Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 18:23:00 EDT
Subject: Re: [HAB:] re: Getting ethical by getting highly self-identical


 
In a message dated 8/23/2004 5:24:09 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
sue-AT-mcphersons.freeserve.co.uk writes:

I'm not so sure about the "diplomatic" part of communication
that  you write about, especially since I recently had an expert
in "diplomacy"  behave in a rather undiplomatic way towards
me.  Communicative  competency can only come about if people
speak from the same world-view,  and I don't think Habermas's
is the most widely understood view, or the  most cohesive one,
to draw individuals together.  If an ideal-speech  situation means
submitting to Habermas's interpretation of what is best or  right,
and if that's not something I can do, ie if neither the strategic  nor
the communicative is effective, then it's hardly an ideal  situation
at all, is it.  In fact, it's barely tolerable.
 
Sue,
 
 If you aren't going to read the man, what is the point.  The  issues we 
discuss here are about reality, but there is no way that  philosophical discussion 
will ever affect reality or other personalities  unless they are competent 
enough to do the reading.  If you are going to  take something seriously, you 
have to know it and at this level knowing means  reading comprehension.  Experts 
in general are nonsense because such an  elite attribute immediately makes 
that individual asymmetrical to others and  poses as a barrier to understanding. 
 You don't 'reach agreement' with an  expert unless you know as much as s/he 
does, or unless the 'expert' has the  competency to make themselves understood 
universally, to everybody.   Communicative competency is an achieved level of 
awareness which can most  definitely overcome cultural or world-view or 
paradigmatic differences.   The whole point to becoming competent is to be able to 
get across these  barriers.  No, few know Habermas, although he is one of the 
most  well-known of the philosophers.  However, so few people actually read or 
 bother themselves with philosophy that knowing him or what he says is almost 
 entirely within the world of postgraduate school academe.  In fact, I  don't 
think there are any courses about him and he only lectures here in the  US at 
Northwestern in the summer.
 
You didn't read my earlier post: communicative action is highly effective  
and it is a normative practice among jurists, legislators, and competent  
interlocutors.  In general, strategic action orientations are very  typical because 
of the paternalistic (read Darwinian) and capitalistic context  of everyday 
existence.  The typical power relations and their mirrorlike  reactions within 
gender, racial/ethnic, and class differences are all too  obvious in spite of 
the regulatory agencies (police) which are all too often  immersed in the same 
contradictions.  BTW, the ideal speech situation  which you have obviously 
heard about is not considered to actually exist  except as an idea which we use 
to compare real situations against; this gives  us an indication of the degree 
of distortion that we are dealing with.
 
Fred



 


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