>The idealization of reason-giving with freedom, equality, autonomy,
>fairness, etc. is not inherent in communicative processes everywhere at
>all times.
Check the archives. If there isn't an anticipation of understanding, then we're not talking about communication. See, I just enacted an idealization. I anticipate that you'll understand what I just wrote, I can't help it - its structural, even if I'm lying.
> Justin asked you to consider an example of pyramid-building. In an age
> in which pyramids were actually being built, the ISS was absent even as
> an idealized counterfactual, since it didn't have social relations of
> "Freedom, Equality, Property, & Bentham" that would give rise to the ISS
> as a necessary fiction of political liberalism.
This is incorrect. Any being that communicates anticipates a rejoinder. It is a formal pragmatic condition of communication.
>Habermas, unlike you, suggests that his desire for universal participation
>in reason-giving in the public sphere is tied up with his concern for
>political legitimacy & stability of constitutional democracy within a
>given nation (hence the limit on universality), marrying Kant with
>Rousseau so to speak.
This is what happens when you start with BFN. Habermas doesn't mention law until 1973 (not in any sustained way). Here, is probably more in debt to Lukacs and the Frankfurt School than anyone else. He certainly wasn't thinking of law when he synthesized Chomsky, Wittgenstein and Gadamer - although surely he had a direction in mind. The exception here is his second book, the one on the Public Sphere, which is a study in the formation of a category, and is prior to having read the bulk of what constitutes his theory of communicate action, certainly 10 years prior to his theory of communicative competence. Yes, Habermas is interested in legitimacy, but you have to demonstrate that this interest turns into an unwanted presupposition in his empirical research. In other words, criticize genetic-structuralism before marrying off anyone.
> It appears that you are not only making the ISS ahistorical but also
> depoliticizing Habermas, perhaps against his intentions, since he has
> been prolific in polemical interventions (against neo-conservatism,
> against pacifism with regard to Kosovo, etc.) in current affairs.
Whatever. Throughout I've been defending a program that preserves the critique of ideology from sliding off into groundlessness (if this is ahistorical and depoliticizing, then I suppose these terms have been redefined along with virtue, eh?). Now, if you want to play the intellectual terrorist, go ahead. Habermas hasn't used the term ISS since the early 80s. He apologized in 1982 for ever using the term, but he hasn't change the format of his argument since 1965: communication anticipates understanding. But you are tossing around the ISS without any relation to Habermas's use of the concept.
Please, send me you dictionary of proper Party terms, I'll do the best translating job I can manage.
>>As for actual consensus, it is irrelevant to Habermas's theory whether a
>>consensus actually emerges. The fact that it is anticipated by those
>>committed to discursively redeeming their validity claims is enough.
>
>Commitment to "discursively redeeming validity claims" does exist in
>graduate seminars & the like, as Justin mentioned, but it doesn't & cannot
>exist where decision-making has the most profound & far-reaching
>consequences under capitalism: most prominently, when, where, how, & how
>much to invest.
And... you aren't disagreeing with anything I've written in this entire thread, and the one before it.
>The dialectical insight here is that what gives rise to the ISS as a
>necessary fiction of political liberalism at the same time severely limits
>its scope of application, by creating & depoliticizing the "economic."
>Yoshie
You're confusing an false impression of Habermas with what he actually talks about in his work. You know, Karl Marx used to sing back up with the Ramones.
gabba gabba, ken