Nervous reply to Rob

[kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2000 12:15:36 -0500 Rob Schaap <rws at comserver.canberra.edu.au> 
wrote:

> I'm saying the speaking of language is a procedure undertaken (inevitably
and definitively) within a complex of normative commitments.

How is it that speaking is procedural?  Yes, I agree that speaking takes place 
within a complex of normative commitments, I disagree, however, that discursive 
procedures (the force of the better argument) lends itself to impartiality.  In 
other words, what I disagree with is the separation entailed in universalizing 
discourses of the good and the just - because the meaningfulness of procedures
themselves *is* a private good.  So a procedure that distinguishes, "with a 
razor sharp" indifference, between the good and the just yet relies on a good 
to do so is logically incoherent.  Habermas must accomplish materialistically 
what Kant failed to do transcendentally, he must demonstrate that the form of 
the law [the principle of (U)] has no other goods before it.  Habermas assumes 
what he should be trying to prove.  Namely, he assumes that a procedural form 
of rationality itself is a good.  My argument against this is that this 
requires postulations that require a good that is presupposed (reason), which 
is intolerable in Habermas for structural reasons.  He's on the horns of a 
dilemma, either he must admit that (U) is a (private) good, which makes his 
ethics relativistic or he must admit that (U) is conditional, which makes it 
trivial in a philosophical sense.  Habermas seems to be aware of this which is 
why he tries to eliminate all affective dimensions of speech - and he goes at 
great lengths to do so - first, he liquidates the uncs (Knowledge and Human 
Interests), second, he grants conceptual priority to communicative vs. 
strategic actions (when he argues that all communication is parasitic on 
communicative relations).  What he accomplishes here is a translation of 
subjectivity *into* language.  The subject becomes language.  This is the only 
way Habermas can defend (U) coherently.  However, by doing so, he equates 
subjectivity with substance.  The subject is, in Habermas, pure cognition - 
which ignores contingency (embeddedness).  By doing so, Habermas aggravates the 
problem - because he needs a leg to stand on in the material world, but at the 
same time he wants to negate the implications of such contingency.  In short, 
we live in all three value spheres simultaneously, and their separation entails 
an alientation.  In order for moral phenomenon to be moral, an aesthetic 
dimension (at least) is required.  But this dimension is denied for the sake of 
theoretical integrity at the postconventional level.... 

> Language is the mode of *intersubjectivity* - not subjectivity - (and I 
suspect Habermas defines reason as intersubjectivity, too).

Sure, it might be reasonable to act in a consensual manner, but Habermas can't 
establish the claim between rationality and morality without presupposing that 
the form of reason itself is moral.  Habermas runs into the same problem that 
Kant runs into - that the form of reason itself is a moral form.  It isn't 
logically coherent to simply assume that both are identical.  Ultimately, 
Habermas appeals to a kind of biological utopianism - something to the effect 
that our human biology possesses within itself a utopian horizon - what 
Castoriadis calls "an enormous logical blunder."

Quoting Habermas you wrote: "we must rather ask: what is *equally good for 
all*? This 'moral point of view' constitutes a sharp but narrow spotlight, 
which selects from the mass of evaluative questions those action-related 
conflicts which can be resolved with reference to a generalizable
interest: these are questions of justice." (*Autonomy and Solidarity* p248]

The problem is this: what is equally good for all (justice) is a private good, 
relying on a specific culturally contingent social imaginary. 

> I've actually read Benhabib's criticisms (Fraser and McCulloch argue
similarly from feminist perspectives, if memory serves).

Fraser argues against Benhabib, something to the effect of, "Benhabib's theory 
wraps intersubjective relations too tightly" - the effect being that it 
entwines moral and ethical questions so close that living together would be 
impossible.  Fraser argues for a further separation of the ethical and the 
moral, higher degress of abastraction for the purpose of creating distance 
between subjects.

> I don't get it at all.  For one thing, a generalisable other has to be 
assumed in *any* process whereby people come together to select "from the mass 
of evaluative questions those action-related conflicts which can be resolved 
with reference to a generalizable interest ... questions of justice".  But
Habermas's 'generalisable other' has a role *only* in that instance:  " ...
the element which can convince *everyone* is narrowed down to the *procedure* 
of rational will-formation itself."  (same page)  and  "After all, we 
anticipate that the pluralism of life-forms and the individualism of lifestyles 
would increase at an exponential rate in a society which deserves the name 
socialist."  (p173)

Unfortunately, in Habermas all generalized others are identical.  So it is no 
small wonder that a generalized perspective lends itself to consensus.  If 
everyone in the room is the same, it isn't difficult to conclude that they'll 
reach a consensus on any given issue.  It's like Disney, "We're all the same 
inside."  Castoriadis argues that this idea is the "ethicists' new clothes" - a 
public display of a private morality.

