Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 01:36:39 -0500 (EST)
Subject: HAB: Understanding (was: Imagining deconstruction)




On Fri, 27 Feb 1998, Kenneth MacKendrick wrote:

> 
> On Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:32:04 -0500  M.A. King wrote:
> 
> (hi matthew)

Greetings, to Ken and the rest of y'all.  I wasn't sure if that was my
first post to this list or not.  I've been lurking quite a while, anyway.

> >Social solidarity breaks down if interlocutors refuse to 
> engage with each other on shared terms--if they refuse to try 
> to understand each other, and to manifest that understanding 
> to each other.
> 
> Right - Habermas must make a plea for solidarity - one that 
> takes place in language despite itself and the context from 
> which it springs.  You have to buy into procedures - they are 
> not necessarily part of the telos of language.

Why can't "the telos of language" also be context-dependent?  For
Habermas, certainly, it cannot be anything metaphysical....

Somewhere in TCA I, Habermas discusses Austin's differentiation between
the illocutionary and perlocutionary functions of language--and while he
seems (from what I recall) to muck up Austin a bit, what ultimately comes
out of his discussion is that perlocutionary effects (i.e. bringing about
some state of affairs) cannot be achieved unless illocutionary effects
(i.e. bringing about understanding) is first achieved.  You can't do
anything with words unless you make yourself understood.  This doesn't
show that understanding is the telos of language, I suppose, since
understanding is still a means to an end--illocutionary effects are still
a means to achieving perlocutionary effects.  But I don't think Habermas
is particularly concerned about that:  though the force of the better
argument is ultimately still *force* (i.e. it gets someone to do
something), all that is important to Habermas is that the effects of force
are achieved through argumentative rather than overtly strategic means.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that understanding is indispensable to our
being able to use language, or at least language as we know it, at all.
When people start trying to use language as a blunt instrument,
communication breaks down, and pretty soon people stop talking to each
other altogether.  Hence the present state of politics in the West....

As to the question, "What makes solidarity a good thing?":  that's like
asking Hobbes, "What makes peace a good thing?"  Habermas's project, I
think, is ultimately just to account for and prescribe a remedy to the
failure of solidarity in modern societies (just as Hobbes's was to account
for and prescribe a remedy to the failure of peace in England).

> Right, I agree.  Habermas makes the assumption that 
> solidarity is a good thing.  What if it isn't?  

You mean, what if you don't think it is?  Then I would think that Habermas
has nothing much to say to you.  I don't think he can be expected to have
anything much to say to you on that point, either--it's like asking, "What
if life isn't worth living?"  Well, maybe one's is, maybe another's isn't;
it's not really something you can argue about in the abstract.  In
general, it seems that people function better, are happier, whatever, when
they feel a sense of solidarity--mutual understanding, common purposes,
etc.--with their fellow human beings--but I don't know that this general
point can have any particular application.  No doubt, there are always
some for whom there are more pressing things to be achieved than
solidarity.  Achieving solidarity with my neighbours hopefully would not
be a high priority of mine if I were magically transplanted into Germany
c. 1940....

> > Again, it doesn't need to be defended with recourse to 
> metaphysics--rather with recourse to the social repercussions 
> of not bothering to make an effort to engage each other in 
> genuine conversation.
> 
> If it isn't metaphysical then it must shift to a strong 
> hermeneutics - something which Habermas disagrees with - 
> opting for a depth hermeneutic instead - one which can reach 
> behind ideological discourses and point out the origins of sys 
> dis com. 

I don't think that anything so complicated (or at least
complicated-sounding:) as a hermeneutics is required.  It doesn't take
much hermeneutical endeavour to understand each other in everyday
conversation; it doesn't/wouldn't take much hermeneutical effort for the
participants on this list to understand each other and engage each other
on shared terms; and I don't think much hermeneutical effort needs to be 
required in the field of political discourse, either.  Understanding and
making yourself understood by other people is hardly ever all that
difficult; what *is* more difficult, ordinarily, is convincing yourself
that it's worth the effort, or summoning up the good will necessary to try
to understand and be understood.

> > Why is it more alienating to 
> try to work with your interlocutors to arrive at common 
> definitions than it is to continue talking past each other?
> 
> Working with people requires incredible amounts of 
> imagination.  Putting yourself in someone elses' shoes is 
> perhaps one of the most difficult things you can do.  It is 
> painful, creative, empathic, etc.  It requires time and space.  

I dunno about painful.  Difficult, perhaps--but so rewarding!  For me,
anyway.  Again, I don't think there's any argument I could possibly make
that anyone else should find it similarly rewarding....

> Furthermore - it might also require a surrender of certain parts 
> of your identity (the alienation).  In order to come to an 
> agreement I suspect, and this is just a musing, that one might 
> have to make sacrifices for the sake of an agreement.  To use 
> a blunt example - if one person uses the word xyz to mean z 
> and you use the word xyz to mean y - then someone will have 
> to "surrender" part of their vocabulary to come to an 
> agreement.  There are lots of problems with this example - but 
> the idea is still there - that communication is, in many 
> respects, a renuciatory activity - something that Habermas 
> doesn't go into much but finds a historical echo in the early 
> work of Horkheimer and Adorno.

Yeah, I can see what you're saying.  But I don't know why this give-and-
take is necessarily a bad thing (or a bad thing at all).  You could call
any act of giving a "renunciatory activity", I guess.  You can't have
everything you want, and you can't keep everything you have, and expect to
get along with anyone else.  (Again, if one doesn't care about getting
along with anyone else, there's nothing either Habermas or I can say).
Anyway, for Habermas, the "surrender" ideally should not be made
grudgingly--the force of the better argument should get you willingly to
surrender your former view; the *willingly* part is a large part of what
makes it the better argument.

Matthew

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  "Words to memorize / Words hypnotize / Words make my mouth exercise /
            Words all fail the magic prize" (Violent Femmes)
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Matthew A. King  ----  Department of Philosophy  ----  McMaster University




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