Critical Theory After Habermas: Encounters and Departures No. 1

Critical Theory After Habermas Social and Critical Theory A Critical Horizons Book Series EDITORIAL BOARD Jan Bryan...

Author: Dieter Freundlieb | Wayne Hudson | John F. Rundell

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Critical Theory After Habermas

Social and Critical Theory A Critical Horizons Book Series

EDITORIAL BOARD

Jan Bryant, John Hewitt, Danielle Petherbridge, John Rundell, and Jeremy Smith

INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD

William Connolly, Manfred Frank, Leela Gandhi, Agnes Heller, Dick Howard, Martin Jay, Richard Kearney, Paul Patton, Michel Wieviorka

Volume 1

Critical Theory After Habermas edited by

Dieter Freundlieb, Wayne Hudson and John Rundell

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BRILL

LEIDEN—BOSTON 2004

PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

Social and Critical Theory, A Critical Horizons Book Series, provides a forum for the critical analysis of issues and debates within critical and social theories and the traditions through which these concerns are often voiced. The series is committed to publishing works that offer critical and insightful analyses of contemporary societies, as well as exploring the many dimensions of the human condition through which these critiques can be made. Social and Critical Theory publishes works that stimulate new horizons of critical thought by actively promoting debate across established boundaries.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Detailed Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available on the Internet at http://catalog.loc.gov. LC Control Number: 2004040778

ISBN 90 04 13741 6 ISSN 1572–459X Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Boston All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, U.S.A. Fees are subject to change.

Contents

Acknowledgments ....................................................................

vii

1. Reasoning, Language and Intersubjectivity .................. Dieter Freundlieb, Wayne Hudson, John Rundell

1

2. Between ‘Objectivism’ and ‘Contextualism’: The Normative Foundations of Social Philosophy .......... Maeve Cooke

35

3. The Pluralistic Public Sphere from an Ontological Point of View .................................................................. Dmitri Ginev

77

4. Irreconcilable Differences? Habermas and Feminism ... 104 Pauline Johnson 5. Postreligious Aesthetics and Critical Theory ................ 133 Wayne Hudson 6. Habermas, Schelling and Nature ...................................... 155 Peter Douglas 7. The Debate About Truth: Pragmatism without Regulative Ideas .............................................................. 181 Albrecht Wellmer 8. Why Subjectivity Matters: Critical Theory and the Philosophy of the Subject .............................................. 212 Dieter Freundlieb 9. Subjectivity as Philosophical Principle ............................ 233 Dieter Henrich

vi • Contents

10. Against a priori Intersubjectivism: An Alternative Inspired by Sartre .......................................................... 259 Manfred Frank 11. The Moral Imaginary of Discourse Ethics .................... 280 Kenneth MacKendrick 12. Imaginary Turns in Critical Theory: Imagining Subjects in Tension ........................................................ 307 John Rundell Index .......................................................................................... 345

Acknowledgments

This book is the first to be published in the Critical Horizons book series, Social and Critical Theory. We would like to thank the Editors of Critical Horizons for their permission to re-print essays that have previously appeared in the journal. We would especially like to thank Danielle Petherbridge for her additional assistance in copy-editing the final manuscript, and William Egginton for his permission to re-print the essay by Albrecht Wellmer.

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Dieter Freundlieb, Wayne Hudson, and John Rundell

Reasoning, Language and Intersubjectivity

Jürgen Habermas continues to be one of the most important and influential thinkers today. He has not only critiqued and extended the legacy of German critical theory, but also made lasting contributions in the areas of political and democratic theory, sociology, and law. These achievements and concerns have been accompanied by a continuing reflection on the way in which the work of critique itself may be articulated and grounded. This work, from his earliest essays on labour and interaction, to Knowledge and Human Interests, to The Theory of Communicative Action, has established a reflective foundationalism that has re-invigorated critique and reasoning and placed them at the centre of critical theory. Moreover, he has developed a multidimensional critique of modernity that has continued to address its pathologies without losing sight of its deeply imbedded positive achievements. More recently he has also made one of the most significant, ethically charged responses to the new reproductive and gene technologies in his The Future of Human Nature. The essays in Critical Theory After Habermas: Encounters and Departures are written in critical solidarity and sympathy with Habermas’ work, and address two broad areas in it that have left their long and indelible legacies for social and critical theory today. The first area pertains to the way in which Habermas distinguishes three domains of rationality under the umbrella of communicative reason, which pertain to norms, aesthetics and religion, and nature. The second set of engagements and criticisms arise from the first, that is, the status of the linguistic turn

2 • Dieter Freundlieb, Wayne Hudson, and John Rundell

in critical theory, and by implication the legacy of the status of the subject that this turn bequeaths. This critical engagement and the critiques that have emerged from it have also led to significant points of departure. Each essay in this book points to difficulties within these two broad areas. As ways of responding to these difficulities, the essays also point to different and often competing theoretical and philosophical developments within and outside German critical theory.1

1

The work of Dieter Henrich provides a major challenge to Habermas’ metaphilosophical claims, one that revives the case for the philosophy of consciousness and subjectivity. See especially Dieter Henrich, Der Grund im Bewußtsein, Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1992; and “Subjektivität als Prinzip,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 46, 1998, pp. 31–44 (trans. as “Subjectivity as a Philosophical Principle,” in this volume). For an overview see Dieter Freundlieb, Dieter Henrich and Contemporary Philosophy: The Return to Subjectivity, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003. Both Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank have criticised Habermas’ rejection of the philosophy of subjectivity and self-consciousness. Frank maintains that a tenable theory of intersubjectivity and autonomous agency is impossible without a renewal of the philosophy of consciousness that Habermas rejects. Both Frank and Henrich offer strong arguments against Habermas’ reliance on G. H. Mead’s theory of intersubjectivity. Substantive critiques of Habermas’ theory of intersubjectivity and his rejection of metaphysics have also been launched by Edith Düsing, Klaus Düsing, and Rudolf Langthaler. Similarly, Henrich has criticised Habermas’ retreat from metaphysical thinking. Henrich argues that a philosophy that is able to offer existential orientation, and which has the potential to transform consciousness, needs to redevelop a certain form of (non-foundationalist) metaphysical thinking. Dieter Freundlieb has critically analysed various aspects of Habermas’ position. The relevance of Henrich’s work to Critical Theory in general, and to critique of Habermas in particular, is only now beginning to be recognised by Anglo-Saxon scholars. Peter Dews has made an important contribution to the debate between Henrich and Habermas in his recent book The Limits of Disenchantment, London, Verso, 1995. See also Edith Düsing, Intersubjektivität und Selbstbewußtsein, Cologne, Dinter, 1986; Klaus Düsing, Selbstbewußtseinsmodelle, Munich, Fink, 1987; Manfred Frank, Einführung in die frühromantische Ästhetik, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1989; Placidus Bernhard Heider, Jürgen Habermas und Dieter Henrich, Freiburg, Alber, 1999.

Reasoning, Language and Intersubjectivity • 3

Norms, Aesthetics, and Nature: Three Worlds, Three Problems i. Normative Rightness and the Public Sphere Habermas’ work is fuelled by a single motivating idea that has permeated all of his work—the public and non-violent force of the better argument. Habermas’ insistence on the validity of norms that are argued out, indicates a commitment to philosophies of right articulated in universalistic terms, as against substantialist or contextualist ones which are oriented to images of the social good. To be sure by adopting such a strategy, Habermas argues that the universalistic dimensions of law and the democratic constitutional state are protected from arbitrary and particularistic interpretations by being subject to a formal-procedural discourse. In so doing, Habermas contrasts his approach to three other traditions of practical reasoning—Aristotelianism, utilitarianism, and Kantianism. This formal procedural discourse functions as a form of detachment that is linguistically and intersubjectively grounded. Kant’s categorical imperative is replaced by a “discursive principle (D), according to which only those norms can claim validity that could meet with the agreement of all those concerned in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse.”2 As Joas points out, this may be satisfactory if Habermas’ discourse ethics “had no other objective than presenting and defending this procedure for assessing normative and evaluative validity

2 Jürgen Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, eds. C. Cronin and P. de Greiff, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1998, pp. 33–34; Jürgen Habermas, “The New Obscurity: The Crisis of the Welfare State and the Exhaustion of Utopian Energies,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 11:2, 1986, pp. 1–18. For a critique that emphasises the idea of the good life see Martin Seel, Versuch über die Form des Glücks, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1995.


claims.”3 However, Habermas’ discourse ethics does more than this. The strict separation that Habermas makes between formal and substantive aspects of politics entails that their meeting ground becomes difficult to envisage. The substantive dimension is narrowed along two fronts. From one side, as many commentators have noted, the impetus that brings the interlocutor into the public sphere to raise claims is of little interest to Habermas. However, for empirical social actors it is important to them whether the impetus for their mobilisation as political actors springs from a ‘struggle for recognition’, a feeling of injustice, or a value stance.4 Honneth, for one, argues that critical theory cannot remain true to its original conception as a diagnostic social theory with critical and practical intent unless it can identify an intra-societal but pre-theoretical potential for “intramundane transcendence.”5 Unlike Habermas, Honneth locates

3 Hans Joas, The Genesis of Values, trans. Gregory Moore, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2000, p. 176. See also Kenneth Baynes, The Normative Grounds of Social Criticism, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1992; eds. Seyla Benhabib and Fred Dallmayr, The Communicative Ethics Controversy Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1990; Jay M. Bernstein, The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno; and Recovering Ethical Life: Jürgen Habermas and the Future of Critical Theory, London & New York, Routledge, 1994. 4 See for example Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1992, English trans. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995; Axel Honneth, Thomas McCarthy, Claus Offe, and Albrecht Wellmer, eds. Philosophical Interventions in the Unfinished Project of Enlightenment, Cambridge, Mass. and London, MIT Press, 1992; Axel Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: On the Location of Critical Theory Today,” Constellations 1, 1994; and Axel Honneth, “Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit. Habermas und die ethische Herausforderung der Postmoderne,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 42, pp. 195–220, 1994b. See also Hans Joas, The Genesis of Value; Agnes Heller, Beyond Justice, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1987. Furthermore, the question whether universalist discourse ethics proposed by Habermas can be entirely separated from ethical conceptions of the good life is debated in the exchanges between liberal and communitarian political thinkers and philosophers such as John Rawls, Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer, and Charles Taylor. 5 Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect.”


this potential for inner-worldly transcendence in the need of each individual for social recognition.6 Furthermore, social actors must first be willing to enter into argumentation and engage with the position of another, which may also entail that their own sensibilities and hermeneutic horizons are opened for critical and even self-critical scrutiny. This often pre-reflexively, socially internalised and incompletely articulated willingness to enter rational argumentation occurs prior to argumentation on the basis of a value orientation and hence commitment to participate. From another side, the social context in which argumentation occurs is also shallowed out by Habermas’ discourse ethics. The content of the normative claim is not simply a matter for detached, procedural adjudication, but also refers to competing social goods, needs, and interests that are imbedded in concrete ways of life and divisions of power. These concrete ways of life and divisions of power are often fixed and immovable blocks to rational argumentation, adjudication, and agreement. In other words, as Honneth has also pointed out, a politico-normative theory cannot do without at least a ‘formal’ concept of the good life that is part of the cultural self-understanding of political society before argumentation can begin.7 To be sure, a discourse may test the normative validity of what is being publicly brought forward. However, without some substantive commitment people cannot feel motivated in an argument and keep to its rules. They feel themselves bound to its result only when the argumentative testing for normative validity arises from a commitment to a substantive value or cause, or when the experience of participation

6 7

Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. See Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect.”


itself produces a commitment to rational argumentation.8 Moreover, it is argued by Honneth, for example, that society should provide the conditions that are necessary for this type of selfactivation and commitments by its members—in other words, that argumentation is immanently tied to the structural conditions for its possibility. In her “Between ‘Objectivism’ and ‘Contextualism’: The Normative Foundations of Social Philosophy,” Maeve Cooke explores Habermas’ double-sided reduction of the conditions of discourse ethics from the vantage point of what for her are critical theory’s underlying aims—to contribute to human flourishing. To this end, she not only engages with the work of Habermas, but also with the works of other critical theorists who have either explicitly or implicitly addressed this issue—Charles Taylor, Michel Foucault, Axel Honneth, Martin Seel and Alessandro Ferraro. For Cooke, each thinker is important for the way in which they throw into relief an implicit agreement that is shared by those who participate in political modernity regarding, minimally, critiques of tradition and authority, and maximally, democratisation. This implicit agreement provides for her a contextualist backdrop against which there is a play of interpretations regarding the nature, meaning and forms of critique, democracy, and ‘the good life’. The concern that she brings to this recognition of both the historicity of occidental political modernity and the play of interpretations and differences which constitute it, is whether there is a universalistic—or in her terms objectivistic—standard by

8

Joas, The Genesis of Values, p. 183. More recently, Habermas, in a slippage away from his procedualism, has recognised the necessity of important preconditions for politico-practical communication. See his “The Conflict of Beliefs: Karl Jaspers on the Clash of Cultures” in The Liberating Power of Symbols, trans. Peter Dews, MA, The MIT Press, 2000, p. 43.


which these interpretations can be judged, argued for or against. And it is here that Cooke, in arguing for an ‘objectivistic’ standard for normative rightness against the more contextualist positions of Foucault, Taylor, Ferraro, and Honneth, does so in a way that draws on, yet departs from, Habermas’ own solution to this problem. Beginning with a critique of Seel’s anthropologically located ‘objectivism’, Cooke argues that critical perspectives that take their starting points from substantivist vantage points cannot but refer to the long history of the self-understanding of political modernity. Moreover, this horizon of self-understanding is accompanied, for her, by a series of learning processes, which are reflexive enough to discriminate between social practices that either enhance human flourishing or diminish it. If social learning processes that enhance the reflexive capacities of social actors are the mainsprings of Cooke’s argument, then for Dmitri Ginev in his “The Pluralistic Public Sphere from an Ontological Point of View,” these are located in and continue to be formed incompletely as narratives. For him, these narratives are neither completely self-enclosed nor completely open, but located in public spheres. The public sphere is the social space which makes both dialogue, and hence a learning process, possible. By conceptualising the public sphere as narratively constituted, Ginev is able to demarcate his version of it from the one that Habermas has both explored and formulated in his earlier and more recent work.9 To be sure, from an historical point of view, the public sphere represents a space in which questions can be raised and negotiated publicly, freed from the constraints of tradition and power.

9 See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1989, and Between Facts and Norms.


However, in Ginev’s view, the public sphere discloses questions that are ‘worlded’ thematically, and this worlding occurs through narratives. Narratives have the effect of providing meaning not only for personal experiences, but also for ‘communal’ ones that are constituted by the collective participants in public communication. In this sense, the public sphere is the meeting ground of world disclosures, which are conceptualised by Ginev by way of Gadamer’s ontological hermeneutics. Ginev argues that the public sphere can be conceptualised as a specification of Gadamer’s ‘fusion of horizons’. From this perspective, there is no single source for interaction and understanding. Rather, in modern multi-cultural societies public spheres are constituted by their very nature through a plurality of moral systems of social behaviour, which includes a variety of particular ethnic and religious traditions. Consequently, there is no political metadiscourse that lies behind the plurality of narratives, only a dialogic interplay between them. In this way, the practice of tolerance in a multicultural civil society does not depend on a search for a universal framework of understanding. Rather, so Ginev argues, it depends on the appreciation of dialogue without the telos of an assumed consensus. This appreciation of dialogue that does not lead to consensus entails that argument, opinion and the clash of traditions cannot be anticipated, controlled, nor imposed within the public sphere. They exist as indeterminate possibilities in all their differences and difficulties, which may never be transcended nor overcome.10 The historical experience, image, and theorisation of the public sphere has also been an issue around which feminist encounters with Habermas’ work have occurred. Whilst Habermas has acknowledged that feminism has been one of the most important

10 For another discussion of this paper see Jan Bryant et al., “Contingency, Fragility, Difference,” Critical Horizons, vol. 4, no. 1, 2003, pp. 1–5.


de-traditionalising social movements of the twentieth century, this acknowledgement of his contribution to de-traditionalisation at the level of theoretical innovation has not always been reciprocated.11 As Pauline Johnson notes in her “Irreconcilable Differences? Habermas and Feminism,” the encounter has been marked by either hostile or friendly encounters. The friendly encounters have attempted to either draw on Habermas’ political insights or, whilst so doing, also criticise a traditionalising legacy located in his version of the historical bourgeois public sphere.12 Habermas’ idea of the public sphere became pertinent to feminism because it opened on to a critique of the two historical worlds of the household and the patrimonial state in ways that offered women something beyond them in the form of entry into, and a stake in, political modernity. Yet, as Fraser has noted, Habermas’ earlier The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere drew on an idealised account of the bourgeois public sphere that empirically downplayed the existence and formation of contestatory, non-liberal, non-bourgeois and women-only publics. Moreover, this idealisation also entailed that assumptions regarding the sexual division of labour were de facto reproduced in Habermas’ later formulation of the lifeworld and system. Against the best intention of his theory, a gendered order found its way into the image of deliberative democracy. As Fraser has argued, “even after women [. . .] have been formally licensed to participate, their participation may be hedged by conceptions of economic privacy and domestic privacy that delimit the scope of debate.”13

11

See Habermas interview in Telos, no. 49, Fall, 1981. For a particularly sympathetic encounter see Maeve Cooke, “Habermas, Feminism and the Question of Autonomy,” in Habermas: A Critical Reader, ed. Peter Dews, Oxford, Blackwell, 1999, pp. 178–210. 13 Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to a Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig 12


Much of the hostile criticism abstracts from the problem of deliberative democracy and the public sphere and, rather, is symptomatic of the ongoing dispute between postmodernist thought in its French poststructuralist guise and a theory of modernity that is part of the architecture of both The Theory of Communicative Action and Between Facts and Norms. For Butler, Habermas’ critical project represents an untenable nostalgia for an image of the rationally constituted subject of the Enlightenment project. Against such a nostalgia, and drawing on Lacan’s work, Butler posits a feminist subject and a feminist critique that emphasises a postfoundationalism of instability and decentredness.14 Alternatively, and in a more receptive vein, Iris Marion Young argues that Habermas’ linguistic turn reproduces a notion of reason that has neither heart, nor desire, nor emotion. As she points out “Habermas’ theory of communicative action has much more to offer a feminist ethics than does modern ethical and political theory,” but its deontological structure and its ascetic version of argumentative interaction as a mode of politics leaves the cleavage between reason and feeling, reason and desire intact.15 To be sure, as she acknowledges, feelings and emotions have a place within the overall architectonics of Habermas’ theory of communicative action—they are delimited, though, to the inner world of dramaturgical action and subject authenticity, neither of which, for him, are relevant for normative argumentation. Rather, for Young, Habermas’ version of normative argumentation abstracts

Calhoun, Boston, MIT Press, 1993, p. 132. See also her earlier 1986 “What’s Critical about Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender” reprinted in Feminism as Critique, eds. Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell, Oxford, Polity Press, 1987, pp. 31–55. 14 Judith Butler, “Contingent Foundations,” in Feminist Contentions, London, Routledge, 1995, pp. 35–58. 15 Iris Marion Young, “Impartiality and the Civic Public Some Implications of Feminist Critiques of Moral and Political Theory” in Feminism as Critique, p. 68.


too readily from the concrete motivations that bring interlocutors into the public sphere, their forms of embodiment, and the nuances of utterances that give language its natural ambiguity and perplexity. In her terms, Habermas replicates the typology of the gendered division of emotional labour.16 Pauline Johnson takes up these issues of feminism’s dispute with Habermas in her chapter in this book. She considers how far Habermas’ changes of stance in Between Facts and Norms meet feminist objections to his project. She emphasises that many feminists have failed to appreciate Habermas’ two-sided account of rationality as giving rise both to the reification of human life and to new critical perspectives. Nonetheless, she argues that Habermas still gives a narrow account of rationality that has been found in the dispute between the Enlightenment and Romanticism. To be considered a rational participant in the public sphere, even in its most post-traditional version, Habermas implies that both women and men must suspend traits historically associated with womanly virtues—passion, feeling, desire, and emotion—and concentrate instead on cultivating and projecting the cold art of reasoning in order to make explicit not only norms, but also their universality or partiality. Universality, validity, and coldness go hand in hand.17 In their critical encounters with Habermas’ work feminist theorising has kept alive Romanticism’s critique of the Enlightenment’s series of distinctions between reason and emotion, reason and desire.18

16

Ibid., pp. 71–73; for a more developed version of her argument see “Communication and the Other” and “Asymmetrical Reciprocity” in Intersecting Voices, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1997. 17 Habermas makes this emotional division of labour explicit in his interview with Toben Hviid Nielsen, “Morality, Society, and Ethics” in Application and Justification, Oxford, Polity Press, 1993. 18 See Pauline Johnson’s “The Quest for the Self: Feminism’s Appropriation of Romanticism,” Thesis Eleven, 1995, pp. 76–93.


ii. Aesthetics or the Linguistification of Innerly Expression The Romantic critique of the Enlightenment usually took two directions. Romanticism often emphasised the elimination of destructive forces through a reconciliation with oneself, others or Nature through beauty, love or embodied sensuality. Alternatively, Romanticism moved inward and emphasised the creative imagination, affects and emotions, and as such viewed the subject as constituted by irrational forces. These two ideas came together in the idea of an aesthetics that would carry the image of a critique of alienation, produced out of the inner ‘burning lamp’ of the creative artist, who through his or her creativity produced the auratic experience that spoke beyond differentiated—alienated—modernity. In this version of aesthetically inspired critique, which, for example, finds its way into the works of Benjamin, Marcuse, and Adorno, reconciliation—or the saddened recognition of its impossibility—and criticism go hand in hand.19 Habermas, however, has been particularly critical of the Romantic counter-paradigm, irrespective of the direction it took. For him, Romanticism’s promise of reconciliation between humankind and nature, and between the differentiated worlds of society, economy, and culture that became the hallmark of modernity, is an illusion fraught with danger. He has responded to this counterparadigm, and especially the way it became absorbed into the sensibilities of the first generation of German critical theorists, in a two-fold yet interconnected manner. On the one hand, for him, aesthetic modernity is an irreversible part of the differentiating narrative of modernity, and as such is part of its learning process. In Habermas’ view, an aesthetical-practical type of

19 M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1953.


rationality emerged, which was differentiated from the other types, one of the results of which was an uncoupling of aesthetics from everyday life in ever more radical forms, culminating in not only the avant garde, but also the retreat of art into experiments with technique only. To be sure, Habermas does not subscribe to a completed post-auratic aesthetics and is mindful that works of art may have “a resonance in the mimetic relations of a balanced and undistorted intersubjectivity of everyday life,” but a resonance that does not involve a de-differentiation.20 As he goes on to say, “the aesthetic ‘validity’ or ‘unity’ that we attribute to a work of art refers to the singularly illuminating power to open our eyes to what is seemingly familiar to disclose anew an apparent familiar reality.”21 From another side, the differentiation and autonomisation of art from everyday life, economy, and the state is grounded, for Habermas, in the socio-cultural evolution of communicatively structured societies and their patterns of action. As distinct from the Romantic paradigm of an irrational force, in Habermas’ view, the creation of works of art belongs to—to coin a phrase—the linguistification of innerly expression—the model for which, at least in The Theory of Communicative Action, is dramaturgical action. Although dramaturgical action is oriented towards the authenticity of an inner life of desires and needs, it nonetheless has to be conveyed to others. To be sure, and in line with the intersubjective impulses of his theory of communicative action, the conveyance of inner life is modelled on forms of self-presentation.22 However, the problem of aesthetic self-presentation

20 Jürgen Habermas “Questions and Counter-questions,” in Habermas Critical Debates, ed. John B. Thompson and David Held, London, The Macmillan Press, 1982, p. 202. 21 Ibid. p. 203. 22 Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, trans. Thomas McCarthy, Boston, Beacon Press, 1984, pp. 90–92.


in the form of works of art is, as Jay notes in one critical commentary, left up in the air. As he remarks, “[it] is difficult enough to grasp what a mediated relationship among cognitive-instrumental, moral-practical, and aesthetic-expressive rationalities would look like, even if they might be integrated with the lifeworld. It is even harder if the rational status of the third remains somewhat of a mystery.”23 It could be argued that Habermas implicitly responds to these issues regarding the communicative basis of aesthetic-expressive rationality in his later essay “The Liberating Power of Symbols.” In a sympathetic reading of the work of Ernst Cassirer, aesthetics represents for Habermas a process of abstraction that occurs within the horizon of already established everyday linguistic expression and in stages of increasing de-contextualisation and objectification.24 For Habermas, an aesthetic object is meaningful, as is its reception, only if it resides within a horizon of meaning that is already understood. The basis for the surprise that art objects create is formed at the intersection between everyday life, generally, and the prior understandings of art into which the art object is ‘thrown’, rather than the actual act of the creation of the aesthetic object itself. However, this formulation entails that insights regarding the constitution of the subject concerning the ineluctable horizons and dimensions of articulation are narrowed or bracketed. Habermas narrows the understanding of aesthetic creation to ‘the singularly illuminating power to open our eyes’, and by so doing brackets

23

Martin Jay, “Habermas and Modernism” in Habermas and Modernity, edited with an Introduction by Richard J. Bernstein, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1985, p. 139. 24 Jürgen Habermas, “The Liberating Power of Symbols,” in The Liberating Power of Symbols, Mass, The MIT Press, pp. 14–19.


the issue internal to debates concerning aesthetics and its autonomisation regarding the nature of creativity, whether or not this is formulated in terms of the sublime, the creative imagination, nature, or sensuous experience. Wayne Hudson, in his “Postreligious Aesthetics and Critical Theory,” explores some of these issues by addressing the problem of aesthetics from the vantage point of postreligious forms of thought. He argues that the case of a postreligious aesthetics elucidates why Habermas cannot deal effectively either with the experience of sensuousness or with anti-mundane dimensions of the world. He concludes that Habermas’ attempt to re-orient critical theory towards language is fundamentally defective and that critical theory needs to take account of a theory of emergent bodies and their senses. iii. Nature and the ‘Thing-In-Itself’ Habermas is at his most Kantian, perhaps stubbornly so, when he addresses nature and humankind’s relation to it. In some respects this is a condition of two aspects of his theorising that derive from different quarters. On the one hand, and as our discussion above indicates, Habermas was neither attracted to, nor convinced by, the Romantic critiques of the Enlightenment and its attempts to posit a reconciliation between humankind and nature. On the other hand, in his effort to re-invigorate and give rigour to a project of deliberative democracy, Habermas has continually reiterated what, for him, is a constitutive division between objects of knowledge and practices pertaining to the world of nature, and those pertaining to the world of society. This distinction has remained intact from his earliest essays on labour and interaction to his most recent The Future of Human Nature.25

25 Jürgen Habermas, “Labour and Interaction: Remarks on Hegel’s Jena Philosophy of Mind,” Theory and Practice, trans. John Viertel, London, Heinemann,


Behind this distinction is a commitment not only to forms of argumentative reasoning that pertain to discrete areas of life, but also and more importantly, to the belief articulated by Kant and reproduced by the hermeneutically sensitised neo-Kantians, that there is a constitutive distinction between knowledge about nature, and knowledge about society. This Kantian distinction is transposed by Habermas into the following formulation by way of the linguistic turn: only propositional truth claims that are the basis for argumentation and consensus regarding scientific knowledge are valid. Habermas attempts to make a strict separation between context dependence and dependence on argumentation, where, like his formulation of practical reasoning, it is abstracted from everyday context and language use. Scientific discourses, like those concerning aesthetics, are specialist forms of knowledge that are symptomatic of the increasing differentiation and specialisation of the spheres of value. The question of the truth concerning knowledge about nature does not concern our experience of it, but rather involves its transposition into a “semantic content of communicative utterances [where] experiences are transformed into a validity claim.” As he goes on to say, “the question of the truth of utterances is posed when we can no longer assure ourselves of their validity through simple ostensive procedures, when circumstances arise which render problematic in a persistent way validity claims previously concealed behind habitation. At that moment we are already moving in a sphere of argumentative speech, where in principle only reasons count.”26

1974, pp. 142–169; Knowledge and Human Interests; trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro, London, Heinemann, 1972; The Theory of Communicative Action; The Future of Human Nature, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2003. 26 Jürgen Habermas, “A Reply to my Critics,” in Habermas, Critical Debates, p. 275.


This reliance on an ideal of argumentation entails that nature is left as an object indifferently treated, except for the claims of cognitive-instrumental action that are made upon it. Nature, as such, does not exist, for Habermas, it is an indifferent ‘thing-in-itself’. And yet, as Mary Hesse has noted in her critical commentary on Habermas’ version of scientific enquiry, there is a tension here. Arguments concerning the validity or truth content of statements about nature presuppose—as has also been pointed out above for his notion of normative rightness—a background commitment. In the context of scientific arguments the commitment is to notions of falsification and accountability, which themselves derive from a commitment to empirical verification on the part of the scientific community. There is, then, a shared background judgement about, and commitment to the normative character of an empiricistically oriented scientific attitude as such.27 However, this commitment to empirical verification in the end is not enough to provide the guarantee of the veracity of scientific statements. As philosophers and sociologists of science have pointed out, an objectivating attitude is not the privilege of occidental science, and nor does it result in only one set of interpretations and practices. This means that nature is already a ‘field’ in which interpretations enter at many levels, which may or may not be able to be disconnected from each other. If nature is not a thing in itself, it is also not a passive environment upon which abstracted interpretations, such as scientific theories, can be imposed unproblematically.28

27 Mary Hesse, “Science and Objectivity,” in Habermas, Critical Debates, p. 109. 28 See Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy, 2nd Edition, London, Routledge, 1990; ed. Bryan R. Wilson, Rationality, Oxford, Blackwell, 1991; Helen Verran, Science and an African Logic, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2001.


In some ways, Habermas recognises this. In his reply to Ottman’s and McCarthy’s critiques of his image of nature in Habermas: Critical Debates, Habermas concedes that a different attitude may occur—an anamnetic one through which a compassionate relation to nature may lie even beyond the horizon of moral-practical insights with their own assumptions of reciprocity and responsibility. As he states, “with these living creatures who are indeed affected by the normatively regulated, morally relevant behaviour of humans, who could not, even counterfactually, step out of the position of those affected and take up the role of participants in practical discourses—nature in itself would come into view in a certain way, and not only the nature instrumentalised by us.”29 Habermas goes on to argue that this anamnetic attitude, through which we could establish a solidarity with nature as a response to ecological difficulties and instrumentalist attitudes, need not, though, result in a change of paradigm. Rather, “a transition to a morality that includes the compassionate relation of humans to nature as a cosmically expanded solidarity with everything that is capable of suffering and that in this vulnerability calls for reverence,” can be made within the orbit of his ‘this sided’ deontological discourse ethics.30 To be sure, John Dryzek and Steven Vogel, for example, have attempted, in competing ways, to develop an image of humankind’s relation with nature that is ecologically sensitised by drawing critically on Habermas’ work. In so doing, they have attempted to relocate and subordinate instrumental-cognitive reasoning to practical reasoning, and, hence, view nature as a partner-in-com-

29 30

Habermas, “A Reply to my Critics,” p. 247. Ibid., p. 248.


munication.31 However, Habermas has been more sanguine. As he notes, the normative validity claims of practical reasoning cannot be carried over into the relation between humans and nature in a strict sense. In this context, the Heideggerian notion of care, for him, is one that “can lay claim to an ethical status only in relation to those who are released into autonomy and reciprocity.”32 Consistent with his three-world strategy, there is a yawning chasm between a discourse ethics and a naturalistic one. For him, a conceptual re-naturalisation of the relation between humankind and nature decreases the boundaries between both, which has a double result. On the one hand, it becomes difficult to determine, so Habermas argues, where the anamnetic attitude should finish with regard to the levels of the natural environment. In other words, should all of ‘nature’ be included, including plants, or only animals? 33 Moreover, and on the other hand, the blurring of boundaries between humankind and nature in terms of a re-naturalisation can also lead to an opposite result—the completed cognitive-instrumentalised identification of humankind with nature, for example under the terms of genetic coding.34 Habermas’ insistence on the three-world boundary is further articulated in his skepticism as to whether a naturalistic ethic

31 See John Dryzek, “Green Reason: Communicative Ethics for the Biosphere,” Environmental Ethics, vol. 12, Fall, 1990, pp. 195–210; Steven Vogel, “Habermas and the Ethics of Nature,” in Roger S. Gottlieb, The Ecological Community, London, Routledge, 1997, pp. 175–192 where he critiques Dryzek’s position, and Against Nature The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory, New York, State University of New York Press, especially, chapter 6. 32 Habermas, “A Reply to my Critics,” p. 248. 33 Ibid. 34 This is an implication of Habermas’ argument in his The Future of Human Nature.


could be adequately grounded today without recourse to religious or metaphysical worldviews, which would effectively undermine the learning processes built into the worldviews of modernity.35 Leaving the issue of the possible relation between humankind and nature as one pertaining to practical reason to one side, Peter Douglas, in his chapter “Habermas, Schelling and Nature,” takes up the challenge of the legacy of a naturalism laid down by Habermas’ post-metaphysical skepticism. Douglas argues that there is a correspondence between Habermas’ approach and the reliance on closed systems in traditional physics. Both concentrate on what is reliably known, ignoring or bracketing out the broader environment outside the system, the result of which is the conflation of explanation and technical control. He goes on to argue that in contrast to these ‘linear’ approaches a parallel can be established between Schelling’s work and contemporary physics, especially chaos theory. In Douglas’ account, Schelling draws on a notion of productivity (a natura naturans) as the ground of an appearing nature. In a similar way, chaos theory posits systems that do not preclude unpredictable outcomes because of their sensitivity to boundary conditions between system and environment, and hence a heightened regard for contingent outcomes that cannot be ignored. This radicalisation of the problem of contingency entails that, like the image of modernity itself, humankind’s relation with nature is not so much an unfinished project, but, more so, a continually problematic one in which there is no linear progress towards greater verifiable articulation. Rather, this relation can be conceptualised as one of ongoing and competing interpretations that build multiple dynamics on both sides of the equation between humankind and nature.

35

Habermas, “A Reply to my Critics,” p. 248.


The Linguistic Turn and the Status of the Subject—Paradigm Shift or Cul-de-sac? Each of the essays that have been discussed thus far, whilst explicitly pointing to the limits of Habermas’ formulations of politics, aesthetics, and nature, implicitly direct our attention to the way he has internalised the linguistic turn in twentieth-century philosophy. The essays by Albrecht Wellmer, Dieter Freundlieb, Dieter Henrich, Manfred Frank, Kenneth MacKendrick, and John Rundell all critically encounter Habermas’ version of this turn, as well as signal departures from it. For Habermas, the linguistic turn marked a supposedly irrevocable paradigm shift in philosophy. As Dews has pointed out this is an attitude he shares with structuralism and post-structuralism, notwithstanding disagreements regarding the constitutive dimensions of its own linguistic turn that emanated from Saussure’s work.36 It enabled him to break with Adorno’s turn to negative dialectics, partly because he was convinced that Adorno remained imprisoned within the conceptual framework of a philosophy of the subject. Habermas’ version of critical theory that takes its point of departure from the linguistic turn is an attempt to redeem the notion of reason through a theory of communicative action, which is simultaneously a theory of intersubjectivity. However, as mentioned above Habermas’ concept of communicative rationality narrows the scope of the human self-image to a construction of human reason as the capacity for the redemption of three types of validity claims in rational discourse. He conceives of rationality almost entirely as the giving of reasons,

36 See Peter Dews, The Limits of Disenchantment: Essays on Contemporary European Philosophy, London & New York, Verso, 1995.


which, when tied to the linguistic turn, is considered as purely a feat of the propositional use of language. This rational idealtypicalisation is linked to a notion of epistemic justification, which in Habermas’ terms cannot transcend the boundaries of language.37 In other words, there is for him, an internal connection between the forms of truth that he accords each of the areas of rationality, and the modes of justification that are required for each. However, there are major difficulties posed by Habermas’ account of truth and his related attempt to ground a theory of epistemic normativity. Here, as in other areas, Habermas has let himself be guided too much by dominant trends in analytic philosophy of language and its inherent affinities with a semiotic-idealist epistemology. In spite of recent concessions and his willingness to take what he calls our ‘realist intuitions’ seriously, he still insists that epistemic justification cannot transcend the boundaries of language.38 This ignores strong arguments developed, for example, by scholars such as Christopher Peacocke and William P. Alston in support of the justificatory role of non-conceptual content in perception.39 To be sure, even within contemporary German critical theory, Habermas’ insistence on the philosophy of language has also been questioned. Albrecht Wellmer, for one, has been a particularly acute interlocutor of Habermas on this question. In his ear-

37

See Jürgen Habermas, “Exkurs: Transzendenz von innen, Transzendens ins Diesseits” in Habermas, Texte und Kontexte, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1991; Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays, trans. W. M. Hohengarten, Cambridge, Mass, The MIT Press, 1992; Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung. Philosophische Aufsätze, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1999; Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1991. 38 See Habermas, Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung. 39 See Christopher Peacocke, A Study of Concepts, Cambridge, Mass. The MIT Press, 1992.


lier, The Dialectic of Modernism and Postmodernism: The Critique of Reason Since Adorno, Wellmer points to the multiplicity of meanings through which any world can be understood.40 Moreover, these multiplicities point to horizons of meaning that are not only linguistically constituted. Wellmer continues this interrogation of the relation between meaning and language in his essay published here on truth. In “The Argument about Truth: Pragmatism Without Regulative Ideas,” he contests the attempt by Habermas, Apel and others to preserve the ‘internal’ or ‘conceptual’ connection between truth and justification, and hence the internal relation between meaning and language.41 Wellmer begins his argument from the difficulties that the correspondence theory of truth has in determining whether a relation of correspondence between a statement and a fact exists and what type of justificatory practices of reason giving are required to establish this correspondence. Wellmer argues that a purely epistemic notion of truth denies the difference between truth and justification, and because of this difference, truth is and will always be ‘disputable’. According to him, once we distinguish, within our justificatory practices, between first-person and third-person perspectives, we realise that what must be accepted as true by one speaker on the basis of the reasons he or she has for a truth claim need not be so accepted by a third person. For Wellmer,

40

Albrecht Wellmer, The Dialectic of Modernism and Postmodernism: The Critique of Reason Since Adorno, Polity Press, 1991, Cambridge, pp. 36–94. See also his Ethik und Dialog, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1986; Karl-Otto Apel, Auseinandersetzungen in Erprobung des transzendentalpragmatischen Ansatzes, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp 1998; Herbert, Schnädelbach, “Transformation der Kritischen Theorie. Zu Jürgen Habermas’ Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns” in Schnädelbach, Vernunft und Geschichte, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1987. 41 The editors would like to thank William Egginton and SUNY Press for their kind permission to Critical Horizons to publish the essay by Albrecht Wellmer. William Egginton translated the essay, which will also appear in The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy: Contemporary Engagements Between Analytic and Continental Thought, edited by William Egginton and Mike Sandbothe, SUNY Press, 2004.


truth cannot provide a fixed point of orientation. There is no ‘meta-perspective’ that closes the gap between justification and truth.42 If, as Wellmer argues, the link between justification and truth is not as close as Habermas presupposes, and thus, a gap remains open, it is also a gap between interlocutors themselves. For Habermas, there is not only an internal link between truth and justification, but also between interlocutors themselves. For him, the linguistic paradigm is simultaneously an intersubjective one. Habermas believes that the linguistically determined and constituted paradigm of intersubjectivity overcomes the subject/object dualism because a ‘performative attitude’ towards the other is constitutive of the speech acts themselves. For Habermas, this performative attitude replaces the postulate of objectification that is unavoidable under the premises of the paradigm of the subject, irrespective of whether this paradigm takes an idealist or a materialist form. There are two issues here that it is helpful to separate out—Habermas’ dismissal of the paradigm of the subject, and his reliance on language to give substance to his human self-image. Habermas’ attempt to move from the philosophy of the subject to intersubjectivity has been challenged by recent developments.43 As works such as John Searle’s The Rediscovery of the Mind, and extensive work in other areas of analytic and continental philosophy of mind and subjectivity testify, we have never entered a

42

See also Jan Bryant et al. “Contingency, Fragility, Difference.” The more the historical record is studied and the more account is taken of contemporary cognitive science, the less plausible any attempt to drop or sidestep the philosophy of consciousness appears. Karen Gloy, Bewußtseinstheorien. Zur Problematik und Problemgeschichte des Bewusstseins und Selbstbewußtseins. Freiburg & Munich, Alber, 1998; see also Manfred Frank, Selbstbewußtsein und Selbsterkenntnis. Stuttgart, Reclam, 1991. 43


‘postmetaphysical’ era in philosophy and the notion that most serious traditional problems in philosophy can be reformulated in terms of a philosophy of language has been shown to be premature. Habermas, in his critique of German Idealism, has argued that the individuality of the subject can only be recognised qua individuality in the performative nature of the speech act. However, some of the strongest critiques of Habermas’ reliance on the linguistic turn have come from those positions that have attempted to re-work the tradition of German Idealism without falling into the trap of either renewed subject-object dualisms or solipsistic versions of the subject. In their critiques of Habermas’ rejection of the philosophy of subjectivity and self-consciousness, both Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank, for example, have argued that this recognition through performativity is already dependent on a pre-discursive familiarity of the self with itself.44 This knowing self-relation—at whatever level it may occur—also implies that relations with others are not expressed in either a performative or an objectifying attitude in the first instance. Rather, the ‘meeting ground’ between subjects is constituted in

44

Cf. footnote 1. Manfred Frank, “Selbstbewußtsein und Rationalität” in eds. P. Kolmer and H. Korten, Grenzbestimmungen der Vernunft, Freiburg/Munich, Alber, 1994; Analytische Theorien des Selbstbewußtseins, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1994; “Self-Consciousness and Self-Knowledge: Some Difficulties with the Reduction of Subjectivity,” Constellations 9, no. 3, 2002, p. XX; Dieter Henrich, “Was ist Metaphysik—was Moderne? Zwölf Thesen gegen Jürgen Habermas,” in Henrich, Konzepte. Essays zur Philosophie in der Zeit, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1987; “Grund und Gang spekulativen Denkens” in eds. D. Henrich and R.-P. Horstmann, Metaphysik nach Kant? Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1988; “Die Anfänge der Theorie des Subjekts” in eds. A. Honneth et al., Zwischenbetrachtungen. Im Prozess der Aufklärung, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1989; Der Grund im Bewußtsein, Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1992; Konstellationen, Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1986; Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht, Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 1967; Selbstverhältnisse, Stuttgart, Reclam, 1982; Fluchtlinien: Philosophische Essays, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1982; J. Grondin, “Hat Habermas die Subjektphilosophie verabschiedet?” Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 12, 1987, pp. 25–37.


many different ways—from intuition, to emotion, to cognition— all of which may, of course, be rendered linguistically. However, at this level, a theory of subject formation that is located in a dynamic that un-problematically brings together language use, and a reflexive relation between ego and alter, overplays its hand. Dieter Freundlieb in his “Why Subjectivity Matters: Critical Theory and the Philosophy of the Subject,” argues that subjectivity cannot be constituted through, and reduced to, the effect of communicative interactions with others. Attempts that posit a communicative interaction as constitutive of subjectivity always presuppose, at some logically prior level, an idea of a subject who is already familiar with him or herself in a non-discursive way. In fact, non-propositional cognitive dimensions are present within subjectivity that provide the background and ultimate premises to virtually any argument. At the same time, Freundlieb argues that Habermas misunderstands a key aspect of Idealism’s philosophy of the subject when he claims that it is committed, willy-nilly, to a subject-object model. Rather, the subject’s selfknowledge is made possible by a form of ‘intellectual intuition’, and it is conceptualised within a (yet to be developed) monistic ontology that enables it to view itself as belonging in, and having a meaningful relation to, the world, to itself, and to other human beings.45 As Freundlieb shows, Dieter Henrich’s renewal of the philosophy of subjectivity poses a fundamental challenge to Habermas’

45 See also Dieter Freundlieb, “Naturalismus und Realismus nach der sprachpragmatischen Wende. Habermas’ Rückkehr zur theoretischen Philosophie,” prima philosophia, 13, 2000, pp. 267–277; “Nachmetaphysisches Denken oder pragmatistische Problemverkürzung? Zu Habermas’ Analogisierung von Richtigkeit und Wahrheit,” prima philosophia, 14, 2001, pp. 219–236; “The Return to Subjectivity as a Challenge to Critical Theory,” Idealistic Studies 32, 2002, pp. 171–189; Dieter Henrich and Contemporary Philosophy: The Return to Subjectivity.


prioritising of intersubjectivity over subjectivity. Henrich in his essay “Subjectivity as a Philosophical Principle” argues for a renewal of the philosophy of the subject initiated by the German Idealists, especially Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. His renewal, however, departs in significant ways from the program pursued by these post-Kantians. Taking as his point of departure the problem of self-consciousness Henrich’s approach is neither foundationalist nor does it assume that it is possible to theoretically account for what he terms the epistemic self-relation in any exhaustive way. Nonetheless, a renewed philosophy of the subject can show that subjectivity is still a principle of philosophy in the sense that our insights into its nature and constitution will make us aware of the implications of subjectivity for the philosophical enterprise, as well as for what Henrich calls a consciously led life (bewußtes Leben). According to Henrich subjectivity cannot be seen as derived from intersubjectivity and from communication in the way suggested by Habermas. In a similar way to Henrich, Manfred Frank, in his “Against a priori Intersubjectivism: an Alternative Inspired by Sartre,” also criticises Habermas’ critical theory for beginning with the assumption that intersubjectivity pre-determines the subject. He terms this assumption ‘a priori intersubjectivism’ that argues that subjectivity is derived from a third person perspective which has priority over the perspective of the ego. As Frank points out, this approach has some unexpected affinities with such divergent thinkers as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, and the neostructuralists of Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze.46 More broadly he also argues that subjectivity and the self-consciousness that accompanies it is not a form of mediated self-reflexivity, and cannot be known according to propositional (de dicto) principles,

46 See Manfred Frank, What is Neo-structuralism? Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1989.


realist (de re) ones, or ones grounded in reciprocal recognition. Rather the pre-reflexive self-consciousness of the first person is an irreplacable postulate. Elsewhere, Frank has drawn on the work of Fichte, Brentano, and Shoemaker in order to posit an image of the self that is an indivisible unity in which intuition, feeling and thinking are prereflexively interconnected in an irreducible way. In the essay published here, though, Frank draws on the work of Sartre in order to posit a different theory of intersubjectivity that begins from the irreplacability of the first person and the simultaneous contingent limitation and possibility that this places on relations between subjects. In Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre argues that the basic contingent ‘fact’ of subjective existence is that others exist, which negates freedoms and limits possibilities for action. In other words, viewed from a dyadic relation there is an incompatibility of two centres of consciousness, neither of which can assimilate the other in itself. There is only mutual hostility. According to Sartre, though, it is only through a mediating third— for example, in the form of time, space, gifts, or money—that an initial propensity for a mutual hostility is transformed into an awareness of a connection between ego and alter, and thus a reciprocal possibility.47 As Frank points out, and irrespective of Sartre’s incomplete theorising here, the ternary relation is a secularised Leibnizian monad that enables every particular subject to go beyond him or herself and reach the co-operative ‘we’. The essays by Wellmer, Freundlieb, Henrich, and Frank point to the limits of the linguistic paradigm itself, and by implication, of posing a paradigm of intersubjectivity in linguistic terms. The reliance on both an epistemic self-relation (Henrich) and pre-

47 Jean Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith and ed. Jonathan Rée, London, New Left Books, 1976.


conceptual and pre-reflexive dimensions of meaning (Freundlieb and Frank) have some affinities with different approaches that re-work the philosophy of the subject from different conceptual strategies that take their starting points from the issues, as Wellmer and Frank intimate, of the gaps between meaning and language, and between ego and alter. One such conceptual strategy that theorises the gap between meaning and language emerges from an implicit appeal to the power of the imagination. However, as our discussion of Habermas’ notion of expressive-aesthetic rationality has noted, the imagination is never theorised as such in his work. Moreover, he views the slippages and metaphoricity of meaning as forms of fictionalisation that belong more to the activity of aesthetic creation. To be sure, the problematic of the imagination has a lengthy legacy in modern philosophy, which is usually confined to an argument between the Enlightenment and Romanticism. However, it is in Kant’s work, rather than that of Schelling, Fichte, or Schiller that this problem is stated most clearly, and takes the form of a series of remarks on the imagination. In an insight in the Critique of Pure Reason that Kant retreats from, the categories of pure reason are creations and representations of an imagination that is ever present, although only partially presented.48 In this context, there is a recognition that in the space between presence and (re)-presentation humankind invents the conditions of its own existence. This recognition of the power of the imagination has taken at least two forms that have resisted attempts to return it to the world of aesthetics, usually under the category of the sublime.

48 As Kant remarks, “the imagination is the faculty of representing in intuition an object that is not itself present.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, MacMillan Press Ltd., London, 1978, p. 165, B152.


Both attempts locate the imagination’s power in terms of philosophical anthropology, rather than in terms of metaphysical categories. One version derives from the work of W. D. Winnicott, for whom the imagination becomes present in the play between ego and alter. It is constituted intersubjectively as a positive outcome of patterns of separation and recognition. Honneth follows Winnicott’s work in his own attempt to work through the patterns of ‘intra-mundane transcendence’ that are central to each individual for social recognition. By so doing he gives a place to the work of the imagination that is denied to it in Habermas’ work.49 Another version emerges from the work of Castoriadis who also extends the idea of the imagination beyond its usual reference to the aesthetic sphere. For him, and from the perspective of an ontological re-casting of this problem, there are two irreconcilable dimensions through which the imagination can be posited. One dimension is the radical imagination or radical imaginary through which the psychic monad creates meaning. This imaginary ‘monadic core’ entails that the individual resists socialisation, even as he or she is constantly socialised through social instituting imaginaries. In Castoriadis’ terms social instituting imaginaries—the other dimension—are the patterns of collectively created meanings that are institutionalised and become a society’s point of reference. Castoriadis concentrates on the nature and invention of meaning through a reflection on socio-historical being that leads him to posit the incommensurability of the socialhistorical dimension from the psychological one. Both Honneth’s and Castoriadis’ work are reference points for the essays by Kenneth MacKendrick and John Rundell. In his “The Moral Imaginary of Discourse Ethics,” MacKendrick opens

49 See Axel Honneth, “Invisibility: On the Epistemology of Recognition,” Supplement of the Aristotelean Society, Number 75, 2001, pp. 127–139.


up the overall status of the linguistic turn itself. In MacKendrick’s view, Habermas’ attempt to avoid the spectre of subjectivism leads him to develop an understanding of universalism that hinges on a critical error, the confusion of subjectivity with normativity. MacKendrick draws on Castoriadis’ theory of the radical imaginary to illuminate this failure, and in so doing shows the way in which Habermas’ moral theory of discourse harbours a moral-imaginary horizon, a non-linguistic and pre-political kernel with which his universalistic ethics is underscored and without which it cannot function. In “Imaginary Turns in Critical Theory,” John Rundell also implicitly responds to Habermas’ linguistic turn by arguing that imaginary horizons are central to the ways in which the gaps between meaning and language, and between ego and alter can be conceptualised.50 The way in which Habermas privileges argumentative reasoning entails that a conflation occurs between the forms of human intersubjectivity in their complexity and richness, and the claims of reasoning themselves. In other words, Habermas’ conception of intersubjectivity entails that other forms of intersubjectivity that cannot refer to normative criteria, such as love or violence, are viewed as inferior or distorted rather than constitutive in their own right.51 Departing from Axel Honneth’s reworking of the struggle for recognition, Rundell argues that the nature of the claims for recognition that are articulated always refer to the status of the

50 See also John Rundell “From the Shores of Reason to the Horizon of Meaning: Some Remarks on Habermas’ and Castoriadis’ Theories of Culture,” Thesis Eleven 22, 1989, pp. 5–24. 51 Stephen E. Bronner, Of Critical Theory and Its Theorists, Oxford, Blackwell, 1994; Wayne Hudson, The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Bloch, London, Macmillan, 1982; Joel Whitebook, Perversion and Utopia: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory, Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1995.


subject. Rundell turns to Castoriadis’ work, especially to his core idea of the radical imaginary in order to more fully explore this issue. However, Rundell argues that there is a problem in Castoriadis’ idea of the autistic radical imaginary with reference to dynamics of sociability. In addressing this issue Rundell posits a tension-ridden co-existence of the creatively imagining subject and multiple forms of intersubjectivity that force the subject beyond his or her initial radical enclosure and enables him or her to establish world relations in multidimensional ways.52 Concluding Remarks A fundamental tension exists within Habermas’ work between the meta-theoretical paradigms through which the tasks of critique are anchored and the task of producing a critique of ‘real existing conditions’. Habermas reduces the complexity of modernity to the tension between life-world and system imperatives. Furthermore, with his underlying evolutionary premise of the differentiation of the structures of rationality, Habermas privileges Western Europe as the primary stage for the development of modernity and too readily demarcates tradition and modernity, and the religious and the secular, a demarcation that is difficult to sustain at the level of historical and social analysis. These issues are areas in which there is much critical engagement with Habermas’ work to date, and the present volume cannot claim to address them systematically. Nonetheless, the encounters with and departures from Habermas’ work that have been articulated in this collection of essays are not simply the technical reservations that can be levelled at almost any theory

52 See J. Byant et al., “Editorial,” Critical Horizons, vol. 2, no. 1, 2001 for a discussion of Rundell’s paper.


of such a range and level of generality. Some of them at least go to the viability of what his critical theory is attempting to do, and the meta-philosophical claims it is putting forward. Whether new forms of critical theory can emerge if more account is taken of human subjectivity, imagination, art, and religion remains to be seen.53 It seems possible that they can, especially if insights that have emerged separately in French and German philosophy are brought together. There are already signs of a critical theory that overcomes the ‘French theory’/German philosophy divide.54 Similarly, much recent scholarship has established links between ‘continental philosophy’ and both analytical philosophy and the natural sciences in ways that are different from Habermas’ own dialogue.55 Critical theory may still prove possible on different theoretical and practical foundations. For

53 For further discussion see eds. Peter U. Hohendahl and John Fisher, Critical Theory: Current State and Future Prospects, New York, Berghahn, 2001. 54 See eds. S. Ashenden and D. Owen, Foucault Contra Habermas: Recasting the Dialogue between Genealogy and Critical Theory, London, Sage, 1999. For a different perspective see John McCumber, Philosophy and Freedom. Derrida, Rorty, Habermas, Foucault, Bloomington, Ind., Indiana University Press, 2000; Thomas McCarthy, Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstruction and Deconstruction in Contemporary Critical Theory, Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1991; Thomas McCarthy and David Couzens Hoy, Critical Theory, London, Blackwell, 1994; ed. David Rasmussen, Universalism vs. Communitarianism, Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1990; ed. David Rasmussen, The Handbook of Critical Theory, Oxford, Blackwell, 1990; William Rehg, Insight and Solidarity: The Discourse Ethics of Jürgen Habermas, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994; eds. Peter U. Hohendahl and John Fisher, Critical Theory: Current State and Future Prospects. 55 See eds. Dieter Freundlieb and Wayne Hudson, Reason and Its Other: Rationality in Modern German Philosophy and Culture, Oxford and Providence, Berg, 1993; Dieter Freundlieb and Wayne Hudson “Convergence and Its Limits: Relations Between Analytic and Continental Philosophy,” Philosophical Explorations 1, 1998, pp. 28–42; Rudolf Langthaler, Nachmetaphysisches Denken? Kritische Anfragen an Jürgen Habermas, Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1997; Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989; John Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind, Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1992.


example, in contrast to Habermas’ meta-theoretical and largely proceduralist approach, it is possible to advocate critical practices rooted in actual contexts and expertises, and to inform these approaches with relevant results from the natural sciences and historical sociology. Paradoxically, such critical practices can include the use of universalisation tests, proceduralism and moral postulates as tools for promoting change. It is also possible to explore less narrowly Kantian forms of critical theory. A critical theory more sensitive to the passions of human beings, to their embodiment, to the particularities of social and historical change and better integrated with the natural sciences, will be substantially different from the critical theory envisaged by Habermas. It will remain indebted, no doubt, to many of his analyses, just as it will be inspired by the precedent he has set of the engaged intellectual loyal to the Western philosophical tradition but intent upon promoting enlightened rationality in dark and dangerous times. But it will take the argument in significantly different directions.56

56

One such direction could be a normative theory of international relations. Another direction might be a normative ecology based on a philosophy of nature rather than on Habermas’ acceptance of instrumental natural sciences. See our discussion of Section 1, part 2, above, and Steven Vogel, Against Nature.

Maeve Cooke

Between ‘Objectivism’ and ‘Contextualism’: The Normative Foundations of Social Philosophy*

Two fundamental challenges face contemporary social philosophy. First, it must find normative foundations appropriate for its project of social critique and congruent with its self-understanding. Second, it must provide a convincing normative account of the conditions for forms of social life that would facilitate individual human flourishing. The following discussion focuses on the first challenge. I start by situating social philosophy as a critical project within the interpretative horizon of Western modernity. I then formulate the task of normative foundations in terms of negotiating the tension between ‘objectivism’ and ‘contextualism’. In section two I examine six contemporary responses within social philosophy to the problem of normative foundations. In the final section I argue that their respective limitations call for renewed reflection on justificatory strategies, in particular, for a conception of ‘objectivity’ based in a normative theory of social learning processes. 1 Social philosophy is a mode of reflection that has developed over the last two hundred and fifty years in industrialised Western societies with the aim of working out critical standards for evaluating forms of social life that would facilitate individual human

* This article was first published in Critical Horizons, vol. 1, no. 2, 2000.

36 • Maeve Cooke

flourishing.1 Defined in this way, the concept of social philosophy can be seen to rest on at least three assumptions. These assumptions are, first, that individual human flourishing is a valuable end of human endeavour, second, that individual human flourishing is possible only under certain social conditions and third, that there are non-arbitrary, universal standards for assessing individual human flourishing.2 On this account, social philosophy has its origins in Rousseau, is taken up in the nineteenth century above all by Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche and is practised from the turn of the last century onwards by sociologists and philosophers as diverse as Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Émile Durkheim, Georg Lukács, Helmut Plessner, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor and, of course, the various associates of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research and those who continue this tradition today.3 The advantages of such an

1

Here I elaborate on a definition of social philosophy proposed by A. Honneth in “Pathologien des Sozialen, Tradition und Aktualität der Sozialphilosophie,” his introduction to Pathologien des Sozialen, Frankfurt am Main, Fischer, 1994, pp. 9–69. 2 This definition leaves open the question of whether or not central elements of modern life are inimical to individual human flourishing. It also leaves open the question of whether social philosophy should have a practical orientation aimed at the actual removal of the identified obstacles to human flourishing and, if so, what kind of practical orientation. The problem of the relationship between theory and practice has been a concern, in particular, of the tradition of social philosophy that goes back to Marx. For a recent statement by a theorist within this tradition, see J. Habermas, “Noch Einmal: zum Verhältnis von Theorie und Praxis,” in his Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1999, pp. 319–333. 3 On this definition, the critical theory of the Frankfurt School can be regarded as one tradition within social philosophy. Honneth has offered two somewhat different characterisations of the salient features of the Frankfurt tradition of critical social theory: the first distinguishes it from other approaches to social philosophy by virtue of its methodological objectives. These objectives are the “systematic utilisation of all social-scientific research disciplines in the development of a materialist theory of society.” Here, Honneth distinguishes Frankfurt critical theory from other forms of social philosophy by virtue of its attempt to overcome the theoretical purism of historical materialism through merging it with academic social science (see A. Honneth, “Critical Theory” (1987),

The Normative Foundations of Social Philosophy • 37

account of social philosophy is that it is general enough to embrace some very diverging perspectives on individual human flourishing, and on the social conditions that impede or promote it, while being at the same time restrictive enough to permit a meaningful distinction between social philosophy and other philosophical modes. The success of the critical project that characterises social philosophy depends on its ability to defend its own normative foundations by postulating ‘objective’ standards for assessing the social conditions of human flourishing. I use the term ‘objective’ and its cognates to refer to evaluative standards that are nonarbitrary and universally applicable. (It is important to note that, on my definition, ‘objectivist’ justificatory strategies have no necessary connection with foundationalism. Nor do they deny the inescapable influence of history and context on human processes of evaluation and interpretation.4) The appeal to ‘objectivist’

reprinted in his The Fragmented World of the Social, ed. C. W. Wright, Albany, SUNY Press, 1995, pp. 62–63). More recently, Honneth has offered a somewhat different definition of the salient feature of Frankfurt critical theory. He now distinguishes it on the basis of its allegiance to a particular kind of normative critique—one that anchors its own critical viewpoint in a pre-theoretical resource (vorwissenschaftliche Instanz) such as an empirical interest or a moral experience. As he puts it: “Critical Theory in its innermost core [. . .] is dependent on the quasi-sociological specification of an emancipatory interest in social reality itself.” (A. Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: On the Location of Critical Theory Today,” Constellations, vol. 1, no. 2, 1994, pp. 255–269 (here, p. 256)). Both definitions are, in my view, accurate and helpful in that they allow us to see why the quite different social philosophies developed by Horkheimer, Adorno, Habermas and Honneth himself are held to belong to a common tradition and can be grouped together in a meaningful way. Admittedly, the second definition in particular makes strong claims on behalf of Frankfurt critical theory; indeed, it raises the possibility that a project of this kind might not be feasible at all. 4 Thus my use of ‘objectivism’ differs significantly from that of R. Bernstein in his seminal book, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1982. By ‘objectivism’ Bernstein means “the basic conviction that there is or must be some permanent, ahistorical matrix or framework to which we can

38 • Maeve Cooke

arguments in justification of a particular normative conception of human flourishing is necessary for a number of reasons. • Social philosophers require ‘objectivist’ arguments if they are to uphold a robust conception of social critique. A strategy of exclusively immanent criticism runs the risk of delivering over the standards for critique to the arbitrary standards of a given historical epoch. Insofar as they rely solely on a context-immanent strategy, social philosophers ultimately lack the resources necessary to defend the validity of their normative visions and social criticisms against arguments that appeal to competing normative standards—or against those who deny the rationality of normative arguments. • A robust conception of social critique requires social philosophers to be able to identify and critically evaluate new normative conceptions of human flourishing as they emerge historically. For example, insofar as social groups currently raise claims to recognition based on new normative ideas of cultural uniqueness, social philosophers require conceptual resources for identifying the newness of such claims and for assessing their validity. Were social philosophers to rely on a purely context-immanent justificatory strategy, they would lack the conceptual resources for evaluating new kinds of normative claims. • A robust conception of social critique requires a concept of social progress. This means that social philosophers must be able to defend the key normative conceptions guiding their respective projects as improvements vis-à-vis earlier conceptions. For example, insofar as their projects appeal to normative ideas such as ‘autonomy’ or ‘authenticity’, they must be able to see

ultimately appeal in determining the nature of rationality, knowledge, truth, reality, goodness or rightness. [. . .] Objectivism is closely related to foundationalism and the search for an Archimedean point.” (ibid., p. 8).


these as historical achievements. Were social philosophers selfconsciously to restrict the validity of their normative conceptions of human flourishing to those who share their own, historically specific, interpretative horizon, they would be unable to defend any concept of social progress. • Social philosophers cannot dispense with ‘objectivist’ arguments if they are to engage in genuine, potentially transformatory, dialogue with the inhabitants of rival interpretative horizons. The need for such dialogue is particularly apparent under contemporary conditions of globalisation where competing visions of human flourishing frequently and publicly collide. Were social philosophers self-consciously to restrict the validity of their normative conceptions of human flourishing to those who share their own, historically specific, interpretative horizon, they would have no motivation to engage in deliberation with those who hold competing views. Even more importantly, they would lack the conceptual resources for any meaningful concept of learning from such deliberation. In order fully to grasp the complexity of the task facing social philosophy in its search for ‘objectivist’ arguments, it should be noted that, on the definition just given, social philosophy is historically contextualised as a project specific to Western modernity. By virtue of being situated within a specific interpretative horizon, it is subjected to certain constraints that affect its methods of inquiry, its justificatory strategies and its proposals as regards the form or content of the social conditions that would facilitate human flourishing. The particular constraints imposed on social philosophy by virtue of its emergence within a modern interpretative horizon considerably complicate the attempt to find an ‘objectivist’ justificatory strategy congruent with its selfunderstanding. This thesis of historically specific contextual constraints is guided by the basic intuition that, as inhabitants of any cultural and

40 • Maeve Cooke

social context, we are unavoidably shaped by a certain history and by certain traditions. These produce evaluative conceptions of rationality, of knowledge, and of human beings and their interrelationships, that shape our identities in fundamental ways. They also form the basis for narrative accounts of the historical development of the social and cultural context in question—narratives that frequently diverge and may even compete with one another (in the case of Western modernity, for example, one need think only of the very different narratives offered by Simmel and by Nietzsche, or by Foucault and by MacIntyre). Notwithstanding points of divergence and competition, however, there are usually important points of agreement and overlap. This is evidently the case for the rival narratives of Western modernity. One significant point of agreement is the view that the development of Western modernity is characterised by a new attitude towards authority: the authority of tradition, and of those in positions of power and privilege, is no longer unquestioned but regarded as open in principle to challenge and criticism by ordinary citizens. More precisely, the category of those deemed capable of critical reflection and informed judgement in matters of validity is not predetermined but becomes itself a matter for critical discussion. (This new attitude is frequently described in terms of secularisation and democratisation.) The agreement of the rival narratives of Western modernity in this regard supports the hypothesis— gained through historical, hermeneutically oriented, inquiry— that the secularisation and democratisation of authority is a key formative element of the modern Western self-understanding.5 Further key formative elements have emerged in the course of its history (for interpretative horizons are not fixed and given but continuously in flux). For our present purposes, I want to highlight three of these. The first is a normative conception of

5

I do not claim that it is specific to Western modernity.


knowledge, the second is a normative conception of human beings and the third is a normative conception of subjectivity: • the view that there are no authoritative standards independent of history and of cultural context that could adjudicate rival claims to validity, especially in the areas of science, law, politics, morality and art, and that such claims should be construed fallibilistically; • the idea that everyone is in principle deserving of equal respect as an autonomous moral agent with a distinct point of view; • a decentered understanding of the individual human subject; the subject is held, first, to be internally disunified and, second, to be at least partially constituted by external material and social forces. These three normative conceptions constitute key elements of the interpretative horizon of late Western modernity in the sense that they now unavoidably shape our (late modern, Western) self-understandings and proposals. Accordingly, they also unavoidably shape the direction of contemporary social philosophy. This is not to say that social philosophy has to accept the validity of these normative conceptions (Nietzsche disputed the second one, for example). The point is that if it does not, it must then take on the task of reorienting our self-interpretations so that we no longer find the normative ideas in question convincing. This is the sense in which the three ideas mentioned act as constraints on contemporary social philosophy in its attempts to elaborate a normative conception of individual human flourishing. For the most part, contemporary social philosophy has not taken on the burden of reorienting the fundamental self-understandings constituting the normative horizon of (late) Western modernity. This considerably complicates its critical project. The main difficulty it encounters is the problem of how to maintain

42 • Maeve Cooke

non-arbitrary, universal standards for its social critique and for its normative projections that are in tune with the central elements of the late modern Western self-understanding. As is evident from the normative conceptions of knowledge, human beings and subjectivity just mentioned, an emphasis on the historicity of human knowledge and experience, and on the plurality of human desires, interests and needs is central to this. Accordingly, if it is to be congruent with the late modern Western self-understanding, contemporary social philosophy must pursue an antifoundationalist strategy in claiming validity for its hypotheses and must conceive of its justified assertions fallibilistically, it must respect all human beings equally as moral agents with a distinct point of view, it must take account of the multiplicity and possible incompatibility of ethical perspectives and must acknowledge the influence of diverse and contingent material, social and psychic factors in constituting these distinct perspectives. Social philosophy is thus faced with the challenging task of finding normative foundations that are robust enough for the purposes of its critical project while taking account of the historicity and plurality of human knowledge and experience. Although the term ‘postmetaphysical’ is sometimes used to describe this task, I regard it as infelicitous. For one thing, it is misleading in that it can be used to refer both to social-philosophical approaches that reject any kind of metaphysical thinking and those that insist on the historicity and plurality of human knowledge and experience but acknowledge the inevitability of metaphysical assumptions in their theories—or, indeed, even see a place for metaphysical speculation. However, it is not easy to find an alternative, more appropriate term of convenience. The label ‘postmodern’ brings with it a host of unwelcome connotations, in particular ones of conceptual and ethical relativism. The term ‘anti-foundationalist’ correctly suggests a project concerned to maintain the ‘objectivity’ of warranted assertions while acknowledging the historicity and fallibility of knowledge; however, it


refers primarily to the epistemological aspects of this project and fails to evoke an adequate sense of the historical situatedness and multiplicity of human experience. Despite the fact that it, too, may have unwelcome associations, I have on balance opted for ‘contextualist’ as a term of convenience to characterise those social-philosophical endeavours that emphasise the historicity and plurality of human knowledge and experience.6 It is evident from the foregoing that ‘contextualism’ and ‘objectivism’ are intimately connected. ‘Objectivism’ stresses the need for evaluative standards that are non-arbitrary and universal; at the same time, however, it is compatible with anti-foundationalism and acknowledges the inescapable influences of history and context on human processes of interpretation and evaluation. It thus incorporates a ‘contextualist’ perspective. ‘Contextualism’, by contrast, stresses the historical contingency of evaluative standards and the diversity of evaluative perspectives. Although it does not deny the need for non-arbitrary, universal standards of evaluation, it is mainly concerned with possibilities for normative assessment through appeal to evaluative standards immanent to a given context of interpretation. If it is to practise more normatively robust social critique, however, ‘contextualism’ has to be supplemented by ‘objectivist’ arguments. In short: whereas ‘objectivism’ without ‘contextualism’ is blind, ‘contextualism’ without ‘objectivism’ is impoverished. In attempting to establish the normative foundations of their projects, therefore, social philosophers must endeavour to do justice to the insights of both ‘objectivism’ and ‘contextualism’.

