Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 12:32:48 -0800 (PST)
From: Gary <gedavis1-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: HAB: Lafont




--- Eduardo Mendieta <mendietae-AT-usfca.edu> wrote:
 
> Now, turning to Christina Lafont.
> 
> The recent book with MIT ...levels the quite >
audacious accussation at Habermas
> that he remains still
> too much of a Heideggerian? Why, because his TCA
> remains still too
> hermeneutic, too wedded to the idea that language is
> a site for disclosure.

I don't find this reading of Habermas plausible at
all. It's evident to me, from Habermas' critique of
Heidegger (in PDofModernity and PostM.T) that he is
not very engaged with Heidegger's work, so I can't
imagine how one can read him as *too much* of a
Heideggerian.

Besides, I don't consider being highly hermeneutical a
criticism. I find no basis in TCA for the idea that
language for Habermas is strongly a site for
disclosure. 

Yet, a contested tacit validity claim to genuineness
is always redeemed disclosively. And the hermeneutical
dimension of discourse are always vital, and it is to
Habermas' credit that he emphasizes this, while hardly
over-stressing it anywhere, in my view (I would like
to see a greater emphasis on hermeneutical features in
his work, not to underestimate the dimensions of
factuality and critical reflection). In fact,  he's
been criticized often (invalidly) for being not
hermeneutical enough! (I'm thinking of the commonplace
reading of Habermasian discourse as abstracted from
application and practice.)

> In any event, ...she turns to Putnam, ...and realism
> as a corrective
> for the incipient
> relativism and idealism that lies coiled like a
> serpent at the heart of
> TCA....

This seems very implausible, as TCA is so centrally
oriented by interest in an anthropological theory of
social evolution. 

> 
...Lafont skips, in the Spanish version, a
> very important series of
> antecedents within the German context: Apel, most
> importantly,
> Stegemueller, and Tugendhat. Now, Apel is the most
> important omission

You're making one wonder why the book was translated
into the prestigious German Thought series.

> We can go back to Knowledge and Human Interest, even
> the early essay on
> Marcuse, Wissenschaft als Ideologie, but in general
> throughout his work
> Habermas has understood and explained language as
> both a medium for the
> Welterschliessung and Weltbewaltigung der Welt---for
> the disclousure and
> managment or copying with the world. 

Yes! And I associated to KHI as well, in skeptically
presenting her synposis of taps into validly construes
difficulties in his work, and advances understanding
onward. But your recollection does not make me
optimistic.

Note how he
> talks about language in
> Philosophical Discourse of Modernity

And there, 1985, he's critical of the focus on
disclosedness that he reads in the French crowd,
contrary to Lafont (in your recollection). 

PDModernity, though, offered Habermas' most evocative
sense of the "web" of language to date, in all its
dimensions. 

...even in TCA,
> language acts as a
> bridge between the subjective, the social, and the
> real world. Further, why
> have at the very least three validity claims...which
> are distinct but
> always interwowen...Truth, Sincereity and
> Truthfulness...

I'm in solidarity with your incredulity.

> 
> In any event, I notice that Lafont changed
> somethings, and added other, so
> I have to see whether she actually engages a broader
> range of Habermas's
> writings to make her accusations and criticism
> stick.

I'm presuming she does--HOPING. It's been six years
since the Spanish book, two years since the article
that Habermas responds to in his recent book, and
she's been with him at Northwestern this past year.
So, I'm hoping that the discourse is advancing. There
are so few readers of Habermas that I find credible.
I'm hoping that one of his students gets it right


> 
> ...Too long, 

No way!

Thanks for your accounts

Gary

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