Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 12:48:27 -0700
Subject: HAB: Colonisation or Autopoesis - What is so Critical About Systems


Kevin:

Thanks for your careful and thoughtful comments. Since you offered your
comments in the spirit of the master's commitment to fallibalism, l do
likewise. I agree with Kevin's attempt to offer a non conflictual and
generous reading of what many take to be a sort of Habermasian
schizophrenia (see the comments by McCarthy, as well as the essays in the
book on TCA edited by Honneth and Joas, eds. _Communicative Action_).
Still, I am not sure I would agree with the overall thrust of the argument.
The argument makes Habermas' work to be much more coherent, smooth, unified
than it has been. Notwithstanding the apparent consistency of certain
Habermasian themes: communication, understanding, validity claims, etc.
etc, there are ruptures, shifts of emphasis, adoption of unforseen
philosophical perspectives. The more noticeable rupture, and not
necessarily the first one, is that between the Habermas of _Knowledge and
Human Interests_ and the Habermas of TCA. The colonization theory predates
TCA. It goes back to his work from the fifites, one may find elements of
this idea in his Habilitationschrift...The Structural Transformation of the
Public Spehere. 

Habermas has wanted to retain this idea, but it has had to change, recede
or play a less central role as it had in his early work (i.e. Legitimation
Crisis, and Theory and Practice), due to his adoption of new theoretical
commitments. This is my central claim.

The colonization theory is essentially a neo-Marxist category, an extension
if you will of the reification and alienation theories of the Western
Marxism that you find in Lukacs, Marcuse, Adorno, et. al. Habermas, in my
view, wanted to retain the critical impetus of the thought figure, but he
was also aware of the theoretical prize to be paid: something like a
self-eviscerating theoretical reflexivity. Habermas was aware, and this has
been one of his major contributiotins, that the critical age of something
like a "colonisation" thesis makes sense if you are able to render the
theoretical standpoint from which you make such a pronouncement inmune to
the very reification and objectification that drives colonization. This is
the question of normativity. To put it in the Hegelianes, if colonization
is an extension of the logic of  rationalization as reification (Lukacs and
Adorno) that drives history, then all cows are black in such a dark night
of reification. There must be some standards that allows us to
differentiate between what is pathology, and simply "emancipatory"
rationalization and functional differentiation.

Let me put it differently. How do we criticize the present without being
consumed by that criticism? How do we pluck the rose from the cross of the
present, to use that Marxist expression, which Habermas echoes in his essay
"From Kant and Hegel and Back Again" (European Journal of Philosophy, 153)?

To do so, Habermas has wanted to see the process of rationalization of
social systems and structures as a processes of learning. Social
differentiation, sytem differentiation and especiallization, are mechanisms
that incorporate the lessons learned from social conflicts and tensions/
Such processes of learning are guided by rational standards. Systems theory
and functionalism allowed Habermas to talk about social development as
learning processes without having to take recourse to a Hegelian-marxist
theory of history. But, buying into functionalism and systems theory means
having to accept that the logic of system differentiation obeys laws,
imperatives, and rules that purportedly are not open to human manipulation
or tampering. One of the central ideas of systems theory, is the idea of
autopoesis -hierachical, or functional differentiation are catalyzed by
internal processe of having to cope with sytem complexity. But if
something, like systems differentiation, is driven by internal logics, in
which the will, dreams and utopias of men, are superflous and without
consequences, then why would we be able at all to say that a certain system
differentation is pathological or "healthy." 

Now, this is the point I am getting at. Habermas has gotten closer and
closer to systems theory in order to be able to preserve the notion of
rationalization, and possibly reification, of social systems as learning
processes. But once you give autonomy to such processes, what is to grant
us the license to call this or that system differentiation pathological or
emancipatory? Luhmann realize this consequence and he therefore dispose
with all pretenses to be engaging in critique.

I trace this line of argument because Kevin has talked about a
bi-perspectival analysis, but if we look closely at his reconstruction of
the argument from the perspective of the systems world, it is but another
version of the lifeworld. Kevin talks about social integration, when the
life-world ceases to function properly. etc. etc. These are all references
to the lifeworld. But where is the real systems level: the economy as a
system that autopoetically communicates itself through the medium of money,
and the political system that self-referentially regulates itself through
the medium of power. etc. etc. Kevin's dual vision, is single vision
through the lense of the lifeworld.  A truly dual vision would have to
account for the autonomy, self-referentiality of the systems world. 

So, I do not accept Kevin's bi-perspective, although I accept the spirit of
the offer.

Let me throw the ball on Kevin's court by offering the following
formulation. Either Habermas bought into functionalism and systems theory,
in which case the critical edge of his critical theory was blunted by the
iron logic of self-duplicating systems, OR Habermas never really bought
into these theories but only used their language in order to point to
something much more fundamental and normative: something like an
emancipatory logic of history that works itself out through the
rationalization of social structures (Hegel, but now lingustified).

As a way to respond to my formulation, let me quote from Habermas, from
"From Kant to Hegel and Back Again..."

"A constitutional state which has become reflexive institutionalizes the
constitution as project. Through the medium of law it internalizes the
tension between the subjective consciousness of the citizens and the
objective spirit of the institutions. It is this tension which Hegel sought
to relieve by subordinating both to the absolute spirit. A democratic
practice of self-determination does not entirely dissolve this tension, but
makes it the dirving force behind the dynamics of public communication
structured by constitutional norms..." 153

"But Hegel's problem returns in a different form,  when we consider those
societies where the immaculate wording of the constitution provdies no more
than a symbolic facade for a highly selective legal order. In such
countries social reality contoverts the validity of norms which cannot be
implemented for lack of the material conditions, and the necessary
political will. A similar tendency towards 'Brazilization' could even grip
the established democracies of the West. For even here the normative
substance of the consitutional order could be hollowed out. This will
happen if __we do not__ [my emphasis] produce a new balance between
globalized markets and a politics which can extend beyond the limits of the
nationa state, and yet still retain democratic legitimacy." 153

It seems, if we read carefully these words, and similar ones in _Inclusion
of the Other__, that there is an element of voluntarism that is anathema to
systems theory. WE can, should, or ought to intervene, lest we let the
forces of totalitarianism and anarchy take over.

Finally, and to conclude, the colonization theory did NOT JUST slip into
the background ( I do not think Kevin meant to use such an ungraceful and
unfortunate expression). There are philosophical reasons why it receded
into the background, and, second, I do think that the new _postnationale
Konstellation_ has determined the way Habermas thinks, and rethinks,  his
theory of action, theory of law and democracy; and most importantly, how he
rethinks the normative foundations of a theory of rationality that was too
closely wedded to the Occidental self-affirmation and self-presentation as
Modernity incarnate.

In any event, thanks Kevin for an excellent posting.


Eduardo Mendieta
Assistant Professor
Philosophy Department
University of San Francisco
2130 Fulton Street
San Francisco, CA 94117-1080

Tel: (415) 422-6313
Fax: (415) 422-2346




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