From: <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca> Subject: Re: HABERMAS' IDEAL SPEECH SITUATION Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 17:04:00 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time) On Fri, 27 Oct 2000 15:57:33 -0400 Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.org> wrote: > Very, very interesting. I can't quite understand the quibble about "applying" Habermas, as the test of the valility of any theoretical claim is to apply it to various situations. Habermas's theory is "post-empirical" in a sense. It can't really be tested. It can be debated and argued, but this only verifies Habermas's hypothesis... that debate and argumentation are the only means at our disposal for the determination of what is true and what is right. The real question, in my mind, is whether or not Habermas has constructed a tremendous argument that begs the question of its own validity. In other words: does Habermas presuppose as valid what he attempts to prove as valid. To varying degrees, Castoriadis, Horowitz, Benhabib, Heller, Bernstein and Wellmer have all pointed this out. > Another question, before I return to your post. Does Habermas have anything to say about Hegel? His theory of communication would seem to have an analogue to Hegel's aesthetics, and to Hegel's opposition to the kunstphilosophie of Schelling at al. I.e. that philosophy is ultimately on a higher conceptual plane than any system of representation (vorstellung), that beyond a certain point art cannot do the job of attaining the level of speculative truth. Ha. You might find this interesting. One of Habermas's most recent articles deals with Hegel. It can be found in Constellations 2000 (I forget which volume). It is basically a slightly modified version of an article in his much earlier work, Theory and Practice: "Labour and Interaction: Remarks on Hegel's Jena Philosophy of Mind." But more interesting than that, Habermas wrote his dissertation on Schelling (which hasn't been translated into english). Another essay on Schelling, "Dialektischer Idealismus im Ubergang zum Materialismus - Geschichtsphilosophische Folgerungen aus Schellings Idee einer Contraction Gottes," was left out of the translation of Theory and Practice. The essay, as Zizek notes (I haven't read it), is the first 'progressive' appropriation of Schelling that interprets Weltalter as a break with the German Idealist logic of the Absoulte, emphasizing the revolutionary political implications of this break. Schelling's Weltalter can be found, freshly translated with Zizek's essay The Abyss of Freedom / Ages of the World... > >If procedures do privilege certain kinds of discourses - then it is not, in > >fact, a universalist ethic. > I don't understand such a conclusion, unless it related to my previous > reservations, that rational discourse in form may not in practice be > ultimately what it appears to be. Thus those who monopolize the means of > rational discourse have the upper hand. But why would a rational > discourse, which many have taken to be the great equalizer--cf. the Jewish > Enlightenment--be any less universalistic because not everybody has > discovered it? The problem is this: Habermas himself has admitted that there is a motivational problem in his work. In other words, on some level, people have to *want* to participate in an argument (a friend of mine conjured up the image of Habermas pointing a gun with the caption, "Be reasonable!" - which might not be completely fair). And maybe I should think twice about calling you on the question of application. Perhaps it can be illustrated that procedures have a tendency to "objectively" privilege certain kinds of discourse and certain kinds of results. To the best of my knowledge, not substantial work has been done on this (other than the criticisms I've mentioned). To quickly make something appear and disappear, Zizek and Salecl have noted that impartial judgement don't come with contentment or satisfaction. In other words, a decision might in fact be rationally made, it might be fair, even objective - but this doesn't mean it is going to be a good *or* desirable end. I have this image that if we follow procedures stictly we'd end up in a world that looks a lot like a cage - bored out of our skulls, truth in hand, waiting to run to the bathroom or the nearest bar... I'm tempted to invoke Adorno here: that the 'objective' results of a procedure can only guarantee the 'objectivity' of the procedure itself... > I imagine Gilroy has experienced and learned a lot since 1993, and he must have learned by now that all of African-American communication--every bit of it--is sytematically distorted communication. In Habermas's big book, two volumes in english (The Theory of Communicative Action) he outlines how power and money actually replace and colonize existing forms of communicative action (the media of power and money steer administrative systems and destroy vital aspects of the lifeworld - which results in counter-enlightenment moves involving self-interest). Another tag-on, one of the things that remains unthinkable for Habermas is that meaning (lingustic meaning) results *from* distortions in language. Habermas's aim is to free language from distortions (from his earlier work, Knowledge and Human Interests). We might speculate that if we free language from all forms of pathology, that communicating with one another would be impossible (ie. math is a language, but it isn't communication). This idea has been taken up by Chantal Mouffe in her recent critique of Habermas's theory (Democratic Paradox). Mouffe makes the argument that Habermas's discourse theory flattens out, or falsely reconciles, the paradoxical nature of democracy: the unresolvable tension between rights and liberty. The key idea being that if we all agree on something, and it is considered just, we either leave the table 'guilt-free' or we stop talking and sit in silence. The idea of consensus worries me. It always makes me wonder exactly what I'm agreeing to, and what has been missed that made the procedure so easy. ken
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