To your question:
>>Or, is it
>>because you assume that language is a universal human attribute and
>>therefore incomprehension would be synonymous with a slight against one's
>>'humanity'?
I wrote:
>>Well -- derision of one's own intellect has its uses. I haven't been here
>>long enough to speak to this instance of it, but there's a kind of aw
>>shucks guilelessness that (1) - can make hard-hitting assertions without
>>alienating the opposition, (2) - has a hedge to hide behind when necessary,
>>and (3) - plays the clown to make it easier for the audience to examine
>>their own convictions, which is like 2 only different.
(BTW, I (thought I) meant to say "which is like 1 only different".)
You answered:
>Yes, perhaps all of the above at different times, and not always in the
>same measure. But Rob and I have done this dance between humanism and
>antihumanism many a time, which seemed to me to lead to the second
>question. I think Rob, too, understood the reference on this occassion,
>since he replied with:
>
>>Language is a universal human attribute for me, yeah. I reckon a human
>>agent is one with the potential to participate in a speech community, such
>>that said human might join in the business of negotiating the truth and/or
>>falsity of statements of concern to the community as a whole. I reckon
>>(agreeing with ol' Jurgen the whole way) we essentially must presuppose the
>>'ideal speech situation' in our practice - thus we must open ourselves to
>>questions concerning the truth and acceptability in and of our speech acts.
>>This ideal, and our implicit commitment to it, seems inescapably 'there' in
>>any social organisation aspiring to democratic legitimacy, I reckon.
And I'm going, Hmm. I suspect we come from very different places on this one. Rob's response seems to me to be about the importance of not leaving your body behind when you speak. By which I mean that the point I take from this (though it may be my point and not Rob's at all) is that, presupposing an ideal speech situation, mostly we won't live up to it, by very virtue of the fact that it's ideal -- because we're not.
Ref. the question I asked of your "and therefore" (see below): in this context it is not a self-slight to apologize in advance for the likelihood that one will not speak accurately, acceptably. Rather it is the gesture we must all make every time we speak, before speaking, or we should be guilty of a kind of hybris. In a sense it is the proudest gesture we can make if we allow as how we're human, if we both rejoice in and agree to the limitations of our humanity.
But I step into a long stream of discussion and am therefore likely to misunderstand.
Joanna
------------------
>You also wrote:
>
>
>>Your second question I find completely puzzling. If lack of understanding
>>is "inhuman" (because language is a universal human attribute), then those
>>who deride their own intellect are also calling themselves less than human.
>> Or? I must be missing something.
>
>
>I think Rob more or less answers 'yes', but in the sense that he approaches
>moments of opacity as obstacles to the 'ideal speech situation' he assumes
>to be _predicated_ by "humanity" and "human agent", whose predication is
>not to be rendered problematic -- or politicised -- by those moments of
>opacity or regarded as anything other than A Bad Thing (in this case, the
>perception of a slight). Rob regards antihumanism as the end of politics,
>I regard it as a beginning -- we disagree.
www.overlookhouse.com