55 PM
>
>
> Fred,
>
> I appreciate the time you have obviously invested in responding to me.
> Because I am new to this list, I am hesitant to step foot into a
> conversation that appears to have a history.  Setting my reluctance aside,
> however, I'd like to take this opportunity to say something about the
> conversation itself.  One of my areas of interest is in the ethics of
> communication, and because of this, I find Bhaskar's insistence on the
> importance of non-judmentalism very refreshing.  I think one of the
> differences between a dialogue and a fight is the absence of ad hominem
> attacks such as your claim that Hartwig's criticism of you is uninformed,
> or
> Hartwig's claim that you have an unerring instinct for marrying Bhaskar
> with
> the devil.  I'm sure both of you have your reasons for disagreeing, and
> don't get me wrong, I enjoy academic spectacle as much as the next guy.  I
> just think your modus operandi might by inconsistent with what Bhaskar is
> preaching!
>
> Since you have been presenting in places like Miami and Hawaii, I am
> assuming you are on my side of the Atlantic, and as such you know that
> awareness of CR in the States is rather poor.  In hopes of raising
> awareness, I have been presenting at conferences where I explicitly mention
> CR, and have started a blog ( http://thehopefulmidwife.blogspot.com )
> where
> I am currently processing through Bhaskar's _meta-Reality:  Volume 1_.  I
> have also purchased the domain http://www.criticalrealism.net, where I'd
> like to promote a network of CR bloggers.  If we've learned anything from
> Obama's presidential campaign, it is that movements in this country gain
> downhill momentum via the web.  Would you be willing to start a blog on
> this
> topic?  Your detractors would likely be happy to keep you in line!  If so,
> let me know -- I am alarmed by the dearth of online resources for CR.
>
> To address your ideas, I wanted to reiterate that I agree with you that the
> Left/Right are symbiotic, that to focus on one at the exclusion of the
> other
> is unhealthy, and that a more complete picture arises when you see them as
> a
> system.  I really like your (and Bhaskar's) claim that neo-conservatism is
> the culmination of the Will to Power.  I only have two qualms with what you
> have stated:
>
> 1.  While the Will to Power may be an accurate description for what
> motivates the Right, the Pulse of Freedom is not the most accurate
> descriptor for what naturally arises out of the Left.  Yes, Bhaskar is a
> philosopher of the Left.  Yes, he has explicitly stated that one of his
> goals is to address the hegemony the Right holds over the spiritual
> dimension of human life by promoting it from the Left.  Critical Realism,
> however, is a model specifically designed to understand TINA formations
> like
> the Left/Right dichotomy.  From Bhaskar's FETW:  "This  results  in  its
> wake,  when  what  is  split  off  (alienated),  supressed  or  excluded
> is  nevertheless categorially  or axiologically  necessary,  in
> denegation,  namely  the  expression  or affirmation of what is denied
> (despite or even in its denial) in what I have called a  tina  compromise
> form, and  thence  to  reflexive  inconsistency  and performative
> contradiction. This chain of avidya secretes a veil or veils, which
> together
> form  an  interlocking  web  or  meshwork  of  illusions. This  (irrealist)
> web  (or ensemble)  holds  contemporary  thought  in  thrall,  generating
> aporiai, contradictions, lacunae, conflicts, splits, anomalies, crises and
> many other modes of  oppositionality within  it" (5).  In other words, CR
> is
> a good model for understanding what you're describing (not sublimated by
> it), and you might want to find different terminology for that which the
> Left is emanating.  Perhaps some of you Marxists could help him out?
>
> 2.  This yin-yang formation you're describing appears to be at the ground
> level of your ontology.  The ground level of Bhaskar's meta-Reality,
> however, is non-dual -- it sustains dualistic illusions, but ultimately the
> goal is to "expand the zone of non-duality in our lives," and thus
> transcend
> something like the Left/Right dochotomy.
>
> Thanks again for the engagement -- I hope you find what I've written
> constructive.
