Date: Fri, 16 Jun 1995 19:56:16 +0800
From: rgeeland-AT-cc.curtin.edu.au (David Geelan)
Subject: Re: HAB: Critiques of 'Knowledge and Human Interests'?


Brad McCormick wrote:

[snip]

>... 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 agree whole-heartedly: a meta-discourse about the discourse at hand,
problematising the otherwise tacit rules under which the discourse
operates, is foundational to true understanding. I would suggest, however
(and the fact that I've missed some posts may show here) that Habermas'
'practical interest', properly understood, is about exactly this process:
the intersubjective improvement of communication through striving to
understand and improve social relationships and our knowledge both of
others as individuals and of others as socially constructed beings. The
'technical' interest is concerned with what you call 'accomplishments "in
the world"', the practical with the improvement of mutual understanding.

My friend (and PhD supervisor) Peter Taylor has discussed this in a paper
on the supervisor/graduate student interaction - I'll try to get his
permission to describe his framework more fully, but essentially he
suggests that this interaction must contain discussion relating to the
technical, practical and emancipatory interests, but also meta-discussion
*about* discussion in each of these interests.

Regards,

David