Date: 	Fri, 31 Jan 1997 04:47:21 -0500
From: Kenneth MacKendrick <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: General Question






> Ken: 
> > I think Habermas tries to address this issue by arguing with Gadamer that there 
is
> > something "outside" or "behind the back" of language - power and labour.  
> 
> What do you mean by "back of language"? Is it possible to stay outside
> language? I wouldn't say that power is outside language. We could say,
> as Bourdieu does, that the power of the words doesn't come only from the
> own words. We must also consider the power delegated to the speaker who
> wants others to recognize his validity claims. Who delegates this power
> to the speaker, so as to turn him (or her) in a person that others want
> or need or have interest to listen and answer. But even this power,
> which comes from the relative simbolic/social position ocupied by the
> speaker in society, is outside language? Is it external to language? I
> don't think so. But Habermas, when he builds his ethics, he begin with
> the strong pressuposition of ideal situation of mutual understanding.
> But rarely does it occurs. It's a trancendental pressuposition,
> transparency of communication, which doesn't consider this question
> which I took from Bourdieu.
> 
Gadamer argues that everything we encounter we encounter in language.  For 
Habermas this view neglects the role that power and labour play in generating life. 
 For Habermas - the critical theory of society plays an important role exposing 
systematically distorted communication.  Gadamer does not think that sys dis com 
exists at all.  Gadamer is concerned with deceptive pre-text (ideology) but argues 
that language is always used as a function of being.  Habermas thinks that sys dis 
com exists - especially through the colonization of the lifeworld by systems.  in 
this way - money and power reify relations, generate monological language 
systems that resist understanding and simply give orders.  These monological 
language systems (for lack of a better term) can only be illuminated by a critical 
theory - since they function behind the back of a metalanguage.  The hermeneutical 
process cannot elucidate these problems - only a critical social theory, ie. a 
theory of communicative action, can appropriately see the big picture.  Systems 
are "autopoieic" (from Luhmann) and cannot be opened up in a sense.  This is why 
they need to be structurally analysed.  THe idea of power in habermas is like a 
fusion between facticity and validity.  When these two dialectical elements are 
fused, such as in the spellbinding power of the holy, then they fall into the 
background consensus (the lifeworld).  This underlying consensus only becomes 
apparent when it is questioned - then the tension between facts and norms 
becomes apparent again.
	I'm not sure Habermas is making a "transcendental presupposition" by 
arguing that language is used in such a way that transcendence is projected from 
within.  Habermas's comments about language seem to come from a very common 
sense observation about how language is used.  We use it to understand and once 
in a while we do understand.  However - even if understanding never occurred 
(which is why habermas thinks of this idea as counterfactual) then his argument 
still holds - language is still used to understand and communicate things 
coherently.  Habermas does not think language is transparent - on the contrary the 
dialectic between facticity and validity is precisely the opaqueness of language.

> > In doing so he does add a "remainder" (Adorno) - he leaves open the possibility 
that
> > language is not onto-theological.  In a way this suppliments his argument 
because
> > it demonstrates how language is systematically distorted.  
> 
> Well, why speak of remainder? I agree that this attempt of not
> ontologize language is very interesting, but the strong pressuposition
> of "transparence in communication" is problematic. Language is
> sistematic distorted, but it has something inside it which gives an
> impulsion towards understanding. In the discussion with Gadamer,
> Habermas refuses the universality of hermeneutics, emphasizing the
> importance of critics of ideology. This is very interesting. But other
> thing is to say that we need the transcendental point of departure of
> understanding as telos of language. 
> 
> Habermas argues that a
> > "telos" of language (which is not a property of language immanently but a
> > characteristic of how we use language) is present as a propositional statement. 
 I
> > say to you "this is an email message" I convey that 1. i understand that this is 
a
> > net thing (appropriateness) 2. that i know what the words "this is an email
> > message" mean (comprehensibility) 3. that i believe it to be true (truthfulness) 
and
> > 4. that the statement is propositionaly true.  
> 
> I would imagine a more complex example. One person say to the other:
> "You have destroyed my life". In this case is not so easy to say that
> the other understand what is going on. One person say a thing and the
> other understand another. Is this a situation of comprehensibility. You
> could say: this is the example of a neurotical relationship. Is it?
> Would it be right to measure the statements of everyday life from a
> standard of a ideal-communication and classify them as patological? This
> is a way of procedure (normal/patological) that begins from this  kind
> of standardization of normality.
> 
> Remainder aside - language cannot
> > coherently be conceived in any other way (in Habermas's view).  
> 
> This is just what I am discussing
> 
> Jose Luiz Aidar Prado