> Bryan
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 1:02 PM, Fred Zaman <agent.redstone at yahoo.com
> >wrote:
>
> >
> > Politics of the Soul: A Critical Realist Theory
> > -
> > Bryan,
> > -
> > I hope the following will clarify what I believe is the
> > conceptual foundation of the disagreements consistently spawned
> > by my attempts to contribute to critical realism, which
> > disagreement in the past has been forcefully stated by several on
> > this list. Here I speak with equal force in defense, but with no
> > intent to offend. I hope only to enlarge the scope of critical
> > realism, particularly as it pertains to political sociology where
> > indeed I feel it will be most useful to humankind. In any event,
> > whether it is accepted here or not, a CR approach to the
> > ?Politics of the Soul? motif will be the subterranean foundation
> > of future articles I publish in political sociology. The Politics
> > of the Soul?s philosophical connection to CR likely will not be
> > stressed, however, because of considerable resistance to any such
> > philosophizing of social science, which I have personally
> > experienced in presentations given in social science conferences
> > last year in Hawaii and Miami. In the immediate future I will
> > employ CR concepts implicitly in publications, but not boldly
> > promote their use by others. Perhaps that will come later, that
> > is if my perennial critics (Hartwig et al.) relent in their
> > uninformed criticism to virtually anything and everything I post
> > on list.
> > -
> > With respect to your understanding that Bhaskar is seeking
> > freedom from precisely the kinds of dichotomies (Left-Right,
> > Liberal-Conservative, etc) that bedevil humankind, I agree that
> > that is his objective; but in that objective I believe he
> > nevertheless will fail so long as his Dialectic, in attending
> > solely to humanity?s Pulse of Freedom, absents humanity?s Will to
> > Power. The Will to Power and Pulse of Freedom I argue are the
> > ?yin-yang? of humanity?s true meta-Reality--one cannot be
> > objectively considered independent of the other. The two, the
> > light and darkness of humanity?s complete meta-Reality, make up a
> > single whole that is both light and darkness?one simply does not
> > exist without the other. Humanity?s yin, the Will to Power,
> > cannot be philosophically transcended by its yang, the Pulse of
> > Freedom, in an ultimate meta-Reality that is constituted by both.
> > History clearly has shown this to be true, which IMO political
> > sociology can do as well through the development of a Bhaskarian-
> > Nietzschean (light and darkness) ?Politics of the Soul.? The term
> > soul here makes no reference to any supernatural concept of
> > being. It refers only to the might, mind, and intentions--both of
> > consciousness and (more importantly) the unconscious--of
> > individuals as mortal beings, and collectives thereof.
> > --
> > The earlier ?Bhaskar and Nietzsche? postings, although not
> > explicitly stated, point toward an ultimate Politics of the Soul
> > in which Nietzsche?s ?Will to Power? and Bhaskar?s ?Pulse of
> > Freedom? are the reverse (back side) and obverse (front side)
> > sides of one and the same meta-Reality, which generally speaking
> > in America today are the political Right and political Left
> > (which perhaps is not always the case). In the Politics of the
> > Soul, all phenomena of human nature both good and bad are
> > theoretically grounded in a Bhaskarian-Nietzschean unification of
> > the soul?s light and darkness. In this Politics of the Soul the
> > suffix -kraft (plural -kr?fte) is German for strength, power,
> > force; the power of muscle, words, ideas. The basic politically-
> > differentiated powers involved in the Politics of the Soul here
> > introduced are:
> > -
> > ?berkr?fte (?upper class powers? of the soul)--the synchronic
> > emergent powers of an elitist master class politically manifested
> > as the Will to Power of a collective ?Overman? acting behind the
> > scenes.
> > -
> > unterkr?fte (?lower class powers? of the soul)--the synchronic
> > emergent powers of a populist oppressed class politically
> > manifested as the Pulse of Freedom of liberal democratic,
> > populist movements.
> > -
> > Politically linked these two class-differentiated powers of the
> > soul form a combined diachronic emergent power, in which the Will
> > to Power of the ?berkr?fte (the soul?s upper class powers of
> > darkness operating behind the scenes) endeavors to maintain the
> > body politic positioned toward the Right while the Pulse of
> > Freedom of the unterkr?fte (the soul?s lower class powers of
> > light) endeavors to  shift the body politic Leftward.
