File spoon-archives/habermas.archive/habermas_2000/habermas.0005, message 56


From: EDavisMail-AT-aol.com
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 21:54:35 EDT
Subject: Re: HAB: RE: Erik/Vic thread


(I sent this yesterday, but was not sure whether it took; I apologize for any 
redundancy)

Joe,

I appreciate your emphasis on Parsons.  

Systemic constraints return our focus to the earlier discussions of field, 
body, and the like (which is why I brought up systems/systems analysis in the 
first place).  Still, note that Habermas in TCA II makes clear that the 
life-world--just as you describe below--can be objectivated into a subsystem 
among others; that's systems analysis as opposed to life-world analysis.  
However, H maintains rightly that the life-world must still be gotten at 
interpretively-hermeneutically--i.e., via life-world analysis and its 
narratives as opposed to systems-analysis--even in order to subsequently view 
it "from the outside" (objectively) as a (sub-)system.

I'm someone who is particularly vulnerable to charges of syncretism, 
especially since my views stem from an explicit synthesis of Hayekian and 
Habermasian traditions (see the link below [and please be patient with the 
download]).  Having said that, I believe that Habermas has solid reasons for 
re-introducing Schutz's work into his analysis.  First, Schutz and Parsons 
had already, though mostly unsuccessfully, engaged one another.  TCA II can 
be read as H's answer to that exchange.  

Not coincidentally, it was Friedrich von Hayek who instigated the exchange 
between Schutz and Parsons, and all three scholars are methodologically 
indebted to Max Weber (and the larger, Continental tradition).  My own hunch 
is that Hayek viewed Schutz much in the same way that Habermas later 
critiqued Schutz and "hermeneutic idealism", especially since Hayek's 
well-informed biases were towards systems analysis (spontaneous orders = 
self-regulating systems with even the same scholars cited).  Hayek and 
Schutz, incidentally, had known each other since they were young 
students--and both were active participants in the intellectual circle around 
Ludwig von Mises.  Today, not surprisingly, one finds several members of the 
so-called "Austrian School of Economics" citing Habermas and Gadamer.

In any case, the fact that Schutz (and subsequently, Luckmann and Berger) 
drew heavily on Weber in a way that complemented Parsons--and that Schutz and 
Parsons had engaged one another in a tense and unresolved manner--must have 
provided fertile grounds for Habermas's synthesis.

Erik R. Davis

References can be found in:
http://www.sigov.si:90/zmar/apublici/iib/iib0298/davi02ib.pdf


> > Suggestions of the system/life-world distinction already existed in THE 
>  LOGIC
>  > OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES [1967], where it is anticipated in Habermas's
>  > interplay of functionalist and interpretive sociology (and especially 
>  their
>  > respective domains)--see the MIT 1988, 173-174.  Still, Vic's point is 
>  well
>  > taken: the distinction is not so clearly articulated as "system" vs.
>  > "life-world" until later.
>  
>  This may seem like a minor point, but I do think it interesting to note 
>  that in Legitimation Crisis Habermas refers to the lifeworld as a type of 
>  *system*, viz. as a social system. I draw attention to this only because 
>  Habermas's view in Legitimation Crisis is extremely Parsonian, a point 
that 
>  is generally underappreciated in the literature. Sociologists will 
>  recognize the general architectonic of LC as Parsons's AGIL schema. 
>  Habermas accepts Parsons's view that the A and G subsystems (economic and 
>  administrative) are integrated through the "steering media" of money and 
>  power respectively, but he denies that the I and L subsystems can be 
>  integrated through the media of "influence" and "commitment" (as Parsons 
>  believed). Rather, Habermas argues that the I and L "subsystems" are 
>  integrated through natural language, and that natural language is 
>  "holistic," and therefore does not permit functional differentiation. Thus 
>  there are no separate I and L subsystems, just one general sociocultural 
>  system -- the lifeworld. The lifeworld also resists functional adaptation 
>  to the other systems, which is what creates the potential for legitimation 
>  crises.
>  
>  Clearly some distant ancestor of the system/lifeworld distinction is 
>  present throughout Habermas's early work (like the "labour and interaction 
>  in Hegel's Jena period" article, etc.) And the whole gist of H's critique 
>  of Marx in KHI revolves around the latter having confused the two. But the 
>  full-blown system/lifeworld distinction is a much later development. And 
>  while Habermas's system/lifeworld stuff clearly maps onto his earlier 
>  distinction, it is important to see that the conception of the lifeworld 
>  that he develops comes almost entirely out of his reading of Parsons. Even 
>  the mature conception of the lifeworld, as involving three dimensions -- 
>  culture, personality, and society -- is lifted straight from Parsons's 
*The 
>  Social System*. His use of the term "lifeworld," along with his nod to 
>  Schutz and Luckmann, seems to me just misleading in this regard -- a case 
>  of Habermas's syncretism gone too far.
>  
>  Best regards,
>  Joe


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

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005