Subject: Re: [HAB:] state and lifeworld [Matt]
Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 03:14:40 +0000



Matt,

1) As John McCumber perceptively writes both Habermas and Foucault “construe 
freedom in terms of situations, and not subjects” (McCumber, Philosophy and 
freedom : Derrida, Rorty, Habermas, Foucault: 3). If this characterisation 
of their work is correct then the possibility of freedom and the project of 
freedom in large part dependa on the correct analysis of the situation (the 
present).

2) But the present should not be construed in narrow terms. I think 
Foucault’s insights about state are even not formulated clearly in the 
literature let alone developing them and critiquing them. I think Foucault’s 
insights about the state are very relevant to our present, the present which 
is constituted and sustained by, to a large extent, what Foucault calls 
capitalist state.

3) I am not sure about Habermas’ views about the state yet. One thing which 
is clear to me is that Habermas considers capitalism in a very narrow terms 
and largely limits it to capitalist economy and markets. But capitalism is 
more than that. It is not just economy. Capitalism is economy as well as 
polity. It is a system as well as lifeworld. It is in this sense that I say 
Habermas has a ‘negative’ conception of state. He sees state as a separate 
entity from the ‘civil society’ and in fact this separation as one of the 
great achievements of our modernity. For Foucault on the other hand modern 
state extends its roots through the creation of civil society. Thus civil 
society is not the other of the state but the medium through which it 
extends its powers beyond. But state in the context is not restricted to 
government or coercive or administrative institutions. It is rather a 
specific political rationality that forms the basis not only of soicatiotion 
but also of individuation.

regards
ali

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