> > -
> > nebenkr?fte (?middle class powers? of the soul)--underlaborer
> > class of the Power Elite (here the soul?s ?berkr?fte) publicly
> > (in the political light) defends the status quo against the
> > opposed populist?s (the soul?s unterkr?fte) Pulse of Freedom,
> > while at the same time facilitating behind the scenes (in the
> > political darkness) the ?berkr?fte Will to Power.
> > -
> > The problem with Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom is that, taken alone,
> > it abstains from addressing that totality of humanity?s political
> > meta-Reality which includes Nietzsche?s Will to Power.
> > Nietzsche?s Will to Power however, similarly abstains from
> > addressing this same totality, which conversely includes
> > Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom. However, both of these political
> > abstentions, by Bhaskar and Nietzsche respectively, are
> > themselves absented in the meta-Reality of a Politics of the Soul
> > that, through a diachronic synthesis of synchronic ?emergent
> > powers,? includes humanity?s meta-Realistic yin and yang?its Will
> > to Power and opposed Pulse of Freedom.
> > -
> > According to this Politics of the Soul, grounded on the
> > ?materialism? of class differentiated ?synchronic emergent
> > powers,? an ?emancipatory axiology? of the political Left vs. the
> > political Right becomes a Bhaskarian ?Possibility of Naturalism?
> > in sociology today. And thus formulated in critical realist
> > terms, in absolute agreement with the substance of all discourse
> > between Mervyn Hartwig and Roy Bhaskar thus far posted on the
> > subject of Nietzsche: ?neo-conservatives are incarnations of the
> > Nietzschean philosophy.?
> > -
> > With regard to Mervyn?s latest posting on this subject, however:
> > the potential political implications of critical realism, however
> > lengthy past discussion may have been on this, have yet to be
> > addressed in any substantive way, simply because the yin
> > (darkness) of the soul?s politics, humanity?s Will to Power, to
> > date has been substantively absented by critical realist
> > dialectic. Any and all ?techniques? suggested by Bhaskar?s meta-
> > Reality, insofar as they attempt to ?absent? the reality of
> > humanity?s Will to Power, (IMO) is destined to fail because of an
> > incomplete understanding of the fundamentals on which humanity?s
> > meta-Reality necessarily are based. The ?explanatory critical
> > theory? needed necessarily must include the Will to Power as a
> > starting point. And indeed this is what the Politics of the Soul
> > formulated above will take as its starting point.
> > -
> > Incidentally, the politically-differentiated powers defined in
> > the Politics of the Soul here defined can be applied at many
> > different levels in society, high and low. Critical Realism
> > itself is one such example of the application of the Politics of
> > the Soul to lower levels. The ?upper class powers? (power elite)
> > of CR today--Roy Bhaskar, Margaret Archer, Andrew Collier, Tony
> > Lawson, Alan Norrie and perhaps others (Critical Realism:
> > Essential Readings)--compose the ?berkr?fte that are CR?s Will to
> > Power (yin) today; the ?lower class powers? of CR?s ?populist
> > oppressed?--such as myself for example--serving as agents of the
> > Pulse of Freedom (yang) in CR itself, are then the unterkr?fte;
> > and CR?s nebenkr?fte, which are ?middle class powers? that
> > underlabor mightily for the discipline?s ?berkr?fte--Mervyn
> > Hartwig clearly being a prominent example, largely defend the CR
> > status quo (the scope and substance thereof) determined by the
> > ?berkr?fte. CR?s nebenkr?fte in its very nature opposes any Pulse
> > of Freedom manifested by the unterkr?fte. There is no way to
> > avoid the Politics of the Soul--as human being we are all thus
> > engaged, at many different levels for many different purposes.
> > The key to enhancing and strengthening the Pulse of Freedom, by
> > whatever techniques IMO, lies in openly acknowledging and
> > addressing not only meta-Reality?s yang (the soul?s Pulse of
> > Freedom), but its yin (the soul?s opposed Will to Power) as well.
> > The soul?s darkness and light, its yin-yang, are in essence
> > everything. There is nothing that is not both at the same time.
