Date: 	Fri, 28 Mar 1997 12:43:41 -0500
From: "kenneth.mackendrick" <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: HAB: Re: Habermas and Social Action


Steve writes:
> I am happy to engage seriously alternative views of communication as
> long as they recognize that at the end of the day, we have to have a
> way of coordinating action.  If we don't, then the actions actually
> taken can only be force of one form or another (deceit, cooptation,
> etc. all being included:  anything not arising out of free consent). 
> 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,
> this doesn't refer to people's humanist intentions but rather to the
> implications of their position. 
> 
"we have to have a way of coordinating action"

This "way" of looking at the problem is precisely the problem.  Coordinating actions 
as a goal is exactly the point at which all things are leveled - difference, choice, 
etc.  Every aspect of our personality is crushed in the injustice of true justice.  The 
mark of total equality is perfect alienation from each and every individual.  The 
idea of consent takes its pride in removing the humanity from the participants.  In 
consensus - read as equity - the "facts of personality" go unacknowledged.  

There is a wonderful dialogue in Agnes Heller's latest book "An Ethics of 
Personality" talking about this point (pgs. 180-189).  Perhaps rather that 
institutionalizing consensus and equity - we might want to look at developing a 
culture of criticism (which would look very different, i think, than current theories of 
democracy) - and just as practical at the "end of the day."  I wonder if the 
revolutionary in Habermas has been too long surpressed and his departure into 
legal theory gives us a sign that more work needs to be done (back to adorno?).

As important as Steve's comments about practicality and coordination are - they 
still preserve a kernel of identity thinking within democratic thought - and a leveling 
out of difference - which inevitably ends up reinforcing the violence that democracy 
theoretically attempts to avoid.

ken




     --- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---