Ethical foundations of the left

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Wed Aug 1 06:44:45 PDT 2001



>> 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.

Kenneth MacKendrick:
> Which is... a theory of systematically distorted communication.

Distorted from what? What's the ur-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. [A]


>> 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?

The goodness. See [A] above. Also implied in [B], as indicated by my question: if language can be distorted in some general, universal way, then it must have some pure original universal godlike form. In the beginning was the Word, etc.



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