Subject: HAB: A non-intersubjective Other?
Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 09:13:28 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)



I have, what might very well be, a stupid question. Maybe because I haven't had 
enough coffee yet.

Are the idealizing tendencies of speech limited to its intentional structure? 
or do these idealizing tendencies also extend into written or non-linguistic 
forms as well? Or is the question stupid, precisey because it doesn't matter: 
since what matters is that the interpreter, or the critic, who attempts to 
understand engenders these tendencies in their attempt to understand.

The problem that one encounters with regards to intential structures manifests 
itself in a problem that Habermas himself pointed to in his debate with 
Gadamer, namely, that unconscious motivates slip into ordinary language despite 
conscious intentions. If this is the case, then it could be demonstrated, in 
at least one case (there only need be one exception to the rule), that 
unconscious motivations, found within language, are themselves 
non-communicative or non-idealizing. The rejoinder of this, I suppose, would be 
that such expressions are not communicative at all. But by the same token, they 
cannot really be considered instrumental either, since instrumental action aims 
at technical control, which probably insufficiently describes the full range of 
unconsicous motivations that haunt consciousness. I guess what I'm asking is 
whether there is room for a radically non-intersubjective Other in a theory of 
communicative action (what else could we all it if it doesn't "fit" the model 
of instrumental or communicative action?). The idea of nature, it seems to me, 
fits this bill, and human beings are, after all, natural beings; in which case 
despite all, there remains at least in some instances, a "bone in the throat" 
... an undigestable moment of any kind of intentionality (a "blind spot?").

Further, would not this very bone make understanding possible to begin with? We 
communicate precisely because we do not understand? (since when we do 
understand something, we cease to talk about it until we no longer understand). 
The implication being: when we understand, there is an element of this 
understand which relies on fantasy, what we understand is already presupposed 
by us, as a compensation for this radically non-intersubjective Other.

I should also note that this Other need not be mystical by any means, since the 
Other is always locateable in some sense, as precisely that which is 
non-intersubjective (nature?).

ken



     --- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---