From: Antti M Kauppinen <amkauppi-AT-cc.helsinki.fi>
Subject: Re: HAB: Re: Habermas and Social Action
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 21:55:40 +0200 (EET)



Steve Chilton wrote:

> On Tue, 25 Mar 1997, Norma Romm wrote [among other things]:
> > 
> > Can you not be a humanist without being a universalist? Here again, the
> > meaning of the terms can be regarded as symbols that invite further
> > discussion.
> > 

Firstly, it's not at all clear that someone like Derrida or Foucault
wants to be a "humanist". Foucault explicitly differentiates between
humanism and Enlightenment in his essay on Kant, and maintains these
positions properly understood actually contradict each other - and
goes on to characterize a new kind of Enlightenment. (Derrida speaks
often of a need for a new kind of Enlightenment as well, for example in
his 'Afterword' to _Limited Inc_.) Behind these anti-humanist views
is of course Heidegger's famous 'Letter on Humanism', which Habermas
detests for obvious reasons. (It's the place where Heidegger writes
that refutation and argumentation on the field of "essential thinking"
is foolish - you can just hear Habermas's blood pressure rising.)

> That's what makes it necessary for a humanist to be a universalist
> (committed not the universality of one's own opinion, of course, but
> rather to the need to recognize and reconcile all positions). Again,

I think Derrida is much closer to Habermas in this respect than is
commonly recognized. From the beginning, deconstruction has been
concerned with the exclusion of the improper, undigestible, parasitic
etc. from philosophical systems (as the very condition of their existence),
and for the past ten years or so Derrida has very much applied these insights
to ethics and politics. Of course, the difference between Derrida's
and Habermas's positions is that while both are "universalists" in the
sense that they will not allow the Other to be *excluded* with a good
conscience, Derrida emphasizes as much that the Other in order to
be such (with a capital O, the genuinely other that exceeds all possible
coginitions, representations etc. that I might have of him), it cannot
be *included* either. This is what Derrida inherits from the
phenomenological tradition, most notably Levinas. This "double bind",
that the Other should neither be included or excluded results in the
conclusion that justice can never be present, it always remains
"to come". Of course, the same goes for Habermas in his own way,
as the ideal speech situation can never be realized in fact (and
even if it could be, any norm or decision could be justified only
for the time being, "equipped with a time-and-place index" as they
are).

> this doesn't refer to people's humanist intentions but rather to the
> implications of their position. 

This is admittedly a difficult question, and would require a thorough-
going study of the works of the likes of Foucault, Lyotard and Derrida
(of whom I would call only Lyotard a postmodernist, by the way). I don't
think that Foucault was very consistent with regard to non-contingent
standards, and Derrida's newfound indeconstructability of justice
might not fit perfectly together with his earlier work either. The way
I read and try to defend Habermas here against those who say he claims
to have access to ahistorical and non-contingent truths (about
communication, justice etc.) is that he employs the inertia found
in the structures of our everyday communicative practices - they are 
not ahistorical or transcendental as such, but quasi-transcendental 
in the sense that they change slowly and make the practices possible
as way know them.

Gotta go now,

Antti






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