Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 14:06:00 EST
Subject: Re: [HAB:] What makes a human right universal?


In a message dated 11/28/2003 8:27:41 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
ali_m_rizvi-AT-hotmail.com writes:
isnt moral claim one validity claim among other validity claims
I think you are considering validity only in terms of Habermas' use of 
validity as the 3 or 4 validity claims: truth, rightness, well-formedness, and 
comprehensible.  I happen to like Habermas' validity 'package.'  But, one reason 
why Habermas' universal pragmatics is considered to be quasi-transcendental  is 
because it operates primarily on the level of language, or linguistified 
action, and I do not mean to reduce all action to its descriptive level by 
characterizing TCA in this way.  However, there is a distinction between moral 
judgment and moral action.  If we hypothesize that action begins with a decision, 
hence cognitive, then we can ask why the results and consequences for an act did 
not accord with the intent and we will run up against not merely our cognitive 
limits, competencies, or capabilities, but also against the social nexus, the 
interfering and antagonistic social reality that does not simply react on the 
basis of its or others notions of compliance with a cooperative normative 
ideal but with a darker side: an envying, jealous group formation of diverse 
interests and powers.  So, if we consider moral judgment only within the 
constraints of these 4 validity claims and not in terms of a wider form of validity, 
that which considers historical knowledge, dynamic reflexes of the group and its 
spokespersons, however darkly they speak or act, and the dilemmas that 
afflict action orientations, then we are considering moral judgment only as the 
rightness of our intent as encoded in speech and barely as the accuracy of our 
foreseen or plausible course of action intimated in the speech act.  Morality as 
justice, or respect, or care is an everpresent consideration through the 
implementation or enacting of all intentions, but the validity of the possibilities 
has to be considered as effecting the development of judgments which goes 
beyond merely a linguistified rightness and extends to a validity that 
encompasses possible consequences.  The differences between Habermas and others like 
Rawls, Gadamer, Gouldner as well as the proffered developments in psychoanalysis 
and developmental psychology advanced by Habermas as emancipatory suggests 
that validity in the quasi-transcendental communication theory of universal 
pragmatics is differentiated and that the moral aspect as rightness is not 
inclusive of the entire moral spectrum when observed in terms of the judgment-action 
difference, however, I do not think this permits a criticism of the validity 
claims of speech acts.  A dedifferentiated concept of validity refers to a moral 
theory as much as to an apodictic theory of truth.

Fred Welfare


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