>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).
ken the problem with this is that you are confusing his use of weber's methodology--ideal typifications--with claims about how the world actually is. and before you get your latex shorts in a knot, please read frank hearn's _the dialectical uses of ideal types_.
to speak theoretically necessarily means that we must clarify the muck, even if we know that it's much more confused and mixed up than that. we have no fucking choice here and you do it all the time yourself by insisting that certain terms mean what they mean and nothing else. similarly, you insist on using a film to teach Locke even though the film is polysemic could easily be used to illustrate a number of competing theoretical frameworks.
as rob says, no one escapes. habermas's hubris is our own.
>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.
no, not as the court of last resort. not at all. habermas repeatedly says that science *cannot* be an arbiter of moral disputes. science can clear some of the underbrush, perhaps. science might be able to tell us that we can control human behavior--say the propensity to rape--among men by administering a certain medication and plan of coercive brutalizing mind control. but science can't tell us whether we should do that. evaluation research on whether life imprisonment or the death penalty is a less costly strategy but it can't tell us which one we *should* opt for. that's why scientific claims must be brought to the public sphere in order to have such conversations. they are had among scientists, to be sure. but rationalizing democratic society would require an expanasion of that process.
>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!
the problem here is that you assume habermas has a unified notion of the lifeworld as necessarily "bad" for us. he doesn't ask that we pull ourselves up out of it and leave it entirely behind. we can't. but we move out of it dialectically and we don't do so once and for all but move back and forth-- they are mutually constitutive. i beg of you to some day read alan wolfe on this in _Whose Keeper_. habermas analyzes these spheres separately but he doesn't want them to ever become absolutely separate from one another. they are mutually constitutive in his theory. but you can and it does no harm to isolate them for ideal typical analysis.
>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.
no it doesn't. we go back to it. eternally and that's what it means to be human and to be free. haven't you read his earlier work on this?
kelley