Subject: re:Habermas and emotions
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 97 12:04:05 -0000
From: Giles Peaker <G.Peaker-AT-derby.ac.uk>


On 30-1-97 Scott Johnson wrote
>When those who agree are "all concerned" the agreement is as universal
>as it can concretely be. To ask for more, to take more as a standard, is
>to develope an abstraction, to demand a transcendent truth. If later it
>becomes apparent that in this or that particular sphere the issues
>transcend such a  limited sphere (that generalizable interests are
>involved somehow) then the discourse naturally widens as the earlier
>agreement is questioned. Habermas doesn't have to be read as posing an
>abstract universality to which an equally abstract particularity can be
>posed, rather I think that discourse, as Habermas conceives it, is where
>universality and particularity meet. The same normative speech act is
>both universal and particular at the same time in that the claim (indeed
>the language itself) transcends the individual while still being truly
>motivating, not an alien "ought". I'm sympathetic to these criticisms of
>Habermas (in fact Steve can attest to the fact that I can get pretty
>heated up in arguing along just those lines), but if Habermas does tend
>to lean to far toward Kantian liberalism, he at the same time points
>beyond this old dichotomy of universality and particularity. 

Scott's comments (and Noelle's reply) have solidified a lot of what has 
been concerning me about the ongoing Habermas discussion. I cannot see 
how Habermas points beyond universality and particularity, and this links 
to other worries As a result I would like to pose some undeniably crude 
questions to those who have undoubtedly read considerably more Habermas 
than I have. 

The first is to ask what ground the ideal communicative situation can 
have that is not, in effect, some variation of Kant's categorical 
imperative?  "The truth of statements is linked in the last analysis to 
the intention of the good and true life" (Habermas, quoted in T. 
McCarthy. The Critical Theory of Juergen Habermas. 1978). As a form of 
intersubjective exchange, it appears to rely on one subject's recognition 
of another as equal through the speech act, yet the only way this is 
achieved, a la Kant, is by the abstraction of subjectivity from all of 
its specific concerns and attributes. In this sense, recognition is both 
a reflection and an abdegnation of self. It denies real interconnection, 
even as it posits abstract similarity at the level of 'reason'. One might 
be able to recognise another, but not another as situated. Hegel's vision 
of the abstract universal of the understanding hovers overhead. From 
another angle, and a perverse one, given the tenor of much of the 
discussion, one could argue that the abstractness and self purposiveness 
of the realm of such communication (in that its ultimate function appears 
to be less decision than consensus on the 'purity' of speech acts) looks 
like the community of taste - the community without self interest - which 
has its place at a foundation of the aesthetic in Shaftesbury, and, of 
course, becomes a model of freedom in Kant (and an attempted foundation).

The second question is concerned with language. As the medium or perhaps 
the very embodiment of this rationality, language (stripped of metaphor, 
allusion, irony apparently!) must also become detached from life, or  
rather abstracted from it. I am curious as to the basis of this language, 
and even more curious as to how this transcends idealism. 

If you will pardon a moment (probably not the last) of Vulgarity, "The 
philosophers would only have to dissolve their language into the ordinary 
language, from which it is abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted 
language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor 
language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only 
*manifestations* of actual life".(Marx & Engels. The German Ideology. 
p491 of Complete edition 1965) At this point one wonders about the social 
basis of an abstract language of 'practical reason'. (please take other 
quotes from Marx, Lukacs and Voloshinov as read, but I can't resist Marx 
on the burghers of Kant's Germany, illict irony and all - "Their attitude 
to these forms [self determination of the will and of the people] was 
therefore far more moral and disinterested than that of other nations, 
i.e. they exhibited a highly peculiar narrowmindness and remained 
unsuccessful in all their endeavours" G.I. p207)

