Date: 	Sat, 28 Mar 1998 14:32:09 -0500
Subject: Re: HAB: On Intersubjectivity


On Sat, 28 Mar 1998 01:42:13 -0500  Gary wrote:

> Of particular importance in inter-*subjectivity* is the 
question of the other's *genuineness*, most often expressed 
as an estimation or suspicion of the other's intentions: 
strategical or open? benevolent or not?  So much attention is 
given to tacit validity claims of what is the case or what is 
appropriate; but the tacit validity claim to genuineness is 
possibly the most difficult of all to work with---so much so, 
maybe, that a focus on other validity claims can be, at times, 
a concealment of issues of genuineness or unquestionable 
questionabilities of the intersubjectivity of interaction that 
*Must* remain interpreted in existentially distant terms of 
what's "practical," what's "provable" or what's "true." The 
search for "truth" often lacks the dimension of self-implicative 
truthfulness because intersubjectivity will not face its 
inter-*subjectivity*.
____

This is one of the more important "unresolved" questions in 
Habermas's work.  At least according to many of his critics.  
Truthfulness, the subjective aspect of good intentions (the 
orientation toward consensus) is, for Habermas, preupposed 
in discourse.  This counterfactual presupposition is part of the 
idealizations of speech.

In this regard I suspect that the philosophy of consciousness 
is not dead.  If one examines the interplay between 
consciousness and unconsciousness then it can be seen that 
a consciousness can never really be transparent to itself 
(which is not what Habermas expects or anticipates).  
However this does create a problem.  At best - the 
consciousness is composed of mythic and cognitive 
elements.  In this space the distinction between fantasy and 
reality is blurred.  Thoughts and images are formed ex nihilo - 
this space, appropriately I think, is the imaginary 
(Castoriadis).  The imaginary is linguistified, but not 
completely.  In this regard the imaginary always leaves a 
remainder - outside out conceptual thought (although 
conceptual thought is surely enfused with such elements).  
This is most obvious on the preoperational and concrete 
operational level.

In the shift to postconventional reasoning, which is a 
philosophical level (abandoning the naturalist paradigm) is an 
achievement of philosophical discourse.  What is of great 
concern is how this remainder is incorporated at this level 
(level 6 - see Habermas's essay "Justice and Solidarity").  To 
stamp out the remainder Habermas relies upon the medium of 
available good reasons.  This reflects his concern with 
autonomy, freedom, solidarity, and rationality.  The question 
of truthfulness is precisely the question of whether or not the 
mythic, the inability to distinguish between the differentiation 
that modernity permits, has successfully be digested and 
transformed by a modern worldview.  It is in the procedure that 
the sacred is linguistified, brought to light, and incorporated 
into yes or no claims.  This is a philosophical task.

The sociological task takes place after the fact.  It is the 
reflective attempt to determine the degree to which the debate 
was actually rational given the circumstances.

My concern is this - to what degree is a procedural form of 
rationality itself mythical.  Kurt Goebel demonstrates, through 
mathematics (and I'm relying on Castoriadis here) that formal 
principles always rely upon undetermined and undeterminable 
variables.  In this sense the formal model of reason that 
Habermas uses relies upon arguments that cannot be proved 
or disproved.  If this is indeed the case then a procedure of 
argumentation itself possesses a mythic remainder.  This 
isn't to say that this is all bad (I'm in agreement with Heller at 
least - that justice is the basis of any possible good life 
despite itself being one particular vision of the good life).  But 
if this is the case then it could be demonstrated, 
reconstructively (at least as a possible reconstruction) that 
formal principles are mythological (ie. part of a particular 
social imaginary).  Habermas *knows* this to some degree - 
which is why he takes special care to discuss Popper's 
principle of fallibility (which falls into the same 
undeterminable category).

It is at this point that I would note, and I know that I have not 
proved my case here, that Habermas implicitly relies upon the 
same kind of emphatic reason that he identifies with the 
Frankfurt School (emphatic reason, according to Habermas, is 
metaphysical since it attempts to unify the three different 
moments of reason - see Autonomy and Solidarity, 101).  
Habermas's entire problem with the emphatic conception of 
reason is that is messes with, in his opinion, the truth claims 
of science - making them both social and subjective and 
objective at once.  In this sense Habermas is focusing a 
tremendous amount of energy to preserve the autonomy of the 
spheres against their collapse - which is precisely where 
people like J Bernstein and J Whitebook engage Habermas's 
internal contradictions.

ken
centre for the study of religion
toronto, on, ca, earth




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