6

As is evident from the foregoing definition, ‘contextualism’ as I understand it neither affirms nor denies the possibility of ‘objective’ standards for social critique. Some writers, however, take it to do so. For this reason, in the following I use the term in quotation marks in order to indicate my particular interpretation of it.

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Contemporary social philosophers have responded to this challenge in various ways. Some, like Michel Foucault, appear to ignore it. But even among those who are evidently aware of the need for non-arbitrary, universal arguments that take account of history, context and human diversity, the response, on the whole, has been inadequate. Some have responded in a way that threatens to affirm ‘contextualism’ at the expense of ‘objectivism’: examples here are Charles Taylor, Alessandro Ferrara and Axel Honneth. In the case of others, the ‘objectivist’ argument is of the wrong kind and threatens to undermine their theory’s ‘contextualist’ impulse. Examples here are Martin Seel and Jürgen Habermas. A brief discussion of these various projects reveals the strengths of the contextualist position—and its limitations when divorced from the right kind of ‘objectivist’ justificatory strategy. 2 a) In contrast to the other social philosophers just mentioned, Foucault’s attitude to the problem of normative foundations is one of unconcern. He makes no attempt to resolve the tension in his work between insistence on the historical contingency and social determination of all human thought and forms of life, on the one hand, and social critique and a normative picture of human flourishing, on the other. Foucault persistently underscores the historical contingency of ‘discursive formations’ and the determination of knowledge—and human experience in general—by social relations of power.7 However, he offers no hint as to how we should understand the relation between his thesis of absolute contingency and total determination, on the one

7

See, for example, M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. Sheridan, London, Tavistock, 1972; M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. A. Sheridan, London, Allen Lane, 1977; M. Foucault, History of Sexuality, vols 1 & 2, trans. R. Hurley, London, Allen Lane, 1979 & 1987.


hand, and his implied critique of social power relations and of the modern institutionalisation of repressive mechanisms of bodily control, on the other. The tension between the two positions is increased rather than diffused in his later work.8 Here, he not only engages in social criticism through reference to obscure normative standards but presents his own normative picture of human flourishing as ethical self-management, the status of which is never clarified. The implication, of course, is that it is no mere expression of subjective preference but an ethical ideal that is nonarbitrary and universally applicable—in other words, ‘objective’. Foucault not only fails successfully to negotiate the tension between ‘contextualism’ and ‘objectivism’, he gives no indication that he acknowledges its existence. To this extent he appears to respond to the problem of normative foundations by simply ignoring it. In contrast, most other contemporary social philosophers are evidently concerned with the problem. b) One of these is Charles Taylor. Taylor sets out to articulate the fundamental intuitions guiding modern conceptions of the self in its social and political relations.9 In doing so he employs a method of hermeneutic retrieval that acknowledges the historicity and plurality of human knowledge and experience.10 However, one of his principal aims in this hermeneutic endeavour is to defend the possibility of truth and rational judgement in the domain of practical reason. Unlike Foucault, therefore, who ignores the problem of ‘objectivity’, Taylor expressly addresses

8

See esp. M. Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 3, London, Penguin Books, 1988. 9 See, in particular, C. Taylor, Sources of the Self, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992 and his The Ethics of Authenticity, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1989. 10 For an excellent account of Taylor’s aims and methodology, see N. Smith, Strong Hermeneutics: Contingency and Moral Identity, London & New York, Routledge, 1997.

46 • Maeve Cooke

the problem of negotiating the conflict between ‘contextualism’ and ‘objectivism’. Taylor is relentless in his critique of subjectivism, introducing the notion of strong evaluation as part of an attempt to find a non-arbitrary normative basis for self-interpretations and for practical judgements. He presents the self as a strong evaluator: someone who is motivated in a fundamental way to define herself meaningfully from within a horizon of important questions about history, nature, God, society and so on. For Taylor, the fact that she cannot do so without making use of a language of evaluative distinctions—in which, for instance, motivations are described as ‘higher’ or ‘base’, ‘courageous’ or ‘cowardly’, ‘clairvoyant’ or ‘blind’—is evidence of the non-arbitrary normative status of her interpretations and judgements. In a similar vein, Taylor argues that deep-seated convictions about the normative importance of authenticity, and a corresponding normative vocabulary, have become part of the modern self-understanding, providing a standard for criticising inauthentic behaviour and the social conditions that encourage it. Taylor’s articulation of the sources of the self is often illuminating; furthermore, his explication of the normative assumptions guiding modern self-interpretations convincingly demonstrates how, from the internal perspective of the subjects themselves, these self-interpretations have an irreducible nonsubjectivist dimension. In addition, insofar as modern self-interpretations produce normative standards that are now firmly established within the social forms of late modernity, Taylor’s approach allows for the possibility of immanent critique through reference to these standards. Ultimately, however, the ‘objective’ status of modern self-interpretations and socially established normative standards remains unclear. One the one hand, Taylor presents his pictures of the self as an articulation of key normative intuitions gained through hermeneutic reflection on the self-understandings of the inhabitants of modern societies; on the other hand, he appears to attribute to them a normative significance


that transcends any specifically modern interpretative horizon. In according them such a context-transcendent normative significance, he implies the possibility of evaluative standards that are not tied to any particular historical context of interpretation and value. But despite his explicit rejection of subjectivism and ethical relativism, Taylor ultimately fails to resolve the question of how ‘objective’ evaluative standards can be accommodated within his hermeneutic framework of enquiry.11 Indeed, Taylor has surprisingly little to say on this score. More generally, the normative basis of his project remains opaque. He does not clearly contextualise his phenomenological descriptions of strong evaluation and practical reasoning as a description of modern practices. Nor, however, does he present them explicitly as part of a universal philosophical anthropology. Similarly, the possibilities for immanent criticism opened up by his approach are rarely, if ever, explicitly thematised; not surprisingly, therefore, he does not discuss the limitations of social-philosophical projects that rely exclusively on a strategy of immanent critique. In short, despite his evident concern with normative questions and with the possibility of social criticism, the tension between ‘contextualism’ and ‘objectivism’ remains largely unacknowledged in Taylor’s work. Moreover, given his hermeneutic emphasis on retrieval and articulation, the ‘contextualist’ strand tends to predominate. As things stand, it threatens to triumph over the ‘objectivist’ impulse that is also apparent in his writings. c) A similar conclusion can be drawn from Alessandro Ferrara’s theory of reflective authenticity.12 Once again, despite the author’s express intentions, ‘contextualism’ threatens to triumph over ‘objectivism’. Like Taylor, Ferrara explicitly addresses the problem

11 Cf. M. Cooke, “Feminism, Habermas and the Question of Autonomy,” in ed. P. Dews, Habermas: A Critical Reader, Oxford, Blackwell, 1999, pp. 178–210, esp. pp. 197–200. 12 Ferrara, Reflective Authenticity, London & New York, Routledge, 1998.

48 • Maeve Cooke

of normative foundations that would be at once universally applicable and sensitive to history, contingency and plurality. However, unlike Taylor, whose method is one of hermeneutic retrieval and articulation, Ferrara moves beyond hermeneutics through appeal to the Kantian notion of exemplary validity. Ferrara starts with a hermeneutic enquiry into the fundamental intuitions and deep-seated convictions that shape the self-understandings of the inhabitants of Western modernity. However, he transcends this initial framework by using his hermeneutically gained findings to construct a normative picture of authentic identity that permits non-arbitrary and universal judgements of validity. Drawing on the Kantian notion of reflective judgement, Ferrara proposes a conception of exemplary validity that enables context-specific judgements of authenticity to claim a contexttranscendent validity. However, in contrast to Kant, for whom the universality of reflective judgement rests on the assumption of certain truths about human nature, Ferrara seeks a less naturalistic and more hermeneutically oriented explanation. In explicit analogy to the constructivist strategy deployed by John Rawls in his later work,13 Ferrara sees himself as presenting a constructivist elucidation of modern Western intuitions that avoids reliance on a Kantian philosophical anthropology.14 Rawlsian political constructivism professes agnosticism concerning the truth of the fundamental intuitions and deep-seated convictions that constitute our individual comprehensive doctrines and with which objectively valid political principles must be compatible.15 Accordingly, the standard of correctness to which

13

Ibid., p. 52. See also p. 153 and p. 158. Ibid., pp. 45–49. 15 J. Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. LXXVll, no. 9, 1980, pp. 518–9; The concept of political constructivism is elaborated in J. Rawls, Political Liberalism, New York, Columbia University Press, 1993, esp. Lecture III, pp. 89–129. 14


Rawls’ idea of political liberalism appeals is not moral truth but reasonableness:16 “To say that a political conviction is objective is to say that there are reasons, specified by a reasonable and mutually recognizable political conception [. . .] sufficient to convince all reasonable persons that it is reasonable.”17 Political constructivism neither affirms or denies the concept of truth, it simply does without it.18 It sees the question of the moral truth of political convictions as a matter not for political discussion but for the individual’s non-public deliberations which he may engage in only when he exchanges his citizen’s cap for the one he wears as a member of a family, church, professional group—or any other of the many associations of civil society.19 Rawls’ political conception of justice is freestanding, not dependent on any specific metaphysical or epistemological doctrine; it is thus designed to gain the support of an overlapping consensus among citizens whose religious, philosophical and moral doctrines not only diverge but are “opposing and irreconcilable.”20 This explains why, for Rawls, objectively valid political conceptions must be conceived as reasonable rather than true: because citizens hold conflicting and irreconcilable positions as regards the truth of political values, truth is not an appropriate standard for measuring their objectivity: “[h]olding a political conception as true [. . .] is exclusive, even sectarian, and so likely to foster political division.”21 Rawls’ methodological starting point is the historicity, plurality and irreconcilability of human conceptions of epistemic validity, that is, of the good and the true. From his political constructivist viewpoint, not only is there nothing to be gained

16

Ibid., p. 127. Ibid., p. 119. 18 Ibid., p. 94. 19 Ibid., pp. 126–129. See also J. Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” The University of Chicago Law Review, vol. 64, no. 3, 1997, pp. 765–807, esp. pp. 787–794. 20 Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 3. 21 Ibid., p. 129. 17

50 • Maeve Cooke

from deliberation on the truth of the specified political principles, to do so would encourage social divisiveness and would prevent the achievement of “a just and stable society of free and equal citizens, who remain profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines.”22 Rawls’ constructivist strategy has certain advantages in the context of political theory—even if one does not share his premise that intractable ethical conflicts are irreconcilable23 or agree with his view that public deliberation on the truth of political values would foster sectarianism.24 One advantage is that it releases the political theorist from the burden of unproductive discussion of fundamental ontological and epistemological questions and allows her to concentrate instead on constructing the political principles and institutional framework most congruent with the deeper self-understandings and aspirations of those who inhabit a given historical, social and cultural context. However, even from the perspective of political theory, the limitations of Rawls’ constructivist strategy are clear. Since his approach disallows questions concerning the truth of the fundamental intuitions and deep-seated convictions with which his political principles are deemed congruent, it is unable to argue for the superiority of these principles over those governing the lives of inhabitants of rival historical, social and cultural contexts. Its combination of ‘contextualism’ with a nonepistemic interpretation of ‘objectivity’ means that it can gain no purchase in social and cultural contexts in which the value of ‘reasonableness’ does not already prevail. Not surprisingly, therefore, polit-

22

Ibid., p. 4. See M. Cooke, “Are Ethical Conflicts Irreconcilable?” Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 23, no. 2, 1997, pp. 1–19. 24 See M. Cooke, “Five Arguments for Deliberative Democracy,” Political Studies, vol. XLVIII, no. 4, 2000. 23


ical constructivism runs into problems when extended to international law and practice.25 Ferrara’s proposed model of reflective authenticity is more ambitious in scope than Rawls’ model of political liberalism for, with its notion of exemplary validity, it explicitly asserts the ‘objectivity’ of judgements of authenticity. In order to do so, however, it must ultimately move beyond the particular kind of ‘contextualism’ characteristic of Rawlsian political constructivism and engage with the epistemological questions this disallows. Surprisingly, despite his explicit rejection of a Kantian philosophical anthropology, Ferrara appears on occasion to endorse a Kantian type of naturalist position and to account for the non-arbitrary and universal character of reflective judgements through appeal to universal truths about the nature of human beings.26 Quite apart from the apparent contradiction, however, a naturalist line of enquiry is out of step with the ‘contextualism’ Ferrara applauds in Rawls’ work. If we are all inescapably formed in profound ways by the particular historical, social and cultural contexts we inhabit, questions about the universal features of human nature are likely to be unproductive; although there may well be universal truths about human nature, they are likely to be too trivial to serve as a normative foundation for a political or social theory.

25

The problem of normative foundations is particularly evident in Rawls’ attempt to develop a “law of peoples” out of liberal ideas of justice. See J. Rawls, The Law of Peoples, New York, Basic Books, 1993. 26 On occasion, Ferrara appears to relapse into naturalism: he draws, for example, on Makkreel’s account of oriented reflective judgement as analogous to having a sense of left or right, postulating a further analogy with having a sense of authenticity (Reflective Authenticity, pp. 47–49). It is on this basis that he claims that, “we all have a sense of what it means for our identities to flourish or stagnate” (Reflective Authenticity, p. 42). If the analogies are sustainable, however, we have to presume not only that we all have the same sense of left and right but also the same sense of authenticity. It is hard to see how this position is a hermeneutically open one that avoids Kantian naturalism—or how it fits with political constructivism.

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Since we are not given any hint as to what enables us to move beyond this ‘contextualist’ position, however, the universality of judgements of exemplary validity remains mysterious and ‘contextualism’ threatens to prevail. More precisely, Reflective Authenticity ends up hovering uneasily between a discredited Kantian naturalism and an unsatifying Rawlsian ‘contextualism’. d) With his theory of social recognition Axel Honneth endeavours to provide resources for a normatively robust social philosophy.27 A central motivation behind his theory is to overcome the limitations of Habermas’ linguistic approach to critical social theory. In Honneth’s view Habermas’ normative conception of a rationalised lifeworld conjures a vision of the good life that is insufficiently robust: it is too thin and too weak to provide a basis for critique of the main pathologies of modernity—indeed, it is unable even to identify them. Honneth argues against Habermas that certain moral-psychological categories drawn from the writings of the early Hegel can be used to construct a formal theory of the good life that would have real critical power.28

27

My discussion in the following is based on Honneth’s Struggle for Recognition, trans. J. Anderson, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995, and on a manuscript, unfinished at the time of writing, in which Honneth engages in an exchange with Nancy Fraser on the capacity of a theory of social recognition to do justice to the aims of a critical social theory. See A. Honneth, “Anerkennung oder Umverteilung? Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Nancy Fraser,” MS, Frankfurt am Main, 1999. 28 In Struggle for Recognition, Honneth offers a formal conception of the good life in terms of three mutually irreducible spheres of reciprocal recognition: that of primary relationships of love and friendship, that of relationships of moral, political and legal right and that of relationships of non-intimate social connection. In the more recent exchange with Fraser, however, he insists that the particular mode of interpretation and institutionalisation of expectations of social recognition depends on the specific historical context in question. It is as yet unclear what implications can be drawn from this for his normative conception of the good life.


In keeping with the tradition of Frankfurt critical theory as he himself defines it, Honneth anchors his critical viewpoint in a pretheoretical resource, more precisely in moral experience.29 He insists that moral experiences of social misrecognition provide the motives for social struggles.30 In this way Honneth gives the normative foundations for social critique a negative formulation: the validity of his vision of the good life is to be inferred from the negative moral feelings produced by experiences of misrecognition that manifest themselves in social struggles. Although at first glance this may look like old-fashioned naturalism, Honneth’s position is more complex.31 At least in his most recent writings, the moral feelings and needs that underpin his theory are not posited as natural facts but are conceived of as the historical result of social processes.32 Although he suggests that the social expectation of recognition from others may indeed be universal,33 he also emphasises that the object and form of recognition vary from historical context to historical context and that expectations of social recognition are institutionalised in different societies in different ways. He maintains, furthermore, that moral feelings are articulated in claims to justice that call for

29

See note 3 above. “Anerkennung oder Umverteilung?” p. 44, p. 51; cf. also Honneth, Struggle for Recognition, chapter 8. 31 This holds, at least, for Honneth’s most recent writings. Here he stresses the role played by historical context in determining the shape and content of expectations of recognition in any given society. 32 This contrasts with the naturalism implicit in the writings of some of his predecessors in critical social theory, for example, Max Horkheimer in his early work. The early Horkheimer explains the motivation for social struggles through reference to feelings (of injustice, etc.), whose status as natural facts means they require no justification. See M. Cooke, “Critical Theory and Religion,” in eds. D. Z. Phillips and T. Tessin, Philosophy of Religion 2000, London, Macmillan, 2000. Insofar as Honneth’s Struggle for Recognition affirmed this kind of naturalism, it also marks a break with his own earlier work. 33 Honneth, “Anerkennung oder Umverteilung?” p. 30. 30

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reasons. These reasons—more generally, the standards of moral justice—are determined by the way in which the “order of recognition” is normatively anchored in a given society.34 Thus standards of justice also vary from historical context to historical context. Honneth is concerned in particular with the specific expectations of recognition that have been institutionalised socially with the emergence of bourgeois capitalism. He identifies three mutually irreducible spheres of social recognition that have been differentiated historically in the process of transition from the feudal to the bourgeois-capitalist social order. First, ‘love’, as the normative idea guiding intimate relationships, second, the equality principle, as the norm for relationships of legal right, and third, the principle of individual achievement, as the standard according to which social hierarchies are established.35 His aim is to show how these three expectations of recognition have a potential for conflict built into them. This potential for conflict exists, and can be mobilised, so long as the actually existing social order fails to realise the normative ideas inherent in each. The critical force of Honneth’s approach rests on the notion of a ‘validity surplus’ (Geltungsüberhang) possessed by each of the three spheres of social recognition, both separately and as they interact to constitute a complex socio-moral order.36 This surplus of validity refers to the normative potential inherent in the idea of ‘love’ and in the principles of equality and individual achievement. Insofar as the existing bourgeois-capitalist social order institutionalises social relations of recognition that are one-sided or restrictive, inhabitants of this social order can rationally object on the grounds that these social relations lack justification. ‘Love’ and the principles of equality and individual achievement thus

34 35 36

Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., p. 35. Ibid., p. 42, p. 44; cf. also p. 48, p. 51.


represent normative aspects in relation to which subjects can rationally make claims to the effect that the habitualised norms of recognition are not appropriate or not sufficient and need to be expanded and developed.37 Thus, for example, the ways in which the principle of individual achievement historically has been interpreted and institutionalised under conditions of bourgeois capitalism can be—and has been—criticised on the grounds that it privileges the activities of one social group (economically independent male citizens) and discriminates against, and excludes, those of others.38 As we can see, Honneth offers a ‘contextualist’ perspective on the conflict potential of modern societies that allows for the possibility of justified moral critique. Importantly, however, the moral standards of justification he appeals to for the purposes of diagnosis and criticism are purely immanent to the social context in question. His theory of recognition thus raises the question of the viability of a critical social theory that relies exclusively on immanent critique. While this kind of critique has a venerable history—Marx used it effectively to expose the hypocrisies and delusions of bourgeois capitalism—it was traditionally used in conjunction with other kinds of argument, most notably with a normative theory of history. Habermas recognised this long ago: “Without a theory of history, there could be no immanent critique that set out from the forms of objective spirit and distinguished between ‘what men and things could be and what they actually are’. Critique would be delivered over, in a historicist manner, to the standards of any given epoch.”39 Habermas’ point serves as a warning against over-dependence on a ‘contextualist’ strategy

37

Ibid., p. 35. Ibid., p. 33. 39 J. Habermas, “A Reply to my Critics,” in eds. J. B. Thompson and D. Held, Habermas: Critical Debates, London, Macmillan, 1982, pp. 218–283, here p. 231. 38

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and underscores the need for ‘objectivist’ arguments in order to deal with rational criticism that appeals to normative standards that are not already socially established. But even Honneth’s own theory points to the limitations of a social philosophy that relies exclusively on a strategy of immanent critique. For such a strategy would be insufficient for its own critical purposes, in particular for the purposes of normatively assessing the validity of new experiences and feelings of misrecognition that motivate social struggles. As Honneth himself acknowledges, it is implausible to suppose that just any feeling of misrecognition, together with readiness to engage in social struggle, is evidence of the need for concern on the part of social philosophy (or, indeed, of the need for fundamental social transformation). In his recent critical exchange with Nancy Fraser, Honneth reproves Fraser for taking too seriously the claims to social misrecognition advanced by the socalled new social movements in the USA. He admonishes Fraser for failing to be sensitive to those experiences of socially induced suffering and injustice that, due to the filtering effects of the bourgeois public sphere, never achieve the level of political thematisation and organisation in the first place.40 Honneth evidently—and in my view correctly—rejects the position that the simple fact of articulation in social struggles guarantees the validity of moral feelings and experiences and justifies the claims to misrecognition articulated on the basis of them. This implies the availability of normative standards for evaluating affectively based claims to misrecognition. Unless he elaborates his theory further, however, the only standards available to Honneth derive from the normative potential built into the socially established ‘order of recognition’. Through appeal to the normative potential of the ‘order of recognition’ established under conditions of bour-

40

Honneth, “Anerkennung oder Umverteilung?” p. 7.


geois capitalism, the claims to recognition raised by certain social groups can be exposed as ideological. As we have seen, this amounts to a strategy of immanent criticism. But problems arise when it comes to new kinds of claims to recognition—Honneth himself mentions the example of claims raised by groups or collectivities to cultural uniqueness.41 As it stands, his theory seems to lack normative resources for assessing new kinds of claim. In order to be able to deal with new kinds of claims to recognition, Honneth must expand his social-philosophical toolbox to include instruments other than immanent critique. On occasion, there are hints that he would like to do so. Whereas when describing the historical emergence of the bourgeois-capitalist ‘order of recognition’, he usually adopts the stance of the neutral sociological observer, on occasion he uses language that suggests a normative perspective. An example here is his reference to the transition from the feudal to the bourgeois-capitalist social order as a ‘breakthrough’ (Durchbruch).42 This clearly implies a concept of historical progress. A similar implication can be taken from his observation that the institutional differentiation of three spheres of recognition under conditions of bourgeois capitalism leads to an increase in ‘individuality’, understood as the possibility of establishing an increasingly secure basis in social approval for the uniqueness of one’s own personality. Here, too, he suggests that this is a positive development.43 As things stand, however, it remains unclear which path Honneth will take in the attempt to move beyond the purely ‘contextualist’ strategy of immanent critique.44 The problem facing him is

41

Ibid., p. 53. Ibid., p. 30. 43 Ibid., p. 35. 44 As indicated, at the time of writing the version of the manuscript on which I have based my remarks in the following was incomplete. Most importantly, 42

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the following: he has to show that justified claims to misrecognition can make claims to rationality that transcend the specific socio-moral order in which they are articulated. Furthermore, and connected with this, he has to show how progress in history is conceivable. Honneth rightly rejects the view that social struggles have a built-in telos. He thus explicitly distances himself from the Hegelian idea that the potential for conflict built into the three spheres of recognition has the essential function of motivating transition to the next stage of social-moral institutions.45 However, although he is right to reject any notion that the progress of history is guaranteed, he must avoid the position that there can be no progress in history. Such a position would lead to a weakened and restricted notion of ‘objectivity’, severely curtail the scope of social critique and eliminate the potential transformatory dimension of dialogue with those who hold competing views of the world. In the interests of normatively robust social critique and intercultural dialogue, therefore, Honneth must maintain a concept of historical progress. Various options are open to him here. He could defend a materialist—for example, naturalist—account of the progress of history or, alternatively, an idealist—for example, rationalist or theist—one. Recently, there is some indication that Honneth appears to favour a Hegelian strategy for he has embarked on the project of reworking Hegel’s notion of objective spirit.46 However, if he wants to avoid the

the final section of Honneth’s paper, which promised to deal explicitly with the problem of the normative standards with which the claims to recognition raised in social struggles could be morally justified, was not available to me. However, my overall argument in this essay is independent of Honneth’s ability to clarify the normative foundations of his theory. My concern is less to highlight the weaknesses of contemporary social philosophy in the matter of normative foundations than to indicate the best way forward if it is successfully to negotiate the tension between ‘contextualism’ and ‘objectivism’. 45 Honneth, “Anerkennung oder Umverteilung?” p. 36. 46 A. Honneth, “Leiden an Unbestimmtheit,” Spinoza Lectures, Amsterdam, 1999.


triumph of ‘contextualism’ over ‘objectivism’ he will have to go further than that. One option here would be to attempt to rethink the Hegelian notion of absolute spirit in a way that acknowledges the historicity and plurality of human knowledge and experience.47 For—as the above quotation from Habermas reminds us—the Hegelian notion of objective spirit does not offer any reference point external to its own historically specific, social and cultural context of interpretation and evaluation. Unless he makes a move to establish such a reference point, ‘contextualism’ will prevail in Honneth’s theory. In consequence he will lack resources not only for engaging critically with rival views of the world but also for a normative perspective on new kinds of claims to misrecognition motivated by moral feelings and experiences. e) In the work of Taylor, Ferrara and Honneth, the ‘objectivist’ dimension is underdeveloped. Martin Seel proposes a formal theory of happiness in which it is made explicit, but which also endeavours to do justice to ‘contextualist’ insights.48 Despite his evident awareness of the importance of both ‘objectivist’ and ‘contextualist’ perspectives, however, Seel fails successfully to negotiate the tension between the two. To begin with, his empirically based ‘objectivism’ awakens suspicions of ethnocentricism. Furthermore, since it provides only the evaluative point of departure for a self-consciously ‘contextualist’ picture of human flourishing, it is soon eclipsed by the ‘contextualist’ perspective and does no work as a justificatory strategy. Thus, not only is the universalist assumption grounding Seel’s theory the wrong kind of ‘objectivism’, it enters into his theory at the wrong level.

47 As Theunissen reminds us, the concept of a philosophy of history is not incompatible with acknowledgement of the historicity of all knowledge and experience: see M. Theunissen, “Society and History: a Critique of Critical Theory,” in ed. P. Dews, Habermas; A Critical Reader, pp. 241–271. 48 M. Seel, Versuch über die Form des Glücks, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1995.

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Seel sets out to elaborate a formal theory of happiness. He emphasises the historicity of human knowledge and experience and the plurality of human desires, interests and needs.49 At the same time, however, he is clearly aware of the need for some kind of ‘objective’ measure for human flourishing: he recognises that the evaluative basis for social philosophy’s interpretation of the human situation should not be an arbitrary one. He takes this to mean that his theory should begin with a generalised understanding of the nature of human well-being that rests on anthropological hypotheses concerning the fundamental possibilities and difficulties of human existence.50 What he seeks here is an evaluative starting point that is as trivial as possible in the sense that it is, first, an assumption that everyone can accept and, second, as philosophically modest as possible.51 The assumption he sees as most suitable for his purposes is that, “anyone who is capable of taking an evaluative attitude towards their life will find it important that some of their wishes are fulfilled.”52 As we shall see, he presents this as an analytic truth that follows from acceptance of an empirically based observation. Seel’s ‘trivial’ evaluative assumption then provides an ‘objective’ starting point for his ‘contextualist’ interpretation of the conditions of happiness. For, in contrast to the non-arbitrary, universal status he ascribes to the theory’s evaluative point of departure, Seel expressly acknowledges the historicity of the proposals he develops on the basis of this initial evaluative assumption. He freely admits that his interpretation of the conditions of happiness is a decidedly modern one and describes his strategy in the inter-

49

Ibid., p. 51; see also M. Seel, “Ethik und Lebensform,” in M. Brumlik und H. Brunkhorst, Gemeinschaft und Gerechtigkeit, Frankfurt am Main, Fischer, 1993. 50 Seel, Versuch über die Form des Glücks, pp. 77–83; see also M. Seel, “WellBeing: on a Fundamental Concept of Practical Philosophy” in European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 5, no. 1, 1997, pp. 39–49. 51 Seel, Versuch über die Form des Glücks, p. 78. 52 Seel, “Well-Being,” p. 44; cf. Seel, Versuch über die Form des Glücks, pp. 78–79.


pretative part of his theory as a kind of ‘historical universalism’. By this he means a mode of reflection on fundamental possibilities for living one’s life that have been disclosed historically and that must be appropriated anew in every actual social context.53 Nonetheless, despite his awareness of the need to do justice to both ‘objectivism’ and ‘contexualism’, there are at least two problems with the normative foundations of Seel’s theory. One problem arises from the empirical basis for the ‘objectivity’ he attributes to his evaluative point of departure. A second problem is that the ‘objectivist’ argument plays a role in his theory only initially and is ultimately redundant as a justificatory strategy; in consequence, the ‘objectivist’ dimension seems to disappear from his theory, which now threatens to become purely ‘contextualist’. In grounding his theory of happiness in an empirically based ‘trivial’ assumption about human well-being, Seel faces the dilemma of all such anthropological approaches to the normative foundations of social philosophy. On the one hand, empirically based anthropological assumptions that are genuinely ‘trivial’ (for example, the assumption that all human beings need to eat in order to live) are unlikely to yield normative conclusions strong enough for the theory’s critical purposes. On the other hand, empirically based anthropological assumptions that are sufficiently substantive are unlikely to be genuinely ‘objective’; the theory is then open to the objection that it subscribes to an ahistorical, ethnocentric universalism that denies the diversity of human beings and of human experience. Seel gets caught on the second horn of this dilemma. We will recall that his ‘trivial’ assumption has two components, an empirical and an analytic one. The empirical component is

53

Seel, Versuch über die Form des Glücks, p. 82, p. 186.

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the observation that most people are capable of taking an evaluative attitude towards their life—or, at least, to their wishes. The analytic component is the observation that everyone who is capable of taking an evaluative attitude towards their endeavours or their wishes will find it important that at least some of their wishes are fulfilled. The component is analytic insofar as, “one cannot take an evaluative attitude towards one’s wishes while wanting none of these wishes to be fulfilled.”54 The individualist bias of Seel’s empirical observation is evident, however. It attributes to all human beings who are capable of happiness a view of the life they lead as, in some important sense, ‘their’ life: that is, as a life for which they must accept some responsibility or over which they can have some control. The universality of his observation can be disputed insofar as there are views of human flourishing according to which ‘life’ as manifested in a given human being is not something for which that human being has any responsibility or over which she can exert any kind of control (for example, because human beings are held to be supernaturally, or naturally, or culturally determined). The individualist bias is even more evident in Seel’s reference to fulfilment of ‘wishes’. Again, his assumption that fulfilment of at least some of one’s wishes is important for happiness is not ‘trivial’ insofar as there are views of the world—for instance deep ecological ones or certain kinds of religious ones—according to which individual human wishes are irrelevant to the achievement of human happiness or subordinate to other considerations. In short, as an empirically based reconstructive statement about the situation of human beings in general, Seel’s evaluative point of departure is open to the accusation of ethnocentrism. The problem, in my view, is that Seel pursues the wrong

54

Ibid., p. 79.


kind of ‘objectivist’ strategy. Empirically based reconstructions of the human situation are inevitably either too trivial for the purposes of social philosophy or they fail to do justice to human diversity. As my argument in the final section aims to make clear, social philosophy needs not an empirically based but a metaphysically based ‘objectivist’ strategy, which seeks to defend the non-arbitrary, universal status of its key normative assumptions by way of a normative theory of the progress of history. From the point of view of social philosophy, however, the main problem with Seel’s approach is not the content of the anthropological assumption he takes as his evaluative point of departure. Since social philosophy, too, is guided by a normative concern with individual well-being, it would hardly wish to contest this aspect of Seel’s theory. The real problem is that, as the theory stands, the ‘objectivist’ dimension does no work as a justificatory strategy. As we know, Seel starts his theory with an ‘objectivist’ argument. He follows this argument with a ‘contextualist’ interpretation of the conditions for happiness, selfconsciously acknowledging the ‘historical’ character of his interpretation. However, since the substance of his theory is presented as a ‘contextualist’ argument, the initial ‘objectivist’ element seems redundant. Certainly, it contributes nothing to the justification of the theory. Most importantly, it does not help to answer the question of why Seel’s interpretation of happiness is better (that is, discloses more normatively superior possibilities for living one’s life) than other interpretations. Although this crucial question cannot be answered without recourse to some kind of ‘objectivist’ arguments, Seel’s empirically based anthropological strategy is unsuitable. Not only is it, as we have seen, too contentious; in providing merely the starting point for his theory it is soon eclipsed by its interpretative elements. In short, Seel not only draws on the wrong kind of ‘objectivism’, it also enters his theory at the wrong level. In my

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view, he would be well advised to dispense with his ‘objectivist’ assumption about human well-being and to pursue a selfconsciously ‘contextualist’ strategy from the outset. This does not mean that his theory can do without any kind of ‘objectivist’ arguments, however. In order to engage in dialogue with rival normative conceptions and in order to practise normatively robust social critique, it must provide an ‘objectivist’ defence of its own key normative conceptions—but, as I argue in the final section, one that is metaphysically rather than empirically based. f) An empirically based ‘objectivism’ also plays a role in the work of Jürgen Habermas. It is particularly evident in the formal pragmatic underpinning of his theory of communicative action. Again, as in the case of the ‘objectivist’ point of departure for Seel’s theory of happiness, it awakens suspicions of ethnocentricism. The main purpose of Habermas’ theory of communicative action is to show how a conception of rationality with critical force can be extracted from everyday practices of communication. This conception of rationality not only provides a basis for contexttranscendent standards of validity (such as truth and justice), it also projects a normative picture of individual human flourishing in terms of a utopian vision of the rationalisation of the lifeworld.55 This is a utopian vision of a society in which first, there is permanent revision of traditional interpretations and practices, no element of which is exempt from revision; second, social integration is dependent on discursive procedures for establishing

55 There is a further important aspect to Habermas’ utopian vision: the idea that human flourishing is dependent on processes of rationalisation both in the system and in the lifeworld and that these processes must establish a relationship of balance and harmony with one another. See M. Cooke, Language and Reason: A Study of Habermas’ Pragmatics, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1994, esp. chapter 5.


and justifying norms and third, the identities of individual subjects are self-regulated through processes of intersubjective critical reflection and, to a high degree, detached from concrete cultural contexts. The normative conception of communicative rationality that inspires Habermas’ picture of a rationalised lifeworld is allegedly grounded in universal features of using language that have an immanent normative potential. Habermas maintains that these can be rationally reconstructed by way of a formal linguistic investigation into the pragmatic dimensions of everyday language-use.56 Formal pragmatic investigation is supposed to reveal certain normative presuppositions of participation in argumentation, understood as the ‘reflective’ form of everyday communicative practice. These form the basis for his normative conception of communicative rationality, and for the normative picture of a rationalised lifeworld suggested by this. According to Habermas, these idealising presuppositions are not specific to any particular historical, social or cultural context but are implicit in the communicative practices of all human societies.57 To this it may be objected that formal pragmatic investigations can at best explicate a set of unavoidable normative presuppositions that would be too weak for the purposes of his critical social theory. A further objection follows from the first: the critical power that Habermas attributes to his conception of communicative rationality is based on a substantive notion of moral universality that is not a formal pragmatic presupposition of

56

“Rational reconstruction” is a non-foundationalist justificatory strategy: see J. Habermas, “What is Universal Pragmatics?” in ed. M. Cooke, Habermas: Toward A Pragmatics of Communication, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1998. 57 J. Habermas, Justification and Application, trans. C. Cronin, MA, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 30–33.

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argumentation in general but rather has emerged historically within specific socio-cultural forms of life.58 The objection starts with the presuppositions of argumentation explicated by Habermas. These include the suppositions that participants must be guided by a common concern for truth, that the contributions of all participants carry equal weight, that only the force of the better argument may prevail and that no relevant argument may be excluded. The objection allows that the presuppositions mentioned may well be universal features of participation in argumentation; it contends, however, that they are insufficient as a normative basis for Habermas’ conception of communicative rationality and for the vision of a rationalised lifeworld conjured up by this. It argues that in order to equip his conception of communicative rationality with the resources necessary for social critique, Habermas requires the help of a number of additional normative ideas. He must presuppose the ‘objectivity’ of certain normative conceptions of knowledge and of human beings, in particular, the ideas that epistemic claims can be settled only through argument and are essentially fallible, that no topic is in principle immune to rational criticism and that no-one should in principle be excluded from argument on grounds of their gender, race, class or ideology. But these evidently are not unavoidable presuppositions of participation in argument in general but normative conceptions of knowledge and human beings that guide argumentative practices in social and cultural contexts in ‘post-traditional societies’ in which knowledge has been desacralised, in which authority has been secularised and in which the principle of universal moral respect has been internalised (as is the case for the socio-cultural forms of life characteristic of Western modernity).

58

See Cooke, Language and Reason, esp. pp. 29–38.


Objections of this kind have been raised most frequently in the context of Habermas’ discourse ethics with regard to his justification of the moral principle of universalisability.59 His usual response has been to dismiss such objections as resting on a misunderstanding—as a confusion of his idealising presuppositions of argumentation with moral norms.60 Clearing up this misunderstanding does not invalidate the point of the objections, however, for a gap still remains between the normative content of the universal presuppositions of participation in argumentation, on the one hand, and the substantive normative ideas on which his conception of communicative rationality draws, on the other. Habermas does admit on occasion that, on its own, formal pragmatics cannot provide the normative foundations required by his theory of communicative action. He acknowledges the need for an accompanying theory of modernity, perhaps even for a theory of moral learning processes.61 As my remarks in the following aim to make clear, however, what he in fact requires is a normative theory of modernity as a social learning process.62 Until he provides a theory of this kind, however, Habermas’ formal pragmatic grounding of his theory of communicative action remains unsatisfactory. Moreover, it awakens the suspicion that it achieves the universality it seeks only by disregarding the

59 See, for example, S. Benhabib, Situating the Self, New York, Routledge, 1992, esp. pp. 33–38. 60 See Habermas, Justification and Application, pp. 31–33; J. Habermas, Die Einbeziehung des Anderen, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1996, pp. 62–63. 61 Habermas, Die Einbeziehung des Anderen, p. 63. Habermas refers approvingly to Rehg’s point about the limitations of the theory of argumentation in W. Rehg, Insight and Solidarity, Berkeley, CA, California University Press, 1994, pp. 65–69. 62 This qualification is important as Habermas has, in a sense, already offered a theory of modernity: see his The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. F. Lawrence, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1997. This theory is not, however, a normative theory that accounts for why we should view the emergence of modern structures of consciousness and modern normative conceptions as the result of learning processes.

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non-democratic and non-egalitarian norms and the closed contexts of justification that traditionally have characterised the communicative practices of many societies and cultures—in other words, that it asserts ‘objectivism’ at the expense of ‘contextualism’. 3 Nonetheless, of the various contemporary attempts to reconcile ‘objectivism’ and ‘contextualism’, Habermas seems most aware of what is at stake. Moreover, with his remarks on the need for a theory of modernity to complement his theory of argumentation, he hints at a way of resolving the tension that I regard as promising. In this concluding section I take up the hint that Habermas offers. I use it to outline a justificatory strategy that would permit social philosophy to negotiate normative foundations in a way that does justice to the valid insights of both the ‘contextualist’ and the ‘objectivist’ perspectives.63 The helpful hint that I take from Habermas is that social philosophy needs a two-step justificatory strategy. As a first step, it needs a ‘contextualist’ argument in favour of the normative picture of human flourishing it proposes; as a second step, it needs an ‘objectivist’ argument for the key normative conceptions underlying the normative picture in question that presents these as universally applicable historical achievements. We can illustrate this by applying this two-step strategy to Habermas’ own case: his theory of argumentation would now be read as a ‘contextualist’ argument for a normative conception of communicative

63

I want to emphasise that I am endorsing only Habermas’ two-step strategy here. I reserve judgement as to the merits either of his particular ‘contextualist’ vision of human flourishing or of his ‘weak’ naturalist account of social learning processes.


rationality. Instead of presenting itself as an empirically based, rational reconstruction of universal presuppositions of participation in argument, it now becomes historically self-conscious, acknowledging that it is valid only for the inhabitants of a certain kind of interpretative horizon (for example, that of Western modernity). However, when read as a ‘contextualist’ argument, Habermas’ formal pragmatic theory of argumentation lacks the context-transcendent standards that are required for intercultural dialogue and for social critique in a robust sense. For this reason it must look to a normative theory of the progress of history (for example, a theory of modernity) in order to find an ‘objectivist’ argument that would supply the required context-transcendent vantage point. As argued in the foregoing, a ‘contextualist’ approach to the question of normative foundations is insufficient. It runs the risk of delivering over critique to the standards of any given epoch and seems especially inadequate in an increasingly globalised world. At the same time, as our discussion of the ‘objectivist’ aspects of Seel’s theory of happiness and Habermas’ formal pragmatics made clear, an empirically based universalist approach runs the risk of ethnocentricity, that is, of disregarding the diversity of human knowledge and experience and failing equally to respect the particular views of the world and particular forms of life of all human beings. A two-step justificatory strategy offers a way out of this dilemma. Its advantages are independent of the specific ‘contextualist’ and ‘objectivist’ arguments offered by any particular theorist. As we have seen, a range of ‘contextualist’ arguments is available. Instead of Habermas’ formal pragmatic argument, one could draw, for example, on Foucault’s ethics of self-management, Ferrara’s model of reflective authenticity, Honneth’s moral-psychological categories or Taylor ’s method of hermeneutic retrieval and articulation. The question of which strategy is most convincing—and to what extent the

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various strategies compete with, or complement and enhance each other—is a matter for ongoing debate among the inhabitants of the social and cultural context in question (in this case, the interpretative horizon of Western modernity). The important point for our present purposes is that any ‘contextualist’ argument is insufficient unless accompanied by an ‘objectivist’ one. This second step is necessary if social philosophy is to practise normatively robust social critique and to engage critically with rival normative conceptions of knowledge, human beings and subjectivity. What is required is an ‘objectivist’ argument that can defend the key normative conceptions underlying the normative picture of human flourishing in question as universally applicable historical achievements. This amounts to a normative theory of social learning processes. Such a theory would, of course, have to be worked out in a way that is congruent with the normative horizon of Western modernity by avoiding the traps of ahistoricism, foundationalism and ethnocentricism. What would a normative theory of social learning processes look like? In my view it would have to comprise at least the following four components: To begin with, the theory would have to provide a convincing phenomenological account of learning. That is, it must convincingly describe, from the first-person perspective of the learner, what it means to have learnt something. The required phenomenological account cannot be confined to everyday skills such as tying one’s shoelaces, riding a bicycle, or reading and writing, although it must also embrace such skills. It must, in addition, offer a convincing description of theoretical learning in the natural sciences and in the humanities, of moral learning, of intercultural learning, of aesthetic learning—possibly even of religious learning. The development of an adequate phenomenology of learning would call for a high degree of expert knowledge as well as for highly differentiated hermeneutic skills. Nonetheless, it is only


one of the components necessary for the kind of theory of social learning we are looking for. A further component would be empirically guided theoretical reflection on the kinds of cognitive and practical capacities that are a precondition of learning in the various domains, and on whether they can be traced back to basic anthropological principles. The lively debates on the preconditions of first-language learning serve to remind us of the complexity of the issues here. A third component would be an investigation of the relationship between individual and collective learning processes. This requires, in turn, exploration of more general questions concerning the interconnections between individual and collective identityformation. But even this is not enough. A fourth component consists in the task of clarifying philosophically the sense in which we may speak of ‘learning’. This component is the crux of any theory of social learning processes. What does it mean for human beings to learn that the earth revolves around the sun? Or what does it mean for human beings to learn that waste-disposal is not just a technical but also a moral problem? Or what does it mean for human beings to learn that they are autonomous beings who should take responsibility for their own actions? Or to learn that conflicts can sometimes be resolved by reasoned discussion instead of violence? Or that children who cannot yet speak have desires and emotional needs that deserve attention? In each case the general question implicit in the specific one is why we should speak of ‘learning’ at all: why do we imply that the change in perspective constitutes an improvement rather than simply an alteration in point of view. This is the crucial question raised by a theory of social learning processes and it poses a formidable challenge for social philosophy. For if it cannot clarify the sense in which its fundamental

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normative conceptions of knowledge, human beings and subjectivity represent an improvement over older or rival ones, it loses the nonarbitrary, universal moment required for social critique in the robust sense and ‘contextualism’ triumphs over ‘objectivism’. Of the social philosophers discussed in the foregoing, only Habermas seems—on occasion—to acknowledge this. Habermas has, of course, long been concerned with questions of social learning and particularly with learning in the moral domain.64 More recently, this concern has resurfaced in connection with his renewed interest in metatheoretical issues such as truth and normative rightness.65 One of the central motivations behind his continued insistence on the disjunction between truth and justification, for example, is a perception that such a disjunction is necessary for an account of social learning.66 Most interesting for our present purposes, however, is his incipient attempt to answer the question of why we should regard certain shifts in perspective or changes in practices as learning. Habermas’s answer draws on a ‘weak’ naturalist argument. One of the central questions that Habermas addresses in his recent metatheoretical writings is how we can uphold a conception of ‘objectivity’ notwithstanding the multiplicity and contingency of world-generating grammars. On his view, the ‘linguistic turn’ has resulted in a ‘deflationary’ interpretation of what is meant by transcendental conditions: the unavoidable

64

See for example, J. Habermas, “Historical Materialism and the Development of Normative Structures,” in his Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. T. McCarthy, London, Heinemann, 1979, pp. 94–129. See also the many references to learning in the various domains in ed. Cooke, Habermas: Toward A Pragmatics of Communication. 65 See his essays in J. Habermas, Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1999. 66 See, for example, J. Habermas, “Richard Rorty’s Pragmatic Turn,” in ed. Cooke, Habermas: Toward A Pragmatics of Communication, esp. pp. 373–377.


conditions that have to be fulfilled in order to make possible certain basic practices are no longer seen as timeless conditions removed from human practices but instead as deep-seated structures of consciousness that have developed historically within our world. Whereas for Habermas, there is no possibility of retreating behind the linguistic turn to a stronger understanding of ‘transcendental’, he sees clearly that it poses the problem of ‘objectivity’: the possibility cannot be ruled out that the postulated necessary conditions of knowledge result in an anthropocentrically contingent, selective or distorted view of things.67 Habermas’ ‘weak’ naturalist argument responds to this problem by showing how the ‘objectivity’ of the (now historicised) transcendental conditions of knowledge can be defended even after the linguistic turn. Although Habermas is principally concerned with the ‘objectivity’ of transcendental structures, his argument can be made relevant to our present concerns. Since, on his ‘deflationary’ account, transcendental structures are conceived of as a kind of practical knowledge, there seems to be no reason why we should not extend his argument to the question of the ‘objectivity’ of the deep-seated normative conceptions of knowledge, human beings and subjectivity that emerge historically as a result of human practices and that fundamentally shape the self-understandings and proposals of the inhabitants of a given historical context. As indicated, Habermas’ response to the problem of the ‘objectivity’ of transcendental structures draws on a ‘weak’ naturalist argument. The argument is naturalist insofar as it relies on the basic assumption, “that the organic equipment and cultural way of life of homo sapiens have a ‘natural’ origin and are accessible

67

Habermas, Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung, esp. pp. 27ff.

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in principle to explanation by evolutionary theory.”68 Its naturalism is ‘weak’ insofar as it is nonreductionist. It does not replace conceptual analysis with natural scientific explanation and reduce the communicative practices of the lifeworld to, for example, neurologically or biogenetically explicable operations of the human brain.69 Habermas claims that his ‘weak’ naturalism makes just one fundamental metatheoretical assumption. It assumes that “‘our’ learning processes—those possible within the framework of socio-cultural forms of life—in a certain way merely continue antecedent ‘evolutionary learning processes’ that have in turn given rise to the structures of our forms of life.”70 This seems to be the basis for Habermas’ defence of the non-contingency of social learning processes. Since the transcendental structures of the forms of life that enable ‘our’ learning processes emerge out of processes of natural evolution conceived of as analogous to learning processes, these transcendental structures acquire a cognitive content. The same is true of any of the general basic features of socio-cultural forms of life. Their origins in processes of natural evolution—to which non-contingency is attributed—means that they too may claim non-contingency.71 Presumably, this is supposed to provide a basis for speaking of social learning processes as opposed to accidental switches in perspective. It is also supposed to make sense of the ideas of universality and necessity that are part of the concept of objective knowledge.72 In other words, it is supposed to allow us to retain a meaningful concept of ‘objectivity’.

68 69 70 71 72

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

p. 38. p. 38. p. 37. pp. 39–40. pp. 27–40.


For our present purposes, what I find most significant about this argument is that it relies on a metaphysical assumption. More precisely, it can avoid a vicious circularity only by making a metaphysical assumption. This assumption is that the history of the species, which embraces both natural evolution and the history of socio-cultural forms of life, is potentially a process of cognition—and thus not purely contingent. Habermas’ argument appears to have the following logic. Natural evolutionary processes are ‘coping’ processes—processes of solving problems and dealing with disappointed expectations—that lead to ever more complex levels of development. Whereas these processes may in fact be purely contingent, we impute to them a cognitive context. This supposition is necessary if we are to be able to conceive of socio-cultural processes as learning processes. In other words, the attribution of a cognitive content to the practices that make possible ‘our’ socio-cultural forms of life requires us to impute a cognitive content to natural evolutionary processes. However, as is evident from the above reconstruction, Habermas’ argument does not explain why we are entitled to speak of ‘learning’ in either case. Rather, it relies on the metaphysical assumption that human beings unavoidably conceive of the progress of history as the possibility of learning—as a potential process of acquiring knowledge—and not as a cognitively irrelevant, purely contingent shift from one perspective to another. This ‘metaphysical’ assumption underlies Habermas’ ‘metatheoretical’ assumption of the continuity between socio-cultural and evolutionary learning processes as a first principle that cannot be disproved. The metaphysical dimension to Habermas’ argument is, of course, significant in light of his repeated rejection of metaphysics and insistence on the ‘postmetaphysical’ character of his critical

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theory.73 But it is also important from the more general point of view of the ‘objectivist’ step that is required to supplement any ‘contextualist’ strategy. It is important insofar as it suggests that, in the end, social philosophy cannot avoid relying on metaphysical assumptions if it is to maintain a context-transcendent concept of ‘objectivity’; furthermore, that the ‘objectivity’ required for the normative foundations of social philosophy should be metaphysically rather than empirically based. In conclusion I want to make three points. The first is that social philosophy has no prior metaphysical commitment to any kind of naturalism—‘weak’ or otherwise. Idealist commitments—for example rationalist or theist ones—cannot be dismissed out of hand and should be taken at least as seriously as Habermas’ ‘weak’ naturalist assumption. The second point is that social philosophy has no reason to fear reliance on metaphysical assumptions. It is not the fact that social philosophers cannot avoid making metaphysical commitments that is problematic but the tendency to deny the effects of history and context and the importance of human free will. It is not metaphysics that social philosophy has to guard against but the views that access to perfect knowledge is available, that perfect justice is achievable and that the progress of history towards perfect knowledge and perfect justice is guaranteed.74 My final point is that social philosophy needs to make explicit its metaphysical commitments. This is necessary not only for the purposes of internal debate as to which kinds of metaphysical assumptions are most convincing, it is also necessary for the purposes of intercultural dialogue and the possibility of learning that such dialogue implies.

73

This insistence can be found in all Habermas’ writings from the 1980s onwards. See, for example, J. Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking, trans. W. M. Hohengarten, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1992. 74 See M. Cooke, “Critical Theory and Religion,” in eds. D. Z. Phillips and T. Tessin, Philosophy of Religion 2000, London, Macmillan, 2000.

Dmitri Ginev

The Pluralistic Public Sphere from an Ontological Point of View*

1. On Heidegger’s Concept of the Public Sphere According to a claim widespread in the literature on the public sphere (as a phenomenon of modernity), it was the mass consumption of printed goods in the eighteenth century that turned persons into a public.1 To be sure, the public sphere is an artefact of modernity’s social dynamics. This is why its ‘structural transformations’ can be studied from a variety of cultural-historical perspectives: the co-births of the nations (and nationalism) and the bourgeois public sphere; the significance of the bourgeois family to the public authority of the middle class; the dependence of the rise of the public sphere upon the sexual differentiation of the public and private; the roots of democratic politics in the bourgeois public sphere’s communicative culture; the pluralisation of the public sphere in communicative spaces of particular cultural life-forms; the birth and the end of modern ideologies in the historical transformations of the public sphere; the growing instrumentalisation of the public debates and the proliferation of new forms of secularisation; the role of the public sphere for the emancipation of civil society from public authority; the revolutions of mass communication and the changing mechanisms of political control and manipulation, and so on. * This article was first published in Critical Horizons, vol. 4, no. 1, 2003. 1 See in particular, Michael Warner, The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1990.

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The notion of the public sphere keeps an essential resemblance to the notion of the political. In both cases, the historical reconstructions of the ‘structural transformations’ are not only compatible with, but rather require an approach in terms of ontological hermeneutics of human existence. Chantal Mouffe demonstrates convincingly that the political as expression of the constitutive role of antagonism in social life “cannot be restricted to a certain type of institution, or envisaged as constituting a specific sphere or level of society. It must be conceived as a dimension that is inherent to every human society and that determines our very ontological condition.”2 By the same token, having a sphere of public discourses in which the individual both loses herself and creates her individuality is an existential-ontological condition of many empirical (cultural-historical) phenomena. By saying this, I am trying to provide a rationale for a ‘model of the public sphere’ in terms of hermeneutic ontology. The construction of such a model is a theme of Heidegger’s Being and Time. I will start out my discussion within the framework of the Heideggerian model. At a certain point, however, I am going to introduce notions that require both an extension of that framework and a ‘weakening’ of the ontico-ontological-difference on which the Heideggerian model is based. (By this weakening I mean: [a] the growing translatability of existential phenomena initially cast in hermeneutico-ontological terms into languages of the social sciences, and [b] the reformulation of empirical ideas about the public sphere in the framework of hermeneutic phenomenology.) The dialogue between hermeneutic ontology and social theory will occupy a central place in what follows. More specifically, the main aim of this paper is to suggest some ideas to bridge the gap between the ontological focus on the hermeneutic forestructure of being-in-the-public-sphere and the focus of social

2

Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political, London, Verso, 1993, p. 3.

The Pluralistic Public Sphere from an Ontological Point of View • 79

theory on the nexus between constructing identity and narrative. Let me sketch out briefly the approach suggested in Heidegger’s aforementioned work. The publicness or public sphere (Öffentlichkeit) is analysed in Being and Time in connection with the existential analytic of ‘falling of Dasein’. It is defined as being-lost in the ‘they’ (das Man). The public sphere of the everyday mode of being-in-the-world is a basic characteristic of the inauthentic existence. Inauthenticity is the absorption in being-with-one-another which characterises the primordial status of each existential mode. In other words, the inauthentic lost in the ‘they’ (or, the anonymous existence in a public sphere) is not a ‘degenerative status’ of a ‘purer’ mode of being-in-the-world. The inauthenticity of being-with in a public sphere is the indication that Dasein has already fallen into the world. (Heidegger stresses that inauthenticity does not mean an absurd existential mode of Being-no-longer-in-the-world. It is rather the everydayness with ‘others’ in the ‘they’.) The primordial (average-everyday) existence is not to be disentangled from fallenness into the world. The phenomenon of falling ‘documents’ (Heidegger’s expression) the existentiality of primordial sociality. The public sphere is the site where the ownmost existential possibilities (or, the ‘potentiality-forbeing’ in ontological terminology) are hidden from Dasein. (On Heidegger’s account, the authentic self-understanding of resolute Dasein is defined with regards to its being-in-the-world for the sake of its death as Dasein’s own most possibility. As it will become clear, the criterion for authenticity used in this paper differs from this formulation.) Dasein lives away from itself and ‘drifts along towards an alienation’. The public sphere is an everyday anonymous sociality in which the ‘turbulence of falling’ (and not the emancipated personal choice) picks out inauthentic existential possibilities. This is why Dasein’s everyday existence in

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the public sphere is dominated (a domination in the form of severe ‘dictatorship’) by the ‘they’. In the public sphere, we “take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they take pleasure; we read, see, and judge about literature and art as they see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the ‘great mass’ as they shrink back; we find ‘shocking’ what they find shocking. The ‘they’, which is nothing definite, and which all are, though not as the sum, prescribes the kind of being of everydayness.”3 Central for Heidegger’s account is the conclusion that the public sphere is the place of an inconspicuous domination by not definite ‘others’ over the everyday being-one’s-self. Before entering further into Heidegger’s existential-ontological analysis of the public sphere, let me draw the following parallel: The existential-ontological claim that, in its everyday mode of existence Dasein has fallen into the world, corresponds with the claim, which can be formulated in terms of social theory, that the established norms and models of intersubjectivity in the public sphere always have priority over the process of reaching personal identity. The latter is a value-neutral (that is, theoretical) claim that is accepted in both the communitarian and liberal versions of social theory. This is why the Heideggerian approach to the public sphere is in agreement with the basic assumptions of both parties. Furthermore, this approach is independent of the opposition between individualistic and collectivist theories in the social sciences. Even the theories, which imply that action is ‘motivated from within’, do not ignore the fact that the public sphere constrains the social order generated by individual interactions. The commitment to the methodological individualism and the rejection of extra-individual structures presupposes a milieu of intersubjective negotiations. Thus, in denying the reifi3 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarie and Edward Robinson, New York, Harper & Row, 1962, p. 164.


cation of cultural patterns the champions of individualistic theories insist on the constitutive role of the public sphere as a milieu of negotiations creating social order. In addition, a full-fledged individualistic theory in the social sciences has to take into consideration the internalisation of ‘being-with-structures’ of the public sphere (transmitted by rituals and traditions) in the process of individuals’ socialisation. A socialised individual is a human being personalised in the public sphere. The non-essentialist programs of methodological individualism must do justice to this fact. By implication, a non-essentialist social theory must avoid any hypostatisation of structures, codes, or patterns determining the individual’s action and interaction. Yet, it can only avoid essentialism by developing an existentialist picture of the public sphere. In resuming the discussion of Heidegger’s approach to the public sphere, I will focus on how the (inauthentic) being-in-they’s-publicness discloses to Dasein a being towards the world-as-presentat-hand, towards the world of primary sociality, and towards the ‘internal world’ of itself. The public sphere discloses the prethematic world as a physical reality of ‘entities, which may have been reached’, the social world as a manifold of particular spacetime-interactions with the ‘others’ of the everyday concerns dealing within the ‘totality of equipment’, and the internal world as the reality of subjective experience. It is the public sphere that ‘makes possible’ through this triple disclosedness the differentiation of objective (though still not objectified by cognitive procedures and epistemological norms) world, social world of immediate contextual and situational interactions, and subjective world of internalised traditions and rituals. On Heidegger’s account, the moments of the triple disclosedness are idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity. They are constitutive for having a public sphere. Idle talk is the average public

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discourse in which the very averageness (and inauthenticity) expresses itself. In this regard, idle talk is the discourse that expresses the communication that prevents the deviations from ‘they’s’ point of view. On another formulation, idle talk is the discoursing of ‘they’s’ average understanding which has lost (or, has never achieved) its primary relationship-of-being. By alienating from the communication that would let the entities ‘be appropriated in a primordial manner’, the ‘they’s’ discourse takes on an authoritative character. Moreover, the ‘groundlessness of idle talk’ (due to its alienation from the primary relationship-of-being towards the entities) creates the medium of all kinds of authoritative manipulation by means of ‘they’s’ mass-communication. Heidegger makes the following observation: The groundlessness of idle talk is no obstacle to its becoming public; instead it encourages this. Idle talk is the possibility of understanding everything without previously making the thing one’s own. If this were done, idle talk would founder; and it already guards against such a danger. Idle talk is something which anyone can rake up; it not only releases one from the task of genuinely understanding, but develops an undifferentiated kind of intelligibility, for which nothing is closed off any longer.4

Idle talk is a discourse (and communication) with a ‘hidden normativeness’ by means of which the ‘they’ prescribes the ‘permissible existential possibilities’ in the everyday being-inthe-world. Curiosity is the ongoing seeking for novelties that does not try to come into a being towards what is seen, but just “seeks novelty only in order to leap from it anew to another novelty.”5 This is why curiosity is everywhere and nowhere in the public sphere. Curiosity determines a ‘homogeneous topology’ of the public

4 5

Ibid., p. 213. Ibid., p. 216.


sphere—because of its ‘never dwelling anywhere’; curiosity is never privileging a certain topic (as standing in need for a comprehension that differs from the average understanding) in the public discourse as idle talk. Finally, in the public being-withone-another it is impossible to decide what is ‘disclosed in a genuine understanding’. By implication, there is a constant ambiguity characterising inauthentic existence in the ‘they’s’ public sphere. To those who are involved in ‘they’s’ public communication, everything looks as if it were genuinely understood, though ‘at bottom it is not’. Ambiguity provokes different ways of understanding what is seen. Since the public sphere does not have resources to decide what is a genuine understanding, ambiguity creates a quasi-pluralism of ways of seeing the world (as physical reality), the ‘others’, and the self. The relativism of these ways increases the potentiality for alienation and manipulation. Due to idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity, one’s understanding in the ‘they’s’ publicness is “constantly going wrong in its projects, as regards the genuine possibilities of being.”6 2. Narratives of Authenticity and Inauthenticity In my further discussion of the existential-ontological conception of the public sphere I should like to bring into play a ‘nonHeideggerian component’. I will make use of the notion of narrative that does not belong to the conceptual repertoire of Being and Time. Nevertheless, it is of prime importance for authors like Wilhelm Schapp, Paul Ricoeur and David Carr who are working in the tradition of hermeneutic phenomenology. In what follows, narratives will be regarded as (a) elementary forms of discourse’s expression; (b) primary means of communication; and (c) structural units of the public sphere. Yet, since the notions of discourse, communication, and public sphere are addressed 6

Ibid., p. 218.

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in the present discussion in an existential-ontological manner, narratives are not to be reduced to forms of linguistic expression or to particular cognitive (pre-explanatory) procedures. On the account put forward by hermeneutic phenomenology, there are ‘ontological narratives’ which express the hermeneutic fore-structures of the modes of being-in-the-world. The everyday-concernful dealing within-the-world is a process of actualisation of projects, which are ‘existentially more primordial’ than the agents who are committed to them. The agents become emancipated as agents only within the projects. Thus, the actualisation of projects within-the-world goes ontologically before the emancipation of the epistemic subject-object cut as a condition of the instrumental rationality of action. What are projected in the modes of being-in-the-world are existential possibilities. The human existence in the world is always already projected. As a projection, the everyday dealing within-the-world is always pressed into such possibilities. This is why the socialisation and personalisation is already projected on existential possibilities ‘available in the public sphere’. A hermeneutic fore-structure is the ongoing correlation of neverending projection of the existential being upon possibilities and actualisation of certain possibilities. On another formulation, a hermeneutic fore-structure is the ontological unity of a horizon of being-in-the-world, the projection of this horizon, and the range of possibilities informed by this projection. An ‘ontological narrative’ expresses both the processual character and the ontological unity of a hermeneutic fore-structure. (I leave aside the temporalising function of narrative. By uniting horizon, projection, and existential possibilities, an ontological narrative expresses a scheme of tempolalisation within-the-world. The discussion of this topic, however, is far beyond the scope of this paper.)


Thus epitomised, the account of the relationship between hermeneutic fore-structure and narrative is in line with David Carr’s phenomenological approach. This approach opposes the views of authors like Louis Mink and Hayden White. For them, narrativity is a term that indicates the cognitive specificity and autonomy of the research process in the historical sciences. According to Mink, for instance, the historian “must set forth in sequence a narrative which . . . he understands or tries to understand as a whole.”7 By placing emphasis upon the ways in which ethnic minorities (Basques, Corsicans, Quebecois, Kurds) construct their identities through subscribing to a story of their community, Carr managed to bridge the problematics of narrative (re)construction of cultural identities with the ontological reading of the constellation of narrativity-temporality-historicality. On his view, the construction of identity is a process within a tradition that continuously reconstructs and deconstructs itself. A significant moment in Carr’s conception is that the ‘narrator’ is detached from the individual, and placed at the level of culturally distinctive communities.8 The process of story telling is ascribed to the communal experience. Like Ricoeur, Carr shifts the focus of the narrativist approach from the epistemological and rhetorical techniques to the (ontological) constitution of cultural life-forms. Stories are lived before being told. The unity of living a story and telling a story (of a life-form’s tradition) informs an important feature of the hermeneutic fore-structure of community’s being-in-a-cultural-life-world. All ‘structures’ that characterise the specificity and autonomy of a cultural life-form are forestructured by narratives lived by a community (as a ‘collective Dasein’ of this life-form).

7

Louis Mink, “The Autonomy of Historical Understanding,” ed. William Dray, Philosophical Analysis and History, Harper & Row, New York, 1966, p. 185. 8 See David Carr, Time, Narrative, and History, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, pp. 122–145.

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Against the background of the foregoing formulations, one can specify further the distinction between inauthentic and authentic existential possibilities. The former are the possibilities of acting prescribed by the ‘they’ in each particular situation. It is the ‘they’ that is pressing situationally into inauthentic possibilities. ‘They’s’ narratives provide coherence among the possibilities actualised in different situations. The public sphere is the site where ‘they’s’ narratives are generated.9 These narratives have to be effective in giving meaning not only to the personal experience, but also to the ‘communal experience’ of all collective participants in public communication. From a historical point of view, the emancipation of a sphere where questions of a common concern can be negotiated is at the same time the emancipation of public narratives, by means of which crises of different sorts can be resolved. The ‘grammar of public narratives’ (circulating in public discourse) is completely detached from the ‘discursive syntax’ of the local and contingent narratives belonging to private life.10 The authentic existential possibilities are related to a self-understanding that enables one to avoid idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity of ‘they’s’ public sphere. The authentic possibilities are also situational and their unifying in a coherent totality requires a narrative reconstruction as well. The self-understanding that reconstructs a coherent totality of authentic existential possibilities shapes a narrative of an authentic existential mode. The

9

I leave aside the highly sophisticated problematics of ‘they’s’ rhetorical tools and strategies in shaping the dominant narratives in the public sphere. Producing ‘they’s’ narratives goes hand in hand with different kinds of emplotment. The ‘plots’ in the public sphere is a topic that requires special attention. 10 On the studies in the grammar of narratives with respect to their psychological and social functions in the areas of psychoanalysis, social psychology, cultural anthropology, ethnomethodology, and micro-history, see Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps, “Narrating the Self,” Annual Review of Anthropology, no. 25, 1996.


public sphere is not only the site of the inauthentic existence, but also the medium where the transition from inauthentic to authentic being-in-the-world takes place. Authenticity as a mode of being-in-the-world through actualisation of authentic possibilities can come into being only in an established public sphere. Moreover, reaching authenticity also demands narrative resources. These are strategies of narrative self-understanding, which have to prevent the imposition of ‘they’s’ narratives in the course of constructing personal or collective identity. The transformation of not-being-its-self into an authentic existence proceeds always in the public sphere characterised by ‘they’s’ authoritative centre. A mode of authentic existence is that one which in its own narrative reconstruction contributes to the dissolution of that centre. The ‘they’s’ dictatorship (as authoritative discourse, groundless communication, and dominating inauthenticity of the public sphere) manifests itself in narratives in which the interconnection of idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity resides. The most trivial illustration of such narratives is provided by the story-tellings that take on the form of ‘gossiping’. Yet, the narrativity of ‘they’s’ publicness includes a wide range of manipulative-political constructions. Their principal feature is to impose ‘inauthentic identity’ on the individual and collective participants in the public sphere. Notoriously, in the social sciences the notion of narrative is related to the process of constructing identity. The conceptual nexus ‘narrative-identity’ takes a prominent place in disciplines like cultural anthropology, social psychology, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, social theory, micro-history, gender studies, studies on multiculturalism, and studies on nationalism. An aspect, which from different perspectives is at stake in these studies, is the ‘potential infinity’, that is, the fact that the ongoing construction of identity can never be totally complete. The narrative construction of identity in the ‘they’s’ public sphere is a process of working out possibilities that are prescribed by ‘they’s’ anonymous voice. On a succinct observation suggested by Madan Sarup,

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“the stories we tell are often reshaped in/for the public sphere. And then, when these narratives are in the public sphere, they shape us. Narratives are, of course, sites of cultural contest, and when they become public, we should ask: who is orchestrating them? This leads us to the problems of representation and power.”11 Through this processual shaping/reshaping us, ‘they’s’ public narratives become powerful myths. The ‘official’ nationalist narratives are a case in point. In this case, the official authorities use in a most effective manner the manipulative capacity of the ‘they’. Notoriously, Habermas puts forward the claim that civil societies (each of them considered as a private sphere emancipated from a public authority) in modern nation-states came into existence as the corollary of a ‘depersonalised state authority’. In his celebrated The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, the origin of ideology is viewed in the early modern identification of ‘property owner’ with ‘human being as such’.12 Under post-ideological conditions, there is a growing tendency of replacing the ideologies of ‘human being as such’ with nationalist propaganda. In the former (the early modern) case, depersonalised state authority (as a political body of the ‘they’) is still rationalised in a certain version of the ‘philosophical project of modernity’ (or, the project of philosophical self-foundation of modernity). In the post-ideological case, the nationalist advocacy of depersonalised state authority no longer needs philosophical rationalisation. In contrast to the ‘classical’ ideologico-political (meta)narratives, nationalist myths and stories do not need argumentation and

11

Madan Sarup, Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1996, p. 18. 12 See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Cambridge Mass. and London, Eng., MIT Press, 1989, p. 88.


legitimation. In their discursive form, these myths and stories are akin to the everyday stories of gossiping. After the ‘end of ideology’ (and the great ideological narratives), the nationalist narratives fill the axiological-normative vacancy in the public sphere once filled by global political doctrines. Each new reshaping in the public sphere of an official nationalist narrative is a reinvention of a national community once imagined in an early modern civil society. It is a reinvention that has to keep alive the myth of the sacredness of a nationhood (and of belonging to it). In addition, such a reshaping has to introduce modifications in narrating (the historical destiny of) the nation-state that are relevant to the historical situation.13 More generally, a standard means for exercising the influence of public discourse upon private life is by imposing ‘official narratives’ about the collective historical destiny. The story of the national heroes, the story of the sacrificial role of the nation’s ‘intelligentsia’, the story of the great nation’s sufferings, the story

13

In speaking of imagined communities, I have in mind Benedict Anderson’s classical work on the origin and spread of nationalism. In societies of increasing anomie and growing destruction of face-to-face communities and cultural life-worlds, there is a dramatic need for imagined communities where the ‘sentiments of locality’ can be restored. States elites’ nationalist narratives compensate the loss of all pre-modern historical-cultural substances destroyed by the spread of industrialisation. When these narratives “portray the nation as based on common ancestry, as having common cultural attributes and values, as constituting a natural and unique subspecies of humanity, they are offering a particularly powerful vision of a kinship community, and thus are seeking to deploy the emotional power of family in the service of the state.” David Brown, “Why is the Nation-State so Vulnerable to Ethnic Nationalism?” Nations and Nationalism, no. 4. 1998, p. 7. A principal feature of national consciousness in the Enlightenment was the growing convergence of thinking for oneself and thinking as a public use of reason. (Fichte’s efforts to entangle the early modern nationalist discourse in his practical philosophy, guided by the dictum that only by completely identifying with the whole as the meta-individual subject of the cultural-historical development can an individual human being really become a person, is the most typical case in point.)

