Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 17:14:56 -0800
From: "Gary E. Davis" <gedavis-AT-pacbell.net>
Subject: HAB: Re: A particular universality


Scott,

OUTSTANDING piece of clarification (“A particular universality...” #2);
you certainly didn’t “squander” any part of your day, as far as I’m
concerned. Thank you very, very much for your time. 

But given your lucid account of the centrality of formal world-concepts
in your understanding of Habermas---particularly your sense of their
“tentatively and fallibly...attributed” universalizability---it seems
all the more implausible that you would think that “Habermas’ theory is
burdened with demonstrating its universality” (“U&P” #1). Indeed, I’m
persuaded that you don’t have a problem with the “situatedness of his
own thinking” (8/27). It is not the case that “a theory such as
Habermas’...demands...an account of our development...grounded in an
anthropology which we know [in both the third and first person]” (“U&P”
#1) because this is what his approach to social evolution has been, in
part, about for many years. He makes no “assumption of [the]
superiority...of his own thinking in the Western tradition”; rather he
makes extended arguments about the evolutionary originality and
irreplaceability of the unfinished project of modernity, as a global
Event that the West was best situated to initiate and advance, in the
name of all parties within the purview of, say, The United Nations,
whose own purview reaches out to all localities, in the name of
universal human rights that deserve to be enforced. 

I'm reminded of the views of the government of Cambodia, which believes
that the principle of sovereignty overrides the discretion of the UN to
claim that its "Western" notion of human rights deserves to prevail over
the internal affairs of the nation. Your approach to universality would
seem to imply that Cambodia should be left alone, as long as it doesn't
invade Thailand. I'm sure you don't believe this, and I'm not looking
for a discussion about Cambodia. But, then, why doesn't a principle of
soverignty prevail over a principle of human rights if, as you say: "As
long as a set of norms of restricted applicability doesn't, extending
beyond that circle, disprupt the communication through which the
non-generalizability of the norm can manifest itself, it is in no danger
of being "clobbered" from without by Habermas's moral theory"?

I don't agree that "Habermas's project is primarily to recover the
rationality of moral discourse" (today). I don't know what IS the best
short statement about what his project is primarily about, if not along
the lines of contributing to the advancement of social evolution,
inasmuch as communicative action can prevail over unreasonable force.  

 
Gary


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