Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 22:43:17 -0500
Subject: Re: HAB: Understanding




Stephen Chilton wrote:

> Let me recap part of this thread and add my own response at the end:
>
> [KEN:] Habermas's particular vision of a more utopian world is
> Kantian.  It is one in where contradictions do not exist (he really
> does rely upon 'generalized other' - something that I really don't
> want to become.
>
> [M.A. KING:] I really don't know why you attribute this view to
> Habermas. As far as I understand him, differences are not
> (necessarily) to be eliminated, but respected and understood.  Of
> course, in any society, there are some differences which must be
> overcome and will be overcome in any event--and the question is
> whether to overcome them strategically or communicatively.
>
> [KEN:] You can think differently but you have to act according to
> reason.  Understanding means agreement about something.  So moral
> actions must be of one accord.
>
> [ME {Steve}:] Such "accord" occurs in the second moment of discourse
> ethics, "M2", which occurs when the first moment, "M1" (which I
> believe everyone is talking about above and which people erroneously
> think is the whole of Habermas's discourse ethics) does not result
> in agreement.  I will be happy to send anyone a copy of my
> (forthcoming, God willing) article, "A Second Moment of Discourse
> Ethics", which lays out M2 and justifies these claims for it.

Hmmm.... First time post to this list, although I've been lurking for a
while.

I was under the impression that both the discourse ethics and the
communicative reason, which Habermas sometimes treats seperatly were
centered not on 'resolving differences', which sounds to me like
homogenization, but on acheiving a mutual understanding of opposing
positions from which the parties in those positions are better able to
coordinate their actions, and ideally, continue to expand that
understanding so as to be able to coordinate action in the best manner
possible at any particular time in the overall discourse.
    The process has always seemed to me to be a means of levelling the
field of discourse in order to both facilitate a more fully realized
communicative process, as well as create a situation in which agreements
can be provisionally reached and acted from. In otherwords, its not just
a matter of first and second moments, but an ongoing process.
    Admittedly, i may be reading too much into it, but that's the sense
that i've come away with.

Steve-- I'd like to get a copy of that paper. Thanks.
--
================================================================Tim Clark  <lckystrk-AT-concentric.net>
Undergrad, UNH Philosophy Dept.

        "... I say 'There is nothing wrong with flogging
        people for fun.'"
                        Professor Richard M. Hare
                        University of Florida
        (from _Prescriptivism: The Structure of Ethics and Morals_)

        Carefully extricated from context by yours truly
==================================================================



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