Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 11:23:25 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Gary E. Davis" <coherings-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: [HAB:] The Moral & The Ethical (again)


I guess that my hope for (anticipation of) fundamental
complementarity between naturalist ("Aristotelian")
and "socialist" (Habermasian) thinking, for the sake
of still-truly-Habermasian cultural evolution that
flowers from an "ethic of the species" that Habermas
might wholeheartedly endorse (given what he wants with
"morality")---such an imaginative hope is expressed in
the old issue (here and with Habermas) of the "moral"
and the "ethical"---which is the topic of Habermas's
new essay, for Richard J. Bernstein: "The Moral and
the Ethical: A Reconsideration of the Issue of the
Priority of the Right over the Good," in the
just-released collection of essays for Bernstein,
_Pragmatism, Critique, Judgment: essays for [RJB]_,
edited by Seyla Benhabib and Nancy Fraser. 

The issue of moral vs. ethical was also the topic that
I sought insight from others about, here at the HAB
list in the beginning of my subscription (Aug. - Oct.,
1997), when I began an extended sojourn online through
ch. 1 of _J&A_, but ceased due to others' apparent
lack of interest (ceased the online reporting, not the
sojourn--which was a return to the chapter after some
years). 

Over all the HAB list years, there's surely much to
apply to James Bohman's new essay on the Internet
vis-a-vis electronic democracy, in the just-out _After
Habermas: essays on the public sphere_, Blackwell:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/habermas/message/920

Anyway....

I've only read the first paragraph and a later
paragragh of JH's new essay, but I hypergraphia
overtook me (cf. _The Midnight Disease_, Alice
Flaherty). 

Habermas begins his essay by recalling his first
meeting of Bernstein, 1972, in order to emphasize the
apparent unusualness for JH that there would be a
genuine pragmatist working in American philosopher. 

I came to academic philosophy, in the late '60s,
believing that pragmatism was all over the place!,
since I was the sycophantic protegé of a Peirce
scholar, albeit in terms of so-called Ordinary
Language Philosophy. I seem destined to disagree with
Habermas, though there's no one's texts I'd rather
engage with.

Anyway.... Near the end, Habermas writes: "The
argument for a postconventional kind of
ethics...[which is exactly what I, Gary, aim for] does
not yet challenge, in the order of justification, the
priority of the Right over the Good" (40). 

Surprise, surprise. Well, I'll see---I'll see what
priority the order of justification might best have in
addressing such an area as: Cultural justice for what?
What's the appropriate priority for the order of
justification in a world evolving in light of insight,
innovation, and the open-endedness of human interests?

Gary






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