----- Original Message -----
From: matthew_piscioneri <mpiscioneri@...>

> I am going to have to look hard for evidence of this, but I don't
> think Habermas overlooks jouissance but is instead
> theoretically "nervous" of jouissance! There is so much rhetorical
> quicksand in Habermas's theory construction, that perhaps the
> *emotivism* of jouissance is on the surface at least inconsistent
> with the formalistic and procedural brand of reason Habermas develops.

There is no emotivism of jouissance, emotivism stems from passionate
attachments which have to do with desire and fantasy. Jouissance is an
enjoyment/trauma which adheres to and is intermingled with the symbolic and
such. If we can say that passionate attachments can be rated on a scale of 1
to 10, jouissance adheres to these numbers like a zero, with a 1, there is
always a zero that can be added and must always be considered. I'm no
mathematician, so that's my best analogy off the cuff. Lacan's point is that
we must always consider the zero, and the way in which this absence proves
to be determinative of the positive.

ken

Pensky writes, "Hanging over the heads of the citizens that it creates, the
Basic Law has occasionally seemed more like a collective superego than a
collective constitution; more like what Hegel criticized as the abstractness
of Kant's "tyranny of the pure ought" than the organic act of national
self-creation" (75). How can I resist this kind of analogy? This, and I
haven't read the entire article, I picked it up only because you mentioned
it (although I very much like everything Pensky has written elsewhere),
seems like the kind of situation that leads Habermas to say that the
democratic structure must meet the lifeworld half-way, a democratic desire
('ethos') has to be participatory. This of course touches on a range of
issues: why desire democracy? how is it possible to foster democratic
change? and empirical questions like: why do citizens cultivated and
socialized into democratic traditions and cultures often harbour nostalgia
for authoritarian regimes? Marcuse once used the term psychic thermidor, the
counter-revolutionary tendency to withdraw back from freedom, Adorno once
discusses a 'fear of freedom' which he attributed to narcissism....

ken

----- Original Message -----
From: matthew_piscioneri <mpiscioneri@...>
To: <habermas@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2002 5:23 PM
Subject: [Habermas] Basic Law


> Re-reading Max pensky's essay in the Cambridge Companion makes me think
> that one reified "form" of Habermas's communicative reason was the
> Basic Law document which I have yet to read but appears to be based on
> the U.S Constitution especially.

Re-reading Max pensky's essay in the Cambridge Companion makes me think
that one reified "form" of Habermas's communicative reason was the
Basic Law document which I have yet to read but appears to be based on
the U.S Constitution especially.
>
> >I don't get it (I'm not trying to be difficult). Are you saying that
> >arguments in the public spheres of France, USA, Canada, etc reified
> or that
> >the concept of communicative reason is reified? or that the
> Constitutions of
> >these nation states a social institutions which guide law-making in
> a
> >reified way? ...
>
> You are reading too much good stuff into my fairly fluffy comments I
> think Ken. All I am saying is that the regulatory conditions of
> Habermas's ISS are there more or less in Constitutional form. In fact
> thinking more about it, I had better get copies of the Constitutions
> of places like USA, Canada and France to see how accurate/inaccurate
> my statements are!

Matthew Piscioneri

Ken,

Please ignore note offlist. I will address what I can in the moment!

>So all we need to do to escape ideology is lift the veil of hidden
social engineering?

I guess the line I am taking is that some degree of "ideology"
production is not only inescapable but "useful". A degree of let's
say "false consciousness" like it not oils the wheels of social
integration/cohesion. Again, this refers to my belief that the
existential demands/needs of the citizenry are almost just as
relevant as their material needs and the "obligation" of social
governance institutions to meet these demands and needs, just as
pressing. The main fault of this conjecture is the presumption of an
implicit sort of social contract going on.

---------------------------------------------

> > A round about way of saying emancipation/integration is not even
a *
> > false* dichotomy. Habermas shows in _CES_ and _BFN_ that it isn't
a
> > dichotomy at all.
>
>My apologies, I still can't figure out exactly what you're getting
at here.
>It isn't because it doesn't make sense, but I'm missing a piece of
your
>puzzle. Is there any chance you could do a quick write-up and
summary about
>how you see integration / emancipation, nothing fancy, just a couple
points.
>Emancipation is a 'freeing' from dogmatic fixations. It means
autonomy in
>the fact of heteronomy, effective freedom of some sort, coupled with
>enlightened insight and so on. Communicative action isn't
necessarily
>emancipatory, since there is always the possibility that
coordinating social
>action will be based on false premises or wrong ideas. Only
communicative
>action guided by methodical critical reflection (science) can lead
to
>non-authoritarian political integration. So it seems to me that
integration
>and emancipation are two separate things - however, they can be
united, in
>Habermas's thinking, when theory and practice are one ("self-
reflection")
>[the twin powers of reconstructive science and communicative
action]. So...
>that's why I'm not understanding you here, I think.

No, Ken, that's why you ARE understanding me better than I am making
sense of my own position I think. Integration and emancipation are
two separate things. My embarassing delusion has been to view them as
dichotomous. It's a point Gary made in another context recently. Just
because categories are separate this doesn't make them dichotomous or
even exclusive of the other in a sense that they are incommensurate.
It's not that I have held integration to be exclusive of
emancipation; rather I have viewed integration as intrinsically
depending upon some form of oppression which inevitably denied
emancipatory potentials. A more in depth analysis and we have what
Habermas calls the dialectic of tutelage and empowerment in _BFN_.

My modeling has been too hard and fast and inflexible.What I think
Habermas brilliantly shows in tracts such as _CES_ and _BFN_ is that
the developmental trajectory of emancipatory consciousnesses
(communicative power ?) in advanced capitalist democratic societies
is realized in the reproduction of social integration which
is "invigorated" or "nourished" by this influx of communicative
power.

[You'll have to excuse the "Being There" type-metaphors but water-
flows and growth metaphors are used by Habermas in both _TCA_ and
_BFN_ so I am just following suit :-)]

This is why I am strong on taking notice of the
existential/historical situatedness of Habermas's theory production.
Not to is to miss the depth of richness and meaning in his work. As
well, not to also TOTALLY ignores Habermas's own methodological
program which he explicitly sets out to emulate that delineated by
Horkheimer in the 1930s for Critical Theory. As Habermas tells us
time and time again, critical social theory is not only a product of
its time but it reflects back onto its historical context.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

> > In the end, even the *false* in "false consciousness" production
> > becomes inaccurate. Showing our brave troops in East Timor or
> > Afghanistan fighting for peace and justice renews the military
> > tradition (very useful in may ways), and reinvents/restimulates
in a
> > VISCERAL way the ethos of the Enlightenment. It makes us *feel*
again
> > this is what we are fighting for/have fought for...OUR way of
life.
>
>This is where I see a theory of fantasy to be invaluable. "Our way
of life"
>is not something that can be pinned down. Why? Because it touches on
the
>real, what Lacanians call jouissance. It is our 'thing' - the way in
which
>we organize our enjoyment...

I am going to have to look hard for evidence of this, but I don't
think Habermas overlooks jouissance but is instead
theoretically "nervous" of jouissance! There is so much rhetorical
quicksand in Habermas's theory construction, that perhaps the
*emotivism* of jouissance is on the surface at least inconsistent
with the formalistic and procedural brand of reason Habermas develops.
-----------------------------

>I don't get it (I'm not trying to be difficult). Are you saying that
>arguments in the public spheres of France, USA, Canada, etc reified
or that
>the concept of communicative reason is reified? or that the
Constitutions of
>these nation states a social institutions which guide law-making in
a
>reified way? ...

You are reading too much good stuff into my fairly fluffy comments I
think Ken. All I am saying is that the regulatory conditions of
Habermas's ISS are there more or less in Constitutional form. In fact
thinking more about it, I had better get copies of the Constitutions
of places like USA, Canada and France to see how accurate/inaccurate
my statements are!

Thanks for the response.

Best regards,

Matthew Piscioneri

School of Philosophy

University of Queensland

----- Original Message -----
From: matthew_piscioneri <mpiscioneri@...>

> One of those sad jokes I am afraid. Meaning that YES I do think that a
> type of automatic social engineering does take place *behind our backs*
> in Lifeworld reproduction processes (personality + social identity
> formation), and on a more institutional level of social engineering
> which occurs through that strange union of state and commercial
> interests which converge in the mutally-beneficial production of false
> consciousness.

So all we need to do to escape ideology is lift the veil of hidden social
engineering?

> This helps to answer the following:

> > Could you expand on why you think this is a false dichotomy?
>
> Because, as I think Habermas draws attention to - in a way that yours
> truly (me) can finally understand and take on board - romantic visions
> of social emancipation on a widespread scale, first, isn't likely and,
> second, not even desirable. I feel uncomfortable with what I have
> written because it doesn't really address the issue. If I can try again
> in a round about sort of a way:
>
> I think social order of one politically-organised type or another is a
> given. Durkheim again. In fact in TCA.2 Habermas draws attention to
> D.'s thesis that order is a physical property of matter. As I am a
> "ruthless" physicalist and treating human beings as matter; this matter
> organises and orders according to the laws of physics. On this basis,
> social integration is not an issue. HOW social integration is achieved
> (what political mode...democracy/dictatorship/etc) is. The
> Enlightenment program continues to offer - to a degree - the
> opportunity for "us" to make sense of our own destinies. This is why I
> like it, and why I like Habermas's defence of it. Which isn't to say
> that it is unproblematical, which is why I am interested in counter-
> Enlightenment critiques especially if they are undertaken in an
> Enlightenment attitude....which they mainly are.

It seems to me that romantic visions of utopia are extraordinarily
widespread - true love, one nation, world peace... the kind of things we
hear in pop songs every day (I would also include dystopian visions as part
of this romantic imaginary that is so common). And I would further argue
that these images are precisely what motivate people into action ("I was so
close to being complete... I had that sofa thing nailed..." - Jack, Fight
Club).

> So what does "social emancipation" mean in this context? For too long -
> and here I am embarassed - I overlooked the "givenness" of social
> integration. Meaning "social emancipation" has to be understood within
> this framework...as it *should* be anyway, and *can* be given that we
> have the mechanisms for social emancipation available to us thankfully
> in the sorts of societies I/You are lucky enough to live in.

> A round about way of saying emancipation/integration is not even a *
> false* dichotomy. Habermas shows in _CES_ and _BFN_ that it isn't a
> dichotomy at all.

My apologies, I still can't figure out exactly what you're getting at here.
It isn't because it doesn't make sense, but I'm missing a piece of your
puzzle. Is there any chance you could do a quick write-up and summary about
how you see integration / emancipation, nothing fancy, just a couple points.
Emancipation is a 'freeing' from dogmatic fixations. It means autonomy in
the fact of heteronomy, effective freedom of some sort, coupled with
enlightened insight and so on. Communicative action isn't necessarily
emancipatory, since there is always the possibility that coordinating social
action will be based on false premises or wrong ideas. Only communicative
action guided by methodical critical reflection (science) can lead to
non-authoritarian political integration. So it seems to me that integration
and emancipation are two separate things - however, they can be united, in
Habermas's thinking, when theory and practice are one ("self-reflection")
[the twin powers of reconstructive science and communicative action]. So...
that's why I'm not understanding you here, I think.

