From: <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: HAB: re: Brave New Conditionality
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 09:15:00 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)



On Sun, 14 Jan 2001 09:53:42  matthew piscioneri <mpiscioneri-AT-hotmail.com> 
wrote:


GD> >A common strategy in critique of Habermas, in order to have ones own 
Position (I suppose), is to underread, overread, and/or antiread in order to
justify a position (remediating JHs blindness) that is really just a 
development of the blind side of ones own reading (or one's reading exhibits a 
project different from Habermas, inattention to which JH is held 
accountable)....

GD> >I have silently lamented readings of Habermas in journals (and books) for 
a long time, not that I pose myself as some great exception (but in fact, I do 
believe Im a non-great exception; I go my own way *thanks* greatly to JHs
work, posing (to myself) my difference from him as a complement to "his" kind 
of work which he exemplifies, ultimately as a participant, *too*--in solidarity 
with his present and future fellow travelers).

> I find these comments intriguing on several grounds. JH is a great  
synthesiser, and has been *accused* of misreading the classics (I think  
Giddens levelled this muted charge in Bernstein's collection... but I could be 
wrong).

No, you aren't wrong. The irony of Gary's comments are that Habermas 
himself is prone to underread, overread, and/or antiread, without apology
(footnote 6 of What is Universal Pragmatics? is typical in this regard: Y. 
Bar-Hillel's critique is based on a paper I characterized as provisional... 
[and] has, I feel, misunderstood me on so many points that it would not be 
fruitful to reply in detail. I only hope that in the present sketch I can make 
my approach clear even to readers who are aggressively inclined and 
hermeneutically not especially open." Apparently this is excused because he has 
his own project. The irony of that isn't lost on me either. We can look back 
through a long series of Habermas's encounters to see this (we can see this in 
his comments in the Postscript to KHI regarding his position on psychoanalysis 
- to the effect - I'm not any obligation to interpret Freud 'properly')...

i have no responsibilities here whatsoever,
i've got my own project!

a lovenote,
ken

"If you understand this, clearly we have a breakdown in communication."



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