Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 18:15:40 -0700
From: Kenneth MacKendrick <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: HAB: A Genealogical Analysis of the Cognitive Content of


At 04:38 PM 9/24/01 -0700, you wrote:
>At 12:02 PM 9/24/01 -0700, you wrote:
>
>>Moreover, I take issue with your "genealogy" discussion almost
>>immedidately. To wit:
>>
>> > To frame this psychoanalytically  which by no means contradicts
>> > what  Habermas intends here  the third person perspective corresponds to
>> > the  superego ("me"); the second person to the alter (the "other"); and
>> > the  first person to the ego (the "I") [TCA II, 41].
>>
>>But such a frame *does* contradict what Habermas intends. You're
>>substituting a focus on intrapsychical processes for a context
>>dealing with actual intersubjectivity (not virtual intersubjectivity)
>>and concerns about impartiality. "Framing" Habermas's opening context
>>psychoanalytically is framing him in the worst sense.
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Gary

Another note...

In Habermas's earlier work (Towards a Theory of Communicative Competence, 
129 and in the essay on hermeneutics and universality, 202) he makes 
explicit the correspondence between the agencies of the personality and the 
deformations of intersubjectivity. He also notes, in Theory and Practice 
(242, 244), that the superego is not excluded from public communication, 
rather, is libidinally charged. This libidinally charged superego is 
subject to rationalization, in a sense, which is indicated when Habermas 
translates Freud's energetics model into a communicative model. This is 
further evinced in Habermas's Communication and the Evolution of Society 
(70) and in TCA, II where are talks about the integration the superego and 
the I in his discussion of Mead (41-45) and where he points out that social 
roles are take form along the lines of the superego (and social desires 
along the lines of the id) (99). The idea is also manifest in Habermas's 
Genealogical essay (4) and in Habermas's essay "Individuation through 
Socialization" (183). Framing the question of individuation through 
socialization in psychoanalytic terms is not antithetical to Habermas's 
understanding of the cognitive content of morality. Although Habermas does 
not explicitly formulate it in psychoanalytic terms, he could have. More to 
the point, his work does require psychoanalytic confirmation as part of its 
cumulative success regardless. I'd also wager that the burden, given 
Habermas's consistency above and my appropriation of this consistency, does 
not reside on my part to show the way in which the superego, the ideal-ego 
and intersubjectivity are linked.

ken



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