> In the end, even the *false* in "false consciousness" production
> becomes inaccurate. Showing our brave troops in East Timor or
> Afghanistan fighting for peace and justice renews the military
> tradition (very useful in may ways), and reinvents/restimulates in a
> VISCERAL way the ethos of the Enlightenment. It makes us *feel* again
> this is what we are fighting for/have fought for...OUR way of life.

This is where I see a theory of fantasy to be invaluable. "Our way of life"
is not something that can be pinned down. Why? Because it touches on the
real, what Lacanians call jouissance. It is our 'thing' - the way in which
we organize our enjoyment...

> > What do you mean by reified here?

> More physicality, I am afraid, Ken. I am using *reified* in the extra-
> extreme (and non-Habermasian) sense of mundane "thingyness". The moral
> principles *generated* by communicative reason are THERE in inkdots and
> on paper in things called Constitutions :-)

So, forgetting that we have a body?

> This ties back to earlier comments I made about the gradual reification
> of communicative reason in departments of Enlightenment which managed
> positive discrimination and minority inclusion etc. It dawned on me
> that communicative reason has been and for a long time (literally? sic)
> *reified* in the constitutions of nation states such as France, USA,
> Canada, Australia, U.K etc). This is why yours and Adams exchange was
> so stimulating. It focused on Habermas's focus on practical
> enlightenment in _BFN_.

I don't get it (I'm not trying to be difficult). Are you saying that
arguments in the public spheres of France, USA, Canada, etc reified or that
the concept of communicative reason is reified? or that the Constitutions of
these nation states a social institutions which guide law-making in a
reified way? ...

> Returning to emancipation/integration; perhaps Habermas's defence of
> the Enlightenment is not unlike what my slightly religious father used
> to say to me: There's the rule book [Bible]....

I don't think Habermas would point to a rule-book, but he would point to
unavoidable pragmatic presuppositions... which doesn't exactly amount to the
same thing (at least we can't substitute literary criticism to unearth the
problems of formal pragmatics)...

ken

----- Original Message -----
From: Adam Elston <adamelston@...>
To: <habermas@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2002 4:36 AM
Subject: [Habermas] What became of the emancipatory interest?/Romantic
visions of Emancipation


> Dear Ken, Matt, all,
>
> Ken, you mentioned Deborah Cook in your post of 12 April and it was of her
> article, The Talking Cure in Habermas's Republic (in New Left Review 12
> Nov/Dec 2001) I thought when I read your original post of 8 April.

Haven't read it, I'll pick it up tomorrow. I did have, front and centre, her
article on the two faces of democracy in Habermas, published around the same
time.

> In this article Cook criticizes Habermas in BFN for believing 'existing
> democracies need scarcely improve on their current functioning in order
> adequately to fulfill its ideal conditions.'  This is because, as we've
been
> saying (and criticizing), democratic institutions are 'more or less'
> approximating the ideals of open and uncoerced discourse.
>
> But what good is that?  You argue Ken, 'I'm very skeptical about the idea
> that we can have political institutions without political content (a kind
of
> stand-alone structural utopia).

I don't understand the question. To put it bluntly: Habermas argues that the
ideal speech situation is 'more or less' instantiated in existing
democracies. In other words - these are institutions that we cannot
structurally question. They are 'more or less' ideal. We can tinker, but
never dismantle. In other words, constitutional democracies are
post-ideological. What Habermas cannot fathom is the possibility that the
form of these democracies themselves may in fact be at the root of various
communicative distortions, not to mention at the heart of the destruction of
various parts of the lifeworld that make democracy as such appealing.
Habermas's theory, it seems to me, separates democratic form and democratic
content in such a way that it discourages ideological critique on the level
of democratic structure. For this, Cook suggests Adorno provides a better
model for ideology critique.

[cut]

> The 'demonstrable illegitimacy' however, is not due to the mysterious
> absence of the emancipatory potential of communication but, as far as I
can
> tell, to the practical limitations in the way of its realisation.  This is
> why Habermas concedes in BFN that we (the public sphere) rarely fulfill
the
> strong conditions needed to turn opinions into communicative power...

The problem is not with the emancipatory potential, but with the
identification of the realization of a prior emancipatory potential. Once
realized, in existing democracies, this potential disappears, along with the
struggle for emancipation. Which is to say, we are living - according to
Habermas, in post-emancipatory times. There can be no emancipatory interest
or desire because the conditions which satisfy this desire have been met (we
don't usually desire what we already have)...

> Can we not then argue-in response to Matt's question, ('How would H define
> the concept of emancipation circa BFN?') that the goal remains the
> same-emancipation through communicative action.  But because as H says in
> BFN, communicative power only comes to the fore in crisis situations (BFN
> p.385? don't have copy to hand) then the 'goal' should be *precisely* (as
> Ken wished) 'the creative imagining of different forms of democratic
> organization.', i.e, conducive to opinion- and will-formation and their
> expression in situations other than crisis.  This shouldn't be easy when
we
> account for the colonizing tendencies of systemic intrusion of the
> lifeworld-but if we bear in mind the call (made way back in Structural
> Transformation of the Public Sphere) that we, (the public sphere), should
> '...set in motion a critical process of public communication through the
> very organizations that mediatize it' (p.232) then we'll be on the right
> track.  By heeding this call won't we be exploring the institutional
> requirements necessary for the practical realisation of deliberative
> democracy and going some way in realizing (not immediately apparent in BFN
> but present nevertheless) 'romantic visions of emancipation'.

What is discouraged, then, is the creative imagining of different forms of
democratic organization. With Habermas, we can, but we don't need to. And
even if we do imagine different democratic forms, insofar as they contradict
existing democracies, they will only been seen as fascist, fundamentalist or
terrorist... (this is the problem with having realized utopia, everything
else appears as 'enemy').

ken

Dear Ken, Matt, all,

Ken, you mentioned Deborah Cook in your post of 12 April and it was of her
article, The Talking Cure in Habermas’s Republic (in New Left Review 12
Nov/Dec 2001) I thought when I read your original post of 8 April.

In this article Cook criticizes Habermas in BFN for believing ‘existing
democracies need scarcely improve on their current functioning in order
adequately to fulfill its ideal conditions.’  This is because, as we’ve been
saying (and criticizing), democratic institutions are ‘more or less’
approximating the ideals of open and uncoerced discourse.

But what good is that?  You argue Ken, 'I’m very skeptical about the idea
that we can have political institutions without political content (a kind of
stand-alone structural utopia).

This is what Cook is arguing also-how she wonders, can Habermas in BFN be
content with the fact that ‘as long as self-empowerment-the normative core
of the democratic project-remains inscribed in the constitutions of Western
states (Matt’s reification point in post of 13 April), and these states
remain open in principle to fulfilling that project, even their demonstrable
illegitimacy does not seriously undermine their democratic bona fides’.
(Cook 140).

The ‘demonstrable illegitimacy’ however, is not due to the mysterious
absence of the emancipatory potential of communication but, as far as I can
tell, to the practical limitations in the way of its realisation.  This is
why Habermas concedes in BFN that we (the public sphere) rarely fulfill the
strong conditions needed to turn opinions into communicative power...

Can we not then argue-in response to Matt’s question, (‘How would H define
the concept of emancipation circa BFN?’) that the goal remains the
same-emancipation through communicative action.  But because as H says in
BFN, communicative power only comes to the fore in crisis situations (BFN
p.385? don’t have copy to hand) then the ‘goal’ should be *precisely* (as
Ken wished) ‘the creative imagining of different forms of democratic
organization.’, i.e, conducive to opinion- and will-formation and their
expression in situations other than crisis.  This shouldn’t be easy when we
account for the colonizing tendencies of systemic intrusion of the
lifeworld–but if we bear in mind the call (made way back in Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere) that we, (the public sphere), should
‘...set in motion a critical process of public communication through the
very organizations that mediatize it’ (p.232) then we’ll be on the right
track.  By heeding this call won’t we be exploring the institutional
requirements necessary for the practical realisation of deliberative
democracy and going some way in realizing (not immediately apparent in BFN
but present nevertheless) ‘romantic visions of emancipation’.

Hope this makes sense...posted more as my own conjecture (again, perhaps due
to my limited reading of Habermas) than a refutation of anybody else’s
opinion.

Regards,

Adam Elston.



_________________________________________________________________
Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com

Ken,

If I can do the easy one first:

[You wrote]

> Commercials promise satisfaction. No specific commercial, although "The Bay"
> uses the line "The way things should be" (which also means that the is has
> met up with the ought). After your response, I can't tell whether this
> should be taken as a joke or not.


One of those sad jokes I am afraid. Meaning that YES I do think that a
type of automatic social engineering does take place *behind our backs*
in Lifeworld reproduction processes (personality + social identity
formation), and on a more institutional level of social engineering
which occurs through that strange union of state and commercial
interests which converge in the mutally-beneficial production of false
consciousness.

This helps to answer the following:

> Could you expand on why you think this is a false dichotomy?

Because, as I think Habermas draws attention to - in a way that yours
truly (me) can finally understand and take on board - romantic visions
of social emancipation on a widespread scale, first, isn't likely and,
second, not even desirable. I feel uncomfortable with what I have
written because it doesn't really address the issue. If I can try again
in a round about sort of a way:

I think social order of one politically-organised type or another is a
given. Durkheim again. In fact in TCA.2 Habermas draws attention to
D.'s thesis that order is a physical property of matter. As I am a
"ruthless" physicalist and treating human beings as matter; this matter
organises and orders according to the laws of physics. On this basis,
social integration is not an issue. HOW social integration is achieved
(what political mode...democracy/dictatorship/etc) is. The
Enlightenment program continues to offer - to a degree - the
opportunity for "us" to make sense of our own destinies. This is why I
like it, and why I like Habermas's defence of it. Which isn't to say
that it is unproblematical, which is why I am interested in counter-
Enlightenment critiques especially if they are undertaken in an
Enlightenment attitude....which they mainly are.

So what does "social emancipation" mean in this context? For too long -
and here I am embarassed - I overlooked the "givenness" of social
integration. Meaning "social emancipation" has to be understood within
this framework...as it *should* be anyway, and *can* be given that we
have the mechanisms for social emancipation available to us thankfully
in the sorts of societies I/You are lucky enough to live in.

A round about way of saying emancipation/integration is not even a *
false* dichotomy. Habermas shows in _CES_ and _BFN_ that it isn't a
dichotomy at all.

What is probably more at stake are the "holistic aspirations" held by
some *dangerous* social actors who for some perverted pyschological
deficiency (convoluted sense of Otherness) can't accept being part of
the herd. This having been said; naive radicalism can have its uses in
the processes of social discourse. As long as TOO much damage isn't
done along the way.

And I am not advocating enforced homogeneity either. Managing the
balance is where it gets tricky, although there are logics of sorts
which appear to manage this balance anyway. Which is why it is a SAD
joke (_DoE_ thesis).

