Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2003 15:30:01 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [HAB:] Freedom Evolves: Habermas vs. Foucault


Ali,

In the spirit of promoting ideas of complementarity between
Habermas and Foucault, here's an interesting resource. The
new anthology _The Ethical_, ed. by Edith Wyschogrod and
G.P. McKenny, Blackwell 2003, has an essay on Habermas by
William Rehg, "Discourse Ethics," in the book's section on
"Aporias of Justice"; and an essay on Foucault by James
Faubion, "Toward an Anthropology of Ethics: Foucault and
the Pedagogics of Autopoiesis" (Isn't that a delicious
essay title?), in the book's section on "Analytics of
Self-Formation."

So, to some interesting degree, the book expresses a
complementarity to be found in ethical thinking, but its a
difficult, distant? complementarity vested in the
difference between aporias of justice and analytics of
self-formation. 

This isn't surprising, as Habermas would gladly confine the
ethical to an analytic of self-formation while insisting
that the aporias of justice require a morality that can't
be translated into the ethical. Habermas would find his
complementarity with Foucault, perhaps, in the
complementarity of the ethical and the moral, charging
Foucault with an inadequate appreciation of the difference.
So, the challenge to the Foucauldian is to show an
appropriate appreciation of "positive" morality (beyond
critique of, say, biopower) suitable to a theory of
justice.

Or else, the challenge---which I find appealing---is to
show the supplementarity of "morality" to ethics, in the
interest of a philosophy of law. Morality, in the
Habermasian sense, has no substance other than (1)
compensating for ethical akrasia and (2) systemizing the
ethical in the interest of a theory of justice. 

Of course, such a view presumes a comprehension of the
ethical which is adequate for a theory of justice. As I've
claimed too often, perhaps, Michael Slote seeks to do just
that in _Morals from Motives_. Perhaps Foucault can give
greater philosophical depth to Care (humanitarian care)
than does Slote---or at least an appealing complement to
Slote's pragmatic sense of humanitarian care, and a strong
complementarity of Habermas and Foucault can be derived
this way.

In my view, Habermas' moral (or moralness or morality) is
nothing other than a proto-legislative or proto-legel
concern for rational law or democratic justice. In such a
case, the "moral" retains its Habermasian purpose for
democratic law, but loses its autonomy from ethics. Duty is
based in care; a non-deontic sense of duty is preferable to
a deontic sense for several kinds of reasons. The value of
justice derives from the value of humanitarian care. This
is the kind of argument I would make (and have suggested,
some months back). 

All of which is simply to avow my interest in a discourse
of complementarity via something like the basis of ethics
in the "nature" of human freedom. 

As Daniel Dennett "says" as the title of his most recent
book: Freedom Evolves. 

Gary





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