From: "matthew piscioneri" <mpiscioneri-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [HAB:] Pragmatism [Ralph]
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 04:39:58 +0000


to be fair to Habermas IMO he holds on a quasi-transcendentalist moment in 
his pragmatism for some of the reasons you outline:

>pragmatism's weakness lies in the slipperiness of its ontological 
>foundations.  Taking experience rather than matter as one's basic category 
>allows an awful lot of fudging on the way down the slippery slope to 
>subjectivism.  Pragmatism is the petty bourgeois liberal technocrat's 
>philosophy of choice.  If Habermas embraces it, that condemns him.  This is 
>one more objectionable engagement that ought to induce some critical 
>reflection on the class basis of Habermas' philosophy.

So when asked the greatest weaknesses of pragmatism Habermas writes:

"the anti-Platonic distrust in an ideological misuse of abstract ideas is 
misunderstood as the denial of the transcending force and unconditional 
meaning of claims to truth. there is an empiricist undercurrent in Dewey's 
and an emotivist undercurrent in James' thought." (Habermas in the Aboulafia 
collection previously cited: p228)

One might add "and an Idealist undercurrent in Habermas's pragmatism."

One of pragmatism's strengths is its openness and fallibilism. It's as much 
a set of guidelines to philosophical inquiry and to how research outcomes 
are to be understood, rather than a unified philosophy.

>And indeed, historically, pragmatism is a manifestation of the naive 
>subjectivist rebellion against transcendentalism and traditional 
>metaphysics.  It is a purely bourgeois debate, of course, as materialism is 
>outlawed here as elsewhere.

disagree. i consider myself a materialist (in both senses: formal ontology 
and in the Marxian sense). pragmatism guides my understanding of my uptake 
of these philosophical positions. That is as part of my progress in the 
world; as a set of beliefs taken on by a human animal that in some way 
facilitates my life.

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