From: "matthew piscioneri" <mpiscioneri-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [HAB:] Lifeworld *telos*
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 01:57:20 +0000


Ralph,

Habermas wrote:

>>"Against this formalism she advances elements of an almost Weberian 
>>world-view: the (in the final analysis) decisionistic basis of value 
>>orientations; the fact that socio-cultural forms of life appear in the 
>>plural; and, finally, the indissolubly tragic substance of history. In my 
>>view neither the polytheism of beliefs nor the dialectic of progress ­ 
>>elements which I am not at all tempted to deny ­can be correctly 
>>interpreted unless one resists the decisionism suggested by Nietzsche and 
>>played out by Weber in neo-Kantian terms, and by Sartre in existentialist 
>>terms." (1983: 226)

>Translate into English, please?

Habermas is rejecting the thrust of Heller's critique which is that he has 
overlooked the sensuous, feeling component of humankind's species-being. 
Heller at one point in her essay writes that Habermasian man has no feelings 
or agonistic sensibilities. Clearly, she wants to hold onto a compassionate 
ethic of care as the basis for undertaking a critical theory of society in 
contrast to Habermas's proceduralist quasi-technocratic approach that 
emphasizes the head and loses the heart :-). Another telling critique Heller 
levels against JH is that his critical theory lacks a *particular 
addressee8.

Habermas argues that a critical theory of society doesn't make sense from a 
subjectivist perspective (methodological individualism), and in a trivial 
sense he is right. A theory of *society* should start with the social (one 
would expect) although Habermas emphasizes the intersubjective over the 
subjective or the collective.

This following statement puzzles me, however, and I won't pretend to fully 
understand (other contributions welcome):

>>In my view neither the polytheism of beliefs nor the dialectic of progress 
>>­ elements which I am not at all tempted to deny ­can be correctly 
>>interpreted...

My *guess* is

[1] that Habermas is insisting on a hermeneutical distinction between 
participating/performative stance v. a theoretical/objectifying perspective 
on the world. It is why he turns to a social systems theoretic in _TCA_ in 
an attempt to *get outside* the interpretive limitations of the hegelian 
dialectic and the polytheistic relativism Weber pessimistically settles on, 
for example.

[2] One of Habermas's *masterstrokes* is his argument that communicative 
reason makes socio-philosophical discourse possible in the first place. The 
raising and testing of validity claims, according to JH, is the basis of the 
(social) scientific logic of inquiry. So JH is arguing that communicative 
reason makes Heller's discourse possible BOTH historically and particularly) 
prior to her substantive discussion.

Sorry I can't make it clearer!
------------------
>>In other words, Habermas is committed to the awkward position that 
>>participants in discourse always/already make a normative commitment to 
>>communicative reason, quite literally, each time they speak.
>
>And who could believe such a thing?

Yes. Although it is worth understanding Habermas's sense of *normative*. I 
don't have Honneth&Joas's -Communicative Action- with me. In his reply at 
the end of this anthology JH explains what his sense of *normative* is, and 
it is a deflationary/modest sense. Whilst *I* take *normative* to suggest 
some sort of ethical commitment, Habermas - if I remember correctly - 
restricts his sense of normative to a rule-following behaviour in the 
Wittgensteinian sense; i.e. language-in-practice is a rule governed 
behaviour. Habermas's sense of normative commitment then appears to be that 
when we speak we are engaging with something that is always/already a rule 
governed (normative) activity. IMO, Habermas then extends Wittgenstein's 
insights and identifies a host of idealizations and presuppositions 
*naturally* embedded in communicative language practice.
--------------------
>>On this issue, Habermas appears to be committed to an immanent lifeworld 
>>*telos* or *redemptive bearing* that seeks the restoration of its 
>>communicatively rational “inner nature.”
>
>English translation, please?

This returns to Heller's critique of Habermas's sidestepping of the 
motivational issue in his reconstruction of Critical Theory. Habermas argues 
that participants in discourse (in this case, critical social theory) are 
always/already committed to communicative reason. Heller presses the point 
however and asks on what basis would a flesh and blood social actor (e.g. 
you or I) take part - given Habermas's understanding of the 
critical-emancipatory project - to correct or undeform the processes of 
deformation that have afflicted the communicatively constituted rational 
structures of the lifeworld, at the hands of a functionalist reason gone 
wild in advanced modernity.

In plain language, Heller wants to know why does Habermas think we would try 
to make things better!!!

I agree with Heller that Habermas has overlooked theorizing the motivational 
bases for re-engagement in processes of theoretical and practical 
enlightenment, especially following the debilitating critique of 
instrumental reason developed by Horkheimer and Adorno - which, according to 
Habermas, *interrupted* the task of undertaking a critical theory of society 
(see _TCA_ 1.386, Polity Press, 1995).

This is why I have suggested that Habermas appears to be committed to some 
sort of teleological or immanent redemptive bearing within the lifeworld, or 
perhaps communicative reason's *interest in itself* in order to explain how 
communicative reason might redress the deformation generated by 
functionalist reason etc.

Sorry for raving here, but these types of issues pretty much sum up my 
thesis. One conjecture I put forward is that Habermas relies on the 
institutional completion of the critical-emancipatory project in the higher 
education system and public administration to redress the social pathologies 
of modernity caused by the lopsided rationalization of the lifeworld. In 
other words, vocational niches have been established in universities and 
public administration. Their function is to *manage* processes of 
enlightenment. And yes there is what I call an enlightenment industry in 
places like Australia, U.S, Europe etc . So it is literally the job of those 
people in the enlightenment industry to - in cybernetic terms - work towards 
mainatining homeostasis or systemic equilibrium.

IMO, the problem with Habermas's position is that a functionalist/economic 
reason has also colonized these reserves of critical reason in higher 
education and public administration.

Cheers,

mattP

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