Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 13:25:34 -0400
From: howleyc-AT-ael.org (Craig Howley)
Subject: Re: HAB: Habermas & Critique



Leo--

I'm still here.  Let me say by way of start on my end, that I've read a
little Lyotard, a little Habermas, lots of Marcuse (back when), a fair
amount of Marx (just volume one of the magnum opus, however), some Foucault
(Madness and Discipline but not much else), smatterings of Gramsci,
Eagleton's Ideology and a couple of commentaries on postmodern thought.  I'm
not an academic, but I write about schooling.  I'm fond of the idea of
"local knowledge," however, as opposed to regimes totalizing knowledge.

I am troubled by--more, actually, I repudiate--the idea that "the
Englightenment"  (per se) is what has brought about the misery of the
twentieth century and also the corollary that it is time to abandon
commitments to reason.  More useful is to maintain and to cultivate further
the distinction between reason and technical rationality.  It continually
surprises me how very many people (ordinarily schooled professionals as well
as "average citizens") confound the two.  Technical rationality, on my
reading anyhow, is more the mental tool of the conspicuous accumulation and
consumption, whereas reason (judgment) constitute the mental tool for
working toward justice and freedom.

Perhaps you will say what you mean by "endgame" and "Enlightenment."  

--Craig Howley