Date: Thu, 15 Jun 1995 21:15:43 -0400
From: Brad4d6-AT-aol.com
Subject: Re: HAB: Critiques of 'Knowledge and Human Interests'?


I am responding to Martin Spaul's question concerning

>pragmatic outcomes if the whole
>of the Theory of Communicative Action is followed through.

I do not know about Cohen and Arato's work.  In my own thinking through of
this problematic (for my doctoral dissertation), it seemed to me that *one*
aspect of an open-ended endeavor to elaborate the theory of communicative
action in real social life is: That an essential ongoing aspect *of* any
communicative relationship should be thematizing, critical, (re)formative...
reflection *on* the relationship itself, in addition to communication about
the relationship's first-order object(ive)s.  Every human relationship should
be also a relationship about itself.  An ultimate subject of any human
interaction is human interaction as produced and manifested in that
particular interaction.  Whatever a communicative interaction is "about" is
merely the particular material the communicants have for shaping the
communicative space which they are (see, e.g., Kenneth Boulding's "The
Image").  

It seems to me that a serious orientation of social life toward communicative
theory of action would result in people investing a much larger proportion of
their available time and energy talking about, reflecting on and acting to
shape their communicative interactions, starting from the most immediate and
humble (between teacher and student, husband and wife, parent and child,
worker and manager, -- in the case I studied in my dissertation: --
psychotherapist in training and the trainee's supervisor...).  Although
accomplishments "in the world" remain important insofar as they really affect
the material conditions of life (from growing foodstuffs to AIDS research),
even here there is surely opportunity to thematically cultivate and do
research on the social relations which sustain these activities.  (I am
inspired here by Edmund Husserl's notion of the universal continuing
transformation of all given forms of life and behavior through reflection.)

Perhaps the ultimate "payoffs" of such reorientation of attention, in terms
of the enhancement of quality of life are: (1) increase in experiences of
recognition by others, by focusing more on our acts of recognition instead of
just what is recognized in those acts (consider Heinz Kohut's phrase: the
mother whose face lights up at the sight of her child), and (2) that we not
suffer and die alone but rather in intersubjectivity.  The first nourishes
life; the second eases that which we cannot fully comprehend but which
threatens it (us)....

I hope the foregoing makes some sense and may contribute to further thinking
and discussion on this issue.  Insofar as it is obscure, I'd be glad to try
to clarify.

Brad McCormick