Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 13:51:28 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: HAB: Understanding




On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, Kenneth MacKendrick wrote:

> [Me:] 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....
> 
> [Ken:] I think one of the things I'm driving at it that lanugage-use is 
> that the separation of instrumental and communicative action 
> is too sharp (razor sharp actually) and that they are more 
> entwined than Habermas would like to admit.  This is perhaps 
> why Habermas cannot completely refute the Hegelian 
> objection of the terrorism of pure conviction (see pg. 196 of 
> MCCA) as people like Benhabib have demonsrated.

Well, I think you're right, as I guess I implied in my response to Gary.
On the other hand, I don't think the distinction needs to be as strong as
Habermas usually makes it out to be in order for his project to stand.
The distinction between an attitude oriented toward understanding and an
attitude oriented toward success may not be all that hard and fast--but on
the other hand, we know what it's like to enter into a debate with no goal
but to win, and we know what it's like to enter into a discussion hoping
to achieve a consensus.  The difference is palpable.  You can feel it, for
instance, in this mailing list as opposed to most of the newsgroups on
usenet:  despite what Gary (I think) said last week about people here
talking past each other, I think the degree to which people here
generally respect each other, are willing to engage with each other, to
accept each other's criticism on this mailing list is fairly remarkable
relative to the rest of cyberspace.  It's a matter of attitude.  The
difference between a good attitude and a bad attitude is hard to pin down,
but it's easy to feel.

> > 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).
> 
> Yes - but other than "Because it is" I really don't see how it 
> can be answered.  It is a particular vision of a good life.  No 
> matter how much one struggles to justify it still comes down to 
> a voluntary participation in discourse based upon some sort 
> of good-will.

I still don't know quite what to say about the charge that Habermas is
really after a certain vision of a good life.  I think that Habermas would
say that a society which has achieved a strong sense of social solidarity
founded on communicative action is not a vision of the good life, but
rather the formal condition under which the members of that society could
then formulate, together, their own vision of the good life.  I'm not sure
what grounds one could have to say that he can't say that. 

> > > [Ken:] 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.  
> 
> > [Me:] 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....
> 
> [Ken:] Painful in the sense that once you get to know someone you 
> realize that they aren't you - and in this way you find that they 
> pass judgement on you.  You find out that the differences are 
> irreconcilable.  He believes x, she believes y, and she 
> believes z while you belive xy.  The differences between us 
> are painful - because we don't recognize ourselves in them.  If 
> you've ever had a serious disagreement with a close friend 
> this becomes apparent.  Understand is about agreement.... 
> and when the differences are real understanding is not 
> possible.  "I just don't understand how you could believe 
> that..."

Personally, I've never found myself saying that to anyone.  Understanding
is necessary for agreement, yes, but, obviously, it is not sufficient.
You can understand someone's views and why they hold them while still
finding them abhorrent and holding out little hope that the two of you 
will ever achieve agreement.  This is painful, yes.  But certainly not
painful enough that we shouldn't bother trying to understand each other.
It sounds like you're saying that trying to understand each other brings
with it the danger that we will discover that we have apparently
irreconcilable differences, and this is potentially devastating.  To which
I would say:  yes, but not nearly so devastating as not trying to
understand each other at all.

> >.... 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.....
> 
> That's the problem.  I want to argue that the surrender cannot 
> be otherwise.  It has to be grudgingly at some level.  Any such 
> surrender would include an idea that "I was wrong" - and this 
> is a blow to the ego.

Well, in some sense, yes ... but so what?  Should we never admit that
we're wrong?  Should we all just fight each other to the death?  I really
don't think that one can only grudgingly be persuaded to change one's
mind; one certainly can often be thankful for having "the error of one's
ways" pointed out to one.

> And I hardly see this as pessimistic.  Optimism and 
> pessimism are a poor substitutes for an honest sensitivity to 
> the ambiguities of modernity.

Funny, that's exactly what I would say. :) Doesn't honesty require
being willing sometimes to admit, ungrudgingly, that you are wrong?

> ps.  great sig....

Thanks. :)

Matthew

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      "That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence."
         (Ludwig Wittgenstein, _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_)
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Matthew A. King  ----  Department of Philosophy  ----  McMaster University




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