Date: 	Sat, 1 Feb 1997 00:12:56 -0500
From: Kenneth MacKendrick <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: 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.


Yes this makes sense - it is "MY" hightest reflection but not "THE" hightest 
reflection.

> > 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.

Funny that you mention illusions - i guess the idea of critique being 
transcendental is a pragmatic and necessary illusion then?  The alternative being 
fatalism, nihilism, or deconstruction.  Since i have problems with the latter - then 
speculative reflection it is.

   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

My complaint about reason, truth etc was geared at metaphysical arguments which 
ground these "guideposts" as universal axis - ie. ideological formulations.  Your 
response demonstrates quite clearly why such formulations are undesirable and 
contradictory.
Notes on a performative contradiction:  I once wrote a small paper on the notion 
that arguing that something was a performative contradiction was itself a 
performative contradiction.  I don't think it was a successful argument but it built up 
a strong distaste for this kind of formula reasoning.  Any jargonistic phrase that 
allows one to dismiss a&H's d of e makes me suspicious....

ken,
sorry no darts this time - just laurels.