>You (Kenneth) said:
>>Have you read Seyla Benhabib's critique of Rawls, Habermas and Kohlberg?
>
>I confess that I have not. You may have gathered that while I am not a
>bigot, I am not big on continental philosophy. I never could get much out
>of what Benhabib I tried, lacked the patience for it.
Huh. I've never found Benhabib's style to be all that continental, she's the clearest of all the Habermas collaborators that I've come across.
>You said:
>>Basically, >Rawls model relies on role-taking, but role-taking where
>>one >generalized >other is taking the role of another generalized other.
>>This is >exactly what >Habermas is doing,
>
>That's not my reading of Rawls, but if it's what your Habermas is doing,
>that's illuminating about where you stand. Btw, I don't follow Rawls, as
>you'll see. I think the two principles of justice in Rawls are OK, though
>overly schematic, but I reject the method of the original position.
Habermas makes the following distinction: Rawls is a philosopher when he tries to defend the original position (which he fails to do), and he's a citizen when he defends the two principles of justice. Habermas sees a division of labour here, on is a theoretical exercise, the other involves generating good reason within a practical discourse about what should and shouldn't be considered normative. Habermas actually reserves a rather small place for philosophy, all it can do is seek to provide a justification for theoretical claims (on the one hand) and interpret theoretical claims (on the other).
>As I say, I don't follow Rawls. And I reject Habermas for similar reasons:
>I don't think ideal agreements abstracted from actual conflicts can
>motivate us as we are, stuck in our actual conflicts, and if they
>cannot motivate, they run afoul of ought implies can.
Right, we aren't motivated by the ideals. Habermas isn't saying that we are. We're motivating by reasons -or- the attempt to understand something with someone. The idealizations are present, but they rest in the background. We simply cannot have a conversation without anticipating understanding.
>The idea of reflective equilibrium comes from
>>Kant,
>
>Oh, no. No no no. Absolutely not. It's pure pragmatism. Rawls got it from
>Nelson Goodman--see Goodman's discussion of the justification of deduction
>in Fact Fiction and Forecast--and it's straight from the black Hegelian
>heart of John Dewey. Goodman, however, probably got it from Otto Neurath,
>the Marxist in the Vienna Circle. Nothing whstoever could be further from
>Kant's transcendental philosophy than RE.
Perhaps indirectly then? I mis-concepted, I was thinking of reflective judgement. Benhabib shows some links between reflective equilibrium, Arendt's notion of 'enlarged mentality' and Kant's 'reflective judgement.' But I'll take your word for it.
>Habermas outlines how knowing things is linked up to an
>>internal >logic of communication, and that only some forms of
>>communication >make it >possible to acquire knowledge.
>
>But he's obviously too limited about what they are. He should reread Hegel
>on Master and Slave, where Hegel shows how slavery made it possible for
>the slave to acquire knowledge of the external world and his own nature.
His article "Labour and Interaction" is a re-reading of Hegel's M/S dialectic, found in Theory and Practice. He's also gone back to this in the article "From Kant to Hegel and Back Again - The Move Towards Detranscendentalization" in European Journal of Philosophy 7, 2 (1999) and "From Kant to Hegel: On robert Brandom's Pragmatic Philosophy of Language" in EJP 8, 3 (2000). Habermas transforms the dialectic to a struggle for recognition, which is typified more in Hegel's Jena writings than in Phenom of Spirit.... interesting work, perhaps some of Habermas's most innovative.
>>He wants to avoid the idea that we can write >poetry and gain historical
>>insight into the dynamics of social >movements.
>
>A desperate fallacy. More is to be learned about the dynamics of the
>English Revolution from Milton's poetry than from many volumes of social
>theory. Sure the fellow who wants to put feeling and emotion into the
>conditiosn of communication cannot be so flatheaded?
You're exaggerating. This is more to be learned - in terms of knowledge - from a comprehensive collaborative research project on the ER than anything Milton can poeticize. Really. Poetry may have inspired the trip to the moon, but it didn't make the technical aspects of it possible. I have no doubt that we learn about ourselves and others from poetry, but if I equate poetic insight with science, then we have a real problem.
>...mys ocoal theoty...
You might want to lay off the gin while you're typing, eh?
>>Ok, Habermas departs historical materialism because he thinks that a
>>model >of social evolution is better. In other words, he charts out
>>the >stage of >cognitive development, on a psychological and sociological
>>level:>explaining how a mythological worldview comes to be transformed
>>into >a >modern worldview.
>
>ANd the rise of capitalism didn't have anything to do with this? I hardly
>call tahn an improvement/
Absolutely. His analysis in Legitimation Crisis goes through this, as well as in Theory of Communicative Action... he has an analysis of early and late capitalism, and all the fixin's that go on in around and through the categories... I should also mention his first book, the one on the public sphere, which talks about this as well.
> > So we have, with Habermas, a yardstick for criticism.
>
>And not with hostorical materialism?
Habermas's theory of social evolution is historical materialism that takes account of the struggle for recognition along with all that Marxian stuff. That all. Naturally, I think it is stupid to call this social _evolution_ because I don't read Hegel as an evolutionist.. but I'm not going to rob Habermas of his genetic-structuralism...
>>When
>>money emerges, it is a medium that replaces communicative action. In
>>effect, it is a communicative pathology, by merit of its very form.
>
>Seems to me I read this in an old critique of political economy by a
>now-forgotten German exile in London . . . .
Jenny something...
>>Any use
>>of money, then, will distort human relations.
>
>. . . But the fellow's name escapes me. March, Mark, something like that.
Don't worry, Habermas knows his Karl. TCA has about 100 pages dedicated to Lukacs, Marx and the FS on commodity fetish. I say this just let you know that these are the folks Habermas is building on, not getting rid of or neglecting.
> There they teach creationism.
Its a wonder that there are some still rather bright biologists in the US.
>So what is your conception of literature and your idea of how it should be
>treated, exactly? I guess you think that we cannot learn from it, that
>Tolstoy, Brecht, Milton, etc. are just entertainers on the level of, I
>don't know, Danielle Steele?
Nah. We can deal with this in the same way we deal with truth and and rightness, through dialogue, we formalize the discourse and call it art criticism. This is just it. If I say, "I like Brecht" and you ask why, and I say, "Just cause." This doesn't give us any insight. It's pathetic.But if I say, "I like Brecht because he grasped... and because... is illustrated, and this lead me to ... the insight that... which is important because... and when I say what Benjamin did with this..." That's different. We start arguing about it, and we use reasons to develop the claims that we want to make. Yes, Brecht was brilliant, insighful, he captures a true image of alienation... and if you read Brecht and watch "In the Company of Men" you'll see that he speaks to us today....
>which is why I think it
>>helps us >find an orientation that speaks to reaching agreement. I mean,
>>if >we've >both read Marx, and we both have, it will be easier for you
>>and I to >agree >than someone who hasn't gone beyond Aristotle.
>
>But if we've learned anything from Marx, we will realize that if I am a
>capitalist and you area worker, we are not going to agree about the
>division of the social product, eh?
Right, because power distorts our relations on a communicative level as well as a strategic level... the only redress for this is to coordinate our plans in such a way that such relations cease to exist. In other words, we strive toward a reality that is more or less symmetrical - or harmonized - than a society where the top rules from the peak of a pyramid....
ken