Against the Spiritual Turn

Marxism, Realism, and Critical Theory

Sean Creaven

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415524049
• eBook ISBN: 9781134009138
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Sociologia

The argument presented in this book is that the recent 'spiritual' trajectory of Roy Bhaskar's work, upon which he first embarked with the publication of his From East to West, undermines the fundamental achievements of his earlier work. The problem with Bhaskar's new philosophical system ( Transcendental Dialectical Critical Realism or simply Meta-Reality ), from the critical-realist Marxist perspective endorsed here, is that it marks both a departure from and a negation of the earlier concerns of Bhaskar to develop a realist philosophy of science and under-labour for an emancipatory materialist socio-historical science. The end-result is a meta-philosophy which is irrealist, speculative, under-theorized, internally self-contradictory, and which cannot provide philosophical guidance to liberatory social practices. In opposition to theist ontological logics more generally (including the rather more rational theism presented by Margaret Archer, Andrew Collier and Doug Porpora), the argument of this book is that the earth-bound materialist dialectics of the classical Marxist tradition, and the naturalistic humanism these dialectics under-labour on the terrain of socio-historical being, offer a much more promising way forward for critical realist theory and for liberatory politics and ethics.

1 Bhaskar’s ‘spiritual turn’
Logical and conceptual problems

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is twofold.

First, to present a recapitulation of the themes of FEW, before highlighting how Bhaskar’s writings on MR are continuous with them and what they add to them. Bhaskar’s ‘spiritual turn’, or his TDCR system, has its origins in his FEW, and is further articulated and developed in his MR writings (PMR and RMR). The main function of Bhaskar’s TDCR philosophy is to draw together the progressive ethical or spiritual aspects of a range of philosophical and theistic traditions that traditionally have not engaged with each other. These include the great world religions (but with a particular emphasis on Buddhism and Vedic Hinduism supplemented with Orthodox-Greek Christian motifs), New Age spiritualism, scientific rationality, aspects of the classical Greek tradition (especially neo-Platonism and Aristotelian essentialism), and what Bhaskar terms ‘New Left’ (which appears to denote the libertarian politics of the 1960s, Marxian emancipatory science, the new social movements, and his own evolving realist philosophy). Bhaskar’s aim is to create a new synthesis out of these divergent elements that will overcome the traditional problems of Western philosophy (reductionism, dualism, actualism, mechanical materialism, utilitarianism, monovalence, empiricism, instrumentalism, positivism, atomism, etc.) and offer an ethic of being (‘right-action’) that will assist in the project of human emancipation worldwide through spiritual self-realization.

Second, to explore the logical and conceptual problems of Bhaskar’s TDCR and MR philosophy. There are, I wish to argue, a number of fundamental difficulties and problems with the ‘spiritual turn’ of Bhaskar’s TDCR (MR) philosophy. These may be briefly recapitulated as follows. First, the TDCR system of MR is, I claim, riddled with logical gaps or absences, and rests its conceptual plausibility on transcendental deductions that are at best simply indecisive, and at worst uncompelling. Second, in ontological essentials, there are, it seems to me, areas of discontinuity and inconsistency between the CR and DCR systems and TDCR. Finally, contrary to its intentions, the ontological substance of the new system (godism and idealization of being) renders it contrary to Marxian philosophy and social science. In this chapter I will explore the logical and conceptual errors of the TDCR system (as I see them). In the next chapter I will complete my critique of Bhaskar’s ‘spiritual turn’, by drawing out the areas of discontinuity and incompatibility of the new philosophy with previous philosophical positions that are still explicitly endorsed by Bhaskar — i.e. the core ontological concepts of his CR philosophy of science and the theoretical logic of emancipatory Marxian social science.

Bhaskar’s FEW: theological CR

The philosophical core of Bhaskar’s FEW is an affirmation of the necessity of dialectical spiritual enlightenment. This spiritual enlightenment is conceived as a dialectic of self- and species-realization. This culminates in a state of connectivity or identity of human consciousness both with its own ‘ground-state’ (our essential human capacities of love, imagination, creativity, knowledgeability, solidarity, freedom) and with the underlying non-duality of being. This fundamental non-duality or harmony of being is, at this stage of TDCR, grasped by Bhaskar as God. God-talk is allowed by Bhaskar, on the grounds that ‘within the continuum of being’, there is no real difference ‘between realism about God and realism about any other being — for instance a galaxy that is beyond the expanse of our current most powerful telescopes’.¹

How does Bhaskar define his ‘realist’ God? First, he says, God is the ‘ultimate categorial structure of the world, including our socialised being’.² Bhaskar means that God is the base stratum or foundational generative mechanism of all things, the source of all causal powers and emergent strata, and the condition of all developmental possibilities. Bhaskar also means that God is the inner ingredient of all natural processes and the unbounded binding force of all being.³ Second, he says, God is ‘an open absent totality’. This is apparently in the sense of being absolute spirit and beyond, a universal being which is inherently dynamic and creative (generating new emergent strata) by virtue of the dialectical interplay or negativa and positiva. As Bhaskar elaborates:

