From: "matthew piscioneri" <mpiscioneri-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: HAB: Habermas' conception of lifeworld
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2003 23:36:53 +0000
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<P><FONT size=1>Stefan, Ali, Bill:</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=1>If I might add my two cents worth. IMO, in the _TCA_ v.1 (if required I am happy to post refs) Habermas makes sure of the lifeworld via what I call his form of transcendental argumentation. I think Habermas's transcendental deduction goes like this:</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=1>1.For meaningful communication (one mediated via symbols, in other words at a post-gestural/behavioural level) to take place successfully there must be a shared lifeworld of cultural meanings etc.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=1>2. Meaningful communication does take place.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=1>3.Therefore, there must be a lifeworld.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=1>JH builds up his picture of the lifeworld in the TCA in bits and pieces. However, in the introductory pages of _BFN_ Habermas re-iterates in condensed form much of his argument from 1000 pages of the _TCA_. I would urge this resource as a means to get a quick and condensed and refined understanding of what JH intends by "lifeworld".</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=1>It also pays to remember that Habermas distinctively contrasts the systemworld which he clearly states he introduces for methodological reasons with the lifeworld which he gives more ontological thinginess to! </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=1>I have problems with the ontological status of the lifeworld. It indicates for me Habermas's "slipperiness" when it comes to the transcendent semantic content of symbols. Again, his unwillingness to let go of this anti-naturalist attachment to the ontological presence of "symbolic meaning" is what annoys me most about his work.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=1>As an ontological physicalist meanings I take to be learned responses to visual and aural stimuli. Meanings do not in some magical way "reside" in the inkdots on a page, for eg. They are brought to a reading with the agent. That we can possess shared "meanings" (i.e. relate or respond in similar ways to the visual stimuli of the pixels thus arranged as MSN) suugests that we share a common lifeworld. Yet, someone who knows the english alphabet but doesn't know MSN is the acronym for Microsoft Network can be said to share a smaller part of the lifeworld those "in the know" share.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=1>Paert of the problem I have with JH's notion of a lifeworld is that it doesn't pay sufficient attention to the extraordinary particularities of the substratum of meaning that supports communicative interaction between people. It's too much of a blanket concept. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=1>Sure there is a very, very general lifeworld Australians share, for eg. Yet, this lifeworld quickly gets particularised according to age, gender, locality etc. I comfortably share aspects of the current general lifeworld with my teenage, but I can only reminiesce about favourite T.V shows of my teenage years with peers. Likewise, my children's tastes in music and the meanings this enables them to share with their peers, leaves me out of the loop.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=1>I think Habermas overly constructs his lifeworld concept as a bulwark against Horkheimer and Adorno's desperate reckoning of humankind's anthropogenetic tendencies to oppression. In other words, Habermas wants to secure a resource of reason and thereby hopefulness in the symbolically structured lifeworld. Again, it seems to me that he hasn't cut away the ballast of German Idealism.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=1>Regards,</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=1>MattP</FONT></P>
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