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of the long and painful way to national emancipation are a few examples of an impressive list of official narratives that are embodied in the textbooks of national history, mass-media propaganda, discursive strategies of the educational institutions, national literature and fine arts. Even institutionalised social practices, which at first glance seem to be apolitical, are often laden with nationalist narratives. Thus, Michael Shapiro notes that the [L]egitimacy of the contemporary nation-state cartography is supported in part by a series of nation-building narrative performances. While it remains unclear if the age of nationalism is near an end, one of its primary legacies remains well entrenched. The story of a unified national culture, designed to legitimate the ethnic and spatial boundary policing of the modern state, retains its force.14

Traditionally, the official nationalist narratives contain ‘fragments’ that tell us why the ‘others’ (those who do not belong to the imagined community of the nation but are for historical reasons citizens of the nation-state) have to be either excluded (from participating in the public sphere) or assimilated. The case of assimilation is typically illustrated by nation-states’ policies towards indigenous people, while the former case was (and somewhere still is) widespread in nation-states with totalitarian or authoritative regimes of institutionalised political power. Yet the public sphere of a nation-state characterised by a liberal-democratic regime of power also tolerates in various situations (even when a multicultural policy is officially accepted by the state elites) the propagation of nationalist narratives. The oxymoron ‘multicultural nationalism’ indicates the privileged status of these narratives in the public sphere. Following this line of reasoning, one may observe that in many cases the imposition of official nationalist narratives does not

14 Michael Shapiro, “Triumphalist Geographies,” eds. Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash, Spaces of Culture, London, Sage, 1999, p. 169.


violate the formal principles of representative democracy. The spread of the ‘myths of unity’ are carried out by means of cultural and educational policy, and not by repressive political mechanisms. However, the reverse side of imposing nationalist narratives on multiethnic societies consists in the fact that ethnic/religious minorities internalise a picture of their own inferiority, since they are compelled to interpret themselves as second-order members of the nation-state. In other words, by propagating (in a nonviolent manner) ‘unifying cultural patterns’ of common historical identity (embodied in new versions of a ‘great nationalist narrative’), nation-state’s authorities promote a public sphere that meets most of the formal requirements for having a political democracy, but manipulate the ways of constructing minorities’ cultural identities as autonomous life-forms (or, communities constituting autonomous cultural life-worlds). This case is exemplified by countries as diverse as some of the ‘new democracies’ in Eastern Europe and some of the post-colonial democracies in South-Eastern Asia. Frank Kermode makes it clear that fictional narratives degenerate into myths whenever one ascribes their narrative properties to the real, “whenever they are not consciously held to be fictive.”15 To replace the real with the fictive is the prime task of ‘they’s’ official narratives. The latter reproduce in semi-academic and semi-bureaucratic languages myths of unity (for instance, the myth of kinship identity of pre-modern communities, or the myth that the nation-state can promote human progress) for the control of societies characterised by diversity of cultural lifeforms. In this regard, they are sources of legitimacy employed by nation-state elites. David Brown convincingly argues that “after the Second World War, these elites began to portray themselves

15 Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending, New York, Oxford University, Press, 1968, p. 39.

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as the agents of equitable development, so that the image of the nation was reconstructed as the social justice community.”16 In addition, the post-war state elites were successful in imagining narratives about the shift of the role of the state from the guarantor of order and unity to the engineer of progress and development. This is a typical case of a reconstruction of established narratives under new historical circumstances. What is achieved by it is the increase of the mobililising power of the invented nationhood. To reiterate, the spread of official nationalist narratives illustrates the post-ideological politicisation of the authoritative centre of ‘they’s’ public sphere. I agree with William Connolly that the task of social theory is to suggest ways of pluralising that centre. In so doing, however, one is not obliged to commit to the principle of dialogic neutrality. In attacking that principle, Connolly formulates the task to forge an “ethos of political engagement between multiple orientations, in which many participants come to terms affirmatively with the contestability of the moral faiths and identities they prize the most and in which many then embody the appreciation in the way they articulate, debate and decide fundamental issues of public life.”17

16

Brown, “Why is the Nation-State so Vulnerable to Ethnic Nationalism?”

p. 2. 17

William Connolly, “Rethinking the Ethos of Pluralisation,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, no. 24, 1998, p. 94. With respect to the problematics of the multicultural public sphere, the principle of dialogic neutrality is under attack for several reasons. Those who advocate this principle, not only for pragmatic but also for theoretical reasons, face serious troubles in working out a coherent social ontology and conceptual models of cultural diversity. In fact, the only way to achieve such a theoretical coherence requires one to admit that the public sphere of a multicultural society is (what Nancy Fraser calls) “a space of zero degree culture,” that is, a space “so utterly bereft of any specific ethos as to accommodate with perfect neutrality and equal ease interventions expressive of any and every cultural ethos.” Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” ed.


The dissolution of the public sphere’s authoritative centre is a dimension of the process of the explosion of particularisms and growing challenge to the models of cultural universalism and globalisation. It is also a part of what Chantal Mouffe analyses under the heading “The Return of the Political”: the revival of manifold ethnic, religious and nationalist conflicts and the emergence of new antagonisms that put into question the universalisation of liberal democracy as a (post)political culture. At the same time, the rebirth of the political is not only entangled with new power relations, struggles and antagonisms, it also provides the chance of a ‘multicultural solidarity’ that gradually replaces the nationalist (and other authoritative) narratives imposing inauthentic identities. Roughly speaking, a general feature of this kind of solidarity is the transition from nation-states societies, with ethnic/racial/national/linguistic/religious minorities striving for a self-isolation in their cultural life-worlds, to pluralistic societies in which culturally distinct communities get their autonomy

C. Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere, Cambridge, Mass. & London, England, The MIT Press, 1992, p. 120. It is this denial to attribute cultural specificity to the public sphere of a multicultural society, which provokes accusations of an inability to take into account the cultural background of political processes in pluralistic societies. Some critics convincingly argue that by professing dialogic neutrality one avoids having to face the real problems of the multicultural public dialogue. Thus, with regard to Ackerman’s model of a pluralistic public sphere Seyla Benhabib makes the case that the “liberal principle of dialogic neutrality, while it expresses one of the main principles of the modern legal system, is too restrictive and frozen in application to the dynamics of power struggles in actual political processes.” Seyla Benhabib, “Models of Public Space: Hannah Arendt, the Liberal Tradition, and Jürgen Habermas,” in ed. C. Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, Mass., & London, The MIT Press, 1992. On a hermeneutic corollary to this critical argument, there is little room in the theory, guided by the principle of dialogic neutrality, for coping with the whole scope of public debates in a way that would unfold the logic of struggles of oppressed groups and communities in multicultural societies. To overcome this shortcoming, a conceptual framework that goes beyond the mere search for ‘liberal conversational constraints’ is demanded.

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through interpretative transgression of normative codes established in the ‘official’ public sphere. I will try to argue that this transgression implies a constitution of a medium of intercultural dialogue. The dynamic identities constructed in this dialogue take place in a public sphere in which collaborations and contestations (as part of an ongoing intercultural dialogue) occur. An appropriate example is the way in which the African-American Muslim community creates a variety of ‘dialogic identities’: first, with respect to the whole community of African-Americans; second, in its relationships with non-American Muslim communities and organisations; and third, in dealing with the problems of living in the majority white Christian culture. Each of these narratives contains a specific rhetorical strategy of drawing a demarcation line between ‘we’ and the ‘other’, and mechanisms of memorising and historicising, which shape a community’s experience.18 The dialogic (and dynamic) identities prevent not only the imposition of ‘they’s’ narratives, but also the self-isolation and the drawing of firm cultural boundaries. As a rule, a narrative generated within a self-isolated cultural life-world leads to the degradation of community to a sort of sect guided by (what Mary Douglas calls) a ‘witchcraft cosmology’: the idea of the bad outside and good inside, and the refusal to have contact with the ‘other’, since this may weaken the protection from various kinds of sub-

18 Gregory Starrett makes the observation that the ‘we’ of the African/ American/Muslim community is “labile and does not necessarily presume or privilege Islamic Africa as an intermediary. For Muslim Americans, like the followers of W. D. Muhammad, the investment in broader identities pays a higher dividend, insofar as it can move beyond a Africannesss and connect with wider global currents . . . and Islamic histories alternative to both Americacentred and Afrocentric identities.” Gregory Starrett, “Muslim Identities and the Great Chain of Buying,” eds. D. F. Eickelman and J. W. Anderson, New Media in the Muslim World, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1999, p. 72.


versive influence. The dialogic identities rule out gradually both the policy of a manipulative control and witchcraft cosmologies. To what extent, however, is this claim not a quasi-political declaration, but a consequence from the hermeneutico-ontological analysis of the public sphere? 3. The Hegemony of the Dialogue In the preceding section, I used on various occasions the expression ‘narrative reconstruction’. Roughly speaking, it refers to a strategy of overcoming an identity crisis. For instance, the identity crisis of a nation-state (as a political, economic and cultural unit produced by the spread of commerce and industry) is resolved through reconstructing a ‘great nationalist narrative’ that connects territory, history, cultural symbolism, and national sentiments.19 In fact, the conception about the way of overcoming an identity crisis through a ‘narrative reconstruction’ of a tradition stems neither from hermeneutic phenomenology, nor from the social sciences, but from discussions in the philosophy of science. Its author is Alasdair MacIntyre. According to him, an epistemological crisis (in the historical development of science) is resolved either by a reconstruction of an existing narrative or by a construction of a new narrative that enables the agents to understand the cognitive dynamics of their enterprise. By resolving such a crisis, one gains ‘narrative resources’ for (re)defining the cognitive identity of a scientific discipline, domain, or research program. For instance, the rise of special relativity marks not only a conceptual revolution in theoretical mechanics, but also a radical change in the epistemological criteria of experimental verification, theoretical coherence, and potential refutability of a

19 See in particular, Gertjan Dijkink, National Identity and Geopolitical Visions: Maps of Pride and Pain, London, Routledge, 1996.

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theory—criteria, which play a crucial role in defining a discipline’s cognitive identity.20 (The epistemological transformation implied by special relativity resolved a crisis provoked by an incompatibility between Maxwell’s field equations and Newton’s first postulate.) The rise of special relativity enables one to evaluate the preceding development of theoretical mechanics by a new set of epistemological standards and criteria. Thus, the historical narrative of theoretical mechanics was rewritten (reconstructed). Thereby, MacIntyre formulates a criterion for autonomy (and epistemological recognition) of the cognitive forms (research programs, theories, paradigms of investigation) in the development of science. The present section will be devoted to the following question: Is it possible to work out a similar criterion for the autonomy of cultural life-forms in a pluralistic public sphere? To begin with, a narrative reconstruction that would preserve the authentic existence of a cultural life-form is that one that promotes a dialogic identity based on the ‘situated transcendence’ of the life-form in the public sphere. The collective Dasein looking for a dialogic identity appeals to the ‘others’ in order to get recognition of the specificity (the ‘irreducible otherness’) of its life-form. Yet, this recognition can be attained only under condition that its champions, on their part, acknowledge and respect the irreducible ‘otherness’ of the ‘others’. Following the hermeneutico-ontological formulation of the notion of narrative, one can raise the claim that the ‘otherness’ is ‘inscribed’ in the life-form’s ontological narrative. To reconstruct such a narrative amounts to ‘making available’ authentic existential possibilities that reside in the hermeneutic fore-structure of the respective mode of beingin-the-world. The collective Dasein of a cultural life-form is ‘situated in this hermeneutic fore-structure, but in order to reconstruct

20 See Alasdair MacIntyre, “Epistemological Crisis, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science,” The Monist, no. 60, 1977.


the latter (and to make available new authentic possibilities), the collective Dasein has to transcend the current horizon of projects and possibilities. In so doing, it reveals a ‘new possible future’ of its existence and ‘rewrites’ at the same time the history of its tradition. The only way of achieving the transcendence of the current horizon is through a dialogue with the ‘others’ whose ‘otherness’ remains always hidden from the perspective of Dasein’s hermeneutic fore-structure. Thus, getting dialogic identity by means of narrative reconstruction is a kind of ‘situated transcendence’. This is why the dialogic identity (in a pluralistic public sphere) can be conceived as a specification of Gadamer’s ‘fusion of horizons’. In this case, one may speak of an interplay of ontological narratives based on the situated transcendence of cultural life-forms in a pluralistic public sphere. Yet, by reaching this conclusion, one faces a traditional objection against the idea of the fusion of horizons. More generally, it is an objection against the cultural ‘universality of hermeneutics’ (and its ontological model of pluralistic public spheres). In a manner quite appropriate for the present discussion, the objection was raised by Marina Vitkin. In analysing the idea of the fusion of horizons, she argues that Gadamer misconstrues the challenge multicultural understanding and recognition present to hermeneutic philosophy. According to her, communicative interaction in a multicultural society is impossible without violence to the ‘others’, and hence “fusion, synthesis and integration are euphemisms for, and so inadvertent invitations to, yoking ‘others’ by force into a frame of reference akin to them.”21 In addition, Vitkin holds that Gadamer’s hermeneutics is unable to respond to the challenge of communicative incommensurability of cultural life-forms. In my view, this critique wrongly applies 21 Marina Vitkin, “The ‘Fusion of Horizons’ on Knowledge and Alterity (Is Inter-Traditional Understanding Attainable through Situated Transcendence?” Philosophy and Social Criticism, no. 21, 1995, p. 58.

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epistemological and logical-semantic arguments in a hermeneutic context of reasoning. (Although Vitkin’s conclusions differ essentially from Davidson’s conception of ‘radical interpretation’, the structure of dialogue is illuminated in both cases from a logicalsemantic point of view.) These arguments are essential for advocating the position of cognitive relativism, but they are irrelevant to Gadamer’s hermeneutic context where from the outset every sort of relativism is discarded through emphasising the radical historical finitude of the interpreter and the primordial openness of the horizon (or, the hermeneutic fore-structure) of every cultural mode of being-in-the-world. Since each particular horizon of cultural existence invites its completion by means of a dialogic interaction with the ‘others’ in their authentic horizons, there is no isolated and closed in-itself cultural life-form. By contrast, every life-form opens itself by ‘hermeneutic necessity’ to be interpreted. Yet, this view does not imply that the intercultural dialogue should lead to a global and universal horizon of cultural experience (or a horizon of ultimate consensus). On my reading, to reiterate in a slightly modified form the thesis formulated above, the fusion of horizons (in which understanding and dialogue coincide) inaugurates an interplay of ontological narratives that rather promotes the pluralisation of life-forms and life-worlds. Indeed, Gadamer’s main concern is with the ‘effective history’ of a given cultural tradition, whereby he pays attention predominantly to mutual openness of the horizonal boundaries between historical epochs within the development of one and the same cultural life-form. There is nothing, however, in Gadamer’s conception itself that forces one to restrict the fusion of horizons only to the dialogue between interpreter and the ‘texts’ of interpreter’s own cultural tradition. The mutual openness of the horizons taking place in a dialogue ‘follows’ from the finitude of every cultural life-form, that is, the fact that it is situated in its hermeneutic fore-structure. The finite (because of its situatedness) but never-ending (because of its hermeneutic


openness and potentiality for a dialogue) construction of a lifeform’s identity makes the fusion of culturally different horizons as unavoidable as the fusion of horizons within the historical dynamics of one and the same tradition. In both cases, the hermeneutic distance informed by the finite hermeneutic fore-structures brings into being the need of dialogic understanding and interpretation. The finitude of every cultural life-form implies a basic incompleteness whose situational and contextual completion in the dialogic interaction is a never ending process. In this regard, the hermeneutic distance is not a phenomenon that has to be overcome (in order to conquer the ‘others’) but a condition of the interplay of ontological narratives in the pluralist public sphere. This interplay is (in contrast to the particular hermeneutic forestructures) infinite in its capacity to reveal new authentic existential possibilities. To sum up, the approach of hermeneutic philosophy to the fore-structures of dialogue is not called into question once a plurality of traditions and cultural life-forms is faced. It is not despite the historical finitude and hermeneutic distance, but because of them, that a communicative interaction in the multicultural public space can take place. In opposing Vitkin’s view that there is in-eliminable violence involved in the intercultural dialogue, one should stress that the multicultural public sphere plays the role of a hermeneutic medium of ontological narratives involved in a constant interplay that prevents any violence to the ‘others’. To this public sphere corresponds a civil society that is the totality of communities’ cultural life-forms (and their life-worlds). The emphasis in this claim is placed upon the notion of totality. In recent literature, the dialogic totality of cultural life-forms is described as a ‘transculturality’. Wolfgang Welsch makes it clear that this concept is not to be reduced to the concepts of ‘interculturality’ and ‘multiculturality’.22 22

See Wolfgang Welsch, “Transkulturalitaet—Lebensformen nach der Aufloesung der Kulturen,” Information Philosophie, no. 2, 1992.

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‘Transculturality’ refers to the aspects of hybridisation of cultural life-forms. One of them is the formation of the public sphere of a pluralist civil society. From the viewpoint of hermeneutic phenomenology, ‘transculturality’ is the totality constituted by the interplay of ontological narratives that leads to a growing complexity of the public sphere. ‘Transculturality’ is a characteristic of the increasing potentiality for a dialogue. But this dialogue does not entail a cultural unification of the public sphere. The interplay of narratives (through which the cultural life-forms construct their identities) rules out not only meta-narratives but the projection of a universal horizon of communication also. This is why the ‘transcultural dialogue’ guided by the ‘ethos of pluralisation’ is an antidote to globalisation. As a consequence of ignoring the phenomenon of ‘situated transcendence’, the notion of ‘transcultural dialogue’ has begun to gain currency in recent years, against the tendency (especially in disciplines like cultural anthropology and cultural history) to conceive of cultural life-worlds as isolated ‘wholes’ of codes of face-to-face communication, customs of everyday life, routine practices that support an existing informal social order, and shared practical beliefs and attitudes. The thesis (imported from the philosophy of science) of the incommensurability of cultural life-worlds is in line with this tendency. As a rule, the formulation of the thesis is related to some kind of social constructivism. On the latter, each cultural life-world is distinguished by specific modes of social construction of symbolic artefacts. Since there are no ‘neutral’ (independent of a hermeneutic fore-structure of being-in-a-cultural-life-world) discursive practices, there is nothing in cultural experience that can guarantee the sameness of the life-forms across the horizonal boundaries of the cultural life-worlds. If this line of thinking were correct, then a multicultural society would be no more than an ‘ensemble’ of particular cultural life-worlds. Each ethnic/religious community


would be closed in its own life-world. The impetus to understand the ‘others’ would be a futile and meaningless endeavour. This picture, however, is wrong. Indeed, each community is situated in its own life-world in a sense that it is committed to the finite horizon (hermeneutic fore-structure) of this world. Yet, this commitment implies the interpretative openness of the cultural life-form. Its hermeneutic fore-structure is open ‘to be completed’. The never-ending completion is at the same time the process of narrative reconstruction by means of which the cultural life-form constructs its dynamic identity. (Gadamer speaks in this regard of a ‘fore-structure of completion’.) Thus, one reaches again the point at which the figure of the situated transcendence comes to the fore. Being situated in its cultural life-world, each ethnic/religious community (within a multicultural pubic sphere) is open to transcending this situatedness in the dialogue with the ‘others’. Since every cultural life-form is predicated on a situated transcendence, a multicultural civil society is not an ‘ensemble’ of cultural life-worlds incommensurable with each ‘other’, but a totality in which each is open to the other. The hermeneutic model of multicultural dialogue opposes not only that form of cultural relativism which is related to the denial of the intercultural fusion of horizons, but also the anti-relativist view that life-world’s rationality is located in the structure of communication itself. On this view, the tenets of the democratic process are to be formulated through a reconstruction of the universal presuppositions of communicative action. Since these presuppositions are normative conditions for Verstaendigung, the kernel of the view (integrated in various critical theories) is a normative doctrine of how to reach consensus based upon the norms of life-world’s communicative rationality. In reaching this consensus, one erects at the same time a democratic dam against the colonialisation of the life-world by state apparatus

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and economy. Thus, the communicative view of life-world’s rationality rests on the tacit assumption that there is in social life a level of ‘ultimate consensus’. However, given the social dynamics of multicultural societies this consensualist dogma is to be rejected. To be sure, Habermas speaks of a ‘communicative force of production’, referring to the ‘exchange of arguments and negotiations’ as a medium for a rational formation of opinion and will.23 However, such an exchange cannot constitute a medium for a dialogue of cultural traditions in a multicultural society. The solidarity and ‘dialogic hegemony’ in the pluralistic public sphere do not need a Habermasian ‘exchange of arguments’. They are rooted rather in a mutual sensibility to the ‘others’ narratives and ‘plots’ and to the new existential possibilities promoting narrative reconstructions of dynamic identities. In other words, the dialogic interplay of the traditions in a multicultural civil society does not aim at an ultimate consensus. It rather creates a hermeneutic medium of interplay of ontological narratives without ruling out the dissensus concerning basic ideals, values, goals, and orientations. The solidarity attained within this medium is ‘solidarity despite the insurmountable dissensus’. In multicultural societies, there are always gaps that must be bridged. But it is these never vanishing gaps that contribute to increasing ethnic/religious communities’ hermeneutic sensibility, which is the ultimate source of multicultural solidarity. The medium of dialogical interaction in the pluralist public sphere creates a kind of ‘unity within an increasing pluralisation’. It seems to me that a notion originally introduced by Antonio Gramsci can help in illuminating this kind of unity. I have in mind the

23 See Jürgen Habermas, “Towards a Communication Concept of Rational Collective Will-Formation,” Ratio Juris, no. 2, 1989.


notion of ‘hegemony’.24 It is neither a concept that can be used interchangeably with ideological domination, manipulation or indoctrination, nor is it a totalitarian concept. Hegemony refers to the processualist order of the public sphere in a pluralist society. Hegemony is not an order imposed by ‘they’s’ anonymous voice. It is rather the self-created order of civil society’s pluralist public sphere. In the case of multicultural civil society, hegemony denotes the dominance of authentic existential possibilities revealed by the interplay of ontological narratives. It is this hegemony that can destroy any attempt of the ‘they’ to impose a new meta-narrative in the public sphere. On this kind of solidarity and ‘dialogic hegemony’ is based also the model of tolerance suggested by the view of the multicultural public sphere. A constitutive dimension of this tolerance is captured nicely by William Connolly: “You practice tolerance when you exercise forbearance to established constituencies diverging from your faith or identity.”25 The insistence on ‘solidarity despite the insurmountable dissensus’ implies the idea of a hermeneutic co-understanding without consensualist utopia. There is no single source of co-understanding and dialogic interaction around which the moral systems of social behaviour of the particular ethnic/religious traditions rotate. Consequently, there is no political meta-discourse that lies behind the dialogic interplay of traditions. To practice tolerance in a multicultural civil society means not to search for a universal framework of Verstaendigung, but to enjoy existential possibilities revealed by the dialogue without consensualist dogma.

24 See: ed. Chantal Mouffe, “Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci,” Gramsci and Marxist Theory, London, Verso, 1979. 25 Connolly, “Rethinking the Ethos of Pluralisation,” p. 95.

Pauline Johnson

Irreconcilable Differences? Habermas and Feminism*

For a long time Habermas’ social philosophy and contemporary feminism evolved in mutual indifference. When feminists did occasionally turn their attention in his direction, the judgement was usually negative and sometimes even scathing. In the last decade this stand off has changed significantly with many now well-known figures like Nancy Fraser and Seyla Benhabib articulating their concerns in the language of critical theory and engaging various aspects of the Habermasian oeuvre. On his own side, Habermas has responded to this mixed reception by going to some pains in his recent work to establish the relevance of his project to feminist concerns.1 The following paper reviews the extent to which main formulations in his last major work, Between Facts and Norms, makes ground against feminist objections to the Habermasian project. It also considers the sources of an on-going alienation between some interpretations of feminist motivations and the terms of Habermas’ hopes for democratic Enlightenment. The feminist critique has not presented a united standpoint. Critics of the early works are principally concerned that Habermas’

* This article is based on an earlier essay entitled “Distorted Communication: Feminism’s dispute with Habermas” that first appeared in Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 27, no. 1, January, 2001, pp. 39–62, and has been rewritten for this volume. 1 Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. by William Rehg, Cambridge, Mass, The MIT Press, 1996.

Irreconcilable Differences? Habermas and Feminism • 105

attempt to reconstruct the immanently critical potentials of cultural modernisation concedes too much. This enterprise remains, they argue, too tolerant of repressive gender relations. Joan Landes contests the apparent dependence of the critical perspective outlined in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere on a liberal separation of the private and the public spheres.2 Nancy Fraser’s influential essay, titled “What’s Critical About Critical Theory?” targets the gender blindness, which, she feels, clings to the description of emancipatory modernising potentials offered in The Theory of Communicative Action.3 I suggest that the formulations that mainly trouble these feminist critics give way in Between Facts and Norms to a new focus. In particular, the mediated relation between the goals of private and public autonomy described in the later work underlines the extent of Habermas’ break with liberal categories that had seemed to sanction traditional gender relations. From this theoretical reconstruction of modern democracies’ self-critical potentials, contemporary feminism can glean some useful clarifications of the broader significance and objective conditions of its own struggles. Distorted communications are, however, only part of the story of feminism’s long-running dispute with Habermas. Feminism is a complex ideology whose critical energies have drawn upon Romantic as well as Enlightenment convictions. Some feminist critiques of Habermas’ efforts to reconstruct the emancipatory potentials of democratic Enlightenment articulate goals and commitments that remain unrecognised by the terms of his theory. The second part of the paper argues that we need to recognise the irreducibility of Romantic and Enlightenment motivations

2

Joan B. Landes, “The Public and the Private Sphere: A Feminist Reconsideration,” Feminists Read Habermas, ed. Johanna Meehan, London and New York, Routledge, 1995, pp. 91–117. 3 Nancy Fraser, “What’s Critical About Critical Theory?” Feminists Read Habermas, pp. 21–57.

106 • Pauline Johnson

within the complexity of contemporary feminist politics. On the one hand, a feminist interest in achieving recognition for the difference of the feminine draws upon, and tries to reinterpret, democratic procedures in its determination to establish the legitimacy of its claims. I argue that an attempt to make sense of these particular investments in terms borrowed from Romantic categories produces incoherent results. On the other hand, we run the risk of alienating an important source of the movement’s critical energies if we reduce the diversity of feminist hopes to an interpretation of the unrealised potentials of democratic Enlightenment. Quite different objectives can inspire a quest for the recognition of feminine difference. An expressive interest in experimentation with novel descriptions of a chosen feminine difference has also been a significant inspiration for contemporary feminist politics. Habermas, as well as his feminist critics, need to recognise both the distinctiveness and the mutual dependency of these two sources of feminism’s critical energies. Reconstructing the Public Sphere Joan Landes has played a leading role in formulating the terms of a feminist critique of early Habermas. She argues that The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere offered an idealised description of the bourgeois public sphere that was too uncritical of the gender ideologies that sustained it. The central claim raised in Women and the Public Sphere is that “the bourgeois public sphere is essentially, not just contingently, masculinist, and that this characteristic serves to determine both its self-representation and its subsequent ‘structural transformation’.”4 Habermas supposed that the exclusion of women and others from the public sphere

4 Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution, Ithaca & London, Cornell University Press, 1988, p. 7.


that took shape in eighteenth century Europe did not fundamentally affect the significance of its idealising self-description as an open arena of unconstrained discussion and debate. Yet the masculinity, together with the class positions, of the participants was, Landes argues, by no means incidental to the mode of interaction upheld by the bourgeois public sphere. Its argumentative style of dialogue depended upon the presumed selfsufficient autonomy of all participants. Nancy Fraser argues that the essential correctness of this account of the biases that infect the tools of Habermas’ critical theory is not diminished by the efforts of The Theory of Communicative Action to distance itself from the terms of the earlier theory. Written in the early 1980s, this two-volume work tried to theorise the self-critical potentials of modernity in terms less reliant on the idealising self-representations of a bourgeois public sphere. Yet, Fraser, we will see, thinks that gender blind prejudices still cling to the systematic reconstruction of the potentials of modernisation processes offered by the later work. Both these feminist appraisals target the deeply problematic character of Habermas’ early formulations of modernity’s potentials for selfcritique. Yet, I want to suggest that significant developments occur in the formulations of Between Facts and Norms that suggest opportunities for new sympathies between Habermas and feminism. Landes concedes that some aspects of Habermas’ early account of the critical potentials of the bourgeois public sphere offer helpful insights into the emancipatory significance of this modern development. Habermas, she writes: Enriched our understanding of modern society by highlighting autonomous regions of political association not centred on the state or the family and not reducible to the principles of labour . . . He opened up new lines of research into the continuing transformation

108 • Pauline Johnson of the category of the public sphere in the West and revealed why the category itself now must be reconstituted.5

Fraser also thinks that The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere represents a ‘conceptual resource’ that is ‘indispensable to critical social theory and democratic political practice’.6 For her, Habermas’ account of the public sphere offers a theoretical reconstruction of the emancipatory potentials of the principle of publicity. Only if the ideal of the public sphere is recognised as the basis of democratic legitimacy can we hope to avoid the horrors of a state power whose proclaimed representative relation to the ‘people’s will’ becomes institutionalised in an authoritarian statist, instead of a participatory-democratic, form. Also Habermas’ idea of ‘the public sphere’ allows feminism to think its way out of a major conceptual confusion that has seen the conflation of all kinds of public power with repressive intervention. Habermas clarifies the democratising credentials of a public power based on the efforts of private individuals to achieve recognition for the generalised significance of their concrete needs and points of view. To these credits it can be added that feminism might be expected to share Habermas’ interest in describing a mode of interaction through which strangers can try to overcome systemic misunderstandings and debilitating isolation. Its sympathies might well go with his efforts to reconstruct procedures through which we deliberatively construct an interpretation of common purposes and can seek recognition of the rational legitimacy of diverse needs and identity claims. Yet for both of these influential feminist critics, it is not merely Habermas’ specific formulations that block his theory’s ability

5

Ibid., p. 6. Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun, Mass., The MIT Press, 1992, pp. 109–143, 110–142. 6


to enter into a helpful relationship with the ‘wishes and struggles’ of contemporary feminism. As Fraser sees it, the sticking point is that because “Habermas stops short of developing a new, postbourgeois model of the public sphere” he never “problematises some dubious assumptions that underlie the bourgeois model.”7 Exclusionary assumptions are, for Landes, built into the procedural norms of the public sphere because only certain kinds of subjects armed with particular kinds of motivations, capacities and histories are equipped and willing to channel their interest in public recognition through such discursive constraints. She writes: Habermas’ formulation fails to acknowledge the way the symbolic contents of the bourgeois public sphere worked to rule out all interests that could not or would not lay claim to their own universality. If only what is universal may wear the mantle of truth and reason, then it is precisely everything else that is reduced to the sphere of what Habermas calls “mere opinions cultural assumptions, normative attitudes, collective prejudices and values.”8

Can Habermas’ theory respond convincingly to this critique? I think we have to make do with a yes/no response. We can’t reasonably hope to avoid an unequivocal answer because feminism itself has an ambiguous account of what it wants from the recognition of feminine difference. I suggest that some of feminism’s investments in the struggle for recognition can be clarified by a reformulation of Habermas’ account of the critical potentials of the public sphere. Other investments in achieving recognition of concrete feminine difference remain deeply suspicious of all demands for a rationalising description of its significance. The first task is, then, to evaluate the assertion that Habermas’ theory has in-built assumptions that prevent it from responding 7

Ibid., p. 111. Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution, p. 45. 8


adequately to any interest that contemporary feminism invests in the struggle for recognition. This strong position, implied by Landes, is, as mentioned, adopted by Fraser also in her critique of the so-called ‘gender blindness’ of key categories elaborated in The Theory of Communicative Action. My focus is on the particular formulation Fraser gives to this shared critique. It is, after all, only in the communicative action theory that concepts employed in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere receive a systematic formulation. If we want to interrogate the biases supposed essential to the critical purposes of the theory it is most useful to concentrate on the feminist critique of the writings from this middle period. Liberating Potentials of Rationalising Processes The Theory of Communicative Action anchors its systematic diagnosis of modernisation processes in a challenge to Weber’s onesided account of rationalising tendencies. Weber, Habermas claims, does offer a description of the liberating potentials of modern rationalising processes. He shows that the separation of the value spheres and the increasing autonomy of high culture provide the conditions that allow individuals to thematise and question inherited aspects of their lifeworlds and to engage in the communicative analysis and reconstruction of them.9 Yet, for Habermas, Weber’s preoccupation with processes of societal rationalisation driven by the expansion of instrumental or functional reason meant that he failed to recognise and elaborate the potentials of this other emancipatory side of rationalisation tendencies. Habermas’ own double-sided account of rationality potentials, stresses that the imperatives of societal rationalisation, entrenched

9 Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, trans. Thomas McCarthy, Boston, MA, Beacon Press, 1994, p. 144.


in the steering logics of bureaucratic capitalism, penetrate into all domains of social interaction. The lifeworld, which stores the interpretive achievements of past generations in the form of diffuse background assumptions, finds itself invaded by alien strategic imperatives that explode the capacity of tradition to provide sanction for its contents. Yet to Habermas, the ‘rationalisation of the lifeworld’ does not merely describe the collapse of traditional forms of legitimation under the ruthless advance of an instrumentalising reason. This concept also identifies the process whereby the released contents of the lifeworld seek new forms of legitimation by attaching themselves to generalising descriptions through which they might seek intersubjective validation.10 Habermas’ theory invests, then, in the critical, democratising potentials of communicative or interactive rationality. Legitimacy can be won by processes of argumentation which finally appeal, not to the authority of tradition or power, but to a set of consensually elaborated principles. Where previous formulations of the critical impulses supporting the concept of reification had focused on social labour as the real bearer of historical evolution, Habermas’ critique of reification gives explicit priority to the emancipatory potentials of communicative interaction. Reification occurs when an expanded instrumental reason seeks to colonise the specific rationality of communicatively achieved agreements. It refers to the colonising function achieved when strategic imperatives of an instrumentalising reason stifle the rationality claims of evolving communicatively achieved modes of integration.11 On this account, rationalisation assumes an emancipatory role as the claims of unreflected upon tradition are pushed back to

10 11

See ibid., p. 124. Ibid., p. 355.


be replaced by new rational solidarities. This reconstruction has some seeming attractions for contemporary feminism. Landes and Fraser are mindful of the theory’s appealing aspects. They endorse its efforts to pin emancipatory hopes, not on the aspirations of an historical agent, but on an analysis of those processes through which modern subjects try to free themselves from the repressive grip of an unchosen way of life. These potentials notwithstanding, Fraser is persuaded that the dualistic sociology of The Theory of Communicative Action is too forgiving of traditional gender arrangements. She objects principally to the apparent implications of Habermas’ colonisation thesis that seems to carry the weight of his critical intentions. De-colonisation, she supposes, suggests a programme aimed at the resurrection of conventional communicative modes of interaction against the alienating impact of system imperatives. This perspective does not, Fraser maintains, finally overcome an appeal to essentialising descriptions of a presumed normative subjectivity and she finds that his formulation of the emancipatory power of reason continues to be marked by a gendered ideology.12 Despite his critique of the exaggerated emphasis Weber gives to societal rationalisation, Habermas repeats the mistake. The result is a theory that apparently describes reification as a matter of the intrusive rationalisation by system imperatives into a traditionally structured lifeworld. Habermas, Fraser claims, ultimately remains blind to the ‘gender subtext’ that informs this conception of a society divided into certain domains of appropriate modes of integration. Marie Fleming endorses this assessment of the sexist ideologies that prop up the colonisation thesis.13 As she sees it, Habermas’ description of the ‘pathological’ consequences of the penetration 12

Nancy Fraser, “What’s Critical About Critical Theory,” pp. 3–4. Marie Fleming, Emancipation and Illusion: Rationality and Gender in Habermas’ Theory of Modernity, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997, 13


of strategic imperatives into the lifeworld’s internal dynamics, is “conservative insofar as it works on an argument for resistance to fundamental change at the level of family structures.”14 She agrees with Fraser in supposing that the critical thrust of the colonisation thesis rests on an idealised portrait of domestic life in which social integration is supposed to be secured, not via instrumentalising imperatives, but through processes of communication. On this viewpoint, the colonisation thesis, which describes the ‘desiccation of communicative contexts’ and the ‘depletion of non-renewable cultural resources’ by the intrusion of system imperatives into the lifeworld, reproduces a repressive gender ideology. As Fleming sees it, Habermas’ account of the pathological impact of the juridification of once informally regulated lifeworld structures of the family has failed to recognise the extent to which bourgeois domesticity is organised around relations of domination and subordination. A programme aimed at the decolonisation of the lifeworld would, accordingly, do nothing to advance the interests of modern women and would actually claw back that range of significant achievements in social justice ushered in by welfare state policies. This line of criticism seems to fly in the face of the double-sided significance that Habermas attributes to modernity’s rationality potentials. Rather than investing in the taken for granted character of the lifeworld, Habermas places his hopes in the emancipatory potentials of rationalisation processes which open the lifeworld up, submitting its traditional contents to critiques, communicative dialogue and negotiation. It appears that the feminist critique

and “Women and the ‘Public Use of Reason’” in Feminists Read Habermas, pp. 117–139. 14 Marie Fleming, “Women and ‘The Public Use of Reason,’” p. 118. Fleming supposes that the idea of colonisation, with its range of conservative implications, remains central to Habermas’ critical perspective. See Emancipation and Illusion, pp. 95–97.


has overlooked the two-dimensional character of this account of the paradox of rationalisation that is supposed to give “rise to both the reification of the lifeworld and the utopia perspective.”15 Yet the feminists are right in supposing that Habermas does not, at this stage, push the critique of the oppressive character of the lifeworld far enough. Despite his own intentions, the weight of Habermas’ interest in the paradox of rationalisation falls on one side of the process, on the description of the colonising effects of system intrusions into the lifeworld. Habermas has, in recent years admitted as much. Written in May 1984, “The Preface” to the Third German Edition suggests that the account of the modernising process developed in The Theory of Communicative Action was driven by a problematic, which skewed the results of the analysis.16 At this stage his overriding concern had been to thematise the phenomenon of reification in terms that made no appeal to a conception of the frustrated potentials of the subject of history. This purpose meant that the exposition of the concept of rationalisation emphasised its credentials as a theory of reification. He later conceded that “this way of approaching systematically induced disturbances in communicatively rationalised lifeworlds was one-sided: it failed to utilise the whole range of potential contributions of the theory.” In particular, this formulation failed to insist that the question of whether the communicatively rationalised lifeworld might impose limits on the intrusions of strategic imperatives or, in turn, be thwarted and suppressed by its competitor, must be recognised as “an empirical question which cannot beforehand be decided on the analytical level in favour of the systems.”17 15

Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2, p. 329. Jürgen Habermas, Torben Hviid Nielsen “Jürgen Habermas: Morality, Society and Ethics—an Interview with Torben Hviid Nielsen,” Acta Sociologica vol. 33, 1990, 95–115, 106. 17 Ibid., p. 106. 16


Habermas admits to less than is required by the feminist critique. His self-criticism recognises no limits to the capacity of the theory itself. As he sees it, the theory can be elaborated to produce a complex and comprehensive account of the range of system/ lifeworld relations at play in any specific conjuncture. By contrast, the feminist critics consider the ‘blindness’ of the theory with respect to the specific circumstances of modern women an index to the prejudicial terms in which Habermas has underpinned his critical perspective on reifying modernisation processes. It was up to reformulations offered in Between Facts and Norms to establish that his account of modernity’s rationalising potentials is able to break from any dependence of the theory on the legitimation of traditional gender relations. Reformulating the Ideal of Critical Publicity Between Facts and Norms does not depart from the core project of Habermas’ theory of modernity. Here, as with The Theory of Communicative Action, he interprets Enlightenment hopes not in terms of the self-asserting ambitions of particular subjects but in the light of potentials for democratising interactions aimed at building rational solidarities. The form in which this general undertaking is now elaborated and, in particular, the terms in which the procedural norms of democratic interaction are now conceived, clarifies the sympathetic relevance of Habermas’ project to some of feminism’s own vital concerns. In the recent work, Habermas reconstructs the normative framework of contemporary legal constitutionalism and political institutions in an effort to demonstrate that democratising ideals are not merely utopian hopes but exist as a powerful normative demand within existing institutional structures. He asserts that the normative claims raised by major politico-legal institutions in modern democracies have not been well understood. He particularly


wants to contest the one-sidedness of both liberal and republican interpretations. Between Facts and Norms does not limit itself to a reworking the idealised self-interpretations of modern democracies. It also wants to identify the social arrangements and the political structures of modern democracies that can be engineered into realising these normative claims. Contemporary feminism can use aspects of both of these undertakings to help it clarify some of its own ambitions and achievements. In Between Facts and Norms Habermas insists that there is a “conceptual or internal relation, and not simply a historically contingent association, between the rule of law and democracy” that has not been properly understood.18 The rule of law claims legitimacy through its appeal to the principle of democratic decisionmaking in which enfranchised citizens “as equally entitled authors of the legal order, must ultimately decide on the criteria of equal treatment.”19 The liberals and the republicans fail to grasp the centrality and the significance of democratic procedures to the self-interpreted legitimacy of the law and the constitutional state. The liberal interpretation gives priority of the idea of private rights while the republican prioritises public or common right. Against the liberals, Habermas insists that the legitimacy of the rule of law does not finally rest on the conviction that the private individual might appeal to the protective authority of the law to sustain his/her private interests, nor does it rely on the republican idea that the law articulates a consensually understood idea of the ‘common good’. The legitimacy of the rule of law depends, rather, on the institutionalisation of those procedural norms through which the private individual is recognised, not just as a bearer of fundamental rights, but as a potential contributor to discursive processes through which the idea of the

18 19

Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 449. Ibid., p. 415.


common good gains legal sanction. In the final analysis, the legitimacy of the law rests on the conviction of the interdependence of the principles of private and public right. To Landes and to Fraser, the early Habermas’ reconstruction of the idea of the public sphere appears to collude with the exclusionary logic of a liberal framework which sees the bearers of systematically frustrated needs for personal autonomy barred from an, only nominally, public discourse. The one-sided stress given to the system-lifeworld relationship in The Theory of Communicative Action appeared to confirm the inability of the Habermasian paradigm to overcome the ‘bracketing’ of the contributions of private individuality that informs a liberal construction of the public sphere. The later Habermas emphasises the dialectical character of the relation between private and public autonomy that underpins legitimate political and legal authority. On this reconstruction, the shared understandings upheld by citizens in the formal public sphere recognise themselves as originating in the will forming processes engaged in by private individuals. Jean Cohen has pointed out that Habermas’ own early prejudices about the politics of the new social movements helped to confirm the misgivings of many feminists. 20 The Theory of Communicative Action had construed the particularistic interests, which were, Habermas supposed, the motivational force behind the new social movements, as a failure in the modernising process; as a defensive strategy aimed at the preservation of specific identities, norms and alternative values.21 Between Facts and Norms indicates a new openness in Habermas’ assessment of the

20 Jean Cohen, “Critical Social Theory and the Feminist Critiques: The Debate with Jürgen Habermas,” in Feminists Read Habermas, pp. 57–91, p. 57. 21 Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2, p. 396.


contribution of concrete struggles for self-realisation to the renewal of the idea of a critical public sphere.22 At this stage he moves his account of the processes of cultural rationalisation from the periphery to the centre of his analysis of modernisation processes. With this development, the theory is better able to demonstrate its potentials as a clarification of processes through which some of feminism’s critical energies are built and as a reconstruction of the objective conditions under which these can become effective as demands. Habermas locates the impetus for the formation of new, reflected upon interpretations of damaged lifeworlds in the experience of the ‘violated interests’ and ‘threatened identities’ that emerge from the disruption to action contexts by system imperatives.23 As private individuals seek to elaborate descriptions of needs that can no longer be interpreted within the horizons of conventional frameworks, they enter into a new deliberative relationship to the remnants of their damaged lifeworlds. In this sense the disrupted lifeworld appears as the arena from which an informal public sphere is recruited. The participants in the communicative actions of a lifeworld begin, namely, to constitute themselves as a public once they seek to elaborate shared descriptions in terms of which the generalisable significance of their problems and claims can be interpreted.24 In the first instance, the claim for personal autonomy appears as a particular concrete demand for the realisation of the newly re-interpreted potentials of a determinate lifeworld. Initially experiencing itself in particularistic terms, as a call for the elaboration of new modes of interaction capable of supporting the hitherto

22 23 24

Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, pp. 424–426. Ibid., pp. 405–409. Ibid., p. 397.


suppressed possibilities of a lifeworld, the demand for self-realising private autonomy must seek to elaborate its claims in ever more generalised and formalistic terms as the wider implications of its ambitions become better understood. What is involved here is no shift away from the recognition of the particularity of the assertion of the need for personal autonomy, but only an acknowledgement of the increasing degree of abstraction or generality in the kinds of arguments that must be mounted in defence of its claims. The threshold separating the private sphere from the public “is not marked by a fixed set of issues or relationships but by different conditions of communication.”25 The public sphere, which initially “draws its impulses from the private handling of social problems,”26 appears, then, as that mode of communication in which strangers seek to deliberatively elaborate generalised or shared understandings through which their differences can be mutually understood. The threshold between the private and the public spheres is entirely pervious, consisting only in the degree of abstraction which might be required of arguments used in the elaboration of particular need claims. Accordingly, the new social movements and those ‘spontaneously emergent associations and organisations’ of civil society attuned to how ‘societal problems resonate in the private life spheres’ can serve, not merely as a receptacle for various identity claims, but as a conduit through which such aspirations are channelled to the ‘sounding board’ of the public sphere.27 Civil associations underpin an informal public sphere. They are the ‘social sites’ in which the generalised significance of points of view and particular claims are teased out.28 However, in order

25 26 27 28

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

p. 402. p. 403. pp. 402–3. p. 397.


to shape these problem descriptions into the terms of effective demands, the social movements must be able move them into the sphere of influence of the decision-making centre of a formal public sphere. Under normal circumstances, operations in the core arena of the political system proceed according to routines without reference to community-wide processes of collective opinion formation. Yet, Habermas insists that the settled routines of bureaucratised decision-making in accordance with the dictates of established power constellations are open to contestation. The welfare compromises between capitalism and democracy achieved in the post war era are, in part, testimony to the capacity of an institutionalised public sphere to respond to demands emanating from the periphery. The politico-legal systems of liberal democracies show themselves vulnerable to the ‘empirical criticisms’ of marginalised populations for whom liberal descriptions of the legitimacy of the constitutional state has revealed itself as mere ideology. These criticisms came to understand themselves as more than a mere demand for the distribution of basic rights aimed at the extension of the conditions of a self-directing private autonomy.29 The feminist movement has, for example, been a significant critic of the self-contradictory character of welfare policies that have used paternalistic means to attempt to shore up the ‘failed’ self-making autonomy of private individuals.30 In this regard, Habermas’ commitment to the democratisation of the welfare state, which insists that this self reforming capacity of liberal democracies be guided by opinion and will forming processes that start in an informal public sphere, offers feminism a perspective on the wider significance of its own struggles.

29

Jürgen Habermas, “Struggles For Recognition in the Democratic Constitutional State,” Multiculturalism, ed. Amy Gutman, Princeton, Princeton University Press, pp. 107–148, p. 116. 30 Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, pp. 420–427.


In this later work, Habermas neither appeals to an idealised description of the early bourgeois public sphere, nor to a systematic reconstruction of tendencies supposed essential to modernisation processes, to anchor his value commitments. The theory now ties its critical values to an interpretation of normative demands upheld by key institutional structures within liberal democracies. This new framework enables the theory to enter into a productive dialogue with certain accounts of the motivations and aims of feminist struggles. In particular, this social movement can use aspects of Habermas’ description of the formation of an informal public sphere and his account of its intersection with the decision-making centre of a formal public to a clarify some of feminism’s own objectives and achievements. By the same token, however, Between Facts and Norms appears to set a collision course with commitments central to other descriptions of a feminist project. For feminists who invest the concrete particularity of feminine difference with a value that cannot tolerate demands for a generalising self-description, there can be no reconciliation with Habermas’ perspective on the rationalising trajectories essential to the galvanising of critical capabilities. The Ambiguities of Feminism Some feminist critics have recognised that Habermas’ dialectical interpretation of the relation between private and public autonomy can help to clarify the wider significance and some of the objective conditions of feminist achievements. Jodi Dean has used a Habermasian model of the relationship between formal and informal dimensions of the public sphere to talk about aspects of the significance of feminist struggles. She points out that feminist politics has exploited the capacity of a formal public sphere to re-describe an interpretation of shared commitments in response to new demands emanating from informal publics sited at the periphery of political power. She points out that


feminist struggles have revealed “the biases within the fiction of the subject of the law. If claiming their status as legal subjects meant that women had to deny their femininity-that is their biological potential for motherhood or their position in the home as child rearer—then the legal subject itself was not universal, but particular-particularly masculine.”31 She goes on to point out that this critical pressure from organised feminism has seen an activation of the self-reforming capacities of some of the political and legal structures in liberal democracies.32 Yet, feminism is no united singular and hegemonic ideology and no generalised acknowledgement of the sympathetic relevance of Habermas’ description of the potentials of a liberal democratic system for self-reform to a feminist ‘project’ can be expected. Some interpretations of feminist motivations repudiate any conception of the quest for recognition that seeks a reinterpretation of shared, generalisable, commitments. Iris Young, for example, supposes that the irreducible distinctiveness of feminine difference demands a form of recognition that owes nothing to the consensus-building aspirations that sustain the modern public sphere. Using terminology developed by Luce Irigaray, Young insists that a respectful attitude of wonder towards irreducible difference is the ethic appropriate to the quest for recognition in a radically democratic polity. She writes, “A respectful stance of wonder toward other people is one of openness across, awaiting new insight about their needs, interests, perceptions or values. Wonder also means being able to see one’s own position, assumptions, perspectives as strange because it

31 Jodi Dean, Solidarity of Strangers: Feminism After Identity Politics, Berkley, University of California Press, 1996, p. 4. 32 Ibid., p. 105. Dean makes the point that, “Questioning is already contained within the notion of an abstract norm, which must be interpreted for it’s meaning to be realised.” See also Joan B. Landes “The Public and the Private Sphere: A Feminist Reconsideration,” Feminists Read Habermas, pp. 91–117, p. 100.


has been put in relation to others.”33 Young supposes that the idea of respect which, remains sensitive to and ‘awaits insights into’ the other’s needs, avoids the ‘dangerous’ character of the concept of wonder which might otherwise be interpreted as a “kind of distant awe before the other that turns their transcendence into an inhuman inscrutability.”34 Feminism needs to be rather cautious about the way in which it uses this interpretation of the need for autonomy. It is not a formulation that is able to support an interest in claiming legitimacy for an interpretation of feminine difference and is, accordingly, unsuitable as the basis of a demand for justice. What it is missing in this regard is precisely the interest in a consensual elaboration of shared perspectives that underpins an attempt to establish the rational legitimacy of need and identity claims. Wonder at the expression of unique difference might be an appropriate response to a subject wrapped in a sense of his/her own self-sufficiency. It cannot, however, even when tempered with necessary respect, offer the basis from which self-interpreted difference can enter into discussion about the justifiability of its unmet needs. In refusing to build any generalising grounds upon which difference can argue for itself, the ethic of wonder denies to the different the capacity to ‘talk back’, to propose corrections to and re-interpretations of, ascribed identity and needs. To respond to the ‘attentive and interested questioning’ of the respectful other, the object of wonder must, it seems, forfeit any claims to the irreducibility of his/her difference and seek to establish an interactive rationality. Young’s intentions notwithstanding,

33 Iris Marion Young, “Asymmetrical Reciprocity: On Moral Respect, Wonder and Enlarged Thought,” Constellations, vol. 3, no. 3, January 1997, pp. 340–364. See also her “Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy,” in Democracy and Difference, ed. Seyla Benhabib, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 120–137. 34 Iris Marion Young, “Asymmetrical Reciprocity,” pp. 341–342.


the role that she gives to the ethic of wonder appears to be consistent only with an attitude of ‘awe’ before the supposed selfsufficiency of the irreducibly different. To save the coherence of the ethics of wonder as a description of a feminist quest for recognition, Young needs to offer a more precise account of the specificity of the feminist motivations it gives voice to. Feminism does, of course, have a strong tradition of ‘separatist’ politics that has offered important space for the trial of novel descriptions of chosen feminine difference. The limits of this kind of strategy has also been admitted by an experienced movement that has learnt that its commitment to achieving justice demands that it enter its new need descriptions into an interpretive relation with shared commitments upheld in a formal public sphere. Different descriptions of how the struggle for recognition might be waged are suggestive of distinct, but compatible, gaols harboured by feminist politics and I suggest that any search for a paradigm able to interpret the significance of these struggles needs to admit this full range of motivations. The attempt to describe the quest for recognition in terms that repudiates all demands for generalisability cannot, I have argued, support an interest in the legitimation of need claims. Introducing the demand for respect for a unique self that cannot give an account of how it wants the significance of its novelty to be understood cannot help in those instances where the different seeks to raise a claim about the justice of unmet need claims. An interest in recognition that refuses to compromise with generalising descriptions is unable to offer a coherent formulation of an interest in the rational justifiability of claims made upon public resources. Yet, so too there can be no formulations of these latter objectives that can satisfactorily assimilate Romantic longings for recognition of the irreducibility of feminine difference.


Seyla Benhabib has tried to reformulate Habermas’ proceduralist interpretation of public reason in terms that makes it responsive to an investment in the singularity of concrete difference. She insists that a supplementation of the categories of the theory is necessary for it to respond to an interest in the uniqueness of feminine difference.35 Habermas’ proceduralism needs to describe the process of building shared understandings in terms that recognise the other as a concrete, not merely abstract, other. The standpoint of the concrete other requires us to view each and every rational being as an individual with a concrete history, identity and affective-emotional constitution.36 Only on the basis of an insight into the situatedness of the particular other are we able to determine in what sense they are different from ourselves and, hence, what might be required to adequately apply our commitment to the extension of equal rights and duties to all. It seems, however, that Benhabib’s proposed adjustments to Habermas’ proceduralism do no more than what might be achieved by exploiting existing capacities of his theory. This is a point that has been made by Maeve Cooke.37 Cooke claims that Habermas’ proceduralism does not need to be supplemented by an extra principle. She points out that the requirements of reciprocity and symmetry, embedded in Habermas’ own reconstruction of discursive rationality, already implies a commitment to the recognition of the legitimacy of difference. On this account, the norms of reciprocity and symmetry between discursive partners requires that participants be:

35

Seyla Benhabib, “Communicative Ethics and the Claims of Gender, Community and Postmodernism,” and “The Generalised and Concrete Other,” in Situating the Self, New York, Routledge, 1992. 36 Benhabib, “The Generalised and the Concrete Other,” p. 158. 37 Maeve Cooke, Language and Reason: A Study in Habermas’ Pragmatics, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1994.

126 • Pauline Johnson Willing (in principle) to consider the arguments of everyone no matter how poorly they are articulated, and to attach (in principle) equal weight to all these arguments . . . In addition, since argumentative willingness to reach understanding requires a genuine openness not just to new arguments but also to the needs, desires, anxieties, and insecurities-whether expressed or unexpressed- of the other participants: at times this will require a special sensitivity and a willingness to look beyond explicit verbal expressions and deficiencies in argumentative skills.38

Habermas defends discourse ethics in similar terms. He argues that sensitivity to diverse points of view and to the multifarious claims of private individuals is built into the ‘richness’ of the theory’s communicative and intersubjective presuppositions.39 The misgivings of some feminists are not easily quieted by accounts of the sensitivities of Habermas’ theory. Maria Pia Lara suggests that the narrowness of his interpretation of the rationalising procedures followed by the struggle for recognition is unable to accommodate other strategies that women have used in their efforts to get acknowledgement of a chosen difference. As she sees it, Habermas describes the consensus-building interactions of the public sphere in terms that remain blind to the importance of the expressive/communicative practices through which feminist understandings have been achieved. In particular, she suggests that Habermas neglects the role of emancipatory narratives in mediating “between particular group identities and universalistic moral claims, providing new frameworks that allow those who are not members of the group to expand their

38

Ibid., p. 160. Habermas, “Lawrence Kohlberg and Neo-Aristoteleanism,” Justification and Application, trans. Ciaran P. Cronin, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1993. pp. 113–133, pp. 130–131. 39


own self-conceptions and their definitions of civil society.”40 On this reading, Habermas’ account of the entwinement of the principles of private and public autonomy appears as something of a blunt instrument. Lara draws upon Hannah Arendt’s notion of ‘storytelling’ in her efforts to identify the ways in which “the normative and the aesthetic contents of narratives allow the multiple projects of women’s identity to express themselves positively in the public sphere.”41 Lara has, on the one hand, no dispute with Habermas’ proceduralist defence of the idea of the public sphere. Yet, as she sees it, he does not give a sufficiently flexible description of the processes through which private individuals attempt to communicate a self-interpretation of their identities and needs to an audience of strangers. Her thesis is that it is through the aesthetic, particularly through literary self-presentation, that modern women first learnt to set their lifeworlds ‘communicatively aflow’. Women “used works of art because presenting themselves within the realm of aesthetics allowed them to express themselves without the impediments of liberal theories that excluded women from the public sphere.”42 Using the narrative, women have, Lara points out, by-passed the necessity of appealing to narrow conceptions of justice in their efforts to make their needs and experiences understood. By such imaginative selfclarifications women have succeeded in slowly pushing back the limited terms in which claims for private autonomy might be publicly recognised. It is not clear, however, that this interest in the power of the aesthetic in elaborating descriptions of the specificity of a feminine

40

Maria Pia Lara, Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1998. 41 Ibid., p. 3. 42 Ibid., p. 7.


self-consciousness can offer itself as a critique of Habermas’ theory. Habermas has consistently acknowledged an important role for aesthetic self-exploration as a mechanism through which new contents, born of struggles to achieve personal autonomy, enter communicative interactions in the political public sphere. As he sees it, problems voiced in the public sphere first become visible when they are mirrored in personal life experience.43 To the extent that these experiences find their concise expression in the languages of religion, art, and literature, the ‘literary’ public sphere in the broader sense, which is specialised for the articulation of values and world disclosure, is intertwined with the political public sphere.44 It seems that Habermas’ theory does allow room for a description of the communicative power of the aesthetic in helping to give shape to new identity descriptions that will finally be able to participate in those generalising self-representations that are required if a legitimate claim on public resources is to be made. Yet he could be accused of underestimating the role of the aesthetic in building attitudes and aptitudes important to the construction of democratic interactions in modern pluralistic societies. Some feminist writers have argued that underplaying the role of the aesthetic communication is a deficiency common to conventional democratic theory. Martha Nussbaum stresses that the communicative resources of the aesthetic play an indispensable role in the formation of attitudes and capacities necessary to the reproduction of the democratic relation. She emphasises that the literary work permits a ready transgression of the boundaries of the worlds of others. “The greatest contribution literature has to 43 Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, see chapter 8 “Civil Society and the Political Public Sphere” especially p. 351, p. 354, p. 359, pp. 360–361. 44 In his “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere,” Habermas emphasises the key place that The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere gave to literary publics. Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun, pp. 421–461, p. 423.


make to the life of the citizen is,” she writes, “its ability to wrest from our frequently obtuse and blunted imaginations an acknowledgement of those who are other than ourselves, both in concrete circumstances and even in thought and emotion.”45 There is, however, a stronger argument to be made here. The problem, it could be said, is not simply that Habermas underplays the significance of the contributions that an aesthetic/ expressive practice make towards the enrichment of democratic commitments. The point is also that his framework insists on trying to assimilate the significance of an expressive investment in communication to its contribution to democratic interests. The distinctiveness and complementary character of these two kinds of motivations within feminist politics needs, I suggest, to be acknowledged to avoid a debilitating alienation within it. Concluding Remarks A Romantic intolerance at rationalising demands is evident in some leading interpretations of feminist agendas. Irigaray is amongst the most influential of those to have searched for a language adequate to the uniqueness of a feminine experience and that can evade the supposedly distorting generalisations required by the categories of theory. The success of her efforts has not been generally conceded. Judith Butler, for example, argues that the terms in which the French feminists have attempted to subvert imposed gender descriptions betrays an essentialising temper that finally confirms the cultural impositions that it tries to resist.46 The details of this debate within feminist theory are not, 45

Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defence of Reform in Liberal Education, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1997, pp. 111–112. 46 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, New York, Routledge, 1990. See also essays in Revaluing French Feminism, ed. Nancy Fraser and Sandra Lee Bartky, Bloomingdale & Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1992.


for our purposes, material its importance lies, rather, in its symptomatic expression of a major theme within contemporary feminist politics. The passionate refusal of all ascriptive generalisations of self-interpreted feminine difference that is shared by Irigaray and Butler and their common enthusiasm for the elaboration of novel identity descriptions is indicative of some major motivational influences at work in recent feminisms. Contemporary feminism draws upon Romantic anti-rationalising impulses and, has an allegiance also to the project of a democratic Enlightenment. The failure to recognise the ambiguous sources of its diverse interests and the attempt to homogenise distinct feminist motivations has tended to promote an undiscriminating assessment of the usefulness of Habermas’ attempt to theorise the possibilities for a reconstruction of the modern public sphere. Under certain descriptions of its goals, feminism can discover important sympathies with Habermas’ interest in renovating the emancipatory potentials of democratic Enlightenment. It can, in particular, use his recent account of the dialectical relations between private and public autonomy to reflect upon its opportunities for activating and radicalising the selfreforming potentials of liberal democratic social and political institutions. For Habermas, it is essential that the project of democratising the welfare state (which appears as the best chance for self-reforming liberal-democracies) insists on the responsiveness of decision-making political centres to need interpretations that are referred on from the informal publics at the margins. This is a model of the potentials of a modern public sphere that makes room for the importance of novel identity descriptions. Yet, while he is happy to appropriate the results of these critical energies insistent on the irreplaceable uniqueness of the particular and intolerant of all generalising self-description, Habermas insists that such energies must finally prove willing to subordinate their spirited self-preoccupation to the wider cause of an invigorated


project of democratic Enlightenment. Habermas does not want to acknowledge a separate framework for Romantic interpretations of the struggle for recognition. The risk here for feminism is that an attempt to squeeze diverse feminist commitments into the mould of democratic Enlightenment objectives will cause a debilitating alienation of those feminist motivations thirsty to experiment with novel descriptions of what it is to be a woman in the contemporary world. The rationalising commitments of democratic Enlightenment and the irrationalist focus of Romantic love for the particular suggest separate utopias that are not finally realisable in isolation. As mentioned, Habermas acknowledges that the self-reforming potentials of modern democracies are activated by demands placed on them by the need descriptions generated by transformative longings. A Romantic disdain for a future that seeks continuity with inherited commitments produces a set of need and identity claims that can be used to sharpen the critical focus of a radical reformism that aims at a discriminating re-working of chosen legacies. Equally, longings for the recognition an unrepeatable individuality rely upon the reproduction of shared commitments that extend recognition to the legitimacy of these self-explorations. Dialogue that acknowledges a mutual reliance between these two separate motivations is, I suggest, necessary to their equal protection and promotion. The general point has a specific relevance to the future of feminist politics. Many have commented on the waning enthusiasm in recent years for the trialing of new directions in feminist theory. This apparent tiredness can be interpreted as the outcome of a number of intersecting factors and sociological influences. At least part of the problem might, however, be attributed to a debilitating cul-de-sac reached by various strands within recent feminist theory. Unmediated by dialogue with a practical reform


agenda Romantic preoccupations with the beauty of the particular can lead to kind of claustrophobic fundamentalism that finally bores itself with its own protective, rigid conventionality. A constant insistence on the need to find the most secure way of defending the integrity of irreducible feminine difference threatens to produce the very constrained identity descriptions that are loathed by Romantic inclinations. Equally, if it cuts itself off from contributions from the hopes of transformative feminist longings, a reformist feminist politics can only lose an energising interest in its own radical possibilities.

Wayne Hudson

Postreligious Aesthetics and Critical Theory

That which deserved the name of glory in the sphere of metaphysics has been lost to view. Being no longer possesses any radiance, and beauty, banished from the transcendental dimension, is confined to a purely worldly reality. . . . Balthasar

Introduction In this essay I raise the problem of how Critical Theory can deal with the antimundane. To do so, in part one, I discuss the theological aesthetics of the Swiss German theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar1 and suggest that, despite its confessional and hieratic features, it can be read as an entry into a postreligious aesthetics. In part two, I consider what such a postreligious aesthetics might involve. In part three I explore the challenges that such aesthetics poses for the work of Jürgen Habermas and draw some possible implications for future forms of Critical Theory. Specifically,

1

Balthasar’s writings are little known in social-philosophical circles, partly because theology has ceased to be important for contemporary discussions generally. Apart from the objection that theology often seems to be no more than in-service talk for religious professionals, modern theologians have failed to make major intellectual contributions to the understanding of aesthetics or the arts, despite various attempts by leading figures, whether Calvinist (Rookmaaker), Reformed (Karl Barth), Catholic (Hans Küng) or neo-Orthodox (Paul Tillich) to do so. Of course, there are partial exceptions, such as the work of Vladimir Lossky; there are also neglected veins of gold in the less wellknown works of Fritz Buri and Heinrich Ott. On the whole however, epigonal assimilations of Heidegger, Jaspers, Adorno, and now Habermas, do not amount to substantive contributions.

134 • Wayne Hudson

I argue that Habermas cannot deal with the sensuous experiences of the antimundane that human beings actually have and that future forms of Critical Theory will need to do so. Whether they can do so using any form of Kantian philosophy is open to serious doubt. But if so, then Critical Theory in the future may need to explore alternatives to Kantianism, including several alternatives raised by contributors to this volume. Of course, no one is so naive as to imagine that rigorous theoricity is always compatible with attempting to engage with the qualitative depths of human experience. This, however, is a crucial issue which neither Habermas nor any other Critical Theorist has thus far resolved. I In recent years the theological aesthetics of the Swiss German theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) has attracted international attention as one of the major achievements of twentieth century theological thought.2 Balthasar attacks modern 2

For recent work on Balthasar, see F. Bowie and O. Davies, Hans von Balthasar: An Anthology, London, SPCK, 1990; L. Gardner, D. Modd, B. Qash and G. Ward, Balthasar at the End of Modernity, Edinburgh, T & T, 1999; R. Gawrouski, Word and Silence. Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Spiritual Encounter Between East and West, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996; E. T. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs Von Balthasar, New York, Continuum, 1994; L. Roberts, The Theological Aesthetics of Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Washington, Catholic University of America Press, 1992; D. L. Schindler, Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1991; ed. J. Riches, The Analogy of Beauty: The Theology of Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 1986; Murphy, F. A. Christ the Form of Beauty: A Study in Theology and Literature, Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 1995. See also V. B. R. Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagination, Beauty and Art, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999; A. Nichols, The Word Has been Abroad: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Aesthetics, Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 1998; No Bloodless Myth: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Dramatics, Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 2000; Say It Is Pentecost: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Logic, Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 2001; T. O’Meara, “Of Art and Theology: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Systems,” Theological Studies, 42, 1981, pp. 272–276; and L. Roberts, “A Critique of the Aesthetic Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” American Benedictine Review.

