Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 22:44:12 -0600
From: Scott Everett Johnson <sjohn-AT-cp.duluth.mn.us>
Subject: Re: General Question


Kenneth McKendrick wrote:

> I see, for now, six problems with Habermas:
> 
> 1. he is a bit of a cypto-theologian.  reason will save us.  if he is arguing that 
> reason is necessarily connected to universality, democracy etc.  he squarely 
> jumps into the metaphysics fields.  Necessary relations give me the creeps.

Reason, I would argue, is characterized by self-conscious reflection.
The necessary relation between reason and "universality, democracy,
etc." rests on the fact that it is because we can reflect on our
practices that we can judge them as inadequately realizing the ends
which are the purpose of our activity. It is only through reflection
that we can step back and examine those practices, only in relfection
that we require SOMETHING ELSE (i.e. a conception of what our purpose
is) to justify the practice, instead of taking the practice itself as
the end itself. In other words, reason IS critical, criticism IS
rational. "Universality, democracy etc." are, for the moment, essential
parts of the highest reflection we have been capable of on what is most
important to us, that which can justify our practices, which can make
them "our own" such that we can claim them as ours AFTER reflecting on
them rather than accepting them without reflection. Thus the connection,
the "necessary relation". Aren't you asking us to reflect on Habermas's
emphasis on reason, his connection between reason and "universality,
democracy, etc"? This "necessary" relation, and all "necessary
relations", give you the "creeps". More specifically, you argue that in
this way Habermas "jumps into the metaphysics fields [sic]." This is
itself a call to reflect. This reflection, you imply, will reveal good
reason to avoid making this connection. Well, I am saying that in doing
this you are being rational. Your action is prospectively oriented to
the "universal", to that which more closely approximates a reflective
adequacy for all of us who are discussing this matter--and, indeed,
implicitly for everyone CAPABLE of discussing the matter.
   Moreover, if your arguement stopped at "Necessary relations give me
the creeps," would you expect us to accept your reservations as
reasonable, as rational? Of course not, just like you wouldn't be swayed
by such an argument from me. As a matter of fact, in most cases you
wouldn't accept it yourself. If after reflecting you couldn't flesh that
feeling out with something in your world which you could regard as a
real correlate to that feeling, you would conclude that your feeling may
be "irrational"--which doesn't mean that it may not be, but only means
that you cannot KNOW this. The only way you could later find that it was
rational is if you can later reflect on a real experience which
demonstrates that the feeling was related to your perception of this or
that which your earlier reflection overlooked, and which you can NOW see
as important. (Though it is possible that there is no connection between
the feeling and what later happened.) The demand of reason, of
reflection, is that one articulate oneself reflectively, that one
doesn't accept such vagaries uncritically--from oneself or another. One
can proceed on the basis of an inarticulate vagary, of course, but it
should be recognized that one does so because one feels that the
rationality of such action will be made manifest later, in reflection
that has the benefit of new experience.
  Regarding your putting the phrase "reason will save us" in Habermas's
mouth, it might be better to say that reason HAS TO save us, because we
have already, so to speak, eaten of the fruit. Habermas can be seen as
saying that reason CAN "save us"--from what we take to be "reason",
even.


> 2.  since he hasn't been bitten by the aesthetic bug he doesn't leave much room for 
> aesthetics.  this is a problem.  aesthetics play a much larger role in life than 
> simply affairs of the private.  ie. there is no poetry in habermas.  following agnes 
> heller - "habermasian man has no feelings.... and is constituted wholly by 
> abstract reasoning" (or something like that).

This is no place to go into this one. The question of the importance of
aesthetics is being pursued, and you'll find discussions in David
Ingram's _Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason_ (Chapter 11) and in J.M.
Bernstein's _Recovering Ethical Life_. (And probably in a whole lot of
other places as well.) I have to object to your quotation from Heller,
though. Habermas may have problems here, which I think are related to
his distinction between right and good, but to speak of Habermasian Man
as without feelings BECAUSE rational is to carry over a cliche from the
conception of reason Habermas is criticizing. Reflection need not
exclude feelings, but it must transform them. 


> 3. habermas thinks science is distinct from hermeneutics.  he argues that only a 
> social science, via a critical theory of society, can illuminate monological linguistic 
> systems (non-discursive discourse).  in this way he is a positivist.

I've got to admit this one perplexes me. Habermas's social science
INCORPORATES hermeneutic awareness. Positivist? I'm afraid I don't
understand how you could make these assertions. Could you expand on
them?


> 4.  habermas ignores context.  a gender analysis demonstrates that habermas's 
> radical separation of the public/private good/just is problematic.  ie.  fraser's 
> "what's so critical about critical theory?"  i'm not saying fraser's right but seyla 
> benhabib is.  habermas has no place for the concrete other - people are conceived 
> in abstraction.  ouch.

