Date: 	Fri, 6 Mar 1998 00:01:05 -0500
Subject: Re: HAB: Understanding


On Thu, 5 Mar 1998 13:51:28 -0500  M.A. King wrote:

> I still don't know quite what to say about the charge that 
Habermas is really after a certain vision of a good life.  I think 
that Habermas would say that a society which has achieved a 
strong sense of social solidarity founded on communicative 
action is not a vision of the good life, but rather the formal 
condition under which the members of that society could
then formulate, together, their own vision of the good life.  I'm 
not sure what grounds one could have to say that he can't say 
that.

Habermas's particular vision of a more utopian world is 
Kantian.  It is one in where contradictions do not exist (he 
really does rely upon 'generalized other' - something that I 
really don't want to become.  Adorno envisioned a different 
kind of reconciliation - one where contradictions co-existed in 
a non-antagonistic relationship.  My question is this - why 
noncontradiction as THE rational sum of any possible moral 
life.  I wouldn't recognize myself under these conditions.  Why 
would I want to work toward such a sterile model?  My identity 
is made possible by contradictions.  Why should I strive to 
eliminate them (and thereby eliminating the possibility of me). 
 What other moral visions of plurality exist?

> It sounds like you're saying that trying to understand each 
other brings with it the danger that we will discover that we 
have apparently irreconcilable differences, and this is 
potentially devastating.  To which I would say:  yes, but not 
nearly so devastating as not trying to understand each other 
at all.

It is a risk either way.

ken




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