Date: 	Fri, 4 Apr 1997 05:08:49 -0500
From: "kenneth.mackendrick" <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: HAB: Re: Derida, Habermas, and the Other




> Antti M Kauppinen <amkauppi-AT-cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
> ...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).
> 
John Dale wrote:
> 	Yet I would venture a comment: that this double bind
> seems to me to be a rather artificial exaggeration. Of
> course, I myself, as an ongoing, conscious subjectivity,
> cannot be totally or forcibly "included" or subsumed in another
> person's finite subjectivity. But I can try to include 
> myself in that person's subjectivity, and vice verse, and 
> this inclusion process is very much what communication is 
> all about.  The Self-Other dyad is certainly not the end 
> of the story, only the beginning, and although 
> communication and justice are never going to be perfect, 
> the overlap between Self and Other makes both of them 
> possible to greater or lesser extents.
> 
It seems to me that both of these comments point indirectly to the function and role 
of language in human relations.  The problem I think with both Derrida's and 
Habermas's positions is their transcendental interpretation of language.  Derrida 
offers one interpretation of language in _Of Grammatology_ which basically argues 
that language is too loaded for a single interpretation.  It is commonly attributed to 
derrida that he is a nihilist - when his work intimates just the opposite.  For derrida 
language is too fluid - too contextual - to be reduced to a common ground or 
common meaning for everyone everywhere.  In the derrida-gadamer encounter i 
think gadamer provides a more coherent approach - that the living dialectic permits 
understanding between individuals through language - precisely through the idea 
of openness and experience - even if language is overburdened with meaning - 
some degree of mutuality is possible (pure Otherness is an illusion).  in this way 
derrida has "reified" the cognitive processes of human development through an 
interpretation of language that just doesn't coincide with real human relations.  
habermas, i think, pulls a similar trick within his theory.  habermas argues that 
language holds an idealist content that delinguistifies the sacred authority of 
tradition and translates it into the presuppositions of speech.  following j.m. 
bernstein i think this point moves in the exact oppossite direction of derrida and 
does become nihilistic.  in the ideal speech situation there would be no subjectivity 
since everything would be detached from a context (from our morals, traditions 
etc.).  in this way - gadamer's, or for that matter adorno's, work provides an 
interesting corrective.  language and reason is ground in a positive way within 
human relations - and the utopian shadow cast is a purely negative one - it 
illuminates not what might be healthy rather what is unhealthy and unjust.

ken




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