From: gedavis-AT-britannica.com
Date: 17 Nov 1999 14:30:10 -0800
Subject: HAB: re5: On "Truth & Justification"


On Wed, 17 November 1999, Martin Blanchard wrote:

MB> As to what exactly has *become* unnecessary (Habermas words), I submit (as a junior) that it could be, for the least, traced back to what Habermas said in 1965, (in the "Knowledge and Interest" conference, see appendix to  _Knowledge and Interest_), namely that the emancipation interest located in language in an a priori thing. But this he already repudiates in 1982, so maybe I'm all wrong.

GD: I don't believe you're wrong about a changed attitude toward the emancipatory interest in knowledge. But I imagine that a statement about unnecessary transcendental justification (the paragraph about his new book) relates to his entire epistemological sense, posed in that paragraph relative to the ontological concerns of that book. 

MB> Thinking out loud, I'd say that I'm forcing speculation a bit too much. 

GD: I don't think so.

MB:> The wise one will answer upon his own reading. But what I wanted to know is: what exactly has become unnecessary?

GD: The fundamental change that I have noticed is that he now looks to "our form of life" for foundational insights (rather quasi-transcendental aspects of cognition unto itself). Our understanding of our form of life depends on advancements in reconstructive science, as well as discursive analysis. 

Our form of life is evolutionary, somehow in both the natural and cultural sense of this, as Habermas explicates in _Theory of Communicative Action_ (where he writes about the biological basis of our cognitivity, when he writes of fundamental issues) and later work that focuses on reconstructive discourse. Description (evolution as generalized process) and phenomenology (developmental accomplishment) meet in the discourse of reconstructive inquiry. Emancipatory processes are fundamentally learning processes. 

MB>I would not want to stand suspected of non-openness…

GD:Not by me.  I had in mind the situation of "postmetaphysical" thinking, as the context at hand seemed to have been the ontological situation of evolutionary claims.

> …the best way to defend openness is not always the way Habermas states it. When
> Habermas says that minority rights are not needed in a liberal state, I'm
>not sure I'd call that a plea for openness. 

GD:If Habermas said this, as starkly as you put it. I strongly doubt this. Got a context? Other subscribers, more familiar with his writing as public intellectual could best address this. But I know there's nothing in his English publications up to the mid-90s that suggests that "minority rights are not needed in a liberal state."  On the contrary: Minority rights are not, in principle, suppressed in a liberal state.

Gary


______________________________________________

Get free e-mail at http://www.britannica.com


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