Critical realism, philosophy of meta-reality and the emancipation in/of anthropologic

194 Pages·2015·0.8 MB·English

Joined-up knowledge for a joined-up world:
Critical realism, philosophy of meta-reality and the emancipation
in/of anthropological spirituality - an exploration of confluence
Dissertation submitted by D.A Schreiber in fulfilment of the Masters in Theology
Degree in Christian Spirituality.
Supervisor: Prof. Christo Lombaard, Department of Christian Spirituality, Church
History and Missiology.
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Contents
List of conventions and abbreviations 7
Declarations 8
Acknowledgements 9
Summary 10
Chapter One: Introduction, overview, argument, intentions and review
1 The general argument and intention: The emancipation of philosophy and spirituality as a
grounding framework 11
1.1 Exploring the confluence of interest in the character of the literature field 15
1.1.1 Compliance and character of the introduction 21
1.2 Reaping where others have sewn: a contemplative moment 21
1.3 A personal agenda 23
1.3.1 The inspiration of dissatisfaction 24
1.3.2 The emancipative agenda: driving a hard bargain? 25
1.3.3 Epistemological hegemony: a many-layered thing 26
1.3.4 Philosophy and the problematic 27
1.3.4.1 Expanding personal “niggles” to philosophy and epistemology 27
1.3.4.2 Lexicons and epistemic complexity 28
1.3.4.3 Word counting and being: a problem for method 29
1.3.4.4 Appropriation of philosophy 30
1.4 The role of philosophy: “contexting” the problematic 30
1.4.1 Problematising spirituality and methodology 34
1.5 Argumentative intentions 35
1.5.1 Entering the fray on coat-tails 36
1.5.2 Choosing representatives 37
1.5.3 A short argument for interdisciplinarity and transformation 38
1.5.4 Restating the problematic 39
1.5.5 Theory to practice: a demonstration from reality 40
1.5.6 Critical powers 42
1.5.7 Joining-up the problematic: philosophy, critique and hegemony 42
1.5.7 Facts, values and Hume’s law I 43
1.6 Getting real: reflections on a world-located spirituality 44
1.6.1 What next? 45
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Chapter Two: Postmodernism, the philosophy of science and critical realism: The
critical heritage
Introduction 48
2.1 A point of confluence – context 48
2.1.2 Falsifyability in the philosophy of science 53
2.1.3 Postmodern scientific incommensurability 53
2.1.4 Postmodern epistemology: a summary 54
2.1.5. The attitude of critical realism 55
2.1.6 Preliminary comments on management 55
2.2 Critical realism 56
2.2.1 A realist theory of science 56
2.2.2 Roy Bhaskar and critical realism 57
2.2.3 The first movement of critical realism: transcendental realism 57
2.2.4 The critique of positivism 58
2.2.4.1 Epistemic fallacy 58
2.2.4.2 Actualist fallacy 59
2.2.4.3 Scientific individualism 60
2.2.4.4 The critique of positivism’s false opposite: the critique of Kant 60
2.2.4.5 A summary of critiques 61
2.3 Critical naturalism: the third alternative 62
2.3.1 Bhaskar’s trajectory 62
2.3.2 Bhaskar’s canon 63
2.3.4 Bhaskar’s system 65
2.3.5 Reflexivity 67
2.3.6 Bhaskar’s features of being (ontology) 67
2.3.7 Confluence and counterpoint 68
2.3.8 Bhaskar’s conception of scientific progress: reality and the essence of science 69
2.4 Social realism 71
2.4.1 Bhaskar on philosophy and science 72
2.4.2 Critical naturalism 75
2.4.2.1 Bhaskar’s social theory 76
2.4.2.2 The critiques 76
2.4.2.3 Bhaskar and transformation 77
2.4.2.4 Intransitivity, trans-factuality and stratification 77
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2.4.2.5 Relational and transformational dimensions 79
2.4.2.6 Bhaskar and historicism 80
2.4.2.7 Comment 82
2.4.2.8 The limits of naturalism in the social sciences: methodological implications 83
2.4.2.9 Bhaskar and agency in synchronic emergent powers materialism 88
2.4.2.10 Persons 89
Chapter Three: Bhaskar’s critique of ideology, dialectical and spiritual turns
3.1 Development of a theory of explanatory techniques 91
3.1.1 An analysis of Bhaskar’s critique 91
3.1.2 The critical refinement 91
3.1.3 Theory of explanatory techniques 92
3.1.3.1 A reflection 92
3.1.4 Bhaskar’s argument 93
3.1.4.1 Hume’s law: fact and value II 95
3.1.4.2 The TINA formation 95
3.1.4.3 Critique of the hermeneutical tradition expanded 96
3.1.4.4 Four hermeneutical circles 97
3.1.5 The critique of ideology: an appropriation for spirituality 98
3.1.5.1 Analytic philosophy: room at the critical inn, anybody...? 100
3.1.5.2 …for an ethical heart? 100
3.1.5.3 A rhetorical question? 100
3.2 Bhaskar’s dialectic 102
3.2.1 The pre-eminence of absence 103
3.2.2 Eight genealogies of dialectic 104
3.2.3 The dialectical enrichment of critical realism 105
3.2.4 Development of dialectical theory 106
3.2.4.1 Dialectic: logic of negation 108
3.2.5 Absence and dialectical critique 108
3.2.6 Non-identity, non-duality, intellect and morality in space-time 109
3.2.7 The otherness of reality 110
3.2.8 The programme of practical mysticism: rational judgement, reflexivity, truth, trust and
alethia 111
3.2.8.1 The dialectical effect of Bhaskar’s system: totality and agency 115
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3.2.8.2 Emergence 117
3.2.9 Summing up the dialectic 117
3.2.9.1 Absence is mediated by duality 118
Chapter Four: Bhaskar’s spiritual turn and the philosophy of meta-reality
4.1 A critique of consciousness in philosophy and the world 124
4.1.1 Meta-reality: development and turns 127
4.1.2 The argument for non-dual ground states and the cosmic envelope 130
4.1.3 The turn from non-identity to identity 131
4.1.4 Co-presence 133
