Dialectic and difference : dialectical critical realism and the grounds of justice / Alan Norrie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Norrie, Alan W. (Alan William), 1953-

Series:

Ontological investigations

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dialectic.

Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014.

Bhaskar, Roy.

Realism.

Physical Description:

xiii, 257 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Routledge, 2010.

Summary:

Dialectic and Difference is the first systematic exploration of Roy Bhaskar's dialectical philosophy and its implications for ethics and justice.

That philosophy has three aims: a dialecticisation of original critical realism, a critical realist reworking of dialectic, and a metacritique of western philosophy. In the first, real absence or negativity links, structured being to dialectical becoming in a dynamic world. The second drawson Marx to locate the critical impulse in Hegel's dialectic in a material, open and changing totality. The third, metacritique, identifies a central problem in western philosophy from die Greeks on, the failure to think real negativity as the essence of change ('ontoiogical monovalence').

Bhaskar's ethics connect basic human ontology with universal principles of freedom and solidarity. He marries ('constellates') these with a grasp of how ethical principles are historically shaped. His account of freedom moves from the infant's 'primal scream' to the eudaimonic society, but flunks the limits to freedom under modern conditions.

Western philosophy systematically denies the real negativity that drives Bhaskar's dialectic. Metacritique traces this to Parmenides, and Plato's account of non-being as difference. It enables a critique of the tradition as a whole and specifically of the poststructural radicalisation of difference, understood as an anti-Platonic move on Platonic terrain

This text is essential reading for all serious students of social theory, philosophy, and legal theory. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction : natural necessity, being and becoming

Accentuate the negative

Diffracting dialectic

Opening totality

Constellating ethics

Metacritique I : philosophy's 'primordial failing'

Metacritique II : dialectic and difference

Conclusion : natural necessity and the grounds of justice.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780415560351

0415560357

9780415560368

0415560365

9780203865934

0203865936

OCLC:

340987769