Date: Thu, 05 Mar 1998 12:58:31 +0200
Subject: Re: HAB: Critique of Moral Universalism



Here's some replies to Ken. I haven't had time to follow the
thread, I hope all of these points have not yet been made by
others.

>As Benhabib notes the idea of impartiality relies upon a 
>"generalized other" - a public persona (and, in fact, a 
>monological retreat to the philosophy of the subject).

(That'll be the same Benhabib who draws heat from other feminists for
her defense of impartiality and universality, and who derives the
core of her theory directly from Habermas.)

>Since an 
>actual consensus regarding a specific issue could only 
>determine its impartiality in retrospect (as Wellmer
>carefully notes) - Habermas MUST posit the distinction 

(What distinction???)

>BEFORE the conversation takes place - something which, as 
>he admits, cannot be done.  

You lost me here. Could you give me a quote from Wellmer, as I
haven't come across his book anywhere?

>So any resulting consensus will 
>have taken place within a concrete community - 

Which is what Habermas has always argued for.

>which is an 
>ethical community and therefore the results ARE ostensibly 
>partial.  

"Therefore"? That logic doesn't work. You're using "impartiality" in 
an absolutist sense, which is not Habermas's use, nor the everyday
use of the word. For example, a decision can be impartial between
two people, if the reasons they present for their case are taken into
consideration equally, without privileging the other somehow. Their
belonging into a community is not an issue as such. Impartiality
among real human beings is always impartiality between certain definite
parties
with respect to some particular issue, not some kind of abstract
"impartiality-as-such".

>In this sense agreement cannot be seen to confer 
>rationality OR morality to a specific issue (only legal validity). 

Rationality in what sense? What *else* do you base rationality on
than agreement? Correspondence to some ideal order (ratio)? On self-
interest? Best means to a given end? Habermas is talking about communicative
rationality, in which nobody has a privileged access to what is
rational. What is rational is what can best be supported with reasons,
that's all there is to it. The kind of agreement that results from
all sides accepting the best reasons available (and nothing else,
ideally) is the best possible guarantee that there is not a better solution.
As new arguments are developed and discoveries made, the best solution
changes, but agreement under conditions as ideal as possible remains what
confers
rationality to it.

With respect to agreement and morality, I won't get into particularly
deep observations on Habermas. I'd just like to point out that there
is, after the metaphysical dream, no moral order in the world to which
the right rules and principles could correspond to. Taking autonomy
(and solidarity) as his starting point, Habermas sets out to work out 
what would best protect that. The answer is the rules and restrictions
which will necessarily bind the agent in a society should be of the
kind she can and will consent to, that are not forced upon her. These
will be the ones she (and others whom they concern) can freely agree with.
Rules that are not based on agreement are, following this ancient liberal
intuition, immoral - there is no higher moral truth which would trump the
individuals' considered opinions. It follows that agreement is a necessary
condition of morality. (It is not a sufficient condition, which can be seen
from the fact that not every agreement constitutes a moral rule, decision etc.
There may also be certain constraints on this agreement, and Habermas has
his own, ie. that agreement is not reached by means that lead to a
performative contradiction.)

> The idea of consensus is a LEGAL principle - not
>essentially a moral one.  

Consensus is a legal principle *only from the point of view of a particular
theory of morality* - for example, Habermasian. Why would law as such require
consensus? This is a matter of substantive moral theory -
and you implicitly subscribe to one of this sort when you tie the
legitimacy of law to consensus. There are many other views of what confers
legitimacy. Under postmetaphysical conditions, the demand for consensus is
the reverse side of the coin of respect for autonomy (on a monological theory,
the preservation of autonomy would not necessarily require consent). This
is primarily a moral principle.

>Habermas's distinction between 
>justification and application doesn't solve the problem.  Since 
>discourses regarding application are inevitably just as partial, 
>and contextualized, as justificatory discourses (if Benhabib's 
>logic is correct).
>
>However this would render Habermas's discourse ethics 
>relativistic - and he really doesn't want that - so he has to 
>ignore the problem or go about it in another way.

No. The non-relativistic part of discourse ethics is the *procedure*
of solving problems ethically. The solutions themselves will be
relative to the particular community. It is of course possible that
the procedure itself is relative to a particular community (at best),
but the above argument is irrelevant in that respect.

(I'll skip some parts in the following.)

>Morality is necessary as a safety net to 
>protect the web of communicative relationships (morality is 
>the gap between a damaged life and an undamaged life).  This 
>already implies a psychological and social ideal in Habermas 
>- unfettered communicative freedom.

This is actually true. Habermas does have a certain very open
normative ideal that he works to defend. At least some aspects of
it, however, turn out to be implied by communicative rationality
itself.

>Habermas also  argues that the idea of the performative 
>contradiction MIRRORS progressive cognitive development.  

(Where?)

>Working backward from the cognitive ideal Habermas exacts 
>the presuppositions of speech that would permit the 
>possibility of attaining the idea.  This is the point at which 
>Habermas begs the question.  Habermas must already 
>possess knowledge of the ideal before working back to the 
>conditions in which the ideal could be manifest.  He MUST
>posit the conclusion AS A PREMISE of the conclusion. 

You should try to formulate that in propositional logic -
you might find where you go wrong. It is true that Habermas's
argument has the structure of a transcendental argument, even
if it is only a quasi-transcendental one. Yes, you move backwards
from a fact or a phenomenon to what makes it possible - but so what?
No need to posit it as a premise.

>It is a 
>logical circle from the perspective of a moral idea.

This is incoherent. Surely something's being a logical circle has
nothing to do with the perspective it's viewed from.

>the reconstructive sciences are able to impartially affirm the 
>presuppositions of any possible argument from the third 
>person perspective.  The problem with this is that Habermas 
>must assume that the sciences possess the capacity to be 
>impartial.  However, as many critics of science have pointed 
>out - the sciences are partial (Adorno, Gadamer, etc.).

This is simplistic, but the problem is, for a change, a genuine
one. To reply on the same level, many defenders of science (any
analytic philosopher) point out that science is a (or *the*) human
endeavour that aims at impartiality, correcting itself each time
it (or something else) catches it for partiality. The same goes
for Habermas's reconstructive sciences; they are fallible and
correctible. They are not, again, impartial in the sense of
presenting a God's-eye view, but impartial in the sense of being
partial for all humanity, or at least aiming at that.

>So 
>Habermas CANNOT rationally depend upon the sciences,
>reconstructive or not, to establish the kind of impartiality 
>necessary 

He cannot rationally depend on anything *else* to establish
the kind of lack of partiality he needs.

>to defend the idea that argumentation can and will 
>lead (eventually or potentially) to universal moral norms or 
>objective truth claims (remember that agreement is a legal 
>principle not a principle which confers truth OR morality).

(Remember that that was refuted above.)

>Moreover the life of the human being MUST be a mirror of the 
>self-understood objectivity of the sciences which in turn MUST 
>mirror the society writ large. 

Where do you get this mirror imagery from?

>Human beings MUST, like the 
>aims of science, orient themselves by impartiality.  

Habermas claims that human beings *do* orient themselves by impartiality
in certain contexts, or aim to do so, set it up for themselves as an ideal.

>Habermas sees impartiality everywhere - in 
>science, in ethics, and in law. 

Habermas sees striving for impartiality (in the sense defined above) 
in science, ethics and law. So do I, and so does the science of history
in the development of the corresponding institutions. 

I'll break off here to be able to catch up with the debate.


Antti



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