Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 07:52:53 -0500
Subject: Re: HAB: Review of Heath's Co. 


To Fwelfare:

You should once and for all put an end to your randomly emitted flaming
comments. Go read the book and then tell us what you think. Your
existential, anxious comments on someone's comments are not enlightening, to
say the least. 

Joseph Heath's book is enlightening on many aspects. It is one of the
clearest and most profound reconstruction of Habermas's pragmatics of
language. It contains many serious questions that Habermas leaves
unanswered, contrary to Fwelfare's dogmatic and uninspired reappropriations
of Habermas. It builds several bridges between Habermas and Brandom. And
last but not least, it assumes from the start its departure from some of
Habermas's thesis.

The rejection of norm-jutifiying action is taken here out of context. Heath
wants to make the case that an account of norm justification cannot take its
departure from a pragmatics of speech acts. It must start, Heath argues, at
the level of  institutional structures and extract its criteria from the
implicit normative commitments found in social action.

I'va already spent too much time answering this, but I wanted to defend this
fine book. I am well in phase with J. Wright when he writes:

"the commentary on Habermas is some of the best to be found anywhere, and
will be of great interest to readers of Habermas"

But then, maybe not for the most dogmatic of us.


Martin Blanchard




Le 3/3/02 9:23 PM, "Vunch-AT-aol.com" <Vunch-AT-aol.com> a écrit:

> J. Wright says of Heath, " He thereby rejects the view that norms must be
> fundamentally defensible with reasons"
> 
> Now I know that nobody defends norms with reasons, everyone around here
> simply takes them for granted and acts like automatons.  But, Habermas' point
> is very clear, norms MUST be justified.  There are valid norms and there are
> invalid norms.  But, since most people fail to realize that some of the norms
> they are following are invalid,  when these people are asked to justify the
> norms, they become violent and conflict begins. Personally, I feel that most
> people are too cognitively and linguistically incompetent to reach Habermas'
> standards.  I am so sure of this that all I really experience in this society
> is a great deal of conflict and it is all because of invalid norms and the
> attempt to coerce others to follow them.  So, on this most central point of
> Habermas's entire oeuvre, I am not persuaded that Heath deserves a read.
> 
> Fwelfare
> 
> 
>   
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 



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