Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 17:34:29 +1000
From: rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au (Rob Schaap)
Subject: Re: HAB: Re: Derida, Habermas, and the Other


Bayard quotes Ken:

>>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.).

and asks:

>Is nihilism simply the refusal of subjectivity?  Does Habermas refuse a
>role for subjectivity in general or subjectivity as it exists at this
>given moment?  (I suppose I really ought to re-read your comments on
>"ideal content" and pull out my Habermas.)

I don't have my Habermas handy either, but is Ken right to claim, 'in the
ideal speech situation there would be no subjectivity since everything
would be detached from a context'?

Jon Stratten's lovely essay (on this list: 23 January), which looks at the
ISS as Benhabib explicates it, and compares it to the process of the
Socrates/Crito dialogue, implies strongly that an ISS can not exist where
there is not a conducive social context.  Morals and traditions are what
allow, or disallow, the theoretical possibility of ideal speech situations.
 Logically, these must exist both inside and outside each communicative
episode.

>From my position of relative ignorance of matters Habermasian, there seems
to be an unresolved tension between the narrowly linguistic and the level
of actual language *use*.  When H. fashions the notion 'communicative
competence', he's obviously on about something bigger than Chomsky's
'linguistic competence'.  My take on 'communicative competence' makes sense
only as an attempt to make this practical move - sort of trying to add
something like Wittgenstein's 'language game' idea (as a dialectical
interaction between 'lifeworld' and any given generation-of-meaning /
episode-of-communication?) to the 'technolinguist' ideas of someone like
deSuassure.  

Anyway, Habermas does not preclude context.  He depends upon it (can we
communicate without the lifeworld providing its regulatives?).  He may just
not have done so satisfactorily.  Nobody else I know of has.

Am I talking crap?  I wouldn't be surprised - this is way beyond the current me.

BTW, here's a piece from Jon's essay:

'Philosophy is not a monological seeking of truth, but a conversation among
interloculors seeking genuine, rational consensus. In a social context in
which genuine and rational debate, questioning, challenging, and
recommendations cannot take place, philosophical activity is impossible.
Socrates' trial has made this very clear. It is the "hardest thing of all
to make some of you understand," that "examining myself and others is
really the very best thing that a man can do." Socrates cannot spend the
rest of his life quietly minding his own business. (Apology 37e, 38a) Nor
is "roistering in Thessaly" (Crito, 53e) the sort of life Socrates wants
for himself. He chooses to live philosophically; a life of rational,
genuine discourse. This life, and it alone, is self-justifying; and yet, it
does not transcend, but is immanent with, a just society.'

Cheers,
Rob.




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