From: kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca
Subject: Re: HAB: Habermas & Hegel's Jena period - part II
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 01:13:25 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)


On Mon, 15 Jan 2001 22:00:28 -0800 (PST) Gary D <gedavis1-AT-yahoo.com> wrote:

> K: ... for Habermas, the moment you speak, the choice (the normative ideals 
within communication) is forfeit[ed] (ie. you automatically enter into the 
consensually-oriented pragamtics).

> G: I dont know what you're talking about; what choice?...

1. In KHI Habermas mentions that the moment we speak we enter into an 
'agreement' of reason giving and taking further elaborated in his later work. 
The 'choice' I was making reference to has to do with the decision to speak. 
For Lacan, the moment we 'choose' to speak we are split by language.

G> Though there are ideal conditions for consensus formation that are usually 
unmet, *this* can be an agenda item, too--can be addressed as completely as 
people are able and willing to do. 

2. To say that ideal conditions could potentially exist is make two 
simultaneous claims: to say that currently incompetent subjects could be 
competent subjects (if they realize their potential) is identical to saying 
competence subjects are already present and actualized in existing social forms.
As far as I can see, this is Habermas's claim about modern democratic state - 
and his argument is a legitimation of existing liberal democracies. It is thus 
the right of a liberal democracy (although deliberatively conceived) to educate 
incompetent subjects in accordance with their potential - to 'implant' them with
a moral-political mission. Ie. To say that I have the potential to write a book 
about Habermas is to say that the book is already written in my head - which I 
will at some point put down on paper.

> K: ...the "transcendence within" in communication assumes an ideal
> communicative community - which is imaginary. .... 

> G: No, the validity basis of speech implies the inherency of reason
> to communicative action, which is universalizable on the basis of the
> inherency of linguistic cognition for our form of life. This is an
> anthropological matter (re: transcendence from within) and a cultural
> matter (re: idealization). 

3. Again, we have the spectre of the potential. To say that linguistic 
cognition is inherent to our form of life is to say that it exists in an 
existing form of life. This is, is it not, Hegel's theory of the Absolute? The 
potential 'not yet' inherent to one form of life has already been actualized in 
another form of life. So it is the task of one to guide the other. In other 
words, it is the job of the West, the Party, the Psychoanalyst, the Critical 
Theorist, the Democratic State to educate the rest of the lot. As a critique of 
ideology, this doesn't fair so well.

> K: For Habermas, this transcendence within provides a certain
> transcendental constraint on discourse for the community..... 

> G: OK. But what looks like a constraint to an oppressor looks like openness 
to those who value human rights, for example. An idealized ensurance of 
openness that arises from the inherent value of reason implied by any 
communicative action is exactly what a certain constraint shoud be, according 
with our humanity.

4. I don't quite see the openness for those who are not deemed to have 
actualized the modern ideal. It isn't just a constraint for an oppressor, it's 
that everyone who is not 'postconventional' in the exact manner Habermas 
specifies looks like an oppressor!

> G: ... doesn't one *live* communicatively? The force of the *better* argument 
is a regulative ideal in deliberations.

5. One could speculate that most of the time we walk around without the 
slightest comprehension of what goes on around us. We talk because we don't 
understand, not because we do - and just because we're talking doesn't mean it 
isn't an automatic reponse / cliche to having been disturbed by some other 
noise. 99.999% of the time I'd say that better arguments have nothing to do 
with what we do or do not understand or consider legitimate, justified, or 
valid. And the rest of the time, it is likely either coincidence that a good 
reason has won the day, or a serious misunderstanding that generates the 
illusion of good reasoning.

> G: I agree, though, that communication is a priori fit for the task of 
individuation (while not sufficient for it...).

6. All communication?

ken



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