In the end, even the *false* in "false consciousness" production
becomes inaccurate. Showing our brave troops in East Timor or
Afghanistan fighting for peace and justice renews the military
tradition (very useful in may ways), and reinvents/restimulates in a
VISCERAL way the ethos of the Enlightenment. It makes us *feel* again
this is what we are fighting for/have fought for...OUR way of life.

Homer's _ILIAD_ and the myth of Achilles is about the same sort of
stuff, obviously.

> > ----------------------------------
> > A further point on an earlier comment I made regarding the reification
> > of communicative reason. In a sense communicative reason has been
> > reified in constitutional form for many years in a number of nation-
> > states. This gets back to Adam's point concerning the "interestedness"
> > of public sphere actors to continue to renew in practice what is
> > securely reified in constitutional form. It's a version of "the use it
> > or lose it" dictum.
>
> What do you mean by reified here?

More physicality, I am afraid, Ken. I am using *reified* in the extra-
extreme (and non-Habermasian) sense of mundane "thingyness". The moral
principles *generated* by communicative reason are THERE in inkdots and
on paper in things called Constitutions :-)

This ties back to earlier comments I made about the gradual reification
of communicative reason in departments of Enlightenment which managed
positive discrimination and minority inclusion etc. It dawned on me
that communicative reason has been and for a long time (literally? sic)
*reified* in the constitutions of nation states such as France, USA,
Canada, Australia, U.K etc). This is why yours and Adams exchange was
so stimulating. It focused on Habermas's focus on practical
enlightenment in _BFN_.

Returning to emancipation/integration; perhaps Habermas's defence of
the Enlightenment is not unlike what my slightly religious father used
to say to me: There's the rule book [Bible]....

Regards,

Matthew Piscioneri

Ali:

Thanks for your very pertinent contribution.

I can't locate my copy of the "Postscript" presently, so I can't check
my odd feelings about the quote you offer from Apel.

Taken by itself, out of context, the quote appears to corroborate my
conjecture about no ontological pretensions in JH's pragmatics. The
quote says, in part, "if we abstract  from the pragmatic dimension of
  symbols, there can be no human subject of reasoning...." Perhaps
you're mis-quoting, since the rest of the quote appears to accord with
a transcendentalist stance; perhaps, Apel wrote "if we DON'T abstract...."

I don't believe that JH would quote Apel "approvingly" with regard to
transcendentalism (but maybe, in 1971 or so, he did). Anyway, it's
clear from JH's 1983 dispute with Apel in "Discourse Ethics" (_MCCA_)
that Apel's transcendentalism is unattractive to JH, and the
"quasi-transcendental" status of the basic concepts of JH's 1976
formal pragmatics (_CES_) is an overt disassociation of his thinking
from Kantian transcendentalism--a disassociation which is reiterated
in his 2001 essay for an anthology in honor of Thomas McCarthy.

However, I agree with you that Apel is "basing the existence of
reflection on the existence of some sort of ontological stance."

Regards,

Gary



--- In habermas@y..., Ali Rizvi <ali_m_rizvi@y...> wrote:
> Gary
>
> Sorry for interrupting an interesting thread. But I
> found the following comments very intriguing:
> > My conjecture is that JH's 3-fold is basically a
> > pragmatic
> > one with no ontological pretensions. Then, the
> > philosophical issue might involve: What is the
> > relationship
> > between a basically pragmatic stance and ontological
> > questioning?
>
> I do not know what you exactly mean by 'pragmatic'
> here but what you will make of the following comments
> by Apel, which are approvingly quoted by Habermas in
> his postscript to KHI. In these remarks Apel makes
> explicit link between 'pragmatic dimension of symbols'
> with the existence of subject (which is obviously an
> ontological entity):
>
> "If we abstract from the pragmatic dimension of
> symbols, there can be no human subject of reasoning
> process. Accordingly, there can be no reflexion upon
> the predetermined conditions of why reasoning is
> possible. What we get is an infinite hierarchy of meta
> languages, meta theories et; containing (and
> concealing) the reflexive competence of man as a
> reasoning subject" (cited in Habermas, A postscript to
> KHI, Philosophy of Social Sciences, vol. 3 (1973) p.
> 158.
>
> For me here Apel, and Habermas, following him, is
> basing the existence of reflection on the existence of
> some sort of ontological stance.
>
[...]
>
> ali

----- Original Message -----
From: matthew_piscioneri <mpiscioneri@...>

> Yes. The penny is dropping.Reading Calhoun's _Re-thinking Critical
> Social Theory_ yesterday there was a remark that Hegel sought to find a
> balance between social emancipation and social integration; the same
> could be said for Habermas. I am still TOO stuck in the binary: either
> social emancipation OR social integration. It is a false dichotomy.

Could you expand on why you think this is a false dichotomy?

> ----------------------------------
> A further point on an earlier comment I made regarding the reification
> of communicative reason. In a sense communicative reason has been
> reified in constitutional form for many years in a number of nation-
> states. This gets back to Adam's point concerning the "interestedness"
> of public sphere actors to continue to renew in practice what is
> securely reified in constitutional form. It's a version of "the use it
> or lose it" dictum.

What do you mean by reified here? I'm not just pressing you for the sake of
it, I'm interested in the way in which you're using the concept: in a
Habermasian or non-Habermasian way. What, exactly, is reified? (and how
would be know, apart from the very ideals Habermas argues are implicit in
communicative praxis).

> ----------------------------------
>
> > > Where have romantic visions of social emancipation disappeared?
> >
> > Commercials.
>
> Gotta keep the dream alive! But what commercials do you mean? Coke ads
> or those commercials for "our way of life" which get filmed in exotic
> locations like Somalia, or during the creation of new democratic
> nations like East Timor. It allows for the renewal of those integrating
> social totems of liberty, justice, freedom, democracy et al. I'm a *
> good* Durkheimian!!! Still, what's the alternative? If you are an East
> Timorese enjoying a sense of freedom and national esteem does it really
> matter what use the social engineers are using your struggle for
> nationhood for in Australia?

Commercials promise satisfaction. No specific commercial, although "The Bay"
uses the line "The way things should be" (which also means that the is has
met up with the ought). After your response, I can't tell whether this
should be taken as a joke or not.

ken

Gary

Sorry for interrupting an interesting thread. But I
found the following comments very intriguing:
> My conjecture is that JH's 3-fold is basically a
> pragmatic
> one with no ontological pretensions. Then, the
> philosophical issue might involve: What is the
> relationship
> between a basically pragmatic stance and ontological
> questioning?

I do not know what you exactly mean by 'pragmatic'
here but what you will make of the following comments
by Apel, which are approvingly quoted by Habermas in
his postscript to KHI. In these remarks Apel makes
explicit link between 'pragmatic dimension of symbols'
with the existence of subject (which is obviously an
ontological entity):

"If we abstract from the pragmatic dimension of
symbols, there can be no human subject of reasoning
process. Accordingly, there can be no reflexion upon
the predetermined conditions of why reasoning is
possible. What we get is an infinite hierarchy of meta
languages, meta theories et; containing (and
concealing) the reflexive competence of man as a
reasoning subject" (cited in Habermas, A postscript to
KHI, Philosophy of Social Sciences, vol. 3 (1973) p.
158.

For me here Apel, and Habermas, following him, is
basing the existence of reflection on the existence of
some sort of ontological stance.

My problematisation here is obviously conceptual and
does not concern the chronology of the Habermasian
corpus.

Btw I am finding the discussion between Ken and
Matthew very interesting. And Ken I found the works of
Agamben very intriguing too. I have not read the one
mentioned but his Infancy and History Verso 1993 is
superb.

I am sorry for not contributing much. I hardly find
time to follow the incoming mails.

Regards for everybody

ali


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax
http://taxes.yahoo.com/

Ken,

Sorry to hear of your misfortune ;-)
>
> Funny story, not that funny for me. I picked up a used copy of Calhoun's
> anthology. After having it for several weeks, and finally cracking it open
> (this would have been several years ago) I found that it had been bound
> incorrectly - and the one essay that had been omitted was Habermas's, in the
> end I ended up with 50 pages of 'double' text... missing out on the last
> fifty. This is one of the few things by Habermas I haven't read (I know, I
> should bite the bullet and pay the $1.50 to have it photocopied).
-----------------------------------
[MattP] wrote:

>Habermas's emphasis post-KHI is upon social INTEGRATION at
> > the expense of social EMANCIPATION.

[Ken relied]

> I would focus this slightly differently: Habermas has ceased to be
> interested in domination. I was surprised when I realized, with the help of
> Deborah Cook, that BFN didn't mentioned systematically distorted
> communication - esp. the possibility that the complete juridification of all
> spheres of life might itself be damaging to social development.

Yes. The penny is dropping.Reading Calhoun's _Re-thinking Critical
Social Theory_ yesterday there was a remark that Hegel sought to find a
balance between social emancipation and social integration; the same
could be said for Habermas. I am still TOO stuck in the binary: either
social emancipation OR social integration. It is a false dichotomy.
----------------------------------
A further point on an earlier comment I made regarding the reification
of communicative reason. In a sense communicative reason has been
reified in constitutional form for many years in a number of nation-
states. This gets back to Adam's point concerning the "interestedness"
of public sphere actors to continue to renew in practice what is
securely reified in constitutional form. It's a version of "the use it
or lose it" dictum.
----------------------------------

> > Where have romantic visions of social emancipation disappeared?
>
> Commercials.

Gotta keep the dream alive! But what commercials do you mean? Coke ads
or those commercials for "our way of life" which get filmed in exotic
locations like Somalia, or during the creation of new democratic
nations like East Timor. It allows for the renewal of those integrating
social totems of liberty, justice, freedom, democracy et al. I'm a *
good* Durkheimian!!! Still, what's the alternative? If you are an East
Timorese enjoying a sense of freedom and national esteem does it really
matter what use the social engineers are using your struggle for
nationhood for in Australia?

In a slightly cynical Saturday mood,

Matthew Piscioneri

----- Original Message -----
From: matthew_piscioneri <mpiscioneri@...>

> Also I thought the following may be useful to your discussion with
> Adam. It's from the question/answer session recorded at the end of
> Calhoun's edited collection of essays re:Habermas and the
> Transformation of the Public Sphere:

Funny story, not that funny for me. I picked up a used copy of Calhoun's
anthology. After having it for several weeks, and finally cracking it open
(this would have been several years ago) I found that it had been bound
incorrectly - and the one essay that had been omitted was Habermas's, in the
end I ended up with 50 pages of 'double' text... missing out on the last
fifty. This is one of the few things by Habermas I haven't read (I know, I
should bite the bullet and pay the $1.50 to have it photocopied).