> > Surely there is no one in critical realism that will disagree on
> > this point. And perhaps now is the time to expand critical
> > realist efforts to address both, taken together as a whole. Only
> > then, IMO, will critical realism become the actual force for
> > change its adherents desire and hope to create.
> > -
> > Fred Zaman/Agent Redstone
> >
> >
> >
> > --- On Fri, 5/15/09, Bryan Tarpley <bptarpley at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: Bryan Tarpley <bptarpley at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
> > To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List" <
> > critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
> > Date: Friday, May 15, 2009, 8:35 AM
> >
> >
> > Fred,
> > While I agree with you that there is a kind of dialectic or feedback loop
> > that occurs between the Left and the Right, I think it might be a
> > misidentification to label the leftward shift of the body politic the
> Pulse
> > of Freedom.  It is my understanding that Bhaskar is seeking freedom from
> > precisely these kinds of dichotomies.  In other words, I think the Pulse
> of
> > Freedom would seek to _transcend_ the Left/Right dichotomy rather than to
> > be
> > an ingredient for its perpetuation.  But I could be completely wrong!
> >
> > In humility,
> > Bryan Tarpley
> >
> >
> > On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 8:39 AM, Fred Zaman <agent.redstone at yahoo.com
> > >wrote:
> >
> > > ?The Possibility of Naturalism? in political theory to be
> > > presented in a forthcoming ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers
> > > Materialism? (NEPM) will require an emergent powers
> > > materialism (both synchronic and diachronic) in which the
> > > political Left and political Right are sociologically both
> > > ?natural phenomena.? In this there is no ?marrying Bhaskar
> > > with the devil.? Mervyn?s statement (as his always are) is
> > > a complete mischaracterization of what I am proposing. NEPM
> > > is a theoretical unification in social science that shows
> > > how Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom and ?the devil?s?
> > > (Nietzsche?s) Will to Power both are a Possibility of
> > > Naturalism. Both are ?natural? phenomena of human nature
> > > and thus--according to Critical Realism--can be explained
> > > in naturalist terms. And just how both may be integrated
> > > into a single critical-realist Possibility of Naturalism,
> > > is indicated in the Nietzschean political structure below:
> > > -
> > > unterW?hler--political constituency of the oppressed
> > > (manifests an egalitarian Pulse of Freedom): the
> > > unterW?hler?s Pulse of Freedom endeavors to  shift the body
> > > politic Leftward.
> > > -
> > > ?berW?hler--the political constituency of an elitist master
> > > class (manifests the Will to Power of a collective
> > > Nietzschean overman): the ?berW?hler?s Will to Power
> > > endeavors to maintain the body politic positioned toward
> > > the Right.
> > > -
> > > ubenW?hler--the political constituency of master class
> > > underlaborers (they man or support the master class ?state
> > > apparatuses?): the ubenW?hler?s underlaboring publicly
> > > defends society?s status quo (against the unterW?hler?s
> > > Pulse of Freedom), while at the same time behind the scenes
> > > underlaboring in the service of the ?berW?hler?s Will to
> > > Power.
> > > -
> > > Based on this Nietzschean model of the ?historical
> > > materialism? of politically-differentiated ?emergent
> > > powers,? an emancipatory axiology of the political Left vs.
> > > the political Right becomes one such Possibility of
> > > Naturalism in the social sciences. And in NEPM thus
> > > formulated, in complete agreement with Mervyn and Roy on
> > > Nietzsche: ?The neo-conservatives [absolutely] are
> > > incarnations of the Nietzschean philosophy.? NEPM concurs
> > > with everything said below regarding Nietzschean
> > > philosophy, and thus absolutely entails no marriage of
> > > Bhaskar and the devil. Mervyn?s characterization of NEPM is
> > > a (possibly intentional) mischaracterization of a
> > > Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism.
> > > -
> > > More to follow, Agent Redstone
> > > --------------------------
> > >
> > >
> > > --- On Tue, 5/12/09, Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere7.demon.co.uk>
> > > Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
> > > To: "'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'" <
> > > critical-realism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
> > > Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 11:38 AM
> > >
> > >
> > > Hi Fred/Agent Redstone,
> > >
> > > You have an unerring instinct for marrying Bhaskar with the devil.