First of all, if the problem is a general one of "context", a "gender
analysis" is not necessary to reveal that. (Though I'm not saying it
isn't sufficient.) In bringing up the hard distinction Habermas makes
between right and good, you hit on a focus of my own criticisms of
Habermas. I lean in the direction of an Hegelian construal of the
matter, in which we concieve of right as also a good, one which we can
accept reflectively; that there is an identity of identity and
difference which unites the two. There is a relation here to the
theory/practice split. Habermas is square in a line of thinkers who have
tried to overcome this--who all have roots in Hegel, BTW. Habermas still
bears in his thinking the influence of those attempts. Can we see a
tension between this strand of his thinking and that derived from
Kantian liberalism, which separates theory and practice, right and good?
Though his appropriation of Kant supposedly takes Hegel's criticism into
account--see the last chapter of MCCA, for example--I think that he
hasn't fully dealt with Hegel here even while his thinking is drenched
in Hegel generally. I am nowhere near being able to make a full
statement about this, however. Again, Bernstein offers light in
_Recovering_, referring at length to Benhabib.


> 5. habermas also underestimates the role of power.  power destroys and silences. 
>  these dynamics are structured directly into our reasoning skills - consensus 
> doesn't prove anything - it also has the element of assmilating dissent (ie. forcing 
> people to accept arguments they disagree with but don't have "good grounds" to 
> dismiss.  in this way - habermas's consensus theory is authoritarian.

Authoritarian? Habermas considers legitemate only the force of the
better argument, or a practice grounded in it. To demand on the other
hand that I accept an argument without grounds IS authoritarian. The
only thing that can make me accept such is--power! Habermas knows all
too well about the role of power. But you speak of power in that it is
"structured directly into our reasoning skills". I don't know how you
can take this line, since Habermas has done such a good job of showing
that taking this position results in a performative contradiction--which
is THE sign that theory and practice have split in your reflection. How
do you account for the validity of your own consciousness if you can't
rule out that your own reasoning may be an effect of external power? You
can't. You may feel fine with that, as if you were merely renouncing a
"totalitarian" claim to eternal truth, but in fact you make your own
action in arguing for the validity of your assessment of power--as
opposed to what you take to be Habermas's--unintelligible to yourself.
Habermas is trying to find a way to characterize the problem of power
which avoids these problems.


> 6.  the nonidentical.  hermeneutics and science in habermas tend to play a positive 
> role and the element of the nonidentical disappears (what else is new).  this may 
> be an aporia but it also happens to be a very relevant observation (on the part of 
> adorno).


<Sigh> The non-identical again! Once more, I must recommend Bernstein,
whose stated purpose in _Recovering_ is to approach Habermas critically
>from the perspectives of Hegel and Adorno. (This isn't to say that I
think he settles anything, or that I accept his thoughts on the matter.)
For myself, I think it is no accident that Adorno was left with a
forever withdrawing Negative Dialectic. This is the end of a
misappropriation of Hegel which sees him as subsuming the other totally,
and wishes to avoid the "totalization" of reason. Ironically, Hegel has
shown that such negativity can never find a "home" in the world; this
being the case, what is it holding out for? What if we see Hegel as
showing us how we let the other appear and be in the first place, and
how the otherness is only intelligible within a self-consciousness which
necessarily exists "in" another self-consciousness. What if we see Hegel
as showing us how to conceive of otherness generally without necessarily
placing it so far beyond ourselves as to be out of our world completely?
After all, what could such an other EVER be to us? Isn't an other that
is ALWAYS wholly other another "thing-in-itself", another superfluity,
another metaphysical abstraction, without meaning because it can neither
be, nor sensibly not be without the possibility of being? Hegel
emphasizes the "releasement" which allows otherness and which thus
creates the possibility of objectivity. All this is way off in another
direction, but I recommend William Maker's _Philosophy Without
Foundations: Rethinking Hegel_ as well as Robert Williams's
_Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other_. If we can reconsider
Hegel, we can also see this Hegel in Habermas. I say that Habermas is
not engulfing the other within reason and excluding what resists such
treatment, but is trying to recover those voices which have been
excluded by the autonomy of a social structure, a system, founded on
instrumental rationality. But to recover a voice is to recover it FOR
someone. If you forever exclude the moment when the other can appear by
defining the other as whatever is not for us, this cannot happen.
Habermas's focus on communication and discourse is meant to preserve the
space in which this CAN happen. 
   I grant that there are problems in Habermas related to his ties to
Kantianism and liberalism. But I still think that there is much of value
in Habermas. Moreover, I think some of the very objections you raise,
Ken, highlight just what some of those things are. But then again, I
have yet to hear your response.

Scott Johnson
Duluth, MN