>At 04:53 AM 7/26/01 +0000, Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
>>I criticized Kenneth for reducing persuasive communication to a graduate
>>seminar model of discursive argument.
Kells says:
>i'd say you don't get what the communicative ethic is that ken is referring
>to.
Well, what do you make of all this insistence on justification, making theoretical presuppositions explicit and manifest, etc.?
>
>>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'm talking about Kenneth's version of the story, not Habermas'. I know that
H has personally engaged, for example, in the Historismusstreit and so
forth. I actually haven't given thought to whether his account of
communicative action can accomodate the points I have been making. Thinking
about Habermas is not something I do a lot. But Kenneth hasn't explained how
_his_ version can accomodate it. He just keeps repeating (as far as I can
tell) that philosophical analysis is an a priori presupposition of human
communication.
>
>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.
This isn't my target. I have doubts about making agreement particularly central in political theory because I'm a liberal and a historical materialist--two theories that emphasize conflict from different angles. But I have not been hammering on that. Rather I have been hammering on what I take to be Kennenth;s excessive rationalsim and his narrowness about therange of considerations and kinds of discourse that matter to them in the social production of their lives, in which the kind of abstract philosophical justification of policy options and basic values that Kenneth seems to insist on (I am talk talkking about Habermas) is not very important.
>
>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.
Tell Kenneth about this, then. He seems to think it's not communicative action to try to change someone's mind by relling a different story or exemplifying a different kind of life.
>
>
>he also means practical insofar as he wants to rescue communicative
>action from "the idealist presupposition that...consciousness determines
>the material practice of life"
Right, Habermas is some sort of historical materialist.
Smooches always
jks
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