Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 20:24:40 -0600 (Central Standard Time) From: Stephen Chilton <schilton-AT-d.umn.edu> Subject: Re: HAB: Hab's sociocentrism I guess Matthew Piscionari's post provides a response to my earlier query about why he doesn't like Habermas's use of Piaget. Here is the relevant paragraph: ------------- "To try and briefly respond to John's specific query...I would have to say it's a bit of both. I have reservations about Piaget's decentration of the individual thesis by itself as I do with any standardised accounts of human development or being, and I worry about Habermas's uptake of Piaget's model EXCEPT as a heuristic or analogical device which I think it is clearly intended to be more than . On one level, I find Habermas's transpositioning of Piaget's developmental model onto societal evolution reminescent of the idea present in early evolutionary theory ( can't remember the name of it off the top of my head ! ) that the development of the foetus in utero reflected the grander story of the evolution of the human species' descent from the cellular level to a that of macro-organism. In this case vice versa. Too metabiological for me I suppose ;-)" ------------- 1. The phrase you're seeking is, "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." 2. Given that Habermas wants to construct a precise theory of social functioning, his using Piaget's model as an analogical device would be a mistake, for precisely the reason you suggest: it ain't that simple. H. would be making what is termed the "fallacy of composition": that there are no emergent properties of a collection beyond the properties of its components. In sociological theory this problem is known as the micro-macro problem. 3. The details of how the Piagetian approach (spec., Kohlberg's work) can be applied to collectivities are worked out in Chapters 2-4 of my "Defining Political Development", with some additional theorization being presented in my article, "Defining Political Culture". The book can be found at http://www.d.umn.edu/~schilton/Articles/DPD.html and the article can be found at http://www.d.umn.edu/~schilton/Articles/GPD6.html You (M.P.) will find that your concerns are well-founded; societal development is like individual cognitive / moral development, but other dynamics need to be introduced. But at the end of the day, my analysis shows that H.'s use of Piagetian theory remains valid. Best, Steve Chilton ************************************************************* | Stephen Chilton, Associate Professor, Dept of Pol Science | Univ of Minnesota-Duluth / Duluth, MN 55812-2496 / USA | | 218-726-8162/7534 FAX: 726-6386 Home: 724-6833 (home) | www.d.umn.edu/~schilton EMAIL: schilton-AT-mail.d.umn.edu | | 'I do not like experts,' he said. 'They are our | jailers. I despise experts more than anyone on earth.' | 'You're one yourself, aren't you?' | 'Therefore I know! Experts are addicts. They solve | nothing! They are servants of whatever system hired them. | They perpetuate it. When we are tortured, we shall be | tortured by experts. When we are hanged, experts will hang | us. Did you not read what I wrote? When the world is | destroyed, it will be destroyed not by its madmen but by the | sanity of its experts and the superior ignorance of its | bureaucrats.' | - John LeCarré _The Russia House_ ************************************************************* --- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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