Dialectic and Difference

About this book

Dialectic and Difference is the first systematic exploration of Roy Bhaskarâe(tm)s dialectical philosophy and its implications for ethics and justice. That philosophy has three aims: a dialecticisation of original critical realism, a âe~critical realisationâe(tm) 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 draws on Marx to locate the critical impulse in Hegelâe(tm)s dialectic in a material, open and changing totality. The third identifies a central problem in western philosophy from the Greeks on, the failure to think real negativity as the essence of change (âe~ontological monovalenceâe(tm)). Bhaskarâe(tm)s ethics connect basic human ontology with universal principles of freedom and solidarity. He marries (âe~constellatesâe(tm)) these with a grasp of how principles are historically shaped. His account of freedom moves from the infantâe(tm)s âe~primal screamâe(tm) to the eudaimonic society, but thinks the limits to freedom under modern conditions. The morally real in ethics and justice is displaced and reconfigured as relations between âe~the idealâe(t…