There is a serious point after all these quotes. How do Habermas' 
formulations escape being 'manifestations of actual life'? It is in the 
end, also an 'Adorno and Horkheimer' point. Reason, taking a very broad 
formulation, is not a goal, a salvation or an ahistorical human faculty. 
It is continually an outcome, a result. Whatever one's doubts about the 
metaphors (again!) and poetics of the first few sections of the 
*Dialectic of Enlightenment* as a history of reason (and of course it was 
not intended as such), what is presented is not the history of the 
deformations and perversions of a pure reason, but precisely reason as 
the 'manifestation of actual life'. Reason, taken in this way, is not our 
saviour, it is what we have now (wrong life cannot be lived rightly) and 
it is from what we have now that the future can be made in all its 
dialectical complexity. (I would have to admit that Habermas knows this 
in a way, but without some conception of a normative, (or utopian?), 
reason immanent in communication per se, he has no politics at all. Both 
the normative and the lack of any sense of how to realise it without 
transgressing it worry me deeply. See Marx's burghers above.)

A few days ago, Michael Parkhurst wrote:

>The best analysis I know of the *inherently* critical character of 
>thought is (surprise) *Negative Dialectics*, particularly the first 30 or 
>40 pages.

>I expanded on this in a (rather unsatisfactory & incomplete) article in 
>_Rethinking Marxism_ a couple issues back.  Essentially, Adorno argues 
>throughout his career that reason (and more concretely, any 
>thinking subject) has a kind of mission or vocation -- that it is 
>necessarily critical.  Adorno derives this in good Hegelian fashion -- 
>thought is negativity.[....]

>This is (incidentally) what Habermas seems to entirely miss about Adorno 
>& Horkheimer.  They write _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ not because they 
>have given up on enlightenment, but because (and this is eloquent enough 
>in their own introduction) enlightenment must criticize itself.  They 
>don't do that from some irrational standpoint 'outside' enlightenment, as 
>Habermas seems to think (personally, I think any Nietzschean resonance in 
>a text just sets Habermas off, and that's at base what spurs his 
>astonishing misreadings of Adorno), but precisely as *partisans* of 
>enlightenment.

I am less sure about the mission, but otherwise I would agree. In a 
sense, it might be tentatively suggested, an aspect of the negativity of 
thought lies in its ability to recognise its own situatedness, even 
whilst unable to occupy what, to understanding, always appears as another 
position (and is thereby taken up in itself again). 

It is certainly reductive but what surfaces here for me is on the one 
hand, the abyss of Kant's attempt to give a foundation for the subject, 
and on the other, the struggles of self-consciousness in Hegel's 
Phenomenology of Spirit, in which  self-conscious being is always and 
necessarily social (and, if we include Lordship and bondage, takes its 
form through work). A final Vulgarity...let us not forget the social 
basis of the emergence of 'the public sphere'. As the english bourgeoisie 
quite rightly observed, disinterest requires freedom from want. As they 
wrongly concluded, disinterest proceeds from a sufficient level of 
property ownership. The very concept of the public sphere has its roots 
in the naturalisation of private property. (This is not to deny its 
dialectical attractions and possibilities). A prioritized comunicative 
rationality could only emerge from 'actual life'. Until then, the utopian 
potential inherent in being able to understand lies about pacifications 
and the rationale for rationalisation, let alone the qualities of the 
latest toasted breakfast crap, eludes me.

Despite the occasional (!) polemic tone, the above are genuine questions. 
But I cannot see why, as he has a normative and ahistorical figure of 
reason, and is without any conception of a politics which will enable its 
realisation, I should not say Habermas' argument is an idealism and I'm 
not buying it. I know these questions have, to some extent already been 
addressed, but from the 'inside' as it were. I pose this as an outsider 
and send it in the hope of *Aufklarung*.

Yours

Giles

Giles Peaker. Historical and Theoretical Studies
University of Derby. G.Peaker-AT-derby.ac.uk
http://art.derby.ac.uk/~detours/detours.html
------------------------------------------------------
"Philosophy and the study of the actual world have
the same relation to one another as masturbation and
sexual love".  Marx.


Giles Peaker
Historical and Theoretical Studies, School of Art and Design
University of Derby. Britannia Mill, Mackworth Road. Derby DE22 3BL (U.K.)
(01332) 622222 ext. 4063    G.Peaker-AT-derby.ac.uk  
Editorial collective:  
Detours and Delays. An Occasional Journal of Aesthetics and Politics.
http://art.derby.ac.uk/~detours/detours.html