Date: 	Sun, 24 Aug 1997 15:22:06 -0400
From: "kenneth.mackendrick" <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: HAB: Communicative and Strategic Rationality



> BTW Why don't members of this list set up a series of weekly 
on-line/-e-mail seminars on an agreed series of CT themes, such as 
say Adorno vs Habermas; the nature of dialectics, the character of 
ideology-critique, theory/practice relations in CT etc, etc etc with each 
seminar based upon agreed one agreed reading from the CT 
tradition. If we had all read the same text in advance,
> then we could perhaps get something more from the discussion. 
This is only an idea for supplementing the usual carry on.
> Michael

Ok folks - i'm not going to concede my position just yet - but i'm going 
to stop writing elaborate posts - somehow we seem to have run into a 
grid lock and i sense the same things might be getting repeated to 
much.  as far as i can see my critique of (U) has not be refuted.  
habermas and benhabib have a static concept of reason and 
subjectivity which is NECESSARILY so because of their reliance 
upon a procedural ethics.  the appeal to a living dialogue, akin to 
gadamer's work, does not solve this problem - since the static 
conditions upon which reason itself is to be actualized have not 
changed at all.  i am simply trying to note that language does not 
exhaust reason.  perhaps i've missed the point that ya'll were 
making.  if so - my apologies.  i'm sure it will click at some point.

as for the weekly readings....
i'm running a book club here in toronto - called the cyclopsclub (a 
metaphor for freedom and happiness from dialectic of enlightenment). 
 we read and review a couple of articles every two weeks.  last year 
we covered the positivist dispute (habermas, adorno, popper), the 
gadamer - derrida encounter, the derrida - rorty exchange, and almost 
got into the contentions between benhabib, fraser, cornell, and butler.

this year we will be doing similar tricks.  more frankfurt school, more 
pragmatism, more hermeneutics, and more postmodernism.  the aim 
of these sessions is to examine the various methodological and 
theoretical approaches out there.  if this is a conversation that people 
might be interested in i could set up an email list that people could 
participate in.  this goes way beyond habermas so i'm not sure doing 
it on the hab-spoon would be appropriate.  perhaps we could arrange 
to have another spoon group entitle "Method and Theory" set up.  if 
we can find a spoon manager this could probably be done within a 
few days or weeks.

thoughts?  feel free to post me privately if you don't want to contact 
the list about this.

kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca





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