Date: 	Thu, 5 Mar 1998 23:34:59 -0500
Subject: HAB: The Question-Begging of Performative Contradictions


Habermas writes:

A performative contradiction occurs when a constative speech 
act k(p) rests on noncontingent presuppositions whose 
propositional content contradicts the asserted proposition p...

  ....  the opponent will have involved himself/herself in a 
performative contradiction if the proponent can show that in 
making his or her argument, she or he has to make 
assumptions that are inevitable in any argumentation game 
aiming at critical examination and that the propositional 
content of those assumptions contradicts the principle of 
fallibilism (MCCA, 80-81).

In short one has committed a performative contradiction if a 
conclusion is self-destructive of the argument.

Eg. The criminal's action is existentially self-defeating since 
the strategic attempt to suppress the other in fact ruins (in the 
form of suffering) the life of the criminal; the trespasser 
intended to do away with another's life but instead destroys 
his own (J Bernstein, Recovering Ethical Life, 181).

Habermas does this to refute the moral skeptic who claims 
that there are no universal moral principles, by demonstrating 
that as soon as the skeptic attempts to argue for his or her 
position she or he must, on pain of performative contradiction, 
accept the rules of argumentation that prohibit all internal and 
external coercion other than the force of better argument (REL, 
181).

My charge against this is that the argumentative strategy that 
Habermas employs begs the question.  In other words the 
case for developing the idea of a performative contradiction 
uses one of its conclusions as a premise.  It is the logical 
equivalent of saying that God exists because God produces 
real effects (William James).  Logically this reads God 
produces real effects therefore God exists.  The conclusion 
that God exists is used as a premise for the statement God 
produces real effects.  It is a logical circle and completely 
incoherent.

This is the formulation of my critique:

Habermas must assume that rules of argumentation are true 
and unavoidable (as a premise of his case) in order to 
conclude that rules of argumentation are true and 
unavoidable.

Interesting enough Habermas tacitly acknowledges the 
problem in passing - "This 'fact of reason' cannot be 
deductively grounded, but it can be clarified if we take the 
further steop of conceiving argumentative speech as a special 
case - in fact, a privileged derivative - or action oriented 
toward reaching undestanding" (MCCA, 130).  In other words 
Habermas *knows* he is begging the question but argues that 
this isn't a completely vicious circle (Benhabib, Critique, 
Norm, and Utopia, 296).  What is really interesting about this 
problem is ^why^ Habermas gets to this point.

I think that Habermas does this by reifying the actual 
experiences of those who he charges (or could charge) with a 
performative contradiction under a universalist interpretation 
of language and language use - stemming from his Kantian 
conception of 'man.'  That is to say that Habermas must empty 
the contents of the way real human beings use language in 
order to make his case.  He can only do this through an 
abstraction.  It is this abstraction away from concrete 
experiences than allows Habermas to 'see' the transcendental 
pragmatic at all (this is why the transcendental pragmatic 
argument is phenomenological). 

NB:  If this is true then I will have established that project of 
discourse ethics is itself a particular articulation of one 
specific ethical vision.  I will have also presented a serious 
challenge to the structural centrality of action oriented to 
reaching an understanding.

Excursus:  On a side note there are several other good 
reasons to reject Habermas's notion of the performative 
contradiction - namely that argumentation itself is simply the 
discourse equivalent of struggles of recognition (which 
effectively places discursive procedures *inside* a wider 
moral struggle).  This understanding of moral and ethical life 
requires a "wider lens" than a narrowly construed discourse 
ethic (REL, 183).  Furthermore it is probably not desirable, or 
consistent, to empty ethical life of its contradictions for the 
sake of a "moral" argument.  It is precisely our contradictory 
identity that we want to hold onto - because these 
contradictions make us who we are.  In this sense Kantian 
noncontradictory 'man' becomes the antithesis of an actual 
(moral) individual identity.  And thirdly - all that a performative 
contradiction can do is identify out fundamental beliefs - the 
very things that we live and breath and wrap our lives and 
identities around (REL, 184).

Back to why Habermas's performative contradiction takes the 
strange shape that it does:

As Bernstein argues (and this is pretty much quoted word for 
word), Hegel used the idea of performative self-contradictions 
in three ways: i) as a philosophical procedure that must be 
used phenomenologically, that is, only a form of 
consciousness testing itself could yield compelling 
performative contradictions since only by permitting each form 
of consciousness to stipulate its own criterion for ultimate 
grounding prevents the demonstration from being question 
begging (NB.  this already demonstrates my point).  ii) But this 
is equivalent to saying that there cannot be direct 
transcendental arguments for fundamental beliefs since the 
philosopher is always dependent on natural consciousness's 
stipulation of basical elements of the conceptual scheme.  
Hence it is only a whole series of performative contradictions 
that can show that there are no alternatives to the 
philosopher's favoured belief set.  iii)  Performative 
self-contradictions therefore are idle against the philosophical 
skeptic since he or she has already refused to posit any 
criterion of what is to count as a fundamental ground of 
experience and therefore is immune to the force of what a 
performative contradicitonbrings about in any particular 
context.  In conclusion - the employments of performative 
contradictions can ONLY trace a series of fundamental ethical 
experiences (REL, 184-185).  What Habermas does is reverse 
Hegel's use of the performative contradiction.  Instead of 
making it concrete and contextual - it makes it abstract.  He 
does so in order to defend his understanding of the moral 
domain in contrast to the ethical.  Habermas does this 
because he cannot have it any other way.  Habermas is forced 
to generate the normative content of modernity out of itself, in 
a contradictory way, in order to defend his universalist 
postmetaphysical project and all of its contents.  Not only do I 
think this leap is impossible - I suspect it isn't even 
necessary.




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