Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 02:57:49 +0100
From: James <james.gf-AT-virgin.net>
Subject: Re: [HAB:] RE: Pragmatism


Hello Ali,

Wednesday, March 31, 2004, 1:43:51 AM, you wrote:

AR> Hello James,

AR> Thanks for your thoughts.

AR> 1) You say [Modern
AR> morality is an historical phenomenon but moral norms are nonetheless
AR> universally and unconditionally valid.]. This seems to me untenable. In fact 
AR> contradiction in terms unless reformulated carefully. Isn’t it more 
AR> appropriate to say that "Modern morality is an historical phenomenon but 
AR> moral norms nonetheless claim universality and unconditional validity, a 
AR> claim which is always open to scrutiny”?. Not the moral norms but the morals 
AR> claims are universal claims.

AR> 2) I agree with you completely on Habermas and Analytic/Continental 
AR> Philosophy. What I was trying to get at was perhaps more trivial. It seems 
AR> to me that Habermas at times would refer to Mead for example, where it would 
AR> be more natural for him to refer to Heidegger, why? Due to Philosophical 
AR> considerations? I think not. Here what I call 'political consideration' 
AR> comes into play. Habermas' political stance keep him away from doing 
AR> jusitice to Heidegger (for example) and hence to his own philosophical ethos 
AR> and argument as well.


AR> best regards.
AR> ali



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

AR> --

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

AR> _________________________________________________________________
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Dear ALi,

True, I was a little clumsy. But
I am reporting what I take to be Habermas's position.


I take it that his position is that valid moral norms are
universal and unconditional. They are exceptionless. And their
validity is not relative to any framework.

If norms are constructs - if their reality is constituted in part by what 'we take
them to be' they will have a social and historical origin.
But the metaphysical question of their reality/ideality is independent
of their formal features. Philosophers of maths don't worry about
whether 2+2=4 is true for everybody or not. They do worry about
whether numbers are real.

So Habermas's position is not obviously a contradiction. The mathematical sum
2 - 2 = 0 was only possible at a certain point in history. (Not for
latins and Greeks) But it is nonetheless universally and
unconditionally true.

No replies yet to my request! Help!

James



-- 
Best regards,
 James                            mailto:james.gf-AT-virgin.net



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