File spoon-archives/habermas.archive/habermas_2001/habermas.0109, message 89


Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 19:39:26 -0700 (PDT)
From: Gary E Davis <gedavis1-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: HAB: Peace & Evolution


This is a response to Ken, "Re: HAB: Sept. 11 and the... Habermasian
project 2":

Ken,

I agree with your "aggressive" stance, to some degree. But I find
this compatible with the tolerant stance I associate with modernity's
*developmental* sense of understanding. 

A well-meaning sense of the world that is unacceptable by others
relative to one region of its belief/norm complex of development may
be acceptable in another region (epistemically unacceptable, but
morally acceptable). One might respect a culture's *right* of
self-determination, relative to the *developing existence* of all its
various belief/norm complexes, some more acceptable to advanced
perspectives than are other regions or complexes. A hallmark of
progressive liberalism in the best sense is its tolerance of abstract
rights (such as freedom of speech) independently of non-violent
beliefs expressed rightfully.
 
--- Kenneth MacKendrick <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca> wrote:
> At 12:52 PM 9/19/01 -0700, Gary wrote:
> 
> >It seems clear to me that modern society has no problem letting
> >Islamic fundamentalism go its own way, as long as the
> fundamentalists
> >don't kidnap Americans (Iran, 1979) or commit crimes against
> others.
> 
> If we consider a feminist critique of religion/patriarchy... then 
> 'modernity,' as Habermas presents it, is likely *fundamentally
> incompatible 
> with nearly all religious institutions, especially those
> institutions which 
> forbid women a position in the public sphere. 

Doesn't a social evolutionary approach to understanding and
interpretation include religious worldviews? Of course. Forbiding
women a position in public life is unacceptable, but you can't force
people to grow. It's like forcing children to grow up; that's bad
parenting. Growth happens, under conducive conditions, but across
generations. I don't believe that the conditions of life for women
under theocracy is basically a religious issue (See Martha Nussbaum,
_Women & Human Development_, Cambridge UP, 2000).

> A fundamentalist regime of 
> such quality cannot 'peacefully' coexist without 'secular' or
'modern' 
> interference on a continual and ongoing basis. I would tentatively
> propose that the fundamentalism *cannot simply go its own way.

I agree, but this "cannot" is not a matter of overtly preventing
fundamentalism from following its path of development. Ironically, in
social evolution, *freedom* undermines backwardness. It's like
letting teenagers learn truths of life in their own time; try to
control them too much, and they willfully hold to immature attitudes;
give them supervised freedom, and they grow up. The "cannot" arises
from the co-existence of fundamentalism IN modern life.
Fundamentalism is destined to become untenable, in my view, but I'm
not in support of great missionary campaigns to convince
fundamentalist Muslims of this. The social evolutionary conflict of
theocratic and modern aspects of life on this tiny planet is
inevitable. 

> 
> >If one can be an "enemy" non-violently, then this accords with the
> >humanistic ethical roots that both Islam and modernity
> (Greco-Judaic
> >civilization) share.
> 
> This is highly interpretive though. 

I agree. 

> Are the 'roots' humanistic? It seems to 
> me this is wide open for debate, with a majority not siding with
> humanism. 

What "majority"? All of the major religions have a humanistic ethic.
But I readily grant that wide open debate applies here. Generally, I
live what I'll call a hermeneutics of enkindering, rather than a
hermeneutics of suspicion (suspician is a derived mode of the
interest in disclosing and fostering shared belonging in a common
Time of Life.) 

> Rome did line the streets and highways with hanging bodies after
all.

I referred to a "Greco-Judaic" root shared by modernity and Islam.
Roman transgression is not important to a context in which Islam
didn't yet exist; and Christianity was not born from a Roman ethic.
Christians and Muslims are all children of Abrahamic Time in
Mesopotamia, which discovered the enoblement of humanness in divine
mystery (which *can* be understood postmetaphysically, as part of a
shared cultural evolution). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
is inclusive. Muslims who don't appreciate this yet have a happy
advent awaiting them. 


> 
> >[G] They want to be left alone...
> 
> Errr... Christianity and Islam are proselytizing traditions, are
> they not? 

In part, I suppose. Proselytizing is part of most traditions, but not
constitutive of those traditions. Isn't it the case that what's
constitutive for both Christianity and Islam is one's relationship to
God / Allah, not one's evangelism (which serves God among *many ways*
to serve God)? Self-determination "under" God/Allah is primordial.
Freedom here, relative to secular modernity (the context our shared
interest in this email medium), is basically *away* from this
secularity--to be "left alone" in this kind of sense, relative to
secular modernity. Left to its ownmost destiny, I would say. 

> 
> I think my position is probably more 'aggressive' than Gary's. A
> critical theory is intervention,...

Isn't intervention supplementary to *fostering*. Again (recalling the
past of *our* exchanges), emancipation serves development. Before and
after emergent needs for intervention, there is the primordial desire
to grow or develop.

> a critique of traditions, like fundamentalist 
> tradition, as incompatible with the tenets of modernity. 

But this incompatibility is *evolutionary* in background and
evolutionary in potential. The "incompatibility" of (1)
preconventional and (2) postconventional understanding is
inevitable-- between (1) generalized childhood (narcissism and, say,
tribal society) and (2) generalized adulthood (idealized mutuality
and, say, progressive organizations). 


> I agree that some radically different traditions can co-exist, 
> but this usually implicates toleration of some degree of
domination.


Or / And some degree of unstable immaturity (relatively speaking,
always--but not relativistically! Evolution is a non-relativistic
relativity, like the cosmos itself).


Peace & Evolution,


Gary

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