Date: Wed, 24 Sep 1997 10:49:07 +0300 (EET DST)
From: Arto Laitinen <armala-AT-cc.jyu.fi>
Subject: Re: HAB: Ethical life, moral interaction... (fwd)



I tried to get this thru yesterday, but I didn't succeed.
Let's see if this works out.
Sorry for potential double mailing.

--Arto Laitinen


Hello,

I'd like to repeat a couple of points made here and add some of my own.

I think that there are a couple of distinctions that Habermas runs
together in his ethical-moral distinction. Getting clear in these
can help us appreciate the important intuitive point behind them.

I think one can say that according to Habermas the moral point of view
(as opposed to the ethical) deals with
1) questions of justice (as opposed to good life),
2) binding norms (as opposed to "freefloating values"),
3) justification which is of a universal kind (instead of just "us" in
our "culture"/"form of life"/etc. seeing something as justified)
4) justification whose criteria is universalizability (instead of
'being-true-to-our-commitments' etc.)
5) universalizable demands (as opposed to particular).

An Ideal-type "Communitarian" can make good arguments against all
of these, and an ideal-type Habermasian can answer some of them
even better:

1) HAB: questions of justice (as opposed to good life),

COMM: Any conception of justice tacitly supposes a conception of a good
life.

HAB: The counterargument: the *justification* of this conception of
justice does not necessarily tacitly suppose any particular conceptions of
a good life although it necessarily *rules out* some conceptions of good
life)

2) HAB: binding norms (as opposed to "freefloating values"),

COMM: Also questions of good life can deal with (non-moral)norms: if I see
that smoking is not good for me, I can give me a validly binding nonmoral
norm: don't smoke. Thus it's not so, that norms and questions of justice
would go together and questions of good life and values.

(here I cannot see a Habermasian counterargument...)

3) HAB:
justification which is of a universal kind (instead of just "us"
in our "culture"/"form of life"/etc. seeing something as justified)

COMM: Charles Taylor would say that although demands of justice are
universal, their justification always necessarily refers to a particular
"framework" of "strong evaluations", ie. a particular "culture". Detaching
from this would make justification impossible.

HAB: Here I think is the strongest point of the Kantian or Habermasian
point-of-view:
any participant can adopt for the sake of justification a universal
stance, apply a universal "procedure" whose validity is not based on
any particular culture (although it *rules out* some features of some
cultures, including our own). This, I think is the basic point of the
moral-ethical -distinction: Moral claims need *justification* from a
universal point-of-view. They don't have to be consistent with everything
in every culture, which would be a weird interpretation of universality
here

4) HAB: In addition to the point three, the criterion at work within the
universal point-of-view is "universalizability" (as opposed to
being-true-to-our-commitments etc.)

COMM: If we are not true to our commitments, there's no moral motivation
and even further, the universal demands are oppressive or senseless.

HAB: we can be committed to morality in its universalizable sense;
and also some of our more 'traditional' commitments remain.
Although a factual 'commitment' is not enough for a moral point-of-view,
it's still a good thing to have.

5) The thus justified demands of morality are universalizable.

COMM: we could have different norms which both pass the test of
universalizability, and there's no reason why norms should be
*universal* as long as they are universalizable.

HAB: Right. As long as they are universalizable they don't have to
be universal. In valid norms there is always some ethical content to it
as well, (in the way of 'application' of the universalizable norm),
and thus the concrete norm in its concrete applications doesn't
have to be universal, as long as it is universalizable in the way
of justification. (I think in BFN Habermas moves in this direction)


Conclusion:

I think one has to make a choice: how many of these 5 claims you
want to include in your conception of a moral point of view.

I (not being faithful to Habermas in all points) think that we should see
moral point-of-view in the first place concerning the 3rd and 4th
claims.

We should drop the universality claim of 5 and speak only
of universalizability, drop the 2nd claim that good life and justice
parallel values and norms (cos there is a value of justice and norms of
good life), see the 1st claim of independence of moral claims (or justice)
from good life as an independence of justification, not of results.

Yours,
Arto Laitinen







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