Subject: Re: [HAB:] Re: Freedom, Reflection and distance [2]
Date: Sun, 07 Sep 2003 05:46:26 +0000


Gary,

Thanks again for your stimulating replies. Some further reflections which 
deal with your posts bit more explicity (hence the legnth of the mail for 
which I apologise).

1) I think when Habermas rejects ontological enterprise he is working with a 
very limited sense of ontology as it is clear from his Inaugural address at 
Frankfurt (Appendix to KHI now) and his recent reply to Brandom (Wahrheit 
und Rechtfertigung: 138-185). In fact Habermas’ enterprise is ontological 
through and through and cannot make any sense without it. Habermas has also 
a sense of complementarily of epistemological and ontological enterprises 
even if it is not explicit. In his piece on Heidegger in the Philosophical 
discourse of modernity (143f) Habermas seems to be well aware of this 
complementarily. And this is another point of intersection with Foucault who 
clearly knows that an enterprise can be epistemological in the Kantian sense 
and still be ontological (ontology of the present).

2) You say that “Yet JH never claimed that autonomy is vested in 
intersubjectivity”. But I am sure communicative intersubjectivity is the 
condition of the possibility of autonomy in Habermas. (It is another way of 
saying that freedom is the condition of the autonomy).

3) The Bernstein text I was quoting is his short piece in reply to 
Dallmayr’s critique of Habermas. [“Fred Dallmayr’s critique of Habermas” 
Political Theory vol. 16 No. 14: 580-593]. The italics was on “dialogical” 
Gary.

4) I do not know whether Bernstein is a Heideggerian or not. His is some 
sort of amalgam of Habermas and Gadamer I guess (plus usual American stuff). 
So through Gadamer he must be some sort of Heideggerian as well. But this is 
irrelevant because after all Habermas himself is a Heideggerian despite 
himself. Quite interestingly Habermas in his piece on Heidegger, referred to 
above, uses, more than once, “Being in the world” as a synonym of 
“lifeworld”.

5) In his introduction to Philosophical Discourse of Modernity McCarthy 
claims that “at the heart of Habermas’ disagreement is the putative 
“ontological difference” between being and beings . . . .” (PDoM: xi). He 
goes on to elaborate this “heart of the problem” in the following way: 
“Innerworldly practice is indeed informed by general, pre-given structures 
of world-understanding; but these structures are in turn affected and 
changed by the cumulative results of experiencing and acting within the 
world” (ibid.). But if this is the heart of the disagreement then it is no 
disagreement at all. One of the central point of Foucault’s enterprise, for 
example, is to explain just this point (cf. Paul Veyne, Foucault 
Revolutionizes history in Davidson Foucault and his interlocutors).

6)  You say that “But the autonomy that “Habermas seeks is a matter of 
“moral-cognitive development,” which may result in “post-conventional” modes 
of reflection, questioning, inquiry, and communicative interaction”. Now you 
are right to the extent that autonomy for Habermas is differentiated from 
factual freedom (which is the condition of autonomy) and you are also right 
to claim that for Habermas autonomy is related to ‘cognitive development’. 
Habermas makes clear these links in the following passage from his Reply to 
Rawls: “There seems to be no way around the explanation of the moral point 
of view in terms of a procedure that claims to be context independent. Such 
a procedure is by no means free of normative implications . . . for it is 
intertwined with a concept of autonomy that integrates “reason” and “free 
will;” TO THAT EXTENT it cannot be normatively neutral. Freedom in general 
consists in the capacity to choose in accordance with maxims; but autonomy 
is the self-binding of the will by maxims we adopt on the basis of INSIGHT. 
Because it is mediated by reason, autonomy is not just one value alongside 
others” (Habermas, Inclusion of the Other: 99, emphases in original). But 
you must know that for Habermas ‘cognitive development’ has very specific 
meaning which can not be lumped with the ordinary use of cognitive (related 
to knowledge). “Cognitive” for Habermas relates to the possibility of 
raising different validity claims (in the case of morality validity claim 
concerning norms) and not to any specific ‘object of knowledge’. The 
“insight” Habermas talks of here is not ‘about anything out there’ but about 
the very possibility of raising and contesting validity claims (It is about 
the possibility of context transcendence as referred to in the quote). This 
process of raising and contesting does not give us ‘objective’ norms through 
adherence to which we become autonomous. No at all. The very process of 
raising and contesting claims constitutes autonomy and it is in this sense 
Habermas’ morality is procedural. Autonomy links ‘freedom’ and ‘rationality’ 
not because ‘rationality’ accrues ‘knowledge’ that ‘guides’ freedom. Not at 
all. Freedom is related to rationality because in this relation resides the 
very possibility of freedom. It is validity claim that raises us from 
facticity and hence provides the possibility of freedom and if freedom is 
de-linked from validity claims (its continuous raising and contesting) what 
we forgo is freedom and nothing else. This is the meaning of autonomy and 
its relating ‘free will’ with ‘insight’.