Postreligious Aesthetics and Critical Theory • 135

Western Christian theology as a decadent rationalism allied to a fideistic and form-less supernaturalism. Instead, he develops a theological aesthetics for which a super-form is manifested by historical facts, not symbols or allegories.3 A theological aesthetics, in Balthasar’s sense, is concerned with the conditions of the possibility of our seeing the appearance of the ‘form’ of the divine ‘glory’ (kabod) in nature and history.4 It is based on the claim that the non-mundane is communicated by the senses. Balthasar’s project is to reintegrate grace and nature, thought and feeling, body and mind, culture and theology, within a synthetic, comprehensive, theological reflection on form.5 For him the divinity of the invisible radiates in the visibility of the world, and the openness of every beautiful form expresses more than what goes into the thing formed. In this sense, aesthetic form manifests the divine ‘super-form’ and there is no need for theology to gesture emptily towards a mystery that lies entirely beyond the world.6 Instead, there is a primacy of history. In place of the Schein of a timeless mysterion, Balthasar argues that the antimundane is historical and manifests in material cultural productions. There is also a turn to contingent facts. Indeed, Balthasar writes of revelation establishing its own sensorium in the soul and of pistis developing into gnosis by a contemplative penetration of individual facts. Balthasar is not a gnostic, however, in the unorthodox worldrejecting sense. Nor is he advancing a neo-Platonist metaphysics. On the contrary, he retains the complex social process view of 3 H. U. von Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, Einsiedeln, Johannes Verlag, 1961–69, I, p. 432. 4 L. Roberts, The Theological Aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Washington, The Catholic University of America Press, 1987, p. 241. 5 L. Dupré, “The Glory of the Lord: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetic,” Communio, no. 16, Fall, 1989, pp. 183 ff. 6 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, IV, p. 34 and I, p. 422.


revelation characteristic of the Judaeo-Christian traditions. Consistent with the ‘ontological difference’, whether as articulated by Thomas Aquinas or by Martin Heidegger, Balthasar distinguishes between ‘inner-worldly beauty’ and ‘divine glory’. The ‘divine glory’ is not the glory of ‘being’.7 There is a divine mystery, but it remains intrinsically concealed. Appearances of ‘the beautiful’ point to a concealed reality, albeit to a reality that is capable of appearing. Just as ‘mimesis’ in Greek does not mean copying appearances, so the form of ‘the divine’ does not copy. Instead, it manifests a mystery that remains hidden. A theological aesthetics, in Balthasar’s sense, describes how non-mundane perfection becomes manifest, where such perfection consists in the correspondence between obedience and love, between selfemptying into hiddenness and being raised up into manifestness.8 Similarly, Balthasar’s theological aesthetics is not a philosophical aesthetics. On the contrary, it is based on a real divine emptying out in a motion downwards (kata). This means that Balthasar’s theological aesthetics is also not an aesthetical theology. Instead, it is an aesthetics, which insists in a very radical way upon the visibility of the antimundane, a visibility that allegedly cannot be understood in terms of the Western philosophical tradition. In a magnificent restatement of Patristic thought, Balthasar argues that human experience reveals a mystery that can neither be reduced to a passive immanence nor placed beyond the reach of the faculties in the manner of modern supernaturalist theology. But to say this is to link the intrinsic depth content of theology with anthropology, as secular Western thought, despite Feuerbach’s profound and little understood efforts, has persistently refused to do.9

7

L. Roberts, The Theological Aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar, p. 53. Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, VII, p. 261. 9 For a positive reading of Feuerbach’s claims, see A. Van Harvey, Feuerbach and the Interpretation of Religion, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995. 8


Balthasar claims that human beings, when appropriately infused, can perceive the non-sensuous sensuously. His claim that human beings can see the form of grace (cf. Origen’s kastastasis) is a major rejection of the apophanticism of the Western tradition. Significantly, he links this move with eschatology. The ‘glory of the Lord’ can be seen, but it is an eschatological category.10 In this way, Balthasar’s claim that the non-mundane is graspable by human beings, but is not available as an inner-worldly reality to them, escapes the divide, re-inscribed in a secular form by post-Enlightenment Western cultures, between grace and nature. In effect, Balthasar argues that we can appropriate contents that neither simply belong to the world (as most post-Enlightenment thinkers assume all contents must), nor transcend it such that they are only accessible in mystical or supernatural experience (as supernaturalist theologians have tended to argue). Accordingly, any sense of reality as there or not there is made complex. Balthasar also rejects any dualism between ‘human beings’ and ‘nature’. He resurrects Greek and Latin Patristics, including the Biblical gnosis found in the writings of Clement and Origen. The result is an aporetical ontology of the real as always involved in social relations, such that our decisions determine the reality we experience. Accordingly Balthasar’s theological aesthetics is complemented by a ‘theological dramatics’, which studies human responses to the Word, and by a ‘theological logic’, concerned with how the appearance of the divine glory is understood by the intellect and processed by the analytical operations of reason. Balthasar also offers a perspective from which to challenge modern aesthetics based on taste or judgement. He does so by reasserting the case for an aesthetics of the kalon, understood as the 10 Here Balthasar’s work is influenced by the Greek church Fathers, by Ignatius of Loyola, and by the distinguished philosophical anthropologist Erich Przywara.


whole, the sound, the shining. The modern term ‘the beautiful’ is unavoidable here, but it is inadequate for what is meant. An aesthetics of transcendental beauty implies that there is an intrinsic link between beauty and goodness, and that everything beautiful indicates, in some measure, a beauty higher than inner worldly beauty. Balthasar implies that modern philosophy does not possess adequate concepts with which to think the world as it appears to us because the material realities around us have modes or ‘characters’ that add nothing to what there is, but are not graspable by reference to finites. This is a powerful claim because it implies that Balthasar’s stress on ‘divine glory’ challenges neo-Kantian attempts, from Hermann Cohen to Lyotard, to reduce ‘glory’ to a purely subjective humanist sublime, explicable in terms of the capacity of the faculties of the subject to grasp or fail to grasp Ideas. According to Balthasar the radiance of the divine ‘glory’ comes from the form, not from the subject.11 What is seen is the doxa of the form: the kalon (from kalein: to call) has a vocative dimension. Balthasar’s work also challenges the self-enclosed account of human experience on which modern secular humanism is based. For him human experience is pervaded by the non-mundane, which cannot be registered in a merely humanist aesthetics. It has dimensions, which regimented neo-Kantian disciplines (Wissenschaften) have rendered speechless. Of course, attempts to understand human experience as open to a radically Other that conceals itself, even when it reveals itself, are hardly new. Both Kierkegaard and later Shestov argued that the phenomenology of such experiences problematised traditional metaphysical understandings of reality. There was a related radicalism in the dialectic of the invisible and the invisible in the late philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. Levinas and Derrida also revisited this ter-

11

Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, IV, p. 31.


rain. Balthasar‘s theological aesthetics, however, goes further because it challenges what Hans Blumenberg calls ‘the absolutism of reality’.12 What Balthasar has achieved by his theological aesthetics is a recovery for contemporary consciousness of the differential heterogeneity of experience. This claim, which can be argued through in Humean terms or in more linguistic terms,13 does not imply that the world has to be understood in one particular ethically formative way. It is a point about level distinctions that need to be marked, whatever ethically formative understanding of the world we adopt, if what can be said is not to be significantly restricted. Finally, despite its theological character, Balthasar’s corpus provides a point of entry into the project of a postreligious aesthetics that inherits his utopian surplus, without his confessional interpretations.14 Although Balthasar’s aesthetics can be read as the work of a Christian theologian, the amazing thing about Balthasar’s theological aesthetics is that any rationalist can understand it. In Ernst Bloch’s language, the utopian surplus is clear, and we can identify the structures of experience Balthasar evokes so brilliantly without entering deeply into the hermeneutics in terms of which he himself attempts to interpret them. This in itself suggests that a rehabilitation of transcendentalism may be possible which differs from transcendentalism in its ancient Greek, scholastic, and modern European forms. For Balthasar ‘transcendental’ need not imply a-historical generality.15 Nor need

12

See H. Blumenberg, Work on Myth, trans. R. Wallace, Cambridge, MIT, 1985, part one, chpt. 1. For discussion and analysis of the work of Hans Blumenberg, see W. Hudson, “After Blumenberg: Historicism and Philosophical Anthropology,” History of the Human Sciences, vol. 6, no. 4, 1993, pp. 109–116. 13 P. Unger, Philosophical Relativity, Oxford, Blackwell, 1984, chaps 1 and II. 14 Cf. the discussion of Bloch’s doctrine of utopian surplus in W. Hudson, The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Bloch, London and New York, Macmillan and St Martins, 1982, pp. 106–9, 173–183. 15 The literature on what Germans mean by transcendental philosophy in


‘transcendental’ refer to a reality that can be objectified independently of the human physical organisation. Rather the point is that the antimundane traverses some of what human beings with species-specific characteristics experience, and it does so in ways that create vertical, and in that sense, transcendental effects. On this basis, it is possible to explore the possibility of a postreligious aesthetics, which not only does not surrender the depth content of the antimundane, but also does not save it in a confessional sense. II But what would a postreligious aesthetics look like? As a technical prospection in one of many possible versions, the possibility of a postreligious aesthetics arises because human beings experience the antimundane as a normal feature of their embodied subjectivity. This fact can be theorised in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the living body. According to Merleau-Ponty the body is the ontological basis for reason, imagination and perception. Both art and the schemata of the imagination arise from the experience of embodiment, although the universal body scheme is exemplified in a purality of experiences.16 Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the flesh, including the experience of its intentionality towards the world enacted by bodily motility, is only one model however, and the more fundamental issue is the need to take the actual experiences human beings have seriously, even if this requires a form of post-rationalism. English tends to down play the metaphysical dimension of this tradition. See W. Leinfellner, “The Development of Transcendentalism—Kant, Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein,” in eds. K. S. Johannssen and R. Nordenstam, Wittgenstein— Aesthetics and Transcendental Philosophy, Vienna, Hölder-Tempsky, 1981, pp. 54–69 and, now, J. Malpas, From Kant to Davidson: Philosophy and the Idea of the Transcendental, New York, Routledge, 2002. 16 For Merleau-Ponty on the body, see eds. F. Evans and L. Lawlor, Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty’s Notion of Flesh, Albany, State Univerity of New York, 2000.


A postreligious aesthetics would not break with ‘religion’ in the sense of the claim that reality includes antimundane dimensions. However, it would move beyond ‘religion’ as a hermeneutics for understanding the antimundane. It would do so on the grounds that more naturalist approaches to understanding the antimundane are now available. Today advanced techno-scientific cultures are arguably moving out of the social processes in which the repression of the antimundane was crucial to the success of early industrialism, and to the moralising religion that was its counterpart.17 In this context it is becoming increasingly possible to view religious organisations of human spirituality more critically, without underwriting an Enlightenment hostility to the antimundane phenomenological data to which religions witness. At a time when religious organisational forms no longer provide adequate responses to the problem of how human beings can best sustain spiritual value systems and practices under conditions of exceedingly fast social change, there are many reasons to rethink the antimundane in this way, especially in the context of possible social reforms. A postreligious aesthetics of the kind envisaged here would explore the historically changing conditions of the intelligibility of antimundane aesthetic experiences with an eye to clarifying their potential significance for attempts to generate alternative social organisational arrangements. Understood in this way, a postreligious aesthetics would not be about ‘art’ as a domain of objects in an allegedly autonomous aesthetic sphere. It would be about grasping the effects of aesthetic phenomena on mortal bodies under contemporary conditions, where these effects may be a source of socially useful

17 Cf. P. Koslowski, Die Postmoderne Kultur: Gesellschaftlich-Kulturelle Konsequenzen der technischen Entwicklung, Munich, Beck, 1987; and his Die religiöse Dimension der Gesellschaft Religion und ihre Theorie, Tübingen, Mohr, 1985.


knowledges.18 These useful knowledges could include the selfknowledges of historically changing subjects. Obviously an aesthetics of this sort would not be a philosophical aesthetics in a neo-Kantian sense. Nor would it confine the phenomena with which it deals to exotica set apart by protocols of distinction. Rather it would be a component of a morally serious and historically sensitive naturalism. Such a perspective sits oddly at first with dominant understandings of aesthetics. There are now many critiques of aesthetics as an independent specialised philosophical discipline (Wissenschaft), but there is no universally accepted conception of aesthetics.19 Attempts to base aesthetics on the philosophy of history are also largely discredited, and attempts to characterise the specificity (Besonderheit) of ‘the aesthetic’ have floundered, at least temporarily, on an inability to mark off the aesthetic from the non-aesthetic within the culturally valorised productions of contemporary Western cultures.20 Hence art is no longer neces-

18

Such a research program should not be confused with calls for the reenchantment of art or with conservative attempts to return to John Ruskin’s watered down version of theoria. 19 See, for example, J. A. Passmore, “The Dreariness of Aesthetics,” (1951) reprinted in W. Eldon, Aesthetics and Language, Oxford, Blackwell, 1984, pp. 35–55; T. Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Oxford, Blackwell, 1990; ed. H. Foster, The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, Port Townsend, Bay Press, 1983; V. Burgin, The End of Art Theory: Criticism and Postmodernity, London, Macmillan, 1986; G. Vattimo, “The Death or Decline of Art,” in The End of Modernity, trans. J. R. Snyder, Cambridge, Polity, 1988, ch. 3. Compare T. Bennett’s discussion of “Really Useless Knowledge: A Political Critique of Aesthetics,” in Outside Literature, London, Routledge, 1991, chpt. 6, and more recently, W. Welsch, Undoing Aesthetics, New York, Sage, 1997. On art history, see D. Preziosi, Rethinking Art History Meditations on a Coy Science, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1988, L. Niethammer, Has History Ended? trans. P. Camiller, London, Verso, 1992, Hans Belting, The End of Art History, trans. C. Wood, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1987; and A. Danto, After the End of Art, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1997. 20 G. Lukács, Über die Besonderheit als Kategorie der Ästhetik, Darmstadt, Luchterhand, 1967.


sarily expected to be beautiful, and the production of beauty is less and less a separate type of institutionally specific social activity. Nor do post-Wittgensteinian attempts to rewrite aesthetics from a third rather than a first person point of view offer a convincing way out of the difficulties associated with general conceptions of ‘the aesthetic’. On the contrary, the heterogeneity of the matters covered by talk of ‘the aesthetic’ and ‘aesthetic phenomena’ makes it hard to defend any approach, which assumes a unified set of enquiries, even though nominalism also fails to provide an adequate basis for a rational approach to aesthetic data. And yet it is not that long ago that philosophical aesthetics appeared relatively secure. Ferenc Fehér and Agnes Heller, for example, in “The Necessity and Irreformability of Aesthetics,” argued that aesthetics as a philosophical discipline was necessary because arguments about the validity of aesthetic judgement were indispensable: Aesthetics is, consequently, irreformable, in the sense that its antinomic character is untranscendable. Therefore, its ‘sources of error’ are ineliminable as well. On the other hand, it is indispensable. At both poles (i.e. of inductive art criticism and philosophical aesthetics) efforts need to be made to avoid, or at least to minimise, the inherent dangers of the respective standpoints. Deductive criticism has to question the process of validation of its value judgements with respect to the individuality and distinctiveness of works of art. Similarly, inductive criticism has to question the validity of its particular judgements with respect to their value beyond the present moment. It is a postulate of art that the value of the artwork and the validity of the aesthetic judgement concerning it should be in unison.21

21 F. Fehér and A. Heller, “The Necessity and Irreformability of Aesthetics,” in eds. A. Heller and F. Fehér, Reconstructing Aesthetics: Writings of the Budapest School, Oxford, Blackwell, 1986, p. 21.


Such claims, however, are hardly self-evident, not only because they bypass the problem of anti-aesthetic cultural production, but also because they assume a Kantian conception of what aesthetics is. But such a conception is arguably inadequate to the sensuous subject matter with which aesthetics deals. Since its inauguration as a separate philosophical discipline by Alexander Baumgarten (1750), aesthetics has been crucially linked with sensory experience (aisthesis) considered in the context of conceptual inquiries (Wissenschaft), but Kantian philosophy has tended to drown out the importance of sensory experience in favour of a formal rationalism of aesthetic judgements. A contemporary postreligious aesthetics would seek to moderate this state of affairs. On the other hand, contemporary critiques of aesthetics are less than reassuring. Many contemporary critiques of aesthetics are absurdly Eurocentric. There is much discussion of Schiller and Kant and Derrida, but little about Japanese or Chinese or Indian or Islamic aesthetics, even though the questions raised by such European philosophers involve empirical claims to which nonWestern materials are pertinent.22 Even within the Western tradition, one has only to pose the challenges of Plotinian aesthetics or medieval transcendental aesthetics or Renaissance phantasmic aesthetics to see how narrow and historically restricted many current critiques of aesthetics are. Contemporary critiques of aesthetics are also weak on references to actual natural scientific findings and often falsely assume that human animals primarily construct and value certain types of objects for historical and socio-cultural reasons.23 There is also a persistent failure to study

22 On Renaissance theories of phantasm see I. P. Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, trans. M. Cook, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1987, chpt. 1 “Phantasms at Work.” 23 Among a considerable natural scientific literature, see T. Reutschler, B. Herzberger and D. Epstein, Beauty and the Brain: Biological Aspects of Aesthetics, Basel, Birkhäusler, 1988, part V.


the effects cultural productions actually have—to analyse ‘didactics’ in the Renaissance sense. Instead, nostalgia for aesthetics as an ethos or way of life lives on in discourses that make no attempt to study the differentiality and diffusion of ethical effects. A neoKantian generality survives, even in writers who pride themselves on their post-Kantian commitments. This is true both of Frankfurt School theorists, who tend to assume that ‘art’ is valuable per se, and of those primarily influenced by recent forms of French philosophy.24 There is also a widespread failure to engage with the cognitive character of aesthetic experiences. Indeed, it is often assumed that any value found in cultural productions, aesthetic or anti-aesthetic, is socially constructed, that such productions matter because they excite emotions and change attitudes rather than because of any cognitive contents that they convey, and that judgements about such value primarily have to do with highly plastic formations of human subjectivity rather than with attributes of actual works.25 Contemporary culturalists, in other words, accept the assumptions of modern subjective humanism, including the notion that aesthetic objects are constructions of the senses of the subject, even when they adopt explicitly anti-humanist or posthumanist positions in certain respects.26 But culturalist approaches to aesthetic data of this type can be questioned on both phenomenological and natural scientific grounds.27 24 For comparison, see F. Schuon, “Foundations for an Integral Aesthetics,” Studies in Comparative Religion, Summer 1976, pp. 130–35. 25 For the view that all value is radically contingent, see B. H. Smith, Contingencies of Value, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1988, chpt. 3. Cf. P. Bourdieu, Distinction, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1984, and, more recently, “The Historical Genres of a Pure Aesthetic,” in R. Shusterman, Analytic Aesthetics, Oxford, Blackwell, 1989. 26 See J. Pefanis, Heterology and the Postmodern: Bataille, Baudrillard and Lyotard, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1991. 27 Here account needs to be taken of the phenomenological turn in recent French philosophy and the work of Jean-Luc Marion, in particular. See


Certainly it is no longer possible to rule out on secularist grounds the possibility of a postreligious aesthetics that questions the anti-naturalism of subjective humanism and denies that human experience can be adequately understood in terms of the organisation of an inner-worldly subject.28 For such an aesthetics the antimundane is basic to human experience and necessarily involves a verticality that confronts the human subject. Such a view does not deny that human subjectivity has irreducible dimensions.29 Nor does it underestimate the constitutive role of historically changing networks of institutions and practices. It does, however, imply that a more finite and determinate view of our own place in the world is preferable to modern subjective humanism. Such an aesthetics may be filled out in terms of a biologically based realism about universals. Here the work of the American philosopher of art and aesthetics Nicholas Wolterstorff is pertinent. Wolterstorff argues for a projectivist aesthetics based on the ontological limitations on the possible: If we reject Romanticism in the arts and approach art from the side of its social practices, and if the philosophy of art we then develop rejects the Kantian/Hegelian dialectic and adopts instead

Dominique Janicaud et al., Phenomenology and the ‘Theological Turn’: The French Debate, New York, Fordham University Press, 2000, and Jean-Luc Marion, Prolegomena to Charity, New York, Fordham University Press, 2002, and The Idol and Distance: Five Studies, New York, Fordham University Press, 2001. 28 The debates between Balthasar and the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth can be usefully reread here by an approach, which interprets both of their theological hermeneutics from a realist standpoint. See Balthasar’s important study, Karl Barth, Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie, Cologne, Hegner, 1951, translated by J. Drury, The Theology of Karl Barth, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. 29 For an excellent collection, see the special issue of Topoi, vol. 7, no. 2, 1988: Who Comes After the Subject? In a related spirit, see Derrida’s important essay ‘Introduction: Desistance” to P. Lacoue-Labarthe, Typography Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1989, pp. 1–42.

Postreligious Aesthetics and Critical Theory • 147 a Realist orientation, then we will see the social practices of art as dealing not just with actuality but with possibility and impossibility; and not just with particulars but with properties and actions and kinds. The fictioneer neither makes a world nor imitates a world, but selects from the vast realm of possibility and impossibility a segment thereof, a ‘world’, for us to consider. Among the many benefits of a Realist philosophy of art is that it offers us a cogent and powerful way of explaining what it is to project a world.30

He rejects subjective humanist accounts of what concepts are in favour of the view that concepts are graspings of real states of affairs in the world: The Realist rejects the Kantian claim that we have no intellectual intuitions. He holds that there are predicables and propositions (states of affairs), and that, of many of these, we have a grasp. He thinks of concepts—some of them, anyway—as graspings of predicables. And he holds that some of the predicables that we grasp are instantiated and are known by us to be instantiated. Reality, though not made by us, is thus also not alien to us. Concepts are not mental representations screening reality from us. Neither are they modes of organisation imposed on unorganised protean stuff . . . We are at home in the world—without having made it.31

Wolterstorff argues that human cultural strivings are strictly limited by the fact that we live in a universe with determinate repertoires and characters. Realism of this sort requires ontological determinacy, in the sense of restrictions, which persist as long as the world is organised in some and not other ways. It rejects the current uncritical denial of all ‘generality’, and focuses instead

30

See N. Wolterstorff, Works and Worlds of Art, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1980, especially part seven ‘Projected and Actual’, and ‘Art in Action’, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1988. 31 N. Wolterstorff, “After Analysis and Romanticism,” in ed. R. Shusterman, Analytic Aesthetics, Oxford, Blackwell, 1989, pp. 55–6.


on relating the surplus given with aesthetic phenomena to possibilities with a basis in the world. III I now discuss the implications of such a prospection of a postreligious aesthetics for the work of Jürgen Habermas and for the future of Critical Theory. Habermas’ greatness as a social philosopher is well established and his work now helps to raise the level of rational debate about political and social questions in many countries. Nonetheless, Habermas cannot deal with a postreligious aesthetics of the type discussed here because his version of Critical Theory, for all its complex and highly contestable methodological claims, cannot deal effectively either with sensuousness as human beings experience it or with antimundane dimensions of the world mediated by the senses. This suggests that the conception of rationality on which Habermas’ entire program is based is flawed in so far as it rests upon a formal rationality, which cannot grasp the rationality immanent in phenomena.32 In a contemporary context the attempt to separate sensuousness from rationality seems misconceived, as both Hegel and Heidegger understood.33 Once rationality is divorced from sensuousness, however, subjectivity becomes a mystery for which clear data cannot be found. Yet without a proper account of subjectivity as mediating rationality it is difficult to establish grounds for criticism that go to the qualitative character of actual states of affairs. It is no accident that Schelling and Bloch found a basis for criticism in non-conceptual knowledge and objective imagination

32

See eds. D. Freundlieb and W. Hudson, Reason and Its Other: Rationality in Modern German Philosophy and Culture, Oxford, Berg, 1993. 33 For Hegel on aesthetics see R. Wicks, Hegel’s Theory of Aesthetic Judgment, New York, Peter Lang, 1994, and for Heidegger on aesthetics, see J. J. Kockelmans, Heidegger on Art and Art Objects, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1988.


respectively, whereas Habermas is forced back to the lowlands of neo-Kantian formality.34 To pursue the point even further, because Habermas has no theory of sensuousness and no historical sociology of the senses, it is doubtful that he can ever construct an adequate account of experience. It is not merely that he has no adequate philosophical anthropology, and the contrast here with Hegel or even with the philosophical anthropologist Arnold Gehlen is striking, but that he lacks adequate means with which to discuss the contents of the world at all.35 Habermas has no theory of the body, and so no theory of the role the body plays in either aesthetic or religious experience. As a result, he has no appropriate account of imagination or perception, and no account of the actually appearing natural world. This means that he has no critical purchase on the world human beings actually see, experience, and live in. Because Habermas cannot deal with the experiences that embodied human subjects have, he cannot generate an adequate account of aesthetics or religion, both of which depend on the experiences of biologically mortal bodies. Consistent with this, Habermas cannot develop adequate accounts of two of the most important areas of value-laden communication: aesthetic and religious experience. It is his failure to achieve theoretic capacity in the whole domain that explains his well-known inadequacies when it comes to specificities. Habermas notoriously fails to engage with actual

34

For Schelling, art is a form of creativity in which our nonconceptual knowledge of ourselves (intellektuelle Anschauung) manifests itself. See D. Jähnig, Schelling: Die Kunst in der Philosophie, 2 vols, Pfüllingen, Neske, 1966. 35 On the philosophy of institutions, see A. Gehlen, Studien zur Anthropologie und Soziologie, Berlin, Luchterhand, 1963, and Man in the Age of Technology trans. P. Lipscomb, New York, Columbia University Press, 1980. For discussion see K. O. Apel, “Arnold Gehlens Philosophie der Institutionen und die Metainstitution der Sprache” in Transformation der Philosophie, I, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1973, pp. 197–221.


works of art and so cannot engage with issues that only manifest at the level of detail. He is also confined to Eurocentric materials, despite the undeniable importance of world art and Chinese, Japanese and Korean aesthetics for educated discussion of the significance of works of art in the context of Critical Theory. Moreover, Habermas’ theory of communicative action does not seriously address non-Western or pre-modern data.36 He also has no way of relating actual art works to the specific and historically changing conditions of aesthetic ‘sense’. Habermas is even less well equipped when confronted by religious experience, even though he concedes that religious symbols have unsaturated semantic potential and even though his approach to religion is much more sophisticated than has often been supposed.37 And again he fails to deal with specificities such as Buddhism and Islam, despite their manifest importance. This matters for his project because it means that he cannot adequately draw on two of the most important sources of critical perspectives but instead is forced to reduce them to forms of rationality. The late Habermas might be happy to emphasise that both forms of experience involve ‘world disclosure’, but he has no theoretical vocabulary in which to say what that disclosure is, especially if both turn out to involve the antimundane. Moreover, these failures pose problems for his theory of commu-

36

For discussion of Habermas’s attempts to integrate aesthetics within his account of communicative rationality, see D. Ingram, “Habermas on Aesthetics and Rationality: Completing the Project of Enlightenment,” in New German Critique, no. 53, 1991, pp. 67–103. 37 For an excellent collection of essays, see Jürgen Habermas, Religion and Rationality. Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity, London, Polity, 2002. It is true that the late Habermas retreats from his early view that dissolution of religious consciousness is desirable and from the notion that religion can be replaced by a rational theology in contemporary society. Nonetheless, the secular character of his approach remains unchanged.


nicative action even in its own terms because Habermas is unable to explain how deep meanings modify human beings in the world. Yet without a theory of how deep meanings arise or an adequate account of subjectivity it is arguably impossible to analyse the most important acts of communication, above all acts of love. In Habermas’ defence, it may be said that he confines himself to epistemologically secure enterprises. This is largely true, and he has, to be fair, avoided the grotesque political judgements and the lurid irrationalisms, which have tempted other less cautious critical thinkers from Berdyaev among the Russians to Foucault among the French. On the other hand, Habermas’ abstinence comes at an extremely high price, especially since it may be possible after all to conceive of an alternative basis for Critical Theory, without falling into the fool’s gold of either grandiose philosophical theories for which no adequate rational justification can be found or deflationary social science programs which ultimately have little critical purchase. On the other hand, once it is accepted that antimundane contents appear in human experiences and should not be left out of account by those attempting to decide how human persons and cultures should be shaped, the possibility of a more world engaging Critical Theory arguably opens up. Obviously Critical Theory cannot offer a worldview or fulfil roles once fulfilled by religion in the West. It could, however, adopt a conception of criticism as rational reflection upon the experiences of the mortal body. Connecting contemplation, criticism and embodiment in this way would be a reprise of anticipations of such a possibility in Renaissance art criticism and physiognomics. This, in turn, suggests that Critical Theory can operate with a stronger theory of sensuous experience than Habermas, as ever the nervous neo-Kantian epistemologist, allows. Of course, this is partly to concede that Walter Benjamin was right when he argued that there was a


need to develop an alternative to flat Enlightenment theories of experience.38 It also suggests that there is a need to develop a theory of rationality that can be applied to the experiences of embodied subjects rather than a theory of rationality that is often confined to their status as reason givers.39 Here again Habermas’ work is deficient. Because he adopts a shrunken conception of rationality, Habermas cannot draw upon or make use of nondiscursive ways of creating meaning and orientation, including those anchored in spiritual experiences. A Critical Theory more sensitive to embodiment would arguably have greater resources in this respect. Of course, such Critical Theory would have to learn from Schelling to privilege actual works of art and matters of contingent fact over the empty conceptuality, which we might describe as Kant’s Lutheran scholastic misreception of the logic of Duns Scotus. Once, however, account is taken of actual cultural productions and of the material achievements of the past (so often neglected by modernity), then a Critical Theory could indeed deal with the antimundane by construing it sensuously in the context of body performances, including performances that can be enhanced by training. It could also relate antimundane experiences to ecologies of differential spatialities in place of the flat spatialities associated with the Enlightenment. In this way it would make possible substantive modifications to the Enlightenment secularism, which has often coloured Critical Theory at the price of cutting it off from Christian, Moslem, Buddhist and Hindu populations.

38 Re-emphasising experience in this way also captures Dieter Henrich’s research into our experience of a never representable and ungraspable ground. For an excellent discussion, see D. Freundlieb, Dieter Henrich and Contemporary Philosophy: The Return to Subjectivity, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003. 39 See eds. D. Freundlieb and W. Hudson, Reason and Its Other: Rationality in Modern German Philosophy and Culture.


Critical Theory of this sort would reassert a worldly rationalism theorised on naturalist and ecological premises. It would be closer to Duns Scotus than to Habermas in taking metaphysics and logic to be primary, and in no way historically defeasible concerns. It would be closer to Marx than to Habermas in regarding the analysis of actual economic conditions as central to an historical rationalism. It would be closer to Schelling than to Habermas in seeking to integrate criticism with a rational philosophy of nature. Critical Theory of this sort would also require a philosophical anthropology that transcends the limitations of European philosophical anthropology, without abandoning its immensely rich heritage.40 Significantly, pace Richard Rorty, Critical Theory of this sort need not be non-foundational. On the contrary, it could provide ‘foundations’ for its critical claims of a finitist anthropomorphic variety that are as strong as we are likely to get. Likewise, a reformulated Critical Theory of this sort would sit well with a historicised approach to the human senses, and with aesthetics.41 No doubt, in a more fully theorised form, it would require a developed theory of subjectivity (Freundlieb, this volume), an account of imaginative horizons (Rundell, this volume), and at least some elements of a philosophy of nature (Douglas, this volume). Of course, developments in these directions would take Critical Theory away from the neo-Kantian formality to which Habermas is committed towards social and cultural criticism informed by the penetration of contingent facts and specific body performances,42 but this would be compatible with

40 For detailed discussion, see my The Reform of Utopia, London, Ashgate, 2004, in press, chapter 3 and Appendix 2. 41 A program to historicise aesthetics also qualifies the work of recent French philosophers such as Lyotard and Derrida. Cf. D. Carroll, Paraesthetics: Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida, New York, Methuen, 1987, esp. chpt. 8. 42 This perspective integrates many recent discussions seeking to combine


combining theoretical and performative perspectives on a range of problems. It might therefore contribute to a clarification of the endemic aporia at the heart of Critical Theory viz. how Theory and Criticism can be satisfactorily combined without overburdening Theory or blunting Criticism.

the work of Foucault with Critical Theory. It suggests how to reconcile the need for a plurality of critical discourses with explorations of diverse ‘aesthetics of existence’. See T. Osbourne, “Critical Spirituality: On Ethics and Politics in the Later Foucault” in S. Ashenden and D. Owen, Foucault Contra Habermas: Recasting the Dialogue Between Genealogy and Critical Theory, London, Sage, 1999, chapter 2; and P. Hohendahl and J. Fisher, Critical Theory: Current State and Future Prospects, New York, Berghahn Books, 2001.

Peter Douglas

Habermas, Schelling and Nature

Introduction This essay argues that it is possible to draw a connection between Habermas’ avoidance of the problem of ultimate foundations and his scientistic conception of nature.1 The point of departure is what Habermas has described as “[t]he unavoidable (for the time being?) circle in which we have to move as soon as we tackle problems that are equivalent to the traditional problem of ultimate foundations.”2 In Habermas this ‘circle’ manifests as the paradox of maintaining, within a transcendental framework, a notion of ‘nature-in-itself’ that is simultaneously an abstraction required by thought as well as its ground. Rather than being interpreted solely as a problem, though, the argument here is that this paradox exposes an opportunity to question the premise that our knowledge of, and interaction with, the ‘natural world’ is necessarily orientated towards emancipation from its constraints via the technical control of its scientifically objectified processes. Using the work of Schelling as a template, it will be argued that it is possible to promote a more positive relation to

1

For material relevant to this argument, see Jürgen Habermas, “Die Philosophie als Platzhalter und Interpret,” Moralbewusstsein und kommunikatives Handeln, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, translated in After Philosophy: End of Transformation? Eds Kenneth Baynes et al., Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1987; Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays, trans. W. M. Hohengarten, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1992; and The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, trans. C. Cronin & P. de Grieff, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1998. 2 Jürgen Habermas, Theory and Practice, trans. John Viertel, Boston, Beacon Press, 1974, p. 285, note 38.

156 • Peter Douglas

nature than one subsumed under the logic of instrumental action: one that maintains that if nature precedes thought, then we need to ground our thinking in an understanding of a primitive relation between subject and nature. The choice of Schelling may seem paradoxical in itself given that Habermas is fully aware of, and rejects as failures, Schelling’s repeated attempts to resolve the problem of ultimate foundations.3 However Schelling’s significance in this context is not to be found in the details of any attempted resolution, but in the implications that he draws from the problem. Habermas and the Problem of Ultimate Foundations The unwelcome though stubborn presence of the notion of ‘naturein-itself’ in Habermas’ work indicates, as he concedes, that the traditional problem of ultimate foundations is compellingly resilient. His post-metaphysical reliance on the possibility of intersubjective consensus, which is intended to overcome the ontological separation of the transcendental and the empirical, seems only to have forestalled the problem of the ground of the necessary relation between the knowing subject and the object known, between language and the world. This becomes evident when the question is addressed of how, within language, we are to understand the distinction between propositional and prepropositional experience. Bowie has characterised this dilemma as “the tension between conceptions of language as the medium of propositional asser-

3 Habermas’ doctoral dissertation, Das Absolute und die Geschichte. Von der Zwiespältigkeit in Schellings Denken (University of Bonn, 1954) addressed in an historical and systematic fashion the repeated attempts of Schelling and his contemporaries to solve the problem of ultimate foundations. See Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1984, p. 403.

Habermas, Schelling and Nature • 157

tion and of language as the medium of world-disclosure,”4 which is reflected in a growing realisation that the linguistic turn was achieved at the expense of attention to our pre-propositional relationship to language. Habermas’ position depends on the validity of the distinction between discourses of legitimation (problem-solving) and articulations of experiences such as those associated with religious and aesthetic expressions (world-disclosure). He admits that the world-disclosing semantic potential of the latter cannot currently be included in the former, but maintains the possibility of this occurring in a future ideal speech situation. As Bowie points out, Habermas “thereby repeats on a less speculative level the Hegelian move of suggesting that there is a higher truth which is arrived at by raising intuition to the level of the concept.”5 The predicament for Habermas is that his post-metaphysical perspective requires the assertion of an absolute difference between rationality and interpretation, which it is not entitled to, as the delineation of such a difference must arise through intersubjective consensus. For the purposes of this essay what is more important than this illegitimate recourse to an a priori difference between rationality and interpretation, is that the promise of overcoming this difference acts to forestall the need for a conception of the real outside of language. If, as Habermas argues, “[o]ur first sentence expresses unequivocally the intention of a universal and unconstrained consensus,” even if such a consensus must be continually tested in the contingencies of intersubjective communication, then it is this promise that the world-disclosing capacity of interpretive discourse can eventually be subsumed within the legitimating discourse of propositional language that defers indefinitely

4 Andrew Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction, London & New York, Routledge, 1993, p. 183. 5 Ibid., p. 186.


the need for a ground that both propositional and pre-propositional aspects of language would refer to.6 This means that even though the need for an ultimate foundation in the form of a conception of the real outside of language can be indefinitely deferred, it could only be foreclosed in the event of the attainment of an unequivocal and enduring universal agreement. In Habermas’ defence, it might be argued that the indefinite deferral of the attainment of an ideal speech situation does not imply the mere forestalling of the need to consider a ground outside of language, as what is to be attained is held to be internal to communication. However, the potential for truth in any intersubjective communicative act does not guarantee its eventual actuality, and as Manfred Frank has argued, it is the absence of such a guarantee that both institutes and maintains the movement towards intersubjective consensus: . . . we would not even need to set off on the road of intersubjective agreement . . . if this agreement were a priori (or intersubjectively) guaranteed. But it is not guaranteed; and the fact that it is not is a result of the irreducible plurality of individual worlddisclosure, without which there would be no pressure of motivation in the direction of interindividual agreement. We must come to agreement with each other as individuals, but not although, but rather because we cannot build on a system of agreement which is agreed in advance. If this were not the case the conception of truth as intersubjective consensus would lose its meaning: it would no longer be a specifically post-metaphysical alternative to the classical-ontological theory of truth.7

If there is no guarantee that the ideal speech situation can be actualised, then there is no firm basis upon which to insist that

6

Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1987, p. 314. 7 Manfred Frank, Stil in der Philosophie, Stuttgart, Reclam, 1992, p. 83, cited in Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction, p. 188.


the distinction between language practices can be delineated and overcome in intersubjective consensus. Without this guarantee there is also no legitimate reason for avoiding the question of what it is that sustains these distinctions. And if we agree with Frank that the plurality of individual world-disclosure is irreducible, and the history of thought gives us no justification for thinking otherwise, then it is feasible to conclude that this irreducibility is the result of something that is not a matter of validity claims. In Habermas this something reveals itself in the notion of naturein-itself, which, as he admits, “designates a natura naturans that has created both subjective nature and what confronts it as objective nature.”8 The dilemma, as McCarthy has explained, is that nature as transcendentally constituted cannot also be the prehistorical ground of the constituting subject.9 As transcendentally constituted, nature appears or is disclosed subject to technical interests in the prediction and control of its objectified processes. In this sense, nature-in-itself is not an unknowable. However, the system of instrumental action is presumed to have a prehistory in nature. In response to the obvious problem involved with an understanding of nature bound to the conditions of instrumental action advancing an account of what was prior to the emergence of these conditions, Habermas argues that a theory of human evolution will have to include a reflection on nature that is not bound to these conditions: . . . a theory of evolution which is expected to explain emergent properties characteristic of the socio-cultural life-form—in other words, to explain the constituents of social systems as part of natural history—cannot, for its part, be developed within the transcendental framework of objectifying sciences. If the theory of

8 9

Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, p. 286. See McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas, pp. 110–125.

160 • Peter Douglas evolution is to assume these tasks, it cannot wholly divest itself of the form of a reflection on the prehistory of culture that is dependent on a prior understanding of the socio-cultural life-form.10

This moderation of the epistemological claim that knowledge of nature is bound within the framework of instrumental action indicates a change of emphasis from a unitary model of cognitive interests, to one that is more ready to admit a relation between “scientific object-domains” and “objectifications which we find pre-given in ordinary life.”11 We are still left with the fundamental tenet that “[w]hat raises us out of nature is the only thing whose nature we can know: language.”12 But given the indispensability of the notion of nature-in-itself as simultaneously an abstraction required by thought and the ground of thought, in what sense have we been raised out of nature? From the discussion so far, it can be inferred that Habermas’ attempt to quarantine the need for a ground in nature to the prehistory of transcendental consciousness is overwritten by three related factors. Firstly, there is the need to supplement our knowledge of nature with a reflection that is not necessarily subject to the technical interests of prediction and control. Secondly, in order to explain the immanent facticity of nature there is the admission that nature is disclosed within language. And thirdly, there is the argument derived from Frank that it is the irreducibility of world-disclosure that institutes and maintains the movement towards intersubjective consensus within language. The combined force of these factors is to suggest that not only can an adequate understanding of nature not be confined to any single language practice, but also that nature is an irreducible,

10

Habermas, Theory and Practice, pp. 21–22. Habermas as cited in William Outhwaite, Habermas: A Critical Introduction, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1994, p. 33. 12 Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, p. 314. 11


immanent, and productive presence within language. If this is the case, then the indefinite deferral of the need to address the issue of ultimate foundations, [which is supposedly required to enable a post-metaphysical quasi-transcendental philosophy such as Habermas’ to focus on issues that can be agreed upon], cannot be justified as these foundations in the form of nature permeate language in a way that disrupts the supposed internality of language. And if the internality of language cannot be maintained, then the question of ultimate foundation cannot be legitimately quarantined from rational discourse. Returning now to the question of in what sense it can be said that we have been raised out of nature, if it can be maintained that nature permeates language, then the answer is not at all. For Habermas the absolute is the goal of ‘universal and unconstrained consensus.’ The current failure of intersubjective communication to ground itself can therefore be interpreted as provisional, just as the current failure of a material relation to nature defined by the parameters of prediction and control to address environmental degradation is. In both cases there is a Hegelian faith in what is to come—more specifically, in the possibility of a scientifically delivered self-grounding totality. In the latter it is a faith in the ultimate efficacy of technological solutions to sustainability. In the case of Habermas, and as noted by McCarthy, implied in the goal of intersubjective consensus is the possibility of a unified account of nature and history that would dispense with the troublesome notion of nature-in-itself (as well as the need to supplement a scientistic understanding of nature with a reflection not subject to conditions of instrumental action).13 And as the following quote demonstrates, such a theory would be scientific and not philosophical.

13

See McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas, p. 403, note 117.

162 • Peter Douglas The unity of nature and history cannot be comprehended philosophically so long as progress in physics and social theory has not led to a general theory of nature or a general theory of social development. . . . Philosophy is the—until now irreplaceable—regent [Statthalter] of a claim to unity and generalisation, a claim that will of course be redeemed scientifically or not at all.14

McCarthy goes on to explain that the use of the term Statthalter— literally ‘place-holder’—is meant to “convey the provisory status of philosophy in relation to science. Just as natural philosophy, for example, gave way to natural science, so too will the tasks remaining to philosophy eventually be subsumed by science. Of course the ‘science’ capable of assuming these tasks will not be the science of today.”15 Significantly, then, the notion of naturein-itself is made redundant only when philosophy itself becomes so, and presumably both occur when scientific theory and practice prevail. These connections reveal an approach to both theory and practice that treats seemingly intractable problems as difficulties that can be left behind by progress towards more appropriate methodologies. The unavoidable (for the time being?) circle in which we have to move as soon as we tackle problems that are equivalent to the traditional problem of ultimate foundations—although this can very well be explained—may be a sign that, among other things, the concepts ‘contingency-necessity’ are no longer sharply separable at this level of argumentation. Presumably, assertions about the contingency or necessity of cognitive interests, just as those about the contingency or necessity of the human race or the world as a whole, are meaningless.16

In contrast, the alternative offered by Schelling accepts that contingency and necessity are aspects of the world that need to be explained.

14 15 16

Ibid. Ibid. Habermas, Theory and Practice, p. 285, note 38.


Schelling and the Absolute For Schelling the Absolute is an origin rather than something that is to come (either potentially or actually), and as such can be interpreted not just as a beginning in the sense of the cosmic singularity in contemporary cosmogonic speculations, but more importantly as an immanent presence that grounds every moment of experience. This conception brings with it the problem of how to conceive the transition from the Absolute to the world, and the development of Schelling’s thought from the Naturphilosophie onwards can be read as a series of unsuccessful attempts to resolve this problem. However the legacy of these attempts is a properly philosophical understanding of the limits of reason that undermines scientistic views of the natural world by grounding consciousness in the nature that is its condition of possibility. By insisting that the first task of philosophy is to understand the character of the relation between self and nature, Schelling is drawn to questions that contemporary philosophy has deigned insoluble. The notion of the identity of identity and difference overcomes the Kantian divide between subject and object, ideal and real, by positing their emergence from a common ground, but falters on the dilemma of how to explain the fact of their emergence. The facticity of the self, the world, knowledge, reflection, language and science cannot be deduced from within the orbit of these, as the contingency of emergence is only ever evident through what is experienced within each of these as necessity. For Habermas the quasi-transcendental conditions that define the behavioural system of instrumental action is necessary in this sense, just as the presumed emergence of these conditions from their pre-history in nature is a contingent fact. Similarly the necessity evident in deterministic accounts of natural phenomena expresses the contingent facticity of a nature that manifests as a resistance and a constraint in the experiences of our


inquiries into it. In both cases the notion of nature-in-itself stands in for this nexus of the contingent and the necessary. As alluded to in the opening paragraph of this section, Schelling does not resolve the dilemma posed by the nexus of contingency and necessity that manifests in fundamental aspects of experience. However, in contrast to Habermas, he does not evade its implications. Instead, justification is found for a critique of reason that requires a consideration of the Absolute as ground and not goal: the inability to explain the emergence of thought exposes the intrinsic and irrevocable incompleteness of knowledge, while the Absolute is that something in our thinking whereby this incompleteness is recognised. That the incompleteness of knowledge is not considered to be provisional can be explained in the context of a distinction that Schelling draws from his analysis of the ontological proof of God.17 In these proofs, he argues, there is an illegitimate movement from that which exists in a necessary manner, to that which necessarily exists. The difference between these types of existence corresponds to what Schelling refers to as two kinds of philosophy: the former the domain of what is termed negative philosophy, and the latter the field of positive philosophy. In articulating that which exists in a necessary manner, negative philosophy as a self-related totality is unable to explain the fact of its own necessity, either in the sense that it exists at all, or that it exists as it does. The inability of a system of necessity to explain the fact that it exists at all is its inability to account for its own emergence. That a system of necessity cannot explain the fact

17 See Andrew Bowie “Translator’s Introduction,” On the History of Modern Philosophy (translation of F. W. J. von Schelling, Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 30–32.


that it exists as it does, refers to an inability to account for its continuing presence in the world, the effects of which, if they were to be explained, in turn lead to further additions to the world that require explanation and so on. Despite their attempts to be otherwise, therefore, systems of necessity remain open both at their origin and into their future. The only way of overcoming this incompleteness is to conflate the world and the system such that the latter becomes the world in and for itself. For Schelling the illegitimacy of this movement, which corresponds to the movement from that which exists in a necessary manner to that which necessarily exists, lies in the false assumption that the former must in fact exist. The crucial point is that what must be must first be in a manner that is itself not potential, and therefore must already be in actuality, for “if it only could exist, it would for that reason not be what necessarily exists.”18 Schelling describes this difference as that which is “not not at all” rather than “what absolutely cannot not be,”19 which translates into the recognition that the kind of existence that is necessitated by that which exists in a necessary manner is not that which could also be prior to the system of necessity that posits it. As he says, “we must begin with/go out from what I have called that which merely exists, from being which is immediate, simply necessary, which is necessary because it precedes all potential, all possibility.”20 The Absolute as origin necessarily exists in this sense, but it is also contingent insofar as it is not the result of logical necessity. The simultaneous contingency and necessity of the Absolute, simultaneous in the sense that that which necessarily exists must be ultimately contingent, can

18

Schelling cited in ibid., p. 32. Cited in ibid., p. 31. 20 Schelling cited in Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction, p. 167. 19


therefore only be established by the fact of existence itself, and more immediately by the recognition of this fact about ourselves. This point returns the discussion to the issue with which this critique of Habermas was initiated. Along with Bowie’s abovementioned recognition of “the tension between language as the medium of propositional assertion and of language as the medium of world-disclosure” in contemporary philosophical debates, comes the suggestion that this tension “in certain ways corresponds to the difference between negative and positive philosophy”21 in Schelling’s later work. As we have seen, negative philosophy addresses the necessity of a world that already is, whereas positive philosophy concerns itself with the contingent fact of existence itself—that there is a world at all. In characterising Habermas’ approach as an example of the former, it has been argued that the prospect of subsuming the world-disclosing capacity of pre-propositional language into propositional statements, of the contingency of nature into the necessity of instrumental action, relies on the efficacy of his attempt to forestall if not foreclose the need to consider the problem of ultimate foundations. In contrast, Schelling finds ontological import in the distinctions that Habermas would surmount. As that which precedes all possibility, Schelling recognises that the Absolute cannot itself be thought: “One can admit this in a certain sense and say: precisely for that reason it is the beginning of all thinking—for the beginning of thinking is not yet itself thinking.”22 The positive philosophy therefore requires the thinking of what cannot itself be thought, a “knowing non-knowledge” that is itself not unthinkable given that thought is a move-

21 22

Ibid., p. 183. Cited in Bowie, “Translator’s Introduction,” p. 32.


ment of the Absolute without being the Absolute itself.23 The immediacy with which the contingent facticity of existence must be grasped consequently establishes a role for intuition and metaphor in philosophy that is irreducible: intuition insofar as “thought which is not a thinking thought cannot be far from an intuiting thought,” and metaphor given its capacity to draw intuitive thought towards the level of reflection in language.24 As a result, the essence of Schelling’s positive philosophy is not to be found in what is brought to reflection, but in what can be intuitively understood in the attempt to bring the Absolute to reflection. Interpreted in this way, the positive philosophy mimes Schelling’s earlier conception of nature as the coincidence of natura naturans and natura naturata, or productivity and product. Here Schelling gives ontological significance to an element of experience that Habermas would do without, and downplays the importance of those elements that Habermas makes central, in this case natura naturata or the product which is nature as objectified: “As the object is never absolute (unbedingt) then something per se nonobjective must be posited in nature; this absolutely non-objective postulate is precisely the original productivity of nature.”25 Whereas Habermas conceives of nature as outside of language, for Schelling the disclosure of productivity as the ground of an appearing nature that includes language avoids these conditions by resorting to articulations that are pre-propositional. The broader significance of this difference can be elicited with reference to a suggestive parallel in contemporary physics. Due to the constraints of solvability, the traditional approach to mathematical modelling was to concentrate on phenomena that could

23

Schelling cited in Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction, p. 136. 24 Schelling cited in ibid., p. 186. 25 Schelling cited in Bowie, “Translator’s Introduction,” p. 36.


be reduced to a system of linear equations. The stability of such phenomena means that fluctuations in their environment can be effectively ignored, leading to their treatment as closed, and therefore predictable, equilibrium systems. With the introduction of computers the constraints of solvability have been considerably relaxed, and as a result more complex and irregular phenomena have been modelled with mathematical resources made available in fields such as nonlinear dynamics. As chaos theory has demonstrated, the necessity with which these systems evolve does not preclude unpredictable outcomes due to their sensitivity to contingent initial and boundary conditions, which implies that the phenomena they model are connected with their environment in a way that cannot be ignored. A correspondence between Habermas’ approach and the traditional reliance on closed equilibrium systems can be drawn on the basis of the way both ignore the broader environment, concentrating instead on what can be reliably known: for Habermas propositional language, and for physics solutions to systems of linear equations. In both cases the necessity with which the system evolves encourages the conflation of predictability and technical control with explanation. However closed linear systems are limited in their application to a relatively small range of simple phenomena that exhibit quite specific conditions. The ability to adequately model a broader range of phenomena in fields such as nonlinear dynamics has come with the realisation that fluctuations in contingent factors such as initial and boundary conditions can significantly influence the overall behaviour of the model. If the analogy holds, then it would be reasonable to suggest that like closed linear systems, propositional language would also have a limited range of application due to an inability to include the contingency of what lies outside of the necessity of its statements. If this were the case, then the prospect of subsuming the world-disclosing capacity of pre-propositional language into the legitimating discourse of propositional state-


ments would be untenable, especially given the former’s amenity to religious and aesthetic experiences, both of which express aspects of nature that are not captured by the transcendental conditions of instrumental action. The conclusions drawn from the analogy with physics broadly support the Schelling-inspired critique of Habermas that has been presented in this essay. From the fact that propositional language cannot include the contingency of its ground it does not necessarily follow that the problem of ultimate foundations is therefore no longer important to an understanding of language in particular, or the world in general. The lesson to be drawn from Schelling and the mathematical modelling of complex phenomena is that more realistic accounts of our experiences of the world are messier and less controllable than many of us would like. And given that Habermas’ avoidance of the problem of ultimate foundations carries with it a conception of nature restricted to the technical interests of prediction and control, as well as the increasingly urgent nature of the many ecological crises that this conception has contributed to, a messier account of the world that includes a consideration of its ground is to be preferred to the wager that the ground can be overcome. Productivity and Synthesis in Schelling and Nonlinear Models of Complex Systems In this context, and given the importance of Habermas’ project of providing both a critique and a defence of reason, Schelling’s thought provides the prospect of the development of a new philosophy of nature that grounds the self in nature rather than in social structures and practices that stand over and against the natural world. So long as I myself am identical with Nature, I understand what a living nature is as well as I understand my own life; I appreciate

170 • Peter Douglas how this universal life of Nature reveals itself in manifold forms, in progressive developments, in gradual approximations to freedom. As soon, however, as I separate myself, and with me everything ideal, from Nature, nothing remains to me but a dead object, and I cease to comprehend how a life outside me can be possible.26

Even though many of the details of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie now seem anachronistic, some of his more fundamental premises have renewed currency in the light of developments in contemporary physics such as those mentioned in the previous section. The weakening of the connection between determinism and necessity in nonlinear models of complex systems allows small variations in contingent aspects of these models to inflate into large-scale unpredictability.27 Correspondences can be drawn between this development and what Bowie has described as Schelling’s determination to “find a way of sustaining notions of freedom and reason that could account for the emergence and development of living nature and consciousness, but which also took account of the fact that the ground of nature and consciousness could not itself appear in philosophical reflection.”28 This

26 F. W. J. Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, trans. Errol E. Harris & Peter Heath, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 36. 27 There is no well defined and generally agreed upon definition of a complex system. However, it is possible to list some commonly accepted elements: • complex systems are not restricted to specific scales of inquiry and often involve interactions between different levels of organisation; • they often have a large number of components or degrees of freedom; • they are predominantly nonlinear and involve nonequilibrium and irreversible processes; • they are open to their environment in the sense that they exchange energy, material and information with their surroundings; • they occur in both energy-conserving and energy-dissipating systems; • causes and effects are not necessarily proportional; • they often appear abruptly and undergo discontinuous changes that suggest that the functional relations that might describe them are not differentiable; and • are recursive or iterative, involving positive or negative feedback. An explanation of dynamical systems will be provided in what follows. 28 Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy, p. 10.


may seem an unlikely proposal given Schelling’s argument that “what philosophy has over mathematics is the concept of the subject of that which can be something and can also not be something.”29 However the simulation of systems of nonlinear equations has demonstrated that mathematical form can be given to an ongoing process that relates the structure of the interactions between the parts of a system to the emergence of an individuated whole. This result supports two central tenets of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie: productivity and synthesis, and both of these are involved in his defence of the reality of the freedom of the subject and its reflection in the individuality of the object. Schelling’s determination to sustain notions of freedom and reason within nature is consistent with the belief, which is accorded to him by Esposito, that the “facts of human experience must be accounted for in terms that leave the meanings of those facts as experienced intact.”30 This is reflected in his conception of the real as essentially relational, with Schelling’s emphasis on synthesis actively opposed to the analytic style of mechanistic thought, to which contemporary physicalism is heir, that reduces all phenomena to the law-governed ordering of material existents independent of thought and spirit. For Schelling the abstraction from experience effected by the ordering of the world in this fashion, its deduction from general laws to a succession of events or states, fails to account for the emergence of individuals in nature. This he equates with a principle of organisation: “In Nature, what bears the character of individuality must be organisation, and vice versa,”31 that disrupts linear sequences of cause and effect by

29 F. W. J. Schelling, Grundlegung der positiven Philosophie (1832–3), ed. Horst Fuhrmans, Turin, Bottega d’Erasmo, cited in Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy, p. 148. 30 Joseph L. Esposito, Schelling’s Idealism and Philosophy of Nature, London, Associated University Presses, 1977, p. 79. 31 Schelling cited in ibid., p. 100.


introducing patterns of interaction that refer to an emergent individual to which the nodes of these interactions become parts. What individuation brings to our understanding of nature, therefore, is the need to relate phenomena to the broader reality they are embedded within. Hence Schelling’s maxim: “there is no analysis without synthesis.”32 For Schelling the broader reality of nature, the context within which nature as a system of dynamic interconnections both within and between multiple levels of organisation is conceived, is captured by a relation between productivity and product of mutual dependence and ultimate identity: “Think of a river, which is pure identity; where it meets a resistance an eddy is formed, this eddy is nothing fixed, but disappears at every moment and reappears at every moment.”33 If nature were simply product, as science conceives it, the conditions of its emergence and evolution would lie outside itself. On the other hand if nature were pure productivity, there would be nothing to resist its immediate dissipation. Because productivity cannot appear as itself we are phenomenologically bound to products. In this respect it is entirely appropriate that science as the study of an empirical nature is similarly bound. Schelling’s objections to mechanistic thought are based on its extrapolation of the determination of the object in science to the world in general, which, he argues, leads to philosophical confusion and estrangement from nature and spirit. His Naturphilosophie seeks to undermine this extrapolation by positing the emergence of both subject and object from the aboriginal productivity of nature. This has the effect of dissolving the ontological distinction between that which produces experiences of self and nature and that which is experienced. In doing so it enables a conception of a living nature in which the freedom

32 33

Ibid., p. 79. Schelling cited in Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy, p. 36.


of the subject arises from the same synthesis of elements, or processes of organisation, as the individuality of the object. Schelling’s characterisation of science as the strict determination of the object, which excludes consideration of the contingency expressed in the freedom of the subject and the individuality of the object, is consistent with dominant law-based explanations of natural phenomena in which general laws infer a necessary connection between the successive states of a system. Given a set of initial conditions, each subsequent state is determined by its predecessor in accordance with the governing equation/s. The strong connection between necessity and determinism in this approach finds application in systems that approximate to a linear aggregation of the parts of the whole in question. The ability to separate out the contribution of the parts toward the whole and then effectively ignore their interactions provides the analytical basis for closed equilibrium systems whose behaviour can either be deduced via integration if they are simple enough, or treated ‘phenomenologically’ via statistical mechanics in more complex cases.34 The superposition of causal factors in linear models therefore assumes that there is no intrinsic relation between the parts of a system, and in situations where the interactions between the parts are accidental to the whole in question this is not a disadvantage. The same cannot be argued when moving to analyses of emergent systems, where the structure of the interactions between the parts is often a necessary condition for the emergence of the whole. There is nothing in a purely analytic approach that can explain the distinction between necessary and accidental relations, as

34 When a deterministic description of a system is not possible due to its complexity, statistical models that relate the average behaviour of each particle to the overall behaviour of the system are used.


this distinction implies the casual efficacy of a whole towards which the activity of the parts is directed. One way of dealing with this limitation is to withhold causal efficacy from emergent phenomena and to dismiss them as epiphenomenal. However this conclusion is not supported by the fact that the simulation of nonlinear models of complex systems produces nondeducible system-level details of emergent phenomena, that these details derive from the nonlinear coupling of the parts of a system, and that they are given in the form of attractors that represent the evolution of the system as a whole.35 It will be argued in what

35 The term ‘nonlinearity’ does not lend itself to a simple definition as West and Deering explain. “Linearity means a response in direct proportion to an applied force; nonlinearity then means a disproportionate response. Here we see that nonlinearity is not narrowly defined; to say the response is disproportionate is to define it by what it is not. There are a large number of ways that a response can be disproportionate, but only one way to be proportionate (linear). The broad range of possible responses in part explains why nonlinear phenomena are so difficult to understand as a class—the only thing they have in common is that they are not linear. Thus they share a common lack, but may not possess any other feature in common.” B. J. West and B. Deering, The Lure of Modern Science: Fractal Thinking (Studies in Nonlinear Phenomena in Life Sciences—Vol. 3), Singapore; New Jersey; London, World Scientific, 1995, p. 125. Holt and Holt provide a similar explanation geometrically. “The most easily grasped distinction between linear and nonlinear functions is geometrical. Where a=f (b), if a plot with respect to b is a straight line, as the independent variable b takes on all possible values in its domain, f is linear: if the plot is any other curve, f is said to be nonlinear. More generally, a nonlinear function (usually appearing as one of many other terms in an equation) is a function which contains a variable raised to a power other than one or zero, or a product of two or more variables, or a variable as the argument of a transcendental function (e.g. sine or cosine). An equation containing one or more of such nonlinear terms is then said to be a nonlinear equation, and the system which inspired the equation is called nonlinear as well.” L. D. Holt and G. R. Holt, “Regularity in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems,” British Journal of the Philosophy of Science, vol. 44, 1993, pp. 712–713. Nonlinearities arise when a variety of pathways through which individual components influence the behaviour of others exist, for example, when a certain chemical present enhances (or suppresses) its own production as in a Belousov-Zhaboyinskii reaction, or in the highly orchestrated system of inter-


follows that these factors arise from a weakening of the connection between determinism and necessity in attractor-based descriptions of nonlinear dynamical systems. This weakening is due to the introduction of an element of contingency, which in a manner similar to Schelling undermines the strict determination of phenomena by equating certain modes of organisation in nature with the emergence of genuine individuals. A dynamical system is a mathematical description of the rates of change of specified properties of physical phenomena. It consists of two parts: the state of the system and the dynamic that determines how these states evolve over time. In the case of a simple pendulum, for instance, the state of the system can be described by the variables velocity and position. The dynamic of such a system can be given in the general form of a difference equation: xn+1 = F(xn), with each successive state of the system (xn+1) depending on the previous state (xn) and its behaviour under the operation of the function or dynamic (F). In cases where the terms of the dynamic are related linearly, it is usually more straightforward to solve the equation directly. However when the terms of the dynamic are related nonlinearly this is commonly not an option, and so the iteration of the dynamic in the form of a difference equation can be used to obtain numerical approximations instead. The results of the continued iteration of the dynamic can be represented in state space, which is a non-metric abstract space whose coordinates vary with the details of the system being investigated. Returning to the example of the simple pendulum,

locking reactions that constitute fermentation. West and Deering also note that nonlinearities lead to forms of stability and instability beyond those expected in a linear world, with solitons mentioned as an example of enhanced stability, and the irreversible behaviour of chaotic trajectories that are also solutions to Newton’s equations of motion an example of strong instability (p. 79).


the coordinates of its state space would be velocity and position, and the topological space defined by these coordinates represents the possible states that the pendulum characterised as a dynamical system could instantiate. The trajectory traced out in state space in this example would be drawn towards a single point that represents the pendulum at rest. This point in state space is the attractor of the system, and it represents its longterm tendency. If we introduce a forcing mechanism that overcomes the effect of friction on the pendulum, however, the situation considerably alters. Firstly the forcing mechanism introduces nonlinear terms into the dynamic, which means that the results produced by the simulation of the model are nondeducible, as they cannot be obtained by analytical methods. Secondly the attractor is no longer a single point in state space, as the pendulum does not come to rest. Instead, and depending on the behaviour of the forcing mechanism, the pendulum-system may evolve periodically, quasi-periodically, or even chaotically, with the latter depicted by ‘strange’ attractors. These represent a bounded unpredictability, as the system remains confined to the attractor even though it is impossible to predict where on the attractor it will be at a particular stage of its evolution. In representing the long-term tendencies of dynamical systems, attractors give structure to the possibilities that constitute state space, of which they are subsets. And given that state space represents how the variables chosen to characterise the phenomenon being modelled change, attractors give the topological form of processes, providing a qualitative classification of how system evolve and respond to fluctuations in their environment. Attractors are therefore more than a simple description of the actual or predicted behaviour of a particular system, which can be represented as a single trajectory in state space, as sets of attractors depict the possibilities that are open to a class of systems given contingent fluctuations in their initial and/or boundary conditions,


these referring to certain aspects of the environment in which the system is embedded. In depicting the range of possibilities of a dynamical system, attractor-based descriptions of these overwrite the importance of initial conditions and governing equations in law-based models.36 Within the basic of attraction of an attractor, all initial conditions are equivalent as the trajectories they serve as the starting points of are all drawn towards that attractor. This also means that the states that the trajectories pass through on their way to the attractor are of less interest than the stable states that characterise the system. As a result, the relations between the successive states of a system, which are determined by the governing equation/s, are also of less interest as the set of stable states that the system settles down to are not determined by previous states but by the attractor. In addition, nonlinear models are commonly characterised by multiple attractors that partition state space into their associated basins of attraction, the boundaries of which are fractal and therefore infinitely complex. The sensitivity of such systems can be such that even slight alterations in their initial and/or boundary conditions can make it impossible to predict not only where on an attractor the system will be, but also which attractor the system will be drawn on to. Thus even though the

36

It should be noted that what follows is not an orthodox interpretation of state space descriptions of emergent phenomena. Many philosophers now study state space as part of a recent shift in analytical philosophy of science from logic and set theory to analyses of the mathematics used by scientists. See for instance Bas Van Fraassen, Laws and Symmetry, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989. However, the interpretation that follows has more in common with Deleuze’s ontological reading of state space, though it does not venture as far. According to Delanda, Deleuze has taken up Poincaré’s topological studies and emphasised the ontological difference that can be posited between recurrent features of state space and the trajectories these features determine. See Manuel Delanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, London, Continuum, 2002, p. 30.


individual trajectories of the system in state space do evolve deterministically, because it is not possible to predict which trajectory the system will actually trace out in state space, the traditional association of determinism with single necessary outcomes is broken. What replaces it is a combination of determinism and chance, which is captured by an often-complex distribution of attractors in state space. This combination of determinism and chance also has the effect of breaking the temporal symmetry that has been one of the hallmarks of deterministic explanations of natural phenomena. If a system can be effectively modelled by a single trajectory in state space, then no meaningful distinction can be made between the past and the future. However, in nonlinear models where the actual evolution of a system cannot be reduced to a single trajectory and the number of possible attractors multiplies as the system becomes more unstable, every ‘choice’ between possible attractors, which is accorded to chance, is a break in the temporal symmetry of the system. It is in this sense that nonlinear systems are considered to be ‘irreversible’ as the actual sequence of states they pass through cannot be traced back by simply changing the sign of the variable that represents time. The irreversibility of nonlinear systems also means that the significance of time in the self-organisation of complex systems receives both a physical meaning and a mathematical description.37 The contingency introduced into nonlinear models by the irreducibility of chance therefore has two important results. Firstly

37 For accounts of the significance of irreversibility in physical (especially chemical) systems see Ilya Prigogine, “Irreversibility and Space-Time Structure,” Physics and the Ultimate Significance of Time, ed. David Ray Griffin, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1986; The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature, New York, The Free Press, 1996; and Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue With Nature, London, New Science Library, 1984.


it gives rise to the range of possibilities associated with a class of phenomena by making it impossible to specify in advance a single necessary trajectory in state space. This means that the trajectory of a particular system is not strictly determined, representing instead the genuine individuation of that system as it actualises a unique set of states that is jointly determined by the contingent conditions of its environment and the form of the attractor towards which it is drawn. Secondly the irreversibility of nonlinear systems gives mathematical form to the production of order irreducible to mere changes in the configuration of fundamental entities. The nonlinear coupling of the terms that comprise the dynamic represent the structure of the interactions between the parts of the system being modelled. The simulation of the model allows both the spatial and temporal structuring of the parts of the system to be included in this representation, and given that the attractor/s associated with the model characterise the behaviour of the system as a whole, what is implied is an active relation between the parts of the system and the system as a whole that gives significance to both analytic and synthetic aspects of emergent phenomena. As with Schelling, then, the association between organisation and individuation and the synthesis that this involves is supported by a principle of activity. In Schelling it is the aboriginal productivity of nature. In nonlinear models it is found in both the simulation of the model via the iteration of the dynamic that represents the organisation of parts of the system, and in the unique trajectory that characterises the system as a whole as a process with a loosely determined form that is depicted by the attractor of that system. Interpreted in this way, nonlinear models imply a genuinely dynamic conception of a nature that is both intelligible and unpredictable. While nonlinear models have nothing to say about the freedom of the subject per se, the ability to model phenomena that are experienced as emergent individuals does not contradict this assertion given Schelling’s premise


that both subject and object arise from the same processes in nature. This combination of intelligibility and unpredictability is also compatible with Schelling’s argument that the incompleteness of knowledge is not provisional. In opposition to Habermas’ project, nonlinear models define a world that, in Delanda’s words, “remain[s] forever problematic.”38 Rather than subsuming the contingency of the ground into a self-grounding system of necessity, then, in nonlinear models the contingent facticity of the world intrudes in a fundamental way. That the phenomena modelled in nonlinear dynamics are not strictly determined, and so can both be and not be something specific, brings an aspect of what Schelling found most valuable in the subject into our mathematical descriptions of the world. It is in this sense that Schelling’s prospect for a philosophy of a living nature as an alternative to a conception of nature restricted to the technical interests of prediction and control receives support from, rather than being opposed to, contemporary scientific investigations.

38

Delanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, p. 155.

