>I'm quite shocked that you agree with
>"ol' Jurgen" here: "we essentially must presuppose the ideal speech situation
>in our practice." Most Habermasians swallow the performative contradiction /
>"transcendence within" argument... but it has *serious* problems -
>politically,
>logically, and theoretically. First, Habermas begs the question to get to
>his
>argument. The validity of reconstructive sciences is based on the
>validity of
>three separate "value spheres" distinguished by communicative actions.
>Communicative actions, then, are validated on the basis of reconstructive
>sciences (yes, it's all in TCA Vol 1 & 2)(I'm giving you the conclusion, not
>the argument). So, to avoid a vicious circle, which would render his theory
>trivial from the standpoint of universality, he *translates* the idea of
>subjectivity into language.
I'm saying the speaking of language is a procedure undertaken (inevitably and definitively) within a complex of normative commitments. A commitment to democracy is a commitment to argument which is a commitment to making propositions and questioning them such that mutual understanding, and hence the possibility of agreement (as to what would be most 'right' there and then), might be reached on matters of mutual concern. So Habermas reckons you start (conceptually) with 'the lifeworld', in and through which norms assert themselves in terms of making certain questions germaine and making one argument 'righter' than another (didn't Marx say something about how we only ask and answer the questions any particular historical context allows/demands?). So Habermas's universalism is not, say, Bacon's universalism; it's much more modest than that. It's a claim he makes for the *procedure* through which generalisable interests (ie those we refer to as issues of justice) might be agreed upon such that coordinated action might enshrine the ensuing transformation. Language is the mode of *intersubjectivity* - not subjectivity - (and I suspect Habermas defines reason as intersubjectivity, too). Hence:
"If we want to stop settling elementary normative questions of collective life through direct or concealed violence, through coercion, through the exertion of influence, or through the power of the stronger interest, and instead convince others without violence through rationally motivated understanding, then we must concentrate on the range of questions which are accessible to impartial assessment. We should not expect a generally valid answer when we ask what is good for me, or good for us, or good for them; 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]
>In other words, when Benhabib criticizes Habermas
>for upholding a model of the "generalized other" - which is a definitional
>identity - Habermas' response is this: Yeah, that's the point! As he
>notes in
>TCA vol 1, all affectivity must be eliminated in discursive procedures, there
>is no room for irony, play whatever. Furthermore, he makes a razor sharp
>distinction between the just and the good. The good *is* the affective
>elements of what it means to be human - what Agnes Heller calls the "romantic
>elements of Marx" (who charges Habermas with this: "Habermasian man has no
>body, no feelings...")(Habermas and Marxism, in Habermas: Debates). So, as a
>result of all this fiddling, Habermas's "subject" is language (worse,
>Habermas' model of cognitive development is teleological - there is only ONE
>kind of competent subject)(see Stella Gaon, Review of Politics, "Pluralizing
>Universal 'Man.'" To add to this, he obliderates the Freudian
>unconscious in this reinterpretation of psychoanalysis (knowledge and human
>interests). For Habermas, the uncs *is* language, distorted language. In
>other
>words, there is no prelinguistic or nonlinguistic reality - it's all language
>in the wrong order. If you don't much like Lacan ("the uncs is struc like a
>lang") then you should really hate Habermas who is far more of a
>fundamentalist
>about this.
I've actually read Benhabib's criticisms (Fraser and McCulloch argue similarly from feminist perspectives, if memory serves). 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)
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?
>However, this may or may not directly speak to the idea of "transcendence
>within" (ideal speech situation). To address you point directly - Albrecht
>Wellmer has a fantastic article about this in his book Endgames.
>Basically, it
>isn't *universal idealizations* that are present in language (which, to be
>honest, is just weird - EVERYONE EVERYWHERE THROUGHOUT ALL TIME MAKES AN
>IDENTICAL INTUITIVE PRESSUPOSITION? Come on).
As the big fella said: Sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es. Not in our private strategic/instrumentalist endeavours, perhaps, but I find it hard to believe a language has ever existed in which the facility to propose, disagree, request explanations, request evidence, interrogate propriety etc has been absent. Regardless of particular power structures, the fact (I'm feeling a little bold today) that you have no society without some such cohering thing is to be considered. Power is a socially constructeed/endowed thing (ie it has to be sensible in terms of the lifeworld) even more than it is often a coercively perpetuated or strategically deployed thing.
>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?
>The up side, this makes good sense. The down side, it is
>more difficult to establish a universalist moral theory from this. I'm
>really
>cutting the arguments down here - only conclusions, stuff for thought
>(as my friend Stephan once phrased it while talking about Levi-Strauss,
>"thinking is good to eat").
"What does universalism mean, after all? That one relativizes one's own way of life with regard to the legitimate claims of others, with all their idiosyncracies and incomprehensibilities, the same rights as oneself, that one does not insist on universalizing one's own identity, that one does not simply exclude that which deviates from it, that the areas of tolerance must become infinitely broader than they are today -- moral universalism means all those things. (ibid p240)
>Actually, on another note, I was quite surprised to read that you accept
>Habermas's argument here - esp. when you had spoken so glowingly about
>Postone's book. Postone's argument isn't incongruent with the one I'm making
>here. Basically, Postone is arguing that labour must be considered when
>looking at language use. Ie. labour, work and so on affect how we use
>language
>- in other words - labour serves as part of the performative ground of
>linguistic utterances. Postone is preserving (at least as far as I
>understand
>him) those romantic elements of Marx that Habermas liquidates for the sake of
>univerality.
