Subject: Re: HAB: RE: habermas and brandom
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 12:55:18 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)



On Mon, 24 Jul 2000 14:19:28 GMT matthew piscioneri <mpiscioneri-AT-hotmail.com> 
wrote:

> Sorry to retrace this thread a little, but Ken's earlier comment (I think he 
> made) that we take part in ongoing dialogue to reach understanding precisely 
> because we don't understand, and this understanding gap is filled by the 
> imaginary. It's the 'filling' of this gap prior to a communicative response 
> where things get interesting. It seems far too determinate to suggest that 
> this gap is filled - as it were - by the lifeworld. It  makes us too much 
> into social-linguistic zombies. Perhaps the dogma of autonomy is not so 
> dogmatic afterall.


When two people understand one another, yes, I have argued that this 
constituted a moment of transference - or what Wellmer identifies as a "blind 
spot" in understanding. I suggested that this entails an imaginary relation 
between speaking subjects - but I did not mean to say that this gap is filled 
by the lifeworld. I guess if I have to run rough with this, I'd equate the 
lifeworld with Lacan's notion of the Symbolic, not the Imaginary. Dialogue 
constitutes a moment of self-reflection in the symbolic field itself. 
Understanding between two subjects occurs when one subject "supposes the other 
to know." What the subjects share is the symbolic (language) but what they 
"understand" is imagined - which is what (I think) Lacan means when he states 
that communication is successful misunderstanding: communication is only 
achieved when one of the participants knows nothing about it... which is the 
fundamentally asymmetical aspect of communicating...

ken



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