From: "matthew piscioneri" <mpiscioneri-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: HAB: From Colonisation to Compromise
Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2001 11:49:42 


Dear Ken

Thanks for the provocative speculations. Not knowing Hegel well enough to 
comment in any depth on your concluding statements I will mainly have to 
confine myself to some fairly innocuous and generally concurring comments on 
your initial response to the iron cage.


>The problem, I think, is that in postmodernity we think / act as though 
>'the
>castle' has been exposed.
[snip]
>I suspect that today, we're seeing the
>collision of both: we know the truth (ideology, systematically distorted
>communication, systems theory, cognitive development, liberal democracy as
>the only way), and yet we are still paranoid (video cameras, 'reality' TV,
>computer chips which record everything, even after we've deleted it)...

Yes, I guess I am just prone to pessimism, reacting negatively to the way 
Fou-Habe-rida eventually underwrite the development of enhanced social 
management techniques. It's all for the greater social good :-)

>In both instances we shift from 'the unknown' to the known. But in >this 
>shift,there is also a profound shift in the way in which we >relate to the 
>symbolic order. The former is paranoid, frighteningly >authoritarian 
>(premodern) - the symbolic as 'the other of the other' >and the latter, 
>safe and cynical(postmodern) 'the other as subject.'

I can't help but think about the status of the *we* in this comment above 
Ken. Are there deliberate undertones of an outcast or lost human nature in 
search of ....? I think on one level at least I can see why you might 
suggest a closer look at the relationship between JH & Hegel.

>I mention this because, in addition to exploring further Habermas's 
>relation to
>Freud, we also need to explore Habermas's relation to Hegel. Is the Jena
>struggle for recognition primary, or is it, as Hegel would have it, a bump 
>on
>the road to the Phenomenology. I'm tempted to say that that medium of 
>language
>is simultaneous with the medium of labour, and that one cannot be 
>subordinated
>(morally or conceptually) to the other: what words are to language, 
>property is
>to labour. If this is the case, then revisiting Habermas's treatment of 
>Hegel
>is, in fact, worth pursuing. What is relevant, then - at least in terms of
>evolutionary structure - is whether Hegel's understanding of ground and
>condition, as retroactively constructed, can be construed as a more radical
>thesis than Habermas's communicative self-formative processes. Habermas has
>argued that communicative action is, in effect, the essence of being. But 
>if
>essence is appearance qua appearance, it is necessarily "empty." Habermas's
>proceduralized understanding of rationality, then, is too positive... too
>formal... and what is necessary is a reclaiming of the Hegelian dialectic 
>in
>negative terms...

in the manner of Adorno? Or am I way off beam in thinking where you thoughts 
are speculating to!

Regards,

MattP

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