The fact that God is unbounded, and in principle consists (also) of infinite (layers of) depth and (zones or swathes of) extension does not mean that he can have no positive qualities (rather he has infinite qualities) or that he can only be defined by the via negativa, as not this, not that and so on. It does mean, however, that … God is both consciousness … and beyond consciousness.⁴

Third, he says, God is the ‘ultimate ground’ or ‘categorial truth’ of reality.⁵ This takes us beyond the first definition, in so far as a claim about the ontological existence of God is extended into a claim about the alethic truth of God.⁶ Finally, Bhaskar wishes to define God (and hence universal being) as ‘unconditional love’.⁷ That is the positive meaning of God alluded to above.

To summarize, then, Bhaskar’s God is the root stratum of reality, as well as its alethic truth, whereas the ontological reality and truth of God (and hence of the universe) is universal unconditional love. Now, by alethic truth, Bhaskar means ‘a species of ontological truth constituting and following on the truth of, or real reason(s) for, or dialectical ground of, things, as distinct from propositions’.⁸ In other words, for Bhaskar, whereas ‘ontological truth’ is the proposition that things are true by virtue of their being, ‘alethic truth’ is a deeper derivative proposition that the essence of a being (its inner nature) is its essential truth. Thus, as Ruth Groff elaborates, ‘for any given alethic truth (y) of x, y is the underlying generative mechanism [essence] that causes x to be, [whereas] alethic truth in general is the totality of real, causal powers that give rise to both actual [non-observed] and empirical [observed] events’.⁹ So, for Bhaskar then, God is the essential or inner truth of all things — structural, actual and empirical.

Bhaskar’s perspective amounts, of course, to a thoroughgoing spiritualization of all reality, human and otherwise. For Bhaskar, ‘the basic structure of both man and the world … is God’.¹⁰ All natural processes, whatever else they are, are consciousness, to a greater or lesser degree. Being is, he says, ‘a continuum’ of consciousness.¹¹ Human enlightenment as self-realization thus consists of reuniting relative or concretely singularized spirit (our own individualized selves, which are themselves the ‘inner God’) with universalized or absolute spirit (the ‘outer God’, which is the oneness of being, the totality of all things, as well as its condition and cause).¹² This perspective is also a thoroughgoing idealization of human-being-in-nature. As emergent forms of absolute being or ‘pure dispositionality’ (universal spirit or God), human beings are themselves in essence God (or absolute being or universal spirit). As Bhaskar puts it: ‘In our first, most essential reality we are immortal and at one with God.’¹³ This appeal to the godliness of humanity is a common refrain running throughout FEW. Here are some oft-quoted examples:

Man is essentially God (and therefore essentially one, but also essentially unique); and that, as such, he is essentially free and already enlightened … Man is essentially God, already essentially free, even now already enlightened; an enlightenment, freedom and Godliness that has only (!) to be experientially accessed, stabilised in his consciousness and so realised in practice … Man is essentially free and essentially God (therefore essentially one, but as a unity-in-diversity and as concretely singularised therefore also essentially unique). Man is essentially creative and essentially being (subject-referential) as opposed to having (attached, object-referential) … [M]an is essentially enlightened not ignorant (avidyic); … [H]uman action is essentially spontaneous right action, which is carefree, joyous and loving.¹⁴

This notion of human beings as essentially God (or ‘Godlike’ as Bhaskar puts it elsewhere) supports a kind of Promethean super-humanism on the terrain of four-planar social being and beyond. Dialectical enlightenment (moksha or liberation) is conceived as the process by which human agents reconnect with their real transcendental selves (our dharma) and hence with God by ‘shedding’ or ‘letting go’ (yagya) the secondary order of the demi-real (the actualist world of historically generated socio-cultural relations and the relative and ephemeral subjectivities this sustains and suffuses). As Bhaskar puts it, ‘man’s intrinsic nature or dharma is to realise God’, both the God-within and the God-without.¹⁵ This process culminates in eudaimonia, a state of inner nirvana in human subjectivities, where ‘concretely singularised self-centred subjects flourish in selfless solidarity with each and all’.¹⁶ This is an earth-bound utopia of universal love, of free-flourishing creativity, of boundless enlightenment, of spontaneous ‘right-action’, and of oneness of humanity with the totality of being. For Bhaskar, this eudaimonia is possible, because unconditional love amongst human beings, and for the rest of nature, is the essence of our species-being.¹⁷ Thus, in Bhaskar’s view, humanity’s self-realization constitutes, as Hartwig puts it, ‘the stabilisation of the absolute in the relative’,¹⁸ or the (re-) unification of humanity and divinity: hence ‘Godliness everywhere’.¹⁹

