> Look, Ken, all I'm saying is that I read Habermas to base everything on the
lifeworld.
Fair enough. Habermas argues that the lifeworld is the place where people draw their meaning from. It is a place of undifferentiated mulch, where the value spheres (truth [science], rightness [morality and law], truthfulness [art and authenticity]) are all mixed up. When we engage in discourse, we are *morally* obligated to lift ourselves up out of the lifeworld in order to debate. For Habermas, this means that we have to open ourselves up to different perspectives and argue such perspectives with the use of reasons. For Habermas, when we do so, we are acting communicatively and morally.
However, on what grounds does Habermas argue that it is possible to separate out these three spheres. Ultimately, he appeals to an ontological argument - modernity *necessarily* splits reality up into three self-contained sections. Make no mistake, there is no overlap between science, art and law. These spheres are related, in the lifeworld, but become separated based on three different kinds of logic - logic regarding truth (an objective state of affairs), rightness (regarding a shared intersubjective world) and truthfulness (regarding personal subjective experiences).
But this is crucial, absolutely crucial. How does Habermas defend the validity of these three spheres?
He uses science - the reconstructive sciences. In other words, he assumes the validity (of science) to prove the validity (of the three spheres). His argument begs the question. The only way he can get around this is by emphasizing that language raises these three claims in such a way that they can be separated. Furthermore, as I mentioned, Habermas translates subjectivity into language: the subject as substance. He does this because he knows that human beings live in the lifeworld, so the only way he can raise them up out of it is to theorize subjectivity as nothing more than a series of cognitive claims.
He just assumes that human beings can separate them rationally. But that's the problem. There is a complete motivational deficiet in discourse ethics. Why would I alienate myself to participate in a discourse? And why should this alienation be called moral?
There is another problem. How do we know that reason is, first, moral and second, in possession of the capacity to derive ontological conclusions.
The irony of all this: Habermas argues that to back out of this, is a step toward psychosis, schizophrenia, suicide, or monadic isolation. My counterpoint is this: it is only *if* you completely alienate yourself from your lifeword that you risk psychosis!
> 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.
My point is this: 'morality' is not exhausted by communication. Actually, that is the sum total of my point. There is more to morality that language, our bodies, someting "real" (in the Lacanian sense) is on the line - in short, morality is tied up with our enjoyment (which hits us on several different levels - bodily, psychical, and cognitive - simultaneously.
On a side note, I think it's possible to have a moral conversation without ourselves. If we couldn't, we'd never be able to raise a counter-validity claim to begin with.
> 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.
Freedom, for Habermas, is limited to communicative freedom. In other words, his entire model rests on an ideal of undistorted communication. The "ideal" subject would express themself in a completely non-contradictory way. In other words, everything they said would confirm and conform the valid separation of the three spheres. This is what Habermas means by "competent subjects" - a subject that is "undistorted." And there is only one model for this. His.
So, those who argue, like Horkheimer and Adorno, that the three spheres are fused in a mythological way, are, according to Habermas, incompetent subjects.
Here's a short list of incompetent subjects: Foucault Derrida Horkheimer and Adorno Lacan Althusser Butler Castoriadis Heller Bataille Heidegger Nietzsche Marx Marcuse Gilligan
... I could go on.
Here's a list of competent subjects: Kohlberg
And Kohlberg killed himself.
(I'm sorry, that was a completely immature and insenstive cheap shot). The problem is, Habermas is after purity - purity of the three realms. If a screwed up world, the demand for purity (authenticity) is a problem.
> 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.'
If this is the case, I refuse, absolutely, to be moral. This doesn't mean that I won't communicate, but it does mean that I'm not going to give up on my desire, my desire to be completely incompetent - to be truly stupid and enjoy every moment of it. I am... an idiot.
And I liked this: "momentarily successful communication." What does this mean: it means that a consensus has been reached. In other words, successful communication, for Habermas, *terminates* the conversation. I can't imagine a more frustrating definition of communication. Doesn't some French psychoanalyst say something about "never stops being written..." The point, in analysis, is not to end the conversation (which marks a neurotic or psychotic breakdown) but to keep it going, to sustain it. I'd rather keep the conversation going than have it stop short.
> It's for you to suggest a fairer and less partial way, isn't it?
I'm not sure that pointing out that Habermas begs the question obligates me to develop an alternative. However, I've always been partial to anarchy - democracy as regime, not as procedure. In this way, a democracy would be about keeping a space open for public dissent and disapproval, and leaving time to discuss things. All decisions made, during this open ended conversation, should be acknowledged as *partial* solutions. In Kant's language: radical evils.
> >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'?
Habermas calls it utopian. My counterargument is that all utopias require a political scapegoat.
> 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?
Sure, but these are performative idealizations. In other words, our ideals, our utopian horizon, will be wrapped up in a local imaginary.
> 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.
I'm not disputing the importance of language, I'm just pointing out that language doesn't exhaust our moral experience.
> >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.
A particularly jaded system of justice... and we shouldn't forget Young here, justice includes the good life. Even if justice is the bone, enjoyment fills out the skeleton. Without enjoyment, discourse about justice is incoherent (see Renata Salecl's critique of John Rawls in Spoils of Freedom).
> >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?
Not really. All judgement must be made solely on the basis of their reasonability. This requires one to step outside of the lifeworld. What would that be, stage 6 on the Kohlberg scale?
> 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?
Not usually. Half that time we simply want someone to tell us that we're right. Mutual understanding, on my view, signals a failure to communicate. Ever been pissed off when someone has said to you, "I understand what you are saying." We all know damn well that they don't. In other words, they're simply trying to end the conversation because their bored of listening. Ok, I'm being a bit cheeky here.
> 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.
But what about those of us who don't shared mutual understanding as an ideal? Habermas aruges that this isn't possible. I think he's wrong.
> >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.
That's fine. But do we have a moral obligation to be Habermasian? Habermas thinks so. I just can't find the coherence I'm looking for...
> Well, isn't the telos of mutual understanding universal insofar as you're
> aiming at a state of agreement?
Isn't that cool. Mutual understanding (agreement) is the telos of communication insofar as the telos of communication is mutual understanding (agreement). Actually, I can go along with that, because it renders mutual understanding impossible. Mutual understanding *is* mutual understanding. It's a tautology that resists all predicates. In other words, "there is no such thing as mutual understanding" (my last post talked about the Hegelianism of this).
> Is it rhetorical to say we aim at mutual understanding when we seek
agreement?
Yes.
> And is Derrida's claim that truth lies wholly within rhetoric
true?
Only in an emphatic sense, not in an analytic sense. It is true in the sense that language is a lie pretending to be a lie. There is a double negative here, which doesn't result in a positive. Take Lacan's vase example, which he draws, unfortunately, from Heidegger. We create a vase. Then, with this creation, the idea of fullness and emptiness come into existence. The vase is rhetoric, the fullness and emptiness of the vase is truth and falsehood. In other words, the question of fullness or emptiness cannot be addressed outside the existence of the vase. Is it full? It can be. But only within the context of the creation of the vase which sustains both. Can we ask, "Is the vase true?" No, the question is incoherent.
I love the smell of theory in the morning, ken