Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 18:43:01 +0100
Subject: [HAB:] Pragmatism


Hello Ali,

Monday, March 29, 2004, 4:41:01 AM, you wrote:

*To be frank I do not really know what pragmatism (as against his
>>pragmatics) means in this context.*

I agree Habermas's pragmatism is peculiar. McCarthy has recently
called it a 'Kantian pragmatism'. In a way that seems right, but what
kind of pragmatism is that? One has to fill out the terms'Kantianism'
and 'pragmatism' in much more detail. iOn some interpretations Kantian
pragmatisim would be a contradiction. On others a clumsy conjunction.
Perhaps somewhere along the line there is a fruitful harmony.

I presume McCarthy has the discourse theory of morality in mind.
Habmeras approach is 'pragmatic' in the sense that he conceives
morality as a way of resolving practical social problems - overcoming
and avoiding conflicts, establishing social order etc.

At the same time Habermas believes that moral norms are universally
valid, (and analogous to truth) and not relative to
some practical context.

Anyway it seems correct to think that habemas is pragmatisit in the
sense that he conceives meaning, understanding morality, ehtics,
politics and law as so many ways of solving practical social
problems.

Haermas is an unusual historicist the same way that he is an peculiar
pragmatist. He cannot forego building in a history of social theory
into his social theory, as well as a history of conceptions of society, and a
history of really existing society. Ditto for his moral theory. But he
refuses to draw any historicist or relativist conclusions. Modern
morality is an historical phenomenon but moral norms are nonetheless
universally and unconditionally valid.

So pragmtatism + historicism, but no truck with contextualism or
relativism.

The other way that he is a pragmatist is his Peircian constructivist
concept of truth (and moral rightness). But Peirce is only just a
pragmatist too. Presumably he's a pragmatist in the sense that he
takes truth to be a construct of the practice of inquiry.


*Habermas intimacy with Analytical philosophy and American
tradition has more to do with his politics than his philosophy.*

That cannot be true. After all Habermas's politics are more or
less left Social-Democrat, belief in welfare state compromise while
it worked, pro-European Union (political and economic) and ultimately
tending towards cosmopolitanism. None of those are characteristic of American analytic
philosophy.

Perhaps you meant that Habermas only got seriously interested in American political
nad legal philosophy in the 1990's when researching BFN. I think that
is a plausible claim. That was when he started taking the problem of multiculturalism (for
Discourse ethics) seriously.

I think there is some truth to the view that Habermas is a Continental philosopher,
malgre lui - in spite of his animus against 'metaphysical thinking' and his
rejection of the philosophy of consciousness. In general it seems to me that Habemras is happy to ignore or dismiss
90% of analytic philosophy. He only ever takes seriously the 'idealists' or
anti-realists e.g. Strawson, Dummet, Putnam 2, and Davidson. He is more or
less dismissive of all forms of metaphysical realism, including
naturalism and reductionism. He tends to read the opponents of the analytic
mainstream, not the mainstream. That is because his implicit 'metaphysical'
stance (in the neutral sense of metaphysics) is intersubjective idealism.

 It a complicated story I guess because there is not one, there are several
 traditions of both analytic and continental philosophy.

-- 

 James                            mailto:james.gf-AT-virgin.net



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