Now the main point to be distilled from this is that, from Bhaskar’s point of view, the ideal state of human-being-in-nature (universal unconditional love, spontaneous creativity, boundless enlightenment, non-dual or harmonious relations with being) is potentially real because humans are emergent forms of God, are essentially God, are Godlike, or suchlike. However, the ideal-state is potentially real, rather than actual, because of the order of the demi-real (i.e. relative socio-historic being, including master-slave type relations), which overlays and occludes the Real Transcendental Self with ‘het-eronomous orders of determination’.²⁰ As Hartwig observes, for Bhaskar, these ‘are basically emergent layers of objectified and lived ideological illusion (maya), the compounded and compounding result of past category mistakes (avidya), resulting from the exercise of free will’.²¹ Demi-reality is an ‘irrealist categorial structure’ sustained by networks of recursive error: avidya (ignorance), maya (illusion) and karma (presence of the past in the present). These are fundamentally errors of consciousness or conceptuality, which sustain the ‘structural sins’ of capitalist modernity by self-deflecting our aspirations for freedom into false channels (consumerism, status-rank, fetishism, domination of nature) and masking the underlying reality of our essential freedom and enlightenment.²² Demi-reality, then, though rooted in irrealist error, and constituted by a ‘web of illusion or maya’,²³ is nonetheless causally efficacious, albeit only by virtue of our self-estrangement.

Consequently, although humans are really essentially free, they are actually everywhere in chains. But, since demi-reality is parasitic on the divine properties of humanity (selfless solidarity and spontaneous ‘right-action’), and since demi-reality is, as the product of a godlike species, necessarily generated by our (deflected) free will, it follows that there are no obstacles to universal self-realization other than our own voluntary self-alienation. As Bhaskar summarizes his position:

Man has to shed the illusion that he is not essentially Godlike and free and the constraining heteronomous determinations (constituting an objective world of illusion, duality and alienation) which that illusion grounds … Such illusions, orders and constraints have arisen as emergent products of man’s free will … The fundamental malaise then is self-alienation, and this underpins a chain of avidya-maya dualism, multiple and heteronomous orders of determination and degrees of constraint … -alienation-reification-conditionality-attachment-ontological insecurity-fear (stemming from self-alienation)-tina formation-denegation-reflexive inconsistency … Heteronomy is always manifest in attachment, set by karma and grounded in self-alienation, based on practical ignorance or avidya (especially of our true selves). These form a vicious interlocking circle. To break free from it is to become what we most truly are; this is our birthright and our task, our bounden duty and our joy: liberation … To become free all we need to do is shed our illusions. These are the chains which bind us to the presence of the past. It is time to let go, to live life afresh. The hour for unconditional love has struck.²⁴

So Bhaskar’s Promethean super-humanism is ultimately sustained by his idealization or spiritualization of being, which is anchored in his theism or godism. Because we are essentially God or god-like, it follows that in the human world, evil (demi-reality) is necessarily dependent on and subordinate to goodness (non-duality). The essence of humanity, its alethic truth or deep structure, is goodness, whereas the order of the demi-real (structural evil) is the ephemeral and inessential socio-cultural forms under which we bury our essential selves. This means that self-emancipation (total self-identity with being, unbounded creativity, self-knowledgeability, spontaneous right-action, selfless love for all human beings, the building of ‘heaven on earth’) is simply a process of ‘casting off’ or ‘letting go’ the past accumulated illusions and errors and self-deceptions of our own free will (karma) that have prevented us (humanity) from realizing our own essential nature. Freedom just is spiritual self-enlightenment.²⁵ As Bhaskar puts it: ‘To change the world, man only has to realize himself.’²⁶

In the eudaimonic society, the culmination of dialectical enlightenment, Bhaskar claims that even ‘desire’ will be ‘absented’. ‘In a eudaimonistic society there would still be intentionality, but not desire or craving as such, with its self-undermining and repetitive character, [rather] intentionality would manifest in the free realisation of aims, goals and projects.’²⁷ This is because ‘desire’ is grasped as inessential to humankind, whose essence is being rather than having, whereas the belief to the contrary is an illusion or error which helps sustain demi-reality and which in turn is sustained by demi-reality. ‘Desire’ is maintained by self-ignorance, which in turn maintains all the oppressive/false social practices and cultural beliefs and philosophical ideas of master-slave type societies, including those of capitalist modernity, such as instrumentalism and consumerism.²⁸

Yet, although ‘desire’ itself is of the order of the demi-real, it is nonetheless an engine of human self-emancipation. This is because the collective struggle for liberation on the terrain of historically relative social being necessarily is animated by the craving to ‘absent’ demi-reality, the desire to remove obstacles to h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Author’s note
• Introduction
• 1 Bhaskar’s ‘spiritual turn’: logical and conceptual problems
• 2 Meta-reality, critical realism and Marxism
• 3 Secularism, agnosticism and theism
• 4 Critical realism, Transcendence and God
• 5 Humanism, spiritualism and critical theory
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index