Albrecht Wellmer

The Debate About Truth: Pragmatism without Regulative Ideas1 Translated by William Egginton* 1 The classical definition of truth that has largely determined the understanding of the concept in the history of European philosophy comes, as is well known, from Aristotle. Aristotle says: “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.”2 This formulation of Aristotle’s has been understood, to

* The translator would like to thank Eric Little for a first version of this translation. My gratitude as well to Bernadette Wegenstein for her invaluable help with the final version. This article was published in The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy: Contemporary Engagements between Analytic and Continental Thought, edited by William Egginton and Mike Sandbothe, The State University of New York Press, 2004, all rights reserved, and appeared in Critical Horizons, vol. 4, no. 1, 2003. 1 This is the revised and greatly expanded version of a lecture I first held in 1995 at a conference on “Pragmatism Without Regulative Ideas?” at the Institute for Cultural Science in Essen, Germany. This occasion explains the strong and originally central reference to Karl-Otto Apel—who was present at the conference and whose 75th Birthday marked the occasion of this event— as well as the title of the essay. Later workings over have somewhat shifted the weight, but the conclusion of the essay, in which I summarise my critique of Apel, remains unchanged. Since the German publication of Mike Sandbothe’s volume Die Renaissance des Pragmatismus (Weilerswist, Velbrück, 2000), I have once more revised my article, prompted in large part by a criticism of Richard Rorty’s (see notes 15 and 18). Several notes, and section 11, are newly written. 2 Aristotle, Metaphysics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon, New York, Random House, 1941, IV, 7, 1011b.

182 • Albrecht Wellmer

a large extent, in the history of European philosophy in the sense of an ‘agreement’, ‘adequation’, or finally also a ‘correspondence theory’ of truth. The medieval formulation according to which truth is an ‘adaequatio rei et intellectus’, is only one version of this basic idea. Even Kant, in The Critique of Pure Reason, plainly presupposed a corresponding understanding of the concept of truth: “The old and famous question with which the logicians were to be driven into a corner . . . is this: What is truth? The nominal definition of truth namely, that it is the agreement of cognition with its object, is here granted and presupposed.”3 2 If one wanted to reformulate what Aristotle and Kant said in an easier and somewhat schematic format, one could do so as follows: (T) the assertion (statement or conviction) that ‘p’ is true if and only if p.

And this biconditional is then in formal semantics reduced to the following schema: (TI) ‘p’ is true if and only if p.

The problem that will concern us from here on emerges in both formulations: on the one hand, in both cases, the ‘truth condition’—be it of the assertion that p, or of the sentence ‘p’—is formulated with the help of the same sentence for which or for whose assertion the necessary and sufficient condition for being true is sought—such that we, so it seems, don’t at all go beyond the sentence ‘p’, or rather the assertion that p. But on the other hand, both biconditionals should explain truth as a relation of agreement between a statement (a conviction) and reality, such

3

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1997, B83/A58.

The Debate About Truth: Pragmatism without Regulative Ideas • 183

that the expression ‘p’ would thus have to emerge on the left and right sides as differentiated functions: on the left side it is a question of the statement (assertion, conviction) that p; on the right side, juxtaposed to this, is the ‘state of affairs’ that p. Nevertheless, it is of course no coincidence that we can specify the ‘fact’ with which the statement (conviction) that p should ‘agree’, again, only with the help of the same sentence ‘p’, with whose help the statement was also made (or the conviction formulated). Next we ask: how can we ascertain whether such an agreement exists between an assertion and a ‘thing’—a state of affairs, reality? Let us assume that someone claims: both doors are closed. I turn around and determine that: no, both doors are not closed. It is not the case, as it was asserted. Or in another situation, I determine: yes, both doors are closed. It is the case, as was asserted. In both cases, therefore, I determine whether the assertion agrees with reality, by determining whether it is thus the case, as was asserted. The precondition for this is that I understand the sentence ‘both doors are closed’, that I know to what the expression ‘both doors’ refers in this case, and that I can correctly use the predicate ‘is closed’. If these preconditions are given, I can determine, as a rule—if I find myself in an adequate position— whether the doors are closed. My ability to determine whether the two doors are closed is my ability to determine whether the assertion that both doors are closed agrees with reality (whether it is the case as asserted)—and this means: whether the assertion is true. What ‘agreement’ between a statement and reality means can thus only be clarified when we reflect on our ability to find out in many cases—for instance, through perception—whether things are as asserted. And, if we have learned a language, we can do this in many elementary cases.


Naturally, things are much more complicated when speaking of logically complex moral, aesthetic, mathematical, historical or philosophical judgements (or statements or convictions). Then we cannot persuade ourselves, as a rule, by merely ‘looking into it’, whether it is the case as asserted: here, as a rule, the idea of a direct comparison between a statement and reality makes no sense. In order to find out whether it is the case as asserted, we are, on the contrary, dependent on ‘indirect’ procedures, namely, on ways of reasoning that so and so is the case—whereas the possible ways of reasoning for statements pertaining to the past, for aesthetic or moral judgements, for mathematical or scientific assertions or convictions, are respectively completely different. We try to decide the question whether something is so, as one says it is, with reasons (where in many cases the reasons which are at our disposal are not sufficient for bringing about such a decision). At this point it becomes clear that the idea of a ‘correspondence’ between a statement and reality (or between a statement and a fact) suggests a misleading picture: namely, it suggests the picture of a relation of agreement—ascertainable from some standpoint (which cannot be ours, but perhaps that of God)— between statements or beliefs and a piece of reality, or the things themselves. If, however, one detaches the idea of agreement between what one says and what is (really) the case from the way we justify or deny assertions or beliefs with reasons—or by calling on perceptions—then this idea becomes something completely incomprehensible. For how then should one think such an agreement between statements (thoughts, convictions, etc.) and reality—two totally incommensurable relata: how and what should be tested here as agreement; and who should carry out such a test? A correspondence concept of truth, such as seems to be suggested by Aristotle’s formulation, becomes either incomprehensible or metaphysical, or both at the same time, if we seek to think of the idea of ‘just like’, that is, ‘agreement’, independently of our justificatory praxis.


3 Let us now return to our biconditional (T): the assertion that ‘p’ is true if and only if (really) p. The intuition that this sentence expresses could also be reformulated as such: an assertion is true if and only if it is the case as was asserted. We can now think what place such an explanation of the concept of truth can have in our practice of making assertions. This practice is of a normative kind: assertions are moves in a language game that are ‘justified’ or ‘unjustified’. We are entitled to assertions if we have good reasons to assert that p, or if we have convinced ourselves through our perceptions that p—or also if Someone whom we have good reason to trust has said to us that p (that is, reason for the assumption that this Someone could provide good reasons). What we learn when we learn a language is—among other things—to judge in a reasoned way and to distinguish between justified and unjustified assertions (convictions). This suggests a new interpretation of the biconditional (T), which frames it no longer as an attempt to interpret truth as an agreement between statements and states of affairs, but rather as an attempt to determine the place the word ‘true’ has in our assertive and justificatory praxis. Accordingly, we could now read the biconditional as such: someone is justified in asserting that p is true precisely when he or she is justified in asserting that p. And this could now be further interpreted as saying: to say that an assertion is true is nothing other than to say that the assertion is legitimate (grounded, justified). Truth would then become no more than ‘warranted assertability’ or ‘rational acceptability’. The concept of truth would consequently be drawn back onto justification. 4 Of course, upon closer examination it appears that something in this reduction—or equation—cannot be correct. Nevertheless,


the new interpretation of the biconditional (T) makes clear an internal relation between truth and justification—which in its correspondence theoretical interpretation is lost from view—and which I would like once again to clarify differently. In Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, one finds the famous sentence: “to understand a sentence means to know what is the case if it is true.”4 This sentence denotes the fundamental idea of truth-conditional semantics. Wittgenstein’s sentence says: we understand a sentence if we know its truth conditions. For example, we understand the proposition ‘both doors are closed’ if we know under which conditions a corresponding assertion is true. Now it is clear that the knowledge of the truth conditions of a sentence p cannot be anything other than the knowledge of the conditions under which I am entitled to assert that p. If I have learned a language, and so long as I understand the sentences of the language, I know, as a rule, when the conditions are present under which I am entitled (or not entitled) to assert that p. This knowledge is only, in part, a propositional knowledge. To a considerable degree it is practical knowledge—a knowing how— as the later Wittgenstein always emphasised (I can ascertain, for example, through perception, whether the predicate ‘is closed’ applies to both doors). My knowledge of the truth conditions is, in practical terms, a knowledge of assertability conditions. Since the conditions under which I am entitled to assert that p are precisely the conditions under which I am entitled to assert that p is true, and in that sense the knowledge of the conditions of assertability is the same as the knowledge of the conditions of truth, it would appear that truth is warranted assertability. Truth would become thus, as one says, an ‘epistemic’ concept, which should mean: a concept that can be traced back to ‘justification’.

4 Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. Ogden, London, Routledge, 1981, 4.024; translation modified.


Upon closer inspection, however, something about this conclusion appears to be false. 5 Putnam has made clear that the words ‘true’ and ‘justifiable’ (referring to assertions or convictions) cannot be equated by reference to the grammar of these words: one is entitled (has good reasons)—under certain conditions—to believe or to assert that p—and such reasons can later be revealed to be insufficient. ‘Justification can be lost’5—justification is relative to time or circumstances and also to people, whereas truth ‘cannot be lost’— that is, a conviction or an assertion cannot today or for me be true and tomorrow or for you not be. Truth is trans-subjective and timeless. This points to an grammatical difference between the predicates ‘is true’ and ‘is justified’,6 which would certainly

5 Hilary Putnam, “Reference and Truth,” in Realism and Reason: Philosophical Papers Vol. 3, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1983, p. 84. 6 Here I employ the concept of justification in a broad sense. An assertion can be justified in a narrower sense by reasons that stand in an inferential connection with the propositional content of an assertion. In the broader sense, it can also be justified through reference to perceptions (or, indirectly, also to the reliability or believability of another speaker). Cf. the analogous differentiation by Robert Brandom in Making It Explicit, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1994, chps. 3 & 4. Incidentally, I concur with McDowell—differently than Brandom, Rorty, or Davidson—that convictions are also justified through recourse to perceptions (although I also have some reservations about the details McDowell’s argument). Rorty’s (Sellar’s, Davidson’s, and Brandom’s) causal interpretation (that is, elimination) of the concept of experience is, in my opinion, only convincing insofar as it is directed against the empirical ‘myth of the given’: namely, against the idea that ‘sense data’ or ‘sensory feelings’ could play an epistemic role in the formation of our empirical convictions. A remainder of this idea is still found in Quine’s concept of ‘stimulus meaning’. Now Rorty rightly points out, for instance, that Davidson—to whom, among others, he himself refers with regard to his own causalistic elimination of the concept of experience—has long since dismissed the Quinean version of empiricism. “Davidson substitutes a ‘distal’ theory of meaning formulated in terms of public external objects; he allows no intermediate terrain of philosophical


remain to be clarified. A corresponding attempt at clarification has been undertaken, in particular, by Putnam, Habermas, and Apel. The basic idea common to all three philosophers is as folinquiry between linguistically formulated beliefs and physiology.” (Richard Rorty, “Dewey Between Hegel and Darwin,” in Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers Volume 3, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998). If the causal interpretation of the concept of experience refers to ‘public external objects’ as the causes of non-inferentially received convictions, then—against Davidson’s and Rorty’s opinion—there exists absolutely no further objection to an epistemic role for (linguistically impregnated) experience (that is, perceptions). If I justify my assertion that the corner window on the second floor of the house across the street is open, with the indication that I see it (or have seen it), then here, in my opinion, it clearly concerns an epistemic relationship between my perception and my conviction. Granted I can also causally interpret the same relationship, as Davidson does in the context of his theory of interpretation. (It is the rabbit hopping by that causally brings about the conviction ‘Gavagai’ in my foreign-speaking interlocutor). But now it appears to me in this case that the epistemic interpretation is to have conceptual precedence over its interpretation as a causal relation, and this is for the following reason: to interpret a relation as causal means to assume that we could discover something empirical about the asserted causal relation. Of course, this is possible in the case of radical interpretation because the interpreter could discover that it is not the rabbit hopping past, but rather, something else that (the interpreter presumes) caused the foreign speaker’s conviction expressed by his uttering ‘Gavagai’. But what is here empirically clarified is nothing of the sort that under these or those circumstances certain objects of the public world cause this or that noninferential conviction. What is clarified is, on the contrary, the question, which is the conviction that the foreign speaker expresses (that is, what ‘Gavagai’ means). But what about the interpreter’s conviction (that there is a rabbit hopping past), which is clearly already implied by his interpretation of the foreign speaker? As to what concerns its cause, as a rule the interpreter has no choice (because most of his—non-inferential—convictions must also be true): it is the rabbit hopping past (that he sees hopping past). But the ‘principle of charity’ now says that, as a rule, the same objects will effect the same noninferential convictions in speaker and interpreter. The interpreter, as noted, has no choice as to what affects him: the cause of his non-inferential conviction is that thing he—in an ordinary way of speaking—sees (that of which he sees that it is the case). And insofar as ‘seeing that’ is an ‘achievement’ word, he can also occasionally be mistaken. What I am driving at is that we can only identify the causes of our non-inferential beliefs in Davidson’s scenario (which Rorty makes his own), in that we say what we see. And that must be—still in Davidson’s scenario—as a rule the correct identification. Accordingly, another method of identification of causes of our non-inferential beliefs can in principle not be at our disposal (except if one would cross over again into ‘physiology’).


lows: if truth is internally connected with justification and nevertheless not the same as justification (here and now), then further conditions must be stated in such a way that an assertion or conviction justified under such conditions would be necessarily true. Truth would, therefore, be maintained as an ‘epistemic’ concept—internally connected with the concept of justification—and nevertheless the simple equation of the predicates ‘is true’ and ‘is justified’ would be avoided. The conditions in question would have to be ideal conditions; and the basic idea is that an assertion or conviction justified under such ideal conditions would be necessarily true—whereas the ‘necessarily’ should give expression to a conceptual necessity. Putnam, Habermas, and Apel want to say that this is how we understand the concept of truth (or this is how we ought to understand it). Let us first make clear the point of the basic argumentation strategy: if one eliminated the difference between truth and justification, there would be relativistic consequences, because it is easy to see that in the vertical dimension of historical time, as well as in the horizontal dimension of a plurality of cultures, situations, and contexts, many mutually incompatible convictions are held to be true by different people, in different cultures, etc., and all with—prima facie—good reasons. This even goes for the history of science—it is thus not only a problem for cultural pluralism. But then there can be nothing disreputable in the (justifying) appeal to (linguistically impregnated) perceptions; on the contrary, the implication of a causal interpretation of non-inferential convictions lead us back to the possibility of justifying such convictions through recourse to perceptions. In reality, however, the praxis of such justification has conceptual priority over a causal interpretation of non-inferential beliefs (as far as the possible identification of the corresponding causes is concerned). The causal interpretation is not false, but first it is compatible throughout with an epistemic interpretation, and since we must now give the epistemic interpretation an epistemic priority over the causal interpretation, second, the causal interpretation of the concept of experience reveals itself to be an empty piece of rhetoric that at best can remind us that we are, even in perception and cognition, still (linguistically skilled) natural beings.


(It would be absurd to assert, for example, that not one scientist in the past had good reasons for theories he was convinced of, even though we might today hold these theories to be false). The consequence of an equation of truth and justification would be relativism, because by such an equation the contextual index that belongs to the concept of justification (someone at a specific time is convinced, with good reasons that . . .) would be transferred to the idea of truth: truth would be tantamount to what, according to the respective prevailing standards of justification for someone, or some group, is justified to be held as true. Such a relativistic dissolution of the idea of truth appears, however, to be incoherent. 6 For Putnam, Habermas and Apel, the problem to solve is: how is the ‘absoluteness’—in the sense of timelessness and non-indexicality—of the concept of truth to be reconciled with the conceptual connection between truth and justification? The answer from all three authors is that opinion can be called ‘true’ which would be accepted as justified under ideal conditions—conditions which would have to be further specified. Characteristic for all three versions of this answer is the following: the idealisation upon which the explanation of the concept of truth seems to be dependent must already be operative, as pragmatically effective, on the level of everyday communication and argumentative discourse, be it as ‘necessary presuppositions’ or as ‘regulative ideas’.7 7

For the following criticism of the ‘Idealisation Theory’ of truth see Albrecht Wellmer, “Ethics and Dialogue,” in The Persistence of Modernity, trans. David Midgley, Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1991, especially pp. 175–182, as well as Wellmer, “Truth, Contingency and Modernity,” in Endgames: The Irreconcilable Nature of Modernity, David Midgley, trans. Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press 1998, 137ff.


Putnam has sought to define truth as rational acceptability under epistemically ideal conditions.8 Against this, Habermas and Apel have rightly insisted that the idealisation contained in the concept of truth should refer not merely to ideal cognitive conditions (that is, to scientific progress), but should be understood in a more comprehensive way. Namely, if one considers the different dimensions of truth and validity with reference to which we can speak of validity claims and their justifications; if one considers further the social dimension of our justification practices and thereby, by the same token, the internal relation between giving reasons and the attempt to bring about a consensus; then the idealisation implicit to the concept of truth must refer to ideal epistemic, moral, and communicative conditions all at the same time. I restrict myself here to Apel because I believe that Apel has worked out this idea in the most conclusive way. The idea of truth for Apel is the idea of an ultimate and infinite consensus of an ideal communication community.9 Truth becomes a regulative idea. Here, in fact, the idea of an absolute truth appears to be reconciled with the insight into the internal connection between truth and justification. Whereas the concept of truth of metaphysical realism severs this connection and thereby implies fundamentally the fiction of a ‘God’s eye view’ outside of our practice of justification, one could label Apel’s position as the attempt to inscribe something analogous to such a God’s eye view into our

8 For example in Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1981. I think that, in the meantime, Putnam’s position has changed (cf. his criticism of consensus theory in “Philosophy as a Reconstructive Activity: William James on Moral Philosophy,” in eds. William Egginton and Mike Sandbothe, The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy: Contemporary Engagements between Continental and Analytic Thought (not final), the State University of New York Press, forthcoming). For the sake of a clear presentation of my argument, I refer nevertheless to Putnam’s old formulation. 9 Cf. Karl-Otto Apel, “Fallibilismus, Konsenstheorie der Wahrheit und Letztbegründung,” in Philosophie und Begründung, Forum für Philosophie Bad Homburg, ed., Frankfurt a.M., 1986, IV.1: 139–150; IV.3: 151–163.


practices of justification as a regulative idea. And thus Apel claims that this idea is a constitutive regulative idea for linguistic communication and the justification practices attached to it. The idea of truth is at once ‘constitutive’ and ‘regulative’ in the sense that, on one hand, the truth-orientation of linguistic communication is unavoidable, and that, on the other hand, thanks to this unavoidable truth-orientation of linguistic communication we know ourselves to be obliged in our discursive practice to approximate ever more the rational consensus of an ideal communication community. 7 If one now attempts to spell out the implications of Apel’s explanation of the concept of truth, it becomes clear that in it, the idea of a final, complete, and absolute truth is short circuited with that of a morally perfect order and that of a completely transparent communicative situation. But this idea is, I believe, metaphysical. It is the idea of a communication community that would have escaped—to put it in Derrida’s words—‘play and the order of signs’;10 it is the idea of a state of full transparency, absolute knowledge, and moral perfection—in short: of a communicative situation that has left behind the constraints, the opacity, the fragility, the temporality, and the materiality of finite, human forms of communication. Derrida has correctly pointed out that, in such idealisations, the conditions of possibility of what is being idealised are negated. Ideal communication would be communication beyond the conditions of ‘différance’—to speak with Derrida—and thus communication outside of and beyond the

10

Cf. Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1978, p. 292.


conditions of possibility of communication. However, insofar as the idea of an ideal communication community includes the negation of the conditions of finite human communication, it also implies the negation of the natural and historical conditions of human life, of finite, human existence. The idea of an ideal communication community remains paradoxical even if it is only understood as a regulative idea, to which nothing real in the world can ever correspond; because it belongs to the meaning of this idea that it commits us to work toward its realisation. The paradox in this is that we would be committed to strive toward the realisation of an ideal whose realisation would be the end of human history. The goal is the end; ideal communication would be the death of communication. This paradoxical structure reveals that the idea of an ideal communication community still contains a metaphysical explication of the concept of truth, which finally does not distinguish itself from that of metaphysical realism structurally, except through its greater subtlety. I will return to this theme. 8 The result thus far is that the concept of truth cannot be explained with the help of the idea (or even the ‘regulative idea’) of justification—or of consensus—under ideal conditions. From this circumstance, Rorty has drawn the conclusion that ‘truth’ and ‘justification’ are two different concepts that have nothing to do with one another. What matters for us in our discursive practices—everyday practices and scholarly research—is, according to Rorty, not truth but justification. ‘Truth’, in contrast, would be a semantic concept, useful for formal semantics or theories à la Davidson. In this way, Rorty wants to cut through the internal connection between truth and justification, not in the sense of metaphysical realism—which is the actual object of his critique—but rather in that he, as it were, lets the air out of the


concept of truth. This corresponds to the strategy that has come to be known as that of a ‘deflationary theory’ of truth. One could also speak of a ‘deflationary’ interpretation of Aristotle’s explanation of the concept of truth, which takes the semantic equivalence of ’p’ is true if and only if ‘p’ as its starting point. One can interpret this equivalence—as I did at the outset—such that I am entitled to assert that ‘p’ is true to exactly the same extent that I am entitled to assert that p. Rorty, however, does not draw the conclusion that I had suggested earlier: namely, that truth could be drawn back onto justification—a conclusion that, in the end, leads to the untenable idealisation theses of Putnam, Apel and Habermas. Rorty would on the contrary say that because the assertion that ‘p’ is true brings nothing to the assertion that p, since both assertions have the same content, the semantic concept of truth has nothing to do with the pragmatic concept of justification. Accordingly, the concept of truth would have primarily certain theoretical (for instance, formal semantic) functions and, in addition, only some rather trivial pragmatic functions regarding the expression of agreement or disagreement11—as when one says ‘that is true’ or ‘that is not true’—but the concept of truth would have in this way lost any weight and substance, respectively. What our discursive practices are about—and the only thing they can be about—according to Rorty, is the justification of our assertions and beliefs: not truth but justification is the goal of inquiry. I believe that Rorty’s considerations signify a step in the right direction as compared to those of the ‘idealisation theoreticians’; I wish to interpret this step, however, in a somewhat different manner than Rorty himself does.12 To this end I would like to

11

I will come back to Rorty’s ‘cautionary’ use of ‘true’. Rorty objected, in response to an earlier version of this work (in a personal communication), that I could not (in what follows in the next two sec12


stick, for the time being, to the basic intuition of Putnam, Habermas, and Apel, that in order to understand the role that the concept of truth plays for our discursive practices one must understand not only the difference but also the internal connection between ‘truth’ and ‘justification’. Later on I will return to Rorty’s thesis. 9 Next I would like to show why regulative ideas are not necessary in order to explicate a normatively meaningful concept of truth, and that the search for such an explication runs up against a ‘grammatical error’. Herein I proceed from an internal connection between truth and ways of reasoning (justification), which could be explained by the following two theses: (a) The truth conditions of statements are only given to us as conditions of justifiability and assertability, respectively. (b) Assertions (and in general, convictions) are, according to their meaning—as validity claims—internally related to justification in a normative sense. Assertions are only rightfully raised—convictions are only rightfully held—if one can justify them. Nevertheless, to justify them means to justify them as true. To justify the assertion (or conviction) that p is the same as to justify the assertion that ‘p’ is true (and with this thesis we need not yet distinguish between the different kinds of truth claims—empirical, evaluative, aesthetic, hermeneutic, and moral—that we raise while speaking). That to justify an assertion, that p, means to justify it as true, is the pragmatic explanation of the semantic equivalence, ‘p’ is true = if p. As soon as we explain the Tarskian equivalence pragmatically in this way, it becomes clear at once that, in order to completely explain it, we must take into account the difference between the

tions) simultaneously call upon Brandom and argue against a deflationist concept of truth. I will attend to this objection further on (see section 11).


perspective a first person (a speaker) has of him or herself and the first person’s perspective on another speaker. In fact, it is valid for me, as for any other, that to justify an assertion (a conviction) means to justify it as true. Reciprocally, however, we do not recognise justifications necessarily as valid, such that in the difference in perspective between two speakers there emerges the difference between something ‘held to be true’ (held as justified) and being true (being justified).13 And as soon as this difference emerges, without which a concept of truth is not possible, it of course also emerges for each speaker with reference to him or herself. Thus it appears that a gap remains between ‘justified’ and ‘true’: that between apparent and real justification; and now one can attempt to make explicit under which conditions a justification would really be a justification, thus guaranteeing the truth of the sojustified—for instance, by saying that the justification of an assertion guarantees truth if it occurs under epistemically ideal conditions or under conditions of an ideal communication community. Justification as such does not guarantee truth, rather only justification under ideal conditions; that—so goes the misleading and already criticised conclusion—is what we mean by truth. The error of all considerations of this kind lies in the fact that they do not take seriously the constitutive difference between a first person’s perspective on herself and her perspective (as that of a ‘second person’ or interpreter) on other speakers, and

13 I have worked out the meaning of this difference in perspective from a somewhat different point of view in my article “Verstehen und Interpretieren,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 3, 1997. Robert Brandom has shown that it is precisely thanks to this difference in perspective that a trans-subjective space of truth can be constituted—(cf. “Knowledge and the Social Articulation of the Space of Reasons,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LV, no. 4, 1995: 903ff.). Brandom has worked out this idea in Making it Explicit, especially in Ch. 8. Nevertheless, I have reservations concerning the reductive theory-design in whose framework Brandom develops this idea. For a brilliant exposition of the same idea, cf. also Sebastian Rödl, Selbstbezug und Normativität, Paderborn, 1998, especially 182ff.


instead attempt to take on a ‘meta-perspective’; that is precisely what I called ‘metaphysical’. Let me try to show next how the normative force of the concept of truth becomes operative through the difference between first and second person perspectives, as it plays itself out for each individual speaker. If I make an assertion—hold a belief—with reasons—then I understand it, with reasons, as true. That is the internal connection between truth and justification. If, however, another makes an assertion—holds a belief—then I can only understand this as the assertion or conviction it is, in that I understand it with its—factual or possible—reasons. I can only ascribe convictions to another insofar as I can understand them as rationally tied together with reasons, evidences, and other convictions. But here to understand beliefs or assertions as being based on reasons does not necessarily mean to understand them as true. To ascribe to another’s reasons does not necessarily mean to recognise these reasons as sound. My reasons—whatever I accept as good reasons—are eo ipso good reasons (that is a comment on the grammar of ‘good reasons’); this should mean that for me the justified beliefs are necessarily the true beliefs. With reference to another person, however, his or her ways of reasoning are not necessarily sound from my perspective, and the corresponding convictions not necessarily true. This should not mean that I exclude myself from the sphere of fallible beings, since the same goes for every other speaker in the I-perspective. That my reasons are eo ipso good reasons, that my reasoned convictions are necessarily true convictions, should only mean that what makes sense as a persuasive reason to me is precisely for that reason a persuasive reason for me.14 I cannot place myself outside of my convictions, reasons, and evidences; if I doubt, that only means that

14 For the connection between ‘justification’ and the ‘I-perspective’ cf. Sebastian Rödl, ibid., 96ff.


I do not feel myself persuaded by the reasons available to me, that they are, for me, (still) not persuasive reasons. And of course I know not only—by understanding myself as, so to speak, the other of another—that the justifications which I give to another will not necessarily be recognised by him or her as sound; rather I also know that what I hold as a reasoned truth may appear to me at some later time—perhaps on the basis of new experiences or counter-arguments that I am confronted with—as not (really) justified. This knowledge, however, alters nothing of the fact that what is true for me is,15 respectively, what I take to be as justified belief. What I hold as reasoned truth deserves agreement: truth is transsubjective. And if I argue for my conviction, I wish to bring about, with reasons, such an agreement. In this sense, a rational consensus is the telos of argumentation. But ‘rational’ here means precisely: reasoned, and that means: similarly reasoned for all those taking part. We can give no criteria for rational consensus other than this: that precisely all those taking part are similarly persuaded by good reasons. Since, however, what ‘good reasons’

15

One could take offence at the formulation ‘true for me’, after I claimed that the grammar of ‘true’ does not allow such a formulation. My answer to this (possible) objection has two parts: (1) in the present context it is a question of there always being certain speakers who recognise something as true (or justified). Thus one could also say that the differentiation between justification as context-relative and truth as non context-relative is insofar misleading as, of course, the ‘taking-to-be-true’ is just as context relative as the ‘taking-to-be-justified’. This is also the reason, if I see it correctly, why Rorty holds the concept of truth in the pragmatic context of our justification practices to be dispensable. Against this I will try to show to what extent the concept of truth nevertheless plays a constitutive role in this context (see section 11). (2) As long as I have not shown this, the above-mentioned objection must be taken seriously, because my arguments up to now leave open the possibility of a general fallibilistic reservation. Such a general fallibilistic reservation would have as a consequence, however, that the only choice we would have left would be between Apel and Rorty.


are can only be shown in that they compel us towards an agreement, a consensus can never be the criterion that what we have before us are good reasons. The concept of a ‘good reason’ is attached, in an irreducible way, to the perspective of the one ‘persuaded’ by good reasons. One cannot describe from a metaperspective which ‘qualities’ reasons must have in order to be really good reasons. To call reasons ‘good’ is not the ascription of an ‘objective’ quality, rather it is the adoption of an attitude with normative consequences. These reasons compel me to accept that p as true. And naturally these are often the reasons that another brings up; in this sense, linguistic communication is, among other things, also a medium for progress in knowledge. 10 The answer to the question ‘why do you believe that?’ or ‘by what right do you assert that?’ is the giving of reasons or evidence. This shows that ‘asserting’ and ‘believing’ are internally geared to the giving and asking for reasons. And to show that an assertion—a conviction—is justified means to show that it is true. Since for every speaker, however, there exists a difference between the first person’s perspective on him or herself and the first person’s perspective on another, there also exists a difference between ‘justified’ and ‘true’. What another holds as true, with reasons, may not be true (that is, I may not recognise it as true if their reasons do not convince me or if I have good opposing reasons myself). What I, however, myself hold with reasons as true, I recognise eo ipso as true. I cannot position myself between my (good) reasons and my affirmation of something as true. But if it is correct that a trans-subjective space of truth can only be constituted by way of an irreducible difference between the perspectives of different speakers, this also means that consensus and dissent are equiprimordial: just as every controversy about truth claims has its telos in an uncoerced consensus, so does


every consensus carry in itself the seed of new disagreements. And this now means: truth, as encompassing various perspectives is, simultaneously, essentially controversial. That truth is transsubjective means that truth is, at the same time, contested. The fight around truth is the element in which truth has its being, a being that compels us ever further to rediscover truth, to take a position in the space of truth, to give and accept reasons. Only against the background of a cooperative fight around truth are shared convictions possible which are taken to be justified by all those who share them. In this context, the idea of a final, ultimate consensus makes no sense: because it would be the idea of a cessation of that dialogue and dispute in which truth has its being, it would be the idea of an end of truth. 11 I now return to Rorty’s thesis that the disquotation theory of truth contains everything elucidating that can be said about the concept of truth. I wish to explain in what sense I believe this thesis to be prima facie plausible, and in what sense I believe it to be false. It is plausible insofar as ‘truth’ cannot mean a property of assertions or convictions like ‘agreement with a reality existing in itself’ or ‘the possible content of a rational consensus under ideal conditions’. Actually, it does not designate, as Brandom has convincingly shown, a ‘property’ of assertions or convictions at all. On the contrary we call ‘true’ those assertions or convictions that we take to be justified: taking-to-be-true is a taking-aposition in a social space of reasons and not the ascription of a mysterious property. This is exactly what appears to speak for Rorty’s thesis that the concept of truth plays (or should play) absolutely no role in our justificatory practice. Since we call ‘true’ precisely the justified assertions or convictions—and one could be of the opinion that my reflections (directed against the ‘idealisation theorists’) on the constitutive connection between a


trans-subjective space of truth and a plurality of social perspectives can be just as well formulated with the help of the concept of justification—then the ‘recognising-as-(really)-justified’ would precisely move into the place of the ‘recognising-as-true’. Nevertheless, Rorty’s thesis appears false to me. I would now like to show that the concept of truth is significant for our discursive practices in that it makes explicit a central trait of these practices.16 If this demonstration is successful, this means that the concepts of truth and of justification mutually point to and demand one another. What is it about our discursive practices that is made explicit by the concept of truth? The key to answering this question is, I believe, the fact, emphasised by Rorty and Putnam, that ‘justification’ has a time and person index, which does not hold for the concept of truth. Whereas Rorty, however, seeks to trivialise the ‘non-indexicality’ of the concept of truth, I see in it a clue that in the concept of truth a constitutive trait of our assertion and justification praxis is revealed: namely, that the timelessness and non-indexicality of the concept of truth make explicit what the implicit meaning of asserting and justifying is. Even though justification always has a time and person index—which is easily made clear by reflection on our justification practices—nevertheless

16

Michael Williams, in a an article on “Meaning and Deflationary Truth” (The Journal of Philosophy, XCVI, no. 11 [1999]), has argued for an expressive role of the concept of truth: “For a disquotationalist, ‘true’ offers a way of replacing talk about the world with logically equivalent talk about words. This move to the level of talk about words (‘semantic ascent’) gives us new things to generalise over—that is, linguistic objects, sentences—thereby enabling us to express agreement and disagreement with sentences that we cannot specify: for example because we do not know what they are (‘What the president said is true’) or because there are too many of them (‘Every sentence of the form “P or not P” is true’)” (547). This, I believe, corresponds to Rorty’s position. Against this I would like to point to an ‘explicitating’ (Brandom’s term) role of the concept of truth, which is not reducible to an “expressive” role in Williams’ sense.


the justification of assertions or convictions from the perspective of those who bring forth such justifications is in no way meant as having a time or person index: where they argue for assertions or convictions, they raise—as one can say with the help of the concept of truth—context-transcending and trans-subjective truth claims. To express a conviction would not be what it is were it not at least implicitly already the expression of a contexttranscending truth claim. And this is exactly what is made explicit by the non-indexicality of the concept of truth. Rorty once said that he himself has never raised a context-transcending truth claim.17 This is of course not an empirical, but rather a meaning-critical (sinnkritische) thesis. It expresses in another way what Rorty also explains as the ‘cautionary’ use of ‘true’, when he says, “that the entire force of the cautionary use of ‘true’ is to point out that justification is relative to an audience and that we can never exclude the possibility that some better audience might exist, or come to exist, to whom a belief that is justifiable to us would not be justifiable.”18 This is Rorty’s version of fallibilism; and a lot, it seems to me, hangs on it. Namely, if it were correct then one could say: since taking-tobe-true itself is plainly context-relative, even the non-indexicality of the concept of truth cannot help us to get beyond particular justification contexts (as it certainly cannot), and therefore the

17

Nevertheless, he says such things as these: “Large-scale astrophysical descriptions of [the solar system, A.W.] are, if true at all, always true. So if Kepler’s description is right now, it was right before Kepler thought it up.” (“Charles Taylor on Truth,” in Truth and Progress, p. 90.) And, “It was, of course, true in earlier times that women should not have been oppressed, just as it was true before Newton said so that gravitational attraction accounted for the movements of the planets.” (“Feminism and Pragmatism,” ibid., p. 225.) One need only reverse the temporal direction of these sentences to see what a ‘context-transcending truth-claim’ is: it is the kind of truth-‘claim’, like Kepler and Newton raised it in their time, as they formulated and justified their theses (namely, as true). 18 Richard Rorty, “Is Truth a Goal of Inquiry?”, ibid., p. 22.


idea of a context-transcending truth claim could look like a piece of empty rhetoric. However, I believe that Rorty’s version of fallibilism is false. I will return to this shortly. First, however, back to my thesis that the disquotation schema of truth in no way shows us everything there is to say about the place of the concept of truth in our assertion and justification praxis. In a first step I argued that we ourselves only understand this schema correctly when we relate the concept of truth as ‘making explicit’19 back to our assertion and justification practices. If we do this, however, we can furthermore show that we only then correctly understand the role of the concept of truth when we make clear to ourselves in what way the truth-value of statements is dependent on—and varies with—a ‘truth-enabling’ conceptual background or ‘vocabulary’, an interdependence which may be spelled out in two ways: (1) On the one hand, vocabularies and conceptualisations are always already potentially at stake in the debate about the truth of propositions, and can also, hence, at any time—in spectacular or in inconspicuous forms— become the object of the debate about truth. Rorty’s own reflections on the difference between ‘inferential’ and ‘dialectical’ forms of argumentation20 point, in my opinion—despite Rorty’s

19 If I use an expression of Brandom’s here, I am doing so—as already indicated—not exactly in Brandom’s sense, since my intention is to make clear a mutual relation of explication between ‘truth’ and ‘justification’. This is incompatible with a reductive theory-design. In fact, I should say: I (as a philosopher) try to make explicit how the concept of truth is built into our discursive practices. However, I believe that what I here say about the concept of truth as ‘context-transcending’ corresponds in some way to what Brandom says about the concept of objectivity as one of ‘perspectival form’: “What is shared by all discursive perspectives is that there is a difference between what is objectively correct in the way of correct concept application and what is merely taken to be so, not what it is—the structure, not the content.” (Making It Explicit, p. 600.) 20 Cf. For instance Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 12, 78: “the ironist’s preferred form of


intentions—to a corresponding connection—which means, however, to the necessity of a broadened understanding of propositional truth. I have tried elsewhere21 to show in more detail that ‘inferential’ and ‘dialectical’ forms of argumentation in Rorty’s sense designate only two extreme poles of argumentation, which in all interesting forms of argumentation are always already tied up together. This means, however, that we only correctly understand the debate about the truth of propositions when we recognise that it is potentially always already tied together with a debate about the appropriateness of the vocabularies in which assertions and convictions are formulated. Turned around this means that what is at stake in the debate about the appropriateness of language is always also the truth of our beliefs, such that we thus do not correctly understand the role of the concept of truth when we understand truth values as being ultimately determined by a specific vocabulary.22 (2) On the other hand—as Wittgenstein in my opinion showed in On Certainty—‘paradigms’ of doubt-free assertions and beliefs are also always already given in every language or, to speak with Heidegger, every form of ‘disclosure’, beliefs which require no justification, but which rather define the elementary conditions of possible justification. Some of these beliefs may not be situation-specific, like “the earth already existed long before my birth,”23 others may be beliefs,

argument is dialectical in the sense that she takes the unit of persuasion to be a vocabulary rather than a proposition” (p. 78). 21 In a piece entitled “Gibt es eine Wahrheit jenseits der Aussagenwahrheit?” in eds. Klaus Günther und Lutz Wingert, Die Öffentlichkeit der Vernunft und die Vernunft der Öffentlichkeit. Festschrift für Jürgen Habermas, Frankfurt am Main, 2001. 22 From this it follows, of course, that the inferential concept of justification, which I have invoked in the preceding considerations, is too narrow in reality to help us to an appropriate concept of possible argumentation. 23 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, trans. Denis Paul and G. E. M. Ascombe New York, Harper & Row, 1969, § 203. “. . . we are interested in the fact that about certain empirical propositions no doubt can exist if making judgements is to be possible at all” (§ 308). And: “What stands fast does so, not because it


like “there’s a hand there,”24 about which one can quite easily be mistaken, ‘only’, as Wittgenstein says, “not in particular circumstances”—in circumstances, to be sure, which cannot, as Wittgenstein adds, exactly—in the sense of a rule—be specified in advance.25 “The truth of my statements,” says Wittgenstein, “is the test of my understanding of these statements.”26 And, “the truth of certain empirical propositions belongs to our frame of reference.”27 If I have until now assumed that we call ‘true’ those beliefs that we take to be justified or recognise as justified, then I have spoken above all about beliefs that are the possible object of a controversy. Wittgenstein, in contrast, is concerned with beliefs about which we cannot say what the meaning of a controversy (a doubt) should be. We assume them to be justified, without really being able to justify them. And that means that they are truth ‘paradigms’. Granted, the linguistic ‘frame of reference’ is also, as has already been emphasised above, never safe from revision—“The mythology may change back into a state of flux, the river-bed of thoughts may shift”;28 nevertheless—and this seems to me the point of Wittgenstein’s considerations—nothing about the ‘structural’ trait of our truth praxis is changed by any of this: namely, that certain paradigmatic truths that we presuppose without justification as certain, define the elementary conditions of a possible justification of beliefs. This means, however, that without such ‘truth paradigms’, standards of justification are not thinkable. And this further means that the concept of justification is not

is intrinsically obvious or convincing, it is rather held fast by what lies around it” (§ 144). 24 Ibid., § 32. 25 Ibid., § 25, § 27. 26 Ibid., § 80. 27 Ibid., § 83. 28 Ibid., § 97.


explainable independently of those of truth and certainty.29 Granted, this presupposes that the ever-present possibility of a revision of vocabulary also does not justify a general, fallibilis-

29

One could object that what was said under (1) does not go together with what was said under (2): Wittgenstein speaks of changes in language like changes in nature (“the river-bed of thoughts may shift”), he can thus also easily say: “When language-games change, then there is a change in the concepts, and with the concepts the meanings of words change” (Ibid., § 65). But that means: in all language games something is undoubtably certain and something else is not, and what is certain and what is not changes with the changing of the language game. Against this I have spoken, with Rorty, of another kind of changing of language games, one in which the invention of new vocabularies is critically related to problems, incoherences, or dead ends—which an established vocabulary has led to. Here then the language change is of the sort that relates critically to the respective established language. Only from such a perspective a problem emerges that in Wittgenstein’s description of language changes cannot emerge at all: I mean the problem of a generalised fallibilistic reservation, which both Apel and Rorty—the latter with the idea of a ‘cautionary’ use of the concept of truth—postulate as necessary. For Apel this reservation holds for all convictions with the exception of those which are ‘ultimately grounded’; for Rorty it holds—just as for Davidson—in the sense that although not all of our convictions can be false, any one taken individually may turn out to be false. Were a general fallibilistic reservation—be it in Rorty’s or in Apel’s version—justified, it would have to also incorporate Wittgenstein’s doubtless ‘certainties’ and my references to Wittgenstein could appear to be somehow displaced. Against this I believe that Wittgenstein’s considerations contain arguments against both versions of a generalised fallibilism which I have mentioned. I don’t want to speak here of Apel’s theses concerning an “ultimate grounding of certain necessary presuppositions of rational discourse,” which I have elsewhere criticised (“Ethics and Dialogue,” 182ff.); in what follows I will refer only to Rorty’s version. What Wittgenstein’s considerations show, in my opinion, is that not any one of our convictions taken individually can be false. As far as a particular, relatively stable system of reference is concerned, this appears to be trivial, because—as Wittgenstein shows—it can still only ever turn on an axis of non-doubtable convictions. Everything depends, therefore, on what happens when ‘vocabularies’ are revised or new vocabularies invented—when, hence, the ‘river-bed of thoughts’ shifts not merely in a natural sense but rather in the context of a controversy about truth. In this way, certainly, as I assumed above, many truths believed to be certain may be put in question; but for the ‘empirical’ certainties discussed by Wittgenstein as paradigmatic this cannot hold in the same sense as it does for common errors or hypotheses, which can be revealed to be false. This is what I am arguing for in the main text, and this is also what, in my opinion, makes an unqual-


tic reservation, as Rorty expresses it when he speaks of a ‘cautionary’ use of the concept of truth. The ‘contextualistic’ aspect of our use of the concept of truth in no way makes it a victim of a fallibilistic devaluation. If Rorty believes that each one of our beliefs may turn out to be unjustified, this also means— despite Rorty’s Davidsonian protest, according to which most of our beliefs must be true—that all of our beliefs (not all at once, but certainly successively) could turn out to be unjustified. If one wants to avoid this consequence—which is certainly incompatible with Rorty’s Davidsonianism—then one must admit that the ‘truth paradigms’ of which I have spoken cannot in any case be revisable in the same sense as all those (possibly) controversial beliefs that one actually means when one formulates a fallibilism principle. If we, for instance, take the conviction that the Earth existed long before my birth—of which Wittgenstein says that to put it in question means to put in question the possibility of historical or natural-historical research (and we must ask ourselves, how we should ever do that)—it would still be thinkable that our concept of ‘Earth’ and the network of inferential relations with which it is tied up could change. But the practically relevant kernel of that (common) conviction would in no way be put into question—which is in some ways comparable to the case of Newtonian physics, which in the limited domain in which it had proven itself a thousandfold, was in no way put in question by the scientific revolution of quantum physics or of relativity theory, but rather remained valid as their limiting case (cf. Bohrs ‘correspondence principle’). Precisely from a pragmatist

ified fallibilism incoherent. The problem with a generally formulated fallibilism principle with reference to the truth of statements is, in my opinion, that it tosses together into one pot completely different cases of a possible revision of concepts and convictions without differentiating among them. If one does not do so, then one cannot, as Rorty does, say in general: “that we can never exclude the possibility that some better audience might exist, or come to exist, to whom a belief that is justifiable to us would not be justified.”


perspective, one should not equate ‘false’ (in the sense of a problematic vocabulary) with ‘false’ (in the sense of ‘untrue’). But if this is correct, then one should not say that each one of our convictions could turn out to be unjustified, but rather—if one wants to say something general—that every vocabulary, every network of convictions, may reveal itself to be in need of revision (and in fact constantly does). If there were no paradigmatic certainties = truths in Wittgenstein’s sense, then there would also be no linguistic praxis with its accompanying possibility of revision. If one takes, however, what was said under (1) and (2) together, then it becomes clear, as I believe, that a deflationist interpretation of the concept of truth conceals constitutive traits of our justification practices or, rather, makes them inaccessible to an appropriate thematisation. 12 In closing, I wish to explain my thesis directed against Karl-Otto Apel, that the attempt to anchor truth in the idea of an ideal communication community is structurally analogous to the strategy of the metaphysical realists. After all, one could first of all object that idea has its place in the context of an already admitted internal relationship between truth and justification, and consequently merely attempts to explain the in fact barely doubtful difference between ‘justified’ and ‘true’ in another way than I have attempted to here. My argument for the thesis that the explanation of that difference with help of the idea of an infinite consensus of an ideal communication community still structurally participates in the weakness of metaphysical realism has two parts: the first part is of a meaning-critical kind; the ideal communication community is the Nirvana of linguistic communication, therefore it makes no clear sense (just like the idea of a world in itself, portrayed as escaping our epistemic capabilities, makes no sense). The second part of my argument is that the con-


sensus of an ideal communication community defines a measure of absolute truth, which is not available to any finite being as a measure of his or her judgements. It is located beyond those standards toward which we are factically always already oriented when we call convictions true or false and reasons sound or not. So the measure defined by Apel’s explication of truth is a measure against which in principle no one can measure his or her judgements and reasons. It is a measure beyond the human capacity for knowledge and judgement, and is in this way comparable to the measure of a world-in-itself, of which we can in principle not know whether our convictions and judgements are appropriate to it. What I have attempted to show is that we don’t need such a measure in order to understand our differentiation between ‘justified’ and ‘true’; a measure beyond our actual judging and reasoning praxis helps us neither to better understand this judging and reasoning praxis, nor to better orient ourselves in it. In Wittgesteinian terms, it is like a wheel in a machine that spins alone. To ignore it or to remove it does not threaten our practice of raising and criticising context-transcending truth claims. For that it is enough that we understand ourselves as beings who, in a social ‘space of reasons’ (Brandom), and from a respectively ‘subjective’ perspective, are compelled to take a position whose meaning can only be explained with the help of an inter-perspectival and context-transcending concept of truth. But in order to understand how the latter can be coherently thought, we would only have to bid farewell to metaphysical understandings of such an absolute truth; and that is exactly what I think is possible when we understand the connection between truth and justification as I have explained it. 13 My conclusion thus runs: truth is not a regulative idea. The attempt to replace a metaphysical correspondence theory of truth


with an epistemic concept of truth—with the expectation that truth and justification (or truth and consensus) will coincide, not here and now but rather under ideal conditions—will not lead us out of metaphysics. Truth and justification coincide with reference to the making of judgements and the holding of beliefs, but not in reference to the ascription of judgements and beliefs to others. From this ‘grammatical’ difference result both the normativity and trans-subjectivity of truth, as well as the ‘contested’ aspect of truth. Apel has always believed that the only alternative to ‘truth-absolutism’—as he sought to explain it through the idea of an ideal communication community—is a relativistic-historicist dissolution of the concept of truth. But I believe this is an optical illusion. What is common to Apel’s and the relativistic position is the attempt to look at our truth practices from a standpoint outside these practices. The relativist tries to step out of the truth game while playing it at the same time––of course, at the cost of a performative contradiction. Against this, Apel would like to make it clear to the relativist that he or she absolutely cannot coherently do this because one must always already stake a claim to a non-relativistic concept of truth in order to deny it. And this argument appears correct to me. The problem lies in Apel’s next step: when he attempts to prove to the relativist that he or she must always already have recognised a concept of absolute truth— which Apel explains with the help of the concept of an idealised communication community—he opens up for the relativist a breathing space for a meta-critique: namely, if the ideal communication community turns out to be a metaphysical fiction, then this means—presupposing that the relativist accepts Apel’s proof—that the idea of an absolute truth is merely the expression of a transcendental illusion that surrounds our discursive practices. And this was in fact exactly what the relativist wanted to say. Perhaps at this point I could be allowed to cite myself: as I said in “Ethics and Dialogue,” it is likely

The Debate About Truth: Pragmatism without Regulative Ideas • 211 that the problem of relativism is merely the abiding shadow of an absolutism which would like to anchor the truth in some Archemedean point lying outside the world of our actual discourse. Relativism in this connection, would be the reminder that there can be no such Archemedean point. But if it is true that we can hold fast to the idea of truth without the aid of such an Archimedean point, then at the same time as we take our leave of absolutism, we can also bid farewell to its shadow, relativism.30

What I have tried to show is that we in fact need no such Archemedean point in order to save the normative power of truth.

30

“Ethics and Dialogue,” 180f.

Dieter Freundlieb

Why Subjectivity Matters: Critical Theory and the Philosophy of the Subject*

The significance of subjectivity for philosophy was not discovered for the first time by René Descartes—St. Augustine and even earlier Greek philosophers in the Stoic tradition had already explored subjectivity to a certain extent. But it is widely accepted today that it was Descartes who launched a new paradigm in philosophy, a paradigm often referred to as either the philosophy of consciousness (Bewußtseinsphilosophie), the philosophy of the subject, or, as Jürgen Habermas sometimes prefers to call it, the ‘mentalist paradigm’. Subjectivity as a grounding principle for all philosophical system building, especially for all knowledge claims, was subsequently made the focal point by both Kant and the post-Kantian idealists Fichte and Schelling, though both Fichte and Schelling later discovered the limitations of any philosophy that relies entirely on the subject as ultimate ground. With Hegel’s move from subjective to objective idealism the role of subjectivity became more complicated and less clear than in Schelling’s and Fichte’s systems.1 There is no need, however, to address this difficult issue in this paper.2 * This article was first published in Critical Horizons, vol. 1, no. 2, 2000. 1 See the ground-breaking work of Klaus Düsing, Das Problem der Subjektivität in Hegels Logik, Bonn, Bouvier, 1995. See also the earlier piece by Konrad Cramer, “‘Erlebnis.’ Thesen zu Hegels Theorie des Selbstbewußtseins mit Rücksicht of die Aporien eines Grundbegriffs nachhegelscher Philosophie,” Hegel-Studien, Beiheft 11, 1974, pp. 537–603. 2 As is well known, Habermas claims that in spite of a promising initial move by Hegel to overcome the mentalist paradigm, he never managed to

Why Subjectivity Matters • 213

With the collapse of German Idealism around the middle of the nineteenth century, the subsequent rise of positivism and, in the early twentieth century, of analytic philosophy, subjectivity was removed from centre stage. It had retained some of its centrality, of course, in neo-Kantianism and moved to the forefront again in Husserl’s phenomenology. But this revival was short-lived. Soon Heidegger was to interpret the philosophy of subjectivity as a central part of the history of Western metaphysics, a history Heidegger wanted to overcome. Its focus on the subject was seen as a manifestation of the subject’s preoccupation with self-preservation (Selbsterhaltung) and self-empowerment (Selbstermächtigung) which prevented it from addressing the prior and ultimately more important question of Being. Today it is often argued that Heidegger and the ‘linguistic turn’ have once and for all made the philosophy of the subject obsolete. Interestingly, this view is shared by two otherwise opposed contemporary schools of thought: postmodern philosophy and Critical Theory. The once fashionable dictum about the ‘death of the subject’ was never quite true, of course, and philosophers such as Jacques Derrida always claimed to be reconfiguring the subject, not abandoning it altogether. Nonetheless, in both postmodern philosophy and Critical Theory the subject is usually thought of as somehow ‘constituted’ by language, albeit in different ways and by different mechanisms. In spite of the strong anti-subjectivist currents that have reigned since the end of German Idealism, there are now signs that the philosophical sensibility is shifting. After some early attempts in the late 1960s the last twenty years or so have seen a genuine return to the subject and to subjectivity as a focus of philosophical

leave it behind. The most recent occasion on which Habermas makes this claim is his essay “From Kant to Hegel and Back again—The Move Towards Detranscendentalization,” European Journal of Philosopy 7, 1999, pp. 129–157.

214 • Dieter Freundlieb

interest. This has occurred in at least two areas: analytic philosophy of mind3 and in the work of Manfred Frank and Dieter Henrich, two major German philosophers engaged in the exploration of the connections between German Idealism and analytic philosophy of mind.4 In my paper I will draw freely on their work because I believe it is of crucial importance for the future of Critical Theory and for social philosophy in general. In fact, both Frank and Henrich have already begun to investigate some of the consequences of the return to subjectivity for Critical Theory,5 but further work needs to be done if the full implications of the new approach are to be drawn out and recognised. Before I begin to show in some detail why subjectivity matters for Critical Theory, let me briefly indicate why analytic philosophers have focussed on subjectivity and why they found that it cannot be reduced to something else, either naturalistically or linguistically. From the late 1960s, a number of analytic philosophers became convinced of the irreducibility of subjectivity when they applied

3 The main figures here are Hector-Neri Castañeda, Roderick M. Chisholm, Gareth Evans, Thomas Nagel, John Perry, and Sydney Shoemaker. See also the volume entitled Analytische Theorien des Selbstbewußtseins, ed. Manfred Frank, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1994. 4 Henrich is best known for his path-breaking historical analyses of German Idealist philosophy. But he has also produced important systematic work and work that is both historical and systematic. Frank is known in the AngloAmerican world for his critique of poststructuralism but he is now also recognised as a world authority on the philosophy of early German Romanticism. 5 See Manfred Frank, “Wider den apriorischen Intersubjektivismus. Gegenvorschläge aus Sartrescher Inspiration,” in Micha Brumlik & Hauke Brunkhorst, hg., Gemeinschaft und Gerechtigkeit, Frankfurt am Main, Fischer Verlag, 1993, pp. 273–289, “Subjektivität und Intersubjektivität” in Frank, Selbstbewußtsein und Selbsterkenntnis, Stuttgart, Reclam, 1991, pp. 410–477, and “Selbstbewußtsein und Argumentation” Amsterdamer Spinoza-Vorträge, July, 1995, Assen, Van Gorkum, 1997. Dieter Henrich has openly criticised Habermas in his “Was ist Metaphysik—was Moderne? Zwölf Thesen gegen Habermas” in Henrich, Konzepte, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1987, pp. 11–43.


their linguistic analysis to deictic expressions such as ‘here’, ‘this’, and ‘now’, including, in particular, the personal pronoun ‘I’ and the peculiar kind of self-reference it makes possible. It quickly became obvious that indexicals such as ‘here’ and ‘now’ can only be fully understood in relation to a first-person perspective, that is, a consciousness with regard to which something is physically or temporally close. Furthermore, analytic philosophers of mind such as Hector-Neri Castañeda argued that knowledge of the self cannot be analysed in terms of concepts we use to refer to objects. He also maintained that reference to objects is only possible on the basis of a previous acquaintance with ourselves in self-consciousness, a point Fichte had made more than a hundred and fifty years earlier.6 This knowledge by the self of itself as subject is not the result of an identification but a form of direct and incorrigible awareness or knowledge. As Manfred Frank has pointed out, from the early 1980s a number of analytic philosophers (for example, Gareth Evans) realised that not all philosophical problems can be reformulated as problems of language. Several analytic philosophers of mind acknowledged that selfconsciousness is pre-propositional and that knowledge of the self as self cannot be reduced, to use more technical terms, to either de re or de dicto attitudes.7 Rather, as David Lewis, in spite of his materialist leanings, argued, self-consciousness must be conceived as a de se attitude.8 Self-consciousness is not knowledge of an object and it is pre-propositional. As early as 1968, Sydney Shoemaker had maintained that self-reference cannot proceed on the basis of the perception model of knowledge

6 Castañeda, “ ‘He’: A Study in the Logic of Self-Consciousness,” Ratio 8, 1966, pp. 130–157; and “Self-Consciousness, Demonstrative Reference, and the Self-Ascription View of Believing,” in ed. James E. Tomberlin, Philosophical Perspective 1 Metaphysics, Atascadero, Ridgeview, 1987, pp. 405–454. 7 “Vorwort,” Analytische Theorien des Selbstbewußtseins, p. 21. 8 See his “Attitudes de dicto and de se” in Lewis, Philosophical Papers, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983, vol. I, pp. 133–159.


because perception requires a subject that perceives an object.9 And such perceptions are always fallible. But in the case of a subject being aware of itself, observational fallibility is impossible. We can be mistaken in many ways when we look at ourselves as persons with certain attributes, but we cannot be mistaken about our own identity as thinking subjects. Thus in his essay, “Personal Identity: A Materialist’s Account,” Shoemaker had argued that perceptual self-knowledge always presupposes nonperceptual acquaintance with oneself.10 It is obvious even from this very brief sketch that the philosophy of subjectivity is alive and well within contemporary analytic philosophy. This is why Habermas’ view according to which the mentalist paradigm has become obsolete as a consequence of the linguistic turn simply does not stand up to scrutiny. On the contrary, there are many signs that a return to subjectivity as a philosophical issue is still on the increase.11 But why did Habermas reject what he calls the philosophy of the subject in the first place? For Habermas (who, it seems to me, is only now beginning to address the relevant issues)12 the philosophy of the subject is primarily associated with the metaphysical program of German Idealism, though his critique is directed at virtually all its continental varieties. His critique basically focuses on two aspects. The first one is his rejection of the philosophy of the subject as a foundationalist program. Even in very recent work he argues that the philosophy of the subject is wedded to the

9

“Self-Reference and Self-Awareness” reprinted in Shoemaker, Identity, Cause, and Mind: Philosophical Essays, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 6–18. 10 In Shoemaker and Richard Swinburne, Personal Identity, Oxford, 1984, p. 104. 11 D. Henrich has recently diagnosed the current situation in his essay “Inflation in Subjektivität?”, Merkur 586, 1998, pp. 46–54. 12 Frank, personal communication.


ideal of epistemic certainty. In his 1996 essay on Richard Rorty, for example, he writes: The ideas of “self-consciousness” and “subjectivity” imply that the knowing subject can disclose for itself a sphere of immediately accessible and absolutely certain experiences if, rather than focussing directly on objects, it turns its attention, in an indirect fashion, to its own representations of objects. . . . The epistemic authority of the first-person perspective is sustained by three paradigmatic assumptions: – That we know our own mental states better than anything else; – That the acquisition of knowledge proceeds essentially on the basis of the representation of objects; – And that the truth of judgements is supported by apodictic evidences.13

Now the first point to be made about Habermas’ comment here is that in its generality this characterisation of the philosophy of the subject is simply incorrect. The incorrigibility of self-reference does not entail that the philosophy of the subject is committed to the ideal of epistemic certainty. Habermas’ description seems to fit late nineteenth century positivism much better than the philosophy of the subject. Even as a description of the admittedly foundationalist program of German Idealism Habermas’ statements are very questionable. In any case, in a sense Habermas is tilting at windmills here because his critique of German Idealism as a form of foundationalism is widely accepted by his critics. Philosophers like Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank, while drawing extensively on German Idealism for their own philosophy of subjectivity, have been arguing all along that the renewal of a philosophy of the subject is not necessarily linked to any foundationalism and should in fact abandon any such attempt. As Frank has demonstrated in great detail, the early Romantic

13 J. Habermas, “Rorty’s pragmatische Wende,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 5, 1996 (my translation).


philosophers and writers, especially Hölderlin, Friedrich Schlegel, and Novalis, never subscribed to the foundationalist program launched by Fichte.14 Habermas’ second, and in our context more important point, is that he believes that the idealist philosophy of self-consciousness is tied to a subject-object model of knowledge and that it cannot, therefore, account for the kind of non-objectifying knowledge the critical social sciences aim for. What Habermas calls the ‘performative attitude’, that is, the attitude of a communicating subject to another subject, is non-objectifying but crucial for the entire Habermasian project. This is where the real differences between Habermas and his critics arise. Habermas thinks he can show that the whole of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy of the subject is caught in a certain network of concepts from which it cannot escape and which makes it impossible to conceive of the performative attitude adopted by subjects oriented towards mutual understanding. Habermas reiterates this critique on numerous occasions, but the following examples will suffice to illustrate the point. The philosophy of consciousness, he claims, is based “on an epistemic model oriented towards the perception and representation of objects,” and it operates with a concept of the subject that is “directed towards objects and that turns itself into an object through reflection.”15 Similarly, he claims that in Fichte’s philosophy subjects can only be conceived as “objects for themselves”16 and that Fichte dissolves intersubjective relations into

14 M. Frank, Unendliche Annäherung. Die Anfänge der philosophischen Frühromantik, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1997. 15 “Die Philosophie als Platzhalter und Interpret,” in Moralbewußtsein und kommunikatives Handeln, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1983, p. 17. 16 J. Habermas, Nachmetaphysisches Denken, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1988, p. 199.


“subject-object relations.”17 In a very recent paper he combines the critique of the alleged foundationalism of the mentalist paradigm with his critique of the subject-object model. He describes self-reflection as the subject’s representing of its own representations of objects through introspection and argues that this search for the origins and conditions of knowledge operates with a concept of truth as “subjective evidence or certainty.”18 These criticisms are rather surprising because surely Habermas is aware that even in Kant the transcendental self is not and cannot be conceived of as an object of knowledge since it is precisely this ‘highest point’ in Kant’s architectonic which makes knowledge of objects possible for a unitary subject. But Habermas seems to assume that the philosophy of the subject is somehow wedded to the subject-object model because it just cannot say how the subject itself is knowable and therefore has no other choice than to fall back on the subject-object model. To be sure, Habermas points to a real problem here because it is true to say that Kant has great difficulties in trying to explain, in what he calls a ‘transcendental deduction’, how we can know the subjective conditions of factual knowledge. Habermas seems to assume that the philosophy of the subject is faced with a dilemma: it is committed to a reflection model of self-consciousness, that is to say, to a model according to which the self knows itself by turning back on itself. But this means that it looks at itself as an object, which by definition it is not, and which it could not even recognise as itself if it were not already acquainted with itself in some other way before bending back on itself. Habermas claims that this dilemma only became obvious in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre. Thus he writes: “If the representation of an object is the

17

Ibid., p. 200. “From Kant to Hegel and Back again—The Move Towards Detranscendentalization,” European Journal of Philosopy 7, 1999, p. 131. 18


only mode in which we can gain knowledge, a self-reflection that operates as a representation of my own representings could not but turn the transcendental spontaneity that escapes all objectification into an object.”19 Post-Kantian philosophers, including Fichte, tried to solve this problem by postulating, at various points in their intellectual careers, what they called ‘intellectual intuition’, that is, a nonsensory but at the same time non-conceptual access to the self by itself, that is to say, a form of knowledge that is not a mode of representing. We will have to come back to this question of how the self can know itself in a moment because it is crucial for a critique of Habermas. But first I would like to look at one more aspect of Habermas’ criticisms. He argues that the philosophy of the subject is committed to an inherently paradoxical dualist ontology. There is the knowing subject that stands over against a world of objects. But at the same time the subject is itself an object in the world. This dual position of the subject has been dealt with in two ways. Attempts have been made to either reduce it naturalistically, as has happened in the empiricist tradition from Hume to Quine, or else it can remain in its paradoxical position as both immanent and world-transcending as is characteristic of the idealist tradition of transcendental philosophy from Kant to the present. Habermas claims that Dieter Henrich is committed to this second alternative, but like his idealist predecessors he is unable to solve its inherent problems.20 Habermas is obviously alerting us to a conundrum here that has plagued transcendental philosophy from its inception. How can we solve the problem arising from Kant’s doctrine of the two realms, the realm of the phenomenal

19 20

Ibid., p. 132. See Habermas, Nachmetaphysisches Denken, p. 27.


and the realm of the noumenal that according to Kant we simultaneously inhabit? According to Habermas we can only solve, or rather dissolve, the problem by switching paradigms. We need to abandon the philosophy of the subject and move on to the linguistic paradigm. But is this the only option we have? And does it really get rid of the problems we want to get rid of? Habermas knows that reflective theories of self-consciousness are circular, but he refuses to countenance the possibility that the knowledge the self has of itself might be a genuine form of knowledge but nonetheless escape the subject-object model, a form of knowledge that is pre-propositional and in fact the necessary epistemological basis for any further propositional knowledge of the self and the external world. This is precisely Henrich’s and Frank’s point. Since we cannot possibly deny the fact that there is self-consciousness, and since reflection theories are inescapably circular, we must postulate a basic epistemic selfrelation which is sui generis in the sense that it cannot be conceived of within the subject-object model of knowledge. This is, of course, what the German Idealists had in mind when they talked about intellectual intuition. Habermas refuses to consider the possibility of such a subjective basis for knowledge because he is convinced that all knowledge must be propositional or conceptual. He probably fears that if we abandon the idea of the linguistic nature of all knowledge his crucial concept of communicative rationality is at risk of suffering serious damage. For Habermas sees rationality and rational justification as reason giving, and reason giving can only be performed through making statements. Like Donald Davidson he thinks that “nothing can count as a reason for holding a belief except another belief.”21 And beliefs are always considered to be propositional. 21 D. Davidson: “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge” in Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, hg. von Ernest LePore, Oxford, Blackwell 1986, p. 310.


This conception of reason giving is unacceptable, however, because it suffers from a fatal flaw: it cannot explain what the validity of those statements or beliefs consist in which function as the ultimate premises of an argument. This is why several analytic philosophers have recently argued that statements expressing beliefs must be grounded in pre-propositional perceptual knowledge.22 And such knowledge always has its basis in subjective experience and is therefore only accessible from a first-person perspective.23 An appeal to publicly available linguistic entities like propositions or statements does not help since their validity (or at least the recognition of their validity) depends on both a unitary subject and its pre-propositional experience. Habermas has always claimed that the move from the mentalist to the linguistic paradigm brought with it the methodological advantage that it replaces subjective evidence with publicly available linguistic entities.24 But this has turned out to be an illusion. The validity of statements must be recognised by individual subjects whose judgement crucially depends on their own experiences. A first conclusion we can draw, then, is that subjectivity matters to Critical Theory because it shows that the epistemic validity claims that figure so prominently in theoretical discourses must be anchored in the subject. What it means to make a knowledge claim and how it can be validated cannot be explicated at the level of pragmatics because any such attempt presupposes cognising subjects with privileged access to their own subjectivity.

22

For example William Alston and Laurence BonJour. See William Alston, “Perceptual Knowledge,” in The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, ed. by John Greco and Ernest Sosa, Oxford, Blackwell, 1999, pp. 223–242, and Laurence BonJour “The Dialectic of Foundationalism and Coherentism,” pp. 117–142 in the same volume. 23 This has serious consequences for Habermas’ consensus theory of truth. 24 For example in the recent essay by Jürgen Habermas, “Richtigkeit vs. Wahrheit. Zum Sinn der Sollgeltung moralischer Urteile und Normen,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 46, 1998, p. 189.


