Only address the bits I could get my sleep-denied old head around, mate ...
>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.
Look, Ken, all I'm saying is that I read Habermas to base everything on the lifeworld. Your categories have nowhere else to come from, to have meaning, to coordinate action or to be a critique. They're the contingent content that Habermas precisely ain't allowing himself to talk about. He's not counterposing the public goods against private goods at all; he's just saying that morality must needs be an issue WITHIN COMMUNICATION - it ain't up for monological grabs, it's definitively something we have to sort out together. He likewise locates freedom IN COMMUNICATION - like Hegel said, freedom is a metaphysical proposition of whatever sort we're content to share, and Habermas is just on about how best to arrive at such (ie valid norms) in light of the fact that it's definitively a common project. That's the rationale, and they're the limits, of 'the generalised other'. I reckon this is simply inescapable!
As Simone Chambers writes:
'The task of a theory of discursive legitimacy is to formalise, clarify, and universalise the unavoidable presupposition that behind every legitimate norm stands a good reason, and in doing so to rationalise the "diffused, fragile, continually revised, only momentarily successful communication" by which we unreflectively renew social norms. In this way we arrive at a fair, rational, and impartial method to reflectively test the legitimacy of a norm.'
It's for you to suggest a fairer and less partial way, isn't it? Yoshie has me thinking about this, mind, and I hope to have something worthy of her post to say after I've spent some claret on it tomorrow.
>> 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.
Maybe he just assumes it IS.
>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."
Need it be 'utopian'? Howzabout the capacity to imagine stuff such as it currently ain't but might be - perhaps even in tandem with a notion of 'better'. We have this, don't we? It's possible we're not the only species who has it, but it's tenable to suspect we need language to think thusly. It seems self-evident that we need language normatively to deploy-and-yet-critique norms with coordinated action as telos.
>The problem is this: what is equally good for all (justice) is a private
>good,
>relying on a specific culturally contingent social imaginary.
Well, it's the specific culturally contingent social imaginary we're in, innit? You do gnaw at a problem, but I'm not ready to even pretend to have anything useful to say on it (yet?).
>Unfortunately, in Habermas all generalized others are identical. So it is no
>small wonder that a generalized perspective lends itself to consensus.
Understanding ain't agreement, I'll admit. But a system of justice we have, nevertheless. And so does everybody else.
>For Habermas, discursive procedures lift themselves up out of the lifeworld
>into a forum of "good reasons."
Doesn't the lifeworld have a hand in determining the goodness of reasons?
>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.
Okay, so mutual understanding is not what we have in mind when we come together to talk about matters of common concern. Is that right?
>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).
Well, the ISS is a critical ideal premised on our a-priori assumption mutual understanding is possible on matters of common concern in the unavoidable situation in which we can only be free and just together. Does he really go further than that? I'm certainly prepared to discover I don't understand Habermas, but I read him as if understanding might ensue - which is the spirit in which I write to you.
>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?)
Nice question, Ken. You're saying Habermas is a Kantian transcendentalist at bottom - the categorical imperative, by which all must be ends in themselves, is at the root of intersubjectivity. I admit you'd have to be a democrat to think that. And I confess accordingly. Put it down to my lifeworld, mate.
> ...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.
Well, isn't the telos of mutual understanding universal insofar as you're aiming at a state of agreement?
>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).
Is it rhetorical to say we aim at mutual understanding when we seek agreement? And is Derrida's claim that truth lies wholly within rhetoric true?
>Derrida's problem is that he is only interested in
>rhetoric, and makes very little contributions to its content.
The paucity of contributions to content used to be a whinge I had about Habermas. But, having seen his content on the Kosovo outrage, I'm now rather glad he kept his gob shut.
>Which is fine.
>Why should Derrida feel obligated to examine anything? (which is why Spectres
>of Marx is his most pathetic book).
He's under no obligation, as I am under none to find him very useful.
Cheers, Rob.