File spoon-archives/habermas.archive/habermas_2001/habermas.0102, message 31


From: <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: HAB: "in the name of humanity"
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 09:13:59 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)



Hi Thom. Thanks for the post.

I don't really have a specific response, which would have to be rather 
elaborate to say the least. But I'd like to think about the idea of 
universality, and maybe pry a couple questions about that.

Habermas's understanding of communicative reason is a highly tentative model. I 
detect two stands in Habermas's work: the robust and the hesitant. With regards 
to the robust, Habermas makes strong universalist claims, and with the 
hesitant, he wavers and expresses uncertainty. In the past I've certainly taken 
Habermasian theory to task (successfully or not) on the robust part.

However, and this is a general question, to what degree can we say that 
language itself, as a pragmatic performative, contains the seeds of a 
universalist ethic? Is this always the case. And, if this is the case, then 
what kind of subjectivity is necessary for this? Subjectivity by definition? by 
development? ... Habermas claims that pragmatically we are ethical creatures, 
and I'd like to think about what that means. Are we ethical/moral only to the 
degree that we can abstract from our circumstances and abide by rule-following /
rule-creating behaviour? Because we speak, we are entwined with ethics.

In TCA he claims this is linked to biology, but I don't think this is a good 
line of argument and I think his more recent writings sway in the direction of 
pragmatics to a greater degree.

My research has lead me in the direction of Lacan's work, esp. his thoughts on 
the relation bewteen desire and language - which is quite different from 
Habermas's. I suspect that there is widespread agreement that more needs to be 
said about desire in the modern world and its role in ethical 
discourse and dialogue. For Lacan, speaking and ethics is very much tied up 
together, which is not unlike Habermas. But for Lacan, ethics is impossible.

Is ethics impossible ('counterfactual') with Habermas as well? Sometimes I get 
the impression that it is.

If I can reel it in: what does it mean (implicate) to say or do something "in 
the name of humanity" ?

some rather stray thoughts,
ken



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