Scott and dialectics

[MSalter1@aol.com]

In a message dated 08/08/97 08:44:57 GMT, Steve write:

<< Michael--Doesn't the mutual dependence you speak of go by another
 name:  dialectical relations?  

MICHAEL Absolutely, Steve but that term needs careful handling. I've recently
been researching the various and generally (if suitably) antagonistic variety
of ways in which the idea of dialectics has been used by judges, jurists,
politicos, feminists, philosophers etc.; and this has made me a little
cautious but I'll get over it soon 


STEVE I can't speak for all of Scott's
 posts, not having read them all or thoroughly, but in the instances
 I've seen, Scott has used his method on folks whose position failed
 to recognize both poles of the dialectic.  

MICHAEL What though of his tendency to reduce the interaction between
universal and context-specific particulars to the latter? Isn'r reductionist
the counter-dialectical strategy par excellence? I may have got Scott wrong
here and if so I apologise in advance. Dialecticians have a worrying tendency
to reinterpret things so as to allow their own approach to get a better grip,
and filter out what would pose problems.

STEVE Whether his own position
 is dialectical and thus avoids his own critique -- we can't judge
 that until Scott defines HIS general stance clearly.  Scott?
  >>
MICHAEL Well, and following Adorno, I have learned to be very suspicious of
attempts to settle substantive issues by definitional means, most of all in
the area of dialectics. Adorno is spot on when he (following Hegel's prewface
to the PofS) insists that step by step phenomenological "demonstration" from
the bottom up must precede real definition; and that top-down
general/abstract definitions are as much part of the problem as a solution.

Cheers
Michael