In a typically Habermasian move, you reduce all use of language of reasoning--a late and rather atypical sort of behavior, rarely enagged in by most people who talk. They'd rather gossip, swear, make passes, insult each other, compliment each other, pass time, express opinions, boast, beg, insinuate, . . . . anything but reason. The value of reasoning, especially about abstract matters l;ike ethical theory, is a specialized taste. Reasoning is good if you care to know that you justified in your beliefs, but few people care about that, and who can blame them?
When you want people to _move_, you gotta say something moving. Go to Jesse Jackson, not John Rawls, to get people motivated. Tell me, Kenneth, how come politicians, preachers, prophets, movement organizers, advertising executives, propaganda experts, psy-war specialists, none of the do their motivating by writing arguments or publishing in the Journal of Philosophy?
I don't think my view is desperately cynical. I think it's realistic, and it's naive and self-defeating to try to turn everything into a seminar. besides, it would be boring to trade in beautiful rhetoric and powerful artistic and literary evocations, narratives that move people, for dry argument. Not that dry argument has got its place. But you have a limited conception of humanity if you constrain us to mere argument,
--jks
>
>At 07:39 PM 7/23/01 +0000, you wrote:
>>I don't go in for this Habermasian metaphysics (sorry, Kells!). Your
>>argument proves too much.
>>It's also uniquely human to baffle each other (and ourselves) with
>>bullshit or blind each other with razzle-dazzle.
>
>Simple point: language mediates our understanding the world. Understanding
>- anything - only makes sense if we understand something with someone else.
>The only way to understand something with someone is to talk to them. If a
>conflict results there is no reason to assume, prior to talking about it,
>that an agreement cannot be reached, since if it is comprehensible by one
>person in language, it is, in principle, comprehensible by another person.
>If it does not prove to be something that can be understood, we call that
>art. ; )
>
>>You misunderstand me if you think I say argument doesn't matter. What I
>>said, rather, is that it doesn't _motivate._
>
>This is a self-defeating proposition. What makes reason a reason *is* its
>inherent capacity to motivate. If it isn't motivating, it isn't a reason to
>begin with. Rhetoric has an inherently argumentative / communicative base.
>One cannot create rhetoric without first already having a preunderstanding
>about how language works. In short, linguistic mastery (rhetoric) sits on
>the back of communicative competence (interaction with other people
>oriented by the attempt to understand, not 'persuade' or 'deceive'). Which
>is another way of saying that communicative action comes before rhetoric.
>
>>That's why I'm sort of a Humean. Reason is the slave of the passions,
>>whether or not it ought to be. And I'm talking about fundamentals. Of
>>course peiole get persuaded about means and about peripheral matters all
>>the time, and even in ways that affect your behavior.
>
>Reasoning is precisely that which raises out of a purely instinctual
>response. Naturally, reasoning has an instinctual base, but passions and
>instincts themselves are linguistically mediated - insofar as one has an
>ego.
>
>ken
>
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