>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.
Which is... a theory of systematically distorted communication.
> > >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!
Hi there. You know, I don't understand where this is coming from. Saying that Habermas is a theologian mystifies me. Where is it? I mean, where has he installed a divine moment, however weak, into his theoretical framework? I just don't see it. Yeah, you can claim this or thanabout a middling god hiding in the throes of a theory of communicative competence... I just don't see it. I'm open to the suggestion, for sure, but how, where... what?
ken