> "From that time on [the writing of his TCA] I have considered state
> apparatus and economy to be systemically integrated action fields that
> can be no longer be transformed democratically from within, that is,
> be switched over to a political mode of integration, without damage to
> their proper systemic logic and therewith their ability to function
> [emphasis mine]. The abysmal collapse of state socialism has only
> confirmed this. Instead, radical democratization now aims for a
> shifting of forces within a "separation of powers" that itself is to
> be maintained in principle. The new equilibrium to be attained is not
> one between state powers but between different resources for societal
> integration. The goal is no longer to supersede an economic system
> having a capitalist life of its own but to erect a democratic dam
> against the colonizing encroachment of system imperatives on areas of
> the Lifeworld (1992b: 444)."
>
> The question is: What exactly is the "goal"? How would Habermas define
> the concept of emancipation circa _BFN_? I don't think it is there as
> a "potential" or otherwise. Again - and accepting Gary's crit. of
> audacity - Habermas's emphasis post-KHI is upon social INTEGRATION at
> the expense of social EMANCIPATION.

I would focus this slightly differently: Habermas has ceased to be
interested in domination. I was surprised when I realized, with the help of
Deborah Cook, that BFN didn't mentioned systematically distorted
communication - esp. the possibility that the complete juridification of all
spheres of life might itself be damaging to social development. Here I would
point to the work of Jessica Benjamin (The Bonds of Love). Benjamin's theory
of recognition (between assertion and recognition) seeks to maintain the
tension between communicaitve relations, which are always contradictory,
moving in two opposing directions at once. Interestlingly, this is very
similar to what Wellmer argues in his essay on critical theory and the
post-hermeneutic turn in his book Endgames....

> I am really stretching credibility here, but there *is* a
> Hegelianesque "glorification" of the [democratic] state and its
> institutions in _BFN_ as the repository of the emancipatory strivings
> of individuals.

I think so too. At least Habermas presents arguments that seem to dissuade
thinking about democracy in different ways. The alternatives, the most
provocative alternatives, are being articulated by theorists like Laclau and
Mouffe, Castoriadis, the Slovene School, and this wonderful thinker I've
only recently encountered: Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and
Bare Life.

> Habermas's theoretical manoeuvre here, I think, is scintillating. He
> connects up his thesis on the primordial basis of social integration
> in Modernity with his thesis on the way social movements contribute to
> the formation of legislation. Put simply, in the types of societies
> under Habermas's analysis social movements cannot overturn the
> existing social hegemony because by the very nature of their operation
> they reproduce this order.

I'd probably agree with Habermas on this, but for different reasons.

> Where have romantic visions of social emancipation disappeared?

Commercials.

ken

Ken,

I have very much "enjoyed" and been stimulated by your exchange with
Adam. I was hoping for one clarification, though:

> It seems to me that after 1971 Habermas ceases to express the idea
of 'human
> interests' as knowledge-constitutive, but instead as performative
attitudes
> manifest in the way in which human beings semantically,
grammatically and
> pragmatically communicate with one another.

Are you suggesting that Habermas - in a sense - has transposed the
three knowledge constitutive interests over/into the three
performative attitudes a speaker can adopt:

technical interest.....statements about the external world
practical interest.....statements about intersubjectively valid norms
emancipatory interest..statements about subjective experience


Also I thought the following may be useful to your discussion with
Adam. It's from the question/answer session recorded at the end of
Calhoun's edited collection of essays re:Habermas and the
Transformation of the Public Sphere:

"From that time on [the writing of his TCA] I have considered state
apparatus and economy to be systemically integrated action fields that
can be no longer be transformed democratically from within, that is,
be switched over to a political mode of integration, without damage to
their proper systemic logic and therewith their ability to function
[emphasis mine]. The abysmal collapse of state socialism has only
confirmed this. Instead, radical democratization now aims for a
shifting of forces within a "separation of powers" that itself is to
be maintained in principle. The new equilibrium to be attained is not
one between state powers but between different resources for societal
integration. The goal is no longer to supersede an economic system
having a capitalist life of its own but to erect a democratic dam
against the colonizing encroachment of system imperatives on areas of
the Lifeworld (1992b: 444)."

The question is: What exactly is the "goal"? How would Habermas define
the concept of emancipation circa _BFN_? I don't think it is there as
a "potential" or otherwise. Again - and accepting Gary's crit. of
audacity - Habermas's emphasis post-KHI is upon social INTEGRATION at
the expense of social EMANCIPATION.

To return to my initial theme; a less theoretically rigorous and more
shall we say "historical" perspective would have Habermas letting
slide potentially inflammatory talk of emancipation in the mid to late
1970s in response to the emergence of anarchic terrorist activity in
the FDR.

I am really stretching credibility here, but there *is* a
Hegelianesque "glorification" of the [democratic] state and its
institutions in _BFN_ as the repository of the emancipatory strivings
of individuals.

Does anything sound familiar:

"In human knowledge and volition, as its material element, Reason
attains positive  existence...But the subjective will has also a
substantial life - a reality - in which it moves in the region of
essential being, essential itself as the objective of its existence.
This essential being is the union of the subjective with the rational
Will: it is the moral Whole, the State, which is that form of reality
in which the individual has and enjoys his freedom; but on the
condition of his recognizing, believing in, and willing that which is
common to the Whole." F.Hegel (1966: 67)

One last quip: Does this make Schleyer's kidnapping Habermas's reign
of terror?

Anyway on a more serious note In BFN, Habermas's analysis is not
overly directed towards the issue of social evolution. Whilst he
remains focused in this work on the dynamics and mechanisms which
ensure social integration in advanced capitalist democratic societies
there is no longer the compulsion to engage with the how or why these
societies have evolved in the manner which they have. These issues
mainly form the bases of his discussion in the TCA. Instead, in BFN,
there is a 'horizontality' in Habermas's approach to the issue of
social evolution.

By this I mean Habermas's historical narrative in the TCA is replaced
with an inquiry into a social landscape, which - for the purposes of
his  analysis in BFN -  has effectively "plateaued out". In BFN - and
given this plateau-modeling - Habermas's theoretical emphasis is
placed more upon the issue of what maintains social integration in
democratic advanced capitalist societies.

In short, the "answer" Habermas provides in BFN is that the processes
of law formation and implementation is the integrating cement - as it
were - of these social systems. Understood in this way, it is no
surprise that in BFN the motifs of 'evolution' and 'learning' are
scarce. In Habermas's account these societies have evolved to a
certain stage of development and Habermas's task in BFN is not to
answer the "how" of this evolution, but rather to answer the "how" of
their continued integration.

Given that Habermas's theoretical focus in BFN is upon the mechanics
and dynamics of social integration in democratic advanced capitalist
societies rather than providing a quasi-historical narrative detailing
the social evolutionary stages leading to the present day, it is
also not surprising that cybernetic motifs dominate the metaphorical
language of his theory construction.

In light of this shift in theoretical emphasis, in BFN social
movements act as 'sensors' (1992: 300, 359) in order to transmit
'warnings' (1992: 359, 373) which indicate the consolidation of a
crisis-consciousness in either of the private or public spheres:

"…the public sphere is a warning system with sensors that, though
unspecialised, are sensitive throughout society….Besides the "signal"
function, there must be an effective problematisation. The capacity of
the public sphere to solve problems on its own is limited. But this
capacity must be utilised to oversee the further treatment of problems
that takes place inside the political system (1992: 359)

In Habermas's throughput modeling of the legislative process; the
output of law from the political sphere and its implementation via the
processes of the administrative sphere represents - in a sense - the
optimum result for the generalized will- and opinion-formation which
generated the communicative power embodied in a social movement.

The optimization of the communicative power of a social movement
through its institutionalization is re-inforced by Habermas's analysis
in BFN in the following way. Not only does the throughput and
cyberneticized modeling of the developmental trajectory of a social
movement diminish the 'holistic aspirations' (1992: 372) of social
actors who seek to either wholly remake or perhaps overturn the
existing social hegemony; but - on Habermas's account - the dependency
of a social movement at one level (the private sphere) on the
linguistic co-ordination of communicative actions, and on the next and
incraesingly institutionalized level of public sphere activity in
advanced capitalist democratic societies on communicatively-based
discursive practices contributes INESCAPABLY to the consolidation or
maintenance of the integration of such a social system.

Habermas's theoretical manoeuvre here, I think, is scintillating. He
connects up his thesis on the primordial basis of social integration
in Modernity with his thesis on the way social movements contribute to
the formation of legislation. Put simply, in the types of societies
under Habermas's analysis social movements cannot overturn the
existing social hegemony because by the very nature of their operation
they reproduce this order. One exact statement of this point is
difficult to extract from the text of BFN, but the following comes
closest I believe:

"Basic constitutional guarantees alone, of course, cannot preserve the
public sphere and civil society from deformations. The communication
structures of the public sphere must rather be kept intact by an
energetic civil society. That the political sphere must in a certain
sense reproduce and stabilize itself from its own resources is shown
by the odd self-referential character of the practice of communication
in civil society. Those actors who are the carriers of the public
sphere put forward "texts" that always reveal the same subtext, which
refers to the critical function of the public sphere in general.
Whatever the manifest content of their public utterances, the
performative meaning of such public discourse at the same time
actualizes the function of an undistorted political sphere as such.
Thus, the institutions and legal guarantees of free and open
opinion-formation rest on the unsteady ground of the political
communication of actors who, in making use of them, at the same time
interpret, defend, and radicalize their normative content (1992: 369)"

Where have romantic visions of social emancipation disappeared?
IMO, in _BFN_ into the "cement" of social integration in advanced
capitalist democratic societies. A good thing too? I am not sure.
Anyway enough from me.

Regards,

Matthew Piscioneri

----- Original Message -----
From: Adam Elston <adamelston@...>

> I realise that the post is your interpretation of Habermas's position in
BFN
> and that it is this you find inconsistent with previous work, especially
TCA
> and the system/lifeworld problematic, and you raise the question, '...how
> exactly should we conceive the relation between a colonized lifeworld,
upon
> which democratic institutions rest, and the embodiment of communicative
> ideals in these institutions?'

Yes, exactly.

> There does appear to be a problematic relationship here but is it possible
> that the 'facts' of the political institutionalisation of the requirements
> necessary for political discourse are (still) waiting for the 'value'
input
> from a (yet to be) politicised public sphere?

That would be possible. But to what degree can we say these institutions are
'political' if there is only a potential for a politicised public sphere? It
seems to me that if the public sphere has been depoliticised through market
mechanisms (for example) then we don't really have a public sphere to speak
of (i.e. one can't hand out political tacts at shopping malls... despite
their being hailed as public space) ... what we do have is an economic
sphere that has the potential to be cracked open. But if that's the case
then the 'political' institutions really rest on a series of happenstance
private interests (or, distorted public interests?). In effect, there can be
no 'political' institutions without an existing political public sphere
(latent is nice in theory, but not in practice). As I hinted at before, I
understand politics to be a field of contestation. This space seems to be
diminishing rather than flourishing  -as new security measures are
implemented, new forms of surveilence appear, as corporations eat up public
companies and so on.

> Viewed thus we can allow that democratic institutions are more or less
> approximating the ideals of open and uncoerced discourse-and their
> legitimacy can be tested when, in the public sphere (albeit only in
'crisis
> situations')- 'perceptions of problems and problem situations have taken a
> conflictual turn (and) the attention span of the citizenry enlarges...in
> such a way that controversies in the broader public sphere primarily
ignite
> around the normative aspects of the problems most at issue.' (BFN 357).

