> 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