Date: 	Wed, 6 May 1998 13:15:24 -0400
Subject: HAB: Anamnestic solidarity


Someone once remarked to me that the foremost crisis of 
Europe is coming to terms with the holocaust.  However they 
then argued that the most primary crisis of North America is 
the colonization and slaughter of native peoples.

These comments have lead me to reflect on Habermas's short 
discussion about anamnestic solidarity in "A Reply to my 
Critics" in Habermas: Critical Debates.  Habermas writes "The 
contradiction that is inherent in the idea of complete justice, 
owing to its in principle iredeemable universalism, cannot be 
dissolved...  Those born later can compensate for the 
contradiction contained in the idea itself only by 
supplementing the abstract thought of universality with the 
anamnetic power of a remembering that goes beyond the 
concepts of morality itself.  This remembering is actualizsed 
in compassionate solidarity with the despair of the tormented 
who have suffered what cannot be made good again.  In this 
respect 'compassion', compassion for the violation of moral or 
bodily integrity, is a limit concept of the discourse ethic, just 
as nature-in-itself is a limit concept of the 
transcendental-pragmatic theory of knowledge....  Anamnetic 
solidarity follows as a postulate from the universalistic 
approach of the discourse ethic; but the relation established 
through compassion itself lies beyond moral-practical 
insights" (246ff).

The problem of memory - and Habermas's concern with an 
'ethic of sympathy' seems to me to be crucial to discussions 
about ethics and morality in a North American context, 
especially considering some of the claims, justifiably, made 
by native groups "give us land or let us die" (similar 
expressions were made by Jewish survivors after 1945 ("give 
us our homeland or let us die").  The arguments presented in 
these discourses *necessarily* invoke past injustice as a 
starting point AND ending point of the debate.  I am hard 
pressed to see how these discourses are not fundamentally 
moral.

The problem that this presents for Habermas's discourse ethic 
is one that finds itself on the margins.  What is the role of 
history in moral discourses?  This could quickly be followed 
up by asking about nature and the environment (to which 
Habermas has made similar arguments in his debates with 
Martin Seel).  Similarly this extends into religious discourses - 
what about God?  Clearly turning history, nature, of religion 
into a subject in itself is problematic - however these things 
*cannot* merely be brushed aside as if irrelevant, secondary, 
or a/moral concerns.  I really don't have many answers to 
these questions, and I'm not quite sure how to think about 
them.  I suspect that Adorno's understanding of art may be 
relevant - that works of art possess cognitive truth content - in 
the same way that natural beauty and recalling the past 
possess cognitive content.... but I'm sketchy on the details.

Thoughts?

ken

PS.  Peter Dews has a wonderful discussion of all this in his 
book "The Limits of Disenchantment" - one of several sources 
of these reflections.




     --- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---