Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 03:26:12 -0600
From: Scott Johnson <sjohn-AT-cp.duluth.mn.us>
Subject: Re: HAB: Universal Norms


Jon, you ask:

Is it true that the presuppositions of discourse are "facts"?

Not an issue for me, really. The "ontological status" of presuppositions
is not what I was getting at. I am saying that from the objectivating,
empirical/scientific point of view that is how they must appear. But for
the reflective, self-conscious beings that we are these presuppositions
have to be *accepted* as our own to really BE our own. Else we would
just accept everything that was "factually" true of ourselves, when it
is just our ability to choose (once there is an option, which is to say
once we have reflected on the matter), to transcend those things, which
is what we feel to be essentially human about our will. Now, how can we
be persuaded that these presuppositions are characteristic of the kinds
of people that we *should* be? Habermas, I am saying, cannot answer this
because he requires these presuppositions to simply *be* presuppositions
>from which norms can be derived.


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