Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 17:06:07 -0600
From: Scott Johnson <sjohn-AT-cp.duluth.mn.us>
Subject: Re: Habermas and Emotions


Steve Chilton wrote:

> Habermas's distinction between a moral agreement and a conventional
> agreement is NOT that the former involves everybody and the latter only a
> few people, as Noelle holds.  The difference is, rather, whether the
> agreement is among ALL the people affected or among only a subset of the
> people affected. 

And:

> I think Habermas's
> intentions are plain in the context of his explicit concern, expressed
> elsewhere, that he is concerned that ALL THE PEOPLE AFFECTED BY THE
> PROPOSED NORM be included.  It is a major issue with him that existing
> "norms" or methods of justification EXCLUDE people affected.  So he
> emphasizes that "all" have to agree, little imagining that some readers
> would then extend this far beyond the people affected.  Why on earth would
> Habermas feel it necessary to take on the obvious problems associated with
> extending an agreement beyond the people affected?

I think Steve is right about this. Habermas means everyone, but a
CONCRETE everyone. Think of it this way: issues which do not affect
anyone beyond the subset of people whose interests are already
represented discursively (whose relationship to that determinate good is
such that it is their own) are local, particular issues--they are
questions of good which would be an imposition if they affected those
who had other interests without their discursve participation in the
determination of that good.  What is important is that questions of good
which don't affect everyone NOT be imposed on all, that they be LEFT OUT
of the determination of truly universal, moral issues TO THE EXTENT THAT
THEY DO NOT AFFECT THOSE WHO ARE NOT INVOLVED IN THE DISCURSIVE
DETERMINATION OF THOSE GOODS. This PRESERVES THEM from a universalizing
moral theory, rather than let them be swallowed up in it. Habermas can
be read as saying that the preservation of the discursive space within
which good is determined autonomously (NOT individually) is what is
alone right. This means that if the pursuit of any particular good
affects this possibility for anyone, it becomes--within the sphere of
those concerned--an issue of right. I think Habermas runs into problems
in the too sharp distinction he makes when explicitly addressing the
issue of the relation between right and good. He wants to preserve an
apodicticity in the determination of right, so he makes it a cognitive
matter (bringing in Piaget and Kohlberg) rather than acknowledging right
as a good as well, but a good which is revealed in the process by which
we determine good, and which good presupposes. I think that a better way
of looking at it is too see it as a matter of concerned reflection which
reveals to us our real commitments, and thus involves a more adequate
determination of those commitments; yet at the same time, being a matter
of reflection, can also be conceived as being also rational in the same
way that truth is. Can right be a good which and at the same time be
something that can be apprehended theoretically? Isn't that just what
the union of theory and practice is all about?
   All this sounds very much like liberalism, and what its intention is
is to preserve what is valuable therin without capitulating to a
relativism that, in discarding all moral argument as inherently
particular, undercuts the capacity for criticism entirely. (Aren't some
of you on this list heading in that very direction as you try to keep
particularity in sight so it is not swallowed up by the universalizing
claims of moral theory?) I'm not saying that Habermas has necessarily
produced an entirely coherent account of this, but I think that to write
Habermas on the basis of these difficult questions is hasty.

Scott Johnson
Duluth, MN