> > > Bhaskar's
> > > whole later philosophy can be viewed, not as complementary to or
> capable
> > of
> > > being merged with Nietzscheanism, but as a decisive rejoinder to it. I
> > > asked
> > > Bhaskar about this during my interviews for Bhaskar with Hartwig, The
> > > Formation of CR: A Personal Perspective (Routledge, forthcoming 2009).
> > Not
> > > from any wish to enter into dialogue with you here but for the record
> on
> > > this important topic, I paste in below the current version of what
> > > transpired. NB: It is still subject to revision. The reference to
> Dominc
> > > Losurdo is: Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico. Biografia
> intellettuale
> > e
> > > bilancio critico (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002). See the review
> > essay
> > > by Jan Rehmann, Historical Materialism 15 (2) (2007): 173-93.
> > >
> > > Mervyn
> > >
> > > # MH: In From Science to Emancipation you explicitly link the question
> of
> > > what is to be done, and the necessary change in our conception of our
> > > selves, to
> > >
> > > "'the politics of disenchantment", the politics of Nietzsche and Weber
> > and
> > > the politics of social democracy ? which has so profoundly influenced
> the
> > > politics of the Left. We need to produce a different conception of
> > > ourselves
> > > in the world. The revolution will be nothing less than this: the
> > > transformation of our understanding of ourselves and of the whole world
> > in
> > > which we live, our situation in the cosmos.'
> > >
> > > It could be then that one of the ways forward at the level of
> philosophy
> > is
> > > a closer engagement with Nietzsche. Of course, at one level, in terms
> of
> > > political implications, as in other ways, there could not be a greater
> > > contrast. In a definitive recent study, the Italian Hegelian scholar,
> > > Dominico Losurdo,  has shown pretty convincingly that, contrary to the
> > > fashionable view that he was above politics, Nietzsche was through and
> > > through a philosopher of the right, the great modern antagonist of
> > > Rousseau,
> > > Marx and generalised human emancipation. Thus Nietzsche?s consistent
> > basic
> > > concern was to nip the modern revolutionary tradition in the bud,
> whereas
> > > yours has been to rejuvenate and enrich it. Nietzsche?s perspective is
> > that
> > > of the unmediated domination of a revitalised master-class, yours is
> the
> > > transcendence of master?slavery in all its forms. Where Nietzsche
> > > thematises
> > > will to power and egoism unbridled by altruism, you thematise moral
> > alethia
> > > and the pulse of freedom. Yet arguably, precisely because Nietzsche is
> > such
> > > a great champion of the master-classes, he has much to teach us from an
> > > emancipatory point of view: the impossibility of founding a eudaimonian
> > > politics on resentment, for example, and the need to move beyond
> slavery
> > > and
> > > any kind of overmanliness as such, as well as diagnostic clues to the
> > real
> > > basis of the current round of the ?imperialism of human rights?, which
> he
> > > exposes as a sham.
> > >
> > > RB: It is important to have an understanding and a good critique of
> > > Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism. The first thing I would like to say is
> that
> > > what has been called the hermeneutics of suspicion is extremely
> valuable
> > > and
> > > is an important part of critical realist emancipatory axiology, because
> > > what
> > > it draws attention to are precisely the heteronomous elements in human
> > > life:
> > > the power and efficacy of what has not been resolved. This links in to
> my
> > > second point, which is a critical one: that Nietzsche and
> Nietzscheanism
> > is
> > > a philosophy based on the repression, denial and forgetting of what has
> > not
> > > been included in the totality; it is a philosophy of split in which
> some
> > > values and some human beings are privileged over other human beings,
> > > issuing
> > > in a politics of split. The whole thrust of Nietzscheanism is to forget
> > > what
> > > you must forget, which of course in our world is that the masters exist
> > in
> > > virtue of the slaves and their activity. Freud has shown that the
> > strategy
> > > of forgetting is untenable. The conscious exists in virtue of the
> > > unconscious, you cannot just forget about the unconscious. What you
> have
> > to
> > > do is redress the imbalance, the asymmetry, between the top component
> and
> > > the bottom component. If you forget about it, you are excluding it from
> > the
> > > totality of your concerns and will pay the price of this omission. The
> > > strategy of forgetting is however invariably the position of masters,
> of
> > > course; it is what the neo-conservatives around Bush did: they forgot
> > about
> > > the culture and traditions of Iraq, and the vibrant Iraqi human beings
> ?
