Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 08:18:15 -0700 (MST)
From: LEO MEEKS  <lmeeks-AT-du.edu>
Subject: Re: HAB: Habermas & Critique




On Mon, 27 Mar 1995, Craig Howley wrote:

> 
> Leo et al.:
> 
> Interesting question.  What exactly does Habermas **oppose**, for assuming that
> critique is the essential Frankfurt orientation, and that critique is an 
> oppositional perspective, I think it is possible to credit Habermas with 
> an oppositional perspective.  Perhaps the devotion that Habermas abandons,
> however, is allegiance to the working class (and not, for instance, to
> domination).  One has to wonder at his appreciation of Talcott Parsons, 
> however.  
> 
> --Craig Howley
> 
Craig, and in order to make this a more communicative apparatus, et al,

The idea of critique is something that i find highly problematic to put 
into words: Baudrillard's suggestion that critique is conservative 
insofar as it is *oppositional*, however, i suggest that a depositional 
manner would be a critique more along the lines Adorno participated in 
viz. negative dialectics. As for Habermas, and positive critique (which 
must in some way be harnessed to a social democratic politics), is the 
work of opposition, of *ressentiment*, which falls under the bane of 
Baudrillard's accusation. To be perfectly clear on this point, Negative 
Dialectics does not *oppose* Platonic-Hegelian dialectics (in 
Della-Volpe's telling manner of putting it) from a position within  another 
ontological position but rather differentiates or extracts itself from 
metaphysics as such and realizes itself within a sort of semiotics (cf. 
Adorno on the concept). 

What does Habermas oppose?
Judging from his writing, it is only thorough reading.

-leo