>Talk to me about consent.
>It's got to be a valid concept hasn't it, somehow detachable from this public
>sphere consensus model?
>
>Valid in relation to what? We need, first, to disengage consensus in the
>public
>sphere from the more hermeneutic notion of mutual agreement / understanding.
>They are related but the dynamics are different (I can only suspect). Two
>people can agree about what to make for dinner, but this isn't of the same
>quality as hammering out social policy.
exactly, and so far as i can see consensus can't be consensus when it is social policy -- it's got to be something else where non-consent is implied, otherwise laws etc policy and so on would be unnecessary. (there's a but... of course, but I'll read the rest of your post)
>Public Sphere Consensus
>
>The aim of consensus is to establish the legitimacy of certain norms,
>which are
>then "translated" by a judiciary which is then "translated" again into
>administrative power. This is the predominant democratic model (or so they
>tell
>me). Analytically, we need to think about the notion of consensus. Does it
>spring from the logic of language-use itself (the context immanent /
>transcending aspect of speaking with one another oriented by the attempt to
>understand)
consent is agreement to something previously proposed (ie by another) so how can it be about the attempt to understand. laws certainly are not about an attempt to understand. (and yet...)
>or is it a shared presupposed value (we agree that consensus,
>regardless of anything else, is a mutually shared moral or ethical principle)
>or is it simply the minimal condition of justice (without consensus, there
>is no justice) ... or... whatever.
but it can't be shared or ethical in that sense when it is consented to, because that's the position of agreeing with an earlier position, if you see what i mean
>Here we have the three predominant "ethical" democratic theories:
>deliberative
>democracy (Habermas, Benhabib); good life communitarianism (Tayler, Heller);
>theory of justice liberalism (Rawls).
so it means something very different though to take an ethical theory which does not presuppose a form of democracy to the contentions of 'deliberative (positively ethical, yes, isn't that the claim, the good society and all that) democracy'.
>I should point out that all three of
>these rest on an identical 'moral' premise: that ethics is about something
>GOOD
>and, in that, is all rather pro-Hegelian (ethical community as an argument,
>ethical community as shared ethos, ethical community as just) and
>anti-Kantian
>(my reading of Kant is based on Lacan, which disavows any good prior to the
>moral law - which all three of these positions, invariably, end up
>presupposing).
yes of course ethical doesn't mean good i wouldn't do hegel-lacan (aren't you shocked) and levinas is out, all those moral premises before knowledge [i do actually think benhabib says some interesting things although it is of course habermasian] what about foucault's version of ethos?
> > Not legislation about consent I guess, but an ethical conception of
> consent?
>
>Mutual Understanding
>
>Ethical concept of consent. Again, this really depends on how we understand
>ethics and consent. What is ethics? For most of the position outlined above,
>ethics revolves around some notion of morality that we attempt to align
>ourselves with through a kind of praxis.
ok by ethics in general i would mean a relation to the other, relations with others, and practices of enacting relations with others -- so ethics can be really fucked, they don't have to be good for anyone. but then there's positive ethical practices, desirable ethical practices, from of course specific positions. my question is about what's desirable because you can't talk about ethics in the 'public sphere' without engaging that claim that they should be 'good for...' X [the good society]
>Consensus, in this model, is the
>underlying moral principle which grounds, somehow, all of our efforts. The
>aim
>here is to be ethical: to live consensually with others. Problems that occur
>can be objective (no room big enough for everyone or not enough time) or
>intersubjective (deception, fraud, misunderstanding) or subjective
>(idiosyncraticies).
how about the impossibility of consent as shared at all, i guess that's where i am it has to be something else, not 'shared' not consensus
>However, Lacan offers another reading of ethics: ethics as a viewpoint
>from the
>perspective of evil. This is compounded with his notion that understanding
>involves a moment of transference - when we "assume the subject to know."
yes i've read that but isn't it foundationally hierarchical insofar as it attaches to that subject presumed to know? ie. him, and people in comparable positions
>Coincidentally, this is also something Albrecht Wellmer raises against
>Gadamer,
>Habermas and Apel. Wellmer argues that in any understanding there is a "blind
>spot" - a point at which we give up and simply agree.
I don't know Wellmer -- give up because we have to agree? force? discipline? give up for some other reason? give up for love?
>So Wellmer's critique of
>Habermas here is in alignment with Lacan's notion of transference. In both
>Wellmer and Lacan: consensus is not so much an 'ethical ending point' like a
>bus stop, rather, a point at which we stop talking with one another.
that's actually very interesting but it doesn't sound very lacanian to me, not put that way
>The
>ethical emerges here in the sense that consensus is read not to be justice,
>goodness or legitimacy, rather, it is a state of radical evil - where we
>"choose" (in retrospect) to cut off dialogue and simply assume we agree (this
>would be Lacan's formulation, not Wellmer's).
that sounds like Lacan. I think there's a difference in those points which you're seeing as continuous. something like if a law tells me something is a matter of 'shared' understanding, consensus, then i am not called on to speak to or even of it, in fact i'm positioned as not needing to speak of it unless i want to interrupt the consensus. yes, that is what i think. but the idea that radical evil is (what?) deployed (?) is the ground of (?) some agential choice to refuse dialogue -- i don't get that. who makes such a choice? who is authorised to?
>In Lacanian terms: consensus is
>the product of "giving up on our desire" - the product of which is guilt. In
>contrast to Habermas's "guilt-free" consensus, Lacan might have argued that
>precisely when we agree we are in the most danger of being authoritarian.
i think you've lost me, at least on the question of why consensus is giving up desire but obviously this matters to me, so... do you really believe that in relation to that old public sphere, why was my/your/his desire at issue anyway?
> > I think I mean -- can you have consent without contract? I concede the
>'consent to...' of consent bothers me then, as well as its articulation in
>terms of majority. But don't you/we/someone have to be responsive to the
>ethical imperative that people be allowed to consent or withhold consent? Ah
>then that bothers me too, it's always this dichotomy isn't it. Consent is
>really about not consenting...
>
>The notion of consenting to something is the idea of submission, isn't it?
Yes. Exactly.
>In
>submission we can think about Hegel's S/M dialectic - the tragic irony of the
>aim of dialogue, mutual recognition, is foiled by subjecting ones
>consciousness
>to the will of another, which results in the will of the Other being
>placed in
>an impossible situation: structurally unable to receive the recongition that
>they desire. Ah... spirals spirals...
so why think of consent -- of what i would want from consent (recognition, or the attempt to...) -- in terms of consensus at all in terms of 'consent'. there must be some other way.
> > I know I know I failed to do my teaching Zizek report and all, but I'm
>feeling so confused about all this, I'd love to talk about it without the
>demand not to sound confused.
>
>"True thoughts are only those which do not understand themselves." - Teddie
>
> > Tell me something Lacanian about it all so I can disagree.
>
>When we understand, we only understand our fantasies.
oh good. that's bullshit. thanks ken.
catherine