If we have a democracy run by thugs, do we really have a democracy? That's
the problem I have with the fusion of facts and norms at the institutional
level. If the law exists but is not actually enforced (human rights for
example) then can we really say that these normative aspects have been
approximated? Even with totalitarian regimes there is always the potential
for politicization, if the picture is painted large and comphrensive enough.
I'm worried, however, that identify this potential detracts from the work of
existing states of affairs... Are things so bad that we can only talk about
potential, what then about the necessary theoretical work required for
providing an analysis of distortions both in existing democracy and the way
in which these distortions have been taken up directly into the theorization
of democratic structures?

> However, expecting the citizenry to have the capability to ferret out and
> thematise these problems is a problematic assumption (BFN 358) (hence the
> gap between the procedures of a democratic society and its political
> content.)  The reason for this is that (pace TCA) we had sacrificed our
> political concerns for the benefits of the welfare state and we were too
> busy exchanging our labour for goods...
>
> In BFN (contra TCA) it seems that the blame has shifted from the
colonising
> (communication distorting) tendencies of systemic imperatives to the
failure
> of the public sphere to do anything about them. In this way, emancipatory
> potential still exists...there is still work to be done; a colonized
> lifeworld wouldn't meet anything anywhere (especially proceduralized
> democratic institutions) half-way so the task remains, to turn back the
> colonising imperatives of a constantly encroaching 'system' and of
> revitalising the critical possibilities of an effective public sphere by
> participating in political processes.

I would agree that an emancipatory potential always exists. But that's how
it is with potentials: what we have now only makes sense in terms of what it
potentially might be, and what it could have been but is not. But I'm very
skeptical about the idea that we can have political institutions without
political content (a kind of stand-alone structural utopia?). Perhaps we can
consider this: what if the gap between the lifeworld and our political
institutions is such than a the task of meeting them up half-way is, in
fact, impossible - or, better, undesirable - without injury to existing
forms of life? Would the task not then be to re-imagine democracy? If theory
moves from the ground up, then it becomes incumbent upon theorists to
refigure the possible alternatives to existing forms of political
inadequacy...

> I guess that by trying to argue that emancipatory tendencies are not just
> structural presuppositions (though these 'facts' constitute half the
> equation) I am suggesting that there is, for Habermas, (on this reading of
> BFN) still scope for 'the creative imagining of different forms of
> democratic organization.'

I hope you're correct here. but again I'd like to express skepticism that
'facts' constitute half the equation. That's what I find to be strange. How
can a structure have an emancipatory tendency at all? I don't understand
this argument... well, I understand it, but I can't find myself in agreement
with it.

> That a failure to utilise the institutionalised
> framework for uncoerced communication is due to the colonising tendencies
of
> money/power.  That BFN isn't indicative of a (modified) end of ideology
but
> rather signals work still to be done before the latent, slumbering
'values'
> (unconscious desires) of a colonized public sphere become (potential)
> political realities.

Unconscious desires... I very much like that (being half-Lacanian
half-Habermasian). Unconscious desires are very strange things - I would
argue that the kernel of any desire, and with Lacan desire is unconscious
desire, is daringly utopian, in the sense that desire itself bespeaks a kind
of openness and impossibility and makes way for the contestation of
fantasies, values and so on. With regards to the end of ideology...
Habermas, I think, presents a modified thesis. It isn't that ideology has
ended, but that if we possess knowledge about undistorted communication, the
seeds of which Habermas argues have been instantiated, then, really, the
potential for discourse free from ideology is immanent, and this immanency
is what creates the spectre of the end of ideology - the fact that we know
what would be ideology-free. All we need to do is tinker and argue about
things and we can then be self-assured that ideology, as distortion, has
been freed from its fixations. I'm more partial to a Lacanian understanding
of ideology - although I won't follow up on that here unless it becomes more
relevant to a discussion about Habermas...

> I hope that this does justice to your post (What became of the
emancipatory
> interest?). I realise my relative inexperience may have resulted in a
> misunderstanding of the point you were making but I do hope not.
> Best,
> Adam Elston

I don't think so. I think you responded lucidly to many of the points raised
and clarified a few other things for consideration. I hope I've responded in
kind.

I think, however, that I've shifted here a bit further from the initial
question about emancipatory interests, although I hope to continue to
discuss the questions of utopian tendencies in embedded in various
institutions or forms of life...

ken

Dear Ken,

Thank you for your very stimulating posting, and Matt for raising the topic.
   As the content of your post relates to work I am doing at the moment I
hope you won't mind if I make a few comments/suggestions...they should be
seen, if anything, as points I need to clarify rather than disagreements
with your comments, and I hope you are patient enough to get through them.

I realise that the post is your interpretation of Habermas's position in BFN
and that it is this you find inconsistent with previous work, especially TCA
and the system/lifeworld problematic, and you raise the question, '...how
exactly should we conceive the relation between a colonized lifeworld, upon
which democratic institutions rest, and the embodiment of communicative
ideals in these institutions?'

There does appear to be a problematic relationship here but is it possible
that the 'facts' of the political institutionalisation of the requirements
necessary for political discourse are (still) waiting for the 'value' input
from a (yet to be) politicised public sphere?
Viewed thus we can allow that democratic institutions are more or less
approximating the ideals of open and uncoerced discourse-and their
legitimacy can be tested when, in the public sphere (albeit only in 'crisis
situations')- 'perceptions of problems and problem situations have taken a
conflictual turn (and) the attention span of the citizenry enlarges...in
such a way that controversies in the broader public sphere primarily ignite
around the normative aspects of the problems most at issue.' (BFN 357).

However, expecting the citizenry to have the capability to ferret out and
thematise these problems is a problematic assumption (BFN 358) (hence the
gap between the procedures of a democratic society and its political
content.)  The reason for this is that (pace TCA) we had sacrificed our
political concerns for the benefits of the welfare state and we were too
busy exchanging our labour for goods...

In BFN (contra TCA) it seems that the blame has shifted from the colonising
(communication distorting) tendencies of systemic imperatives to the failure
of the public sphere to do anything about them. In this way, emancipatory
potential still exists...there is still work to be done; a colonized
lifeworld wouldn't meet anything anywhere (especially proceduralized
democratic institutions) half-way so the task remains, to turn back the
colonising imperatives of a constantly encroaching 'system' and of
revitalising the critical possibilities of an effective public sphere by
participating in political processes.

I guess that by trying to argue that emancipatory tendencies are not just
structural presuppositions (though these 'facts' constitute half the
equation) I am suggesting that there is, for Habermas, (on this reading of
BFN) still scope for 'the creative imagining of different forms of
democratic organization.'  That a failure to utilise the institutionalised
framework for uncoerced communication is due to the colonising tendencies of
money/power.  That BFN isn't indicative of a (modified) end of ideology but
rather signals work still to be done before the latent, slumbering 'values'
(unconscious desires) of a colonized public sphere become (potential)
political realities.

I hope that this does justice to your post (What became of the emancipatory
interest?). I realise my relative inexperience may have resulted in a
misunderstanding of the point you were making but I do hope not.

Best,

Adam Elston




_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com

--- Kenneth MacKendrick <kenneth.mackendrick@...>
wrote:

Gary, I'm anticipating that you won't agree...

No, Ken, I *applaud* your discussion. [So I disagree that I
"won't agree." :} ] Thanks for such a thought-provoking and
constructive posting.

There *are* some points I could disagree with, but the
value of your discussion merits letting go of disagreement
(for the near-term, at least).

More importantly, you offer a very credible bridge between
the early JH notion of emancipatory interest and _BFN,
speaking directly to Matt's issue in terms of JH's work.
Where you're critical of JH or disagree with what he
appears to claim, you really compel careful consideration.
Good critical practice.

Regards,

Gary







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Gary, Matt, Others,

As you know the question of Habermas's understanding of an emancipatory
interest is crucial to my research. ...

It seems to me that after 1971 Habermas ceases to express the idea of 'human
interests' as knowledge-constitutive, but instead as performative attitudes
manifest in the way in which human beings semantically, grammatically and
pragmatically communicate with one another. Instead of a
socio-anthropological interest, Habermas argues that these orientations are
ontogenetic, which is to say that they are fundamentally structural and
pragmatic (TCA, I, 24-25, 44-45). For instance, Habermas writes, "The
utopian perspective of reconciliation and freedom is ingrained in the
conditions for the communicative sociation of individuals; it is built into
the linguistic mechanism of the reproduction of the species" (TCA, I, 398).
In not even sure that Habermas uses the concept 'human interest' in
Communication and the Evolution of Society... (we should notice that human
interests disappear at the same time that Freud disappears).

Although this shift is evident immediately after the publication of
Knowledge and Human Interests, Habermas's most sustained argument can be
found in his 1976 essay "What is Universal Pragmatics?" (CES, 1-68). Here,
Habermas argues that in speaking we take up a series of performative
attitudes toward the world and toward others. Habermas outlines a tripartite
orientation: a cognitive-pragmatic orientation toward objects, a
normative-ethical attitude toward other subjects, and an
evaluative-aesthetic attitude toward ourselves regarding truthfulness and
authenticity (thus preserving and replacing his earlier distinction, see
BFN, 161). The task of a universal or formal pragmatics is to outline and
justify the normative basis of all communicative performances and includes a
taxonomy of different ways of speaking and communicating.

The difference between early and late Habermas appears to be as follows. In
Habermas's earlier work, the interest in knowledge closely resembled an
ego-interest in knowledge (based on the tentative distinction in Freud's
work); hence the link Habermas established between a desire for knowledge
and the fantasy of a good life that underpins this desire. After 1971
Habermas attempts to ground the intuitive ideal of undistorted communication
in a modified way. What he had formerly identified as a transcendental
interest in emancipation was re-theorized as a quasi-transcendental
structure, best expressed in pragmatic terms as an assumption that is
unavoidable, regardless of human desire or socialization (TP, 8, 14, 21).
The human interest in various ways of knowing was thus considered less from
an anthropological and methodological point of view and more from a
pragmatic and linguistic point of view. This shifts Habermas's emphasis
without shifting his aim. Whenever we speak with others, Habermas argues, we
pragmatically and unconditionally assume that understanding and agreement is
possible. Likewise, we also assume that the conditions for understanding and
agreement have been met (BFN, 35). This is not a matter of consciousness but
a counterfactual performative assumption, embedded in our activity.

In Habermas's response to several theologians, as well as in Between Facts
and Norms, he outlines this normative ideal as 'transcendence from within.'
The idea of 'transcendence from within' again refers to the performative
idealizations that participants oriented by the attempt to understand and
coordinate their actions consensually. Such idealizations lend themselves to
formal reconstruction, the necessary conditions required for communicative
action, and have been expressed by Seyla Benhabib in two succinct
principles: universal moral respect and egalitarian reciprocity. The first
principle is a guarantee of equal rights and freedoms for speaking subjects.
The second, the principle of communicative exchange, is the idea that mutual
understanding and agreement rests on normative content preceding moral
argumentation itself.  Without these twin principles communication free from
domination is considered to be impossible. These principles of discourse
serve not only as the basis of a communicative ethics but also as
'guideposts' for ideology critique and the moral frame of a legal theory.
When these conditions are violated distortions in communication, such as
imbalances of power or ideological affects, are certain; i.e. argumentation
cannot be conducted on the basis of strategy (BFN, 31).

