Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 10:14:53 -0400
Subject: Re: HAB: Understanding (was: Imagining deconstruction)


Mathew writes:

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

how is a telos context-dependent?  Doesn't the meaning of "telos" imply
something metaphysical? Certainly it must be realized contextually- but a
telos is more than the context dependency of something, right?

further,
>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.
>
Geez, Mathew, this is very optimistic or something, isn't it.  First, we
all understand each other because we have similar languages and
backgrounds.  But what about people with other histories, other ways of
looking at the world?  All I'm say is that this comment above seems very
dismissive of the problem of incommensurability.  And isn't
incommensurability one of the worries of Habermas, for example in "The
Unity of Reason in the Diversity of its Voices"?  There he argues that
language is inherently a translation mechanism between cultures.
This is not to downplay the point that it is very difficult to convince
one's self to make the effort to reach understanding.

Jeffery




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