>Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 09:35:59 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu>
>Subject: Re: lbo-talk-digest V1 #4733
>
>And autonomy and solidarity are important because . . . they are
>traditions in a particular society. So we must support this form of
>rational argument because it supports a way of life (democracy,
>individual autonomy, and so on) that we are used to. I still think
>this stinks of ethnocentrism: concepts like rationality and autonomy,
>created in a specific social nexus, are elevated to necessary
>components of any "inclusive" society--and then we make profound
>philosophical judgments about the moral inferiority of any society
>that does not include these concepts.
>
>Miles
You do realize that the charge of ethnocentrism comes with the implicit claim that non-western societies lack conceptions of autonomy and solidarity and reason.... but that isn't my primary concern.
You can't make this judgement (about whether or not autonomy, for instance, is universal or conventional) until you've already entered into a discourse with 'the other' - which can only take place under conditions of autonomy and solidarity and reasoning...
This is all the more strange because you are concerned about 'western' judgements about the moral inferiority of any society that is not concerned with freedom, reason, or community. Habermas point is that at a postconventional level, moral judgements about the inferiority of any society are forbidden, unless the members of that society are included in the conversation which would then make the charge of inferiority false.
Which is another way of saying: moral judgements require universal participation. The only 'society' that could at all be deemed 'morally inferior' is one that is actively trying to destroy communicative relations of 'the other' (because this amounts to a self-defeating and closed logic).
Habermas isn't claiming that universality exists in the middle of us, he's arguing that we possess the capacity to create it. There is a sense, in this, that Habermas is being eurocentric, but in order to disagree, you have to acknowledge the importance of reasoning giving, which makes him correct.
As I said in the very first post about this topic: you can't use an argument to negate the constitutive unforced force of arguments without contradicting yourself.
ken