Date: 	Tue, 3 Mar 1998 19:05:02 -0500
Subject: HAB: Critique of Moral Universalism


In response to Steven I will try to demonstrate two points.

1.  That the idea of a performative contradiction is logically 
incoherent (because it depends on an teleological 
understanding of cognition and because it cannot be 
non-normatively restructured) and 

2.  That in establishing this dependency Habermas cannot 
claim to have successfully established the moral 
universalism that his moral theory of discourse supports.

First: Habermas's discourse ethics operates on the idea that 
the moral point of view can be established impartially.  This 
requires a separation of issues of the good life and issues of 
justice.  Without belaboring the issue - Habermas has failed to 
do this.

As Benhabib notes the idea of impartiality relies upon a 
"generalized other" - a public persona (and, in fact, a 
monological retreat to the philosophy of the subject).  Since an 
actual consensus regarding a specific issue could only 
determine its impartiality in retrospect (as Wellmer
carefully notes) - Habermas MUST posit the distinction 
BEFORE the conversation takes place - something which, as 
he admits, cannot be done.  So any resulting consensus will 
have taken place within a concrete community - which is an 
ethical community and therefore the results ARE ostensibly 
partial.  In this sense agreement cannot be seen to confer 
rationality OR morality to a specific issue (only legal validity). 
 The idea of consensus is a LEGAL principle - not
essentially a moral one.  Habermas's distinction between 
justification and application doesn't solve the problem.  Since 
discourses regarding application are inevitably just as partial, 
and contextualized, as justificatory discourses (if Benhabib's 
logic is correct).

However this would render Habermas's discourse ethics 
relativistic - and he really doesn't want that - so he has to 
ignore the problem or go about it in another way.  In effect 
Benhabib has demonstrated, with her critique, that the moral 
domain is incoherent in Habermas.  So Habermas
appeals to a transcendental understanding of humankind 
('man').

Habermas ignores the problem (above) by arguing that human 
beings are essentially vulnerable and teleological beings (ie. 
opening Habermas up to the charge that he has developed a
metaphysical model).  Morality is necessary as a safety net to 
protect the web of communicative relationships (morality is 
the gap between a damaged life and an undamaged life).  This 
already implies a psychological and social ideal in Habermas 
- unfettered communicative freedom.

Habermas also  argues that the idea of the performative 
contradiction MIRRORS progressive cognitive development.  
Working backward from the cognitive ideal Habermas exacts 
the presuppositions of speech that would permit the 
possibility of attaining the idea.  This is the point at which 
Habermas begs the question.  Habermas must already 
possess knowledge of the ideal before working back to the 
conditions in which the ideal could be manifest.  He MUST
posit the conclusion AS A PREMISE of the conclusion.  It is a 
logical circle from the perspective of a moral idea.  In any 
event - even if it can be demonstrated otherwise the
performative contradiction can only emphasize legal validity 
and not rational or moral validity (remember Habermas is 
relying on the Kantian idea of reason as noncontradiction).

Habermas tries to avoid this by granting special privilege to 
the reconstructive sciences (the objective sciences) to 
determine where the telos is moving.  Whereas arguments 
take place within actual debate - with real people in real time - 
the reconstructive sciences are able to impartially affirm the 
presuppositions of any possible argument from the third 
person perspective.  The problem with this is that Habermas 
must assume that the sciences possess the capacity to be 
impartial.  However, as many critics of science have pointed 
out - the sciences are partial (Adorno, Gadamer, etc.).  So 
Habermas CANNOT rationally depend upon the sciences,
reconstructive or not, to establish the kind of impartiality 
necessary to defend the idea that argumentation can and will 
lead (eventually or potentially) to universal moral norms or 
objective truth claims (remember that agreement is a legal 
principle not a principle which confers truth OR morality).

However if the idea of science itself can be understood as a 
normative enterprise - and NOT an objective one - then the 
comparison between the always already presuppositions of 
speech as objective falls apart.  If science yields normatively 
charged results then Habermas cannot rely on the sciences to 
determine, impartially, the objective functions of language.

Moreover the life of the human being MUST be a mirror of the 
self-understood objectivity of the sciences which in turn MUST 
mirror the society writ large.  Human beings MUST, like the 
aims of science, orient themselves by impartiality.  Habermas 
uses Lawrence Kohlberg's work on cognitive development to 
demonstrate this.  Habermas sees impartiality everywhere - in 
science, in ethics, and in law.  Habermas assumes that the 
individual psyche is mirrored in the social institutions of a 
given culture.  Whereas the telos of language is 
understanding - the telos of society is consent (which is why 
he goes on to argue that a rational society MUST institute law
and democracy to avoid regression into irrationality).  
However Habermas has not demonstrated the morality of any 
of these things.  Not only is his understanding of morality 
based upon a transcendental image of humanity his 
proceduralism is as well.

What Habermas has done is develop a HUGE monological 
circle.  His understanding of normativity is determined 
normatively within the science under the guise of a 
non-normative analysis.  His understanding of science, drawn 
from presupposed distinctions regarding truth, rightness, and 
truthfulness, is weakened once the ideals of science have 
been demonstrated to be illusionary.  Habermas, in effect, has 
develop *a* discourse theory of morality not *the*
discourse theory of morality.  Heller acknowledges this when 
she talks about *an* ethics of personality and Benhabib 
acknowledges this when she talks about communicative 
ethics *trumping* other moral perspectives reflexively (which 
is still open to question) (ie. Communicative ethics is *an* 
ethics not *the* ethic).

This critique is fairly repetitive and relatively unsupported by 
references to Habermas's texts so I expect the charge of 
"faulty" analysis and/or misunderstanding... but I await the 
rejoinder anyway with a willingness to support each of the 
claims I have made here with specific references to the text.

as always, hypothetically,
Ken

PS.  I also think this analysis supports my reading of 
Habermas that argues that he instills a utopian vision within 
his understanding of discourse (the emphatic character of his 
work) - something further clarified by examining it in relation to 
the idea of the moral imaginary.  Something I intentially have 
not brought out directly in this critique.




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