File spoon-archives/habermas.archive/habermas_2000/habermas.0012, message 12


From: <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: HAB: Anyone for Habermas on Freud? <fwd> / F. van Gelder
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 09:33:51 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)


--Part10012160951.B

via my email address...
ken

--- Begin Forwarded Message ---
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 22:27:25 +0100
From: "F. van Gelder" <f_van_gelder-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Anyone for Habermas on Freud?
Frederik van Gelder
gelder-AT-em.uni-frankfurt.de

----- Original Message ----- 
From: F. van Gelder 
To: habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu 
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2000 8:25 PM
Subject: HAB: Habermas on Freud


 


Anyone on this list interested in a systematic analysis of the
relationship Habermas/Freud?

In a first step this would involve going through all of the
Habermas texts - concentrating, in the main, on everything
between *Erkenntnis und Interesse* (EuI) and *Theorie des
kommunikativen Handelns* (TdkH) - in which there is mention of
the complex Freud/ anthropology/Darwin. The goal of the
enterprise - this has to be made explicit at the outset, since
otherwise one disappears for ever into the 'historicist' or
'history of ideas' side of it all (or one or other of the
countless flames on these things) - is a threefold
clarification:

1) at the *methodological* level, the relationship of Critical
Theory (CT) to Psychoanalysis (PA);

2) at the *theoretical* level, the relationship of
Uebertragung/Gegenuebertragung (transference/ countertrans-
ference) in contemporary PA versus the analysis of truth
claims in speech act theory;

3) at the *real* (historical) level, the relationship between
the forces of Globalisation (globalised Capitalism) on the one
hand, the social psychology of contemporary mass movements on
the other.

As I see it, we would have to start with an analysis of the
*methodological*, the *theoretical*, the *political* context
in which EuI is written. (To my mind, for *us*, trying to gain
clarity on these things, it is essential, in this endless
vista of controversies, political confrontations, reading
lists too vast to cover in a single lifetime, to hold onto the
difference between these three contexts: the methodological,
the theoretical, the political. Without such beacons we are,
it seems to me, as ordinary mortals with not much more than a
PC and a bookshelf at our disposal, simply lost.)

I. *Methodologically* EuI seeks to clarify, against the back-
ground of Fromm, Marcuse, the *Authoritarian Personality*, the
*Dialektik der Aufkl"rung*, the 'Kulturismus' debate, the
relationship between CT on the one hand, the individual social
sciences - starting with Psychology (PA) - on the other.
Habermas, at the time of EuI, shares *neither* the thirties
position of Fromm and Horkheimer ('PA is capable of telling us
why class consciousness in the Western Democracies failed to
develop') *nor* the *Dialectic of Enlightenment* position of
Horkheimer and Adorno during the war years in California.
('Enlightenment and Reflection as the basis for a *political*
movement - as opposed to the achievement of individual and
isolated philosophers - is dead') With Marcuse, he seems to
have had the hope that the modern - since 1945 vastly expanded
- University system in the West could form something like an
equivalent for the selfconscious 'collective historical
subject' which *Lukacs* had still discerned in the
'proletariat', but which the realities of Soviet and Eastern
Marxism had by then made patently untenable. 

II. *Theoretically* EuI seeks to clarify the relationship
between anthropological universals, their sedimentation 'in'
language, ('Knowledge constitutive interests'), and the
peculiar experience of 'reflection', in the course of which
we, both as concrete individuals and as a species, are capable
(touch wood) of reaching a 'higher' degree of individual
autonomy and collective freedom. The proof of the *reality* of
'reflection' as a means of gaining *individual* autonomy
(which in Habermas' eyes PA had demonstrated beyond any doubt)
had a two-fold purpose:

a) against the *positivists*, for whom 'objective knowledge'
is confined to the results of the natural sciences (maths,
stats, experiments) the reality of individual reflective
processes is used to prove the inadequacy of formalist
explanations of what it is that happens in the course of
'scientific progress'; ('the hypothetico-deductiv method is
ideologically biased in favour of purely instrumental reason')

b) against *dogmatic Marxism* the reality of individual
reflection makes it (i) impossible to ignore the way in which
power relationships sediment themselves in ordinary language
(which then comes into focus as the place where emancipation
at an *individual* level becomes possible); (ii) impossible to
'subsume' everything under the sun under the 'objective
contradiction' of 'market' versus 'labour'. (A 'macro-theory'
of the species as a whole, as revealed to the party
ideologues, according to which every individual experience is
nullified by confronting it with a 'class analysis' of the
speaker.)
In short: for the *positivists* Freud is obscurantist
nonsense, a throwback to quasi-religious sectarianism and
unprovable metaphysics; for the *Marxists* Freud is a petty-
bourgeois intellectual - 'patriarchy' was not yet fashionable
as a term of opprobrium - hiding his true class interest in
exploitation behind the phony 'universal truths' of Idealism.

III. *Politically* EuI is a text written at a time when
Germany (and the rest of Europe, plus many other parts of the
world) is seeking to come to terms with the legacy of two
world wars - and in the middle of a 'Cold War' marked both by
the expansion of the 'market mechanism' into all areas of
life, and the reality of war in Vietnam and other parts of the
'third' World. In *this* context 'Marx' and 'Freud' give
expression to the hope that the contemporary world is - from
the perspective of the individual - intelligible at all, that
the notion of 'progress' has not been torpedoed for good,
('Spengler', 'Orwell') leaving - if anything - shrinking
niches in literature, art, and music for the lucky few. (While
the rest of us are left with the choice - if that is what it
is - between 'McWorld' and 'Jihad'.)


Comments anyone?


