Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 18:08:51 -0600
From: lennymo-AT-casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Lenny Moss)
Subject: Re: HAB: Working Class and Habermas


Kerry,

To say that norms are (all or partly) innate, and to mean innate in such a
fashion as to not be able to differentiate between any possible sense of
the word innnate, is not helpful.  Habermas would certainly not say that
norms are innate.  He does make strong statements about the universality of
certain formal presuppositions of communicative interaction, but these are
not the substantive norms characteristic of particular cultures.  If he is
right then there is a basis for an ethics of discourse and thus rational
argumentation about normative issues (not to be taken for granted). But
that is not to say that our norms are first of all derived from rational
argumentation or that the proper resolution of any dispute is predetermined
by some set of universal norms specified by discourse ethics, other than
those that provide for the very possibility of discourse.





>Dear Lenny:
>
>:>I think that you are confusing two concepts our normative basis, which is
>:>innate,
>:What do you mean by innate?  Innate in what?  In our chemistry?  In our
>:tendencies as a species?  In the practices of our life-world?  In language
>:as such?  This term carries far too many implications too be used so
>:casually.
>
>None of your examples would differentiate the implication of "innate", for
>innate means that it is part and parcel of what it is to be and in this case it
>is to be human.