I criticized Kenneth for reducing persuasive communication to a graduate seminar model of discursive argument.He demusr, but what he says here seems to me to support the charge.
>Immanent to speaking, and
>attempting to reach an understanding with others, is a communicative ethic,
>one which can (and need be) supported with theoretical evidence and cogent
>demonstration.
I disagree. Most people get along without this. They use narratives, ideals, exemplary models. Has it occured to you to reflect on the meaning of the fact that history is controversial? Why does anyone care about the Smithsonian exhibit on Hiroshima? That mattters to most people a lot more than any abstract argument you could present about the ethics of international relations. Yeah, sure, it's nice to bea ble to present philosophical arguments on the just use of force and the like. But people actually think about these questions through stories like "We dropped the bomb to save lives"; ideals, like "America is the land of the free"; exemplars of virtue: King, Lincoln.
Most of Habermas's work is for show, it is analysis
>that
>supports his claim, which is rather simple: when we speak, we make
>assumptions - that are inherent to the structure of speech regardless of
>individual assumptions. This structure can be elaborated and systematized
>and, in the end, it provides a 'idealizing' model through which we can
>ground criticism.
Well, as a pragmatist I say hooey. I don't go in for transcendental argument. I think the claim that there are necessary a priori conditions for anything just shows a lack of imagination: we haven't thunk of the alternatives yet that enable us to do without 'em.
Without an this kind of model, criticism lacks a
>normative standpoint and is guilty of being arbitrary.
I can't be accused of indifference to the relativist threat: I have my own materialist theory, totally anti-Habermasian (though my publshed target is the structurally similar views of Rawls) in nature. But if this is what is pushing you around, I think you fail to grasp the critical possibilities inherent in the alternative modes of thinking and feeling I have suggested. The Hiroshima exhibit debate displays how competing narratives with different meanings of AMerican ideals are played out in real life. Rather than talking about philosophy, people expressed their differences in hsitorical terms. Likewise, it is possible to reject a vision of the good life nonarbitrarily but nonphilosophically, or to debate the merits of different exemplars: Martin vs. Malcolm, John Brown vs. Lincoln, Lenin vs. Luxemburg.
It is, in a
>very
>simple sense, a materialist and a communicative ethics. This threat is
>about the ethical foundations of the left, right? I've proposed a model for
>such a grounding. Habermas calls it formal-pragmatics. I like to think of
>it as the capacity to criticize that avoids the accusation of just being
>whiny.
>
But the kind of criticism you offer runs the risk of being boring and irrelevant. I mean, I like philosophy, but far from being an a priori condition of humanity, it's a decidedly minority taste. Personally, I think jazz is far more important. Wish I could do it,
--jks
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