Date: 	Sat, 25 Oct 1997 14:15:41 -0400
From: "kenneth.mackendrick" <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: HAB: Re: Morals & the good life, 10/24



> Ken notes, quite constructively in his response to Brian, that 
a vision of the good life may be open to procedural debate.... 
esp. if justice is understood as a vision of the good life.  I 
enthusiastically agree with the first part of this statement; but 
the situations in which a vision of the good life might 
*actually* be taken up in procedural debate would have to be 
those situations in which procedural debate is normally 
carried out, obviously.

Heller argues that communication is a choice.  Unless the 
conditions of justice are already satisfied one does not 
possess "good reasons" to participate since the conversation 
will be not be a conversation at all (because of the power 
interests involved).  In this way Heller argues that actions 
may be chosen instead in order to secure a level playing field 
(hence her decisionism).  Habermas's response (Reply to my 
Critics) argues that even the coordination of action within 
strategic means is coordinated communicatively.  Habermas's 
argument is persuasive because his interpretation of 
language prevents him from being wrong about this.  What I 
am concerned with here is whether Austin's speech-act theory, 
and Habermas's appropriation of it, is sound.  Derrida, for 
instance, takes a very different spin on it....  The underlying 
quesiton here is whether nor not it is possible to summarize 
communication within the boundaries of an ontological 
interpretation of language (the minimal pragmatic 
requirements...).  In TCA Habermas argues that the "original" 
purpose of language was communicative (in his sense of the 
term).  If he is wrong there will be hell to pay.
 
> But it is a mistake to understand justice "as a vision of the 
good life." This would be to understand justice in terms of 
solidarity, rather than conceiving understanding as a 
complementarity of justice and solidarity, appreciation of 
difference and appreciation of identity.

I wonder if the distinction here rests on whether one 
understands the heart of the moral human condition as one of 
honesty or modernity.  If one understands modernity to the be 
focus then Habermas may very well be right about this 
(justice and solidarity).  However if one takes an orientation 
from the idea of living an honest life - then one is not obligated 
to be in solidarity with an abstract idea of "everyone."  Heller 
argues for an ethics of personality and Habermas argues for a 
discourse ethics.

> A complementarity of appreciations *requires* that, as you 
say of Heller, "justice is a chosen value of the good life," at 
*least*.   But if justice is *at most* chosen (rather than 
inherent to intersubjectivity as such), then the charge of 
decisionism becomes credible.

Yes, but Habermas still relies completely on his reading of 
the intersubjective use of language.  Is it reduceable to 
pragmatic presuppositions?  Yes, we address questions 
directly to other people, but what is left over?  What "more" is 
conveyed in these statements (aesthetically, 
psychoanalytically, and hermeneutically).  And can this 
"nonidentical" be thematized out without liquidating the 
concrete nature of such expressions.  ie.  if you strip away 
from a linguistic utterance its' particularity then will anything 
be left?
> 

>>Is Gilligan's critique successful in that it successfully 
produces an 'enlarged mentality' which necessarily 
incorporates justice and care (Benhabib, Situating the 
Self).  

>Now that's a very interesting question. I think: Yes.

The problem with this is that if it is correct then justice and the 
good life cannot be separated out and Habermas's entire 
project falls apart (yes - the entire project as he conceives of 
it).  If the good and the just are intermingled then so are 
issues of truth, rightness, and truthfulness.  Without being 
able to distinguish between the spheres Habermas's entire 
speech-act theory is incoherent (this does not 
necessarily mean the end of modernity either).  This is why 
Benhabib pulls out of the daring critical dive at the last 
moment - and argues for a minimalist idea of reciprocity and 
respect.  She merges the good and the just but then perserves 
justice from the good in a different way (the interdependence 
of the public and private).  Benhabib still relies upon an idea 
of the generalized other since this is necessary for any kind of 
communicative ethic.  This has to do with whether one can 
determine, with certainty, the minimal requirements for being 
a linguistic animal.  Habermas and Benhabib argue that this 
can be definitely determined.  Folks like Castoriadis and 
Whitebook and J. Bernstein are trying to think about this in a 
different way...  I don't really want to get into this debate right 
now though since it will involve a fairly complicated and 
technical critique of Habermas which would certainly drive 
(me) right off the list.

>By the way, fishwrap is the fate of newspapers; journalists 
(round San Francisco, anyway) have been known to cynically 
reconcile themselves to the fate of their exhausting efforts of 
investigation and writing and editing by fondly referring to 
their work as "fishwrap."

ie.  garbage.

>So, you want to consider the "separation" of the good from 
the just in terms of one's sense of the relationship between 
women and men?

No.  I am pointing out that, and as you mentioned above, you 
do not disagree with this, that Habermas (and Kohlberg) have 
a narrow interpretive reading about the moral domain.  This 
narrow interpretation is based upon a gendered reading (ie. an 
implicit privilege to male participants).  Now don't go all 
absolutist on me.  I chose my words fairly carefully as 
deliberately to NOT imply essential characteristics or 
experiences to either men or women.  Habermas wants to 
deny essential characteristics as well but he ignores voices 
that disagree with him about justice and care - and in many of 
these cases the dissenting voices are women.  He is probably 
just as shocked as I am.  Habermas has, responsibly, 
responded to the criticism - namely the distinction between 
justification and application.  But this does not get to the 
bottom of the quesiton which has the real possibility of 
undermining his project of discourse ethics by questioning its 
foundations.  The fact that this arises in gender discourses 
should not erase the fact that it also arises in hermeneutics, 
parxis theory, aesthetics, pragmatism, deconstruction, and 
psychoanalysis.

I'm not oppossed to Habermas's project.  I am trying to sketch 
out dissent and determine what is credible and what isn't.  I'm 
not dogmatically attached to Habermas any more than I am 
Heller.  I raise these issues because it does not seem to me 
that Habermas's theory, as he has presented it, can counter 
them successfully.  This does not mean that his project is 
unsound rather it points to the fact, that Habermas recognizes, 
that it is in its infancy.




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