Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 13:27:52 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [HAB:] HAB: Germans vs. those Americans [the whole thing]


I see that just a fraction of my posting went through. This
is the entirety of it. I've added a line where the earlier
sending ended.

Claus Hanen's query causes me to raise a question that's
come to mind from time to time, which implies (for me) an
interesting situation for Habermas readers generally (I
hope).

The simple question is: Is there a Habermas discussion
group in German? I had assumed that there was, such that
the low degree of Spoons-based English-language engagement
with Habermas' work by European readers of Germany's
greatly popular public intellectual and philosophical
leader (?) was due to the fact that *real* Habermasians
don't bother with those Americans. Antti, for example. 

After all, one might think that work by Habermas comes into
English almost as a distant afterthought, years after its
appearance in German (and Habermas isn't really very
influential yet in the English world, especially inasmuch
as so few read him non-tangentially; regretfully, this is
something I can document, the meaning of which---for
me---is merely that he's philosophically ahead of the times
in America---one more reason for German readers to not care
much for the problems those Americans have with his work).
_Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung_ is a 1999 publication, fully
appreciated by those who really care about Habermas' work
long before it now comes into English as _Truth and
Justification_. True?

But really, I think the case is somewhat the converse.
Habermas' work is so pervasively a result of his engagement
with American philosophy and social theory that its meaning
and significance can only be considered relative to its
reception in the U.S. AND Europe. Thus, the English
dialogue is not tangential. To understand Habermas is to
understand the problem of the....

--------------------

.... "AND", as a matter of intellectual culture in the
EuroAmerican region of human presence. 

This discussion list is by no means representative of the
English side of the AND, of course. You could make a list
of the leading readers of Habermas English, as well as the
contributors to widely available anthologies about
Habermas' work, and you find none of them contributing to
this list, even in a spirit of fostering engagement with
Habermas' work by a broad public (so important to Habermas
himself; cf. TCA2: 326middle-to-bottom). I bet that not a
one the insiders care at all whether or not this discussion
list flourishes; they've got their seminars and each other
(It's an inner industry affair, you see---the university in
advanced industrial society [AIS] and the potential of
philosophical social theory to affect AIS's careers within
knowledge-intensive power). A note of support  from Thomas
McCarthy merely applauding the thankless efforts here of a
few engaged readers could be a great asset to validating
this kind of forum. But the "real" Habermasians don't have
time for that, for all they need is each other. 

Yes, the real work goes on in the classroom. "Publish in
refereed journals, if you care so much," they say in
effect; the online medium doesn't serve the public
intellectual very importantly, they say, in effect, by
their incognizance (or lamentable silence). Those who
really care just don't have time for supporting this medium
through their acknowledgement of it. So, it's no wonder
that its content is of no interest (or of marginal
interest) to the readers of Habermas-oriented communicative
action (i.e., surveyors of the winds of communicative
action in light of Habermas' work). At best, the Spoons
list (or the Yahoo! list) might be some data for someone's
interest in "Habermas & the Internet" as a sociological
curiosity. 

Anyway, I think that Habermas would take exception to
thinking that the English reception of his work is
secondary to his career. The English translation is
sometimes more than that, such that the German reader can't
just assume that those come-lately Americans are just
reading the German thing in English after its old news in
Europe. 

I recall a seminar with Jean Cohen in the early 1980s where
she circulated a photocopy of the translation manuscript of
the "Introduction" to vol. 1 of _TCA_ (which is 140 pp. of
the book), and it had an immense number of marginal
scribblings that I later learned were Habermas' revisions
of McCarthy's translation (I still have that filed away
somewhere). You know that the German version, from which
the 1987 English translation of vol. 2 is based, was itself
a 3rd corrected edition, 1985, of the 1981 publication; I
suppose that the changes to the English version of vol 1
were incorporated into later German editions. McCarthy
notes in his "Preface" to vol. 2 of TCA that "the author
[has] read through a first draft and suggest[ed] whatever
changes he thought appropriate," which goes to the
ongoingness of Habermas' thinking with-and-against his own
text. So, in a sense (however trivial), the English
translation may provide a better text than the German (or:
the German editions evolve with their English). The English
version of Habermas' _The Future of Human Nature_ has
paragraphs not in the German (says JH, in his preface to
the book) and a whole section of chapter 1 which isn't in
the German edition; I see significant differences between
the main chapter on liberal eugenics, between the English
draft presented at NYU, Oct. 2001 (when, by the way, JH
gave his interview on terrorism, in _Philosophy in a Time
of Terror_) and the version in the book. 

So, I don't lament that I work with English texts (though
once upon a time I did). And hold onto a kind of private
joke that something really useful might happen here, be
archived, but be largely overlooked until way down the
road. Someone will have the last laugh, be it the naïf here
or the readers of communicative action who still find the
Internet to be a curiosity.

Gary






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