File spoon-archives/habermas.archive/habermas_2000/habermas.0011, message 22


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_
*************************************************************




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