>a socialist humanism would lay claim
>to the future as the unfolding of what we have always been *essentially*,
>which if one is a workerist of any stripe, comes down to 'being a worker'.
I happily wear a tag of which I wasn't aware (ta): practical humanist. I think I am bound to posit a essential human, whose essence may come more to the fore as relations transform. Being practical (in this respect at least), I admit we'd have to be wary of declaring the details of this essence, of ever being able to say 'there: that's a bit of essence coming out!'. Essence is what freedom allows us to express and freedom is that which allows our essence to express itself. Problematic in the extreme, but I find I have to hang on to it, circular as it is.
> ... the
>theoretical humanist, perhaps the humanist who's neat definitions of what
>it means to be human are given institutional form, allowed to become
>abstract ideals imposed upon the world, is the one to look out for in my
>view.
And here we meet the problem of grey theory meeting green reality head-on. I guess the practical person has to attend to the conditions and procedures by which institutions (which are, I submit, logically inevitable - enabling as they are potentially constraining) are constructed, reproduced and transformed. I reckon this is the point that got Habermas going.
>as for the question of agency, me thinks that is a question of
>process (of class composition, say) rather than subject as already-given,
>whether that be as origin or end of any strategy or programme.
A dialectic between our unknown essence and the world as we currently have it?
>"The democracy to come obliges one to challenge instituted
>law in the name of an indefinitely unsatisfied justice, thereby revealing
>the injustice of calculating justice whether this be in the name of a
>particular form of democracy or of the concept of humanity."
Again, the practical question is how what is just is determined; how it may address itself to the particular, and how its potential for stasis in a changing world may be obviated. Habermas again?
Anyway, a very helpful post, Ange. Ta, Rob.