No, Postone (hardly a romanticist, I'd've thought) thinks Habermas made that distinction of his between 'labour' and 'interaction' (KHI ch2) because the latter saw the primacy of the 'labour' category as a trap (how do we transcend instrumentalist hegemony within the realm of instrumentalism). But, says Postone, Marx does not mean concrete labour on its own at all. He means 'abstract' labour, too - the DNA of capitalism - the stuff of relations under capitalism - and consequently a mediating constituent of communication wherever such relations pertain. For one thing, we have been homo laborens since the Rift Valley - and will ever be - so Postone sees no historical theory in Habermas. Fair enough. For another (albeit, relatedly), reality changes as our sensuous activity changes as reality changes, so the complex of our relations - to self, other and environment - get realigned. If we follow Habermas in removing our communication ('interaction') from the labour category - we have no historical dynamic within our communication - yet it is within this category Habermas sees our emancipation-to-come! Fine.
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?
Sez Angela:
>I've been thinking about Habermas a little more, and I can't help but think
>his stuff is really tied to the post-war west german experience of the
>police state and the terrorist corollary, hence H's assumption of the
>figure of 'democracy' as the indisputable terrain of rhetorical legitimation,
>as a simultaneous move both against and around terrorism, the CD machinery
>and
>east german 'totalitarianism'.
I reckon you're right. But you're not the sort of person to delegitimise democracy, are you, Ange? You and I share that particular normative commitment, don't we?
Responds Ken to Ange:
>This might well be the case, but it doesn't confront his argument (I'm
>assuming you know this, which is why I'm tried to flesh this comment out
>above). It's more like an ad hoc explanation.
Quite right, Ken.
>Although if we follow Wellmer
>here, then this certainly makes more sense. Habermas' reading of language
>comes out of a certain democratic imaginary, a democratic ethos which upholds
>specific historically conditioned ideals - imaginary in the Castoriadisian
>sense (I think a more powerful critique can be made from a Lacanian
>perspective, via Zizek, but I know that Rob thinks this is bunko, so I'll
>keep
>to Castoriadis, Wellmer, Heller, Benhabib, and Postone here).
Er, aren't *all* ideals historically conditioned, then? We're in the lifeworld du-juour. We ask questions, assume values, and voice aspirations accordingly. I can live with that. I mean, no-one's ever lived outside a lifeworld, have they? Habermas not only recognises this, he bases his dicourse ethics firmly upon it.
Avers Ange:
>> For instance, wasn't the Battle over Seattle within the left in many ways
>about the ways in which the 'demos' is being delimited through the figure of
>those rule-breaking anarchists; or isn't much of the pain and flame of e-list
>discussions a feature of the assumption that the other speak 'the same
>language' (must perforce ask the same questions, etc) as a matter of course;
In the terms that concern Habermas, we do assume this, Ange. We'd not be here if we didn't. We're socialised beings voluntarily coming together such that we are at once 'generalisable' (we all have to get on enough to cop what benefits we seek from the list, and we've nothing but norms to do it with) and 'individualisable' (I do think Lacan is a wanker and I don't trust the veracity and democratic utility of Derrida's theory, and want to test my theories).
" ...[I]n modernity, the plurality of individual life-projects and collective life-forms cannot be prejudged philosophically, because ways of living are handed over to the responsibility of socialized individuals themselves, and can only be assessed from the standpoint of a participant, the element which can convince *everyone* is narrowed down to the *procedure* of rational will-formation intself. (ibid p248)
Ange goes on:
>isn't australian politics more amenable to a discussion of representation and
>violence when we come to thinking about, say, the ways in which Howard stands
>up to give his Invasion Day address and announces a new round of dole-bludger
>floggings?
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?
You may read the texts, identify their implicit metaphysical self-legitimations (as Shakespeares Hamlet took our godly selves down a notch at 2:2), binaries (eg. undone by pricking the Merchant of Venice), absences ('Shakespeare's sister' comes to mind) and hierarchies (Timon of Athens on the rule of gold) as much as you like without Derrida. You may speculate on matters of polysemy and contingent meanings (Ophelia seeking the play's meaning, Pollonius misinterpreting Hamlet, and us still wondering whether H was nuts or not) all you like. All Derrida adds is that, having deconstructed, you may not reconstruct (mebbe that's not so new either - Hamlet constantly wastes his time asking questions without answers, misses his best chance to top Claudius, kills the wrong baddie, misses what is signified by Laertes's final ambivalent signifiers, and ends up as one of a legion of non-linguistically-killed people).
>The irony of all of this is the, if one follows my reasoning, then Judith
>Butler and Habermas are two sides of the same coin. Habermas reduces the
>idea
>of subjectivity to language, by liquidating the Freudian uncs, and Butler
>does
>the same thing, she opts for transgressive politics and, in doing so,
>splinters the imaginary and equates it with the fragmentation in the symbolic
>(in other words, she reduces the Freudian uncs to language as well). While
>Habermas works with consensus, Butler works with transgression of norms.
>They're both in the same situation from opposite ends. This isn't good news
>for modernists who like Habemas and don't like Butler, likewise, its bad news
>for those who don't like modernism in favor of postmodernism. I am amused
>by the paradox.
Habermas's critical yardstick (discourse ethics) still make some useful sense to me even though his theory ignores history - society is based on norms, whether they are circumscribed and constantly transformed by the relations of production or not. As I think they are, I don't see the emancipatory project as doable within the realm of communicative action alone. That's where I take my leave of him. Still, I reckon something of use remains. Does this departure leave anything at all of Butler's transgressive politics? I mean, is there much of use in Butler beyond the idealist, ahistorical exhortations to the individual to 'abandon the discursive binary of normative gender'?
>PS. I've put all of this in an article and submitted it to Critical
>Horizons,
>a new Austrialia journal.
Good luck with it! (er - I meant that quite sincerely, btw).