> For another thing: Habermas needn't throw out pre/non-linguistic reality at
all!  We need accept only that we do our social self-organising through
language.  Reality is always our sensuous activity for a Marxian materialist, 
and Habermas's subjects/lifeworld/normative commitments may be assumed to be 
engaged in this reality, no?  I mean, why not?  How would it undo his argument?

For Habermas, discursive procedures lift themselves up out of the lifeworld 
into a forum of "good reasons."  Jay Bernstein notes that this gesture, the 
very attempt to do so, would render life, moral life, completely alien to the 
subject.  So, if you actually make it to the highest level of cognitive 
development, you would not longer recognize yourself.

> >Rather, when we use langauge we make PERFORMATIVE idealizations.  We draw
from our local linguistic structures, ideals and so on.

> That'd be the lifeworld upon which Habermas bases his whole project,
wouldn't it?  Language is always spoken within (even if it may sometimes be
spoken in interrogation of some element of) the lifeworld.  I still don't
see that we have a necessary either/or when it comes to H on language and H
on lifeworld.  They rather need each other, don't they?

Yes, in the lifeworld, the world from which we draw meaing and coherence, is 
the place where our ideals are performatively enacted.  However, Habermas 
argues that deep down, there is one ideal that counts as coinciding 
with the universal.  This idea is mutual understanding.  From this, Habermas 
derives his moral theory.  My point is that this ideal only appears moral from 
a certain perspective.  And that Habermas has no good grounds to argue that 
this perspective is a universal perspective.

> Postone sees no historical theory in Habermas.  Fair enough.

Habermas doesn't need a historical theory.  His analysis is, self-proclaimedly, 
"quasi-transcendental."  Habermas would respond affirmatively to the suggestion 
taht his theory isn't historical - in the sense that the ideal speech situation 
isn't historical (I'm sorry, I'm not supposed to use that term any more.... the 
"transcendence within" speech acts isn't historical).

> So?  Can't I subscribe to Marx's materialist conception of history (or
rather, my rudimentary grasp thereof) and yet maintain that communicative
action is a tenable (I'd say self-evident) universal human potential
(because we live together, inter alia, in language) with the critical
capacity to highlight the contradiction between high capitalism and
democracy, and inform projects to approximate the latter?

Sure, you can maintain this.  But I'll ask you this:

What makes communicative actions moral? (as opposed to instrumental actions). 
Why should I be communicative? (wouldn't I be just as moral if I treated 
everyone instrumentally?)

> Er, aren't *all* ideals historically conditioned, then?

One would think so.  But not with Habermas, communicative ideals are not 
historically conditioned.  They transcend their context in the sense that this 
transcendence stems from within the very act of trying to communicate with 
someone about something.

> I don't need bloody Derrida to do that.  Neither do you.  As at least Brad
now joins me in asking, what exactly does Derrida bring to these topics?

The idea of impossibility, the idea that the signifier relies on a radical 
rhetorical gesture (the difference between rhetoric and truth, in Derrida, 
falls within the field of rhetoric itself - in other words, truth comes out of 
rhetoric - which illustrates an imaginary foundation of sorts for truth as 
true).  Of course, the Lacanian criticism of Derrida is worth noting. It isn't 
that the signifier is caught in a rhetorically split matrix - the point not to 
be missed is the Hegelian idea that the signifier itself is the form of a 
split. "Morality is morality."  Morality, the first one, is the general form, 
and the second, the negation of all possible predicates of the first.  In 
effect, when one says, "morality is morality" it is another way of saying 
"morality does not exist" outside of itself.  In other words, it is nothing, No 
Thing - ie. it is the quilting point of any discourse - the final destination 
of a matrix of signifiers.  I'd say this is a nifty contribution, even if 
Derrida makes you puke.  Derrida's problem is that he is only interested in 
rhetoric, and makes very little contributions to its content.  Which is fine.  
Why should Derrida feel obligated to examine anything? (which is why Spectres 
of Marx is his most pathetic book).

ken