Date: 	Mon, 2 Mar 1998 15:16:38 -0500
Subject: Re: HAB: Re: Understanding


On Mon, 2 Mar 1998 03:50:59 -0500  gedavis-AT-pacbell.net 
wrote:

Gary, I want to make a certain point so I'm going to poke 
around a bit in your post (something you tried on me once).  A 
kind of test run for an idea that is floating around in my 
head....  My edits are <>'d.

> Indeed, "<strategy> is indispensable to our being able to 
use language," but, more fundamentally, language is 
indispensable to our being able to have <strategies> (since 
there is more to <strategy> --and cognition--than merely 
linguistic representation).

> 'Language' is commonly a placeholder for "intelligence," 
and there is clearly more to cognition or intelligence than 
linguistic intelligence (and Habermas would agree, pointing 
out that this is irrelevant to a theory of *communicative* 
action, properly so, perhaps). The axiality of linguistic 
<strategies> is a function of the axiality of coordinated action 
among persons. We are <*emphatic/creative>* beings; hence, 
the fundamentality of language. But the <communicativity> of 
language doesn't imply a fundamental <communicativity> of 
<strategy>, except (again) within larger horizons of <strategy> 
or the lifeworld itself.

> Do be careful, though, of your apparent propensity to 
transpose notions of relationship and <strategy> into 
<communicative> terms.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Gary

The point of all this was to demonstrate that understanding 
involves both communicative and strategic gestures - 
something that is best examined by the logical categories of 
creativity and the imaginary.  The radical distinction between 
the two creates an illusion of impartiality and an illusion of 
partiality in discourse.  Clearly both are at work here 
simultaneously.  Which makes the distinctions between 
universalism and particularity problematic.  Habermas cannot 
reach behind the aporia of a negative dialectic with an appeal 
to a postconvential worldview without hypostatizing the 
contradiction.

ken






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