Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 16:05:40 +0200
Subject: Reply to Michael



First, I want to thank Michael for a quick, thorough, and civil reply,
which inspired me to get back to reading Heidegger, which I enjoy
enormously. I find the pace of this list quite hectic - please forgive me
if I take a little more time to think.

AK:
>>Belief in the inner truth and
>> greatness of your own thinking, your own German nation, regardless of what
>> others think or say is what makes possible silencing, or gassing, the
>> others, the parasites.

Michael (ME):
>I do not see any necessary link between regarding oneself as great and
wanting
others to be silenced. That is a merely suggestive concatenation. As for
wanting
others to be murdered, a few more monstrous links would be necessary.
Greatness
can go only with humility.

AK:
I agree with the last sentence. What I was suggesting was obviously not
that belief in one's own special access to truth leads necessarily to
murdering others. Rather, it makes possible to consider oneself justified
in one's beliefs whatever the others say, and a fortiori even if these
beliefs require silencing the others for good. It should be pointed out
that I do not think Heidegger's beliefs ever required anything remotely
like that.

ME:
>Rafael has already replied to you with some insightful remarks, including
the
one that it is a mistake to think of _alaetheia_ as truth with a capital T or
otherwise. _alaetheia_ is the opening for the play of disclosure _and_
covering
up. It is where truth can take place, not truth itself. We are beings
exposed to
seeing and failing to see, to lucid views and distorted ones. It is not as if
the insight into _alaetheia_ were the guarantee for privately possessing _a_
truth. Nor does the step back from propositional truth into the clearing mean
that one has moved simply to a zone of experience that cannot be brought to
language. Phenomenology means, after all, putting the phenomena into words,
and
that implies that phenomenological truth is necessarily shared. (But it is
shared even before words!)

AK:
I quote this not to criticize, but to commend: as far as I see, this is a
brilliant brief exposition of Heidegger's conception of truth.

ME:
>If, like Habermas, one wants to insist on rational argument (no matter how
this
rationality is conceived) to the exclusion of what cannot be put into words,
this amounts to truncating what human being is and can be by pushing out of
sight what is out of proportion with this _ratio_.

AK:
Now, it is true that what cannot be put into words cannot be publicly
debated. But bear in mind that Habermas is not aiming at an account of
human being in its fullness: what he is talking about is rather how to
settle disputes of (propositional) truth, politics, morality, or law
non-arbitrarily and without recourse to metaphysics.

ME:
>It must then bear the ominous
title, the Irrational, as something to be feared and kept under control by
rationality.

AK:
Hence, on Habermas's account politics, for example, cannot be based on
ineffable insights on part of seers, whether they happen to be party
leaders or university rectors. Irrationality - holding on to beliefs that
cannot be defended in open discourse - is indeed something to be feared in
politics, even if those who believe they don't have to justify their
beliefs believe they've been handed to them by Being itself. On the other
hand, there's a lot more to life than making and critizing validity claims.
Sexuality, for example, has little to do with rationality (unless some sort
of violation of moral norms is involved, of course), and so is beyond the
scope of Habermas's theory. (It would perhaps be better to speak of
"arational" than "irrational".) Habermas is not a philosophical
anthropologist.

Michael:
>Our
bodiliness, for instance, will never be amenable to propositional truth but
requires another sensibility and perceptiveness if we are to escape the
natural-scientific understanding of our body.

However, if I may quote one very reliable account of true thinking of
being, "Nor does the step back from propositional truth into the clearing
mean that one has moved simply to a zone of experience that cannot be
brought to language." Why? Because "[p]henomenology means, after all,
putting the phenomena into words, and
that implies that phenomenological truth is necessarily shared." One can
argue for a different understanding of the body and so thematize it in
rational discourse, as you yourself are doing, or as Merleau-Ponty did.

>By chance I have also found the passage in Habermas where you quote him
quoting
Heidegger=C6s "All refutation...=F6.

When I wrote my previous message, it had been a year or two since I had
read Habermas's critique of Heidegger, I wasn't directly referring to that.

