Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 14:44:04 EDT
Subject: Re: HAB: kant and habermas


In a message dated 98-05-10 14:12:51 EDT, you write:

<< I'm interested in challenging Habermas' reading of Kant, and have
 been surpised at the small amount of literature that I've found.  >>

I haven't seen too many criticisms of Habermas' use of Kant, but all that I
have seen have been incorrect.  Often, naive readers think that Habermas is
Kantian and that is enough to write him off.  In Knowledge and Human Interests
and Theory and Practice, Habermas dissects both Kant and Hegel quite nicely.
He shows how Kant holds to the individual's autonomy and also maintains what
we would consider a scientific stance.  Hegel's critique of Kant focusses on
the issue of spirit in relation to individuality, which Kant does not get
into.  Today, from a legal perspective, Kant reigns; individual's are held
accountable for their actions from a scientific perspective and the spirit of
place/time/group has no effect.  Kant, in Habermas's terms, is a strategic
thinker. Hegel, OTOH, gets into spirit and reflection which is quite
interesting but after the fact.  The only reason I know why people frequently
associate Habermas with Kantianism is due to the Catagorical Imperative issue
which is certainly an easy critique.  There is no way everybody is making
judgements by way of the CI, it is a laughable matter.  But, Habermas proposes
the ideal speech situation (ISS) which presupposes certain validity claims as
prior to any speech act.  Perhaps, some people get mixed up and associate the
CI with the ISS, or synthetic a priori's with Habermas' validity claim.

I have imagined giving a talk on this subject and everyone having a good laugh
at how confused and jumbled most ideas about this matter are.


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