Subject: HAB: Habermas - The Dialectician?
Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 22:37:44 


Gary,

Trust it's OK to join in on this reply; I am hesitant to butt in but this 
sort of exchange is why I subscribe to this List :-)

I get the feeling you are working with a very technical usage of the term 
*dialectic[al]*. It is one of the most *abused* terms in the philosophical 
lexicon, and I admit to often using it to refer simply to a patterned set of 
social phenomena which fit into an evolving, (cumulative?) reflexive 
developmental schema which is more sophisticated than a basic mechanical 
stimuli/response/stimuli pattern. And here I am reminded of Bateson's dictum 
about communication-as-information signaling being a difference that makes a 
difference.

I realise in your reply to Stephen that you are shifting the focus of the 
earlier posts on 1) the dialectical character of Habermas's own work & 2) 
his recognition of the dialectical logic basic to the defining *quality* of 
Modernity; but I don't think that the methodology of a reconstructive 
science is UNdialectical. Quite the opposite:

Having said this Gary, I am going to have to digest what to me is fairly 
*deep* Habermasian analysis:

>S> I'd like to end by noting, as I have said several times
>before, that the concept of a dialectical relationship is
>central to an understanding of Habermas's thought.
>
>G: Certainly, because the *emancipatory interest of
>critique* is central to understanding JH's thought. But his
>thinking is not basically critical. Rather, it is
>constructive. The "theory" (really a metatheory) "of
>communicative action" is a deeply, broadly complex
>discourse dealing with what a derivative emancipatory /
>critical interest *serves*. Critique serves "communication
>and the evolution of society," which JH DOES NOT basically
>understand dialectically--which was my main point to Matt.
>
>S> (He uses the less inflammatory and more specific term
>"reconstructive science", but the fundamental logical
>structure is the same.)
>
>G: No. Representing reconstructive science as a dialectical
>relationship is a misunderstanding of JH's sense of
>reconstructive inquiry. You are reducing the discursive
>interest in understanding, theory, and practice to the
>emancipatory interest of critique (not to mention buying
>into the misconstrual of the emancipatory interest and
>critique as a dialectic, which KHI goes to great lengths to
>understand hermeneutically).

Thanks for keeping this sort of Habermasian analysis available to this List!

MattP


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