...

>> 'Wahrheitstheorien' in _Vorstudien und Erg=F5nzungen zur Theorie des
>> kommunikativen Handelns_, Suhrkamp 1984).

>Thanks for the reference.

AK:
I checked that up myself, and I'm afraid it's not a very good reference
with regard to Heidegger. What he says there about Heidegger is trivial and
most likely false. I don't know if the general point, which is much better
established, applies to Heidegger's conception of _propositional_ truth.
Earlier in the same collection, he concludes his criticism of Husserl as
follows:

"Wenn es aber einen Rekurs auf ein letztes tragendes Fundament nicht gibt,
wenn wir, wie schon Peirce eindrucksvoll gezeigt hat, den Evidenzbegriff
der Wahrheit preisgegeben m=FCssen; dann sind die in den intentionalen
Erlebnissen implizierten Geltungsanspr=FCche nicht anschaulich, sondern nur
diskursiv einzul=F6sen. Nicht Anschauungen, sondern allein Argumente k=F6nnen
uns veranlassen, die Rechtm=E4ssigkeit problematisierter Geltungsanspr=FCche
anzuerkennen oder zu verwerfen." (J=FCrgen Habermas, 'Vorlesungen zu einer
sprachtheoretischen Grundlegung der Soziologie', _Vorstudien und
Erg=E4nzungen zur Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns_, 48)

(Truth, for Habermas, is one of the validity claims (Geltungsanspr=FCche)
raised in speech acts.) In other words, Habermas is arguing in the spirit
of Sellars and Rorty that the authority or justification of judgments like
"this piece of chalk is white" is not to be explained with the piece of
chalk being present to us in intuition (as in Husserl) or by our being by
(bei) it, but can only take place in the "logical space of reasons"
(Sellars). This is what Heidegger says on the matter: "Wir, die Subjekte,
beziehen uns direkt auf dieses Seinde (Kreide) selbst; wir sind bei ihr.
[...] Wir kommen nicht erst auf dem Wege =FCber die Aussage und die
Beziehungszusammenhang, in dem sie angeblich h=E4ngt, zur Kreide, sondern
umgekehrt, nur insofern wir schon bei der Kreide sind, uns bei ihr
aufhalten, kann sie m=F6gliches Objekt der Aussage werden." (GA 27, 66) For
him, predicative truth is based (I'm not sure if "based" is the best
characterization here) on a more fundamental relationship, which he calls
veritative: "Die Wahrheit liegt also nicht in der Beziehung des Pr=E4dikats
zum Subjekt, sondern in der Beziehung der ganzen pr=E4dikativen Beziehung zu
dem, wor=FCber ausgesagt wird, zum Aussagegegenstand." (ibid., 53)

As I said, I could not say at this point whether or not the pragmatist
criticism of evidential conceptions of truth applies to Heidegger, or what
the implications would be in that case. It would have to be carefully
considered what the nature of the relationship between truth as al=EAtheia
and propositional truth is in Heidegger, and of course one could also
criticize the pragmatist conception.

>> What I would like to see is an account of truth that gives absolute
>> privilege neither to discourse or to disclosure.

ME:
>I don=C6t know what =F4absolute privilege=F6 is with respect to _alaetheia_ (which
should not be equated with disclosure). Isn=C6t it just a matter of gaining an
insight into what is meant by the =F4clearing=F6? And with this insight, other
phenomena too could become clearer (for instance, the Other) and thought
through
more adequately.

AK:
What I meant was that philosophers seem to prefer either propositional
truth or al=EAtheia (which, as you correctly pointed out, shouldn't be
equated with disclosure, I was careless there) and place the other as
secondary. In Heidegger's case, and here I'm again echoing
Habermas-as-I-remember-him, it is difficult to see how feedback from
argumentation would modify the clearing, ie. how newly established
propositional truths alter the space within which truth can take place
(Habermas speaks of "learning processes"). I welcome references to
Heideggerian texts where such alterations are not simply unaccountable
sendings of being.

