>but it's sort of scary to see ken doll taking on my roll defending
>Habermas. banging your head on a steel wall yet, ken? :)
I've decided that I'm split: I'm an orthodox Habermasian *and* an orthodox Lacanian. This week I'm defending Habermas, Lacan, come later. Despite all of my thoughts here - I think Habermas is wrong on a good many issues - but he has a dreadfully powerful mind, and he's a hell of a synthesist. If one is inclined, my most recent posts to the Habermas Spoon list (in the archive) are more critical notes. Justin was on to it, but hadn't formulated the problem precisely (that idealizations are local, not universal).
With Habermas, the problem is that his entire project of reconstruction science *misunderstands* itself as science, it is a narrative form, not a scientific one. If the results are dependent upon the affirmation of the one (or the collective) under scrutiny, then the results must have an affective aspect if they are to be accepted. The force of the better argument yes, but only on pains of infinite regress (Habermas argues that language is inexhaustible, this applies to arguments as well - communication free from constraits requires the postulate of the immortality of the communicative community, which is why some theologians like Habermas, and establishes his link to Kant who, as we all know, postulated the immortality of the soul - which reminds us of Sade, who postulated the immortality of the body - to be tortured, or was that argued, for all eternity). This is not my beautiful jouissance! This entails that one desire to 'fill in the gaps' between know how and know that, and this can only be accomplished through the creation of a narrative. It isn't a bad narrative, probably the most concrete and radical that I've found a sustained argument for, but it isn't science, communicative theory remains a critical hermeneutics. This is why I think Lacan is important, because psychoanalysis exceeds the scientific framework without falling prey to the hermeneutic, it is both and, neither nor. Obviously I'm pulling psychoanalytic privilege here, but that's how it works: don't give up on your desire.
If this isn't persuasive, and one still wants to remain Habermasian, consider that the idea of communication free from domination is *conceptually* incoherent. This should put an end to it. If you can't conceptualize it, one can hardly defend that it is a necessary moment / structure of speech (I agree, the presupposition can be made, in a practical discourse, but not invariantly so) [although Habermas doesn't argue this is invariant, he notes that the lifeworld must meet the world of institutions half-way... but then that's just a problem for my argument *and* his isn't it?
However, with that being said, I'm going back to an orthodox Habermasian perspective, and I'll be defending that for the next few weeks.
blessed critique, ken