In BFN, Habermas takes up the position that existing constitutional
democratic forms have institutionalized, more or less, the ideals of
autonomy and solidarity, the institutional actualization of self-realization
(human rights) and self-determination (popular sovereignty).  In other
words, the necessary conditions for consensus free from constraint.
Habermas argues that within contemporary democratic institutions there is no
"opposition between the ideal and the real." Thus, the normative core of a
communicative morality is "partially inscribed in the social facticity of
observable political processes" (BFN, 287). Habermas's frequent use of the
phrase 'more or less' means that the facts have met up with the norms and
all that remains to be done is to tinker with the last vestiges of
suppressed communication. What was first understood to be a counterfactual
ideal now appears to factual, and Habermas's normative account of a
deliberative liberal democracy is understood to be instantiated within
empirical democratic institutions.  In effect, we have, in some respects,
reached a modified version of the the end of ideology thesis.

I should note, despite this dramatic claim, Habermas's affirmation is not
ubiquitous. Many of his publications since Between Facts and Norms still
uphold the idea of 'transcendence from within' as being a kind of utopian
feature of communication. This usually has more to do with moral theory and
less to do with Habermas's legal theory. In any event, Habermas's writings
on deliberative democracy are not at all neglectful of the relation between
law and morality.  However, one particular comment by Habermas is telling.
He writes, "Naturally, even a proceduralized 'popular sovereignty' ...
cannot operate without the support of an accommodating political culture,
without the basic attitudes, mediated by tradition and socialization, of a
population accustomed to political freedom: rational political
will-formation cannot occur unless a rationalized lifeworld meets it
  halfway" (BFN, 487).  Taking Habermas's work as a relatively consistent
body of literature, at least with regards to the idea of unbound
communication, one is struck by the apparent inconsistency of Habermas's
affirmative institutional analysis in BFN and his more critical analysis
TCA, at least in terms of distorted communication. In TCA Habermas argues
that everyday life is increasingly subject to forms of systematically
distorted communication, the colonization of the lifeworld by money and
power. The incongruity thus appears to rest in the way in which the
lifeworld is colonized by distorting influences, yet democratic institutions
remain relatively free from this malevolent process. If, as Habermas argues,
the political culture of the lifeworld must meet with proceduralized
democratic institutions 'halfway,' then how exactly should we conceive the
relation between a colonized lifeworld, upon which democratic institutions
rest, and the embodiment of communicative ideals in these institutions? Or,
since Habermas argues that democratic institutions and their political
content presuppose one another, how are we to understand this relation in
light of Habermas's analysis of reification, systematically distorted
communication, and his thesis regarding colonization pursued in TCA? In a
rather strange way, it would appear entirely possible to have an
institutional structure which 'more or less' embodies the ideals of
undistorted speech without the requisite political culture to affirm or
recognize such ideals, even though such institutions rest on this very
lifeworld. Such a sharp break between the procedural form of a democratic
society and the social and political content of a democratic society would
appear to be highly problematic because it casts a rather dramatic shadow
over either the legitimacy of existing democratic structures or the
normative assumptions of a damaged public sphere, a Janus-faced conclusion
perhaps?

To narrow in on the problem, what Habermas essentially argues in Between
Facts and Norms is a radical de-politicization of the existing democratic
institutions and the idea of a democratic state. If the normative core of
the idealizing tension inherent to discourse has in fact been
institutionalized then democratic institutions are not political
institutions per se. The problem here, which I consider truly deflationary,
is that Habermas forecloses on the creative imagining of different forms of
democratic organization and ends up with an apology for existing
institutions. I would argue that this is not an oversight, but an inherent
tendency stemming from his understanding of undistorted communication and
his 'recommendations' regarding proceduralization....

I guess I'm kind of thinking that Habermas's understanding of an
emancipatory interest, as a distinct interest, kind of disppears into his
formal pragmatics, which has a rather different character than KHI. The
shift from a socio-cultural anthroplogy to a more thorough linguistic theory
is indicative of this change. Utopian tendencies no longer adhere to
interests, but specifically to the structure of our way of life, regardless
of the specific content of that life. What is problematic for me about this
is that I find it odd that emancipatory tendencies become structural
presuppositions rather than questions of conscious or unconscious desire...

Gary, I'm anticipating that you won't agree with my caricature of Habermas
here (as is what usually happens). So I will thank you in advance for any
consideration that you might have of my thoughts on this and any time you
might spend considering my comments. I'm trying to pinpoint an ambiguity in
Habemas's thinking here, which extends into a critique but that's less
important than whether or not the ambiguity is present in Habermas's
thought. Surely my casting of Habermas as depoliticizing the public sphere
is overdetermined... and yet I think it gestures toward an idea that is very
important to me: the idea that politics isn't about acting in accord with
regulative ideals but the very contestation about regulative ideals...

ken

--- matthew_piscioneri <mpiscioneri@...> wrote:

...I struggle to understand where Habermas's interest in
"emancipation" has ended up in a work like _BFN_. I know
it's been sublated; but into what???

Matt:

Doesn't JH's sense of emancipatory interest pertain to an
interrupted development (individual and social)? So, a
successful release from distortion, inhibition, domination,
etc. returns one to the shared community condition of
developing resources and opportunities for progressive
social action, which democratic life strives to
institutionalize. The great question following emancipation
is: What now? What is to be done?

Regards,

Gary








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Gary,

  Thanks for your reply.

  >Please appreciate that I'm enjoying a *response* to your
  >stimulating posting, not referring to you.

  I appreciate both the *motivation* behind your response, and,
especially, the content. The relationship between the practice of
discourse (theory-production)
  and the practice of a political/Political engagement need not be as
vexing as it continues to be (for me at least) because *factually*
people continue to do
  both. It's only when one or the other sites of a praxis is prioritized
over the other that alarm bells start to ring. Equally misleading is
the postulation of a
  uni-directional i.e. causal relationship between theory and practice.
Recognizing theory production as a social practice and then recognizing
that social
  actions inevitably get *brought* to the site of discourse and a fuller
social meaning is conferred indicates the holistic framework covering
theory and
  practice.

  >So much "Critical Theory" is just that: theory
  of critique that never gets very far toward progressive
  practice. Real critical practice tends to turn into
  post-critical or constructive activity relatively quickly.
  In other words, immanent critique of a real local community
  program leads to solidarities with actual others who are
  more interested in revising the program than celebrating
  their recognition of community failure (though there are
  plenty of activists who are quite happy, it seems, to go on
  and on about their critical consciousness, rather than
  making reliable local commitments). Much academic critique
  is too distant from actual conditions of life to say much
  to a general audience about progress, so they commune with
  each other about the problems of critique.

  There you go!!!Putting hot-winded theoreticians like me out of
business;-)
  --------------------

  You claim that "Habermas's functionalist depiction of the
  emancipatory interest as a
  central mechanism of social integration in advanced
  capitalist societies is a major subtext of Habermas's
  _BFN_" It makes me smile, because it's so audacious (and,
  to me, implausible). The "emancipatory interest" is an
  idiom of _KHI_ in the late 1960s--a long, long way from
  BFN. JH never--from 1968 to present--has claimed that the
  emancipatory interest is a "central mechanism of social
  integration."

  Gary, my use of "emancipatory interest" is anachronistic agreed. It is
just that I struggle to understand where Habermas's interest in
"emancipation"has
  ended up in a work like _BFN_. I know it's been sublated; but into
what???

  ---------------------------------------

  Thanks,

  Matthew Piscioneri

Matt:

Very stimulating.

People get awfully nebulous with the terms 'theory' and
'practice'. These two terms are really emblems for
large-scale attitudes toward reality--something on the
order of "academic life" and "the real world." This is
registered in your direct association of "the theorist"
with "the intellectual".

I mentioned earlier (which you quote) that a so-called
theory-practice concern is "essentially an issue of
translating academic work into organized community activity
that is progressive."

This must also involve processes of assessment and
re-thinking that would include questions such as yours: "in
what sense can we then talk about a practical enlightenment
having been achieved?"

Such a question can only be answered relative to specific
"translations" or programs, involving educational, social
welfare and health systems, etc., as I mentioned. We *can*
talk about progress (a common synonym for your "practical
enlightenment"?), but talk is also questioning. So, one
*does* have to ask of *any* frame of understanding "in what
sense can we talk"--*validly* (you surely mean).

It's at once an epistemological and evaluative questioning:
How can we do it (whatever good we aim to actualize), and
how can we know that we've done it well (i.e., critically
appreciate arrival--and recognize non-arrival or
unacceptable rates of advance)?

Most times, I feel that I'm on the other side of critique.
People talk about "bureaucratization," as you do, like it's
news; while I would focus on ways to avoid
bureaucratization in the first place (which is also an
indirect basis for dissolving existing bureaucratization).
I *know* the emporer has no clothes; what matters is how to
make a court that isn't compelled to pretend otherwise.
Critical theory teaches mandarins how to talk about nudity,
but it doesn't provide much insight into shaping
progressive programmatic action. Theory of democracy that
speaks to the actual processes of social evolution from
which it was shaped teaches court design.

To my mind, the promise of a renewed Critical Theory,
expressed by JH in 1980 (when TCA was written), has been
abundantly realized in the two decades since, in JH's
political "theory" (e.g., BFN) and practice (e.g.
_Inclusion of the Other_).

Nonetheless, specific critiques of ideology, distortion,
domination, etc., are an integral part of the dialogue of
social evolution. I don't want to be read as dismissive of
critique. But I go for *doing* critique (which is a
specific, ideally immanent matter), not talk much about it
(unless in response to others who do, which I try to do
immanently). So much "Critical Theory" is just that: theory
of critique that never gets very far toward progressive
practice. Real critical practice tends to turn into
post-critical or constructive activity relatively quickly.
In other words, immanent critique of a real local community
program leads to solidarities with actual others who are
more interested in revising the program than celebrating
their recognition of community failure (though there are
plenty of activists who are quite happy, it seems, to go on
and on about their critical consciousness, rather than
making reliable local commitments).  Much academic critique
is too distant from actual conditions of life to say much
to a general audience about progress, so they commune with
each other about the problems of critique.

Please appreciate that I'm enjoying a *response* to your
stimulating posting, not referring to you.

--------------------

You claim that "Habermas's functionalist depiction of the
emancipatory interest as a
central mechanism of social integration in advanced
capitalist societies is a major subtext of Habermas's
_BFN_"  It makes me smile, because it's so audacious (and,
to me, implausible). The "emancipatory interest" is an
idiom of _KHI_ in the late 1960s--a long, long way from
BFN. JH never--from 1968 to present--has claimed that the
emancipatory interest is a "central mechanism of social
integration."

M> First, the practical realisation of theoretical
enlightenment....

G: "The" realization, as far as our context goes, seems to
involve something more specific--let's say (to get more
manageable) we're talking about education. You would, then,
be at least claiming that education....

M> ... is ...

