Hegel & Marx
by Ted Winslow
Whitehead's ontology is "a scientific worldview." It's a sublation of
the scientific materialist form of science that includes, for instance,
a sublation of relativity and quantum theory.
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CB: So what is overcome and what is preserved ?
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The sublation produces an ontology consistent with the existence of
"freedom" not only as self-determination, but as self-determination
potentially able, in the case of human being, to take the form of a
"will proper" and a "universal will." As I've pointed out before,
Whitehead makes "science" in this enlarged sense "the essence of
freedom" understood as "the practicability of purpose," a conception of
freedom he explicitly associates with "the economic interpretation of
history."
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CB: So, is he rediscovering Engels on these issues ?
^^^^^^^
Scientific materialism has no logical space for self-determination in
any form let alone this one,
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CB: What do you mean by "scientific materialism" ?
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i.e. no room for "will" where we mean by
this some degree of self-determination. This produces logical
incoherence, as in the claim that science so conceived can enhance
human "freedom."
A "will proper" contrasts with an animal "will" which has more of less
"limitation or a content which is immediately extant through nature."
^^^^^
CB: Human will in contrast with animal will has much more social content,
including especially social connections to life experience and activities of
now dead generations of humans. This is the main difference between human
and animal consciousness/will.
Referring to your previous post crtiicizing Darwin, Lewontin, et.al, since
Darwin, Lewontin and other biologists are dealing with animals, the "will
proper" wouldn't play the same role for them as in dealing with human
society, right ?
^^^^^^
"The Will Proper, or the Higher Appetite, is (a) pure indeterminateness
of the Ego, which as such has no limitation or a content which is
immediately extant through nature but is indifferent towards any and
every determinateness. (b) The Ego can, at the same time, pass over to
a determinateness and make a choice of some one or other and then
actualize it." (Hegel, The Philosophical Propaedeutic p. 2)
In the articles I recently cited, Julie Nelson appropriates an "object
relations" psychoanalytic interpretation both of the dogmatic
misidentification of "science" with scientific materialist ontological
premises and of the inability of minds dogmatically attached to these
premises to comprehend alternative premises such as the premise that
relations are "internal."
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CB: How does the concept of internal relations help explicate the absolute
general law of capitalist accumulation ?
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On this basis she makes the following
claims:
"This feminist critique of economic methodology, then, springs not from
ad hoc dissatisfaction with various aspects, but from a deep analysis
of the social, historical, and psychosexual meanings the traditional
image of science holds for its participants. The idea that the
universe may be open, in some ways fundamentally unpredictable, and
intrinsically purposive
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CB: Unpredictable , yet purposive ? Doesn't knowing the purpose give a
basis to predict ?
^^^^^^
- in contrast to being a closed system,
ultimately distillable into formulae, controllable, and fundamentally
indifferent - is not simply a reasonable alternative ontology that can
be carefully weighed for its logical implications and neutrally
evaluated for its relative merits. As Harding writes, 'it requires a
great deal more than just 'clear thinking' to dislodge ... ontologies
from their status as obvious' (1999: 130). The idea of an open
universe feels fundamentally _scary_ for those who sense that not only
their status as scientists set above the objects they study, but also
their safety vis-a-vis chaos, their 'manhood' (whether actual, or, in
the case of female scientists, symbolic), and their very own distinct
selfhood are threatened unless they can keep the living, novel,
relational aspects of nature safely at bay.
"Feminists who delve into the historical, social, emotional, and
psychosexual dynamics that have kept women suppressed and oppressed
have found a complex of dualistic, hierarchical belief patterns that
manifest themselves not only in the social realm, but also in
intellectual (and religious and artistic) endeavors. Historically,
well-reasoned criticisms of neoclassical economics - targeting its
unrealistic assumptions, narrow methodology, over-formalism, false
detachment, etc. - have been legion, as any perusal of a bibliographic
database will show. Also historically, they have generally failed to
alter the mainstream ideas of the discipline. Yet the present feminist
analysis does not simply add to this legion of critiques; it suggests,
at a basic emotional and motivational level, that such critique is
suppressed because it is _feared_. It points out how reasonableness is
taking a back seat to emotional reaction, in this drama. This feminist
analysis takes us back to the territory of critique of Enlightenment
dualisms once more but this time with feeling." ("Once more, with
feeling: Feminist economics and the ontological question," in Feminist
Economics 9(1), 2003, p. 111
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CB: Does this contradict a historical materialist/ vulgar materialist
explanation of bourgeois political economists' fears of critiquing the
neo-classical economics paradigm , i.e. bourgeois political economists are
in the cash nexus/need jobs and money ( like us all) ?
^^^
I think Doug once tried to initiate a discussion on this list of an
earlier version of these claims.
Ted
