Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 12:12:26 -0600
From: Scott Johnson <sjohn-AT-cp.duluth.mn.us>
Subject: Re: HAB: Re: Habermas and Social Action


Ken wrote:

> "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.  
> 

Congratulations on having freed yourself from the insidious appeal of
universalism! Presumably, of course, it is not everyone's *facts* of
personality which are to be respected, since that would be universalism
again.

> 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." 

And how would that be practical at the end of the day, if by then there
were no understanding reached such that our actions would not be reduced
to mere strategy? As for the culture of criticism, it seems to me that
is just what we have, and that it is just because there is a belief that
criticisms are incommensurable that more "objective" criteria prevail.
The result is the abstract idea of justice which is your real target.
   Hegel called the state "the existence of freedom", and he has since
been called authoritarian, totalitarian, etc. His point was that freedom
is realized *between* people. (If you don't believe this, go in the
woods and assert your rights of particularity to an angry she-bear.) The
basis of freedom is shared commitment to a common idea of freedom. If in
the past that idea of freedom has, in its substantiality, been exclusive
of particularity and individuality, the modern world has gone in the
other direction and institutionalized a freedom which places a high
value on particularity and individuality, and denies that what is
particular and individual can be commensurable. Thus, individuality and
particularity are EXCLUDED from the idea of justice. What is obscured is
the shared commitment which underlies Liberalism as an actualization of
freedom. The trick is to recover that basis without reversing the gains
of modern freedom. Because in fact the more we realize freedom as
conceived in Liberalism, the less free we feel, because those
"objective" criteria of justice conceal the imperatives of the social
system, and not the lifeworld which is the home of not only our
particularity and individuality, but our shared commitment to them as
well.
-- 
*****************************************************
* Scott Johnson        e-mail sjohn-AT-cp.duluth.mn.us * 
* 105 W. 1st St. #214      phone # (218) 722-1351   *
* Duluth, MN  55802                                 *
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"...How can Quine expect universal consent on anything 
in any language-using community that allows for the 
existence of philosophers?" --Victor Scheff



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