7)What I have said above is very much contained in your following 
formulation with which I agree totally: “So, you see here a distinction 
between conditions of formation and actual formation. The latter requires an 
active subjectivity apart from communicative action. Bernstein seems to miss 
this vital point (But one can't expect too much from short quotations)”. So 
yes Gary I was saying the above but do not know whether Bernstein missed the 
point or whether he was concerned with this point at all. I would have to 
read his piece again to say anything definite.

8) You say “but is Habermas’ notion of validity a “transcendence”? Where? 
How? “. Gary first chapter of BFN is quite clear on this. For quick 
reference see On the Pragmatics of Communication 218-219 where he refers to 
the ‘transmundane’ character of communicative action (via illocutionary 
force of validity claims). The actors in communicative actions ‘attain’ 
transcendence through raising validity claims. But ‘transcendence’ in the 
way I am using (and I believe it corresponds to Habermas’ and Foucault’s 
usage) does not refer to anything positive. It is a pure negativity, just a 
possibility of being and acting ‘otherwise’. This possibility is obviously 
created through raising validity claims in Habermas’ sense.

9) You say “But does rationalisation imply transcendence (in more than a 
loose figurative sense)?”. Rationalisation is a pretty complex concept in 
Habermas. I do not pretend to have explained it adequately here. But one 
very important sense of lifeworld rationalisation is explained through the 
very crucial concept of ‘decentration’  Now decentration as explained in 
White’s quote and it is explained very adequately I believe, does involve 
‘transcendence’ in the sense explained above, (which requires distance 
negatively speaking and the possibility of ‘otherwise’ positively speaking).

10) The notion of field independence you refer to is in line with what White 
says and the way I have understood the concept. If you go to page (93) of 
the essay you are referring to, there Habermas talks about the ‘meaning of 
the transition from sixth to seventh stage’ which according to him “can be 
found in the fact that interpretation is not longer assumed as Given . . . 
.” (Emphasis added). This is crucial. Once all ‘given’ lose their powers as 
‘given’ we get out of the spell of facticity and hence arises the 
possibility of ‘transcendence’, of thinking and acting ‘otherwise’. And in 
this consists our modernity according to both Foucault and Habermas.

11) Decentration according to White consists in double reflection. On the 
one hand differentiation of three conceptual dimensions obviously requires 
reflection and distance. On the other hand we subsequently attain reflective 
attitude towards this differentiation itself. Thus modernity does not only 
imploded the power of ‘given’ from within, it subsequently retains a 
permanent attitude of distance and reflection towards whatever it poses in 
place of the ‘given’. In this sense the attitude of modernity must consist 
in permanent critique (of which Foucault speaks so memorably in What is 
Enlightenment and other pieces) because there is always the danger that what 
replaces the ‘given’ itself become the ‘given’.


Regards
ali

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