But let me now turn to Dieter Henrich for whom subjectivity can still function as a philosophical principle as long as we avoid the foundationalism that was once associated with this idea. Let me give you a brief outline of his philosophy of subjectivity. In line with German Idealism, but without attempting to renew the idealist program of ultimate foundations, Henrich argues that philosophical reflection needs to start from an analysis of subjectivity because a philosophically tenable understanding of ourselves and our place in the world, of truth and objectivity, must first engage in an analysis of the subjective presuppositions of knowledge. So, what he proposes is obviously a version of transcendental philosophy. But while Kant had identified transcendental apperception, that is, the ‘Ich denke’, as the ‘highest point’ in his epistemology, he had failed, according to Henrich, to analyse sufficiently the intrinsically and irreducibly complex structure of the knowing self-relation, even if we have to concede Kant’s point that the epistemic self-relation cannot be fully explained theoretically, and that our attempts at its elucidation cannot avoid getting caught in a certain kind of circularity. Henrich claims that such an elucidation shows the epistemic priority of the self-relation in which the subject is aware of its identity with itself. Its identity is in fact constituted by the irrefutable identity, over time, of its ‘I’-thoughts (Ich-Gedanken). Henrich also points out that in the case of ‘I’-thoughts thinking and being coincide, that is, the ‘I’ exists as a thinking self. In other words, it is normally always possible that what I think about does not exist. But this is not possible in the case of ‘I’-thoughts. Henrich also argues, following Leibniz and Kant, that our sense of what is real in the world is in fact derived from the immediate experience of the reality of our own existence. This is what ultimately supports and from which we derive our sense of what else is real, apart from our own self. As a consequence, he believes


that an analysis of the self-relation shows that the objective world can never be conceived of as entirely independent of ‘I’-thoughts, that is, that we cannot refer to objects in the world except on the basis of a prior self-consciousness, a point made by Fichte but also, as Manfred Frank has pointed out and as I mentioned earlier, by analytic philosophers of mind such as Hector-Neri Castañeda.25 In this sense, our account of the world contains an irreducibly idealist moment. At the same time, however, our striving for knowledge always goes beyond a world of objects whose basic structure is constituted by subjective conditions of knowledge. Here Henrich sides with post-Kantians such as Schelling who likewise argued that we need to go beyond Kant’s view that we can only know a world of phenomena. According to Henrich, as we have just seen, an analysis of the knowing self-relation shows that ‘I’-thoughts imply a belief in the existence of a world of objects. In other words, the epistemic self-relation is inconceivable without a simultaneous relation to an already (partially) disclosed world that is not a mere extension of the self.26 This is the indispensably realist aspect of Henrich’s philosophy, a characteristic that sets it off against the radical idealism of the early Fichte. At the same time, as embodied subjects, we know that we are not just a subject but a spatio-temporally situated person in the world and thus an object among all other objects in the world,

25

M. Frank, “Psychische Vertrautheit und epistemische Selbstzuschreibung,” in Denken der Individualität. Festschrift für Josef Simon, ed. by Thomas S. Hoffmann and Stefan Majetschak, Berlin & New York, de Gruyter, 1995, p. 74. 26 In his analysis of Schelling’s Die Weltalter, Wolfram Hogrebe argues that reference to objects in the world is only possible on the basis of a ‘pre-semantic’ cognitive relation between self and world. I take this to be a similar point to Henrich’s argument. See Hogrebe, Prädikation und Genesis, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1989.


even though we know that the relation between the subject and its bodily existence as a person is not of the same kind as the relation between the subject and external objects. But, as is the norm in the case of external objects, we normally do not have privileged knowledge of what we are as persons with bodies. Also, since we know ourselves as individual subjects, we know that there can be other such subjects. Subjectivity and intersubjectivity are therefore co-terminous. Far from being self-sufficient or completely transparent to itself, the subject is aware that it has not created itself and is dependent on a ground that supports its existence. This ground, however, cannot be conceived on the basis of a materialist or purely naturalist ontology. In other words, the reality of the subject for the subject cannot be understood entirely as that of a material object in the world. The ground we depend upon can therefore not be conceived of as the (material) cause of our existence. An analysis of the knowing self-relation makes us aware of the ground. But at the same time the ground remains beyond our cognitive reach in the sense that while it can be thought, it cannot become an object of (objectifying) knowledge (Wissen). An analysis of the self-relation makes us realise that we are not at home in the world in the sense that our ‘natural’, philosophically unaided, understanding of the world does not make available an internally consistent ontology but presents us with incompatible ontologies, especially the ontology of subjectivity and free agency, on the one hand, and that of things or objects and their relations in the external world, on the other. In Henrich’s view, this is one of the main reasons for the need for philosophy. Once we recognise that our situation in the world is inherently precarious and lacks clear orientation and full intelligibility, the need for a revisionary metaphysics (in Strawson’s sense) and a certain kind of speculative thinking becomes inescapable. In a


sense, what we need is a new kind of Vereinigungsphilosophie as it was postulated by Hölderlin and the early Hegel, a philosophy that can unify what seem to be incompatible ontologies and the conflicting tendencies of life they give rise to. According to Henrich, all philosophy which rightfully bears this name arises from and, once developed, should reconnect with existential questions and uncertainties that emerge from the incompatibilities of the ontologies we are confronted with in our ‘natural’ understanding of the world. By doing this, philosophy should be able to give our lives guidance and orientation, though without imposing any particular doctrine upon us. And while conflicting but equally legitimate orientations and tendencies arise unavoidably from within our natural understandings of the relation between the self and the world, it is the task of philosophy to attempt to reconcile or at least come to a final assessment of the conflicts that arise from within ‘conscious life’ (bewußtes Leben), that is, a life led by and in accordance with (regulative) ideas in a Kantian sense. Historically, the major religions of the world have offered such existential orientation, but they have always given priority to only one of the conflicting tendencies and are therefore inherently unstable. A naturalistic scientific worldview, on the other hand, cannot make the whole of reality intelligible either. An all-encompassing naturalism such as the one underlying most of analytic philosophy (paradigmatically manifest in the work of Quine) must be taken seriously, but it cannot possibly give a complete account of the world (especially not of naturalism itself as an explanatory approach to the world). Only philosophy, if anything, will enable us to analyse and assess the conflicting tendencies and to give an account of how that which naturalism leaves out of consideration can be accommodated within a more comprehensive understanding. What is required then, according to Henrich, is a philosophy which is monistic in its ontology and guided by the neo-Platonic


idea of the ‘hen kai pan’, that is, the notion that the diversity and multiplicity of the world ultimately derives from an all-encompassing unity of which everything is and remains a part. Only such a monistic ontology would allow us to see ourselves as actually belonging to and having a meaningful place within the world. And he sees the enduring achievement and contemporary relevance of German Idealism in its attempt to develop new conceptual frameworks (Begriffsformen) and a monistic ontology that could make our precarious and intellectually puzzling place in the world intelligible. As in the case of German Idealism, a contemporary version of such a philosophy has to be metaphysical in the sense that it needs to develop a speculative form of thinking which transcends and unites existing but incompatible ontologies. Now let me return to Habermas and Critical Theory. As we have seen, Habermas assumes that the problems of the philosophy of the subject can be avoided by moving from the mentalist to the linguistic paradigm. But if what both analytic philosophers of mind and Frank and Henrich are saying has any validity, Habermas’ paradigm shift is neither justified nor does it solve the problems it is intended to solve. For a start, Critical Theory, unlike some postmodern conceptions of the subject, needs an autonomous subject qua social agent. But there is no systematic account in Habermas’ work of such a subject because for Habermas the subject is a product of social interaction. When he tries to explain the constitution of the subject, intersubjectivity takes priority over subjectivity. He believes subjectivity to be the result of a process of a communicative exchange with other persons. But this is getting things the wrong way around. His attempt to analyse the emergence of self-consciousness and the subject on the basis of George Herbert Mead’s theory of social interaction cannot succeed, even if Mead’s theory is refined in the way Habermas suggests it must be. As Frank has shown, such attempts always presuppose the notion of a subject that is already familiar


with itself before it can understand and adopt the perspective of a co-subject with whom it interacts through communication.27 Just as the subject cannot identify itself by looking at its image in a mirror unless it already knows itself as an identical subject, the subject cannot first learn that it is a subject by being approached by another subject. Subjectivity is not reducible to the effect of a communicative exchange with others. The development of a personal identity in the social-psychological sense of this term is of course very much dependent on our interaction with others. But this development can only proceed on the basis of a sense of identity that cannot be learned from being exposed to others. This also means that the ‘performative attitude’ which Habermas believes he can somehow deduce from an analysis of basic presuppositions of speech acts is ultimately explicable only from within the philosophy of the subject that Habermas rejects. Only a subject standing in the kind of knowing self-relation that Henrich has been trying to elucidate is capable of adopting a performative attitude. That it is being addressed as a subject, is again, not something the subject can learn by listening to the speech acts performed by others, even if they are directed at him or herself. In a similar way it can be argued that subjectivity matters in the field of ethics, including the discourse ethics developed by Critical Theorists. The subject knows itself as an agent who can act on the basis of freely accepted norms. It cannot conceive of itself as a mere object in a material world governed by natural laws. The basic principles of Habermas’ discourse ethics, which again he claims can be rationally reconstructed from the presuppositions 27

See for example Frank, “Subjektivität und Intersubjektivität” in Frank Selbstbewußtsein und Selbsterkenntnis, pp. 410–477. See also Frank, “Die Wiederkehr des Subjekts in der heutigen deutschen Philosophie” in Frank, Conditio moderna, Leipzig, Reclam, 1993, pp. 115–6 and “Against a priori Intersubjectivism” in this book.


of communication, would be unintelligible to a subject that does not already understand itself as free and therefore acting within a space of norms and reasons, not the space of natural laws. In this sense Kant was right when he talked about a ‘fact of reason’ that is not open to any further explanation. In fact, one could argue that both our sense of what is real and our sense of what ought to be are part of a basic self-understanding that makes factual and normative knowledge possible. They are conditions of possibility and hence not reducible to a result of social learning. The notion of the recognition of and by other subjects that plays such a prominent role in Habermas’ (and Axel Honneth’s) social philosophy is then also only intelligible if it is anchored in a theory of the subject, that is, a subject that is both capable and in need of recognition. What needs to be recognised is a subject of a certain kind. And if recognition is to be ethically meaningful, it must be of a subject that knows itself as not entirely socially constituted but also as not entirely self-created. This becomes clearer once we take some of Henrich’s further considerations into account. As we have seen, Henrich argues that the subject is faced with a fundamental uncertainty about its origin as well as an uncertainty about how it can make its own position in the world intelligible given that it encounters several incompatible ontologies. The ‘knowing self-relation’ (wissende Selbstbeziehung) as Henrich calls it opens up different and equally valid possibilities of leading a meaningful life. And the irreducible self-reflexivity of the subject allows the subject, at least in principle, to distance itself from any conceivable selfinterpretation. The formation of a personal identity, which of course, always proceeds within the context of an ongoing interaction with others, must be seen as both self- and other-directed. Even more importantly perhaps, the subject which has to lead its life and which therefore needs to arrive at a reasonably stable


self-interpretation, even if much of its life might be taken up with trying to arrive at such a self-interpretation, will not be able to do so if it sees itself as no more than a social agent. It will want to know how it can conceive of itself as occupying a meaningful place not just in its social environment but as a human being in a cosmological environment of which it will always have a very limited understanding. It is in this sense, too, that subjectivity matters to social philosophy. Social philosophy must incorporate a philosophy of the subject that conceives of the subject as much more than a social being. If Critical Theory requires a standard by which it evaluates the chances for self-realisation that a social order offers its members, then that standard must take into account the fact that subjects are in need of existential orientation. This does not mean, as Habermas often fears, that philosophy should take on the role religion once played and impose its own conception of the good life on the rest of the community. Rather, it means that philosophy must elucidate options for self-realisation and self-interpretation that would not otherwise be available. Social philosophy cannot pretend to be neutral in this regard anyway because it will always operate with a certain conception of the subject, whether this is made explicit or not. And whatever the open or underlying conception might be that it fosters, its conception will inescapably have an effect on the self-interpretation of subjects. For how we think about ourselves is in part what we are or what we are in the process of becoming. Self-interpretations do not leave the subject unchanged. This is another important reason why subjectivity matters. It is becoming increasingly clear that Critical Theory cannot rightfully ignore conceptions of the good life and concentrate instead on procedural and universal conceptions of morality or justice. Axel Honneth, for example, has argued that what is needed is


at least a formal notion of a post-traditional ethics (formale Sittlichkeit).28 But if Henrich is right, it would seem to follow that we even require a return to a certain kind of (non-foundational) metaphysical thinking in philosophy, a philosophy that clarifies the options available to a subject seeking answers to significant and unsettling existential questions. These options can only be developed if we overcome the incompatible ontologies that prevent us from constructing a coherent self-interpretation. Perhaps we must look out not just for pathologies of the social but for pathologies of social philosophies. Habermas regards the differentiation of reason into different domain-specific rationalities as a cognitive gain of modernity. But he does not offer a plausible way in which a higher, reunified reason can adjudicate between competing rationalities. Henrich is not in a position to provide any easy solution to this problem either. But it must be acknowledged that he has seen the problem with great clarity. In a rather bold move, he even hints that we may not be able to make much progress unless we rethink the idealist notion of the Absolute as a grounding concept for an overarching monistic ontology.29 Whatever we might think of this move—and so far it remains undeveloped in Henrich’s work—it seems to point in the right direction. Habermas has not been able to avoid the problem of incompatible ontologies built into his own conceptual framework. And his commitment to what he calls the postmetaphysical role of contemporary philosophy prevents him, it seems, from even addressing the issue. There is at least one thing the history of philosophy has taught us. Problems don’t go away by being ignored. Subjectivity and the question of how it fits into a unifying view of the world is

28

A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1994. Henrich, Dieter “Die Zukunft der Subjektivität,” p. 9, Internet http://www. geocities.com/Athens/Forum/7501/ph/dh/e4.html. 29


one of the problem areas of philosophy and human understanding, including social philosophy, that cannot be kept at bay for too much longer. This is especially true of Critical Theory since without addressing these problems it cannot do what it has always aimed to do: provide a normative standard by which society is to be judged.

Dieter Henrich

Subjectivity as Philosophical Principle*1 Translated by Dieter Freundlieb 1 More than two hundred years have passed since an entire philosophical movement focused on the knowledge that allows us to form an originary epistemic relation to our own self. We can refer to this knowledge as self-consciousness (Selbstbewußtsein). However, the word Selbstbewußtsein is also used to signify a tendency to emphasise one’s own accomplishments and qualities2 or else a reflective attitude towards one’s own behaviour, a tendency which already presupposes the existence of what philosophers mean by ‘self-consciousness’. This is why there were good reasons for philosophers to associate this knowledge with the use of the personal pronoun ‘I’ and to make our elementary knowledge of ‘the Self’ a primary focus of philosophy. The philosophical attention that was devoted to the self did not just happen however, because self-consciousness is a significant

* This article was first published in Critical Horizons, vol. 4, no. 1, 2003, and was translated by Dieter Freundlieb with permission from the author. 1 This essay is based on an Inaugural Lecture given by Dieter Henrich on, 13 November 1997, at the Humboldt University in Berlin on the occasion of the honorary professorship the University awarded him. The essay was originally published in Deutsche Zeitschrift fuer Philosophie 46, 1998, pp. 31–44. It was then republished in Dieter Henrich, Bewusstes Leben, Stuttgart, Reclam, 1999, pp. 49–73. 2 This applies to the German word Selbstbewußtsein. The English word ‘selfconsciousness’ does not have these connotations. ‘Self-assuredness’ is closer to ‘Selbstbewußtsein’ in this respect (translator’s note).

234 • Dieter Henrich

and fascinating fact, and because its explication seems to demand the development of peculiar and previously unavailable conceptual resources. There were two further reasons which turned the philosophical movement concerned with knowledge of the self into a philosophy of the subject: the thought of an ‘I’, our own self, offered itself as an ultimate evidentiary ground upon which all further knowledge could be based. And the special nature that could be attributed to this thought opened up the prospect of enabling us to deduce from it the entirety of what can be known through a chain of deductive steps, a chain that would eventually link up with itself. An outline of a new science presented itself that would surpass in its systematicity even mathematical knowledge. Indeed, a further expectation seemed to be well-founded—the hope that since the epistemic self-relation was considered selfsufficient and explicable from within itself, the thought of an Absolute might find its best and perhaps its only possible explanation if it was modelled on the epistemically accessible self-relation. At the university that is today called the Humboldt University, the philosophical movement that focused on the self developed into a world philosophy as Marx called it in a letter to his father, and from which he in vain attempted to escape. Fichte, the first Rektor of this university was the first to give this philosophy a distinct shape. This is what Hegel said about it in his Berlin Lectures: “Fichte, by starting from the ‘I’, does not, in the manner of Kant, proceed in a narrative fashion; this is what makes him so eminent. Everything must be derived from the ‘I’.” Schelling gave the second of his early writings the title On the I as Principle of Philosophy. I would like the reverberations of this work to be heard within the theme of this lecture. For I wish to raise again the question: in what way can philosophy as a whole

Subjectivity as Philosophical Principle • 235

gain a profile and a point of view by taking its departure from the knowledge of our own self? And yet, while the theme of my lecture indicates that I wish to reconnect with the intentions that informed the work of the three most eminent philosophers who have taught at this university, working through this theme means to present, in outline, a contrasting project. If two hundred years after the beginning of Fichte’s philosophy of the subject one wishes to start again from subjectivity as a principle, then what is required are justifications that demonstrate a connection with, and their relevance to, contemporary philosophical problems and issues. Similarly, a renewed philosophy of the subject must not risk being exposed to the fundamental suspicion, so eloquently formulated by Heidegger, that the act of theoretical violence of which Fichte’s work was accused from the beginning, results from a deeper underlying error, that is to say, from the conviction that we can lead a human life only on the basis of acts of the universal objectification of everything there is and finally on the basis of an act of self-empowerment. In formulating and conceiving its fundamental principle a renewed philosophy of the subject will therefore try to bring itself into harmony with our experience and awareness of human limitations and ambivalence, an experience which in itself is the reason why a self-consciously conducted life, a life concerned, in Plato’s sense, with itself, gets drawn into philosophising in the first place. When we look ahead towards undertaking such a contrasting philosophical program two things may be emphasised: subjectivity can only be regarded and function as a principle if the elementary knowledge we have of our own self allows us to reach a variety of conclusions which clarify basic facts better and solve problems more convincingly than if we choose any other principle as a point of departure. That does not mean, however, that


in the course of such a deductive procedure a system can be derived of the kind of which the erstwhile philosophers of the subject proved to be masters, but about which they offered what proved, in the end, to be unredeemable promises. The connection between the principle (Prinzip) and the conclusions that follow from it must and can be of a different kind than the demonstration that all facts with regard to which something follows are already contained in the principle and can therefore be derived in their entirety from it. In fact, the principle as such must be conceived in a different way. The great Berlin professors took it for granted that the principle, though by no means simple, was transparent to itself and that it was self-explanatory. The second property was the presupposition for their assumption that the philosopher would be able to comprehend it adequately and completely, and it was the reason why they regarded it as the paradigm case of a well-defined thought of the Absolute, that is to say, of the self-explicating ground of everything there is. It will become obvious, however, that we can no longer take their assumption for granted. Furthermore, we will try to show that nonetheless, and perhaps for that very reason, subjectivity can still serve philosophy as a fundamental principle. Such an attempt, however, faces numerous opposing though influential views and arguments. They support the thesis that the philosophy of the subject is a form of philosophical thinking that belongs to the past. Today, so the argument goes, philosophy should take an approach that is anchored in intersubjectivity and especially in language, that is to say in areas of support and heuristic promise which the philosophy of the subject will never find congenial. Nonetheless, in what follows this prejudgement will be rebutted as well. It is obvious that the design of a profile of a philosophy of the subject that can be defended today can only be advanced in out-


line and in the shape of a number of main theses. However, in comparison with a more fully developed design and its realisation, such a sketch still has the same significance as an architectural draft. One just needs to be able to see that the solidity of the edifice, and thus the strengths of its foundations, have not been lost sight of during the process of planning. To be sure, for nearly fifty years now every kind of philosophy of the subject has been regarded as standing in diametrical opposition to the dominant tendencies of contemporary thought. No matter how internally conflictual these tendencies were, they all came together in the view that the problems of the philosophy of the subject were either easy to solve or obsolete. And its general orientation was seen as incompatible with the most important philosophical insights and of no benefit to any of the most interesting philosophical problems. Logical positivism, analytic philosophy, pragmatism, and a whole spectrum of recent forms of phenomenology and social philosophy uniformly agreed in their rejection of the philosophy of the subject. If the possibility and the indispensability of a philosophy of the subject, or perhaps even a philosophy that would regard subjectivity as a philosophical principle, was to be demonstrated again and in a novel fashion, one had to be prepared to take on the role of the outsider and the hopelessly outmoded. However, during the last two decades the situation and the chances of a philosophy of the subject of just this kind have become more propitious. The fact that some American philosophers had begun to support such a project was only one factor in this development. Two philosophical disciplines that, on the face of it, would have appeared to be most inimical to the philosophy of the subject began to recognise the significance of its themes: analytic philosophy and the philosophers concerned with the results of the neurosciences. Without addressing these developments in detail we can state that one no longer needs to


feel off-side when one tries to re-establish the validity of a philosophy that regards subjectivity as a principle and that wishes to regain an audience for it. For the moment I would like to address in some detail the problems one faces and the results one gets if our elementary knowledge of the self is to be set up as a philosophical principle. In a second somewhat programmatic step I will move on to the conclusions and applications that can be gained from this principle. 2 Problems arise the moment we ask questions about the kind of knowledge that allows us to form a cognitive relation to our own self within the realm of what we know. The terrain of problems that comes into view when we begin to ask such questions is not illuminated by the objectifying light that shines on and assists the investigation of observable objects of formal systems. It is a terrain of problems all of its own that we have to enter if we wish to remain in control of an investigation of that which forms the starting point of all our understandings of the world. And we need to be aware that what forms our starting point remains with us and supports us at every turn of our path to a comprehensive understanding. In taking our point of departure from our knowledge of the self we face the constant danger of going astray or of running into a dead end. This is why, in the case of such an endeavour, questions regarding the adequacy of philosophical procedures become even more pressing than is usual whenever foundational philosophical problems are being debated. As a result, we encounter uncertainties that a boldly affirmative style might disguise but cannot, in the end, alleviate. What compensates us for these uncertainties, however, is the prospect of gaining an insight into the conditions of all philosophising and the basic condition of a consciously led life.


If our aim is an investigation into the first and most basic knowledge we have of our own self, contemporary analytic philosophy of language suggests that we should pay attention to the system of personal and possessive pronouns we find in our language. In fact, the philosophy of the subject has always established its credentials by looking at the use of such pronouns as the examples of Descartes’ ‘cogito’, Kant’s ‘I think’, and what Fichte called the ‘absolute I’ demonstrate. No doubt, this philosophy will remain indebted to such investigations. It is easy to recognise the key role of ‘I’ within the system of pronouns when it comes to articulating our knowledge of the self in sentences. For the primary indexical expressions ‘here’ and ‘now’ already presuppose that the position of the speaker who relates to himself by the pronoun ‘I’ has been fixed. ‘You’ and ‘we’ as well imply that individuals have knowledge of themselves and can refer to themselves. To be sure, the ‘I’ is part of the pronominal system. But its priority in the case of the determination of the semantics of ‘here’ and ‘now’ indicates that the mutual dependency of the personal pronouns does not imply that they are all of equal weight within the system. Now it would be illegitimate to conclude from all this that our capacity for the rule-governed use of the personal pronoun ‘I’ was a precondition for our self-knowledge or that the knowledge of ourselves consisted in its use as if in some kind of soliloquy. One can see that this is entirely misleading when one realises that the capacity for the correct use of personal pronouns is acquired rather late in the linguistic development of the child. The reason for the late acquisition of the system of personal pronouns is not just that it requires the abstract realisation that one can use the same word to express something about oneself that others use when they make a statement about themselves. Similar accomplishments are frequently achieved in other areas of early language acquisition. A more plausible explanation for the late


acquisition of the use of the pronoun ‘I’ is that in using ‘I’ we indicate to others that we are addressing them from the perspective of our own self-relation. This means that the use of this word already presupposes a reflective relation to our self-relation and not just the self-relation itself. The semantic analysis of the use of the pronoun ‘I’ can in fact demonstrate that its use can only be made intelligible on the basis of a prior self-consciousness on the part of the speaker. It follows from this that we cannot avoid articulating our thoughts with the help of personal pronouns such as ‘I’ and ‘me’ when we analyse the epistemic self-relation. At the same time, however, we must be clearly aware of the fact that this self-relation cannot be reduced to the actual use of personal pronouns. That the relation exists prior to the use of pronouns and actually informs their use justifies, though not without some critical caveats, our attempt to elucidate the relation via an analysis of the use of personal pronouns. But the fact that the self-relation cannot be reduced to the use of pronouns also makes our caveats necessary. The indispensability of the reservations we have has the significant benefit that it prevents the investigation of the epistemic self-relation from being treated as a problem that poses only a small risk. At the same time our reservations make the proposal of bold but simplistic solutions difficult, solutions that appear to expose as untenable all obscurantism in the analysis of the self. For example, the remark that when a speaker uses the pronoun ‘I’ he refers to himself as speaker, a remark designed to put an end to any further analysis, does not really contribute anything to an understanding of the epistemic self-relation. We encounter different kinds of difficulties when, having gone through the procedures applied by analytic philosophy of language, and having thus sharpened our analytical tools, we move on to an explanation of the constitution of our self-knowledge, that is to say, the self-knowledge that underlies our use of per-


sonal pronouns and which, as can be shown, forms the foundation for any understanding of language and any intelligent use of language. The classic philosophers of the subject were only partially aware of those difficulties and paid only partial attention to them. And one can only hope to get a grip on those difficulties if one is prepared to engage in a lengthy process of moving between ideas designed to solve the problems and bouts of selfdoubt, all the while attempting to delve deeper into the problems and being aware of one’s own perspective on those problems. In our deliberations we will concentrate on two bundles of difficulties. For what can be learned from these difficulties will yield results that have consequences for the status of the philosophy of the subject. They will also tell us something important about the conclusions to which the philosophy of the subject might come as far as its content is concerned. It is not difficult to describe many natural events by employing an unproblematic notion of ‘self-relation’: birds lift themselves up into the air, plants supply themselves with nutrients, and leaves even have the capacity to turn themselves around to adjust their position in accordance with the changing angle of incidence of sunlight. In many of these cases it is only our way of describing things that makes us attribute a self-relation to these phenomena when in fact no such relation exists within them. In any event, none of these cases are cases of a knowing self-relation. As soon as we begin to ponder these, we are faced with numerous embarrassing enigmas peculiar to this kind of relation. One difficulty has now been widely recognised. It arises from the fact that we can only speak of true self-knowledge if the knower not only has, as a matter of objective fact, knowledge of something that is himself but knows that what he knows is indeed himself. But now it seems that this is another fact that must be known by the knower. If we then ask the question what selfknowledge actually consists in, we end up in a logical circle of


the Baron Munchhausen type. What turns knowledge into selfknowledge is a requirement that is necessary at each step of the way so that it can never be fulfilled. Conversely, one may ask of what one has knowledge if one has knowledge of oneself. Here a complementary circle familiar from the fairy tale of the hare and the hedgehog arises. Any one who makes an attempt at a self-attribution must already have an awareness of the receiver of this attribution as the one who attributes something to himself. So any such attribution concerns a person who already stands in an epistemic relation to himself. Either way, we have reason to suspect that knowledge of one’s own self therefore is an impossibility. And the reason is its propositional nature: There is no knowledge of the self that is not, at the same time, known as such, that is to say, that it is knowledge of the self. This diagnosis of the origin of the two kinds of circularity pushes us towards removing our qualms about the apparent impossibility of self-consciousness by way of a proposal which says that we must equip self-knowledge with the capacity to use the predicate ‘knows of itself’ in relation to the knower’s own self. While this is indeed the only promising path to take, new obstacles arise as soon as we go down this track. It is obvious from the start that a self-characterisation cannot be explained on the basis of an epistemic self-relation to which this self-characterisation applies. One can avoid this difficulty by saying that the self-characterisation constitutes this self-relation, not that it already presupposes it. However, it now remains unintelligible how the predicate ‘knows of itself’ can be available in the first place. For as we just saw, its availability does not follow from simply noting that there is a kind of knowledge whose object of knowledge happens to be the self of the person who knows. If it did follow, then the capacity to use the predicate ‘knows of itself’ would presuppose what the use of the predicate was meant to explain in the first place. This way one would be caught again at some other point


within the circularity exemplified by the tale of the hare and the hedgehog. The thesis according to which mastery of the use of the predicate that articulates self-reflexivity constitutes the epistemic selfrelation, implies that in the case of this relation, the object of knowledge and its being known necessarily coexist. It is inconceivable that he who knows of himself is initially without such knowledge (whatever else he might already know at this point in time), and then, in a subsequent act of gaining knowledge, acquires self-knowledge. The person who has knowledge of himself and the fact that he knows himself as himself cannot be separated from each other. To be sure, knowledge of oneself presupposes someone who is the object of this knowledge for otherwise there would not be knowledge of anything. However, this presupposition must be understood as a necessary implication. That is to say, it must not be understood sequentially and as a relation between two somehow independent entities. Self-knowledge can only emerge at once and as an indissoluble mutual implication. This, by the way, is another reason why the subject is indispensable. But it is also the reason why talk of the subject has always come under the suspicion that it introduces into philosophy something ghostly or spooky. Subjects emerge spontaneously and equipped with self-knowledge, and this is why they cannot be treated like any other contents or objects. Yet this does not force us to the conclusion that they emerge in empty space and without relations to anything else. On the contrary, the thesis of their spontaneous emergence can be reconciled, and is demonstrably linked with, the insight that the epistemic self-relation originates within and becomes part of a pre-existing structure. This structure comprises perceptual fields, bodily awareness, behavioural patterns, affects, and other things and their multiform


coordination. In earlier times they were associated with what was called ‘inner sense’; they can, indeed, be characterised, in a particular sense, as ‘subjective’. However, this particular meaning cannot be explicated on the basis of the concept of the subject that pertains to the epistemic self-relation. Conversely, it is impossible to explicate the knowledge on the basis of which the subject constitutes itself in thought from these pre-existing cognitive structures and capacities. Another bundle of difficulties regarding our coming to an understanding about the epistemic self-relation comes to the fore when one focuses on an aspect of this self-knowledge that was there all along: Knowledge is not an anonymous process that draws in and engages the knowing individuals as if they were rather non-committal participants. And it is only in a highly metaphorical style that one can say that in knowledge as such we know something about knowing. Knowledge is always knowledge that someone has, that is, the person who knows. And this individual person must therefore be called the subject of knowledge. If there is knowledge of oneself, it is always knowledge the having of which means that the subject knows of itself and of its knowing. And it knows this in such a way that it can use the word ‘I’ to indicate the having of this knowledge. In this way, the epistemic self-relation is always bound to the person who knows of himself as a knower. And yet we cannot say that the knower is something that belongs to what is known in the way that ways of knowing and everything known belongs to knowledge. We can already conclude from this that there cannot be an anonymous or general and therefore strictly singular subject of knowledge. However, at this stage we need not take this conclusion into account, a conclusion that would situate us in opposition to the earlier philosophy of the subject. But then we have to ask ourselves again: How can a subject acquire knowledge of itself, especially if this also means knowl-


edge of what such knowledge consists in? Anyone who is tempted to explain this in some distant analogy to our previous description of the bird that lifts itself up in flight or of plants that supply themselves with nutrients will end up in a cul-de-sac of the same kind we encountered in the previous attempt at an explanation. Any one going down this path, it would seem, would at least have to start from the assumption that he could gain a general concept of an epistemic self-relation from the distant observation of the relevant facts, and that he could then apply this concept to the specific case of someone who is aware of the knowledge he has and that what he has is self-knowledge. However, what it actually means to have knowledge of oneself, the knowledge we attribute to subjects, cannot be understood independent of the fact that we are confronting a case of knowledge that is peculiar to each individual subject. For in cases like this, and for knowledge of oneself in general, we have to say not only that the concept ‘of oneself’ must already be in use. Since this knowledge is not anonymous and subjectless but an individual’s knowledge, the thought of the self-relation has to be made explicit not just through the notion of a ‘Being for itself ’ but more precisely through the idea of a ‘Being for me’. Whatever explanation one might come up with regarding the acquisition of such a thought, it cannot possibly be considered as a general concept formed on the basis of cases one has encountered somewhere and which is then applied to one’s own case. The reason for this is that it only acquires its meaning in the actual use a subject makes of it in relation to itself. Insofar as this thought is indispensable for the possibility of any knowledge of oneself, it belongs to the very constitution of this knowledge, is in fact in use within it and is always already being used, which means that one cannot really say that it is ever ‘applied’. The abstract thought of a general ‘Being-for-me’ only emerges when an epistemic self-relation is attributed to other subjects on the basis of one’s own individual ‘Being-for-me’. To be sure, one can characterise the constitution of this thought on the basis of its functioning within the individual


‘Being-for-me’ in such a way that the idea of a knowing selfrelation does not end up in a circle of the hedgehog or Munchhausen type and thus as an impossibility. But it does not follow that the constitution and the capacity for the use of our selfknowledge have actually been explained in any way. Now this result forces us to draw certain conclusions that have fundamental consequences. If one does not wish to deny that there is such a thing as a knowledge of oneself that provides subjects with an understanding of themselves in relation to this knowledge, then three things have to be accepted that are in diametrical opposition to many widely adopted opinions, including some to be found in earlier versions of the philosophy of the subject. (1) This knowledge is sui generis because with regard to this knowledge one cannot make the distinction between it and mere opinion that has not reached the stage of self-knowledge—as one can in the case of ordinary talk about knowledge. In some instances this has led people to assume that self-knowledge is a particularly simple case of knowledge and to see it in analogy to intuition. But one has to accept that it is in fact a multiply layered complex. For it always already contains the thought of ‘of oneself’ that in turn is complex in itself. (2) It follows from this that something else must also be accepted: the epistemic self-relation cannot be made intelligible and reconstructed by building it up from one of its components. The components must emerge simultaneously, and they are determined and modified through their interdependence. This has consequences for our understanding of the development of the conscious life we lead. To be sure, the epistemic self-relation, through a number of steps, can reach a fully articulated clarity and develop into what we can call a truly rational life. The self-relation is


based on presuppositions and there are preliminary stages in its development. But eventually its full blown form must emerge spontaneously—in spite of the presuppositions to which it is related. It must, fundamentally, be the same complex form of knowledge from the very beginning. It is possible, even necessary as will become apparent in a moment, that the development that brings about the epistemic self-relation must be stimulated by external factors. But this constitutes the limit of its social genesis. Its real base is entirely endogenous. In making this claim the philosophy of the subject is in fact in agreement with the neurosciences, though it is still separated from these by methodological and substantive chasms. (3) The self-understanding of philosophy regarding its procedures and its situation in general is affected by the above deliberations. The unavoidable circularities in which it gets entangled whenever it tries to gain an understanding of self-knowledge can teach philosophy a lesson. It is bound to fail if it attempts to clarify this kind of knowledge by way of the commonly practiced procedure that aims to comprehend complex configurations through an analysis of their individual elements. Self-knowledge eludes this kind of analysis, regardless of the fact that it is not something unitary, that its aspects can be isolated in spite of their mutual dependence, and that it can be characterised unambiguously by its propositional form as knowledge of itself or, rather, knowledge of ‘myself’. Nonetheless, the explication of self-knowledge in its totality can always only be approximate. As soon as philosophy tries not only to take the whole complex of self-knowledge as a starting point but attempts to master it through a process of reconstruction, it is driven back into the circularities noted before. This is the reason why one should regard these circularities as symptoms of an endeavour whose methodology and approach is inappropriate to its task.


It might be tempting, while retaining the methodological commitment to an analytical explication, to avoid the problematic situation one is in, by locating the development of the knowing self-relation in a dimension of originary experience that precedes the capacities of conceptually articulated cognition, and thereby also escape its problems. It might appear that genuine understanding could be achieved if one distinguishes between different moments, but then declares that they cannot really be separated but remain bound together in some archaic unity. But this would in no way change the situation. In fact, this would go against and dissolve the real relationship between self-knowledge and intelligibility in favour of an illusory escape route. To know of oneself as oneself is only possible in fully articulated thought, even though this thought is not derived theoretically. In this sense the subject, in so far as it has propositional knowledge of itself, is nothing without its thoughts. One may even say that it exists in nothing but its own thoughts. This connection, however partial, with Descartes, but also Hegel, can be complemented and made more plausible by indicating that I can only know something about myself if I can entertain the (possibly only implicit) thought of a particular, a particular that is I. I need not be able to characterise it beyond the notion that it is that in relation to which, and by which, all the thoughts that are mine are entertained. In whatever way this particular may be explained, it contains within itself, even in the minimal determination given of it here, the contrast with a multitude of other particulars of the same constitution. Not only in relation to the particular that I am but already in relation to the constitution of self-knowledge as such the question of what forms the basis of the epistemic self-relation is ineluctable. For this constitution is complex and by no means self-explanatory. It does not have the self-sufficiency of a Platonic idea, and we cannot separate it out into self-contained components


in order to reconstitute the whole, in a process of synthesis, from one of these components. In cases such as this we must always inquire about a preceding ground which, at the same time, raises the question of the origin, a question that always and unavoidably occupies a self-consciously led life. Acts of creation cannot be the answer since they presuppose a subject with the same kind of self-knowledge as our own. Once one has reached this point, a wide range of options opens up. What has been said so far could even be used by neurophilosophers as an argument for the naturalistic thesis that all knowledge emerges from material nature. But it is also possible to connect what has been said with the tradition of speculative metaphysics. The epistemic self-relation is then referred back to a foundation that is not a form of knowledge with which we are familiar but one that can be seen as a kind of self-relation and to which, in its self-relation and the development of this relation, we can attribute the property of being more complex than the constitution of subjectivity that forms our point of departure. Whichever of these two options is to be preferred, we can say about both that from a descriptive perspective we cannot get beyond the limits of what the nature of our cognitive capacity has furnished us with. And the epistemic self-relation forms a prominent part of this capacity. Whatever arguments might motivate us in the end to accept as true one or the other of the two forms of emergence of the epistemic self-relation, we cannot expect that this relation will allow us to derive, step by step, the ground we must postulate in order to make its existence intelligible. For we have seen already that its constitution can only be described approximately. A ground upon which my self-knowledge rests, in whatever way we might conceive of it, can only be thought of as a hypothesis, a hypothesis that cannot be converted into a proven cognition through some process of final verification.


There is no need for any anxiety that admitting such a limit to what can be known is a violation of the spirit and ideal of systematic knowledge or that it might even promote some kind of philosophical obscurantism. Setting limits to what it is possible to know, especially when it comes to knowledge of the self, is one of the most important achievements of human rationality. This is something we need to realise because it lies at the bottom of all our epistemic capacities, and we were led to its acknowledgment when we tried to come to an understanding of the knowing self-relation, though it also applies elsewhere. It applies to the form of truth-functional statements and particularly to our conception of truth as such. Reference to truth is complex and fundamental at the same time. After many attempts over decades by Anglo-Saxon philosophy to trivialise the notion of truth or to develop a theory of truth that could be fitted into a naturalistic world view, it has now become obvious that all our investigations must rely, from the very beginning, on truth as a fundamental fact. We can always show that anyone who tries to explicate truth through an analysis of components must presuppose an already grasped notion of truth and therefore gets trapped in a circularity. Now the relation to truth within knowledge is intimately and in many ways connected with the knowing self-relation. The results of our analysis of the self-relation thus accords with insights achieved in neighbouring areas. This insight brings about a fundamental reorientation in our conception of the aims of philosophy: what is fundamental can only be explicated approximately. But on the basis of this limited explication we can throw some light on the totality of our knowledge and our cognitive relation to the world. The fact that we cannot establish final or inherently unitary foundations, but are nonetheless able to gain insights into such general matters concerning human knowledge, will also throw some light on the significance of philosophy for the life we have to lead. Philosophy can-


not offer us compelling final grounds or absolutes that give orientation to our life. It can only enlighten us about the human condition as such. But it can provide legitimacy to our endeavour to find out, in the process of leading a life and from within that life, what it is that ultimately supports us. Finally, philosophy can clarify the possibilities open to us of an all-encompassing existential orientation while at the same time giving us an understanding of the reasons for the confusions in which we invariably end up in our search for such an orientation and the theories we develop in these pursuits. This means that philosophy, at its most basic level and in its very constitution and its limitations, forms an integral part of, and is in concordance with, the life that seeks to comprehend itself through an analysis of the cognitive self-relation. It follows from all this that the starting point of a fundamental philosophy and its elucidation of the interdependent components of the human condition must not be equated with that which seems to be the most important and most fulfilling aspect of life in its attempt at gaining a self-understanding: The philosophy of the subject is not in the service of selfenhancement or the stabilisation of an autistic image of selfempowerment. This philosophy, rather, is a necessary presupposition for a deepening of our understanding of life, a deepening that, in view of life’s ultimate ground, implies a renunciation of self-interest. And this process of a deepening of our self-understanding means that our life is subjected to an aim and regarded as relative to the context in which our life is to be led. 3 After the above deliberations and from a point of view that is relevant to the whole of philosophy, we can now move on to a further clarification of subjectivity as philosophical principle by looking at a number of its implications. In doing so we will have to concentrate on those implications that can be based on precisely


the characteristics of the epistemic self-relation that emerged in our previous discussion in the context of the question about the way in which they can become a major theme in philosophy. Other implications follow from other characteristics—for example the self-relation’s identity over time and its latent presence within all our thinking. Amongst them are also those that have given Kant’s theory of the cognition of objects its particular contour. However, in the present context we must look at implications that can be elucidated via the inescapable thought of the epistemic self-relation’s transcendent ground. Methodological questions concerning the concepts needed for such an endeavour cannot be addressed here. Furthermore, we will have to restrict our discussion to the task of offering no more than a number of theses. But such a restriction can be tolerated because our present interest lies in the possibility and the kind of implications, not the more substantive issues arising from specific aspects. Nonetheless, central current and controversial problems in philosophy within epistemology and in relation to questions of intersubjectivity and language will be addressed. 1. The age-old fundamental question of what it is that ultimately convinces us that the real can be grasped in thoughts is directly related to the result of our analysis of the knowledge we have of ourselves. For it has emerged that we can only be the kind of beings that we are in virtue of our ability to entertain ‘I’-thoughts. With regard to these thoughts a differentiation between that which is being thought and the reality of what has been thought about simply drops out of the picture. There cannot be ‘mere’ ‘I’-thoughts. Rather, it is ‘I’-thoughts that constitute the actuality of a being whose characteristic nature it is to exist in a mode of ‘Being-for-itself’. To some this may sound like reviving the famous ontological proof of the existence of god, though this time not applied to an infinite but to the finite human Being in its ‘Being-for-itself’. In fact, we cannot object to this as long as we are aware that we are not deducing anything ontologically


real from a mere thought but demonstrating why, in this ‘abnormal’ but peculiarly eminent case, something actual is constituted by thought. At the same time it became obvious to us that the actuality constituted by the ‘Being-for itself’ is not self-explicatory and that we therefore had to postulate a Grund from which it emerges. And while this ground of our cognition will elude us if it is treated as an object of cognition, it nonetheless defines another class of what is real. And its reality is such that a conscious life can only relate to it in the sense that it makes it aware of its lack of self-mastery. Now a subject whose reality emerges in and through ‘I’-thoughts’ always and at the same time entertains thoughts in relation to a world distinct from his own self, though this is a world whose actuality is as real as his own. He knows that the quasi-predicate ‘real’ that he uses does not just serve to refer to individual thought contents, and he knows this on the basis of his experience of the epistemic self-relation. This is what gives him the right to relate everything he refers to in thoughts to the dimension of the real, a reality that for him is beyond any doubt. This also explains and justifies the unshakable realism of our everyday convictions about the world. We can describe the world in different ways but these world descriptions, while justified in themselves, are in conflict with each other, a conflict that cannot be settled by any kind of compromise. Now whether the world description of mathematical physics or that of our everyday experience with its Aristotelian ontology truly matches what is not just real within a system of description, this question must be decided through an investigation that is not the one that focuses on subjectivity as such. But since the use of the predicate ‘real’ in an absolute sense is based on, and justified by, such an investigation, and since we


know that nonetheless the ground of subjectivity cannot be known in an objectifying way, it is clear that all our world descriptions and the objects we take to be part of the world, are subject to certain cognitive limitations. This also shows that the philosophy of the subject, through the realism that is characteristic of it, must reject the accusation of promoting subjectivism and the project of an unlimited scientism—and for the same reason. 2. If one starts out from the ‘Being-for-me’ of subjectivity one is led to the notion of intersubjectivity through a different aspect of its constitution. In so far as it is not the general ‘For-itself’ of the self-relation but the ‘For-me’ of the ‘I’-thought that is constitutive of it, the subject necessarily understands itself as a particular. Therein lies, as mentioned before, that it must think the thought of other possible subjects and, as a further consequence, the thought of an order within which such subjects can be distinguished. It is not necessary that the subject, within its selfrelation, has a determined concept of this order or this dimension. But both the ‘I’-thought and the relation between this thought and the thought of the order allow us to develop, without any difficulty, another thought, that is, the thought of the relation that subjects can take up with each other from within their Beingfor-themselves. This is in fact what constitutes a minimal characterisation of intersubjectivity. From this a further implication can be shown to follow. It is impossible for a singular subject to be present to another subject in the mode of the other subject’s own Being-for itself. For this would mean that it would be included in the other subject’s Being-for-itself. The difference between the two subjects would be suspended. Subjects can only become accessible for each other through some kind of embodiment. A subject can be said to be embodied if it also exists as a particular that is not just constituted through the ‘For-me’ of the epistemic self-relation but in


a way that nonetheless belongs to the subject and in which the subject can directly intervene through its intentions. To be sure, the embodiment as such does not guarantee any interaction controlled by intentions. It must be presupposed, in addition, that an embodied subject can make its presence felt for another subject and its Being-for-itself without, however, interiorising it within its own self. This is made possible by language. Of course there is more to spoken language and the variety of its functions than this. What has become clear from our deliberations, however, is that language must be understood as a medium and not just as an instrument of communication. Subjects cannot come to an agreement about its use because such an agreement would already presuppose the possibility of its use. It follows that any taking up of communication presupposes an existing communality between subjects who can interrelate to one another. Such a communality belongs as much to the roots of any cultural community as the indispensable Being-for-itself of subjects is required for linguistic communication aiming at mutual understanding. Such Being-for-itself cannot in any way be derived from communication. But neither is it self-generated as the analysis of the epistemic self-relation has demonstrated. It has to emerge spontaneously from a transcendent unmasterable ground. In spite of this we must realise and expect that subjects entering, and finally departing, a temporal Dasein are in need of guidance, support and the company of other subjects. This also explains the fact that the subjects’ thoughts can only reach maturity if the subjects acquire, at the same time, the shared language of the culture in which they grow up. And we can also understand now that the options for living a certain kind of life that are opened up in and through the Being-for-itself can find their fulfilment in relationships with other subjects. If it understands Being-for-itself correctly,


the philosophy of the subject must not succumb to the fallacy of identifying that which lies at its base. This is essential since life gains its ultimate meaning and fulfilment in this base. Furthermore, it has now become clear that there is no good reason to assume that there is an irresolvable antagonism between a philosophy of the subject and coming to an understanding about intersubjectivity. It is not by accident that in the history of modernity both themes were developed almost simultaneously. To be sure, with regard to our understanding of intersubjectivity, the theory of language made available during the current [twentieth] century has given rise to entirely new problems and perspectives. But those who regard the era of the philosophy of the subject as the predecessor of an epoch of the theory of communication, thereby giving the latter an historical accreditation of its superiority, fail in their comprehension of the ongoing modernity. In addition, they are saddled with the irredeemable task of deriving the genesis of the epistemic self-relation from processes of communication. Looking back at the path we have followed so far, what remains to be said is how subjectivity can be seen as a principle and what the procedure is by which subjectivity can be employed within philosophy. Subjectivity is not self-explicatory. It is an aggregation of elements that cannot be reduced to each other but which are modified by each other and are thus bound together. It is not self-sufficient but points beyond itself in a dual way: towards its ground and towards an external world. Nonetheless, this multiplicity constitutes a poignant unity because its presence can be demonstrated within the epistemic self-relation. The eminent philosophers who belong to the early history of the Berlin University took this unity as their starting point. They did not mistake the self-relation for an undifferentiated simplicity.


But they also underestimated its internal complexity. One reason for this was the fact that they took the knowing self-relation to be self-explicatory. But they also underestimated it because they thought that it could become a principle if only one followed its own movement of explication, a movement by which knowledge of the self would evolve into knowledge of foundations and of the world, whereby the whole of philosophy could then be turned into a system. If it is understood in this way, subjectivity can no longer be a principle for us. The multiplicity we can perceive within the epistemic self-relation cannot even be mastered in an otherwise adequate analysis of it. But its elements can be the starting points of justificatory deliberations in which the ‘For-myself’ of this self-relation must be kept in view and in which contexts of the ‘Being-for-myself’ can be disclosed—as we have indicated in the areas of cognition and intersubjectivity. Since we do not assume, in what the results of these deliberations show us, that subjectivity turns itself into a system, there is neither the possibility nor a motive for the development and the deployment of a speculative conceptual framework when it comes to the procedures we use for the explication of the nature and validity of the epistemic self-relation. A speculative logic only plays a legitimate role when subjectivity and its world are conceived of as based on a transcendent ground and when it therefore becomes necessary to explicate a concept of the Absolute. It follows that when we try to explain subjectivity as a principle, and when we are concerned with the procedures of a philosophy of subjectivity, we must depart in almost every way from the project pursued by those who first tried to establish this project. However, it is a clear indication that we are still committed to the original motives that occupied their thinking


when I quote a statement from Hegel’s inaugural lecture he gave at this university almost a hundred and eighty years ago: Philosophy as science has been entrusted with the preservation of a light, “and it is our vocation to nurse it and to nourish it and to make sure that the highest a human being can call his own, the self-consciousness of his essence, may not be extinguished and perish.”

Manfred Frank

Against a priori Intersubjectivism: An Alternative Inspired by Sartre

I A basic conviction of the current version of the Frankfurt School is that all humans are ‘always already’ (‘je immer schon’) in communicative exchanges with each another with the aim of a final consensus. We may also formulate it thus: if subjects exist at all, then they have ‘always already’ existed as inter-subjects in communicative and cooperative relations. In what follows I will call this position ‘a priori intersubjectivism’. Ernst Tugendhat modified this position by including the perspective of the third person in that of the first-person. In his view, my solitary epistemic self-reference does not actually require the identification of myself as a space-time object. But I must know that I am such an object for others (and for myself as an observer). To put it differently, self-consciousness ‘implies’ knowledge of social rules that grant the convertibility of speakers’ perspectives and can be understood only in the light of these rules.1 Tugendhat characterises this knowledge with the predicates

1 Ernst Tugendhat, Selbstbewußtsein und Selbstbestimmung. Sprachanalytische Interpretationen, Frankfurt am Main, 1979, p. 87. Tugendhat says: “[. . .] this possibility of intersubjectivity is itself necessary, because it follows from the meaning of ‘I’ ” (p. 88). Previously, he had claimed “that it generally has always belonged to the usage of the word ‘I’ that he who uses it uses it so that he knows that another can understand his speech in such a way that he refers to

260 • Manfred Frank

of ‘precedent’ (‘vorgängig’), ‘general’, and ‘necessary’. Such knowledge is therefore a priori.2 Following George Herbert Mead, Jürgen Habermas gave a pragmatic turn to semantic intersubjectivism. But this does not weaken its commitment to apriorism. According to Habermas, linguistic understanding not only relies on knowledge of semantic rules, especially those governing the use of indexicals, but on ‘communicative competence’, that is, the practical ability of speakers to take on the perspective of another. This ability creates “a selfunderstanding which in no way presupposes the solitary reflection of the knowing or acting subject on itself as a precedent consciousness. On the contrary, self-reference is generated in an interactive context.”3 Elsewhere he writes that self-consciousness is “what first results, in communicative action, from taking over the perspective of the other.”4

the same person with ‘he’” (p. 84). Tugendhat has since admitted that his theory of self-consciousness is untenable in reaction to Dieter Henrich’s objections (“Noch einmal in Zirkeln. Eine Kritik von Ernst Tugendhats semantischer Erklärung von Selbstbewßtsein,” in Clemens Bellut & Ulrich Müller-Schöll, eds. Mensch und Moderne. Beiträge zur philosophischen Anthropologie und Gesellschaftskritik [= Festschrift for Helmut Fahrenbach], Würzburg, 1989, pp. 93–132). 2 And it is clearly a case of applied rule competence. More recent analytical work on the theory of consciousness has, however, persuasively demonstrated that epistemic self-consciousness cannot be understood as a case of successful language conditioning—such as mastering the usage of the firstperson singular pronoun. These rules can, rather, only be learnt by persons familiar through direct acquaintance with the referent of ‘I’ or ‘my’. 3 Jürgen Habermas, Nachmetaphysisches Denken. Philosophische Aufsätze, Frankfurt am Main, 1988, p. 32. 4 Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Vol. 1, Frankfurt am Main, 1981, p. 527. The young Marx had already repeatedly protested against the presumption of deriving the ‘real, empirical individual’ as the ‘result’ of a general process, for example (but not only) in the Ökonomischphilosophische Manuskripte (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke, Berlin, 1957ff., 1st supplementary volume, p. 584): “This process must have a bearer, a subject; but [allegedly] a subject first emerges as a result.” The individual

Against a priori Intersubjectivism. An Alternative Inspired by Sartre • 261

Despite all their internal differences, both approaches, surprisingly, concur with Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, and the poststructuralists in their treatment of subjectivity as something derivative. It is to be derived from relations in which the third-person perspective, or practical interaction, has priority over the perspective of the self, from within which a feeling, thinking, and active being is disclosed to him- or herself. Tugendhat and Habermas do not want to prove that subjectivity is fictional or non-existent as do Nietzsche, Heidegger, the poststructuralists, or Daniel C. Dennett, for example.5 In showing that it emerges from intersubjectivity, they have fulfilled their ambitions to humiliate the narcissism of the philosophy of the subject. But what if it turns out that subjectivity is not even conceivable in this way? Then it would make no sense to claim that it must be explained as an epiphenomenon of intersubjectivity. The evasion of a solid epistemological clarification of the structures of subjectivity would have to come at the cost of the failure of a priori intersubjectivism. This is because the subjects, whose interaction the a priori intersubjectivism intended to demonstrate as precedent, would thereby immediately cease to exist as subjects. In addition, moral imperatives of the form that “act in such a way that you treat mankind, yourself and others included, always as ends, never only as means” would lose their addressees.6 Such

bearer of the social process and the social process itself are thus in a “relation of absolute inversion.” 5 Daniel C. Dennett treats self-consciousness as a hermeneutically useful ‘fiction’ and in so doing refers concurringly to Nietzsche and Derrida: Consciousness Explained, Boston-Toronto-London, Little, Brown and Company, 1991, pp. 227 and 411. 6 I. Kant, AA IV, p. 429, p. 433 and VI, p. 395.


principles cannot—as for instance Harry G. Frankfurt7 believed— have a merely practical justification; they require, in addition, a fundamentum in re. Put differently, they are dependent on the claim that there in fact exists something like non-objective subjectivity. Without it, there would be no point to any human rights declarations or to appeals to respect the individuality of other subjects. I cannot recapitulate the discussion of more detailed arguments against the theory of intersubjective apriorism here.8 These arguments can, though, be found in the extensive literature on the philosophy of mind (hardly taken note of in Frankfurt), the most prominent authors of which include Hector-Neri Castañeda, Sydney Shoemaker, Roderick M. Chisholm, John Perry, or David Lewis. Here we find the view that self-consciousness is a phenomenon that cannot be analysed in terms of perceptual observation, demonstrative reference, or (Fregean/Russellian) definite descriptions. The phenomenon referred to as ‘self-consciousness’ is not mediated reflectively, although I can easily take it as a starting point from which I can then reflect on it, in which case I attend to it as an object of my inner life. Self-consciousness is also not a kind of knowledge. For everything that is known is relative to theories that could be false. I am aware of my psychic states, however, even when I know of no theory that I would take to be true of them. That is why animals and children can be self-conscious before the onset of language acquisition. (And that is also why it is possible that I literally ‘do not know’ what

7 H. Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 68, 1971, pp. 5–20. See also Georg Mohr, “Personne, Personnalité et Liberté dans la Critique de la Raison Pratique,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, vol. 42, no. 3, 1988, pp. 289–319, esp. 297f. 8 I took a start in this direction in Selbstbewußtsein und Selbsterkenntnis. Essays zur analytischen Philosophie der Subjektivität, Stuttgart, 1991, especially in essay III (“Subjektivität und Intersubjektivität”), pp. 410ff.


happens to me psychologically, without thereby lacking selfconsciousness.) Epistemic self-ascriptions cannot be logically tackled by means of attributions de dicto or de re; the first-person perspective is irreplaceable as that which situates subjects in the world and enables practical interaction. Closely related to its theory-independence, self-consciousness does not stand for a state of affairs that can be articulated in propositions. If we understand ‘language’ to comprise the entirety of what is communicable and understandable in propositions, then self-consciousness cannot be called a linguistic phenomenon. David Lewis talks of a non-propositional knowledge.9 Reduction attempts such as the private-language argument or the semantic nominalism based on it have no purchase on self-consciousness or prove to be misleading. This is analogously true of pragmatist attempts at reducing selfconsciousness to intersubjectivity. It has been shown that sooner or later such attempts get caught in circularity, covertly presuppose the phenomenon they pretend to explain, and would be aimless without this presupposition. Contrary to specious views suggested by everyday speech (which, however, a thorough linguistic analysis ought to undermine), there is no relation between something and another (or to itself as an object) in self-consciousness. All attempts to derive the non-relational self-awareness in consciousness from relations—whether from behavioural observations or from interactively taking over different roles—lead sooner or later into circularity, as has been shown time and again by philosophers from Fichte to Sartre. For how can something nonrelational be the result of relations? That I am myself and that my experiences are my own cannot be a lesson I learn from the

9 “[. . .] If it is possible to lack knowledge and not lack any propositional knowledge, then the lacked knowledge must not be propositional” (“Attitudes ‘De Dicto’ and ‘De Se’,” in Philosophical Papers I, Oxford, 1983, p. 139).


truth of a proposition or from something that has been communicated to me by someone else, nor could it be conveyed to me by my mirror image. According to Shoemaker, [self-awareness] is radically different from perceptual knowledge. The reason one is not presented to oneself ‘as an object’ in selfawareness is that self-awareness is not perceptual awareness, i.e., is not the sort of awareness in which objects are presented. It is awareness of facts unmediated by awareness of objects. But it is worth noting that if one were aware of oneself as an object in such cases (as one is in fact aware of oneself as an object when one sees oneself in a mirror), this would not help to explain one’s selfknowledge. For awareness that the presented object was f would not tell one that one was oneself f unless one had identified the object as oneself; and one could not do this unless one already had some self-knowledge, namely the knowledge that one is the unique possessor of whatever set of properties of the presented object one took to show it to be oneself. Perceptual self-knowledge presupposes non-perceptual self-knowledge, so not all self-knowledge can be perceptual.10

Habermas presents an especially instructive example of such circular explanations of self-consciousness when he writes, for example, that ‘the self’ consists in “the self-relation which is established performatively in a hearer by taking over the perspective imparted to him by the speaker.”11 Since the alter-perspective has (logical) priority over the speaker’s ego-perspective—or since the former is even encapsulated in the latter as a necessary and sufficient condition for conscious self-reference—such explanations rather lead to an especially crass circulus in probando. This circularity is what Habermas shares with other similar theoretical approaches. Their paradigmatic progenitor is Hegel’s theory of the reciprocal recognition (Anerkennung) of subjects who supposedly first

10 Sydney Shoemaker, “Personal Identity: A Materialist’s Account,” in Shoemaker & Richard Swinburne, Personal Identity, Oxford, 1984, pp. 104f. 11 Habermas, Nachmetaphysisches Denken, p. 34.


learn that they are subjects through their objective relatedness to others. II The circularity of Hegel’s theory of reciprocal recognition was first clearly recognised by Jean-Paul Sartre.12 Despite his importance and his contemporaneity with the development of Critical Theory, Sartre has not been included in its discussions and still does not have a favourable reputation in Frankfurt. Yet his approach is excellent in demonstrating how starting with the ‘cogito’ not only doesn’t obstruct intersubjective consequences, but first makes them intelligible. This remains true even when one considers the early Sartre’s uncooperative and mocking attitude towards Heidegger’s talk of ‘being-with’ (Mitsein) as modelled on conformist masses or on football teams.13 Sartre’s philosophy is particularly well suited in showing that in their commitment to the philosophy of the subject opponents to a priori intersubjectivism certainly need not deny that we exist as inter-subjects. Rather, they only reject the idea that this assertion expresses an a priori truth of reason. We are in fact inter-subjects—but only contingently. ‘Contingently’ doesn’t mean at all that we have the

12 Its precursor is Schelling’s critique of Hegel’s inability to overcome the reflection model of self-consciousness (see Manfred Frank, Der unendliche Mangel an Sein. Schellings Hegel-Kritik und die Anfänge der Marxschen Dialektik, enlarged new edition, Munich, 1992, esp. Ch. III, pp. 151ff.) Later, Dieter Henrich restates it as follows: “The claim that he [Hegel] could not relinquish the reflection model is incidentally not refutable just because he believed that reflection could only take place in a social interactive context. This has no impact on his account of the structure of what ensues in this way” (“Selbstbewußtsein. Kritische Einleitung in eine Theorie,” in Hermeneutik und Dialektik. Essays, vol. 1, ed. R. Bubner, K. Cramer, R. Wiehl, Tübingen, 1970, p. 281). 13 Sartre, L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, Paris, 1943, p. 303. Sartre later gave up this attitude as a biographically motivated contingency and at the end of his life arrived at a co-operativist interpretation of being-with-others.


freedom not to treat or understand ourselves as inter-subjects. Leibniz, too, had characterised self-consciousness as immediately self-evident knowledge, which is nevertheless not a priori, rather a posteriori.14 In the same sense, Sartre sees intersubjectivity—and even our moral duty towards other subjects—to be originally unmediated through language. Articulations in language are corrigible, propositions are falsifiable, but our being-with-others is a certainty. Therefore it must be a primordial component of selfconsciousness. I quote from one of Sartre’s last interviews: [. . .] in every moment that I am conscious of or doing something or other, there is some sort of obligation (réquisition). It bestows on the action I intend to perform a kind of interior constraint (de contrainte intérieure), namely, as a dimension of my consciousness. Every consciousness can do what it does not because it is of such great value, but on the contrary because whatever intentions it has are presented to it with an element of obligation, and this I hold to be the departure point for morality.15

Since, as already mentioned, it was Hegel’s conception of intersubjectivity that became paradigmatic for the views of the younger Frankfurt School, we should first see how Sartre understands and criticises Hegel’s theory of the subject and the inter-subject.16

14

“[. . .] this intuition, which acquaints us with our existence, also causes us to know it with complete evidence that is neither in need of nor open to proof. [. . .] I add that the immediate self-awareness (aperception) of our existence and our thoughts provides us with the first a posteriori truths or truths of fact (ou de fait), i.e. the first experiences, just as the identical [thus analytically true] assertions provide the first a priori truths or truths of reason (ou de raison), i.e. the first illuminations (les premières lumières). Both are resistant to proof and can be called immediate; the former, because there is immediacy (immédiation) between the faculty of understanding and its object; the latter, because there is immediacy between the subject and the predicate”(Nouveaux Essais sur l’Entendement Humain, Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, 1966, Livre IV, Chapitre IX, pp. 383f.). 15 Jean-Paul Sartre, “L’espoir maintenant . . .,” in Le nouvel observateur, no. 800 du 10 au 16 mars 1980, p. 59. 16 Sartre, L’être et le néant. Essai d’une phénoménologie ontologique, Paris, 1943, pp. 288ff.


Hegel calls self-consciousness the truth of consciousness. But as its sublation (Aufhebung), it remains—like all consciousness— chained to an object outside of itself, the independence of which it endeavours to disrupt and incorporate into itself through negation.17 In first differentiating itself as the immediate certainty of its self-identity (as I = I) from its object, it pays tribute to abstraction or finiteness. Yet it can free itself from these in appropriating the difference constituting its (intentional) reference to others as its own reflection-in-itself. In this way, its particularity dissipates, and it recognises itself as itself or as “the universal [dis-individualised] self-consciousness.”18 So self-consciousness is in fact—as with Mead—the result of reflection in a social field: I recognise myself as myself by catching reflexes sent by other subjects.19 Hegel had thus attempted to mediate self-consciousness by reducing it to object-consciousness and by giving the third-person perspective priority. The other is a condition for my self-knowledge because the self alone does not have immediate (non-objective) self-knowledge. Self-consciousness, according to Hegel, exists always only ‘for a self-consciousness’. It is thus principally only accessible through reflective ‘duplication’, and is therefore, as Hegel says, only “mediated with itself through another consciousness.”20 Consequently, the being of the other precedes the knowledge of myself. Even if, in the consequence of the battle for recognition, it is

17

Hegel, Enzyklopädie, §§ 424/5, in Theorie Werk-Ausgabe, eds. Karl Markus Michel and Eva Moldenhauer, Frankfurt am Main, 1970, vol. 10, pp. 213/4. 18 Hegel, Theorie Werk-Ausgabe, p. 215. 19 These are Hegel’s own words: “self-consciousness is a reality to itself according to its essential universality only in so far as it knows its reflection in others (I know that others know me as a self)” (Theorie Werk-Ausgabe, vol. 4, p. 122, § 39). 20 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller, Oxford, 1977, pp. 110–11, 115.


negated as an object, it is its objectivity through whose collapse the subject experiences its selfhood. Sartre has brought forth two objections against this explication. To begin with, it is utterly implausible that a subject learns through a reflection that it is itself this reflection. A subject would only be authorised to this insight through a pre-reflective and non-objective familiarity with itself, which Hegel emphatically rejects.21 On the other hand, Hegel describes the goal of the battle for mutual recognition not as my individual, but rather as a ‘universal self-consciousness’, in whose ‘empty’ identity all traces of individuation are annulled.22 But then I still cannot recognise myself as the one that I am: for I am neither an empty universal nor the other individuated person I reflect myself in (and strive to kill).23 This is where the crypto-theology behind Hegel’s theory of lordship and bondage manifests itself: the master, who is not afraid of death, can know that he need not be afraid of anything; for in death he executes the mediated transition to the concrete eternity of ‘reason’ (‘Vernunft’) that constitutes his truth or essential home. At this level of self-reflection, he has no need for the particular other-as-object who reflects his own (individual) particular self. His consciousness has reached “its truth [. . .] as the middle term which proclaims to the unchangeable consciousness that the single individual has renounced itself, and, to the individual, that the Unchangeable is for it no longer an extreme, but is reconciled with it.”24

21

So what is missing, as Sartre says, is “a common measurement for subject and object” (Sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 299). I can never experience from the existence of me as an object that I myself am this object: “Etre objet c’est n’être pas moi” (Sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 298). 22 Hegel, Theorie Werk-Ausgabe , vol. 4, p. 117, §§ 22/3; vol. 10, p. 213, § 424; p. 228, § 438; Phenomenology, p. 139; Theorie Werk-Ausgabe, vol. 4, p. 122, § 38. 23 Sartre, L’être et le néant, pp. 299–300. 24 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 139.


