Date: 	Thu, 26 Mar 1998 11:06:49 -0500
Subject: Re: HAB: Communicative Communism


On Thu, 26 Mar 1998 05:17:13 -0500  Bryce Weber wrote:

> Political speaking, in the absence of an alternative account 
of mutual understanding to that offered by a 
strategic/instrumental account there isn't a lot of room left to 
argue for an alternative to a socio-cultural system which 
pathologizes people's lives to the degree that it presupposes
that treating people as objects of manipulation ((and in 
"normalizing" what they do by making it integratable into a 
system of commodities that reduces everything to the formal 
identity of a "price" in a market)) is an untranscendable social 
norm and organizes their social and economic lives 
accordingly. [apologies for the run-on sentence] 
Non-rationalist accounts of social understanding/solidarity can 
be posited here as alternatives to Habermas's rationalist 
alternative to the socio-cultural-economic status quo, but if 
demonstrating this is one's (Ken's?) overall intention there's
no need to attack Habermas as an identity theorist. It would be 
adequate on these grounds to criticize him for relying on a 
broadened notion of rationality as the basis for an account of 
an alternative to instrumental reason.

I can't disagree with most of what you posted.  What I am 
trying to explore is whether or not there is a 
plausible alternative to Habermas's reading of language and 
language use.

Something seems very strange here because R. Bernstein  
argues that the differences between Rorty and Habermas are 
theoretical, not political.  And then C. Mouffe notes that the 
difference between Rorty and Derrida are theoretical, not 
political.  So, in effect, Rorty, Derrida, and Habermas are all 
on the same side politically - just with different explanations 
of what that means and implies.  So if everyone ends up in the 
same place - what is going on here?

ken




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