[FRA:] [Adorno-Hegel] Something about Kant from ND

[Ralph Dumain]

As usual, you have nothing to say.  Completely empty, contentless 
drivel. Congratulations. You should be a headline speaker at the 
Democratic National Convention.

At 04:21 AM 8/26/2008, matthew piscioneri wrote:

>I think Habermas's statements of this sort need to be understood 
>with at least 1/2 an eye on his role as a "public" intellectual...a 
>great deal of his work IMO should be understood as "situated" or 
>"practical" discourse...in other words, its a form of discourse 
>praxis. It's one of the great attractions of Habermas's work. 
>Indeed, and without wanting to stretch things TOO far, I sometimes 
>think Habermas (and safely from within the guise of the 'last great 
>rationalist') utilizes a typical PoMO strategy of discursive 
>flexibility to push specific practical objectives.
>
>Too often we pigeon hole thinkers into slots that refer more to the 
>pop interests of the academic publishing industry...snappy dust 
>cover tropes that seduce us into intellectual false consciousness. 
>In the late 1960s, Habermas identified a niche in the then current 
>discursive ecology and occupied it somewhat effortlessly. But, to 
>overlook the almost playful manipulation of an extraordinarily wide 
>range of theoretical positions (from Popper to Austin, for example) 
>is to underestimate Habermas's fundamental commitment to pragmatism 
>and the core/original CT intention of developing a critical theory 
>of society, informed by science with practical intent.
>
>
>----------------------------------------
> > Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:37:46 -0400
> > From: jamesrovira at gmail.com
> > To: theory-frankfurt-school at srcf.ucam.org
> > Subject: Re: [FRA:] [Adorno-Hegel] Something about Kant from ND
> >
> > I think Habermas credits postmodernism with too much originality.
> > There's significant overlap between postmodern hermeneutics and, say,
> > Medieval hermeneutics -- really, Catholic hermeneutics up to Luther,
> > in their assumptions about the text, its authority, etc.
> > "Christianity" is too big a word to be meaningfully used as Habermas
> > seems to be using it.
> >
> > But I'm not sure what Habermas means by "Christianity" in that
> > quotation.  You might be able to argue that the ethical systems (and
> > to some extent, the metaphysics) of German Idealists were strongly
> > informed by -German Protestantism- (probably what Habermas means by
> > "Christianity"), but that's not saying much.  Hegel knew that but
> > believed he was taking the next step -- so religion is picture
> > thinking and philosophy leads to the truth.  Of course we'd expect a
> > similarity of patterns between the two, but there's no question what's
> > being privileged and what's being left behind, either.  In this view
> > "Christianity" has a place in an evolutionary narrative, but like
> > everything in every evolutionary narrative it's to be left behind.
> > Does this make Hegel a Christian?  Or Marx?  Or Adorno?  Hegel's
> > narrative seems to me to have much more in common with hermeticism or
> > panentheism than with Christianity in the end.
> >
> > The only persons to really reject Christianity -- to not give it any
> > place -- seems to me to be Nietzsche and Stirner.
> >
> > Adorno, if I recall, expressed a great deal of hostility toward
> > Kierkegaard's Christianity in his book Kierkegaard, but at the same
> > time seemed to prefer Benjamin's Jewish inflected writings more than
> > his communist writings -- he at least seemed to find them more
> > interesting.  The Jargon of Authenticity seems to be harsher toward
> > Heideggerian existentialism than religion as well.  These ambivalences
> > could be nothing more than differentiating the bad from the worse,
> > though, but I haven't quite worked it out yet.
> >
> > Jim R
> >
> > On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 7:46 PM, Lev Lafayette
> > <lev_lafayette at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> > > I'm not sure of that specific quote but there is the rather 
> notorious remarks of 2004:
> > >
> > > "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of 
> liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of 
> Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than 
> Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. 
> Everything else is postmodern chatter."
> > >
> > > (cf., http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=347)
> > >
> > > Personally, I think Habermas' uhhh, "epistemological turn" 
> occurred with the publication of The Future of Human Nature in 2003.
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Lev
> >