Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 15:16:38 -0500 Subject: Re: HAB: Re: Understanding On Mon, 2 Mar 1998 03:50:59 -0500 gedavis-AT-pacbell.net wrote: Gary, I want to make a certain point so I'm going to poke around a bit in your post (something you tried on me once). A kind of test run for an idea that is floating around in my head.... My edits are <>'d. > Indeed, "<strategy> is indispensable to our being able to use language," but, more fundamentally, language is indispensable to our being able to have <strategies> (since there is more to <strategy> --and cognition--than merely linguistic representation). > 'Language' is commonly a placeholder for "intelligence," and there is clearly more to cognition or intelligence than linguistic intelligence (and Habermas would agree, pointing out that this is irrelevant to a theory of *communicative* action, properly so, perhaps). The axiality of linguistic <strategies> is a function of the axiality of coordinated action among persons. We are <*emphatic/creative>* beings; hence, the fundamentality of language. But the <communicativity> of language doesn't imply a fundamental <communicativity> of <strategy>, except (again) within larger horizons of <strategy> or the lifeworld itself. > Do be careful, though, of your apparent propensity to transpose notions of relationship and <strategy> into <communicative> terms. > > Best regards, > > Gary The point of all this was to demonstrate that understanding involves both communicative and strategic gestures - something that is best examined by the logical categories of creativity and the imaginary. The radical distinction between the two creates an illusion of impartiality and an illusion of partiality in discourse. Clearly both are at work here simultaneously. Which makes the distinctions between universalism and particularity problematic. Habermas cannot reach behind the aporia of a negative dialectic with an appeal to a postconvential worldview without hypostatizing the contradiction. ken --- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005