HABERMAS' IDEAL SPEECH SITUATION

[kenneth.mackendrick@utoronto.ca]

On Thu, 26 Oct 2000 13:44:32 -0400 Ralph Dumain <rdumain@igc.org> wrote:

> While I would agree that the transparency in communication depends on the 
relationships between people, it is not obvious to me that following the formal 
procedures of argumentation guarantees a rational outcome of discussion, as the 
inbuilt assumptions of a discussion may prove impermeable to rational argument, 
and the implicit content  belied by the form of tolerance and openness to 
argument. 

The guarantee is a 'transcendental' one. In short, counterfactual - it is 
assumed but not necessarily "actualized." Habermas does in fact argue, 
somewhere, that complete intersubjective transparency is impossible (and likely 
undesirable) even when it is assumed that sufficient transparency can come to 
light regarding very specific and narrowed interests. For Habermas, inbuilt 
assumptions that prove to be impermeable cannot then be considered "moral" 
issues. Moral issues are only those in which universal agreement can be 
achieved (in actual discourse). In principle, Habermas argues that everyone 
could agree to the principle of consensus as being a legitimate one for the 
resolution of conflicts. Whereas the question of what I ought to eat in the 
morning isn't open to 'discursive redemption' since it is really a matter of 
taste and not justice (unless I happen to be a cannibal...).

> But I would agree that implicit in real communication is the openness of all 
truth claims to questioning and verification.  Then again, it seems impossible 
to be able to cleanly separate the manifest forms of communication from the 
relations between the people.

There is a kind of division of labour that Habermas upholds here. First, he 
maintains that all attempts to understand something with someone are implicit 
forms of solidarity. However, he also notes that all such attempts are to be 
subject to critical inquiry - which takes the form of a critique of ideology.

> My concern about distorted communication comes from some recent painful
> observations of ritualistic and fetishistic forms of public communication,
> where instead of the pursuit of truth and the exchange of information that
> is supposed to be happening, fear, cultism, desperation, dogmatism, and
> mental deadness are the governors of social interaction.  I haven't thought
> to correlate this with specific forms of speech, but with its content, but
> above all with the guiding norms of interaction that contradict the spirit
> of inquiry and suppress rational interchange between autonomous individuals.

Yeah, for Habermas, fear, cultism, desperation, dogmatism and mental deadness 
are bastard instrumental forms of communicative action. They are parasitical on 
communicative forms in that they presuppose that the object of the rant will 
understand what they are saying (ie. in order to be intimidated, one must 
understand that one is being intimidated)....

ken