From: "robade" <robade-AT-infonie.fr> Subject: HAB: Hab:political rationality and reflexive judgment Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 09:07:57 +0100 Hello, Thank you both Ulrich Gaehler and Demetrios Douramanis for your information regarding Habermas and individuality. Although I would like to tell Ulrich that, unfortunatly, I don't read german. What follows will probaly be too general for most of you, since I haven't read much of Habermas, I have just started. Nevertheless, I have a few doubts that I would like to clarify with you, if you have the patience to help me orient in this new continent of Hab's philosophy. For this I will compare some aspects of Hab's and Arendt's respective political philosophies. 1) Hab's realism Compared to Arendt's conception of politics Habermas seems to me more realistic, when he reminds us that politics is not an autonomous sphere of rationality and action, separed from the other systems (economy, bureaucracy; money and power). Indeed, politics is also a tecknč, guided by a strategic-instrumental rationality. To neglect this aspect can only provoke the eclipse of politics or an idealistic conception of it. For Arendt, tecknč is violence, and politics isn't about violence. For Hab, there is a dialectic between tecknč and praxis, and this dialectic is constitutive of politics. 2) Consensus Consensus, for Arendt, is the result of "opinion". Indeed, if the political institutions have can be legitimal, this rests on opinion, meaning, an "agreement of many". This is problematic, because opinion can be false. For Hab, opinion must be related to truth, otherwise, the legitimity of political power cannot be defended. For this, the free consensual expression of public opinion has to be related to a demand of truth and soundness. The norm of truth is the possibilty of universality, this universality being possible only by public discussion and rational argumentation. But truth here doens't mean theoretical and objective truth, it is an intersubjective and pratical truth. 3) Consensus again So, for Arendt, consensus is reached by opinion. And how is this opinion formed? Thanks to commun sense (possible trough tradition, commun symbols that make a culture). Commun sense is what allows us to use our judgment and the agreement with others'judgments. Well, this agreement is consensus. And consensus is not only what legitimates the political power, but also what allows praxis, political action. 4) Separation opinion/truth and aesthetics In fact, this separation leads Arendt to look for an asthetic model for her political thinking. She sees in Kant (third critique) a model for her political phil. She is probably forgetting that if Kant had recognized the political and moral implications of his aesthetics, then his moral and pratical questions would not be able to reach truth, and Kant is very concerned with truth. But, indeed, Arendt's use of Kant's reflexive judgment and enlarged thought (which imply a use of the imagination) does make some sens. Reflexive judgment is a political power, it allows us to orient ourselves. 5) Finally, I still haven't talked much about Habermas, and this letter is already too long. For those who are familiar with Habermas critiques of Arendt, maybe they could help me answer to this question: what would be in Habermas political rationality, the room left for the use of reflexive judgment (reflexive jugment is a method: for kant it implies a use of the imagination, making possible the search for a universal without concept), faculty that belongs more to a expressive sphere than to a search of political truth through rational argumentation? How constitutive of political public spaces the use of rflexive judgment would be for Habermas? Thank you for giving biblio advise. With sympathy, Roberto --- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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