Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 19:12:28 -0600
From: Scott Johnson <sjohn-AT-cp.duluth.mn.us>
Subject: Commitment and Reflection


Ken MacKendrick wrote:

> I have three reservations regarding 
> your thoughts - 1. democracy etc. represents the "hightest reflection" is a 
> dangerous statement.  It gives the impression that existing democracies are now 
> justified, historically, since they represent the best of reason that there is to offer.  
> This is an extremely enthocentric statement.  The issue of "hightest reflection" 
> assumes that one has transcended above and beyond all other reflections.  This is 
> problematic for obvious reasons - and - especially since i don't think democracies 
> have worked out so well - for many people.

Yes, I agree it is dangerous. But in distancing ourselves from existing
democracies, are we not doing it in the name of a concept of democracy,
one which we know all the better for reflecting on the inadequacies of
other such conceptions which didn't include reflections on the
experiences of those for whom it hasn't worked out so well? Isn't the
fact that it matters for us at all what they think due in part to our
commitment to "democracy"? If so, it is still our highest reflection,
YOUR highest reflection. How far would you like to take your insistence
on the ethnocentricity of the concept of democracy? To the point where
you would argue, for example, that it may just be an irrational,
ethnocentric quirk that we judge societies which tolerate slavery or
caste to be morally deficient? To the point where you disable your own
critical capacities by assuming that even your own arguments are
hopelessly ethnocentric? Not just not necessarily valid, but incapable
of attaining to validity? You cannot distance yourself totally from
these commitments and ideals because they are your own, they ARE valid
for you and they are operative even in your reflections upon the
commitments themselves. To attempt to distance oneself from one's own
commitments and ideals winds one up in performative contradictions
because one's explicit theory denies the source of one's practice.
   
> Second, the idea of reflection, in this 
> context, contains a kernel of transcendence ("transcendence within") which, it could 
> be argued, does not really exist.  Words, reasonable arguments, may, on a 
> different reading of language may, not give us skyhooks and we may not have the 
> capacity to reflect ourselves outside of history.


If we are capable of criticizing existing democracies, why is this so?
Is it because we have somehow transcended our own situatedness entirely
in order to see from a perspective which is completely outside out own?
Of course not. But then does this mean that we are to think of ourselves
as locked in our own situatedness such that we cannot EVER transcend
ourselves, thus leading us to deny the validity of our own critical
capacities (or, inconsistently, the critical capacites of others)
because they are not grounded in something transcendent? Many who deny
the first are led in the direction of the latter, but the consequences
of this are drastically relativistic and moreover theoretically
incorherent when faced with the activity of the subject who is able to
be critical enough to reach such a position in the first place. (For
example, you said above that "it could be argued" that a "kernel of
transcendence" in reflection "does not exist." If not, how can it be
argued? Why should I listen to your arguments, which cannot attain
validity?) 
   How can we conceive the critical activity of the subject while
avoiding the above dilemma? How can a subject whose critical capacities
are formed within a historical set of existing commitments criticize
those commitments if her own standards are grounded in them? Isn't it
just those commitments which are in question? The short answer is that
we reflectively reach a better understanding of our actual commitments,
which no matter how much we criticize them are still there as the basis
of our criticism. There is a contradiction in saying on the one hand
that the validity of someone elses commitments are in question because
they are historically situated, and then not drawing the same
consequences in regard to ones own. Drawing that consequence, however,
puts one in the position of denying the validity of one's REAL, actually
motivating commitments. Theory--one's position regarding the
non-validity of one's own commitments--is split from practice--those
commitments themselves. The various formulations of the inner
diremptions of modernity (fact and value, right and good) are related to
this problem. This is not necessarily a fate, however, since these
commitments ARE EXPRESSED IN THE ACT OF CRITICISM ITSELF. (Thus the
performative contradiction in denying them.) I think it was Camus who
said "One who fights against his society is really fighting for it." It
is not on the basis of an immutable foundation, but on the basis of a
REAL critical advance on a REAL motivating commitment that one's
reflection appears valid to oneself and can be the basis of an attempt
to convince another. What is important is that those commitments are
seen as real, and not as illusory.   Ken wrote:

Again - the idea of the ongoing connversation comes up - 
> where no ideas are tossed out a priori but rather those in the conversation itself 
> decide what they want to constitute moral phenomenon.  who knows - the idea of 
> justice, the good, reason etc. may all disappear.  for now they work as helpful 
> guideposts for the conversation but eventually they might not.
   

You yourself would not accept those commitments if you thought they were
not universal; they in fact motivate your suspicion of them. What the
concepts of  reason,  the good, and justice articulate is still
motivating your actions, but here in criticizing those concepts.  One
avoids the split between one's commitments and what one thinks about
those commitments if one affirms that one's own commitments are THE
BASIS of the judgement of the those commitments and the determinate ends
toward which those commitments are directed--a position which has the
virtue of not being contradictory in denying its own situatedness.  What
is needed is a conception of ourselves and our fumdamental commitments
which is not contradictory, which would acknowledge the normative force
of fundamental commitments even as they are criticized by understanding
how the critical stance corrects our conception of what those
commitments are in the face of experience. But, it could still be asked,
even though we have acknowledged their force could we KNOW that these
commitments acknowledged as our own have the universality we demand of
rightness? If we know our commitments in some determinate way and take
care also that those commitments preserve the space in which the
determination of real, motivating commitments takes place, then we are
as sure as we can be that they are not in conflict with moral right. 
What gives us the right to accept these commitments as morally right is
that determination that they preserve the conditions for their own
existence, and openness to the experience of real, concrete others which
could show us, in reflection, otherwise--can show us that the
realization of our commitments has resulted in a reversal. These
conditions can be known not a priori, but in the breach they are
revealed to us. It is open to you to show how a conception of right is
not valid, but in order to do so you have at your disposal only existing
commitments as your own motivation and as the "lever" by which to move
someone to freely give assent to your ideas. It is in the denial of this
that you will run into performative contradictions. The adversion to the
argument of performative contradiction is, far from being "incredibly
weak", very strong; moreover, it is just the argument to reveal the
theory/practice diremption. 

Well, I'll leave it at this, and await the volley....

Scott Johnson
Duluth, MN