> > > all
> > > became just part of the project.
> > >
> > > MH: The neo-conservatives are incarnations of the Nietzschean
> philosophy.
> > >
> > > RB: Absolutely. So the Achilles? heel of Nietzscheanism is that it
> draws
> > > attention to heteronomy, and then the impossible answer is forget about
> > it
> > > ?
> > > do not bother about it, rise above it. Of course, this is the
> standpoint
> > of
> > > radical split and master?slave society, it is very dualistic. So what
> we
> > > have to do is embed it in the structures of dialectical critical
> realism
> > > and
> > > meta-Reality, within a moving conceptual formation that will
> incorporate
> > > the
> > > repressed and resolve this aporia. What Nietzscheanism overlooks or
> > > neglects
> > > is not only that what has been forgotten, denied or repressed is
> actually
> > > part of a totality with, and bound eventually to be causally
> efficacious
> > > on,
> > > the unforgotten, affirmed part, but also ? and this is my third point ?
> > the
> > > dialectics of co-presence, namely, that what is excluded is just the
> > > unrecognised or undeveloped part of yourself. Such exclusion is the
> basis
> > > of
> > > all oppositions according to the philosophy of meta-Reality. The person
> > you
> > > are fighting with is just bringing out or developing aspects of
> yourself
> > > that you have not acknowledged. That is at the deepest level. Of
> course,
> > at
> > > more superficial levels you can apply other modes of criticism and
> > > understanding, but at the end of the day that is what the repressed is.
> > The
> > > repressed is what you yourself have not developed. And when you have
> > > developed it ? this is the thrust of Freud ? there is then no need to
> > > repress it at all because it will now be part of your moral economy in
> > > sublated or sublimated form. It is of course very difficult actually to
> > > achieve a society that incorporates all the slaves such that there are
> no
> > > longer any master?slave-type distinctions and oppressions, but that is
> > the
> > > only position that is tenable. Sooner or later this process of
> sublating
> > > and
> > > radically incorporating will yield joy, you will experience those bits
> of
> > > yourself that you have left out as enjoyable and rewarding and wonder
> why
> > > you did not think about and acknowledge this before.
> > >
> > > MH: So in fundamental ways your philosophy could be viewed as a
> response
> > to
> > > Nietzsche: if you think in terms of thesis, antithesis, synthesis you
> > have
> > > something like Hegel/Marx, Nietzsche, Bhaskar. But I take it you did
> not
> > > consciously intend this; you do not engage with Nietzsche in detail, it
> > is
> > > mostly implicit.
> > >
> > > RB: I am not sure whether I will have time to get round to it but of
> > course
> > > it might be that this way of looking at my work is the best way, in
> which
> > > case I will have to make time. There is no doubt that Nietzsche
> together
> > > with Heidegger, who is a combination of Nietzsche and hermeneutics, are
> > the
> > > most influential philosophers in the vogue part of the academy at any
> > rate,
> > > because they are the thinkers the poststructuralists are mainly
> indebted
> > > to.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu
> > > [mailto:critical-realism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of
> Fred
> > > Zaman
> > > Sent: 12 May 2009 04:19
> > > To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
> > > Subject: [Critical-Realism] Bhaskar and Nietzsche
> > >
> > > A merger of Bhaskar and Nietzsche can result in an Nietzschean Emergent
> > > Powers Materialism (NEPM): NEPM then refers to the (historical)
> > materialism
> > > of powers whose emergence is fundamentally Nietzschean in
> > > character--meaning
> > > the materialism of powers out of which emerges the ?will to power? of a
> > > Nietzschean Ubermensche or Overman. The following essay on American
> > > capitalism now in review provides an informative exemplar: America?s
> > > Nietzschean Power Elite: An ?berman Political Theory of Capitalism Can
> > the
> > > collective exercise of Friedrich Nietzsche?s universal ?will to power?
