Date: 	Tue, 22 Apr 1997 10:22:50 -0400
From: "kenneth.mackendrick" <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: HAB: casuistry, communicative banking, and camp




 Mari F. Wylie wrote:

  I can't do better than a concept of "coming to the table". 

 However, I am more interested in
> seeing how the theory I am learning about becomes transformed through
> "praxis".  Would the communication on the Habermas list be a search for
> mutual understanding or what other types of communication would emerge.


There is a place that I think Habermas's work has been "but to the test" so to 
speak.  I think his work provides a coherent backdrop for the practice of casuistry - 
which has become very prevelant in "medical ethics."  See especially Albert 
Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin _The Abuse of Casuistry_.  Jonsen and Toulmin 
outline how the practice of casuistry is able to find agreement revolving around 
practical decision without coming to theoretical terms with the implicit 
condradictions of a pluralistic public.  As long as the conversation stays rooted in 
"what should be done here" a consensus is often formed.  When the questions like 
why a person thinks this is right emerge then the agreement breaks down - but the 
consensus is already present  - in the coordination of action.  Most of the casuistic 
writings stem from theological ethics, narrative ethics, and applied ethics (I know - 
sounds like astrology - "what ethic are you?" - but the research is tremendously 
interesting.  Casuistry, the practice of comparing cases, also has similarities to 
hermeneutics - especially Gadamer's idea of prejudice, openness, and 
interpretation.

To toot my own horn - i'm presenting a paper on casuistry in St. John's 
Newfoundland on June 3 at the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion (an 
abstract is available at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/~bsalton/cssr.html).  If 
anyone else has worked on casuistry and communicative action I would love to 
hear from you.  As far as I know this is completely new ground (with the exception 
of a couple of articles which footnote gadamer).  My paper is basically exploring 
whether Habermas's critique of Gadamer applies to casuistry (i think it does - but i 
recognize that casuistry is an inevitable part, and an important part, of moral 
reasoning in a very practical way).


> >Desert island, huh?  That's what worries me.  I don't know where else the
> post-modern critique can take one.  I would really rather that the
> skepticism that exists in that camp would stay at the table and engage as a
> "hearer" as well as a "speaker".  

a desert island is the perfect place for a theoretical argument - especially one 
aimed at unconcealing reification in theory (methinks).  However a camp might be 
even more fun.  I can just imagine Habermas roasting a Frankfurter in front of an 
open fire - with Rorty making wood carvings, Derrida telling ghost stories, Popper 
throwing fuel on the fire, Marx singing drinking songs, Butler dancing to Marx's 
show tunes, and Sartre getting lost in the forest hunting for something to eat.  
Irigaray might be reading erotica and Benhabib would be beside Habermas - trying 
to convince him he should be a vegetarian....

> >hmmmm... your probably right.  maybe next time i'll launch 
> >>into a debate about the banking system - how the government, rather than the 
> >>private banks, should finance loans a .01% interest (as the law maintains
> they can 
> >>do) with the interest paid going back into the public coffers, instead of
> leaving it to 
> >>the private banks.....


I think this is important if anyone wants to talk about it.  The banking industry is 
perhaps one of the most stupid games in town.  Poverty and systematic destruction 
are part in parcel with how loans are dealt with.  There are alternatives.  ALL the 
problems with funding can be resolved with this practice - of borrowing money from 
ourselves.  It has working in other countires and the unemployment rate has 
swooped to .02%!!!!!!!!!!!!! for almost a decade!!!  this doesn't make the private 
sector happy but it eliminates unemployment - and provides full funding for 
education, research, health etc.


I found between facts and norms kinda problematic - for the same abstractness that 
haunts much of habermas's work.  i wonder why he chose citizenship over human 
rights and why he still relies upon the stabilization of behaviour through the force 
of law.  for me - an anarchist utopia isn't that bad.  utah phillips has it right on - 
good people don't need the laws and bad people don't obey them - so what use are 
they anyway!!!!

i don't want to work, i just want to bang on de drum all day,
ken




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