 
--- End Forwarded Message ---


--Part10012160951.B

HTML VERSION:

Dear Kenneth Mackendrick,
 
I would be most grateful if you would be kind enough to pass this onto the Habermas list. (While away from my office I can receive, but not send under my usual address.) From your contributions to the list I know that you are interested in this material, and it is also a way of indicating my interest in your own comments.
 
best regards,
 
 
Frederik van Gelder
gelder-AT-em.uni-frankfurt.de
 
 
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: F. van Gelder
To: habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2000 8:25 PM
Subject: HAB: Habermas on Freud

 
 

Anyone on this list interested in a systematic analysis of the
relationship Habermas/Freud?
 
In a first step this would involve going through all of the
Habermas texts - concentrating, in the main, on everything
between *Erkenntnis und Interesse* (EuI) and *Theorie des
kommunikativen Handelns* (TdkH) - in which there is mention of
the complex Freud/ anthropology/Darwin. The goal of the
enterprise - this has to be made explicit at the outset, since
otherwise one disappears for ever into the 'historicist' or
'history of ideas' side of it all (or one or other of the
countless flames on these things) - is a threefold
clarification:
 
1) at the *methodological* level, the relationship of Critical
Theory (CT) to Psychoanalysis (PA);
 
2) at the *theoretical* level, the relationship of
Uebertragung/Gegenuebertragung (transference/ countertrans-
ference) in contemporary PA versus the analysis of truth
claims in speech act theory;
 
3) at the *real* (historical) level, the relationship between
the forces of Globalisation (globalised Capitalism) on the one
hand, the social psychology of contemporary mass movements on
the other.
 
As I see it, we would have to start with an analysis of the
*methodological*, the *theoretical*, the *political* context
in which EuI is written. (To my mind, for *us*, trying to gain
clarity on these things, it is essential, in this endless
vista of controversies, political confrontations, reading
lists too vast to cover in a single lifetime, to hold onto the
difference between these three contexts: the methodological,
the theoretical, the political. Without such beacons we are,
it seems to me, as ordinary mortals with not much more than a
PC and a bookshelf at our disposal, simply lost.)
 
I. *Methodologically* EuI seeks to clarify, against the back-
ground of Fromm, Marcuse, the *Authoritarian Personality*, the
*Dialektik der Aufkl„rung*, the 'Kulturismus' debate, the
relationship between CT on the one hand, the individual social
sciences - starting with Psychology (PA) - on the other.
Habermas, at the time of EuI, shares *neither* the thirties
position of Fromm and Horkheimer ('PA is capable of telling us
why class consciousness in the Western Democracies failed to
develop') *nor* the *Dialectic of Enlightenment* position of
Horkheimer and Adorno during the war years in California.
('Enlightenment and Reflection as the basis for a *political*
movement - as opposed to the achievement of individual and
isolated philosophers - is dead') With Marcuse, he seems to
have had the hope that the modern - since 1945 vastly expanded
- University system in the West could form something like an
equivalent for the selfconscious 'collective historical
subject' which *Lukacs* had still discerned in the
'proletariat', but which the realities of Soviet and Eastern
Marxism had by then made patently untenable.
 
II. *Theoretically* EuI seeks to clarify the relationship
between anthropological universals, their sedimentation 'in'
language, ('Knowledge constitutive interests'), and the
peculiar experience of 'reflection', in the course of which
we, both as concrete individuals and as a species, are capable
(touch wood) of reaching a 'higher' degree of individual
autonomy and collective freedom. The proof of the *reality* of
'reflection' as a means of gaining *individual* autonomy
(which in Habermas' eyes PA had demonstrated beyond any doubt)
had a two-fold purpose:
 
a) against the *positivists*, for whom 'objective knowledge'
is confined to the results of the natural sciences (maths,
stats, experiments) the reality of individual reflective
processes is used to prove the inadequacy of formalist
explanations of what it is that happens in the course of
'scientific progress'; ('the hypothetico-deductiv method is
ideologically biased in favour of purely instrumental reason')
 
b) against *dogmatic Marxism* the reality of individual
reflection makes it (i) impossible to ignore the way in which
power relationships sediment themselves in ordinary language
(which then comes into focus as the place where emancipation
at an *individual* level becomes possible); (ii) impossible to
'subsume' everything under the sun under the 'objective
contradiction' of 'market' versus 'labour'. (A 'macro-theory'
of the species as a whole, as revealed to the party
ideologues, according to which every individual experience is
nullified by confronting it with a 'class analysis' of the
speaker.)
In short: for the *positivists* Freud is obscurantist
nonsense, a throwback to quasi-religious sectarianism and
unprovable metaphysics; for the *Marxists* Freud is a petty-
bourgeois intellectual - 'patriarchy' was not yet fashionable
as a term of opprobrium - hiding his true class interest in
exploitation behind the phony 'universal truths' of Idealism.
 
III. *Politically* EuI is a text written at a time when
Germany (and the rest of Europe, plus many other parts of the
world) is seeking to come to terms with the legacy of two
world wars - and in the middle of a 'Cold War' marked both by
the expansion of the 'market mechanism' into all areas of
life, and the reality of war in Vietnam and other parts of the
'third' World. In *this* context 'Marx' and 'Freud' give
expression to the hope that the contemporary world is - from
the perspective of the individual - intelligible at all, that
the notion of 'progress' has not been torpedoed for good,
('Spengler', 'Orwell') leaving - if anything - shrinking
niches in literature, art, and music for the lucky few. (While
the rest of us are left with the choice - if that is what it
is - between 'McWorld' and 'Jihad'.)
 

Comments anyone?
 

 
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