ME:
>1) Habermas is keen on nailing Heidegger to a fixation on his teacher,
Husserl.
Habermas wants to show that Heidegger thus remains tied negatively tied to
Husserl and what Habermas calls =F4Subjektphilosophie=F6.

AK:
Not true. I can't see anything about a "fixation" on Husserl, so that
cannot be the reason why Habermas considers Heidegger negatively tied to
philosophy of the subject. The connection is rather that Heidegger
(according to Habermas) repeats the transcendental-empirical distinction on
a new level with the ontological difference, and is so faced with the
problem of constitution. Instead of a transcendental subject, Heidegger has
Dasein (until die Kehre), whose projects provide the meaningfulness in the
light of which entities are disclosed. I do not think this is a
particularly fair criticism of Heidegger, although I do sense subjectivist
overtones in the language of "resoluteness" and the sarcasm with which das
Man is always treated. However, even if one-sided, this critique is not
based on Heidegger's connection to Husserl.

ME:
>Habermas does not realize
just how much Heidegger owes to Aristotle and Plato. It is the interpretation
(the phenomenological reading) of these fathers of metaphysics which allows
Heidegger to unearth what _alaetheuein_ means. Habermas does not venture to
comment on Heidegger=C6s reading of Pl. and Arist., presumably because he is
out
of his depth in the beginnings of metaphysics.

AK:
Or because he is concerned with the philosophical discourse of modernity
and has 20 pages to use for the whole of Heidegger (and, to be honest, he
is out to get him). I don't know. Maybe he does not have anything to
criticize about it?

ME:
2) Habermas therefore reads the Zeuganalyse in SuZ as a kind of pragmatism
which
does not offer anything beyond the =F4pragmatism from Peirce to Mead and Dewey=F6
(Habermas S.176) He can only do this because he fails to see that Heidegger=C6s
aim in analyzing equipment is to show that handling equipment in everyday
life
is a mode of _alaetheuein_! This becomes especially clear if one reads e.g.
GA19
_Sophistes_. For Habermas, Heidegger overcomes =F4Bewusstseinsphilosophie=F6,
but so
does pragmatism, so Heidegger is merely on a par with Peirce, Mead and Dewey.

AK:
He says, though, and I quote at length because I can't see any major
problems with it, "This concept of truth [alaetheia, AK] serves as the
guideline in terms of which Heidegger introduces the key term of
fundamental ontology - the concept of _world_. World shapes the
meaning-disclosing horizon within which entities are at once withdrawn from
and manifested to the Dasein existentially concerned with its being. World
is always prior to the subject that relates itself to objects in knowing
and acting. For it is not the subject that assumes relationships toward
something in the world, but the world that first of all establishes the
context out of whose preunderstanding entities can be encountered. [...]
[T]he human being is so interwoven with the context-shaping, space-giving,
temporalizing processes of world-disclosure that Heidegger characterizes
its existence as Da-sein (there-being), which "lets be" every entity by
comporting itself toward it. The Da (there) of Dasein is the locale where
the lighting-up process of Being [Lichtung des Seins] opens up." (_The
Philosophical Discourse of Modernity_, 147). Habermas never criticizes this
aspect of Heidegger's thinking, and I don't think it is reasonable to call
his reading of it "appalling", even if he does not use the same rhetoric as
Heideggerians do. His remark on this not being an advance to American
pragmatism is intentionally provocative and, I have to say, stupid.

ME:
3) Habermas represents SuZ as the result of several =F4begriffsstrategischen
Entscheidungen=F6 (decisions relating to conceptual strategy; S.174). This is
antithetical to Heidegger=C6s phenomenological approach in which it is a
matter of
pointing to (in language, with the _logos_) the phenomena as they show
themselves of themselves.

AK:
This is not a valid criticism of Habermas's critique. Heidegger may well
represent himself as simply adhering to how things show themselves from
themselves, but it does not follow that this is the case. In itself, the
fact that what Heidegger says about what he's doing does not prove that
Habermas's different interpretation is wrong. Surely being and beings do
not articulate themselves into concepts of themselves, even if they do show
themselves; you know better than I do the care with which Heidegger chooses
his concepts, even using creative etymology to link them together.

