Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2001 00:59:26 EST
Subject: Re: HAB: Theory and Praxis



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In a message dated 12/27/2001 9:52:57 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca writes:


> the impulse toward emancipation. 
> >In TP Habermas argues that there can be no guarantee of a political 
> >program in theory, practice or praxis.
> 

If we consider where Habermas is coming out of, we can better understand 
emancipation, if we give him the benefit of the doubt.  Theory, strictly 
speaking, was legal theory as rationality!  Practice was, strictly speaking, 
traditional action patterns.  To escape this would require a criticism of 
legal domination and thus the overcoming of the law, in so far, as legal 
rationality was a transcendence of tradition in the first place.  Habermas 
proposes a position which is beyond traditional action patterns and therefore 
outside of the law up to the point that the law has merely codified 
traditions, albeit with a certain rationalizing effect that takes into 
consideration scientific perspectives, and hence the disenchantment of 
religious and metaphysical (or traditional) beliefs.  The problem with this 
position is not that it conflicts with the law, but that it conflicts with 
tradition and those laws which are not yet rationalized, e.g. NYS Employment 
Statutes which are still titled Master-Slave Relations!!  Not that these laws 
constitute any threat.  Due to the nature of legal change, laws stay on the 
books until the precedents are challenged, but the presence of the irrational 
statutes represents traditional expectations.  The tenuous position in the 
theory-practice dialectic takes up just this positioning of being slightly 
ahead of the law.  Perhaps you could generalize this analysis to a 
university's policies, or any corporations, or even lifeworld (cultural) 
expectations!

Fwelfare

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