Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 19:44:35 -0600 From: jlnich1-AT-service1.uky.edu (jln) Subject: Re: >Habermas is Habermas, 'nough said. 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. It is not only Habermas' fatal weakness, but much of current philosophical debate's current weakness. Few people take up the question of what it means to say there are different kinds of rationality and then of describing what kinds of rationality there are. Part of the problem might be that everything is written in the dominant rationality of the Kantian/generally philosophical tradition. This automatically makes other forms of rationality suspect. Perhaps this is why Adorno writes in such an odd way. But the other problem is really getting a handle on what these other forms of rationalities are. Is the Gilligan-type female rationality really a "rationality" or another way of relating to the world which does not rely on reason. Hoe many rationalities are there? Two, as in Horkheimer/Adorno and Marcuse or multitudes as in anthropology and Foucault? Coudl the multiple forms of rationality in Foucault be classified under two kinds of rationality: enlightenment-dominating kind and "aesthetic, or not? And exactly what is this aesthetic reason which Adorno and Marcuse refer to? Even Habermas speaks of these two kinds of rationality, but in his enthusiasm to spell out exactly what communicative rationality is, he never dessiminates aesthetic reasoning- he only uses it as a place holder. JLN jlnich1-AT-pop.uky.edu University of Kentucky ------------------
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