Subject: Re: [HAB:] Communicative Action in everyday contexts
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 12:34:38 +0100



From: <FREDWELFARE-AT-aol.com>
> I would like to suggest that we simply highlight, instead of dissect, a key
> passage of a post and then respond, otherwise we end up with lengthy
> essay-like  responses which are time-comsuming and difficult to respond to, as below.
> Fred W.
>

I'd like to do as you wish, but sometimes there is no key
passage (unless it is the one I am responding to now), or
there is actually more than one passage that perhaps ought
to be responded to, even if, as you suggest, it might be
time-consuming and difficult.

You could, if you didn't mind too much, try and cut out
previous bits you wrote that I responded to, before you
responded again. Some of the background will be lost,
but hopefully not too much of great value.



> <FREDWELFARE-AT-aol.com> wrote:
> But, at this time in our history and in our society, the criteria of  being
> an individual, that is, being autonomous in the sense of independent (who
> would understand Kant?) is a substantial matter as this is the entity or body
> that does not simply vote but that reproduces biologically which is not true of
> those bodies that have not reached the definitive - legal and cultural -
> status  of being an individual, not to mention the many other legal capacities of
> such  an entity.
>
>

Are you talking about "adulthood" as we perceive it, or the state
of being an individual. And are you saying such a state depends
on one's ability to reproduce and that the legitimacy of those not
yet at that point, or beyond it, is questionable?

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>
> <FREDWELFARE-AT-aol.com> wrote:
> 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,
>
> sue-AT-mcphersons.freeserve.co.uk writes:
> 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)?
>
>
> I mean the valence that is given to the paternal role (whether actual or  not
> in the given situation) at the risk of violence.  In this sense, I am
> interpetting social reality in psychoanalytic terms, but the words themselves,
> "father," or "papa" and their opposites
> along with terms of degradation (the Darwinian problematic) in the  feminine,
> coupled to the sense of risk, warning, and violence.  To me,  taking up a
> paternal role with regard to another is as provocative as taking up  the
> Promethean or 'young turk,' (many homonyms come to mind: punk for example)  position.
> In many contexts, these roles become inflamed as jealousy is  aroused.

I think that instead of expecting Habermas to do it all, one
could just bring other theoretical perspectives - psychoanalysis,
for instance, or psychology, to try to understand the dynamics
of "the family" that are present, I believe, in probably most
social communicative interactions.

Sue McPherson







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