Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 22:56:57 +0000
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: re: intersubjectivity & such


In message <231A8BB15DE-AT-dodo.jyu.fi>, Jukka Laari <jlaari-AT-dodo.jyu.fi>
writes
>So, concept of intersubjectivity. First, basically we should keep in
>mind the difference(s) between it and that of social, though this
>difference isn't at the moment the most urgent task.

I agree that this is a very important distinction. Indeed I would say
that not all societies are intersubjectivities, because humans are not
always subjects, nor especially are they subjects in a relation of
mutual distrust. 
>Thirdly, it's not an empirical question, but conceptual and logical
>one; not for example about capitalism, but about all "possible
>worlds", in a sense. That is, it's related to basics of any theory. 

Here I must part company. I agree that the theory is expressed as if
intersubjectivity were not 'about capitalism', but about 'all "possible
worlds"', but I reject that claim. First because any theory that is
suitably abstract as to embrace all possible worlds is not much use.
Like a spanner that is so wide it fits all nuts, it does not engage with
any of them. Second, because I read the theory differently, as
purporting to be a theory of mankind as such, but actually reposing
conditions of capitalist society as universal human conditions, namely
the mutual distrust, hostility but also interdependency that is
characteristic of market relations. In situating these characteristics
in all possible worlds, the possibility of overcoming this mutual
antagonsim (read market relations) is closed. Like all civil society
theories, every tradition is open to criticism, except civil society
itself.
>
>Let's say that we are asking some basic epistemological question about
>knowing. Rather, about the conditions of cognition in general. And as
>epistemologies teach us, there's subject and object of knowing
>relationship. The problem concerns the subjective side, of course -
>world is there despite the subject. The point, however, doesn't
>concern epistemology as such, but rather is ontological one concerning
>the subject, any human being as a subject: how this subject is
>possible? And not only as subject of cognition and knowing, but also
>as subject of action. 
>
>No empirical answer is allowed because that would lead to nasty
>logical problems. That's so because we are looking for universal and
>necessary (purely logical) condition(s) of subject, whose one
>characteristic is being a subject of knowing. If we refer results of
>scientific research, then we enter one ugly problem: empirical
>knowledge cannot fulfill the criteria of universality and necessity,
>because it's contingent, as they say, probabilistic only. Besides, if
>we are going to justify or ground - that is, to give the condition of
>possibility of - the experience we have to avoid all references to
>experience, otherwise we enter 'circulus vitiosus' (don't know what
>it's in English), evil circle that throws us between two moments for
>eternity: ego grounds itself in reference to knowledge based on
>experience that was supposed to be justified by the grounding
>operation. Circle with no way out. So the answer must be
>philosophical, "pure, logical construction". 

I think this philosophical reasoning is self-serving. It is not true
that the question of subjectivity is nto empirical. Humans have not
always been persons, individuals free to make their own decisions. So we
can put a date on the end of servitude in Russia, the emancipation of
the slaves in the United States, the guaranteeing of voting rights for
American blacks, the guaranteeing of civil rights for American Blacks,
the abolition of the slave trade in Britain, the recognition of the
rights of married woman to own and dispose of property outside of their
husband's, the extension of voting rights to artisan's and non-property
owners, the recognition of the rights of workers to association.

Clearly the question of the individual subject is historical, empirical
and yes, contingent. Your point seems to be that it would be intolerable
to base subjectivity upon contingent historical circumstances. I don't
see why. I find it intolerable that they should be seen as
transhistorical, or logically necessary, because in the narrow sense of
mutually hostile subjects, I think these are social conditions that one
needs to go beyond.

Rob wrote:

"I suspect that particular problem emanates from Habermas's focus on
language.  As he says, language 'presents inalienably individual aspects
in unavoidably general categories'.

"But then Marx focuses on labour.  Clearly, under capitalism, one is
alienated from and by his/her labour.  Am I being dense (again) when I
ask if labour too must *always* present 'inalienably individual aspects
in unavoidably general categories'?"

Which I think is a useful distinction. Though, like a dog with a bone, I
could insist that what Habermas thinks he sees in language is only a
projection of the social conditions of his day. Giambattista Vico
presents some striking evidence of the historicity of personality and
language in his renaissance masterpiece The New Science. Such as, for
example the intelligence that 'Homer' was not a single individual, but a
generic name for the blind singer, a name that served for scores of
'Homers' each of whom gave their own twist to the epic songs, and each
of whom were indistinguishable in the eyes of their compatriots.
Similarly Vico analyses the poetic imagination of early men, who used
the metaphorical language of ideogrammatic writing. I wonder if these
inscriptions 'present inalienably individual aspects in unavoidably
general categories' - I suspect not.

On labour, it should be remarked that Marx uses a dual concept:
work/labour. Work is an everpresent condition of human existence, anbd
as such an abstract, transhistorical category. Labour, by contrast, by
dint of its very generality, is work under capitalism, that produces not
only use values, but also exchange values. Marx looks forward to the
abolition of the latter but only the curtailment of the former.

Farternally
-- 
James Heartfield


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