From: <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: HAB: Balancing practicality & self formativity
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 09:27:18 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)



On Fri, 12 Jan 2001 17:49:38 EST Vunch-AT-aol.com wrote:

> > This would render any kind of "undistorted speech situation" a conceptual 
impossibility...

> Habermas has repeatedly stated that the ISS is a counterfactual which is  
logically necessary to judge the degree of distortion of any situation.   
Otherwise, on what standard would you be able to judge whether any distortion  
is occuring?  The real question is whether the ISS is an horizon towards which 
we aspire or an opening beyond the horizon which we cannot yet observe, but 
which we can envision in thought.

I understand Habermas's counterfactual argument... but we could say that every 
speech act contains the presupposition of undistorted telepathy... and then use 
that as the standard.

Two points: first, I think Albrect Wellmer, in Endgames, has put forward a good 
analysis of Habermas's pragmatics: specifically, that the ideals presupposed 
are local, not universal. In this sense, each 'transcendence within' is 
immanent to the context - so the ideal at work will differ from situation to 
situation. This escapes the possible metaphysicality of Habermas's formal 
pragmatics. I'm in agreement with Wellmer on this point. Second, If the 
idealizing tendencies of speech are local (weak idealizations vs strong 
idealizations) then we can still contextually drawn on the power of 
negation, criticism. This contextually based approach is closer to a Lacanian 
approach for two freasons: first, it does not give up on the scientifically 
reflective character of a critical theory, a line of inquiry that does not 
reduce critical theory to hermeneutics and, second, it does greater justice to 
the idea that meaning comes out of distortions as such - paying tribute to both 
Kant's "thing in itself" (as the objet petit a) and Hegel's dialectical process 
of cultural and cognitive development.

I'm tempted to say that Wellmer accomplishes in philosophy what Benhabib makes 
a case for in feminist critique. Both, I think, are open to 
constructive Lacanian rejoinders.

ken



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