This result of Hegel’s reasoning is invalid, and not only because the condition under which it is possible has been repressed. It simply does not accord with the phenomenologically verifiable mode of being (Seinsart) of consciousness, that is, that its identity with its object—if we can even sensibly use the term ‘object’ here—can be testified from a vantage point which “does not [first] establish myself in what I am and so pose the problem of other selves from [the perspective of] my own being. In short, the only certain point of departure is the interiority of the cogito.”25 Yet Hegel might have recurred to two precursor positions about the reciprocal acknowledgment of free individuals, those of Fichte and Schelling.26 Both had managed to explain the social integration of individuality without circularity because they assumed that the self-knowledge of particular subjects is a non-objective or pre-reflective certainty. Fichte and Schelling had already spoken of the reciprocal ‘acknowledgment’ of subjects as a necessary condition for the individuation of their self-consciousness. But in so doing, they correctly assumed that this individuation forfeits its cogency if understood as resulting from the knowledge of the other-as-object reflected back onto the subject. So “the activity of external intelligences is sure to be a condition for [individual] self-consciousness,” since “no rational being can prove itself as such except through the acknowledgment of others,” that is to say, as independently existing subjects.27 I cannot say whether Mead or Habermas have really comprehended this problem and understand why it is disastrous for a 25 “[. . .] m’établit dans mon être et pose le problème d’autrui à partir de mon être. En un mot, le seul point de départ sûr est l’intériorité du cogito” (Sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 300). 26 Fichte’s Werke, ed. I. H. Fichte, reprint Berlin, 1971, vol. III, pp. 35–52; Schelling’s sämmtliche Werke, ed. K. F. A. Schelling, Stuttgart, 1856–64, vol. I/3, pp. 538–557. 27 Schelling’s sämmtliche Werke, vol. I/3, p. 550.


theory of communicative reason. It is true that they do not argue from the perspective of an objectifying observer, but from that of social interaction with others. But this does not save them from circularity in their attempts at explanation. The other just is, in fact, at first a given—even ‘given’ as an object. To impute personality to him or her first requires a prior understanding of what it means to be a subject, but I cannot derive this understanding from cooperation. Rather, only those beings can enter into cooperative relations of whom I know in advance that they have some sort of rudimentary self-understanding. (For lack of time, I cannot justify my criticism of Mead and Habermas further here; however, I have done so elsewhere.)28 III Instead, I owe you a few explanatory notes on how Sartre’s success in refuting Hegel can be developed into a positive theory of intersubjectivity. If this can be achieved, then such a theory would be preferable to a priori intersubjectivism. For it would be of the same explanatory value, yet devoid of the latter’s faults. In his lecture to the Society of French Philosophy on the 2nd of June 1947, Sartre had mentioned that every philosophy with the ‘cogito’ as its point of departure must reckon with at least five objections.29 These include the inability to see another (‘autrui’) as anything but an object, and thus as another self-conscious and actively cooperating subject. “Autrui doit être certain ou disparaître.”30

28

In Selbstbewußtsein und Selbsterkenntnis, p. 410ff., esp. pp. 464ff. “Conscience de soi et connaissance de soi,” in Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie, tome 42, 1948, pp. 49–91; reprinted in Manfred Frank, ed. Selbstbewußtseinstheorien von Fichte bis Sartre, Frankfurt am Main, 1991, pp. 367–411. 30 Sartre,“Conscience de soi et connaissance de soi,” 51.6 29


Now he is certain, even if this certainty—as with Leibniz and Kant—is not a logical truth, but rather forced upon us due to the ‘empirical circumstances of our facticity’. To explain how Sartre can say such a thing without absurdity would require a more thorough analysis of his theory of consciousness. This is not possible within the framework of this paper. Nor can I discuss Sartre’s earlier attempt to argue that one’s own ego is just as transcendent of consciousness as that of another, because he later withdrew it.31 On the other hand, he was able to interpret certain experiences, such as shame and pride, as apodictically certain, despite the fact that they imply knowledge of foreign subjectivity. This was due to his theory of pre-reflective consciousness, which was later dialectically extended by means of its inner ‘reflet-reflétant’ structure. Shame presents itself as non-positing (self-)consciousness of shame, thus as a subjective experience of the same Cartesian certainty as pleasure or belief—that is, as states that do not essentially require an intersubjective interpretation. Unlike these, shame has the peculiarity that it is not only self-reflective (I am ashamed of myself ), but also essentially based on self-understanding. It would be absurd to believe that this understanding would ensue had I not been conscious of someone in front of whom I feel ashamed (even shame in front of myself assumes the internalisation of a generalised foreign subject—of a super-ego). We thus confront the ‘presence of another in my consciousness’ without the possibility of practicing a Husserlian epoxh on him.32 When ashamed, just as when morally indignant, I am afflicted, even to the core of my cogito.33 Therefore, unless I undergo self-destruction, I

31 32 33

Sartre, L’être et le néant, pp. 290f. Sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 276. Peter Strawson has, incidentally, analysed the non-dismissibility or the


cannot protect myself from the certainty of foreign viewpoints that are just as transcendental as my own. Sartre convincingly shows that realism with respect to the existence of other subjects is not at all better off than idealism. Realism cannot explain which knowledge allows us to ascribe self-consciousness to another human body (it faces the problem that an attitude de re cannot be transformed into an attitude de se without a logical gap.)34 And idealism must either explain self-consciousness as super-individual (in which case we would not be able to differentiate our own from that of another) or it must justify the self-consciousness of others by analogy with one’s own, for example in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.35 In short, the egological centre of intelligibility of another subjective system remains epistemically inaccessible to my viewpoint; it is neither homogeneous to my own, nor is it causally connected with it. In principle, it could exist without my knowledge of it—and vice versa. In this way, the other is transformed into a regulative idea, a being-as-if. This is, however, an untenable abstraction; for the other, who puts me to shame, is not a doubtful object, but rather a non-object the existence of which is certified by a Cartesian guarantee.36 In L’être et le néant, Sartre especially emphasises and deliberately caricatures the agonal and unsociable quality of the mutual reifireality of moral experiences very similarly to Sartre. In a famous paper from 1962 (reprinted in Freedom and Resentment, London, 1974) he has used the example of our anger in reaction to being insulted by others to make plausible that we do not just find the actions of the other bad or dreadful—as in the case of anger or shock—but rather morally outrageous. So we must always already have experienced the reality of morality before subsequently perhaps finding it problematic. It is the same with resentment where we have already permanently recognised the existence of others as moral persons. 34 See Sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 279. 35 See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 359f. 36 Sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 283.


cation of freedom. Each subject can only maintain his/her subjectivity in compensating his/her suffered reification by reifying the other. This results in the battle for the maintenance of one’s own capacity to be a subject in an inter-monadic world. But this unfriendly aspect of Sartre’s conception of intersubjectivity (which made it difficult and even impossible for him to justify a morality of solidarity in the 1940’s and 1950’s) does not alter his conviction that the other is just as certain as myself—this [latter] conviction is rather presupposed. We should also take into account here the writer’s strategy in shocking the bourgeoisie with its own unpleasant image. Later, especially in his confrontation with Marxism, Sartre sought a new and original solution. It stems from the observation that the other is not the negation of en-soi, but rather of my pour-soi: I am not the only subject in the world (‘I am not Paul’); others negate my freedom and limit my radius of action. The difference between others and me is not the distance between bodies, or something like the distance between body and soul. Rather, it is the incompatibility of two centres of consciousness, neither of which can assimilate the other in itself. In this context, the concept of a ‘tiers à médier’—of the mediating third—appears for the first time. Sartre used it in his Critique de la raison dialectique as a key to understanding the ‘we’ of a group: only a third person is able to see what two opposed subjects truly have in common.37 The ‘tiers à médier’ is thus a secularised Leibnizian central monad that enables every particular subject in an intelligible way to reach the cooperative ‘we’. In the late interview entitled L’espoir maintenant, the presence of others in my own consciousness is hesitatingly extended to include a moral dimension: the other is not a cold gaze intent on reifying me, but rather to be understood

37

Sartre, L’être et le néant, pp. 286f.


as the voice of duty. If the other belongs to my inner consciousness and is distinguished by its radical freedom, then the dimension of responsibility must be extended to that of obligation. I admit, however, that this remains vague. It would now be of importance to analyse much more thoroughly how this intervention of the alter in my selfhood can actually form a component of my immediate self-consciousness—but one which, unlike in the analytic tradition following Strawson, must not accept epistemic asymmetry, since it presents itself as a certainty. This certainty is of course not such that it would be constitutive of my self-understanding as a subject. The certainty of interaction with others is contingent to me to the extent that it is de facto indubitable—in the same sense in which my selfconsciousness is contingent to me, but de facto immune to error. (As mentioned above, this is how Leibniz and Kant saw things). I already anticipate your criticism: so far so good, you might say, but rather little has been accomplished for a social theory. I concede this—but I was more concerned here with the premises on which such a theory could justifiably be based. And these premises are not provided by an understanding of social interaction as an a priori truth. This is sufficient to fundamentally question the entire project of a priori intersubjectivism—as convincing as it may seem in its subsequent development. Thus I have done the same with the Theory of Communicative Action as the young Schelling did with Kant when he remarked, “Philosophy has not yet come to an end. Kant provided the conclusions: the premises are still lacking. And who can understand conclusions without premises?”38

38

Letter to Hegel of 6 January, 1795.


Now it would in fact be arrogant to accuse Sartre of going no further than providing the premises. He finally did elaborate on his theory of intersubjectivity in extensive works on social theory in the 1950’s and even later. It remains to be proven—excluding questions of detail—that his attempt has principally failed. What seems especially important to me is that Sartre, in his Critique de la raison dialectique and in other works, chooses the self-consciousness of an individual person as his point of departure in defending the ‘irreducibility of human praxis’.39 The intelligibility of social relations must be built on the transparency of a particular self-consciousness and not on arbitrary super-individual or a priori totalities.40 Sartre naturally concedes that individuals never appear other than as ‘singular universals’ (universels singuliers), that they do not affirm themselves against society, but rather understand themselves as individualised collective consciousnesses. Logically, however, this means that the universal acts only as the conditio sine qua non for individual consciousness, not positively as its causa per quam.41

39

Critique de la raison dialectique (précédé de Questions de méthode). Tome I, Théorie des ensembles pratiques. Texte établi par Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre, Paris, 1985, pp. 73, 167. 40 Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, pp. 154, 182 41 “One should call mankind a singular universal: by being inserted into a [Heideggerian] totality of meaningfulness through his belonging to an historical epoch, man is defined (universalisé) as a universal; but he redefines the borders of this epochal whole (il le retotalise) in re-establishing himself in it as a singularity (en se reproduisant en elle comme singularité) (Sartre, L’idiot de la famille, tome 1, Paris, 1971, p. 7). I have thoroughly examined this dialectic in “Archäologie des Individuums. Zur Hermeneutik von Sartres ‘Flaubert’,” in M. Frank, Das Sagbare und das Unsagbare, Frankfurt am Main, 2nd ed., 1989, pp. 256–333). This dialectic corresponds to the way Marx talks of the ‘social individual’ which, if separated from his epoch and living situations, would be just as unthinkable “as language development without individuals who live and speak together” (Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Berlin, 1953, p. 6). However, what cannot be explained without society, is not for that reason the ‘result’ of social processes, and therefore of the universal. That would rather be the reversed abstraction that Marx characterises as the ‘inverted world’ or ‘mystification’. Neither Marx nor Sartre hold the individual


It may now seem surprising that Sartre bases his maxim of methodological individualism, according to which all totalisation starts with the individual, on the philosophy of Karl Marx. For Marx was conceivably far from the false universality which seeks to generate knowledge about mankind dialectically by progressively elevating itself from the most broad to the most precise determinations. He defines his method in a letter to Lassalle as research, which ‘elevates itself from the abstract to the concrete’. And the concrete is according to Marx the hierarchical totalisation of hierarchised determinations and realities. For “the population is an abstraction when, for example, I leave out the classes which constitute it. Class is again an empty term if I do not know the elements upon which they are based, for example paid labour, capital, etc.”42 In fact, Marx’s name has been roped in by a priori intersubjectivism to the extent that one has forgotten what drove him to criticise Hegelianism. His motive was not only that matter cannot be sublated into mind, but more importantly the irreducibility of individuality to universality.43 ‘The unrestrained realisation

to be ontically ‘independent’ in contrast to society; but it participates in society’s presenting itself as this rather than that particular, concrete society. 42 Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, p. 49; the citation is taken from the introduction to the Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke, 13, p. 631. 43 Marx adopts from Feuerbach and from Schelling through Feuerbach (cf. for example Schellings sämmtliche Werke, II/3, 162, 2) the objection that “the reality of mankind and of nature [. . .] becomes in Hegel’s philosophy [. . .] mere predicates, symbols of this covert unreal mankind and this unreal nature [of absolute spirit, or the idea of nature]. Subject and predicate are thus in a relation of absolute inversion” (Marx and Engels, Werke, 1, supplementary volume, p. 584; cf. Marx and Engels, Werke, vol. 2, p. 204; vol. 1, pp. 206–8, pp. 240f.; vol. 3, pp. 378, 384 and passim). “‘Real mankind’ or ‘the real subject as the foundation for the state’ are consistently characterised with the property of ‘individuality’ or ‘singularity’, as a charge against the ‘mystical’ notion, according to which the subject of history is ‘Subjectivity’ or ‘the Universal’: It is important that Hegel makes the idea a subject and that he makes the actual,


(Entfaltung) of individuality’ was indeed the true motive of his earlier (and arguably also of his later) theory. Marx never accepted the unauthorised ‘power of the universal’ (for example of the ‘value’), which is constitutive of the distinctive structure of capitalist society and its institutions, as a power that defies intentional explanations and that should be interpreted from a systems-theoretical or Hegelian perspective. He rather chastised functionalist interpretations as mystifications throughout his career.44 For example in The German Ideology Marx argues:

real subject [. . .] a predicate. But development always comes from the side of the predicate.” (Commentary on § 268 of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law and Right, cf. commentary on §§ 270, 279–280: the subject [is] necessarily an empirical individual). For a criticism of Hegel’s subject-predicate inversion in the works of Schelling, Feuerbach, and Marx cf. my Der unendliche Mangel an Sein, esp. pp. 276ff., 298f. (each in context). 44 In the following, I adopt the main claims made in a doctoral thesis being completed in Tübingen by Moritz Epple, Abstrakte Handlungen. Zur Diskussion des “rational choice marxism” im Kontext der handlungstheoretischen Analyse moderner Gesellschaften. This thesis will show that the methodological individualism of analytical Marxists is a method which Marx himself had already employed. A homogeneous social theory can be formulated by differentiating concrete (situation dependent) and abstract (situation unspecific) rules of action, and the abstract theoretical derivation of the latter from the former. Abstraction theory, which evolved insufficiently in British empiricism (especially with Berkeley), became conceptually refined in the number theory and logical investigations of the early Husserl. According to the latter, abstract concepts (such as number, plurality, or continuity) are to be thought of as grounded (‘fundiert’) on a concrete (singular) intuition. They are, however, not immediately (as ‘primary content’) ‘derived’ from psychic experiences. Rather, they are mediated by ‘reflection’. With the help of abstraction theory, the concept of intentional action can now be retained even within explanations of systemic orders. For the latter are nothing other than ‘abstract actions’—assuming that the much too rigid rule concept of mathematical game theory (which may be of explanatory value only for the subsystem economy) can be made more flexible within a Wittgensteinian and Davidsonian framework. As a second step, Moritz Epple shows that this sort of pragmatically extended and adjusted model of action can be made fruitful for the analysis of institutions. In so doing, he is able to find support from the works of Winch, which explain the regularity of behaviour not causally (as in the case of Althusser’s ‘structural causality’ or deterministic economism), but rather non-deterministically

278 • Manfred Frank The fact is that those specific individuals that are productively active in a specific way enter these specific social and political relations. Empirical observation must in each singular case empirically demonstrate the connection between social and political structures and production without mystification and speculation.45

In a similar vein, the “Introduction” to the Critique of Political Economy makes the following point: If there is no production in general, then there is also no general production. Production is always a specific branch of production— for example agriculture, stock farming, manufacture, etc. [. . .]. All production is appropriation of nature by the individual located within and mediated by a certain social form.46

in terms of the concept of rule following. Patterns in social action can nevertheless be made comprehensible without any loss of the internal intelligibility (and thus our hermeneutical understanding) of single individuals’ intentional actions. At the same time, the capacity of social orders for innovation and their openness to criticism becomes more easily understandable. As a third step, Epple shows that society can in fact be grasped adequately as a whole by methodological individualism. According to Wittgenstein, games emerge in an irreducible plurality without being dependent on a universal language or society as a whole from which they can all be deductively derived. Here again, abstraction theory is can be deployed: the reciprocal relations between (language and other) games or action contexts, even those that are regulated differently, may be grasped by differentiating concrete and abstract rules (of action). This would allow the abstract (situation unspecific) rules (of action) to appear embedded in (and grounded by) concrete (situation sensitive) ones (see project sketch p. 8). From this differentiation and from the abstraction theoretical derivation of the former from the latter, Moritz Epple can hope to formulate a social theory made in one (theoretical) casting: Within this theory action situations and individuals’ actions are posited as real, and it ascribes to social institutions no independent reality in contrast to the actions constitutive of them [. . .]. For every institution we can ask the question of which individual actions establish the ‘usage’ of the rules that build the inner core of the institution that is being investigated (see project sketch p. 9); cf. meanwhile Epple’s article “Karl Marx und die soziale Wirklichkeit,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 48, 1994, 4, pp. 518–542. 45 Marx and Engels, Werke, vol. 3, p. 25. 46 Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, pp. 7 & 9.


The followers of Marx who emphasise his putative methodological dependency on Hegel are usually themselves committed to functionalist social theoretical assumptions (especially apparent with Althusser). Even Habermas takes the trouble to divide labour so that institutions are allotted functionalist and the life-world actiontheoretical explanations. Both explanation models are perhaps incompatible, and anyway lack consistency in contrast to the homogeneous conceptualisations of social processes according to the early Marx and Sartre. An especially interesting task would be a detailed investigation of the convergence in the approaches of the early Marx, Sartre, and the methodological individualism of Jon Elster and John Roemer. Each of these writers understands the systemic character of social relations—partly with the help of game theory—to mean the unwanted fallout of originally individual and intentional actions (as ‘practico-inerte’) and not as a sort of universal a priori, which has ‘always already’ anonymously disenfranchised (entmündigt) individual practice. In any case, I cannot and need not demonstrate here that Sartre’s counter-conception to a priori intersubjectivism is convincing in all aspects in order to be justified in talking about the failures of the latter. Rather, our critical assessment of tradition-building theories of intersubjectivity has taught us that those who do not account for subjectivity from the start cannot later make it understandable as an inter-subject. In contrast, methodological individualism opens doors to the field of intersubjective relations. The plausibility of these attempts and the advantage they already have due to their epistemological safeguard against a priori intersubjectivism, still make them attractive, despite manifest shortcomings and inconsistencies. I plead for the removal of these weaknesses from the explanatory resources of a theory of communicative reason. Conversely, I suggest that intersubjectivism not misconstrue the explanatory advantages of methodological individualism with its pointless polemics, but rather that it quickly convert them to its own use.

Kenneth MacKendrick

The Moral Imaginary of Discourse Ethics*1

[Moral] thoughts are those alone which do not understand themselves.2

Gillian Rose, shortly before her death, noted that “It is strange to live in a time when philosophy has found so many ways to damage if not to destroy itself.”3 However, in agreement with Cornelius Castoriadis, I suspect that the ‘death of subjectivity’ and the ‘end of philosophy’ are exaggerated reports.4 Still, it is ironic that precisely when the ideals of rational thought, or at least the aims of critical analysis, appear to be needed most, the pre-emptive conclusions regarding the possibility of reason have been encouraged to fall in either of two undesirable directions: self-inflicted destruction (the cultural logic of late capitalism) or political terror (nationalism, authoritarianism). This is, in fact,

* This article was first published in Critical Horizons, vol. 1, no. 2, 2000. 1 It would be irresponsible not to thank Andrea Brown, John Rundell, Stella Gaon, Chris Brittain, Kelley, Darlene Juschka, Bill Arnal, and Stephan Dobson. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the American Academy of Religion: Eastern International Region Conference, University of Toronto, April 17, 1998. 2 The original reads “True thoughts are those alone which do not understand themselves” in Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, trans. E.F.N. Jephcott, London, Verso, 1974, p. 192. 3 G. Rose, Mourning Becomes the Law, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 1. 4 See Cornelius Castoriadis, World in Fragments, ed. and trans. David Ames Curtis Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 137 and Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, ed. David Ames Curtis, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 13–32. For an innovative and persuasive critique of postmodern ‘deconstructions’ of subjectivity, see Slavoj ÒZiÏzek, The Ticklish Subject, London, Verso, 1999.

The Moral Imaginary of Discourse Ethics • 281

the provocative thesis of Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment: that reason, at the moment of the fall of metaphysics, risks slipping into a “new kind of barbarism.”5 The idea here is depicted in the striking etching ‘El sue de la razón produce monstruos’ by Francisco Goya. The image is interesting because of its ambiguity. Is it the ‘sleep of reason’ or is it ‘the dream of reason’ that produces monsters?6 In either case, the image illustrates several entanglements for critical theory in ‘postmodern’ times and highlights the relevance of what I understand to be the dreamwork of moral philosophy.7 The important idea not to be missed here is the radical entwinement of fantasy and moral consciousness. Prompted by this etching, this paper will examine the relation between the ‘discourse ethics’ of Jürgen Habermas and Cornelius Castoriadis’ theory of the ‘imaginary institution of society’. Habermas’ critical social theory, including his theory of communicative rationality and moral theory of discourse, is one of the most challenging and innovative attempts to ‘rescue’ Enlightenment-based reason from ‘uninhibited scepticism’ and the ‘monadic isolation of strategic action’.8 Habermas’ conceptualisation of practical reason through a sophisticated and differentiated 5 M. Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming, New York, Continuum, 1990, p. xi. 6 For a brief reflection on Goya’s image from Los Caprichos, plate 43, see David Couzens Hoy and Thomas McCarthy’s “Introduction” in Critical Theory, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 1994, pp. 1–4. 7 I am using the term ‘dreamwork’ here in the Freudian sense, “the work which transforms the latent dream into the manifest one,” keeping in mind Freud’s fundamental insight into the phantasmic character of trauma, which lies at the heart of moral consciousness. Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis: Vol. 1, trans. James Strachey, New York, Penguin Books, 1991, p. 204. 8 J. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1987, p. 129 and Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1990 p. 102.

282 • Kenneth MacKendrick

understanding of communicative rationality is virtually poetic in stature. Quoting Walter Benjamin approvingly Habermas writes, “there is a sphere of human agreement that is non-violent to the extent that it is wholly inaccessible to violence: the proper sphere of ‘mutual understanding’, language.”9 The non-violence intimated in the sphere of mutual understanding serves as a foundational moment for Habermas’ ‘muscular’ universalism and his analysis provides an important opportunity to revisit what universalism might entail for contemporary moral philosophy. Yet, as I will argue, Habermas’ attempt to rescue reason, as communicative action, remains bound in a paradox in that moral reasoning is implicated in its own contingency, and with regards to universalism, is entwined in a necessary and impossible structure. Although Habermas’ discourse ethics remains one of the more fruitful developments in moral philosophy today, it does not acknowledge enough and perhaps presupposes too much. To substantiate this paradox, I argue that Habermas’ moral theory fails to establish the necessary immanent connection between the universality of discourse ethics and the quasi-transcendentalism that is supposed to provide its ground. In effect, Habermas’ attempt to avoid the spectre of subjectivism leads him to develop an understanding of universalism that hinges on a critical error, the confusion of subjectivity with ethical substance [the subject becomes language]. Using the work of Castoriadis, I maintain that Habermas’ moral theory of discourse harbours a moral-imaginary dimension: a pre-political kernel that undercuts its capacity to serve as a universalist ethic. What his analysis of morality fails to distinguish here is the depth to which particular forms of subjectivity and discourse are fused with a moral-imaginary horizon. As a consequence, the attempt

9 Walter Benjamin quoted in Jürgen Habermas, “Consciousness-Raising or Rescuing Critique” in Gary Smith, ed. On Walter Benjamin, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1988, p. 124.


to circumvent such a fusion leads to something that Castoriadis refers to as ‘the ethicists’ new clothes’—a public display of a withdrawal into the ‘private’ sphere that is characteristic of the present age along with its ‘individualist’ ideology.10 Furthermore, I then suggest that Habermas’ discourse ethics, because of the way in which the question of universalism is formulated, remains firmly embedded within a substantive conception of reason which, in effect, aligns his moral theory in close proximity to praxis philosophers such as Agnes Heller, Cornelius Castoriadis and the earlier work of the Frankfurt School, despite his explicit disagreements with their conclusions. This affinity further illuminates the imaginary horizon of moral philosophy. Habermas’ Emphatic Conception of Reason Theory formation is in danger of being limited from the start to a particular, culturally or historically bound perspective, unless fundamental concepts are constructed in such a way that the concept of rationality they implicitly posit is encompassing and general, that is, satisfies universalistic claims.11

The central idea of Habermas’ theory of communicative action is that there is an indestructible moment of rationality that is grounded in concrete forms of human existence. Habermas uses this indestructible moment as a foundation for the articulation of a comprehensive social theory which shifts beyond the traditional ‘critique of ideology’ to a theory of rationality expressly concerned with the validity of its own critical standards. To this

10

Castoriadis, World in Fragments, p. 110. A similar critique of this problem can be found in Seyla Benhabib’s essay “The Generalized and the Concrete Other” in Situating the Self, New York, Routledge, 1992, pp. 148–177. 11 J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action: Vol. 1, trans. Thomas McCarthy, Boston, Beacon Press, 198, p. 137.


end, Habermas develops a theory of communicative rationality, which requires an understanding of objectivity that shows itself to be universally valid. He is well aware that this is a very strong requirement for a theorist operating without metaphysical support, and argues that there are three ways in which to expound the universality of the concept of communicative rationality without ‘falling back’ into metaphysics. The first way is through the introduction of a formal-pragmatic concept of communicative action, including a rational reconstruction of universal rules and necessary presuppositions of speech acts oriented toward reaching an understanding. The second way, to explain pathological patterns of communication found in the evolution of the foundations of socio-cultural forms of life and the ontogenesis of capabilities for action. Based on these two approaches, Habermas develops a third way, expounded in the theory of communicative action.12 Habermas’ aim here can be taken as twofold: first, to reconstruct the ‘rules’ of argumentation that are unavoidable; and second, to outline a rational and ethical vision of the world in accord with an idea of moral subjectivity that is appropriate to these rules. To reconstruct the ‘rules’ of argumentation, Habermas develops ‘formal’ or ‘universal’ pragmatics out of the idea of ‘transcendental pragmatics’ from the work of Karl-Otto Apel. In this way, Habermas links questions of universality in moral statements with a theory of communicative action. Habermas’ argument takes the form of a reconstructive science, the (objective) articulation of the non-contingent ‘intuitive know-how’ or ‘intuitive pre-understanding’ of speech acts oriented by the attempt to understand something with someone. The purpose of a universal pragmatic argument is to prove that all discourses entail inescapable presuppositions. Habermas’ intention is to demon-

12

Ibid., pp. 138–139.


strate that ‘argumentative games’ are not mere conventions, but are rather implicit rules, which, upon reconstruction, outline the minimal moral content of any possible discourse. Failure to comply, in practice, with this reconstructed model results in a performative contradiction, the raising of a radical or critical claim which undercuts or contradicts the possibility of its own validity.13 Language use, therefore, is rational when participants coordinate their plans of action consensually, and it is moral when the agreement reached at any point is evaluated in terms of the intersubjective recognition of validity claims.14 Habermas’ explication of universal pragmatics rests on his thesis that communicative actions can be successfully demarcated from all other social actions. He makes the claim that such a separation can be accomplished through an analysis of the illocutionary binding/ bonding force of utterances (what Habermas has more recently identified as a ‘transcendence within’).15 Communicative actions, according to Habermas, differentiate themselves based on their self-sufficiency, in the sense that “the communicative intent of the speaker and the illocutionary aim he [or she, KM] is pursuing follow from the manifest meaning of what is said.” 16 Specifically, Habermas then argues that all speech acts oriented to reaching understanding [Verständigung] raise three distinct,

13 Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, pp. 76–98 and Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy, Boston, Beacon Press, 1979, pp. 1–68. 14 Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, p. 58. Habermas also writes, “What counts as rational is solving problems successfully through procedurally suitable dealings with reality.” See Jürgen Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking, trans. William Mark Hohengarten, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1992, p. 35. 15 See Jürgen Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other, ed. Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1998, pp. 7ff. Also, Jürgen Habermas, “Transcendence from Within, Transcendence in this World” in Habermas, Modernity, and Public Theology, ed. Don S. Browning and Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, New York, Crossroad, 1992, pp. 226–250. 16 Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, p. 289.


meaningful and procedurally separable validity claims: claims regarding truth (the objective sphere), rightness (the social or political normative sphere), and truthfulness (concerning the subjective sphere of private experiences). Habermas further argues that this separation of ‘value spheres’, the result of a ‘decentring of worldview’, has been incorporated (in however distorted and incomplete a fashion) into the institutions of constitutional government, into the forms of democratic will formation, and into individualist patterns of identity formation.17 The stronger thesis that Habermas develops is that communicative action, the use of language orientated to reaching understanding, is the original mode of language use, and that the instrumental use of language is parasitic.18 To this end, universal pragmatics seeks to reconstruct and make explicit the universally valid orientations of speech acts while simultaneously providing a systematic outline of the “intuitive knowledge of competent subjects.”19 In short, universal pragmatics claims to outline the intuitive and necessary conditions for a “happy employment of sentences in utterances.”20 The failure to conform to the logic of these rules inevitably results in what Habermas calls a performative contradiction. A speaker is ‘competent’ when, and only when, their utterances do not conflict with their ‘always already’ presuppositions. The problem that the theory of communicative action must overcome is this: How is it possible to thematise discourses into questions of truth or rightness without an a priori appeal to their factual and valid separation? Habermas attempts to short circuit

17 18 19 20

Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, pp. 115–117. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, p. 288. Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, p. 9. Ibid., p. 26.


the charge of begging the question by relying upon a quasitranscendental understanding of communication, whereby the internal structure of validity claims are conceived of as possessing the turgid durability to mediate agreement through mutual recognition. For Habermas, the adjudication of validity claims regarding objective truth or normative rightness must be determined procedurally if they are going to remain in accord with rationalisation. Proceduralisation as ‘ideal role-taking’ is the rational (and moral) paradigm of modernity in philosophical form. Guided by Kantian intuitions, Habermas elaborates the formal character of discourse ethics with a theory of argumentation which sustains the idea that all questions of truth or normative validity can be successfully adjudicated through the use of good reasons, with consensus upon any issue serving as rational grounds for its validity. Since traditional worldviews, in their encounter with plurality, have lost their legitimacy, modern reason must create normativity out of itself by relying on nothing more than the force of the better argument.21 Legitimacy (understood here as consensual will-formation), for Habermas, in light of the disenchantment of mythical worldviews, requires a turn toward reason, discursively conceived and quasi-transcendentally derived. Habermas grounds this turn to reason in the social evolutionary development of autonomy and solidarity constituted by the intersubjective and communicative logic of ego development.22 In sum, Habermas provides an analysis of speech act orientations and argues that rational thinking is determined, in part, by what one wants: “It is a matter of making a rational choice of means in the light of fixed purposes or of the rational assessment of

21 22

Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, p. 7. See Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, pp. 69–94.


goals in the light of existing preferences.”23 The question, ‘What should I do?’ takes on a pragmatic, an ethical, or a moral meaning depending on how the problem is conceived: pragmatic questions address strategic directions for action, ethical questions correspond to ethical-existential advice concerning correct conduct of life and the realisation of a personal life project, and moral questions pertain to the clarification of legitimate behavioural expectations in response to interpersonal conflicts resulting from the disruption of our orderly coexistence by conflicts of interest.24 Pragmatic and ethical discourses have an affinity with empirical discourses—which take on a third person perspective, oriented by an interest regarding a discursively constituted ‘objective state of affairs’ and moral discourses thematically deal with questions of ‘rightness’ and the validity of social or moral norms.25 To sustain these divisions, Habermas maintains that “the social world, as the totality of legitimately ordered interpersonal relations, has a different ontological constitution from the objective world.”26 In other words, meaning and truth, for Habermas, are (ought to be) mutually exclusive. For example, the question of how one might equitably distribute food is a pragmatic question, regarding the strategic and technical employment of reason. The question of whether one wants to live their life like a saint or a communist distributing food is an ethical question, pertaining to a particular vision of a good life. Finally, the question of whether one should distribute food is a moral question, pertaining to the potentially universal moral interest of all. Habermas’ discourse ethics rests on the intuition that the application of the principle of universalisation calls for a joint process of ‘ideal role taking’, which entails the pragmatic presupposi-

23

J. Habermas, Justification and Application, trans. Ciaran P. Cronin, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1993, p. 3. 24 Ibid., pp. 8–9. 25 Ibid., p. 11. 26 Ibid., p. 39.


tion of an inclusive and non-coercive rational discourse between free and equal participants—the explicit theorisation of which can be identified as the “general presuppositions of communicative action.”27 Beyond an Emphatic Conception of Reason: Towards Performative Idealisation In a careful analysis of Habermas’ program of discourse ethics, Albrecht Wellmer argues that Habermas’ principle of universalisation is a moral principle, guided by a local ideal, which fails as a legal principle of consensual validity, pertaining to legitimation.28 Likewise, Agnes Heller argues that the universalisation test requires at least one shared good as a presupposition upon which any attempt to reach consensus can hope to ground itself. In other words, both Wellmer and Heller have argued that Habermas must presuppose a shared ethos: an ethos that grants, as a good, the conceptual priority of communicative action. This is highly problematic since such a presupposition contradicts the universalist aim of Habermas’ project by incorporating an ethical good in the very ‘bones’ of his moral theory of discourse, given that Habermas requires that the good and the just be separate in order to substantiate the claim that the principle of universalisation serves as a guarantee of impartiality.29 If Wellmer and Heller are correct, Habermas’ model of moral discourse necessarily fails as a universal model because it relies on ethical assumptions derived from a pre-political a priori acceptance of normative claims that are external to discursive formal procedures.30

27

Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, p. 1. A. Wellmer, The Persistence of Modernity, trans. David Midgley, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1993, pp. 145–159. 29 A. Heller, Beyond Justice, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1987, p. 240. 30 Adorno understood this well when he asserted, “In general, the objectivity of empirical social research is an objectivity of the methods, not of what is 28


In response to Wellmer, Habermas argues that the moral element of discourse ethics is only exhausted in the justification of a norm and its application; the latter linking moral principles to concreteness.31 With regard to Heller, Habermas maintains that there are simply no alternatives to a formalist model of mutual recognition and that for this reason, a shared good can legitimately be presupposed. Habermas writes, “In communicative rationality we are always already orientated to those validity claims, on the intersubjective recognition of which possible consensus depends.” Furthermore, he notes, “In structures of undamaged intersubjectivity can be found a necessary condition for individuals reaching an understanding among themselves without coercion.”32 Habermas’ stage model of ego development, which he also formulates as the development of ‘ideal role taking’, is taken here to be the (only!) valid model.33 Simultaneously he argues that this process of justification and application should not be understood consequentially: solidarity and autonomy are preserved in the procedures themselves. The substance of universal pragmatics serves as the basis on which the fundamental principle of discourse ethics can be elaborated: only moral rules that could win the assent of all affected as participants in a practical discourse can claim [impartial] validity. Essentially, Habermas’ claim is that all originary attempts of

investigated,” an argument that I also think holds true for Habermas’ reconstructive sciences. Theodor W. Adorno, “Sociology and Empirical Research,” The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, ed. Theodor W. Adorno et al., trans. Glyn Adey and David Frisby, London, Heinemann Educational Books, 1976, p. 71. 31 Habermas, Justification and Application, pp. 30–39. 32 J. Habermas, “A Reply to My Critics” in Habermas, ed. John B. Thompson and David Held, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1982, pp. 227–228. 33 For a particularly excellent critique of this problem in Habermas, see Stella Gaon, “Pluralising Universal ‘Man,’’ The Review of Politics, vol. 60, no. 4, 1998, pp. 685–718.


human beings to communicate with each other contain at least a minimal ‘idealisation’ from which it is possible to derive the universal principles of justice and solidarity. Habermas argues that by virtue of the ‘idealising’ assumptions that everyone who seriously engages in argumentation must make, as a matter of fact, rational discourse can be formulated as a procedure that explicates the moral point of view. Specifically, the moral point of view is understood to be the reconstruction of a ‘God’s eye’ within the boundaries of our intersubjectively shared world.34 The ideas of justice and solidarity are articulated, in retrospect, to be implicit in these idealising presuppositions of communicative action.35 As Stella Gaon summarises, Habermas must “explicate the moral point of view in such a way as to render it both ethically empty and yet normatively full.”36 Without this impartial element, Habermas acknowledges that “we must be prepared to renounce the emancipatory potential of moral universalism.”37 What Habermas fails to adequately consider in his responses is the way in which discursively inaccessible ethical assumptions themselves may be buried in his understanding of the reconstructive sciences. This assumption can be located in Habermas’ claims regarding the ‘idealisations’ found within all linguistic utterances. Specifically, Wellmer argues that Habermas’ ‘necessary idealisations’ involved in the raising of truth claims can be understood in two ways: in a strong or ‘totalising’ sense, and in a weak or ‘localising’ sense. If taken in a strong sense, it becomes metaphysical; if understood in a weak sense, it becomes innocuous.38 Wellmer argues that if we reach a consensus that we think is based on 34

Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other, p. 7. Habermas, Justification and Application, p. 50. 36 Gaon, “Pluralising Universal ‘Man,’’ p. 689. 37 Habermas, Justification and Application, p. 125. 38 A. Wellmer, Endgames, trans. David Midgley, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1998, p. 140. 35


good reasons, then we take it for granted that no arguments have been suppressed and that none of the participants has been prevented from putting forward relevant counter-arguments. In retrospect, we might discover this to be wrong. But it would be a mistake to construe these ‘necessary idealisations’ as signifying an ideal structure, which we might use as a normative standard for evaluating real structures of communication. In effect, idealisations might indeed be necessary, but they are, strictly speaking, not idealisations in the Habermasian sense, since they arise out of local ‘epistemic conditions’ and strategic performative assumptions.39 Wellmer concludes that the dialectics of contextimmanence and context-transcendence involve idealisations, as performative presuppositions, only in a local context.40 In other words, the performative presuppositions of argumentation are not ‘universal’ idealisations, but are rather idealisations of a contingent sort. This point acknowledges that language can be used in different ways, and does not grant a privileged position to communicative utterances. Wellmer provides a critical insight if, as Maeve Cooke concludes, Habermas’ language-theoretic argument can show no more than the conceptual priority of the communicative mode of language use.41 This insight can be further elaborated by a point made by Castoriadis. Against the formal implication of Kantianism, and relying on insights from Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, Castoriadis argues that formal principles (upholding the idea of non-contradiction) always rely upon idealised assumptions or presuppositions that remain undetermined and undeterminable within a given set of axioms.42 This analytical observation explains, in part, the logical

39

Ibid., pp. 142–145. Ibid., p. 150. 41 M. Cooke, Language and Reason, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1994, p. 19. 42 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Kathleen Blamey, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1998, p. 74. 40


gap that Wellmer and Heller point out, namely, that Habermas lacks sufficient grounds to adequately justify the conceptual privileging of communicative rationality as a universal and moral form of rationality. The problem here is that if the validity claims regarding the reconstructive sciences themselves cannot be reduced to ‘yes or no’ truth claims because they rely on indeterminate assumptions, or if the procedures of discourse cannot be substantially questioned without assuming their validity, then the procedure of justification, structurally, cannot yield impartial (however fallible), non-contingent, or universally acceptable results. In other words, Habermas smuggles a ‘transcendental good’ into his moral theory of discourse without providing adequate justification for doing so. By appealing to a normative ‘transcendence within’ Habermas must also simultaneously appeal to a transcendental principle external to his moral theory of discourse. This problem aggravates the way in which Habermas derives the universality of discursive moral principles (the principle of discourse and the corollary principle of appropriateness). Of central importance is whether Habermas can justify a principle of discourse as the moral principle without assuming its validity as an a priori or relying on metaphysical assumptions. There is a second problem as well. The problem, in short, is that Habermas uses the reconstruction of the ‘intuitive pre-understanding’ of speech to demonstrate that the reconstructive sciences are more than retroactive analyses with an imposed normative meaning. Here, Habermas must indicate how reconstructive sciences possess the capacity to provide (relatively) pure cognitive content (Habermas must ground his analysis ontologically) without relying on a heteronomous authority. In other words, Habermas’ principle of discourse must martial evidence that demonstrates that it does not beg the question; Habermas must accomplish materialistically what Kant failed to do transcendentally. And this is precisely what Asher Horowitz argues Habermas cannot do. To quote Horowitz at length:

294 • Kenneth MacKendrick The problem presents itself as follows: the three spheres of rationality are deemed by Habermas to follow from the act of linguistic communication itself. On the one hand, human grammatical speech is the ‘transcendental’ condition of the forms of objectivity. On the other hand, that the system of world-relations follows directly from grammatical speech is knowable only within the frame of reference supplied by that system. . . . Thus Habermas is thrown back on science, specifically on a reconstructive science deemed to be capable of grasping the logic of development, in order not to be seen to be begging the question of the priority of communication action.43

Habermas uses a reconstructive science to confirm communicative validity which is now the only possible grounds for a reconstructive science. As Horowitz notes, Habermas’ argument is circular.44 The validity of the reconstructive sciences depends on communicative validity, which, in turn, is dependent upon the validity of reconstructive sciences. Horowitz argues that to escape this dilemma Habermas tries to save himself through an ontoanthropological argument where the Subject does not at all disappear within the philosophy of language: the Subject becomes language.45 Ironically, Slavoj ÛZiÏzek has noted that this in fact may align Habermas’ social theory with postmodernism, since Habermas’ understanding of discourse stems from the alienation produced by disenchantment—which now takes a purely procedural and disembodied form. In effect, Habermas’ moral theory liquidates and breaks with any ‘rational’ and substantial content 43 A. Horowitz, “Like a Tangled Mobile,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 24, no. 1, 1998, p. 16. For a similar critique see Jay M. Bernstein, Recovering Ethical Life, New York, Routledge, 1995, pp. 58ff. 44 One is tempted here to introduce, pace Habermas, Lacan’s notion of the inherent lack involved in all forms of symbolisation. In effect, the paradox present in Habermas’ theory of communicative action is the symptom of impossible and necessary demands of conceptualisation. For a concise introduction to Lacan’s theory of symbolisation, see Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject, New Jersey, Princeton University Press and for Lacan’s relation to the political, Yannis Stavrakakis, Lacan and the Political, New York, Routledge, 1999. 45 Horowitz, “Like a Tangled Mobile,” p. 19.


of modernity by taking the form of a postmodern/postmetaphysical moral philosophy.46 In the end, in order to escape the circularity of his moral theory of discourse, Habermas unwittingly appeals to an empirical argument with normative dimensions; an attempt that Castoriadis calls an ‘enormous logical blunder’.47 By appealing to a corroborating retroactive authority for internal legitimacy, Habermas paradoxically ends up in the same place that he criticises the Frankfurt School for occupying—he invokes ‘a reason that is before reason.’48 If this is the case, then both Wellmer and Heller are correct: the procedures of justification and application are themselves moral principles and rely, implicitly, on a specific (local) performative idealisation, what I have termed the moral imaginary of discourse ethics. In effect, the principles that Habermas identifies do not lend themselves to an impartial assessment of norms, rather, to the fundamental assumptions of a particular kind of democratic politics. The Moral Imaginary of Discourse Ethics and The Imaginary Institution of Society The internal contradictions in Habermas’ account, according to Seyla Benhabib and Agnes Heller, establish that discourse ethics is not the moral point of view but a moral point of view.49 I have proposed that the moral-imaginary element of Habermas’ work is that which informs moral arguments but cannot be exhausted by them because they require presuppositions that are indeterminable in his theory. In other words, Habermas’ discourse ethics S. ÒZiÏzek, Looking Awry, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1991, pp. 141–142. Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, p. 78. 48 Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action: Vol. I, p. 382, quoted in Horowitz. 49 Benhabib, Situating the Self, 38–46 and Heller, Beyond Justice, pp. 230–256. 46

47


remains embedded within the imaginary of a particular set of institutionalised practices. The imaginary grounding of discourse ethics is manifest as an anticipatory utopian praxis, which requires the appropriation of specific, and contingent culturally articulated values.50 Strictly speaking, however, Habermas’ theory leaves little room for imaginative creativity in moral argumentation, yet when he translates subjectivity into language, discourse ethics is obliged to take on phantasmic dimensions (which appear as transcendental presuppositions) to support and ground its thesis. These values take their shape from the ‘social imaginary’ of a historically conditioned democratic ethos, the suppressed content of discourse ethics, the actual substance buried within Habermas’ procedural model. Habermas’ moral theory of discourse is unable to justify its own grounds, and thereby fails to establish the conditions under which its premises could be accepted as universal precepts toward the resolution of moral problems. Habermas fails to demonstrate the validity of a universalist orientation because of the logical indeterminacy of a procedure that is ‘normatively full’ yet devoid of an substantial content. In other words, Habermas makes a rather Kantian error.

50

Several studies of Habermas’ theory of communicative action, particularly analyses examining gender, have also pointed this out. See Marie Fleming, Emancipation and Illusion, University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997, Joan B. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1988, and ed. Johanna Meehan, Feminists Read Habermas, New York, Routledge, 1995. An even greater insight into this problem might be uncovered through a Lacanian analysis, particularly Lacan’s idea of an ‘obscene object.’ In other words, in order to maintain the consistency of a moral theory of discourse, Habermas is obliged to import precisely those elements which the structure of his theory forbids (‘the good’). See Slavoj ÒZiÏzek, Plague of Fantasies, London, Verso, 1997, p. 213. ÒZiÏzek further argues that the philosophical approach to ethics seems to be split between three options: substantial ethics (communitarianism), procedural ethical universalism (Habermas and Rawls), and ‘postmodern’ ethics, all three of which de facto privilege a certain positive content. This positive content, the ‘obscene object’ of discourse ethics, then could be read as an ideological kernel, the existence of which must be denied (repressed) in order to maintain consistency.


What is of interest here is how a ‘remainder’—a vanishing mediator (an element of moral reasoning not exhausted by moral argumentation) located in the ‘moral imaginary’ and substantial element of discourse ethics, has been inadvertently incorporated into Habermas’ understanding of post-conventional or postmetaphysical interpretations of reasoning.51 The work of Castoriadis, particularly his interpretation of Freud, addresses the very nature of an imaginary dimension to discourse ethics and offers a refreshing and persuasive alternative to Habermas’ strictly cognitivist proceduralism. It is particularly interesting that the political convergence and divergence of Castoriadis and Habermas has been largely ignored, despite the fact that Habermas’ ‘project of Enlightenment’ and Castoriadis’ ‘project of autonomy’ are almost indistinguishable.52 This is especially striking since their theoretical conceptions of subjectivity and their employment of psychoanalysis are quite distinct. For Habermas, psychoanalysis provides a ‘tangible example’ of a successful self-reflective emancipatory science that combines communicative rationality with explanatory procedures, thereby clarifying the foundations of critical theory. For Castoriadis, psychoanalysis is a practical and poetic activity, both creative and self-alterating, whose object is human autonomy.53 The crucial differences between Castoriadis and Habermas rest largely on their mutually exclusive interpretations of subjectivity. The former maintains subjectivity is constituted by a ‘monadic core’ conceived of in terms of a theory of imagination. The latter proposes an evolutionary model of linguistic development and

The idea of a ‘vanishing mediator’ is taken from the work of Slavoj ÒZiÏzek. See The Indivisible Remainder, London, Verso, 1996, pp. 92ff. 52 J. Whitebook, Perversion and Utopia, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1995, p. 166. 53 Castoriadis, World in Fragments, p. 129. 51


communicative competence—the subject as a derivative of communicative interactions.54 The only way Habermas is able to martial evidence to support its ‘objective’ validity is by translating the idea of subjectivity directly into language, an error that Renata Salecl and Slavoj ÒZiÏzek, in different contexts, have identified as the equation of ‘subjectivity with substance’.55 Habermas’ ‘logical blunder’ stems from what I regard as a fundamental dilemma in his appropriation of psychoanalysis: the linguistic ‘liquidation’ of the Freudian unconscious. Habermas’ reinterpretation of Freud’s entire theoretical framework from the perspective of language remains, I think, at the heart of the problem. For Habermas, psychoanalytic interpretation is taken to unearth the idiosyncratic links between the public use of language and illicit and private motivations.56 Consequently, Habermas understands the unconscious as a kind of interrupted conversation with oneself, the reconciliation of which produces an ‘undistorted’ and ‘competent’ subject. In effect, Habermas contends that the unconscious is a derivative phenomenon, stemming from the pre-existing social reality of mutual recognition. Communicative incompetence, for Habermas, is a result of the ‘untamed’ or ‘un-rationalised’ conscience, whereby the entwinement of meaning, fantasy, and cognition takes shape as a ‘mythic’

54

Castoriadis notes that communicative action is certainly an important moment of psychoanalysis, but in no way defines its meaning or end: “The end of psychoanalysis is not ‘interpretative understanding’ between the analyst and the patient . . . but rather a contribution to the patient’s access to his/her own autonomy.” Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, p. 77. 55 See Renata Salecl’s critique of John Rawls in The Spoils of Freedom, New York, Routledge, 1994, pp. 77–89 and S. ÒZiÏzek, The Ticklish Subject, pp. 171–239. 56 Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro, Boston, Beacon Press, 1971, p. 257.


or ‘pre-modern’ mode of thinking.57 This mythic ‘failure’ is further illustrated in Kohlberg’s pre-operational and concrete operational level, a model that Habermas places squarely in the centre of his neo-Kantian discourse ethics.58 Habermas contends that the shift to postconventional reasoning, at the level of philosophical reflection, transcends the naturalist paradigm and is an achievement of an orientation toward universal discourse (from myth to enlightenment).59 This orientation requires that moral discourses rely upon the medium of available good reasons, which take shape in actual discourse.60 This reflects, in turn, his concern with communicative autonomy, intersubjective solidarity, and rationalisation. It is at the level of argumentation (formal discourse) that the question of whether the distinctions between value, imagining, and cognition have successfully been digested and transformed is to be resolved. For Habermas, it is through procedures of argumentation that these issues are linguistified, clarified, debated, and translated into yes or no truth claims.61 The problem here is that Habermas’ linguistic transcendentalism prevents him from adequately addressing the extra-linguistic and pre-linguistic reality of moral consciousness at the procedural level. As Joel Whitebook notes, Habermas “is compelled

57

Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, pp. 43ff. Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, pp. 69–129 and Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, pp. 116–188. For a good discussion of the switch in Habermas’ understanding of knowledge and human interests to a developmental perspective see Richard J. Bernstein’s “Introduction” in Habermas and Modernity, ed. Richard J. Bernstein, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1991, pp. 1–32. 59 J. Habermas, “Justice and Solidarity,” Hermeneutics and Critical Theory in Ethics and Politics, ed. Michael Kelly, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1991, pp. 32–35. 60 Franklin Gamwell persuasively discuses the implicitly teleological framework in Habermas’ universal pragmatics in contrast with Karl-Otto Apel’s transcendental pragmatics. Franklin I. Gamwell, “Habermas and Apel on Communicative Ethics,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 23, no. 2, 1997, pp. 21–45. 61 Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, pp. 158–160. 58


for systematic reasons simply to dismiss the notion of a pre-linguistic unconscious ex cathedra.”62 The issue of how one conceptualises the relationship between psychic agencies, especially between language and the imaginary, is thus crucial to any comparison of Habermas’ moral theory of discourse and Castoriadis’ theory of the imaginary institution of society.63 Castoriadis introduces his anthology, World in Fragments, with the line “The world—not only ours—is fragmented. Yet it does not fall to pieces . . .” The world does not fall apart precisely because it is tied together or ‘filled in’ with a potentially inexhaustible source of imaginary constructions, the institution of meaning though the fundamental act of positing a self/other distinction, which is generated along two fronts. One front emanates from the psyche, which Castoriadis terms the radical imaginary, the other from the side of the social, which he terms social imaginary significations. The radical imaginary ultimately stems from the originary faculty of positing or presenting oneself with things and relations that do not exist, in the form of representation. This originary faculty is taken to be the radical imaginary, the common root of the actual imaginary and of reason. The radical imaginary is “the elementary and irreducible capacity of evoking images.”64 Society, then, is ‘self-positing’ and what is instituted is a creative world-interpretation, a universal of significations. The institution of society is the institution of a

62

Whitebook, Perversion and Utopia, p. 167. For a summary of the dispute between Castoriadis and Habermas see Whitebook, Perversion and Utopia, pp. 165–215. For Habermas’ response to Castoriadis see Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, pp. 327–335 and Castoriadis’ brief remarks in Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, pp. 47–80. 64 Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 127. 63


‘magma’ of significations, which bring society into an ‘identitaryensemblist’ organisation of what exists for society. This imposed meaning is always retroactive, arbitrary, and while not completely irrational, it certainly cannot be reduced to rationality (there is always an indeterminate element in rational thought).65 For Castoriadis, the institution of society is the institution of social imaginary significations, the building blocks of language. The subject, for Castoriadis, is both a groundless monadic core and a product of radical and contingent socialisation. In contrast to Habermas, Castoriadis maintains that the spontaneous and creative power of the imagination is not and could (should) not be completely ‘tamed’ or rationalised, although he also maintains that such a ‘taming’ of the psyche is necessary to preserve the institution of society of which the individual remains a part.66 From birth, Castoriadis notes, the human subject is also caught in a variety of social-historical fields, and placed under the grip of a collective instituting imaginary. Castoriadis understands social imaginary significations to demarcate a shared ethos, a shared web of meanings, carried in and through the institution of a given society.67 For intersubjectivity to exist there must be human subjects and the possibility for these subjects to communicate. In other words, there must already be socialised human beings and a language that they could not produce by themselves as individuals. In other words, subjectivity is instituted by imaginary significations, not as substance, but as question and as project. The subject, for Castoriadis, “is not merely real,

65

Ibid., pp. 160ff. C. Castoriadis, “Democracy as Procedure and Democracy as Regime,” Constellations, vol. 4, no. 1, 1997, p. 2. 67 Social imaginary significations are “significations that are relatively independent of the signifiers that carry them and . . . they play a role in the choice and in the organisation of these signifiers.” Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 139 and World in Fragments, pp. 7ff. 66


it is not given; rather, it is to be made and it makes itself by means of certain conditions and under certain circumstances.”68 In this precise sense, too, language is instituted in society by the imaginary. For Castoriadis, language is a system of ensembles; an instrument acting on what is external to it.69 In this sense, language can only impose a limited order, synthesis or form on objective reality: we can organise ‘reality’ in specific ways, only insofar as objects are amenable to certain forms of organisation. Against Habermas then, ‘communicative action’ is understood to be a contribution towards autonomy but defines neither the meaning nor end of this project. In other words, the institution of society by imaginary significations is the cipher through which the project of autonomy is channelled. Such a project is coherent only insofar as it is meaningful for those involved. This stands in sharp contrast to Habermas’ understanding of rational argumentation, which, theoretically, eliminates all imaginary and affective dimensions of speech.70 Such imaginary dimensions are eliminated precisely because Habermas’ moral theory of discourse structurally avoids the implications of what Castoriadis identifies as the radical imaginary. Furthermore, Habermas, for all intents and purposes, begins with a semantic understanding of cognition, Castoriadis argues that the absolute condition for the possibility of reflectiveness (subjectivity) is the imagination.71

68

Castoriadis, World in Fragments, p. 143. Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 238. 70 See Heller, “Habermas and Marxism,” p. 23. Peter Dews also makes a similar argument, although he explores it along different lines. Dews comments that Habermas seems to be aware of the problem of eliminating all ties to affectivity, noting that Habermas has, on occasion, “expressed the view that the anthropocentric orientation of discourse ethics needed to be supplemented by an ethics of sympathy” in the form of anamnestic solidarity, which, quoting Habermas, signifies an attempt to sustain a “compassionate solidarity with the despair of the tormented who have suffered what cannot be made good again.” Peter Dews, The Limits of Disenchantment, London, Verso, 1995, p. 153. 71 Castoriadis, World in Fragments, p. 159. 69


Whereas Habermas’ theory of communicative action points to a procedural model of will-formation based on a theory of justice, Castoriadis’ imaginary institution of society focuses on self-interpretation and creative collective praxis.72 While language provides certain representations and is, without a doubt, the primary vehicle for social co-ordination, the imaginary upon which language is based, cannot be ‘tamed’ or ‘rationalised’ in the way that Habermas’ theory requires, upon pains of social disintegration.73 Castoriadis even goes so far as to note that Habermas’ attempt ‘rationally’ to deduce right from fact “leads him . . . to seek a mythical biological foundation for the questions of social theory and political action.” Habermas writes: “The utopian perspective of reconciliation and liberty is ingrained in the conditions for the communicative sociation of individuals; it is built into the linguistic mechanism of the reproduction of the species.”74 Castoriadis goes on to note that it is incoherent to assume that biology has a ‘built in’ utopian perspective.75 What the work of Castoriadis is able to illuminate here, through the idea of the imaginary, is the ‘vanishing mediator’ between Habermas’ circular justification of communicative action as moral, and his subsequent and illicit equation of subjectivity with substance.76 72

For Castoriadis’ understanding of creation and creativity, see The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 195–201. For an equally innovative understanding of the creative character of human action, see Hans Joas, The Creativity of Action, trans. Jeremy Gaines and Paul Keast, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996. 73 Castoriadis argues that a democracy reduced to a set of procedures risks eliminating the ultimate goals of collective life by dissociating all discussion relative to these goals from the political form of the regime. Castoriadis, “Democracy as Procedure and Democracy as Regime,” p. 1. 74 Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action: Vol. 1, p. 398 (quoted by Castoriadis). 75 Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, p. 79. 76 It should be noted that Habermas’ critique of Castoriadis remains largely intact here. Despite the fact that Habermas cannot establish the link between universality and ground, his critique, that “Castoriadis cannot provide us with the figure of mediation between the individual and society” still remains valid. As Joel Whitebook notes, “Castoriadis shares Kant’s problems and is guilty of


What is remarkable here is the coincidence of two lines of inquiry. One the one hand, Habermas has been criticised by Wellmer and Heller for illegitimately granting conceptual and moral primacy to procedural communicative actions, ones that are also substantively imbedded. On the other hand, Habermas has been criticised for granting primacy to language over the more fundamental ‘dreamscape’ of the imaginary, specifically in regards to his re-reading of Freud’s notion of the unconscious. Habermas is on the horns of a dilemma: he cannot escape the snare of begging the question without translating the idea of subjectivity into language and, by doing so, he must eliminate all phantasmic or imaginary elements of psychical reality that would make morality meaningful for human beings. What the work of Castoriadis accomplishes here is the illumination of a pathological impulse in discourse ethics as a theory: the attempt to purify and separate cognition and meaning. Habermas’ reflections on morality and moral theory contain specific value judgements and embody a variety of evaluative and speculative claims which relate concretely to historical and social circumstances while, at the same time, make claims which transcend such circumstances. Habermas’ appeal to justice, solidarity, autonomy, or moral principle is inevitably a retroactive justification drawn from a specific utopian horizon, despite the fact that it may address concrete concerns. The question of ethics emerges here as a ‘crisis of values,’ what Castoriadis takes to be a crisis in our ‘social imaginary significations’—the significations that hold a society together.77 As such, ethics is essentially political and we must be content to acknowledge that all forms of theory “attempt to conceive of the world without knowing, either before or after the fact, whether the world is actually conceivable, or even just what conceiving of

subjective idealism.” See Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, p. 334 and Whitebook, Perversion and Utopia, pp. 196ff. 77 Castoriadis, World in Fragments, p. 110.


something exactly means.”78 The important idea not to be missed here is Castoriadis’ insight that in analysis the objective is not to reach a definable or determinate end, such as consensus, but is rather to encourage self-activity, ‘self-alteration’. For Castoriadis this ambition is the project of autonomy.79 Conclusion Castoriadis observes that the purely procedural conception of ‘democracy’ itself originates in the crisis of the imaginary significations that concern the ultimate goals of collective life and aims at covering over this crisis by dissociating all discussion relative to these goals from the political ‘form of the regime’, and, ultimately, even by eliminating the very idea of such goals.80

As I have argued, Habermas’ proceduralism can be understood with a paradoxical recognition that principles and procedures harbour no guarantee of a withdrawal from ideological edifices. As such, moral thoughts are always contradictory, in the specific sense that they signal ethical and political failure. It is in this sense that morality contains a significant paradox: a vision of a better world for one, for many, or for all, without possessing the certainty of whether or not such a utopian vision, as a concrete vision, is indeed reasonable or desirable. As such, a moral philosophy, which seeks to retain the idea of universalism, must be a critical moral philosophy, one that avoids the finality of its analysis. As Jay Bernstein notes, the ‘passion for critique’ is impossible without some sort of vision that stands in judgement regarding the object of a particular critique. If the radical imaginary is the ground of practical reasoning then, as

78 79 80

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 74. Castoriadis, World in Fragments, pp. 126–129. Castoriadis, “Democracy as Procedure and Democracy as Regime,” p. 1.


a result, morality is the work of the radical imagination as an act of asking questions. The moral imaginary of discourse ethics is shaped by a relentless interest in calling one another into account. Responsibility, linked with autonomy and solidarity, are the regulative ideals that shape Habermas’ moral theory. Habermas has argued that such regulative ideals are presuppositions of the communicative use of reason, embedded in the idea of mutual recognition. However, Habermas is unable to justify this claim without a transcendental appeal. The circularity in Habermas’ account emerges when he equates the substance of moral trauma directly with the subjectivity of participants in a dialogue. As Horowitz notes, the subject, in Habermas, becomes language. This is the point at which Habermas short-circuits his universalist intention. As Bernstein notes, moral discourses about justification can only indicate the irreducible aspects of moral thought as they are entwined within living and breathing moral subjects.81 Since moral reflections are aporetic and are always incomplete, while being both necessary (for human coexistence) and impossible (as a determinate project), the fact that procedures find justification in democratic societies, indicate that they are the remains of a shared social imaginary. Moral philosophy, as such, stands in defiance of what is deemed ‘good,’ ‘final’ and ‘necessary.’ Such an argument intimates that moral thinking resist becoming unconditional. In other words, formalism in moral philosophy must take itself at its word, and not assume a priori its own unqualified moral substance.82 81

Bernstein, Recovering Ethical Life, pp. 180–191. Developments in moral theory working in this direction, especially regarding the rethinking of Kant through Lacan, can be found in the work of the Slovene Lacanian School. See Joan Copjec, ed. Radical Evil, New York, Routledge, 1995; Salecl, The Spoils of Freedom; ÒZiÏzek, The Plague of Fantasies and “Kant with (or against) Sade” in The ≥ZiÏzek Reader, ed. Elizabeth Wright and Edmond Wright, Oxford, Blackwell, 1999 and Alenka ZupanÏciÏc, Ethics of the Real, London, Verso, 2000. 82

John Rundell

Imaginary Turns in Critical Theory: Imagining Subjects in Tension*1

Introduction In recent critical theory, there are many directions from which the ‘linguistic turn’, especially the one identified with Habermas’ work, has been challenged.2 Two are of particular note and will be the subject of our discussions. In his own work on intersubjectivity, Honneth argues that the phenomenal-affective or emotional forms through which the subject is formed intersubjectively are as significant as the linguistic ones. In this sense, it is not so much the linguistic mediation of emotions that is important here, but the emotional content itself.3 Whilst Honneth draws our attention to the Jena period of Hegel’s work as a basis for the

* This article first appeared in Critical Horizons, vol. 2, no. 1, 2001. This paper grows out of a series of seminars that were given in The Department of Sociology, University College Dublin in 1999. The author would like to thank members of the department for their hospitality, and for criticisms of aspects of this work. I would like to thank the reviewers, especially Maeve Cooke, for their own criticisms. Thanks also go to Danielle Petherbridge and John Cash for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 2 Axel Honneth, Thomas McCarthy, Claus Offe and Albrecht Wellmer, CulturalPolitical Interventions in the Unfinished Project of the Enlightenment, trans. Barbara Fultner, Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1992; Axel Honneth and Hans Joas, Communicative Action, trans. Jeremy Gaines and Doris L. Jones, Cambridge, U.K., Polity Press, 1991; Maeve Cooke, Language and Reason: A Study of Habermas’ Pragmatics, Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, 1994; Maeve Cooke, ed. On the Pragmatics of Communication, Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, 1998; Peter Dews, ed. Habermas A Critical Reader, Oxford, Blackwell, 1999. 3 Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, Cambridge, UK., Polity Press, 1995. 1

308 • John Rundell

interrogation of an intersubjectively constituted struggle for recognition, his interrogation of this struggle will be suspended in the following discussion in order to interrogate another issue that accompanies it—that of subject formation itself. For Honneth, following the works of G.H. Mead and Habermas, subject-formation can only be understood as a process that is inter-subjectively constituted. Winnicott’s work is also important to Honneth not only because it provides a framework of primary sociation, but also because it addresses the interior world of the subject, which is, itself, intersubjectively constituted. Here the creative imagination plays a developmental role of significant importance, which points to an implicit imaginary turn in Honneth’s work.4 However, Honneth’s re-working entails that subject-formation is subsumed under the paradigmatic weight of intersubjectively co-ordinated theorising, which leaves to one side, the status of the subject sui generis. This entails that Honneth (and Habermas) reproduce an over-socialised conception of the human being. For Habermas, this oversocialisation is rendered as an ‘over-linguistified conception of the human being’, whilst for Honneth it is rendered as ‘the over-mutually-determined conception of the human being’.5

4

In this context, it can be suggested that Honneth’s position with regard to his critique of Habermas’ work is similar in many ways to Schiller’s own critical position to Kant. Both draw on notions of the creative imagination drawn from an idea of play to give substance to notions of subjectivity that have been emptied out at the hands of formalistic philosophy. 5 As far as Habermas is concerned this aspect of over-socialisation is a theoretical disposition that is structured even into his earliest work. See, for example, “Toward a Theory of Communicative Competence,” Recent Sociology, no. 2, ed. Hans Peter Dreitzel, London, Macmillan, 1970, pp. 115–148, and his reading of Freud in Knowledge and Human Interests, London, Heinemann, 1974. See also Joel Whitebook’s critique in Perversion and Utopia, Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1995.

Imaginary Turns in Critical Theory: Imagining Subjects in Tension • 309

As is well known, the critique of the image of over-socialisation posits that there is a non-social dimension of the human being that exists alongside socialisation itself. In other words, this critique works with an image of the human being as “a social animal without being entirely a socialized animal.”6 It is this problem of over-socialisation, and hence the status of the subject, that will be the entry point for our current discussion, rather than the one concerning the struggle for recognition. The ‘imaginary turn’ is a way of re-thinking the over-socialised conception of the human animal, and not only the conceptualisations of its over-linguistification. It will be addressed primarily through Castoriadis’ idea of the monadic core of the subject. From the vantage point of the interior world of the subject, Castoriadis’ work exposes the dilemma of oversocialisation in Honneth’s work, notwithstanding, as we shall see, his own ‘imaginary turn’ drawn from the work of Winnicott. In Castoriadis’ work, the subject is constituted by an irreducible relation and tension between the monadic core of the psyche and socially created constellations of culture and social institutions that he terms social imaginary significations. These dimensions, for him, are constituted as imaginative or imagining activities, rather than linguistic ones, that produce meaning both as a creative flux, and a flux of creative interactions between these two dimensions. The question of the internality of the subject is moved away from the metaphysics of the unconscious (Freud and Lacan), to a site that is posited in anthropo–ontological terms, the emphasise of which is on the indeterminate creativity of human subjects and the equally historically indeterminate creation of human societies.7 Castoriadis’ work continues and consolidates an imaginary

6

D. Wrong, “The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology,” American Sociological Review, vol. 26, no. 1, April 1961, pp. 183–193. 7 See Cornelius Castoriadis, “Anthroplogy, Philosophy, Politics,” Thesis Eleven, 49, May, 1997, pp. 99–116.


turn in critical theorising that is part of the longer history of the dialectic of the Enlightenment and Romanticism.8 Yet, notwithstanding Castoriadis’ anti-functionalist insight concerning the irreducibility of each side of subject-formation, his

8 See Cornelius Castoriadis, World in Fragments, ed. & trans. David Ames Curtis, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997; Philosophy Politics, Autonomy, ed. David Ames Curtis, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991; The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Kathleen Blamey, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1987; “Anthropology, Philosophy, Politics,” Thesis Eleven, no. 47, May, 1997, pp. 99–116. Castoriadis’ imaginary turn shifts an interpretation of the imagination from one interpreted in predominantly aesthetic, fictive terms. Whilst it is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a genealogy of modern notions of the imagination, in brief, this particular interpretation was cemented in the context of the conceptual division of labour that emerged in the dispute between the Enlighteners and the Romanticists. If one views Kant’s work as paradigmatic in the case of the Enlighteners, the faculty of the imagination plays a central yet suppressed role. In Romanticism, the imagination predominates, especially if it is interpreted from an aesthetic perspective, as is the case, for example, in the works of Schiller’s The Aesthetic Letters on the Education of Man, and August and Friedrich Schlegel, especially their Atheneum Fragments. However, an “imaginary turn,” which emphasised indeterminate creativity sui generis, can be viewed as a parallel current that accompanied Kant’s uneasy reflections concerning the faculty of the imagination, and in the wake of these reflections attempted to rework these reflections beyond the Romantic paradigm. This parallel current includes Hegel’s early work, especially his Jena period, Freud’s ‘discovery’ of the unconscious, and Castoriadis’ own critical engagement with Aristotle, psychoanalysis and Marxism. For the first current see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, London, Macmillan, 1978; Critique of Judgement, Trans. & Introduction by Werner S. Pluhar, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, 1987. The Romantic current includes Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde and the Fragments, trans. & Introduction by Peter Firchow, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1971; Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, ed. and trans. Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L.A. Willoughby, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1967. For the third current see G.W.F. Hegel, System of Ethical Life and First Philosophy of Spirit, eds. and trans. H.S. Harris and T.M. Knox, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1979; Hegel and the Human Spirit, a translation of the Jena Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit (1805–6), with a commentary by Leo Rauch, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1983; Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, New York, Basic Books, 1965; Cornelius Castoriadis, see footnote 3 above, especially “The Discovery of the Imagination” in World in Fragments. See also James Engell, The Creative Imagination, Cambridge, Mass, Harvard


formulation of the subject, nonetheless, confronts the problem of the complexity of subjectivity. It is in this context that Hegel’s Jena Lectures are once again instructive. To be sure, Honneth draws our attention to them in The Struggle for Recognition. However, here it is not their normative content that is instructive, but the weight that Hegel gives to the forms of sociality that move the subject beyond an initial self-enclosure. In this context, and in a critical dialogue with Castoriadis’ work, the Jena Lectures are drawn on to posit what will be termed here, subjects in tension. By ‘subjects in tension’, I mean subjects who are forged out of a combination of subjective interiority as well as the patterns of interaction that are multidimensional in their scope and create social spaces that force the subject beyond an initial closure.9 Moreover, this paper also traverses what has been termed an oscillation between ‘metaphysical discourse’ and ‘critical discourse’.10 This distinction can also be read as a tension between three aspects that constitute a critical theorising. The first aspect refers to the, often, concealed anthropological principles or basic human self-images of both subjectivity and intersubjectivity, and the relations and tensions between them. The second aspect refers to the impulses and horizons that give rise to a critical stance, whilst the third aspect refers to the paradigmatic nature of the

University Press, 1981; Richard Kearney, The Wake of Imagination, London, Hutchinson, 1988; M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, London, Oxford, 1953; Rethinking Imagination Culture and Creativity, eds. Gillian Robinson and John Rundell, London, Routledge, 1994. 9 The notion of tension is taken from J.P. Arnason “Modernity as Project and a Field of Tension,” Communicative Action, pp. 181–213. The idea of “intersubjectivity in tension” has also been explored by me in “The Hermeneutic Imagination and Imaginary Creation: Ourselves, Others and Autonomy,” Divinatio, Volume 8, Autumn-Winter, 1998, pp. 87–110. 10 See Dews suggestive discussion of Herbert Schnadelbach’s account of the history of philosophy as an oscillation between metaphysical discourse and critical discourse in “Modernity, Self-consciousness and the Scope of Philosophy” in The Limits of Disenchantment, London, Verso, 1996, p. 190.


critical theory as a system of thought itself. Theorising has its own ‘metaphysical’ predisposition to bring these dimensions into alignment, in other words to systematise them and close over basic dilemmas in, and tensions between, them. In the rush for a critical theory—to protect critical theorising itself—the basic dilemmas of the ‘who’, the mobiliser of critique, are often closed over. This essay will touch on the second aspect, and leave to one side the third in order to elucidate the dilemmas of the first— the anthropological in a way that does not assume the normative primacy of critique, and hence, the critical subject. Honneth and the Intersubjective Development of the Critico-Reflexive Self In The Struggle for Recognition Honneth draws on Hegel’s Jena Lectures, the works of G.H. Mead, and the paediatric psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott in order to posit a theory of intersubjectivity, otherwise couched in terms of a dialectic of recognition. The aim of his theory is to investigate the way in which the reflexive, democratic personality might be formed. Mead’s work is important for Honneth, because following Habermas’ use of it, it provides the framework for a structure of interaction through which self-reflexivity develops. According to G.H. Mead, self-reflexivity occurs as an outcome in a proto—or real—dialogic interaction between self and others. More accurately, a reflexive self occurs out of a process of learning to put oneself in an object-relation to oneself.11 As Honneth points out, in the formulation of that part of the self, which Mead terms the ‘me’, “[Mead] inverts the relationship between the ego and the social world and asserts a primacy of the perception of the other to the development of

11 See G.H. Mead, Mind, Self and Society, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1972, especially pp. 199–246.


self-consciousness.”12 In other words, the perceptions that are given to the self by others enable the self to become its own object of self-reflection. The corollary of this self-reflection is the recognition by society that the self is a social member. Moreover, this social recognition is the basis for self-respect. In other words, there is an internal relation, for Mead, between the inner ‘imposition’ of the ‘generalised other’ and the emergence of a reflexive self which is simultaneously one who receives respect as well as gives it to itself. For both Mead and Honneth, then, this dynamic of reflexivity through objectification is a basic anthropological principle. In this way, the person participates in social life on the basis of mutual recognition gained by such objectifying interactions. For Mead, as well as Honneth, though, the interactions that occur between the ‘me’ and the ‘generalised other’ of community norms should not necessarily result in a conventional attitude being taken. Rather, the reflexive self is simultaneously a critical one in the form of a ‘dialogue’ that proceeds along two fronts—externally and internally. According to Mead, it is the dialogue between the self and the internalised ‘generalised other’ that initiates the critique. For Honneth, though, the way that Mead structures this internal dialogue raises the issue of both the dynamics of critique and its origins. For Mead, and in a homologous formulation with psychoanalysis, there is part of the self “that is responsible to action problems . . . that can never as such be glimpsed”—the ‘I’.13 However, as Honneth points out, whilst the ‘I’ stands for “the sudden experience of a surge of inner impulses,” it is unclear

12 13

Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. Ibid., p. 74.


whether it stems from pre-social drives, the creative imagination, or the moral sensibility of one’s own self.14 It is here that a conceptual tension emerges in Honneth’s own work around Mead’s, and his, basic anthropological principle. Both Mead and Honneth adopt the latter formulation of “a moral sensibility of one’s own self” as the interpretation of the ‘I’. According to Mead (and Honneth), the ‘I’ is conceived as a “creative reaction potential” that establishes a friction that initiates critique.15 However, Honneth not only follows Mead’s footsteps, but also confronts the limits of his (Mead’s) formulation of the critically oriented impulse as a moral-integrative one. Critique, for Mead, is mobilised as a form of creative deviation from societal norms. This version of critique, however, exposes Mead’s own peculiar naturalistic functionalism, which simultaneously slips away from a theory of pragmatic psychological developmentalism to a theory of societal evolution.16 Whilst critique functions at the seam between the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ it only does so on the basis of an integrative principle of re-integration.17 14

Ibid., p. 81. See also “Moral Development and Social Struggle,” in CulturalPolitical Interventions in the Unfinished Project of Enlightenment. 15 Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 82. 16 See G.H. Mead, On Social Psychology, especially pp. 4–18. 17 At a fundamental level for Honneth’s reading of Mead, “this inner friction between the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ represents the outline of the conflict that is supposed to be able to explain moral development of both individuals and society. As the representative of the community, the ‘me’ embodies the conventional norms that one must constantly try to expand, in order to give social expression to the impulsiveness and creativity of one’s ‘I’. Mead thus introduces into the practical-relation-to-self a tension between the internalised collective will and the claims of individuation, a tension that has lead to a moral conflict between the subject and the subject’s social environment.” Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 82. In this context, social critique, and the dynamics of the reflexive personality, occurs not only merely at the seam between system and life-world (Habermas), but also and more significantly, at the seam between the ‘I’ and the ‘me’.


