Subject: HAB: Correction & retraction !
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 22:30:44 


Hello Ken,

thanks for your reply. Actually I feel the need to correct the following 
poorly expressed sentence:

>>Critical echoes of Horkheimer's & Adorno's poetic
>>notion of a total reconciliation with Nature.

I meant to say H's. & A's. position critically reflected on JH NOT that 
there was an echo of them in JH on language/Nature. Quite the opposite & 
apologies for sloppy writing.

>Hope it is ok if I butt in.

Sure.

>Dependency upon language is what Habermas charges
>hermeneutics with. Habermas argues, against hermeneutics, that >theoretical
>inquiry lifts us out of dogmatic dependency on language.

The point I was playing with here, is CAN language - the stuff of 
theoretical inquiry - ever be non-dogmatic? JH strikes me more and more as 
primarily an ideologist of democracy. Critical reflection on the ideological 
origins of language takes language to do it. This is why I hear echoes of H 
& A.

BTW, I want to retract the statement about meaning & Wittgenstein and 
meaning as a construct of social usage. I was lured in by JH's own poor 
reading of Wittgenstein. Like Quine, Wittgenstein was an eliminativist about 
*meaning*. I am surprised at how much of Wittgenstein Habermas leaves out. 
Does anyone know of a substantial critique of JH's selective reading of LW?

Re-reading the PIs, the salutory point I get from LW is that language is a 
human behaviour intrinsically connected or embedded into other patterns of 
human behaviour i.e social action. I think LW would regard JH's notion of a 
validity claim raised by a speech act in the same way as he regarded Russell 
on meaning...as nonsensical.

mattP


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