Date: 	Mon, 7 Apr 1997 22:27:43 -0400
From: "kenneth.mackendrick" <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: HAB: habermas's nihilism



> Scott wrote:
> Since neither the traditions nor anything else can be considered really
> authoritative and unquestionable, to what do we appeal in questioning
> them? What is a "good reason"? There is *something* to which you are
> commited, but at the same time you want to remain infinitely uncommited.
> What can that something be? Something outside of "yourself and your
> traditions?" Something right outside of history and actuality? Hardly.
> When we question traditions we reflect on them according to their own
> immanent criteria, we discover what we "really meant by all that." It is
> according to an already existent commitment, something that we for the
> moment hold as authoritative and unquestionable, that we can judge
> anything. Your comment reminded me of Wayne Booth's argument in his
> "Rhetoric of Irony" against the fashionable idea of total irony, where
> he pointed out that to say that the perfectly ironic has no moral point
> of view is faulty, because when one pursues that as a goal one takes a
> moral stand against moral stands.

There is an unbearable contradiction here though.  One cannot be committed to a 
stand and open to a different perspective at the same time.  We argue from our 
perspective with another person precisely because we have reservations about our 
thoughts.  The idea of infinity does not enter here - since we have a conversation or 
debate in order to come to a conclusion about something - a conclusion that is 
expresses as either a hypothesis, a probable opinion, or a fallibilistic validity 
claim.  The moment it becomes unquestionable or authoritative is the moment we 
break off discourse.  i think you are questioning my stance on that basis that you 
object that I can make my cake and eat it too.  Well i'm doing just that.  I don't see 
the contradiction.  I'm not sure i'm being ironic either - the clarification of where we 
stand is not a clarification of our unquestioned premises - it may illuminate them - 
but the instant they become know they loose their authoritative status - and are 
placed on the discursive table so to speak.

>    I like to think of Habermas as trying to uncover real normative
> commitments by putting them in action, since to merely reflect on them
> cannot give us anything which can be potentially different that our
> current conception of those commitments. That is, we reflect on
> ourselves when our commitments are revealed in action, in their actual
> exercise. The distinction between the cognitive/instrumental and
> moral/practical has the import of showing that the latter is something
> else entirely from the former, in that its rationality lies in a
> reflexivity which refers not to states of affairs which can exist apart
> from communication, but to a reality which is irreducibly "between us",
> and thus is simply not available to a "monological" approach. From this
> point of view, in advocating the "notion that we articulate our views,
> without limits, from our understanding of ourselves and our traditions
> while acknowledging that these sources of our identity cannot simply be
> held as authoritative and unquestionable" you fail to recognize the
> already shared commitments which motivate your assertion, and you also
> fail to recognize the expectation you have that others will consider
> your point of view in that assertion to be persuasive and legitimate.
> The nature of this ground is such that it cannot be "viewed" as a whole
> from a theoretical point of view. I think of Habermas as pointing out
> THAT this ground exists, and not WHAT it is. The performative
> contradiction reveals your practical (and, Habermas says, formal)
> commitment its existence EVEN IN DENYING IT. My difference with Habermas
> is in characterizing this ground. He tends, I think, too far towards the
> transcendental in trying to avoid historicism. Instead of going too far
> in the OTHER direction, I favor a Hegelian conception which tries to put
> the two back together again. 

Two points - the first is that the coordination of action, from our commitments, is 
dialectical.  Even if a norm is justified, as Habermas understands the term, its 
application will no doubt lead to the revisioning of the justification.  This is why the 
decision to coordinate action has a moment of undecidability - we all know that 
something is going to screw up (or at least has the potentional to screw up) 
because the justification is not perfect and the future is unknown.

The second point, about grounding, i don't see myself as denying that we are 
grounded in something.  I also don't see how being open ends up in a performative 
contradiction.  To use Gadamerian language - our prejudices shape who we are - 
and we do try to persuade people from our perspective because we experience it to 
be true - but this process of persuasion - if it is going to be communicative - is 
necessarily one that intimates a willingness to come to an understanding about 
something - where all of the participants postpone judgement, even if they think 
they are right and continue to argue from their perspective, precisely in order to do 
justice to the possibility that someone else might be speaking the truth.  I don't 
disagree with what you are saying about habermas - nor do i disagree with your 
statement that we argue from a perspective.  i just don't understand your objection 
to my point - that nothing within a communicative conversation can be authoritative 
without being tentatively justified by all of those within the conversation - 
which, however, still leaves it open to contention but withdrawn into the shadows 
for a moment.

ken

> "...How can Quine expect universal consent on anything 
> in any language-using community that allows for the 
> existence of [Kenneth MacKendrick]?" --Victor Scheff

ps.  good thing universal consent isn't a criterion of truth eh?




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