Ok, I must have misunderstood something and agreed with it inadvertently. People understand one another *all the time* - but this understanding is fragile, and it is subject to the suspicion that it is systematically distorted (on a theoretical level, in practice we usually wash our hands and go to bed). Likewise, agreement, after understanding, is tentative (at the post-conventional level) because a fallible consciousness is a condition of argumentation. I tend to work on the counter-intuitive operating principle that agreement is failed communication, that we agree to something and then stop thinking about it (which is Lacan's point). Habermas calls this fallible, I tend to think in terms that are a bit more negative. This isn't nihilistic, but it establishes two things at the same time: a normative foundation for critique and an actual critique. It justifies its criticism as it does the criticizing - this is how fucked up things are, and these are the norms that have been shredded along the way. Habermas, in the end, it recovering a sense of human dignity. He demonstrates that democracy is linked up with the logic of communication that is *essential* for social and cultural reproduction. The fact that his most recent book is on legal theory is an indication of the kind of accomplishment this is. However, I think Habermas is a better critic than reconstructive scientist. His critique the limit-concepts in competing frameworks is remarkable. What is unmistakable is that Habermas's model of communication will likely be *the* model for sociological and critical theoretical work for a long time to come. Why? Because it provides diagnostic tools and a conceptual apparatus that, until now, has been unavailable to social theorists. We simply cannot deny the importance of communicative action (which was a concept that didn't exist until recently) as the 'glue' of social interactivity - in the family, in culture, in the economy and so on. The finer points of his analysis might not pan out, but the gains for social inquiry are pretty much irreversible. Who would have guessed that Wittgenstein, Durkheim, Parsons, Weber, the Frankfurt School, Mead, Peirce, Gadamer and Popper could all be brought under the same conceptual umbrella. Habermas might be a moralist, but he's got a theory that explains a lot, and certainly avoids a lot of the dead ends of a truckload of competing theories. I suspect Habermas's legacy will be tied up with some sort of headstone that reads: Liberal, bury outside the church grounds. it is a shame, since, for starters, Habermas isn't a liberal and, for another thing, his work is not only useful and productive, but it also gives us a perspective that steps outside of self-righteous certitude and into a social critcism that upholds immanent potential of rationality that is latent in our relations. We don't have to reach out and grab Nation, God or Party - nor turn to acient myths or rituals or resign ourselves to watching TV - we possess the capacity to think and reason, and imagine, without fear of abstraction, a place where suffering and misery do not have the final say.
that's all. ken