G: for JH in BFN? Or the bureaucratization of
enlightenment? Charitably, I read you as switching back in
attention from BFN to the latter.

M> ...largely *confined* to the symbolic reification of
this enlightenment....

G: But has nothing to do with JH's sense of emancipatory
interest or education or anything, as a matter of working
constructively. Any notion of reification only makes sense
relative to a pre- or post-reified sense of things.
Understanding *this*, reification can be *recognized*, but
better: AVIODED.

This is the kind of tack I would take with your related
comments--all good performances of critical rhetoric, but
precursory to some specific context and the more important
kind of questions about doing things well and making
reparations.

INDEED, as you say "there are empirical issues which affect
the
translation of [any] theoretical program into practice."
This is why JH is also an exemplary participant, as public
intellectual (while BFN itself is a *result* of his
theorization of empirical issues for many years).

M> William Scheuerman in his essay "Between Radicalism and
Resignation"
in the 1999 Dews ed. anthology asks the blunt question does
anyone
(including Habermas) really believe that omsbudpeople and
judicial
watchdogs can prevent the distortion of the due processes
of
deliberative democratic systems.

G: I'm confident JH doesn't believe this. His sense of
deliberative democracy isn't primarily jurisprudential.


I'm going to stop here. Thanks for your thought-provoking
comments.


Gary





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Gary,

Thanks for your comprehensive reply. You are right that:

G:Wanting a "theoretically guided political practice" is a
very precursory, almost tired level of formulation that
recalls JH's 1971 essay for the re-publication of _Theory &
Practice_, "Aspects of the Attempt to Link Theory and
Practice."

I suppose the issue of the relationship between theory and practice
has been almost THE central motif of the discourse of critical social
theory since Marx, at least. This is one reason why I am keen to
discuss - as was suggested - Chapter 1 of _MCCA_, and perhaps then
attempt to trace the changes in Habermas's conception of the role of
critical theory and the critical social theorist since _Theory and
Praxis_.

As may be easily discerned, in the background on my query is the
issue of the role of the theorist, or ,in more classic terms, the
*intellectual* in the production, first, and translation, second, of
a theoretical enlightenment:

G:[snip]It's essentially an issue of
translating academic work into organized community activity
that is progressive.

Yet whilst *organized community activity* may be a practical outcome
of applied theoretical enlightenment in what sense can we then talk
about a practical enlightenment having been achieved? On the one hand
this is an empirical question, however, on the other hand it is also
a question that has been consistently addressed on a theoretical
level, and is an issue which I think remains available to discussion.

This is, unless, I am stuck in a early 1970s time warp, and everyone
else on the planet happily *accepts* the bureaucratization of
enlightenment in departments of the state responsible for the
inclusion of minorities, managing positive discrimination and other
*enlightened* programs which began to appear in Australia during the
1980s, and might be lumped together as the social phenomena of
*Political Correctness*.

Habermas's functionalist depiction of the emancipatory interest as a
central mechanism of social integration in advanced capitalist
societies is a major subtext of Habermas's _BFN_ although it is
certainly there also in _CES_. Three issues at least arise from this.

First, the practical realisation of theoretical enlightenment is
largely *confined* to the symbolic reification of this enlightenment
in the programs and activities which stem from the theoretical
enlightenment *produced* by the critical social theorist. The
critical social theorist or *enlightener* is better understood as a
functionary in the service of social integration and certainly NOT in
the service of the "holistic aspirations" of revolutionary social
movements!

Second, participants in programs which are the practical outcomes of
the translation of a theoretical enlightenment are confirmed in their
status as *clients* of the state. This begs anew the question of
enlightenment: Can a *client* of the state be considered enlightened
whilst remaining a client, and yet putting romantic outsider notions
to one side - what are the other available options? Does any of this
provide a *clue* to articulating a definition of the possibilities
and limits of contemporary "enlightenment"?

Third - and this leads onto the next discussion - what of the
reification of communicative reason?
______________________________________________________________________

Matt> What I am conjecturing is that Habermas has
underestimated the difficulty of politically (as well as
personally) organizing the theoretical enlightenment
exposed - as it were - by his overall critical
communication theoretic.

G: That's not yet plausible to me, given the context of
work I indicated above--not plausible for 1979 and less
plausible by the mid-1990s.

My terminology here (*underestimated*) has let me down I think. What
I probably meant was *under theorized*. Habermas's outline in the
_BFN_ provides a good starting point - by my standards at least - for
a satisfactory (enlightened) theoretical basis for initiating
programs of practical enlightenment. Yet, as he admits in _BFN_, and
I can't provide the reference immediately because I am away from home
for the next week, there are empirical issues which affect the
translation of his theoretical program into practice.

William Scheuerman in his essay "Between Radicalism and Resignation"
in the 1999 Dews ed. anthology asks the blunt question does anyone
(including Habermas) really believe that omsbudpeople and judicial
watchdogs can prevent the distortion of the due processes of
deliberative democratic systems. This is one area in which I would
argue Habermas has under theorized the practical difficulties which
face the translation of his theoretical enlightenment.
__________________________________________________________________

G: In my view, a notion like "emancipatory program" can
make *practical* sense in terms of existing social system
resources of education, social welfare, public health, etc.
(focusing the problems of progress here relative to real
social conditions in specific societies). In real contexts,
"the difficulty" IS "explicable in terms commensurate with
Habermas's" work, it seems to me, but the component of
"genetic structuralism" pertains primarily to
psychodevelopmental processes. The "development of
normative structures" (JH) belongs to the entire horizon of
sociocultural progress.

M: Agreed, Gary. The provocative thread I was mischievously tugging
at - for the sake of stimulating discussion - is to invert Habermas's
focus upon species-wide *competencies* and look for species-wide
*incompetencies* in an attempt to make clear what are the empirical
conditions shaping the possibility for the successful realisation of
a theoretical enlightenment in the real world, shall we say.

And before people label me a social darwinist or supporter of
meritocracy I have raised this point in the context of examining the
difficulties of translating a theoretical enlightenment into a
practical enlightenment. Thoughts anyone?

Matthew Piscioneri

Matt:

I'm glad you're participating here, especially since you're
very involved with Habermas's issues.

Your first posting drew on the 1981 _Theory of
Communicative Action_, and I would expect that *that* at
least would be a primary context for addressing Honneth's
1979 concerns. But an even more appropriate context would
be JH work of that period already available to Honneth, on
"the reconstruction of historical materialism."

Also, I would want to distinguish Honneth's issues (frame
of interpretation) from Habermas's.

Honneth (AH) writes: "Using *interaction* as a form of
action viable in all social systems, and therefore also in
the context of historical reification, Habermas is able to
salvage the possibility of a theoretically guided political
practice....

Wanting a "theoretically guided political practice" is a
very precursory, almost tired level of formulation that
recalls JH's 1971 essay for the re-publication of _Theory &
Practice_, "Aspects of the Attempt to Link Theory and
Practice." By 1975 or so, this has become what one finds in
_Communication & the Evolution of Society_, especially
"Development of Normative Structures" and the
"Reconstruction" essay I mentioned. Moreover, _Legitimation
Crisis_ is 6 years into the past by 1979. Thus, we're far
from anything specially Habermasian in the characterization
by Honneth that:

AH: "....Thus, for Habermas, the practical focus of
critical theory shifts to that dimension of social
reproduction in which subjects interpret their own needs
and intentions...."

G: This especially recalls "Moral Development & Ego
Identity," from CES, which is ultimately about just this:
the capacity for "subjects [to] interpret their own needs
and intentions" relative to a role competence and
moral-cognitive maturation that makes workable a
participatory response to the distortive conflicts outlined
in LC in terms of the development of normative structures
(which becomes JH's theory of democracy in _Between Facts &
Norms_).

It seems clear to me that JH's work satisfies the
requirement that:

AH: "...This communicative action should generate both a
meaningful self- definition and a critique of domination
through a process of collective social criticism which
would reach the social space where theoretical
enlightenment can be politically organized."(58-59)

G: There are four modes of development here. One mode is
"the social space", which can be organized, presumably via
processes of deliberative democratic action.

M> What interests me most here is this notion of
*theoretical enlightenment* and the possibility of
*translating* a theoretically- achieved enlightenment into
a practical enlightenment.

G: Yes, very interesting. It's essentially an issue of
translating academic work into organized community activity
that is progressive. TRANSLATING is a very good focus. I
recall a report I heard last week about the work of the
U.S. National Instutes for Health, where the reporter
talked about "translation research" that works out the
bridge between research and program implementation.

Matt> What I am conjecturing is that Habermas has
underestimated the difficulty of politically (as well as
personally) organizing the theoretical enlightenment
exposed - as it were - by his overall critical
communication theoretic.

G: That's not yet plausible to me, given the context of
work I indicated above--not plausible for 1979 and less
plausible by the mid-1990s. So, can you be specific about
the political difficulty? Is something missing in, say, TCA
and BFN (which is, in effect, volume 3 of TCA)?

M> As James Schmidt makes clear in his essay in the same
_Telos_ volume quoting Richard Bernstein that:

"If *all* speech entails this telos [towards
domination-free communication], then we need an account of
what it is that 'leads human beings to overcome forms of
distortive communication and work toward the conditions
required for ideal speech...."

G: I agree, but it seems to me that even in 1979, it's not
the case that, as Schmidt continues:

S: "...What seems to be lacking here is any illumination on
the problem of human agency and
motivation."(69)

G: What does Schimdt mean by "here"? An "account" of the
problem of agency seems to be a keynote of  "Moral
Development & Ego Identity" (especially in the early
sections on psychoanalytic ego psychology which leads into
Kohlberg's focus on moral motivations in cognitive terms).
Also, the analysis of the lifeworld in TCA is centrally
about the *embodied* interests of personal, cultural and
social identity.

M> Yet for Habermas to acknowledge the centrality of a
volitional component (presumably on both the individual and
collective levels) in the translation of a theoretical
enlightenment into political practice risks commencing the
slippery slide back into decisionism....

G: How so? His theory of communicative action doesn't have
a decisionistic grasp of understanding, mediation, and
validation. Granted, there are risks (there are always
risks). But there are also critical processes that can be
developed through education and institutionalization (e.g.,
critical media) and competences for analytic and
self-reflection that translation processes can *foster*, as
well as embody (or exemplify).

M> ....and finally a confrontation with the self
preservationist principles and the philosophy of
consciousness subject/object paradigm Habermas so
strenuously seeks to move beyond.

G: Yes, the problem of "subject-centered reason" that is
central to _Philosophical Discourse of Modernity_ which JH
resolves practically in _Justification & Application_, in
terms of the "employments of practical reason" and
appropriative processes between discourse and lifeworld
that is the focus of "Remarks on Discourse Ethics".

M> More pointedly, is the difficulty of the widespread and
lasting realisation of an emancipatory program finally
explicable in terms commensurate with Habermas's professed
theoretical recourse to genetic structuralism?