ME:
>Habermas refuses to acknowledge that Heidegger=C6s
analysis of das Man is not motivated by cultural critique (as Heidegger
explicitly points out), but insists it is part of a =F4conceptual strategy=F6 to
include =F4existenzphilosophische Motive=F6 (S.174) which could =F4at the same time
serve as an answer to the practical question as to how to live correctly=F6
(S.175) It does not seem to have any effect that the text _SuZ_, and also
later
texts, explicitly attempt to rule out this existentialist misunderstanding
and
point in another direction. Rather, das Man has to be understood, if at
all, as
a happening of _alaetheia_ too, namely, as a covering-over.

AK:
"If at all"? Surely the problematic of das Man has to be understood, and
the modernity-critical tone is all too noticeable, no matter how it is
denied. (I'm sure Heidegger also denies the influence of his cultural
background to the analyses of the fourfold, and with no more credibility.
Had he been born 500 miles to the east or to the west, the thing thinging
might have brought something quite different to play. I sometimes wonder
which elements of his philosophy would have been different had he been a
woman born in New York.) Have you read Bourdieu's _The Political Ontology
of Martin Heidegger_? (I don't recall the French title.) It's a little too
much to expect people to believe that the coincidence in tone and rhetoric
between Heidegger and the mandarins of the time would be just a
coincidence, particularly when it seems to take some twisting to fit the
critique of das Man with Dasein being Mitsein from the start.

ME:
>4) Because Habermas has no insight into _alaetheia_, he cannot conceive of
the
world as a space where the play of _alaetheia_ happens and where Dasein is
only
the playmate of _alaetheia_, not an originator of theoretical models. He
thinks
the life-world as =F4being suspended, so to speak, in the structures of
linguistic
intersubjectivity=F6 (S.177) and laments that Heidegger did not pass down the
path
of =F4such an answer in terms of communication theory=F6. But this shows that
Habermas himself remains tied to the metaphysics of subjectivity, namely,
that
of intersubjectivity. The world can only be thought as something between the
subjects, not as a being-in-the-world for which the play of the world
itself is
primary.

AK:
This may be your most revealing misunderstanding. Habermas's point is that
the world does not play by itself (you speak of Dasein as "playmate"
yourself), nor does Being cast its light on beings by itself. True, for
Habermas the play of the world is not primary; it is _co-originary_ with
the agency of actors, who are formed in and through the different networks
of lifeworld interaction. The subject is not given or foundational or in
control of everything in herself or around her, so I do not think you can
make the charge of metaphysics of subjectivity stick. If, on the other
hand, you eliminate human agency altogether, what do you have but nameless
occurring, for which nobody is responsible in the least?

ME:
5) Because Habermas has no insight into _alaetheia_, he also cannot follow
Heidegger=C6s thinking beyond _SuZ_. In reading SuZ, Habermas can at least
understand Dasein as a sort-of subject. Once Heidegger dispenses with the
preludium of a Daseinsanalytik, he becomes totally incomprehensible to
Habermas.
...
So the late Heidegger is for Habermas
a preacher of blind submission to destiny. Habermas gets nervous at the idea
that there could be something happening which is not in the hands of
subjects.

AK:
There is a difference between subjectless happening and happening that is
not quite in the hands of subjects. It is only the first one that Habermas
cannot accept. What he gets nervous about is throwing your hands up
altogether and surrendering in the face of metaphysics of subjectivity or
the merciless march of instrumental rationality.

***

But this list is not about Habermas, so I won't go any deeper into that,
given that this is already way too long. What I've tried to do is show that
his critique, while polemical and one-sided, as Michael has pointed out,
does raise some questions that cannot be simply waived away by calling him
a sociologist or by stereotypical insults at his theory. I hope to take up
some of them with regard to the recently discussed Koinon passage in the
next couple of days. I wish to contribute to making the Nazi thread go away.


Antti



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