Date: Wed, 3 Jun 1998 01:54:15 -0400 (EDT) From: "M.A. King" <kingma-AT-mcmail.CIS.McMaster.CA> Subject: Re: reification, agency, Habermas On Tue, 2 Jun 1998 Vunch-AT-aol.com wrote: > Wait, Habermas claims that in our 'totally administered society' (to borrow > Adorno's phrase) there is a clash between strategic action including strategic > linguistic action as systematically distorted and perlocutionary, and > communicative action when language is justified through validity claims. I > don't think Habermas means to say that coordination exists without the > subjects intersubjective coordinating activity. Administered activity or > strategic action when actors and speakers manipulate each other is not > coordination, rather it is a form of steering. Well ... at p. 101 of the first volume of the Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas writes: "Concepts of social action are distinguished ... according to how they specify the coordination among the goal-directed actions of different participants: as the interlacing of egocentric calculations of utility ... ; as a socially integrating agreement about values and norms instilled through cultural tradition and socialization; as a consensual relation between players and their publics; or as reaching understanding in the sense of a cooperative process of interpretation." So, there at least for Habermas coordination is something that can be achieved through strategic action. Perhaps he uses the word differently elsewhere.... A matter of semantics, but when dealing with someone like Habermas, semantics can be important.... Anyway, if you want to pursue this further, maybe we should take it off the list. ----Matthew A. King------Department of Philosophy------McMaster University---- "The border is often narrow between a permanent temptation to commit suicide and the birth of a certain form of political consciousness." -----------------------------(Michel Foucault)--------------------------------
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