G: In my view, a notion like "emancipatory program" can
make *practical* sense in terms of existing social system
resources of education, social welfare, public health, etc.
(focusing the problems of progress here relative to real
social conditions in specific societies). In real contexts,
"the difficulty" IS "explicable in terms commensurate with
Habermas's" work, it seems to me, but the component of
"genetic structuralism" pertains primarily to
psychodevelopmental processes. The "development of
normative structures" (JH) belongs to the entire horizon of
sociocultural progress.

M> Isn't Habermas committed to this [explicability]?

G: I believe that he is.

M> Otherwise he would be back with Adorno and a
metaphysical dialectic of enlightened reason, surely.

G: Surely. But I don't see any risk of that.

Onward

Regards,

Gary





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I'd prefer replies to go to the whole list, but I can easily go to the
webpage if others would prefer private replies.


> Currently, all postings are to be distributed to all members who
have
> chosen to receive e-mails; but I can change this to be that
replies
> are only sent to the author, so that "postings"  are distributed to
> everyone who receives e-mail from the group address, but
"replies"
> only go to the posting author; then, if you're interested in others'
> extended exchanges, you can check the Webpage. Would you
want that?





I think that the below policy is very reasonable.  It might also be
desireable to ask new members to send an introductory
message to the list, letting us all know of their interests.  I'm too
shy to do this unless everyone else does it, too, but it might be
too much to ask as a policy.


> What if new membership had to be approved by me? Currently,
anyone
> becomes a member if they choose to. This is good from a
populist point
> of view, but you can get populism from the Spoons list or from
tens of
> other lists at Yahoo! Groups.  I happen to be very permissive,
but I
> don't think it unfair to ask members about their interest and to
> express a group ethic to him/her (like what I've listed in the
"Group
> Files.pdf" document) before a new member is approved. No
evaluation,
> but *contact* with the person wanting membership, before that
person
> becomes a member. This would entail that a group ethic be
kept in
> mind, re: postings.

Dear List,

The following quote is from Axel Honneth's essay on Habermas's
theoretical movement beyond the negative dialectics of Adorno
("Communication and Reconciliation" in _Telos_,1979):

"Using *interaction* as a form of action viable in all social
systems, and therefore also in the context of historical reification,
Habermas is able to salvage the possibility of a theoretically guided
political practice. Thus, for Habermas, the practical focus of
critical theory shifts to that dimension of social reproduction in
which subjects interpret their own needs and intentions. This
communicative action should generate both a meaningful self-
definition and a critique of domination through a process of
collective social criticism which would reach the social space where
theoretical enlightenment can be politically organized."(58-59)

What interests me most here is this notion of *theoretical
enlightenment* and the possibility of *translating* a theoretically-
achieved enlightenment into a practical enlightenment.

What I am conjecturing is that Habermas has underestimated the
difficulty of politically (as well as personally) organizing the
theoretical enlightenment exposed - as it were - by his overall
critical communication theoretic.

As James Schmidt makes clear in his essay in the same _Telos_ volume
quoting Richard Bernstein that:

"If *all* speech entails this telos [towards domination-free
communication], then we need an account of what it is that 'leads
human beings to overcome forms of distortive communication and work
toward the conditions required for ideal speech. What seems to be
lacking here is any illumination on the problem of human agency and
motivation."(69)

Yet for Habermas to acknowledge the centrality of a volitional
component (presumably on both the individual and collective levels)
in the translation of a theoretical enlightenment into political
practice risks commencing the slippery slide back into decisionism
and finally a confrontation with the self preservationist principles
and the philosophy of consciousness subject/object paradigm Habermas
so strenuously seeks to move beyond.

More pointedly, is the difficulty of the widespread and lasting
realisation of an emancipatory program finally explicable in terms
commensurate with Habermas's professed theoretical recourse to
genetic structuralism? Isn't Habermas committed to this? Otherwise he
would be back with Adorno and a metaphysical dialectic of enlightened
reason, surely.

Regards,

Matthew Piscioneri

List members:

I'm writing as moderator, but first a few words about my member
activity this weekend. Thanks in advance for your time.

----------------------------------
AS MEMBER:

I've revised my discussion of a sense of "philosophical" attitude to
Habermas's work (see "Files", "Topic 1:..."), in an effort to be
clearer, to extract asides that are better addressed separately in
some detail (e.g., Derridean echoes clutter things prior to some focus
on that), and I've deleted all comments about there being a "mall"
condition. (Having a multiple personality, I readily take issue with
Gary the next morning, here in the northwestern quadrant of the
planet). I'm satisfied that I won't be revising that document tomorrow
or anytime foreseeably soon. My private issue is, then, where to go
next, rather than to go back to that statement. Others may wish to see
a different focus or topic become active;  I know I get obtuse, so I'm
not expecting anyone to have my problem of "philosophicality" (which
is a cultural evolutionary issue for me. But I didn't mention this
aside in my discussion).

----------------------------------
AS MODERATOR:

Also, I don't want the role of uploading other people's files, so I've
revised that document to provide guidelines for others and otherwise
merely offer to be helpful.

Next, I want you to know that the member list is NOT available to
members; if you want to be a secret lurker, you've got it. But you
should know that presently there are only 17 members, in case you have
dreams of constructive feedback. I could probably raise the membership
of engaged Habermas readers substantially rather quickly by inviting
specific others from the Habermasian community (including my favorites
from the Spoons group and Habermas scholars  around the U.S. And *you*
may want to hear from specific others through this venue), but I have
to wonder why I should do this--or why you might.

Though the Yahoo! venue provides more flexibility, who really needs
this? *I* want the convention of file use that I've mentioned at the
end of my "Topic 1" discussion file, but I don't want the job of
reminding casual members of the difference between working with
Habermas's work and chat, and I suppose that engaged Habermasians
don't want the chat.

So, what would the "serious" reader of Habermas have to gain by
subscribing to this address, unless I made it a selective membership?
I'd like to believe: a *lot* to gain, in terms of the sensibilities of
existing group members--HellOoooo---but I don't presently have time to
be an extended respondent frequently (until maybe June--a matter which
has been deleted from my "Topic 1" discussion ending). In time, I will
make very good example of the distinction between long discussion
uploaded as a group file and e-mail discussion. But for the
short-term, I'm not ready to be a good example, beyond what I've done
this weekend.

Most members presently have elected to not receive e-mail from this
list other than "special notices," which this message is. I suppose,
if you special-notice persons are interested, you'll check the Webpage
archive of messages (not that there's anything now to check, beyond
*my* files--and Matthew Piscioneri's greeting). BUT, if you've elected
to more or less keep this group address out of your life because
you're wary of voluminous frivolity, then give me your feedback about
moderating this group (There's no voluminousness yet, and I'm willing
to enact guidelines). Though there's little activity, I might be able
to cause that to change, I think, but why should I? Anyway, if you
would welcome that, provided that postings are kept on topic (i.e.,
relating to a genuine interest in Habermas), then let me know. In
general, let me know what you want from this group address.

Currently, all postings are to be distributed to all members who have
chosen to receive e-mails; but I can change this to be that replies
are only sent to the author, so that "postings"  are distributed to
everyone who receives e-mail from the group address, but "replies"
only go to the posting author; then, if you're interested in others'
extended exchanges, you can check the Webpage. Would you want that?
Let me know.

What if new membership had to be approved by me? Currently, anyone
becomes a member if they choose to. This is good from a populist point
of view, but you can get populism from the Spoons list or from tens of
other lists at Yahoo! Groups.  I happen to be very permissive, but I
don't think it unfair to ask members about their interest and to
express a group ethic to him/her (like what I've listed in the "Group
Files.pdf" document) before a new member is approved. No evaluation,
but *contact* with the person wanting membership, before that person
becomes a member. This would entail that a group ethic be kept in
mind, re: postings.

What do you think? Let me know. Otherwise, why shouldn't I let this
venue be guided by agreement among the few who *do* have an opinion?

Regards,

Gary

Hello all.

I've uploaded an "initial" discussion to the "Files"
section, named "Topic 1: JH as Philosopher.," but I don't
mean to make my views a center of attention. I would prefer
to see a focus on Habermasian specifics. But, since I
started the group, I thought I should offer some
perspective--obtuse as that may seem to become late in my
"short" (6-page) discussion (which also touches on some
group-specific issues at the end).

Please note my expression of need to take a sideline role
with the group until *around June*, which is mentioned
toward the end of my discussion. But this doesn't mean
silence, just not a lot of extended contribution or
response, as I'm deeply in a writing project "Point" that
requires lots of focus, and my free time is scarce.

Also, you'll find in "Files" a note about putting something
in "Files".

Regards,

Gary

P.S. I'm sorry about the ads at the bottom of postings. It
seems to be a small "price" to pay for a very flexible
communication environment.



Maybe a lot of spacing at the end can help.





.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Greetings - send holiday greetings for Easter, Passover
http://greetings.yahoo.com/

Dear List,

A quick introduction as a new member. I am currently working towards
the completion of my Ph.D in philosophy at the University of
Queensland, Australia. My research topic centres on an examination of
Habermas's claim that his theory of communicative action can "permit
us to once more take up the since-neglected tasks of a critical
theory of society" (_TCA_: 1.386, 1995, Polity Press)

I strongly endorse Gary's ambition that this group undertake text-
specific discussions and readings of member's commentaries, and leave
other extraneous or side issues to the chat room facility.

Looking forward to some positive exchanges,

Best Regards,
Matthew Piscioneri

Whoops! It's _Moral Consciousness & Communicative Action_

I knew that.


--- In habermas@y..., gedavis1 <no_reply@y...> wrote:

>
> How about a close reading of some manageably short text? How about
> understanding and application of chapter 1 of _Moral Development &
> Communicative Action_?
>

I'm searching for a focus for this group that can be usefully
insightful for engaged readers of Jürgen Habermas.

I revised the readily-revisable group statement tonight to read:
-------------------------------
"What good is philosophy, in so-called 'postmetaphysical' Times?

"How can the Habermasian view of philosophy advance philosophy itself,
as calling, as practice, and as career?

"What are the Big Questions that we should be developing and how does
Habermas's work matter in this endeavor?"
--------------------------------

But I want the statement to evolve. I want to be useful and to have
the <habermas@yahoogroups.com> address be worthwhile. So: Do you have
a better idea for a group focus?

How about a close reading of some manageably short text? How about
understanding and application of chapter 1 of _Moral Development &
Communicative Action_?

Note that the Yahoo! Groups model allows for "files" to be attached to
the group site, rather than as mere e-mail atttachments, which
provides for a project of building a group archive of work (drafts,
long commentaries, digests of topical foci, etc.). Thoughtful
discussion via messages and papers can be separated from a "chat"
feature that is also available (a feature which the listserv doesn't
provide), which is especially good or hot topics that are marginal to
the intent of the group. Group development has a "calendar" feature
and "database" feature (I don't know yet what use that might be put to).

Anyway, I recognize that most members have indicated that they want to
receive only "special notices," which happen to be postings by the
group "owner" (me) that are designated such; so, please trust that I
will not misuse this option.

But do let others know (or let me know, at leas) how this address can
be worth your time. I invite you to give meaning and significance to
this medium (and please tolerate the modest advertising that Yahoo!
uses to provide a great medium to subscribers for free).

Best regards,

Gary Davis