> by
> > > capitalism?s elite upper class create ideological equivalents of his
> > > anti-democratic, amoral ?Overman?? In this essay a political theory of
> > > America?s ??berman,?
> > > which rethinks Nietzsche?s principle collectively in the terms of
> ?class
> > > war? in the United States, an elitist, avaricious ?will to power?
> engages
> > > class-differentiated, unconscious agents of capitalist political
> ideology
> > > in
> > > class warfare. ?berman Political Theory validates in American
> capitalism
> > > the
> > > Marxist concepts of ?class struggle? and historicist ?laws of motion.?
> > > Other
> > > Marxist principles however, ?proletarian revolution? and ?class
> > > consciousness? for example, are superseded by ?ideology,?
> > ?interpellation,?
> > > and ?political unconscious? in Althusserian political theory.
> Expressing
> > > its
> > > fundamentally anti-democratic character throughout history by
> continually
> > > waging ?class war? on the underclasses, behind the scenes
> unconsciously,
> > > ??berman?s elitist ?berKlasse is the class-differentiated, collective,
> > > amoral ?will to power? of a Nietzschean capitalist class ruling America
> > > behind the scenes through society?s political unconscious. Critical
> > Realism
> > > it seems can provide basic philosophical concepts for framing the
> > > investigation and theoretical explanation of Nietzsche?s universal
> ?Will
> > to
> > > Power?
> > > principle, as it may be manifested in nature and by humankind socially,
> > > economically, and politically. And Nietzsche?s principle, conversely,
> may
> > > be
> > > able to do the same for CR--provide a unified philosophical framework
> for
> > > applying CR principles to the diversity of emergent powers observed in
> > > nature and society.
> > > A ?Nietzschean Emergent Powers Materialism,? in providing a materialist
> > > basis for Nietzsche?s Will to Power that is opposed in principle to
> > > Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom but nevertheless grounded on the same
> > > ?Possibility of Naturalism,? may be able to greatly increase the
> > conceptual
> > > power of both ideas. Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom and Nietzsche?s Will to
> > > Power are complementary principles?one provides the background for
> > > explaining the other. In a comprehensive approach to the Possibility of
> > > Naturalism, Bhaskar?s Pulse of Freedom is very much the yin to the yang
> > of
> > > Nietzsche?s Will to Power.Fred Zaman
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Critical-Realism mailing list
> > > Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> > > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Critical-Realism mailing list
> > > Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> > > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Critical-Realism mailing list
> > > Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> > > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Bryan Tarpley
> > Stephen F. Austin State University
> > 936.468.6112 | btarpley at sfasu.edu
> > _______________________________________________
> > Critical-Realism mailing list
> > Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Critical-Realism mailing list
> > Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Bryan Tarpley
> Stephen F. Austin State University
> 936.468.6112 | btarpley at sfasu.edu
> _______________________________________________
> Critical-Realism mailing list
> Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Critical-Realism mailing list
> Critical-Realism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism
>



-- 
Bryan Tarpley
Stephen F. Austin State University
936.468.6112 | btarpley at sfasu.edu

From matonianuk at yahoo.co.uk  Sun May 31 20:41:09 2009
From: matonianuk at yahoo.co.uk (Karl Maton)
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 02:41:09 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Seminar, Weds 3rd June, Sydney University
Message-ID: <613494.65408.qm@web23604.mail.ird.yahoo.com>


Seminar, Weds 3rd June, Sydney University

Getting Real: AACR Seminars and Discussions

The Australasian Association for Critical Realism (AACR)is pleased to announce the latest in a new series of seminars, to be held at the University of Sydney. 

Wednesday 3rd june, 6.30pm
Room 148 (downstairs)
R.C. Mills Building, University of Sydney

Margaret Moussa
University of Western Sydney

J.S. Mill and Empiricism

Getting Real is a new series of seminars and discussions of readings organised by the AACR.  They are open to anyone interested in coming and engaging with realist ideas.  Neither speakers nor other participants need be 'critical realists' - the aim is to open up and encourage debate and discussion. 

We adjourn to the pub afterwards as well.

PLEASE send this on to anyone in your Dept or Faculty you think might be interested!  Thanks.