08 January 2010

Reply to Adam's Reply to "Ideologues and Critical Realists"

Thanks Adam for your reply. First I would like to just say a word about the main point of the post and then define what I mean by Critical Realism. The main point I was making was to distinguish Obama's decision making process from the previous administration. It's not of course that GW did not go through a critical decision making process, it's just that he tended to defer to ideology (at least in my opinion) much more readily and with less epistemological angst.

The decision to go to war in Iraq is what I'm thinking of mainly here.

As far as I can tell there are at least three schools in different disciplines that call themselves Critical Realists.

1. Aurthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne are scientists and interested in the question of religion. 2. Bernard Lonergan was a Catholic philosopher and theologian (he wrote Insight and Method in Theology). His work has had an impact (albeit limited) in biblical studies (Ben F. Meyer, N.T. Wright, and Rikk Watts specifically). and finally 3. Roy Bhaskar and friends which I believe focus on social science, politics, ethics...? (you should correct me here). I believe Alistair McGrath has explored the connections between some of these distinct schools.

Lonergan (along with Meyer, Wright and Watts as well) is the one who has influenced me (my own work is in biblical studies- pursuing a PhD in NT). I know very little about Roy Bhaskar.

The various forms of CR have family resemblances ("ontological realism, epistemological relativism and judgmental rationality" as you put it). Specifically, Lonergan has an understanding of human consciousness engaged in the drive to know as having four levels- From an earlier post on this blog:

The four levels of consciousness consist of relative operations each building on the previous, (1) experiencing leads to (2) inquiry and understanding by which intelligible answers are formed to questions arising from the first level. (3) Judging the veracity of the answers follows and finally (4) deciding a course of action in accord with what has been judged true is the final level of consciousness. The levels of consciousness are a dynamic unity, given as a whole.

Calling Obama a critical realist has more to do with seeing this process in action than anything else. What characterizes CR for me here is that one can have several construals or insights for the same set of data- answers for the questions that arise on the second level. With Obama and the war, these construals include "scenarios" - construals of the reality "on the ground" and projections of how things will play out given distinct courses of action. Ideology provides construals which may run rough shod over evidence, (e.g. U.S. style democracy will make people more free no matter where/how or at what cost it is implemented) but a critical realist is adamant about moving beyond to judgment (attention to cultural specificity socio-historical realities). There is a lot that is given- Obama did in fact inherit the war(s)- but now he has taken ownership of Afghanistan and has argued that there are times when war is justified- he's a moral realist but I think is aware of his position (a discussion of this is really not possible here). He's also a realist in the colloquial sense of the word.

What I appreciate about your comments (which to a certain extent are beyond me with respect to vocabulary and concepts) is that it points beyond the intellectual sphere of inquiry to that of normative ethics- something inherent in CR. Critical realism (in Lonergan's terminology) includes both the drive to know and the drive to the good- which are parallel and closely related (the step of deciding a course of action - level 4 is obviously inherently an ethical one). You say,


Critical theory *must* be willing to analyze the violence inherent in its own categories and scrutinize the effects of such categories. If Obama is a critical realist, how I ask, might he be reproducing, and not transforming (a key purpose of critical realism), oppressive structures of physical and cultural violence?


Lonergan's theory involves laying bare horizons- making explicit assumptions that become embedded in ideology and allows for, even seeks the transformation of horizon and conversion (intellectual and moral).

I'm not sure that Obama isn't to some extent transforming categories (his use of language in contrast to Bush era rhetoric) but ultimately I don't think any sitting U.S. president can truly be a critical realist.

2 comments:

Thomas said...

By the way, for more about my understanding of CR, some of my early posts on the blog discuss that.

Unknown said...

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for your reply. I will respond over the weekend with a few remarks. Things have been busy lately.

All the best, a.

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