4.1.5 Non-duality and transcendence 134
4.1.5.1 Christian non-duality? 136
4.1.6 Confluence? 138
4.1.7 Bhaskar’s system: a summary of the diachronic development of critical realism
represented as a synchronic system – further development 139
4.1.7.1 Love 141
4.1.7.2 Re-enchantment and consciousness 142
4.1.7.3 Meta-reality and ontology 143
4.1.8 Practicing humanly 144
4.1.9 Bhaskar comments on meta-reality 145
Chapter Five: Final argument and conclusion joining-up critique and knowledge:
Making the implicit critique of religion explicit
5.1 The role of critique 146
5.2 Fleshing out the critique: the battle for anthropology 148
5.3 Values and hegemony 150
5.4 Are religions brands? 151
5.5 The disease of dichotomy 153
5.6 Hegemony of paranoid alterity 155
5.6.1 Churched possibilities? 156
5.6.2 Ontological cure to paranoid alterity 157
5.6.3 Aetiology and diagnosis 158
5.7 Summary of the argument 158
5.8 The critical cure 162
5.8.1 Epistemology and methodologies: “fact-u-lying” society? 166
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5.8.2 Being and seeing through 171
5.9 Concluding a deal for a new worldview? 175
Bibliography 181
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List of conventions and abbreviations
All words appearing in bold typeface are the present author’s emphasis except where
appearing in quotations.
All use of [brackets] are the present authors additions to quotations, except for Bhaskar’s use
as quoted on page 111, and his enumeration as quoted on pages 63 and 133 of this
dissertation.
The present author uses italics to indicate emphasis
Abbreviations of concepts and publication titles are respectively conventional amongst
contributors to critical realism and may thus appear in the dissertation as follows:
CR = Critical Realism
TR = Transcendental Realism
PDM = Philosophical Discourse of Modernism
TDCR = Transcendental Dialectical Critical Realism
RTS = A realist theory of science (Bhaskar [1975] 2008)
PON = The possibility of naturalism (Bhaskar [1979] 1998)
SRHE = “Scientific explanation and human emancipation” (Bhaskar 1980)
RR = Reclaiming reality (Bhaskar 1989b)
DPF = Dialectic: The pulse of freedom (Bhaskar 1993)
FEW = From East to West (Bhaskar 2000)
RMR = Reflections of meta-reality (Bhaskar 2002a)
FSE = From science to emancipation (Bhaskar [2002b] 2012)
PMR = Philosophy of meta-reality (Bhaskar, 2002c, 2002d)
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Key words in this dissertation:
Critical realism, spirituality, meta-reality, methodology, inter-disciplinarity, emergence,
absence, dialectic, transformation, emancipative axiology.
Declarations:
The dissertation presented here is a theoretical argument in which no interviews were
necessary. Consequently a discussion on the ethical guidelines for conducting such interviews
is omitted.
I, Dudley Alexander Schreiber, declare in accordance with the guidelines and ethics of the
Academy, that plagiarism has not been committed and that all work that is not my own has
been properly acknowledged as such.
Signed:........................................................... Date:.......................................
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the numerous people and organisations they represent who were
instrumental in inspiring, affording the bursary, giving me space and time, supervising and
supporting this endeavour. Firstly the inspirers: to Professor Christo Lombaard, of the
Department of Christian Spirituality, Unisa, thanks for the chats, advice and coffees, all of
which I take as outward expressions of sincere warmth and generosity. My former Professors
of St. Joseph’s Theological Institute who inspired my study of Philosophy. My long time
thanks to Albert Nolan O.P. whose example and presence at one time have evinced a
profound, ongoing search. Professor Celia Kourie, whose beautiful writings have inspired and
uplifted my spirit, providing a light in the sometimes dark labyrinth of methodology. The
Philosopher of the moment Roy Bhaskar without whose mention by Roland Benedikter, I
might never have investigated critical realism. My thanks also to Refilwe Makgae for seeing
to all the administrative processes involved in the Bursary afforded by Unisa. To my extended
family for the support when I had run out of words to speak and the space-time to get the
words on paper, “thanks bunch”. To Tracey and Percy from Sprint, my thanks for your
patience and words of encouragement.
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Summary
Seldom are we privileged to witness an international philosophical movement, which in
addition to being a philosophical revolution, vindicates the values and concerns of a critical
anthropological approach in Spirituality from the analytic tradition. The work of critical
realists is potential remedy for the ills, dichotomies and lacunae inherent in the Western
philosophical and spiritual traditions. Critical realism and philosophy of meta-reality, it is
claimed, not only emancipate philosophy but, science and society as spiritual. This
dissertation explores the many points of confluence and exposes dimensions of living and
studying spirituality, which challenge us to think of ontological realism, epistemological
relativism and rational (reflexive) judgement in a mode, which cautions against the naive
relativism, tacit irrealism and other mistakes which tend to over-characterise our academic
discourse with social linguistification, to the detriment of humanity and our utopian freedom
and flourishing.
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