Date: Mon, 11 Mar 96 15:50:51 EST
From: "Joe Cronin" <croninj-AT-thomasmore.edu>
Subject: Re: >Habermas is Habermas, 'nough said.


          Perhaps the goal of "rational communication" is amiss
          because it requires an essentially rational subject to get
          off the ground.  The idea of a form of rational
          communication which is non-essentialist is not, of itself,
          an impossible ideal.  But we have to make allowances for
          different kinds of rationality; this, unfortunately, is
          habermas' fatal weakness.  he's not interested in
          rationalities - in that Kantian/Hegelian/(Hitlerian?)
          tradition, the REAL is The rational, and so on.  Sorry, but
          in that discourse, there's only one form of rationality (and
          communication, really) available.  This form can't have a
          history id it is to serve as the ground and measure of
          history.
          we can, as Focuault does, speak of divegernt rationalities,
          and forms of communication within and among them.  That not
          only seems to be a much clearer description of how things
          actually do happen, it is not overladen with a
          transcendental subjekt either.


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