HABERMAS' IDEAL SPEECH SITUATION

[kenneth.mackendrick@utoronto.ca]

On Fri, 27 Oct 2000 15:57:33 -0400 Ralph Dumain <rdumain@igc.org> wrote:

> Very, very interesting.  I can't quite understand the quibble about 
"applying" Habermas, as the test of the valility of any theoretical claim is to 
apply it to various situations.

Habermas's theory is "post-empirical" in a sense. It can't really be tested. It 
can be debated and argued, but this only verifies Habermas's hypothesis... that 
debate and argumentation are the only means at our disposal for the 
determination of what is true and what is right. The real question, in my mind, 
is whether or not Habermas has constructed a tremendous argument that begs the 
question of its own validity. In other words: does Habermas presuppose as valid 
what he attempts to prove as valid. To varying degrees, Castoriadis, Horowitz, 
Benhabib, Heller, Bernstein and Wellmer have all pointed this out.


> Another question, before I return to your post.  Does Habermas have anything 
to say about Hegel?  His theory of communication would seem to have an analogue 
to Hegel's aesthetics, and to Hegel's opposition to the kunstphilosophie of 
Schelling at al.  I.e. that philosophy is ultimately on a higher conceptual 
plane than any system of representation (vorstellung), that beyond a certain 
point art cannot do the job of attaining the level of speculative truth.

Ha. You might find this interesting. One of Habermas's most recent articles 
deals with Hegel. It can be found in Constellations 2000 (I forget which 
volume). It is basically a slightly modified version of an article in his much 
earlier work, Theory and Practice: "Labour and Interaction: Remarks on Hegel's 
Jena Philosophy of Mind." But more interesting than that, Habermas wrote his 
dissertation on Schelling (which hasn't been translated into english). Another 
essay on Schelling, "Dialektischer Idealismus im Ubergang zum Materialismus - 
Geschichtsphilosophische Folgerungen aus Schellings Idee einer Contraction 
Gottes," was left out of the translation of Theory and Practice. The essay, as 
Zizek notes (I haven't read it), is the first 'progressive' appropriation of 
Schelling that interprets Weltalter as a break with the German Idealist logic 
of the Absoulte, emphasizing the revolutionary political implications of this 
break. Schelling's Weltalter can be found, freshly translated with Zizek's 
essay The Abyss of Freedom / Ages of the World...

> >If procedures do privilege certain kinds of discourses - then it is not, in 
> >fact, a universalist ethic. 

> I don't understand such a conclusion, unless it related to my previous
> reservations, that rational discourse in form may not in practice be
> ultimately what it appears to be. Thus those who monopolize the means of
> rational discourse have the upper hand.  But why would a rational
> discourse, which many have taken to be the great equalizer--cf. the Jewish
> Enlightenment--be any less universalistic because not everybody has
> discovered it?

The problem is this: Habermas himself has admitted that there is a motivational 
problem in his work. In other words, on some level, people have to *want* to 
participate in an argument (a friend of mine conjured up the image of Habermas 
pointing a gun with the caption, "Be reasonable!" - which might not be 
completely fair). And maybe I should think twice about calling you on the 
question of application. Perhaps it can be illustrated that procedures have a 
tendency to "objectively" privilege certain kinds of discourse and certain 
kinds of results. To the best of my knowledge, not substantial work has been 
done on this (other than the criticisms I've mentioned). To quickly make 
something appear and disappear, Zizek and Salecl have noted that impartial 
judgement don't come with contentment or satisfaction. In other words, a 
decision might in fact be rationally made, it might be fair, even objective - 
but this doesn't mean it is going to be a good *or* desirable end. I have this 
image that if we follow procedures stictly we'd end up in a world that looks a 
lot like a cage - bored out of our skulls, truth in hand, waiting to run to the 
bathroom or the nearest bar... I'm tempted to invoke Adorno here: that the 
'objective' results of a procedure can only guarantee the 'objectivity' of the 
procedure itself...

> I imagine Gilroy has experienced and learned a lot since 1993, and he must 
have learned by now that all of African-American communication--every bit of 
it--is sytematically distorted communication.

In Habermas's big book, two volumes in english (The Theory of Communicative 
Action) he outlines how power and money actually replace and colonize existing 
forms of communicative action (the media of power and money steer 
administrative systems and destroy vital aspects of the lifeworld - which 
results in counter-enlightenment moves involving self-interest).

Another tag-on, one of the things that remains unthinkable for Habermas is that 
meaning (lingustic meaning) results *from* distortions in language. Habermas's 
aim is to free language from distortions (from his earlier work, Knowledge and 
Human Interests). We might speculate that if we free language from all forms of 
pathology, that communicating with one another would be impossible (ie. math 
is a language, but it isn't communication). This idea has been taken up by 
Chantal Mouffe in her recent critique of Habermas's theory (Democratic 
Paradox). Mouffe makes the argument that Habermas's discourse theory flattens 
out, or falsely reconciles, the paradoxical nature of democracy: the 
unresolvable tension between rights and liberty. The key idea being that if we 
all agree on something, and it is considered just, we either leave the table 
'guilt-free' or we stop talking and sit in silence. The idea of consensus 
worries me. It always makes me wonder exactly what I'm agreeing to, and what 
has been missed that made the procedure so easy.

ken