File spoon-archives/habermas.archive/habermas_2003/habermas.0310, message 83


Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 09:17:24 -0400
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.org>
Subject: Re: [HAB:] Moby Dick Ahoy [Ralph]


I don't know about pessimism manifest in the nature of being.  I don't even 
know what this means, so I can't take responsibility for such a 
statement.  I am suggesting, as I'm sure some of the Frankfurters must have 
written somewhere, that bourgeois rationalism and irrationalism are 
indissolubly linked.  The same tensions and dichotomies can be found within 
Marxism as well, and are marked by conflicting schools of thought within 
Marxism.  I recently wrote a review of part of Martin Jay's MARXISM AND 
TOTALITY (posted to the Frankfurt-school list), which I think points up the 
difficulty of overcoming the dichotomy, in this case not so much between 
rationalism and irrationalism, but between idealist holism and a 
scientifically oriented standpoint.  But more generally, the polarity of 
scientism and romanticism holds for Marxism, too, as is characteristic of 
the bourgeois (modern) world as a whole.

I see I am now failing to distinguish between this polarity in the history 
of thought and in social life as a whole.  However, the unity of 
rationality and irrationality holds not just for philosophy but for 
Stalinism in practice as well, and of course for bourgeois democracies as 
evidenced by the right-wing reign of terror unleashed by the election of 
Reagan in 1981.  Ruling elites are always irrational.  CLR James explained 
why; I need to find the relevant texts.  My experience of the general 
populace is none the more edifying.  Bourgeois rationalism and 
irrationalism combined pervades the whole society.  To confirm this, I need 
only pick out people I know here in DC who simultaneously hold to 
astrology, occultism, and religious superstition as well as a bourgeois 
administrative-bureaucratic orientation to practical matters.

I am serious about DofE being a weak work and the worst thing either of 
these fellas wrote.  I wrote an extensive critique of this book over the 
summer, which I posted, perhaps to frankfurt-school.  I don't recall the 
details, but I criticized the book both for its inept argument about the 
Enlightenment, and for the lack of concrete argument supporting the general 
contentions about the culture industry.  H & A were far more intelligent in 
other works, in their opposition to irrationalism as well as positivism, 
even being harsher on the former than on the latter as is proper.  I think 
the leading Frankfurters were hampered by the very idealist anti-scientific 
tradition in which they were schooled and rebelled against.  This is even 
more obnoxiously manifest in Marcuse, also in the 1940s.  In REASON AND 
REVOLUTION, positivism rather than irrationalism bears the brunt of the 
blame for fascism.  Marcuse of course was schooled in Dilthey and 
Heidegger, a very unsavory brew.  Disgusting.

Now apparently Habermas rebelled against DofE and went in a different 
direction.  Yet he was also influenced by DofE. MY question is, did he 
really overcome the anti-scientific prejudice of the first FS generation, 
or did his tripartite classification of the sciences (which I have never 
believed in) give him the means to compound their confusion rather than 
clear it up?

At 11:42 AM 10/15/2003 +0000, matthew piscioneri wrote:
>.......
>>But the obvious contradiction of our time, already foreseen by Herman 
>>Melville in 1851, was the mutual co-existence and interdependence of 
>>"rational" means combined with irrational ends.
>
>fascinating insight. but is it a dialectical relation you are positing 
>here. What then? An indissoluble and irredeemable pessimism manifest in 
>the nature of being? surely you jest then when you say DoE was a very weak 
>philosophy. makes my top 20 everytime.



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