> humans aren't defined solely by their rights, you wanker.
>From a functional (institutional) perspective, they are. So
human rights define what the legal limits of humankind. This
is a problematic objectification... especially if we consider,
following everyone from Hegel and Adorno to Lacan, Salecl,
Zupancic, and Zizek, that subjectivity is an impossible
representation. The political aim here would be to make room
for human freedom by holding open the political vortex.
> i am FAR more concerned that human beings are defined by
their capacity to be so called rational actors making choices in
the osensibly free fucking market than i am by worries about
rights which no way in hell have to be defined as pre political
in habermas's reformulation. they simply aren't pre-political,
they can never be not political and friggin habermas isn't
defining them as pre-political. they are political.
Habermas "corrects" Kant by identifying the subject as the bearer of a transcendence within language, instead of a transcendental subjectivity. All of the problems in Kant are repeated by Habermas on the linguistic level (Kant postulate God and the immortality of the soul) (Habermas postulates the unlimited communicative community).
> you've conveniently ignored habermas's redefinition of the
categorical imperative.
Not at all! Habermas's redefinition of the categorical imperative has two parts, the principle of discourse (only those things are valid which can be rendered valid in discourse) and the principle of universalization (which makes consensus possible). The problem with (U) is that it terminates the conversation. Once an agreement has been reached, it sinks back into the lifeworld as an authoritarian presupposition. This is why Habermas is a theoretician of perversion. The "rational subject" in discourse *acts* as if they *know.* And this is how the "world of the systems" operate. The operate on the level of "assumed to know" - they operate "as if" there is a consensus. Habermas's critique of this is that such systematic imperatives become detached from the feedback loop that feeds them... and then proceed to colonize the lifeworld. But Habermas's discourse ethics, insofar as it is procedural, actually ends up doing the same thing! What should be forbidden in discourse ethics then, is the final moment - the moment of consensus. But this is precisely what constitutes the universality of his project!!!
Ok ok, so Bernstein assumes relevance here.
> and here we have the fatal blows. every godamn
philosophical theory will be found to be tautological, a
performative contradiction, or paradox. so fugghedaboudit!!!
all a waste of time.
NOOOOO!!! (insert overreaction here). That's just it. It is *never* tautological. Reality is dialectic manifest... the tautology, which is frozen in theory, is compromised in practice. This is what theory itself needs to consider. That every logical tautology is a hypostatization. Hans Joas: the creativity of action... Castoriadis... the imaginary institution....
A tautology in reality is impossible, however a tautological in theory illustrates an ideological moment. Hegel's philosophy of the absolute can be read as a theory of ideology. The absolute is the ideological kernel.
> i want to figure out a way to create spaces where people can
learn to make decisions together and this will help them
shape and strengthen the capacities to run their own lives
together rather than relying on procedural mechanisms like
state and market.
Then why move beyond Gadamer's dialectical ethics of the good?
ken