Subject: Re: [HAB:] Communicative Action in everyday contexts
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 21:18:49 +0100


>  
<FREDWELFARE-AT-aol.com> wrote:
> Sue and all,
>  
> I think that the most critical issue for both the functionality and  
> legitimation or justification of communicative action, and its criticism of  strategic 
> action initiatives, is to discuss and understand how communicative  action 
> works or can work in everyday contexts.  Whether CA can be  instituted in a 
> particular situation or as an ongoing pattern may or may not  involve ascribed 
> role characteristics of actors/speakers.  

I wonder if CA is something that can be "instituted" or whether 
it just develops over time, if the circumstances are right, if the 
actors are competent, and if they want to communicate.

Whether it  does and why seems to me to 
> be the crux of the matter.  Before we can  address autonomy, we have to 
> address individuality and  individualization.  What is an individual, when is a 
> body an individual,  and then whether or not said individual is autonomous as 
> perceived through  her/his ethical actions.  

Individuals are often not as autonomous as they would like to
think they are, or as they try to be. Social forces and the actions
of less ethically-oriented individuals can act against the 
individual actions of others.

I perceive attributes flying all 
> over the place  and ascribing roles to bodies which either castigate their 
> individualization  or their autonomy, entirely for the strategic gain.  

One can't always know the reasons, but yes, I agree, others
apply attributes and roles to others which can do harm.

At some 
> point,  Habermas will have to address Darwinism and the intensified zero-sum locus 
> of  interaction.  In an engagement where actors do not redeem or justify  
> their claims validly, by for example mimicking the institutional authority of  
> the nuclear family, 

Do you mean by putting some in the role of children, and ones
in positions of more power as patriarch and mother (in this
case, this list)?


it is not an option to retreat or close communication by  
> the insisting on a redemption before communication resumes, this only puts the  
> CA actor in the void, which does not even exist.
>  

If the CA actor is in the "void", then surely this particular void 
DOES exist.  Existence can be fragmented, and even fall completely
apart at times, probably, but even the void cannot last forever.

Sue McPherson





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