It is here, too, that we are confronted by the nodal point of Honneth’s argument. For Honneth, at least in The Struggle for Recognition, the impulse towards critique not only occurs as part of the self’s objectification, but also emerges in the context of damaging intersubjective relations. Leaving to one side Honneth’s own reworking of Hegel’s Jena Lectures, we will investigate the way in which he confronts the constitutive dimensions of the ‘I’ as critical impulse, because for him it belongs to the capacity of human individuation and autonomisation. In The Struggle for Recognition, conflicts and struggles over recognition remain ultimately pseudo-dialogic in the manner laid down by Mead. However, in “Imagination and Recognition,” Honneth turns his attention to the ‘imaginative’ dimensions of reciprocal recognition, in a way that not only foregrounds this aspect, but transforms it into a necessary part of a developmental process.18 In order to pursue the themes of individuation and autonomisation, which are internal to the ‘I’ as critical impulse, Honneth, at this point, departs from Mead’s work and concentrates on the work of the paediatric psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott with some unexpected results. These results point towards an unacknowledged imaginary turn in Honneth’s work. For Honneth, at least in The Struggle for Recognition, the fight for recognition involves an increasing realisation of the differentiating inter-subjective dimensions of love, rights and solidarity that are built up in relations and encounters between self and other. In his view, the human faculty of the imagination is linked to each of three patterns of recognition—love, rights and solidarity. The result of this linkage is that, “if the subject participates in a social life-world in which the tripartite hierarchy of patterns of recognition are present . . . he [or she] may anchor his [or her]

18

A. Honneth, “Imagination and Recognition,” 1991, unpublished paper.


relationship to self in the positive modes of self-confidence, selfrespect and self-esteem.”19 Honneth links the faculty of the productive imagination to the struggle for recognition through a reading of Winnicott’s work. This is done by Honneth to make the productive imaginative faculty the result of an intersubjectively orientated set of experiences, and ones that are linked to the earliest years of life. According to Winnicott and Honneth, the creative or productive imagination can only develop within the context of the mother’s loving recognition of her infant.20 To cut a long and very complex story short, the first phase of absolute [mutual] dependence comes to an end when a new possibility on the part of the mother occurs. She returns to the independence that everyday life offers, which also offers a possibility of relative independence to occur on the part of the infant. Winnicott argues that two psychic mechanisms must be available to the infant for this potential of relative independence to be successful—destruction and transitional phenomena. Both are saturated with meaning for the infant. In this context, aggression is neither negatively nor injuriously interpreted; rather it is the constructive means through which the infant comes to recognise the mother as other and integrate both aggressive feelings and this knowledge beyond his or her fantasies of omnipotence.21 In “Imagination and Recognition,” however,

19

Ibid., p. 7. For Honneth, Winnicott’s work is a supplement to the insights put forward by Hegel and G.H. Mead in their own versions of the dialectic of recognition. According to Honneth, what distinguishes Winnicott from the tradition of orthodox psychoanalysis is that the symbiotic and interdependent relation between infant and mother cannot be captured by the term primary narcissism. Rather, the first phase of the human life cycle indicates, for Winnicott, that there are two parties in interaction who “are completely dependent on each other for the satisfaction of their needs, without at all being able to demarcate themselves individually from the other” (p. 8). 21 D.W. Winnicott, “From Dependence towards Independence in the Develop20


Honneth places more emphasis on the phase where transitional objects are selected and played with by the infant, a phase in which another mediation between self and ‘world’ is forged. To put it slightly differently, during this phase the bridge between the primary experience of being merged and the experience of being separate, that is of being by one’s self, or being alone, is crossed.22 To put it more strongly, for Honneth, this relative independence should also include a capacity for mutual recognition by the infant. It is here that Honneth locates the role of the creative imagination as part and product of this developmental process in which the new mediated relation is forged. Following Winnicott, “the child’s creativity, indeed the human being’s imaginative faculty as such, is tied to the presupposition of ‘a capability of being alone’ in the context of a basic trust in the willingness of the loved person to devote him or herself to the other.”23 In other words, Honneth reiterates Winnicott’s thesis that “the human imagination emerges genetically at that moment when the child acquires a capacity to be alone by trusting the permanency of the mother’s devotion . . . that is that the imagination can only develop in the context of loving recognition.”24 Imagination, trust, affirmation, and mutuality go together for Honneth, and it is on this basis that not only other areas of human expression are integrated—feelings and emotions—but also solidaristic forms of association as well as the creation of cultural objectivations. Notwithstanding the psychoanalytic insights derived from Winnicott’s work, Honneth’s analysis of the imagination has ment of the Individual,” The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, London, Karmas Books, 1990, pp. 83–92. 22 D.W. Winnicott, “The Capacity to be Alone,” The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, pp. 29–37. 23 Honneth, “Imagination and Recognition,” p. 14. 24 Ibid., p. 15.


rendered it into an intersubjectively conceived moment. However, Honneth’s subsumption of the creative imagination under the umbrella of the paradigm of mutual recognition begs the question of the status of the subject. At the deepest level this subsumption must presuppose a primary acquaintance of the self with itself for interaction to occur at all.25 For Honneth, imaginative, playful creativity, and thus reflexivity, are outcomes of a developmental process rather than constitutive dimensions of the human being. In Honneth’s account, the creation of meaning and mutual recognition stand in homologous relation with one another. This also entails that Honneth’s reconstruction of the struggle for recognition has a quiet functionalism behind it in that a normal developmental path results from this homology. Deformations are traced to damaged and dysfunctional relations and patterns between forms of intersubjectivity and the creation of meaning, which itself is grounded in the autonomisation of the subject and his/her recognition of others. Honneth’s critique of Castoriadis, for example, is already based on a pre-theoretical disposition that overstates Castoriadis’ loyalty to the revolutionary paradigm at the expense of exploring the more fundamental issue of the constitution of the subject.26 However, in the context of the formation of a reflexive-critical self, it can be argued that Honneth, in positing ‘a moral sensibility of one’s own self’ propelled by a creative imaginary impulse, implicitly raises the question of the status of the subject and its primary self-acquaintance.

25

See Axel Honneth and Avishai Margalit, “Recognition”, in Supplement of the Aristotelian Society, 75, 2001, pp. 112–126. Dews, “Modernity, Self-Consciousness and the Scope of Philosophy: Jürgen Habermas and Dieter Henrich in Debate,” The Limits of Disenchantment, pp. 169–193, especially p. 173. 26 See Honneth’s “Rescuing the Revolution with an Ontology: on Cornelius Castoriadis’ Theory of Society,” Thesis Eleven, no. 14, 1986, 62–78. See Castoriadis’ response to Honneth’s critique in “Done and to be Done,” The Castoriadis Reader, ed. David Ames Curtis, London, Blackwell, 1997.


Hegel, Castoriadis and Ontologies of the Creative Imagination Whilst Honneth draws our attention to the Jena period of Hegel’s work as a basis for an interrogation of an intersubjectively constituted struggle for recognition, another reading of Hegel’s work suggests the co-presence of the creatively imagining subject and intersubjectivity, rather than a developmental homology. Moreover, this co-presence is constituted in a tension-ridden manner. Tensions exist between this creatively imagining subject and the forms of intersubjectivity, and within forms of intersubjectivity themselves. It is, first, worth looking briefly at Hegel’s Introduction to his later Lectures on Aesthetics (1820) before turning to the earlier Jena Lectures (1805/1806) in order to further present our problem. In his discussion, or more properly his positioning, of the three successive art forms—Symbolism, Classicism, Romanticism, Hegel suggests that Romanticism establishes the authentic existence of the inner world of the human being as a world sui generis.27 Hegel recognises the explosiveness of the Romantic movement’s prioritisation of the idea of the imagination, especially the way it depicts the tension between inner and outer realities. Romanticism, in his view, rightly fractures an assumed formal unity between that which art is to mean (that is, the Idea) and the form of the art object itself. It emphasises ‘free concrete spirituality’ or the ‘spiritually inward’ in which art no longer works ‘for sensuous intuition’.28 Rather, it must “work for the inwardness which coalesces with its object simply as if with itself, for subjective inner depth, for reflective emotion, for feeling, which

27 Hegel, Introduction to Aesthetics, trans. T.M. Knox with an Interpretive Essay by Charles Karelis, OUP, 1979, pp. 79–81. 28 Ibid., pp. 80–81.


as spiritual, strives for freedom in itself and seeks and finds its reconciliation only in the inner spirit. Inwardness celebrates its triumph over the external”29 to the extent that externality is viewed as a contingent factor. This means that the imagination, in a strong critique of empiricism and realism, is at liberty to distort, mirror, play or concoct any reality out of its own inner directed and inner-forming world. In the Jena Lectures, especially “Spirit According to its Concept,” though, Hegel conceptualises this inner chaotic world in a human self-image that gives priority to an ontology of the imagination and not only to its expressive-aesthetic capacity. For Hegel, an aesthetically determined expression is not the only form through which humans issue themselves upon the world. Both Kant and Hegel confront the power of the productive-creative imagination. Kant, whilst recognising this power attempts to minimise it; Hegel adopts another strategy: dread in the face of the productive imagination’s omnipotent, creative power.30 To quote: This image belongs to Spirit. Spirit is in possession of the image, is master of it. It is stored in the Spirit’s treasury, in its Night. The image is unconscious; that is, it is not displayed as an object for representation. The human being is this Night, this empty nothing which contains everything in its simplicity—a wealth of infinitely many representations, images, none of which occur to it directly, and none of which are not present. This is the Night, the interior of human nature, existing here—pure Self—and in the phantasmagoric representations it is everywhere . . . we see this

29

Ibid. See I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 487; R. Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1990; J. Rundell, “Creativity and Judgement: Kant on Reason and Imagination,” Rethinking Imagination, especially pp. 88–96. 30

Imaginary Turns in Critical Theory: Imagining Subjects in Tension • 321 Night when we look a human being in the eye, looking into a Night that turns terrifying . . . Into the Night the being has returned.31

As Hegel has just declared, this Night is not an empty nothing, it is the ‘treasure’ of the human imagination that is filled with the flux of representations. For Hegel, the imagination and its flux is ontologically posited, as the condition and ground of human existence in its simplicity. Moreover, Hegel, in his Jena Lectures not only lays open the existence of the imagination sui generis, but also reflects on its content. In so doing, the existence of the creative imagination is not limited to its deployment as a faculty in the service of either cognition, as it is for Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, or aesthetic creation in the Critique of Judgement, or playful, solidaristic forms of life, as it is for Schiller in his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.32 It also originates and deploys images of violence and cruelty, caprice, grief and despair. In other words, as Hegel constructs it, this imaginative inner world is the place where evil, as much as good imaginings may reign. However, as an ontological moment or insight, this is as much as Hegel has to say about the imagination before his move to a position of intersubjectivity, a move which we will have cause to return later.33 It is in Castoriadis’ work that this imaginary

31

Hegel, Hegel and the Human Spirit, p. 87. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, second edition, especially the B Deduction; Critique of Judgement, especially p. 98; Schiller, The Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, especially letter 15. 33 In the Jena Lectures Hegel either ‘absorbs’ the work of the imagination into a systemics of Being, which requires language and the dialectics of negation in order to achieve an openness to the world, or lays the groundwork for the activities of love, work and politics, through which humans become historically ruminating animals (to use a phrase taken from Nietszche’s work), and thus move away from first nature. Following Taylor’s interpretation in his Hegel two directions emerge in Hegel’s work on the dialectic—the ontological and the historical interpretivist. In the former, reason functions as the central 32


turn takes full flight. Beginning from his own re-working of the Freudian idea of the unconscious, Castoriadis implicitly reiterates Hegel’s idea or image of it as the Night of dread and self-enclosure, and adds that it is also the site of the ontological and very human moment of creativity. This is also a response to Heidegger’s

motif in which it creates itself in order to bring together the practice of knowledge and its conceptualisation. The dialectical play of the categories, which is laid out in the Logic, for example, denudes the significance of humankind as a plurality of actors who form the world through their actions. In this strong metaphysical version, humankind becomes only a subordinate moment of Geist, which mediates its own teleological impetus through a spiral of self-consciousness. As has been stated elsewhere, “the teleological logos of reason is actually metasocial—society and the human life which encapsulates it are but intermediary stages or stations on the way to reason’s self-knowledge” (J.F. Rundell, Origins of Modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1987, p. 37). Not only is it systemic, its truth content is also immanent, and dependent on the idea of the articulation of reason as whole. In this way, the metaphysical-ontological dialectic can never posit the possibility of a positive decomposition, a detotalisation, a domination or a cruelty. The latter, if they exist for Hegel, are ultimately in the service of reason. There is neither apocalypse nor power on horseback, here, only reason’s cunning. Unlike the ontological dialectic, Charles Taylor, for one, argues that another version—the historical-interpretivist—begins with no realised purpose, but finishes with one. This version places the emphasis on history as an interpretative project, which must convince its audience that reason has proceeded in the most rational and necessary course. It does this through the study of world history, and the truth content belongs to the plausibility of the historical interpretation that is developed by the interlocutor (in this instance Hegel, through the eyes of Charles Taylor). The point though, is that “although history is looked at with the eye of reason, it is substantiated reason made visible, because it is being made conscious through an interpretation of it. (Rundell, The Origins of Modernity, p. 38). This also entails that humankind becomes a substantial actor, and that Hegel’s philosophy of reason becomes an action theory, or more specifically a historically centred reflexive action theory in which the anthropology and the normative horizon are internally related. Reason’s self-consciousness is internally related to humankind’s struggles towards reflexive action, and away from the worlds of self-incurred tutelage. The result, for Hegel, is a combination of politics, historicity and reason. For Hegel, this is the story of how humankind creates its own possibilities for freedom, which are brought forward as real historical moments, for example Athenian democracy, and the modern constitutional corporate state. The latter is ideal-typically reconstructed in the Philosophy of Right.


simultaneous re-opening and re-closing of the topic of the imagination in a renewed theological metaphysics in which the trace of meaning is located near to language, and it is only the privileged few who enter this ‘house’ on the way to Being.34 For Castoriadis, the imagination is neither a gift of Being, nor its (Being’s) concealed or partially recovered ‘other’ side, its difference. Rather, it is indicative of humanity’s capacity to create its own world, and to create it always as a condition of altereity, as difference, sui generis. In this sense, Castoriadis’ view of the imagination is simultaneously ontological and anthropological. As he says, “the living being is an emergence. In this emergence we read this formative potentiality of overall Being/being, a potentiality that in itself has, of course, no personality, and no finality either; it is not teleological.”35 For Castoriadis, the subject is not one of and by either language or intersubjectivity—he/she is an ontological creation, the ontology of which is co-constituted by the creative imagination. In Castoriadis’ view, the creative-productive, rather than associative, dimension of the imagination is the constitutive and defining characteristic of the human animal. More specifically, the subject is constituted through two imaginaries which, in terms of their deployment, co-exist and compete within any social subject, and yet are irreducible to one another. These imaginaries are the radical imaginary of the psyche, and the social instituting and instituted imaginary of society that attempts to make/fabricate a social individual who inhabits a particular place, time, and social formation.36

34 Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in R.M. Zaner and D. Ihde, Phenomenology and Existentialism, New York, Capricorn Books, 1973; Richard Kearney, Poetics of Imagining, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1998. 35 Castoriadis, World in Fragments, p. 184; see also “Anthropology, Philosophy, Politics,” Thesis Eleven, pp. 99–116. 36 See The Imaginary Institution of Society and “Radical Imagination and Social


As such, the human animal is simultaneously a social animal, and an animal in which the imagination is infused throughout his/her entire existence both inside and alongside its sociability. It is only in the condition of its sociability, of his/her ‘thrownness’ into the world that begins from birth, that the tension between the asociability and closure of the radical imagination which resists socialisation, and the sociability that is constituted through imaginary significations required for human life and established and experienced intersubjectively—in the older Durkheimian language, collective representations—is thrown into relief. In an especially significant essay entitled “The State of the Subject Today,” Castoriadis formulates the constitutive dimensions of the totality of the human world. He lays out a groundwork for different ‘orders’ of the imagination in a more complex way than is usually posited by him as his distinction between the radical imaginary (on the side of the psyche) and the social imaginary (on the side of the social).37 In this essay the living human being is posited as a coalescence of four dimensions, each with its own internal complexity. Whilst each does not presume or precede the other, human life, in any meaningful way, cannot exist without

Instituting Imaginary” in Rethinking Imagination. This current essay leaves to one side the dimension of social imaginary significations in Castoriadis’ work, which mould/fabricate the psyche into the social-historical. I have explored this aspect in “From the Shores of Reason to the Horizon of Meaning: Some Reflections on Habermas’ and Castoriadis’ Theories of Culture,” Thesis Eleven, no. 22, 1989. 37 The essays in World in Fragments, published in English in 1997, represent, more so than the Imaginary Institution of Society, Castoriadis’ systematic working through of his reformulation of the anthropo-ontology of the creative imagination. Although interpretative weight is given to “The State of the Subject Today” in this current essay, “From Monad to Autonomy,” The Construction of the World in Psychosis,” “The Discovery of the Imagination,” “Logic, Imagination, Reflection,” and “Merleau-Ponty and the Weight of the Ontological Imagination” are also of particular significance.


them as a totality.38 These four dimensions are the living being, with, what Castoriadis terms, its corporeal imagination; the psychical being with his/her radical imagination; the social being or social individual with his/her societal imagination and reflexive or second-order creative imagination; the social world, or socially instituted and instituting imaginary significations and their collective representations, that is, the self-understanding of the social world, together with its imaginary horizon, its ‘ideality’.39 There are three principles that Castoriadis posits in his idea of the human corporeal imagination—finality, the creation of a world for it, and, thirdly, that this world is one of representations, affects and intentions. Castoriadis’ point here is that, against empiricist biology, which views things in quantitative terms, there is a qualitative mediation with nature, even at the most seemingly organic level. Moreover, this mediation is one that is neither solely environmental nor relational (that is, selective, in Darwinian terms, for example). It is creative-interpretative in the sense that the mediated qualitative relation with nature is experienced as a series of shocks, rather than ‘natural’ processes that are blind sensations that are only later incorporated as cognition. In this sense of the shock, for Castoriadis, there are no passive sensations.40 The activity of the body goes hand in hand with the radical imagination and together they form the defunctionalised

38 ‘Meaningful way’ is the key term here as it assumes dimensions and capacities for sociation. Sociation is not simply an interaction but one saturated with meaning. This emphasis on meaning takes into account the autism of the radical imagination and ‘purely’ physiological damage, both of which impair sociation. What one does about this impairment is an issue about values and their imaginary horizons. As a further aside, the dead human being is a repository of corporeality that decays, as well as specific imaginary significations from the side of the living, even in the specific ‘archaeological’ re-‘discovery’ of a specific ‘body’. 39 Castoriadis, World in Fragments, pp. 143; 178. 40 Ibid., pp. 148, 178.


‘non-natural’, that is, non-immediate world, of, and for, the living human being. The human being qua animal is one in which natural processes can no longer be taken for granted; in his view what is taken for granted are their distortions. These distortions indicate, for Castoriadis, that at the level of the development of the long history of the species a shift occurred from organ pleasure to representational pleasure, or more specifically when representational pleasure came to dominate over organ pleasure.41 In Castoriadis’ view, the interior world of the human being exists, ontologically speaking, in a state of ongoing representational activity that does not know time or space, logic or symbolic order. It is “an unlimited and unstable flux, a representational spontaneity,” that creates meaning out of itself for itself, and in this sense is a closed world.42 Moreover, because of its spontaneous, fluxing and orderless state, it is fragmented. At this primary level, it creates meaning rather than imposes or controls it. This development entails that, for Castoriadis, the human animal is the one who mediates all dimensions of his/her existence by means of this imaginary, representational pleasure, or its objectifying products. In this context, there is no world of ‘first nature’ as a substrate separate from this imaginary flux. Instead of referring to this aspect of the human being as ‘first order nature’ (Hegel), we could, following Castoriadis, refer to this aspect as ‘first order autonomy’.43

41

Ibid., p. 151. Ibid., p. 151. 43 This domination of representational pleasure over organ pleasure occurred, according to Castoriadis, when the imagination became autonomous. Autonomy here does not refer to Castoriadis’ other political rendition of this term. Rather, in this anthropo-ontological context, autonomy refers to both the separation of the imagination from the functionality of the organism. It also refers to the imagination’s radicalisation, in that it was no longer enslaved to the requirements of this functionality. In other words, the homologous and correspondent relation 42


The power of an imaginary world to create that which was otherwise not present indicates the imagination’s irreducibility to a category of either functional schematisation (in Kant’s cognitive scheme), or functional psychological organisation.44 As Castoriadis wittily states, “animals are certainly more ‘logical’ or ‘rational’ than humans; they never do something wrongly or in vain.”45 In The Imaginary Institution of Society, Castoriadis refers to humankind as “the mad animal,” rather than the rational (Hegel) or sick one (Nietzsche).46 Notwithstanding the way in which this characterisation can mislead the reader away from its basic insight, Castoriadis is at pains to emphasise and draw out the dysfunctionality of the human animal, which is grounded, for him, in the creative flux of its imagination. For Castoriadis, there is a constitutive gap between the dysfunctionality of the imagination and the forms through which it is represented, as well as the ways through which it takes institutional shape. It is in this space between the imaginings and their (unstable and re-interpretable) symbolic and institutional forms that new forms emerge and take shape. According to Castoriadis, something is new when it is in a position of a form neither producible or deducible from other forms . . . [It] is created ex nihilo as such . . . That does not mean that it is created in nihilo or cum nihilo . . . [Humans] create the world of meaning and signification, or institution upon certain conditions . . . But there is no way we can derive either this level of being—the social historical—or

between the imagination and the organism, which occurred associatively, was broken. This radicalisation that the human imagination undergoes also radicalises the affects and desires, making each quasi-autonomous in that they are mediated by the creative, representational flux of this radicalised imagination. 44 I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, especially pp. 18–187. 45 Castoriadis, “Radical Imagination and Social Instituting Imaginary,” Rethinking Imagination, p. 137. 46 Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 199.

328 • John Rundell its particular contents in each case from these conditions . . . Creation entails only that the determinations over what there is are never closed in a manner forbidding the emergence of other determinations.47

Thus, these creations are other than what was there before, separate and undetermined by them, yet leaning on but not reducible to a pre-existing context. Thus, irrespective of what appears to be an ontology of the subject, Castoriadis’ reworking of the imaginary dimension entails that it is simultaneously one that concerns the multiplicity and hence the relation of these imaginary creations. Thus, according to Castoriadis, there is “a heterogeneous multiplicity of co-existing alterities” which emerge from or in poietic imaginary space, “space unfolding with and through the emergence of forms.”48 His emphasis on the ontological primacy of the creative imagination entails that at this level of his theorising, the theory is indifferent to what these creations are and what form they take. In other words, at this level, his theory is importantly indifferent to the content of the imaginary creations and how they are represented emotionally, or in socially objectified ways. As already mentioned, in Castoriadis’ formulation there are two sets of meaning or imaginary significations that are constitutive of human existence. One is psychic meaning that is projected outward upon the world which a present psyche creates, and the social meaning which is introjected, learnt and re-interpreted by way of this originary projective dimension, outward again. The primary tension here, then, is between two meaning constituted and saturated sites—a defunctionalised psyche and a functionalising social frame, which itself is constituted as an imaginary horizon. Castoriadis constructs a trenchantly anti-functionalist

47 48

Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, p. 56. Ibid., p. 59.


image of the human subject, and his or her relation with the social-historical world into which he or she is thrown. To return to the opening topic of the relation between self and other, each side undergoes both a radicalisation and relativisation. In Castoriadis’ view, the emergence of new forms and constellations which may or may not be benign, is an activity of the permanent ‘othering’ of any self of its self, as well as of others. This implies there are always contexts of interaction or sociability from the vantagepoint of particular imaginary horizons. Subjects in Tension: Between Closure and Openness In Castoriadis’ formulation, whilst imaginary chaos belongs to the world of the radical imagination, time space and relational forms belong to the world of the social-historical. There is, then, the dissociable existence of two worlds that are permanently in conflict. In other words, what is posited here is a tension between the asocial (rather than the pre-social) radical imaginary, and the social imaginary. The asociality of the radical imagination works against a completed socialisation that would normalise the living human being. It, thus, works against the world of the social and the creation of the subject as a social individual. It is at this point, though, that a major difficulty arises in Castoriadis’ work. In his stronger formulation of the autistic, radical and creative imagination, the psyche is a closed entity unto itself. There is, however, a formulation in Castoriadis’ work that lessens the emphasis on primary autism. Whilst he wants to argue that the psyche’s entry into society cannot occur takenfor-grantedly, but rather takes place in a highly contingent and uncertain way, there is a moment in his thought that posits a different image of the radical imaginary—one that is not inherently closed. As he says, “[socialisation] is the history of the psyche in the course of which the psyche alters itself and opens itself


to the social-historical world, depending, too, on its own work and its own creativity.”49 As Whitebook has pointed out, “this statement presupposes the existence of a potentiality immanent in the psyche—dare we say an Anlage—which not only ‘lends itself to’ socialisation, but which can ‘support and induce it’ as well.”50 It is not so much that Castoriadis cannot incorporate or theorise this other dimension in his work, as Whitebook further points out, but that the less extreme version provides an interpretative opening to interrogate this dimension in terms that are both with and against Castoriadis.51 We can, in the light of the above quote posit a radical imaginary that is simultaneously closed and open, against the thrust of Castoriadis’ own formulations. The radical imaginary is an ‘unthought’ field in which the subject can both somatically and creatively turn against itself and be closed. Simultaneously, it can also become a creative and interpreting opening towards the world outside, inhabited by others, transforming desire into drive, to use Hegel’s terminology of the Jena Lectures. In Castoriadis’ own reworking of psychoanalysis, this transformation ‘stratifies’ the psyche. The so-called stratification of the psyche is its social positing, a positing that begins from birth through which the monadic core of the subject is cracked open, social identity formed and consolidated, and social relations established. The intrapsychic conflicts that exist in the human animal are formed instances of the co-existence of these phases, and thus the historicity of the subject. In this sense, these phases are neither developmental,

49

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 300. Whitebook, Perversion and Utopia, p. 178. 51 Whitebook, Perversion and Utopia. Castoriadis’ emphasis on the distinction, but co-presence, between the psyche and the social-historical within each individual has entailed that the forms of the social-historical, which take place as intersubjectivities or relational imaginaries, has been under-theorised. To be sure, Castoriadis responds to Whitebook’s critique in “Done and to be Done,” The Castoriadis Reader, David Ames Curtis, London, Blackwell, 1997, p. 690ff. 50


nor dialectical in the sense that one phase precedes another and is brought up into the following stage in a sublated manner. Rather, each is unfinished, and stands in tension with the others. In this sense, as far as the radical imaginary is concerned a double creation occurs—one from the side of closure, another from the side of an opening. The ability to inhabit time and move in social space, as well as create an array of outwardly directed meanings all indicate the radical imaginary’s work as an opening. As Castoriadis acknowledges, the passage from the closed creative world of the radical imaginary to thought, as well as to others beyond the subject’s asocial autism, is one that posits another mode of being, one that occurs alongside the other, and which also invites an alteration, that is, the simultaneous formation of the social individual. From this interpretation, the opening that the psyche emits takes place as the creation of outwardly directed meaning. Moreover, it is meaning that recognises other human beings as subjects. This recognition of other subjects, and to which Hegel’s Jena Lectures was one response, alerts us to the further issue of the creative opening of the subject qua inter-subjectivity. In some ways, Castoriadis recognises this in his discussion of the socialhistorical dimension of the human being as infant. As Castoriadis notes, the human being as infant has an outside, so to speak, and this outside is the mother. However, his point, in an understated re-functionalisation of his otherwise anti-functionalist theory, is to take the mother, as “the first and massive representative of society for the new born baby . . . if she speaks she is a social individual, and she speaks the tongue of such and such a particular society; she is the bearer of social imaginary significations specific to that society.”52 In other words, the infant is bathed,

52

Castoriadis, World in Fragments, p. 155.


so to speak, in social imaginary significations of which the mother is the first representative. Whilst all of this is correct, Castoriadis’ reference to the mother figure as representative occludes an investigation into the dynamics of openness, as well as the forms of relation that are established between self and others. It is at this juncture that we can return to Hegel’s Jena Lectures.53 The Jena Lectures are instructive, because, for Hegel, the constitutive ontology of the creative imagination is supplemented by a paradigm of outwardly orientated subjectivity that recognises non-identity or negation of the other as one of the subject’s relational forms. The difference between Honneth’s, Hegel’s, and Castoriadis’ positions is that whilst Honneth views the creative imagination as the product of a relational process, Hegel and Castoriadis view it as ontologically primary. Hegel, though, recognises nonetheless, that self-formation is one that also requires an outward movement in order to escape the terror of the Night or self-enclosure here. Hence, this reading moves Hegel’s and Honneth’s analyses away from an intersubjectively based quest for recognition, to a notion of subjects based in forms of tension. In terms that posit the explicit reference point of this paper, this dialectic of recognition may be better stated as a tension between closure and openness.54

53

This reading of Hegel will concentrate on the intersubjective dimensions, whilst remaining within the orbit of Castoriadis’ formulation of the mediating creative imagination. In this sense it will suspend Hegel’s own philosophical anthropological distinction between first and second nature. Notwithstanding this distinction and from the vantagepoint of his image of ‘the night’ of enclosure, Hegel’s insight is to ask how the subject “breaks the barrier of his implicit and immediate character.” So the dilemma becomes whether this combination of ‘animalic first nature’ and imaginary creation entraps humans in their animality, and a permanent internality with its combination of chaos, creation and dis-articulation like Werther in Goethe’s The Sufferings of Young Werther, or whether they can establish a relation with an outer reality. 54 It is here that we can depart from some other readings of Hegel’s work,


Behind the fight for recognition is a fight for an openness from the position of enclosure in which the creative imagination is posited as its source. The position of openness itself is also one of interdependence—or at least the potential of its recognition— through which this closure is fractured and world-relations established. In the Jena Lectures, at least, the position of possible openness precedes the normative horizon of what now can be viewed as second-order autonomy, or more accurately, for Hegel, freedom. For him, freedom is the specific form of second-order, reflexive interdependence, the result of which is relations of symmetrical reciprocity. In the Jena Lectures, Hegel’s more usual immanent connection between philosophical anthropology and the normative horizon of second order autonomy (freedom) is, for the briefest of moments, suspended. Whilst the struggle for openness is experienced, according to Hegel, as an activity of self-objectivation or externalisation through the developmental process of learning a language, the weight of his analysis of the process of it is posited in relational terms, that is, in the context of the self’s relations with others. Hegel argues that the self’s fracturing towards openness occurs through multidimensional modes of intersubjectivity. Hegel privileges three— love, work and politics. According to Hegel, each in their own way provides both the constitutive intersubjective groundwork

especially Taylor’s in Hegel in which he posits the metaphysical-ontological and the historical-interpretivist dialectics (see footnote 31 above). Notwithstanding each of these currents, though, another reading of the Jena Lectures indicates that it is the double positioning of the imagination qua imagination and outwardly posited intersubjectivity that is central to Hegel’s theoretical concerns, and not necessarily the structure of Being, nor the hermeneutically formed historical consciousness, as such. Rather, he is interested in the way in which forms of intersubjectivity fracture enclosure. These modes of intersubjectivity, and the ways that the subject is opened onto the world through their relational forms, is conventionally thought of as the dialectic of, or struggle for, recognition.


and institutional settings for this struggle. In the context of this paper, love, work and politics are of interest less for their formal content, and more for what they indicate as moments of complex opening of the subject to others. Each opening will have its own internal moment of tension where the stress or emphasis of subjects undergoing opening is experienced not solely as something positive, but also as something antinomic. In the Jena Lectures specifically, Hegel attempts to conceptualise the move from the Night of self-enclosure to the day of openness and otherness, by making a distinction between desire and drive. Although it belongs to first nature and is animalic, desire, for Hegel, is already constituted through the work of the imagination alone. Desire is the expression of a will that exists only for itself, and “has extinguished all foreign content within itself [and] is left without an other.”55 Although it feels a need for otherness, nonetheless, the human being who is commanded by desire makes its own being-for-itself its own end, and thus encloses itself within itself. In other words, according to Hegel, not so much that particularity reigns here, but that it is a particularity in which difference, or as he says, contrast, disappears.56 In contrast, being with another, experiencing contrast or difference, for Hegel, is experienced through the drives. In the work of the drives, the self moves beyond its own interiority (in Castoriadis’ terms, its own autism) and works upon the world in the context of, and with others. The consummation of this work is the self’s self-objectification. This self-objectification contains two moments, for Hegel. In the first moment, the self develops a capacity for reflexivity and thus mediated world relations. In this context, Hegel posits a model of self-consciousness as a

55 56

Hegel, Hegel and the Human Spirit, p. 100. Ibid., p. 101.


form that is three-dimensional. The three dimensions of selfconsciousness that Hegel posits in the Jena Lectures are that it is externalising, it acquires increasing capacities for self-detachment and reflexivity, and it is increasingly mediated by world-relations.57 Hegel draws on the image of the tool and human labour here; and yet the point is more general, for in this externalising reflexively self-detaching mediation with the world, the self confronts others. And this is the second moment, and can be captured, in one of its dimensions, through the experience of love. Hegel uses the experience of love as an ideal-type in order to establish the dialectic of openness. Yet, in a similar way to Honneth, this indicates an insight, as well as a double limit to Hegel’s own reflections. One limit is at the level of his anthropology; the other is at the level of his critico-normative theory with systemic intent. Each limit pushes his work towards both the metaphysical-ontological and historical-hermeneutical paradigms, with their own internal features, dynamics and problems. Love requires the recognition of otherness. Hegel’s image of love is one in which the Night of the self-generating and creating imagination is located in a specific social space, that of intimacy in a way that not so much transposes the imaginary force, but transforms it because in Hegel’s terms it is a form of cognition. This understates the case that Hegel makes for the importance of love, though. Whilst the image of the drives is internal to it, the important point about love, for Hegel, is that it is an externalising, reflexively self-detaching mediation of a specific world relation that forces the self to give up its dream of autistic independence.58 For this reason, the condition of love is a dissatisfied condition, as the self is no longer satisfied in itself, but seeks

57 58

Ibid., p. 101. Ibid., p. 107.


satisfaction in another. Moreover, it is not only the recognition of otherness that is crucial here, but recognition of the difference that the other brings to it, a difference that is external and remains so. By concentrating on the dialectic of reflexive othering, otherwise known as the dialectic of recognition, Hegel resists the great temptation posed by the Romantic version of love, as typified by Goethe’s Werther—the mergence of the one with the other. As Hegel states, love is the condition of not being satisfied in oneself, but rather having one’s essence in another—because one knows oneself in the other, negating oneself as being-for-oneself, as different. This selfnegation is one’s being for another, into which one’s immediate being is transformed. Each one’s self-negation becomes, for each, the others being for the other. Thus, the other is for me, that is, it knows itself in me. There is only being for another, i.e., the other is outside itself.59

Love is given concrete existence and finds expression as mutual love or mutual recognition according to Hegel, in the totality of the many sidedness of intimate ties that are expressed in relational form—a shared life together, care, child bearing, child raising and commonly acquired and held goods and property. As Hegel again states, it “is a total movement in itself—being recognised, . . . regard in care, activity, work, recapitulation in the child, procreation . . . therein a dissolution of [individuality].”60 In this sense, for Hegel, love and its concretisation in the socially objectified form of marriage, is the admixture of personality (as the practice of reflexive detachment) with the impersonality of first nature.61 Yet, Hegel alerts us to love’s own internal point of tension that moves it beyond the dialectic of mutual or symmetrical 59 60 61

Ibid. Ibid., p. 134. Ibid., p. 135.


recognition. There are points of tension that Hegel alerts us to, and makes us suspicious that love cannot be the basis for a version of practical rationality in the way that is internal to the structure of the Jena Lectures, and that Honneth, too, proposes. In the first instance, the relation of love between two people presupposes a dimension of exclusivity or particularity, in the sense that it (the love relation) becomes the point of reference. By being exclusive, an initial equality that is established between two different selves in the mutuality of recognition, generates an inequality on the part of those who are excluded from this relation, and its objectified form, the family. Hence, the other of this new form of interdependence is not the emotional economy of mutual recognition, but the emotional economy of envy and resentment. As Hegel states: The excluded party spoils the other’s possession, by introducing his excluded being-for-himself into it, his [sense of] “mine”. He ruins something in it, annihilating [i.e., negating] it as desire, in order to give himself his self-feeling—yet not his empty self-feeling, but rather positing his own self in another, in the knowing of another. The activity does not concern the negative aspect, the thing, but rather the self-knowledge of the other. A distinction in the knowledge of the other is thereby posited, which only puts one in the existence of the other. He [the excluded] is also angered thereby; he is divided in himself, and his exclusion from being is turned into an exclusion of knowledge. He becomes aware that he has done something altogether from what he intended. His intention was the pure relating of his being to itself, his impartial beingfor-itself.62

The important point here is that this point of tension is itself a relational form. In Hegel’s Jena Lectures, as in the more developed, yet less nuanced master-slave dialectic of The Phenomenology of Spirit, the recognition of the other always contains its oppositional

62

Ibid., p. 115.


moment. The importance of crime, for example, for Hegel, is not that it points to the functional limit of the sacred or the moral law, but that it also internally constitutes relations between self and other. Crime is a recognition of the other in its antinomic state, for Hegel, and these antinomic states, for example, envy and resentment, belong as much to self-consciousness as rational self-detachment does. In other words, in the confrontation with the realisation of otherness, the self experiences a tension between, as Hegel says, “driving and being driven.”63 The experience of domination, for Hegel, and hence the master/slave dialectic belongs here and as one that can only be constituted as a relationship between self and other. In this context, and as Hegel shows in a delimited form in The Phenomenology of Spirit, violence, power and domination only occur in the context of this relationship, and generate their own emotional economies.64

63

Ibid., p. 105. In the context of the dialectic of domination, though, Hegel and Honneth, glide over the issue of love’s permanent potentiality for tension, and, thus, for its own potential for domination. Although Hegel does not say this explicitly, love is a dialectic of asymmetrical recognition. To put it another way, in this register it is an intersubjective form of both exclusivity and bestowal and has as its counter-factual interiority the always ever-present potential of denial, withdrawal and absence. For this reason, and against Honneth and Winnicott, love cannot be the basis for a dialectic of practical rationality, although it is one basis, and an important one, for identity formation. As an intersubjective form, it is the basis for the dialectic of human enrichment, creativity or fertility—in other words, the internal dialectic of Eros, as well as agape. Nonetheless, Hegel and Honneth combine love’s particular form of intersubjectivity with the institutional form of the family. It is here that the ‘glide’ or occlusion occurs because the family form is absorbed into Hegel’s normative systemics with its structure of Subjective Spirit, Objective Spirit, and Absolute Spirit. Given this systemic emphasis, he concentrates on the formal recognition of legal entities that inhabit the world of Objective Spirit in a real or potential position of symmetrical reciprocity or mutual recognition. The world of Objective Spirit, and the position that subjects hold to one another intersubjectively, is the world of politics and the practices of practical reasoning. In other words, both Hegel and Honneth attempt to resolve a point of tension that sits at the intersection of love and practical reason by subsuming the particular intersubjectivity of love under its institutional form. Its institutional 64


In this context a distinction can be made between domination or power, and cruelty. What Hegel terms evil, or what also might be termed cruelty, is nothing but a singularity. In Hegel’s terms, it is the movement towards self-consciousness which is still, as he says, “enclosed in itself, subterranean, knowing what is there in the light of day, and watching something accomplish its own destruction by its own efforts, or else turning actively against the thing, thereby introducing a negative element into its being, indeed into its self-preservation.”65 In this sense, cruelty is the second-order reflexive autism of the creative imagination.66 Cruelty is beyond desire and constitutively different from the asocial autism that is indifferent to social-moral ordering. Rather, cruelty

form—that is, marriage as the public face of the intersubjectivity of love—is used by Hegel to build a bridge into the world of the political sui generis, that is to open onto the structure of civil society and the forms of sociation or intersubjectivity and their antinomies that are present there. To be sure, marriage opens onto love’s ethical form of life, or its Sittlichkeit, both internally and externally. When once acknowledged, marriage enables the partnership to move from exclusivity to inclusivity on the basis of the co-existence, yet difference between love and friendship. Love constitutes the relationship’s internal horizon, friendship its external one. However, it is friendship, or symmetrical reciprocity, and not love that constitutes the particular intersubjective horizon of practical reasoning. It is this image that finds its way into The Phenomenology of Spirit and The Philosophy of Right, but itself is generated in a way that alerts us to the internal tensions of political modernity along the fault lines of democracy, juridification, administration and nation-state formation. Moreover, each will have its moment of non-symmetricality, voiced through neither register of love nor friendship, but that of power. In the spirit of the above remarks power can be conceptualised as a form of sociability that presupposes an opening onto the world, albeit in asymmetrical terms. Cruelty, alternatively, and as indicated above, is indicative of enclosure. 65 Hegel, Hegel and the Human Spirit, p. 105. 66 See also the Phenomenology of Spirit where Hegel interprets evil as a singularity, which cannot negate itself, that is consider something that might exist outside of itself. Kant indicates something similar in his notion of radical evil in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone where it (radical evil) is viewed as a perversion of practical reason that makes itself its own transcendentally construed absolute. See also S. ÒZiÓzek, “Kant with (or Against) Sade?” New Formations, no. 35, Autumn 1998.


is self-conscious and deploys reason in the service of itself. This deployment is not only calculative, in the manner portrayed in de Sade’s work, but also occurs only from the vantage point of the self’s own reflexive, yet self-enclosed and self-referential imaginings with the purpose of annihilating another’s. There can be no self-reflexivity of the type portrayed by G.H. Mead or Honneth that results in mutuality here. In order to separate the normative horizon from the anthropological one, the dialectic of recognition may now be viewed as the fight for interdependence in the context of the tension between imaginary openness and closure. Provisionally put, patterns and tensions of intersubjectivity indicate the space and the relational forms in which social individuals, each with their own radical and social imaginings interact with others and together create and re-create these relational forms. In other words, intersubjectivity, here, refers to a relational space. The space indicates both this meeting place between social individuals, each with their own radical and social imaginings, and the interactive dynamics that presuppose, at an equally constitutive level as the radical and social imaginaries, the simultaneity of co-presence, recognition and reciprocity, but not symmetricality. In this sense, interactions between human beings take form in ways that have meaning for the subjects involved, meaning that can be imposed or agreed, understood or misapprehended, acquiesced or contested. In this formulation, intersubjectivity is both a space, an interstice constituted by imagining subjects, and a relation grounded in the recognition and reciprocity, or otherwise, between ego and alter. Because intersubjectivity is a space between ego and alter, it is a space that can remain either closed or open. It may also contract or expand. It can also be ignored. In this sense, the space has a meaning for the subjects involved, grounded in the patterns of recognition and non-recognition, reciprocity and non-reciprocity, symmetricality and asymmetricality


that are expressed at any one time, that is, historically. In other words, intersubjectivity is the space in which co-presence is given form as both empirical-phenomenological patterns, as well as figurations of meaning, that is, as social creations in their own right. Furthermore, because intersubjectivity is theorised in terms of the relative, spatial forms of closure or openness, it cannot be reduced to one form alone. Closure or openness—and in the case of the latter, recognition and non-recognition, reciprocity and non-reciprocity, symmetricality and asymmetricality give range to imaginarily constituted intersubjectivities in both unsociable and social forms. In the light of the formulations outlined above, the closed or open nature of these forms are structured as horizons of meaning by both the radical and social imaginaries. In this sense, love, friendship or power are doubly constituted as meaning figurations in both psychogenetic and sociogenetic terms. From the side of psychogenesis, they are creations of the radical imaginary; from the side of sociogenesis they are socially and historically instituted and instituting collective imaginings. As relational figurations, they are structured in terms of modes of recognition or non-recognition, reciprocity or non-reciprocity, symmetry or asymmetry between ego and alter. In this way, these imagining subjects in tension co-exist in either closed or open ways with one another through spatially conceived relational forms. In this sense, the notion of the social individual is a field of tensions in which the corporeal imagination, the closed and open radical imaginary, the social historical, and the relational forms between subjects coalesce and meet. It is within this spatial and imaginary complexity that critique enters, neither as a transcendentally conceived first principle, nor as a privileged relation to the world, but as one possible moment among many others. To be sure, the move to ontological openness by the subject, and the forms through which it occurs through relations between self and others lay the ground


for the possibility of critique. In Castoriadis’ view, though, critique is positioned as an ontologically and historically privileged dimension of the creative imagination—the capacity to put itself and its creations into question. However, from the perspective of subjects in tension, the capacity to ‘put into question’ is mobilised from a variety of vantagepoints. However, the activity of ‘putting into question’, which, for Castoriadis denotes what has been reconstructed here as ‘second order autonomy’, intersects or leans on value horizons or hermeneutic contexts, which may be constituted and articulated from many vantage points. This means that there is an intersection of creative interpretation with second order autonomy and the value horizons, which themselves may be constituted in either closed or open ways. This intersection makes interpretation an active principle, which itself is established and articulated in terms of the relational space between ego and alter. In this context, ideal-typical distinctions can be made between modes of interpretation along the following lines: the interpreter as genius creator who overlays the world with his/her creations as a god, and thus treats the other as a thing of indifference. Creativity here is the myth of auto-creation in an enclosed way that resists relational forms. The interpreter can also exist as controller/legislator who brings in other interpretations and assembles them only from his/her perspective, or legislates paternalistically on behalf of others. In both cases, the space between self and other is relatively open but from the position of power, and as such, can always, potentially at least, be disassembled. Another mode of interpretation is the wry and ironic creator who reads the space between ego and alter as simply an ontological condition of disjuncture and difference. In this sense, there is a detached sensibility on the part of the wry creator on the basis of the recognition of this disjuncture. The creative-interpreter as interlocuter has a sensibility that is similar to the former, but


assumes that the space between ego and alter is potentially at least always open as a relation in which something new can occur. This form can be termed ‘dynamic autonomous creation’ in which disagreement, as much as agreement, is mutually present. The stronger claim to second order autonomy (Castoriadis) is one such claim among others. In the context that posits the horizon beyond this paper, the critical subject is one who discloses him/herself in the midst of this tension, and by invoking at least one value with which to step outside the existing social field, even momentarily.67

67

For Castoriadis’ work on the idea of the questioning of radical and social imaginary creations see, for example, “Logic, Imagination, Reflection,” World in Fragments, ed. & trans. David Ames Curtis, California, Stanford University Press, 1997, pp. 246–272; and “The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy,” Philosophy Politics Autonomy, ed. David Ames Curtis, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 81–123. See Agnes Heller, “Everyday Life, Rationality of Reason, Rationality of Intellect,” The Power of Shame, London, Routledge, 1985, pp. 71–250; J.P. Arnason, “World Interpretation and Mutual Understanding,” in Honneth et al. CulturalPolitical Interventions in the Unfinished Project of the Enlightenment, pp. 247–267; H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, second revised edition, trans. & revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, London, Sheed and Ward, 1989.

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Index

Absolute 9, 231, 234, 236 action communicative 10–11, 14, 21, 101, 260, 289, 291, 294, 302, 304 theory of 64, 67, 150–151, 283–286, 303 instrumental 84, 157, 159–160, 161, 163, 169 Adorno, Theodore W. 12, 21, 281 aesthetics 1, 12–15, 21, 133–154 agreement 5, 18 Althusser, Louis 279 ambiguity 83, 86, 87 anthropology 30, 47, 48, 51, 87, 136, 149, 153, 333 antimundane 134, 135, 136, 140, 141, 146, 148, 150, 151, 152 Apel, Karl-Otto 23, 188–192, 194–195, 208–210, 284 Arendt, Hannah 36 argument better 3, 66, 287 contextualist 60, 61, 63, 69, 70, 76 naturalist 72 objectivist 63, 69, 70, 76 argumentation 10, 16, 17, 65, 198, 291, 292, 299 moral 296, 297 pre-suppositions of 66–67 rational 5, 6, 302 theory of 68, 287 Aristotle 181–182, 194 art 13–14, 33, 41, 141, 142–143, 145 critical theory and 150 philosophy of 146–147 authenticity 38, 46 narratives of 83–95 reflective 47, 51, 52, 69 authority 6, 40 autonomy 38, 121, 127, 130, 287, 297, 302, 304, 305, 306, 325, 333, 342–343

Balthasar, Hans Urs von 133, 134–139 Baumgarten, Alexander 144 Being 323 as if 272 existential 84 for-itself 245, 252–255 for-me 245–246, 254 for-myself 257 for-themselves 254 glory of 136 in-the-world 79, 82, 84, 87, 96, 98 living 325 no-longer-in-the-world 79 psychical 325 social 325 socio-historical 30 Being and Time 78, 79, 83 Benhabib, Seyla 295 Benjamin, Walter 12, 151–152, 282 Berdyaev, Nikolai 151 Bernstein, Jay 305, 306 Between Facts and Norms 10, 11, 104, 105, 107, 113, 115, 116, 117, 121 Bloch, Ernst 139, 148 body 140, 149, 151 capitalism 111, 120, 280 bourgeois 54, 55, 57 Cassirer, Ernst 14 Castañeda, Hector-Neri 215, 224, 262 Castoriadis, Cornelius 30, 31, 32, 280, 281–283, 292–293, 295, 297, 300–305, 309–310, 318, 321–332, 342–343 chaos theory 20, 168 Chisholm, Roderick M. 262 cognition 26, 75, 257, 302, 304, 325 common good 116–117 communication 27, 64–65, 128, 151, 157, 192, 256, 284 community 191–193, 208–209

346 • Index mass 77, 82 public 8, 83, 86 consciousness 28, 160, 163, 170, 267, 269, 271, 273–274, 298 moral 281, 299 philosophy of 212, 218 consensus 259, 290, 291, 305 intersubjective 157–161 truth and 199–200 constructivism, political 48–50 contextualism 35, 50, 51, 52 objectivism and 43–47, 59, 68, 72 contingency 20, 44 critical theory art and 150 as social theory 4 German 1, 2, 22 imaginative turns in 307–343 Kantian 34 linguistic turn in 1–2, 21–32, 72, 73, 157, 213, 216, 307 metaphysical characteristics of 75–76 new forms of 33–34 philosophy of the subject and 212–232 postreligious aesthetics and 133–154 re-orientation towards language 15 subjectivity and 213–214, 222 creation, aesthetic 14, 29 critique 1, 6, 12, 32, 305, 312, 313–315, 341–342 immanent 55–56, 57 moral 55 social see social critique Critique de la raison dialectique 273, 275 Critique of Judgement 321 Critique of Political Economy 278 Critique of Pure Reason 182, 272, 321 cruelty 339–340 curiosity 82–83, 86, 87 Dasein 79–81, 85, 96–97, 255 Davidson, Donald 193, 221 Deleuze, Gilles 27 democracy 6, 116, 120, 305 deliberative 9–10, 15 liberal 93, 120, 121, 122 representative 91

democratic theory 1, 128 democratisation, 6, 40 Dennett, Daniel C. 261 Derrida, Jacques 27, 138, 144, 213 Descartes, René 212, 239, 248 Dialectic of Enlightenment 281 dialogue 7, 8 intercultural 69, 94, 99 multicultural 101 transcultural 100 discourse critical 311 ethics 3–6, 18, 67, 126, 228, 280–306 interpretive 157 metaphysical 311 moral theory of 31, 281, 295, 302 principle 293 rational 21, 161 Durkheim, Émile 36 ego 27, 30, 271, 312, 340, 342–343 connection to alter 28, 29, 31, 340, 342–343 development 287, 290 Elster, Jon 279 embodiment 140, 254 Enlightenment 11–12, 15, 29, 152, 297, 310 democratic 105–106, 130, 131 ethics 10, 31, 231 discourse see discourse ethics ethnocentrism 59, 64, 70 Evans, Gareth 215 existence 28, 79 human 78, 283, 328 types of 164–167 experience 53, 139, 144, 152, 156 aesthetic 145, 149, 169 fundamental aspects of 163, 164 human 59, 146 religious 149, 150, 169 sensuous 15, 134, 148, 151 fallibilism 202–203 feeling 28, 135 feminism 8–11 ambiguities of 121–129 Habermas and 104–132 Ferrara, Alessandro 6, 7, 44, 47–48, 51, 59, 69 Feuerbach, Anselm 136 Fichte, Johann 27, 28, 29, 212, 215,

Index • 347 218–219, 220, 224, 234–235, 239, 263, 269 flourishing, human see human flourishing Foucault, Michel 6, 7, 27, 36, 40, 44, 45, 69, 151 foundations, ultimate problems of 156–162 Frank, Manfred 158–160, 214, 215, 217–218, 221, 224, 227 Freud, Sigmund 297, 298, 304, 309 Future of Human Nature 1, 16

human being as infant 331–332 conception of 308–309 dimensions of 324–325 beings 51, 66, 69, 70, 137, 140, 301, 319 normative conception of 41, 42, 72 flourishing 35–39, 41, 44–45, 59, 62, 64 humanism 138, 145–146

Gadamer, Hans Georg 8, 27, 97–98, 101, 261 Gaon, Stella 291 Gehlen, Arnold 149 German Ideology 277–278 Goethe 336 good life 5, 6, 52, 53, 230 Goya, Francisco 281 globalisation 39, 93, 100 glory, divine 135, 136, 138 grace 135, 137

I (personal pronoun) 215, 233–234, 244, 313–315 absolute 239 acquisition of 240 constitutive dimensions of 315 think 239 thoughts 223, 224, 252–254 idealisation, performative 289–295 Idealism, German 25, 27, 213, 214, 216, 217, 223, 227 identity 48, 79, 85, 87, 286 diologic 94–97 personal 80, 87, 228 ideology 88, 112, 283 imaginary radical 31, 32, 300, 302, 305, 329, 330–331, 341 social 329 Imaginary Institution of Society 327 imagination 12, 33, 148, 149, 297, 323 corporeal 325, 341 creative 15, 317–318, 319–329, 332–333, 339 power of 29–30, 301 productive 316, 320 radical 30, 306, 324, 325 inauthenticity, narratives of 83–95 individual 5, 81, 325 achievement, principle of 54–55 individuality 57, 269, 276–277 infant, relative independence of 316–317 innerly expression linguistification of 13–15 interaction 1, 26, 111 intersubjectivity 28, 31, 225, 236, 252, 254, 256, 257, 260, 273, 290, 301, 307, 311, 319, 321, 331, 333, 340–341

Habermas, Jürgen 1–6, 8–27, 29–34, 44, 52, 55, 64–69, 72–76, 88, 102, 104–132, 133–134, 148–154, 155–180, 188–191, 194–195, 212, 216–222, 227–231, 260–261, 264, 269–270, 279, 281–299, 301–306, 307–308, 312 happiness, theory of 59–64, 69 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 27, 36, 52, 58, 148, 149, 212, 226, 234, 248, 258, 264–269, 270, 279, 307, 311, 315, 319–322, 330–338 Heidegger, Martin 27, 78, 136, 148, 204, 213, 235, 261, 265, 322–323 Heller, Agnes 283, 289–290, 293, 295, 304 Henrich, Dieter 214, 217, 220, 221, 223, 225–229, 231 Hölderlin, Friedrich 218, 226 Honneth, Axel 4–6, 7, 30, 31, 32, 44, 52–59, 69, 229, 230, 307–309, 311, 312–319, 332, 340 horizons 5, 23, 98 fusion of 8, 97, 98–99, 101 interpretive 39, 69, 70 moral-imaginary 31, 282–283 normative 70, 333, 340 Horkheimer, Max 281 Horowitz, Asher 293–294, 306

348 • Index apriori 27, 259–279 paradigm of 24, 29 theory of 21, 270, 275, 312 see also subjectivity intuition 26, 28, 220, 221 Jenna Lectures 311, 312, 315, 319–321, 330–335, 337 Joas, Hans 4 judgement 45, 48 justice 49, 54, 64, 123, 230, 291, 303, 304 justification 55, 221, 293, 295 truth and 23–24, 186–187, 189–190, 193, 196, 201–202, 204–207, 210 Kant, Immanuel 3, 16, 29, 48, 144, 152, 182, 212, 219, 220–221, 223, 229, 234, 239, 252, 271, 272, 274, 293, 320, 321, 327 Kierkegaard, Søren 138 knowledge 15, 16, 40, 44, 66, 73, 148, 164, 186, 215, 224, 244, 250, 264 human 42, 59, 60, 69, 250 normative conceptions of 41, 42, 70, 72 subject-object model of 218, 221 see also self-knowledge Knowledge and Human Interests 1 knowledges, socially useful 141–142 labour 1, 9, 11, 15, 111, 276, 279, 335 Lacan, Jacques 10, 309 language 11, 16, 164, 236, 239, 252, 255, 282, 290, 300–304, 323 nature and 160–161, 167 philosophy of 22, 25, 239, 240, 294 propositional and pre-propositional experience and 156–158, 168–169 subjectivity and 296, 298, 304 use 65, 285, 286, 292 law 1, 3, 41, 51, 122 rule of 116–117 learning 7, 35, 70–71, 74, 75 Lectures on Aesthetics 319 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 223, 266, 271, 274 L’être et le néant 272

Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man 321 Levinas, Emmanuel 138 Lewis, David 262, 263 liberalism, political 49, 51 life forms, cultural 77, 85, 96, 98–101 good see good life socio-cultural forms of 74–75 world 32, 64–65, 66, 100–102, 110–112, 114, 115, 118–119 love 31, 54, 151, 315, 333, 335–337 Lukács, Georg 36 MacIntyre, Alisdair 36, 40, 95–96 Marcuse, Herbert 12 Marx, Karl 36, 55, 153, 234, 276–279 Mead, George Herbert 227, 260, 267, 269–270, 308, 312–315, 340 meaning 23, 29, 30, 31, 288, 304, 318 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 138 mind, analytic philosophy of 25, 214–215 misrecognition 56, 58 modernity 1, 12, 20, 52, 77, 88, 107, 152, 231, 256, 287 political 6–7, 9 theory of 32, 67–68, 69, 115 Western 35, 39, 40, 41, 48, 66, 69, 70 monad Leibizian 28, 273 psychic 30 moral agents 42 experiences 53 learning processes, theory of 67 systems 8 morality 41, 230, 306 myth, nationalist 88–89 narratives 7–8, 86, 95, 126 official nationalist 88–93 ontological 84, 96, 99, 100, 103 nation-state 90–91, 95 naturalism 20, 52, 142, 226 weak 73–74, 76 nature 1, 18, 155–180, 325 blurring of boundaries with humankind 19–20

Index • 349 emergence of individuals in 171, 175 grace and 135, 137 in-itself 155, 156, 159, 161, 162, 164 knowledge and 16 philosophy of 153, 169, 180 reconciliation with humankind 12, 15 relationship with humankind 18–20 ‘thing-in-itself’ and 15–20 Naturphilosophie 170–171, 172 Nietzsche, Friedrich 27, 36, 40, 41, 261 Night 321–322, 332 non-mundane 135, 136, 137 normative rightness 3–15 norms 1, 11, 295, 313, 314 moral 67, 288 objectification 24, 235 objectivism 7, 35, 50, 59, 60, 64, 68 contextualism and 43–47, 59, 68, 72 objectivist argument see argument, objectivist objectivity 8, 61, 66, 73, 74, 76, 284, 294 On Certainty 204 On the I as Principle of Philosophy 234 openness 336, 341 perception 22, 149 Perry, John 261 phenomenology 213, 237 hermeneutic, public sphere and 78, 83–84, 95, 100 Phenomenology of Spirit 337–338 philosophy analytic 22, 213–216, 226, 237 conception of aims of 250–251 hermeneutic 97, 99 Kantian 134, 218 moral 281–283, 295, 305, 306 negative 164, 166 positive 164, 166, 167 postmetaphysical 25 postmodern 213 social 35–76, 68–69, 229–230, 232, 237 transcendental 220, 223 physics 20, 167–169

Plato 235 Plessner, Helmut 36 political theory 1, 10, 50, 51 politics 4, 21, 41, 124, 333 democratic 77, 295 feminist 106, 121, 131 positivism 213, 217, 237 power 5, 8, 121, 339 social relations of 44–45 pragmatics 284–286, 290 productivity 20, 169–180 psyche 300, 301, 309, 323, 324, 329–330 psychoanalysis 87, 297, 313, 330 public sphere 3–15, 56, 108, 109, 117–118, 120, 122, 128, 130 bourgeois 106–107, 109, 121 concept of 77–83 formal 120, 124 Heideggerian model of 78–82 informal 118, 119, 120, 121 pluralistic 77–103 structural transformations of 77–78 publicity 108, 115–121 Putnam 188–191, 194–195 Quine, W. V.

220, 226

rationalisation 110, 112, 287, 299 rationality 1, 11, 13, 32, 34, 40, 58, 64, 148, 150, 152, 157, 283, 294 aesthetic-expressive 14, 29 communicative 21, 65–67, 69, 101, 221, 281–282, 284, 290, 293 interactive 111, 123 Rawls, John 48–51 reason 3, 12, 21, 29, 111, 112, 163 communicative 1, 270, 306 emphatic conception of 283–295 practical 20, 45, 281 reasoning 11, 19, 98, 297, 299 argumentative 16, 31 practical 3, 16, 19, 305 reciprocity 18, 333, 341 recognition 55, 315, 318, 332, 341 dialectic of 312, 336 order of 54, 56–57 reciprocal 28, 264–265, 315 social 30, 52, 53, 54, 57–58, 313 struggle for 31, 131, 316, 318, 319 reification 11, 111, 114, 273 relativism 47, 190, 211

350 • Index religion 1, 33, 140, 141, 149, 150, 151 responsibility 18, 306 rightness 6, 7, 286 Roemer, John 279 Romanticism 11–12, 29, 310, 319–320 Rorty, Richard 193–195, 200–204, 207 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 36 Salecl, Renata 298 Sartre, Jean-Paul 28, 263, 265–266, 268, 270–273, 275–276, 279 Schelling, Friedrich 20, 27, 29, 148, 152, 153, 155–180, 212, 224, 234, 269, 274 Schiller, Friedrich 29, 144, 321 Schlegel, Friedrich 218 science 95, 162, 258 sciences 34, 41, reconstructive 293–294 Scotus, Duns 152, 153 secularisation 40, 77 Seel, Martin 6, 7, 43, 59–64, 69 self critico-reflexive 312–318 nature and 163, 169 self-awareness 263–264 self-consciousness 25, 27, 28, 128, 215, 217–218, 219, 221, 224, 227, 233–234, 240, 259, 262–264, 267–269, 272, 274, 275, 313, 334–335, 339 self-empowerment 213, 235 self-image, human 21, 24, 320 self-interpretation 41, 46, 229–231 self-knowledge 26, 142, 215–216, 235, 238–239, 241–249, 257, 264, 269 self-preservation 213, 339 self-reflexivity 27, 243, 312 self-relation 25, 27, 28, 223–225, 228–229, 234, 240–241, 243, 245–252, 254–257, 264 self-understanding 7, 40, 42, 46, 48, 86, 87, 229, 260, 270, 271, 325 Shestov, Leo 138 Shoemaker, Sydney 28, 215, 216, 261, 264 Simmel, Georg 36, 40 social critique 35, 38, 42, 43, 44, 53, 58, 66, 69, 70

philosophy see philosophy, social recognition see recognition, social struggle 56, 58 theory 1, 51, 55, 65, 78, 80, 87, 92, 108, 274, 275, 279, 281, 294 socialisation 30, 84, 330 society conflict potential of 54–55 imaginary institution of 281, 295–305 multicultural 102–103 sociology 1, 34, 112, 149 speech 25, 302 spirit 58–59 state constitutional 3, 116, 120 welfare 120, 130 Strawson, Peter 274 Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere 9, 88, 105, 106, 108, 110 structures, transcendental 72, 74 Struggle for Recognition 311, 312, 315 subject creatively imagining 32, 319 formation, theory of 26, 308, 310 language and 294, 306 philosophy of the 21, 27, 29, 212–232, 234–237, 244, 246, 251, 254, 256, 261, 265 subjectivism 31, 46, 47, 282 subjectivity 27, 31, 70, 148, 151, 153, 253–254, 256, 257, 261, 280, 284, 297, 302, 303, 308, 311, 323 as philosophical principle 233–258 human 33, 146 language and 296, 298, 304 normative conception of 41, 42, 72 philosophy of 25–27, 212–232 see also intersubjectivity sublime 15, 29, 138 synthesis 169–180 systems, complex, nonlinear models of 169–180 talk, idle 81–82, 86, 87 Taylor, Charles 6, 7, 36, 44, 45–46, 47–48, 59, 69 tension, subjects in 307–343 theology 135–136

Index • 351 Theory of Communicative Action 1, 10, 13, 105, 107, 110, 112, 114, 115, 117, 274 tolerance 8, 103 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 186 tradition 6, 8, 81 transcendence 123 intramundane 4, 30 situated 96, 97, 100, 101 within 285, 293 transcendental 140, 156 transcendentalism 139, 299 transculturality 99, 100 truth 22, 45, 49, 60, 64, 66, 158, 181–211, 250, 274, 286, 287, 288 definition of 181–182 justification and 23–24, 186–187, 189–190, 193, 201–202, 204–207, 210 theory of 23, 182–183, 185–186, 194–195, 200 Tugendhat, Ernst 259–260, 261 unconscious 298, 300, 304, 309, 321 universalisation, principle of 288–289

universalism 31, 60, 93, 282–283, 291, 305 universality 11, 65, 74, 276 validity 11, 41, 48, 49, 54, 64 claims 16, 21, 159, 191, 285, 286–287, 289, 293 exemplary 51, 52 normative 5, 287 violence 31, 321 Weber, Max 36, 110, 112 Wellmer, Albrecht 22–24, 289, 290, 292, 293, 295, 304 Whitebook, Joel 299, 330 Winnicott, W. D. 30, 308, 309, 312, 315–317 witchcraft cosmology 94–95 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 186, 204–205, 208 wonder 122–124 world 81, 155 descriptions 253–254 disclosure 157, 159, 160, 164 World in Fragments 300 worldviews 20, 286–287 Ò iÏzek, Slavoj 294, 298 Z

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