Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 15:23:08 +1000
From: Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au>
Subject: Re: HAB: A Direction Of Inquiry


G'day all,

Gary writes:

>*That's* something I'd *love* to hear about, when you have the time.
>I've been searching for a good practical issue to suggest focusing
>attention on ... The obvious phenomenon we share is--da, da!: The
>Internet. But >your topic sounds like a book (and my postings don't, of
>course).

Hopefully it will be a book one day (it's on my list of things to do when I
grow up).  It's only half-arsed ideas and moot associations at the moment.

> ... in summarizing EMW's discussion of early modern democratic
>capitalism. It >makes me want to pull out _Legitimation Crisis_ again.

Good idea - I've not looked at LC for ages.  Perhaps it's time someone
played Marx to Habermas's Hegel and inverted him for a minute.  Y'know:
turn the crisis of legitimation upside down and start from the legitimation
of crisis (a potentially useful ploy in this PR-distorted world - as Gary
concludes 'From one colonized lifeworld to another...').

>I felt obligated to relativize the domain of the ethical to what he
>considers >especially moral ... the "essence" of Habermas' work, his
>>"quasi-transcendental" claims.

Yeah - I kinda hope someone explains this to me in English.  I think Mike
Salter (whom I used to persist in misrepresenting - all quite innocently)
sees this as a fundamental problem (Kant + Dialectics = What?).

And Ken, has my historical tease elicited any interest?  I'm happy to
paraphrase the rest of the chapter over the next few days if you want to
chat about it afterwards.  Otherwise, I'll embark on a peek at Roy Bhaskar
(as directed).  The bloke seems to be rather out of vogue in the Australian
academy, so he must be fundamentally correct in at least some significant
respect ...

Cheers,
Rob.


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

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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