Kenneth MacKendrick:
> In the primordial Freudian sense, sure. We 'choose' consciousness rather
> than remaining unconscious. Not much of choice if you ask me. But I can see
> it in my minds eye...
Language is often used to obstruct or suppress consciousness. It seems to be what enables people to not only construct lies, but to believe in them and be put to sleep by them. Or more accurately, be turned into zombies or sleepwalkers, able to work in mighty enterprises like General Motors or the Holocaust.
> ...
> >But if Habermas wants to reject this, he must attribute to
> >_ratio_ some sort of divine afflatus which keeps it from going
> >"bad" -- a god.
>
> Nope. Habermas's doesn't want to see the world go to hell, but he
> acknowledges that it can, and that would be the end of the world as we know
> it. So, if that's god, I say it is a pretty pathetic god.
Exactly. Habermas knows that the big, masterful god can get knocked off on the basis of poor performance or aesthetics. He's trying a middling god. It's a rhetorical strategy. One needn't spend much time on it; big or small, gods are still gods, and they're still hiding in the grammar. Or in the case of Habermas's rhetoric, I guess we could say they're coyly peeking out. Hi, there!
> ...