File spoon-archives/habermas.archive/habermas_1997/habermas.9708, message 28


Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 15:56:14 +1000
From: Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au>
Subject: Re: HAB: Communicative and Strategic Rationality


Just had to chime in with the irrelevant news that I absolutely,
fundamentally, admiringly, and gratefully agree with Scott's last post.
I've saved it, and intend to paraphrase its clear arguments shamelessly to
anyone who'll listen.

Good on you, Scott!  And thank you, Ken.  On this list, you say many things
worth hearing, and when you don't, you get other people to.

Best to all,
Rob.

>kenneth.mackendrick wrote:
>>
>> Ok - i've obviously raised too many issues too quickly.  I'll
>> sum up.
>>
>> Habermas's project communicative rationality has little to do
>> with rationality at all.  Habermas in unable to maintain a
>> coherent idea of reason and communication.  What we have
>> here is an expression of desire - a utopian image - which may
>> appeal to us for some reasons but ultimately it appeals to
>> what we want to be true or moral.  It is an image of what
>> Habermas thinks the world we should be like - in accord with a
>> specific and local understanding of reason.  In other words -
>> habermas's project is philosophically trivial - since it
>> expresses a version of contextualized reason which does not
>> speak to a universal audience rather it speaks from and to a
>> specific tradition.  This is why i am hinting at the idea of
>> emphatic reason - since i read habermas as being far more
>> poetic that rational.
>
>Habermas is arguing that this "local" Western tradition has universal
>import. Note that it is within this tradition that the ideal of am
>impartial universality which preserves local, individual differences
>arose and became highly valued. And when you essay your idea of
>"emphatic reason" you are advancing this very tradition yourself -- or
>are you coming from nowhere, with no rooted desires or "utopian image"?
>Like it or not, Ken, their is something you expect to be highly
>(ultimately) valued not just by yourself but all those to whom you
>direct your argument. That is, you implicitly raise a universal claim.
>This is not merely something you can speak of in the third person as a
>"desire", but is something that you identify with, that animates your
>criticism and critique. You can't admit this; Habermas can. If you argue
>that his approach is ethnocentric or whatever, you only do so on the
>basis of values transmitted in that tradition you want to argue embodies
>only local moral/ethical aspirations, thus advancing yourself that very
>tradition.
>
>>
>> Habermas unsuccessfully entwines motivation with reason.
>> The force of the better argument is not a determinable event -
>> eventually it will be based upon desire more than good
>> reasons - which does not make it irrational and certainly does
>> not exhaust the idea of reason.
>
>Good reasons ARE good because there is an as yet unarticulated basis of
>valution which has not itself become problematic. That is, if something
>is a good reason for me and also for you, it is because the reason
>refers to a value we both share, something we are both commited to and
>identify with. This is not "desire" that we could speak about only in
>the third person but constitutes our moral orientation in the world,
>which lies "behind" us in the lifeworld. Because any reflective
>articulation of this moral orientation is not the thing itself, it must
>demonstrate itself in practice (say, in criticism of a previous
>articulation). To seek this ultimate moral orientation as an objectified
>"desire" misses the point that reflection itself is an expression of
>this moral orientation. Thus the force of the charge of pragmatic
>contradiction, which denies the "moral sources" of its own criticism,
>yet relies on them implicitly nevertheless.
>   Where does "rationality" come into all this? The ideal of rationality
>involves universality. Good reasons rest on lifeworldy moral
>orientations, which you claim are irremediably local and particular AND
>THUS CANNOT BE UNIVERSAL. You declare this a priori, however, and with
>the intent of protecting that particularity from a rampaging universal.
>Your declaration, however, is a claim to the universality of truth, and
>argues for a universal order which protects particularity. Moreover it
>relies on moral sources you expect your interlocutors to identify with.
>If I ask you why I should care that Habermas's project "expresses a
>version of contextualized reason which does not speak to a universal
>audience rather it speaks from and to a specific tradition," you would
>probably be taken aback that I have abandoned the assumed valuation of
>universality. Habermas intends to accept explicitly that this valuation
>of universality is a standard (and one which has been developed
>locally), and to let that that universality emerge for itself instead of
>trying to dictate what it should consist of. Or instead of ignoring,
>like you and so many others who fall into pragmatic contradiction, the
>universality of your own claims and their situatedness in the tradition
>you criticize.
>
>>  What good reason do i have
>> for obeying the rules of discourse?  what would motivate me
>> to participate in a discussion, a real life discussion, where
>> predetermined rules exist about what is and is not acceptable.
>
>How about this: because those rules safeguard particularity by not
>allowing anything to preempt its voice in the discussion. Particularity
>may be transformed in the process of discourse, but through rational
>appeals which compel from within and not just from without -- that is,
>non-violently.
>
>>  Of course I WANT to participate in discussions - but i don't
>> have, ultimately, a completely rational reason for
>> participating.
>
>Is this a change of heart, Ken? Didn't you say before that you didn't
>want to be rational? As for not having a "rational reason": I think you
>mean to say that you sense that your reasons are good because of the
>moral sources they connect with, which themselves are as yet
>unjustified. What could justify an ULTIMATE value? Nothing. But it is
>still an ultimate value, one which is not indifferent to you, which you
>can objectify as a "desire" and accept as merely "local", but is
>expressed in the universal claims you implicitly make in practice, as
>you live your life. Thus in PRACTICE what is of ultimate value for you
>is universal, though your THEORY may contradict your practice. The
>trajectory of practice that the arrow of your moral longing follows aims
>at the universal. It will find its target only through communicative
>medium which lets it proceed unmolested. A truly universal, "rational
>reason" will be one which connects with a value which, while
>unjustified, is one that all share -- just the sort of value you appeal
>to in your argumentation, and the sort of value that Habermas would like
>to see emerge in a discourse which does not distort.
>
>   If you remain incorrigible, Ken, I'll have to send a squad of
>jack-booted discourse police to apply some advanced techniques of
>rational persuasion on you. ;->
>
>--
>---------------------------------------------------------
>                     Scott Johnson
>
>105 W. 1st St. #214                sjohn-AT-cp.duluth.mn.us
>Duluth, MN   55802             voice/fax  (218) 722-1351
>
>   http://www.cp.duluth.mn.us/~sjohn/sjohn_on.html
>
>
>     --- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---



************************************************************************

Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia.

Phone:  02-6201 2194  (BH)
Fax:    02-6201 5119

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'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day's toil of any human being.'    (John Stuart Mill)

"The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
the form of capital."                                    (Karl Marx)

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