Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 22:24:57 -0400
From: Martin Blanchard <tintamar-AT-club-internet.fr>
Subject: Re: HAB: democratic ethos=democratic ethics?


I was about to find a response to John when Gary made his nice 
comment, which I find very interesting.

Reading Gary's response I remembered, in the Peter Dews interview, 
Habermas stating that he started in the sixties by trying to work out 
the distinction between a broken subjectivity and the utopian ideal 
of communication. He also said that this work was still before him, 
and that Adorno went further than him on this problem.

Maybe that's one reason why I  "miss the importance of the ethical 
for Habermas and in his work" (Gary). But I sure do not disagree that 
"ethical considerations do play a limited role" (John) in a 
democratic discourse, according to Habermas. Sorry for being so 
vague. I did talk about democratic validation, but that was not 
precise enough. The thing is that I believe Habermas is going too 
fast in making moral claims the ultimate validation. So I totally 
agree with Gary that the ethical dimension in Habermas is just not 
being more worked out.

If it was worked out the way Gary intends, would it leave everything 
as it is? Would constitutional patriotism be the only legitimate 
political culture, in the sense that the constitution would be the 
only justifiable (as validity claim) bond between citizens?


For John:

Concerning the _Debat sur la justice politique_ : the book contains 3 
articles, two by Habermas, one by Rawls. The first two texts are the 
ones that Habermas and Rawls wrote in "The Journal of Philosophy", 
march 1995. The last one is an answer by Habermas, and was not, like 
you thought, in the original debate. Its title is : "La morale des 
visions du monde. "Raison" et "verite" dans le liberalisme politique 
de John Rawls" ("The moral of world-conceptions. "Reason" and "truth" 
in Rawls' political liberalism"). It has some very interesting 
points. I don't know if Habermas reproduced at least part of it in 
other articles (standard practice...). I read it 4 years ago... I 
have never seen an english translation of the whole text. Has anyone 
did?


sorry for my broken english-writing subjectivity!

Martin Blanchard




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