>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.
i'd say you don't get what the communicative ethic is that ken is referring to.
>Has it occured to you to reflect on the meaning of the fact that history
>is controversial?
had it occured to you that this is precisely the issue that Habermas was addressing!?
i think one of the problems with readings of habermas is that there is an excessive fear of agreement and a strange assumption that, in language, there is a one-to-one pointer reader relationship. but, invoking agreement and commonality does not require absolute sameness. there is always a multiplicity of meanings, an arena of contestation within which various meanings are operative and understood. meanings are contested, negotiated. indeed, in order for there to be disagreement at all there must be a considerable arena of agreement . in agreement there is always already disagreement. both/and.
i sense an odd reduction, not in your post per se, but in bernstein too, of habermas's work on communicative action to the linguistic, ideational arm of CA. we shouldn't think of CA as language only or rationality. reason is meant to involve action, social action, the practical lived aspect of communication and interpretation.
so, to speak of communicative reason is not to speak only to thought, rationality, thinking but of social interaction. His treatises in these regards pound incessantly at this theme: the indestructible moment of communicative action is anchored in social life. this is the energia that is always there: as humans we are fundamentally social and always already more or less cooperative--not peaceful, lovey dovey, happy happy joy joy cooperative and solidaristic. it's a mistake to think of it that way. rather, we must live together and depend on others. this is what the avenging energia means. it does not mean that the human capacity for rational thought will be the ultimate hope for rescuing us from irrationality and barbarism. it means that we are social creatures--zoon politikan. that is the avenging energia that drives the master-slave dialectic in hegel, no? the recognition that they are interdependent yet different is was drives the moment of recognition of distinct subjectivity.
he also means practical insofar as he wants to rescue communicative action from "the idealist presupposition that...consciousness determines the material practice of life" (see, A Review of Gadamer's Truth and Method). a practical commitment means exploring the "concrete embodiments" of language. this move is an attempt to resurrect habermas' caveat, one that distinguishes habermas from most of his critics. language is not merely ideational, nor is it a phenomena that operates only at the microlevel of face-to-face relations. language is a social institution born of and constrained by nature/domination:
"the linguistic infrastructure of society...is constituted by the constraint of reality--by the constraint of outer nature that enters into procedures for technical mastery and by the constraint of inner nature reflected in the repressive character of social power relations. ...behind the back of language, [nature/labor] also affect the very grammatical rules according to which we interpret the world. social actions can only be comprehended in an objective framework that is constituted conjointly by language, labor, and domination." [critique of gadamer's truth and method]