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Jurgen
Habermas –
still chugging along Knowledge
and Human interests, Philosophical discourse of modernity, theory of communicative
action Communicative
action, instrumental reason, life-world, ideal-speech situation, validity
claims Adorno Frankfurt
School |
Concerned
with critique of positivism, shared with critical realism, Adorno etc. According to Jay (1985) Habermas considers his project as
a reinvention of Marxist Holism. Work with insights of critical theory but take
them out of their malaise and rework a holism that captures synthetically the
whole of human reality.
In
post-war Germany socialism was identified with Stalinism so only with the
emergence of the New Left in the 1960s was Habermas able to develop a more
positive stance (Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science and
Politics 1970) Here socialism
ought not to view itself as an idea opposed to actuality, but a critique
grounded in reality. Habermas's doctoral dissertation was on Schelling. He fell
out with Heideggerian ideas in the 50s dismayed that they could be republished
without any mention of the war. The publication of the Dialectic of
Enlightenment had a massive impact, like on so many other students of that age.
Habermas rejects the labour theory of Value (which he
sees as implicitly accepted by Frankfurt School)- see Knowledge and Human
interests. Argument = Marx is a positivist in sense that labour as constitutive
activity is read as natural history. Critique of instrumental action, favouring
communicative action. The point here is that Marx uncritically replaces labour
or production for the category of reflection in Hegel's phenomenology. Hence
the self-actualisation of the species, and the natural laws of its development
(the positivist overtones in Marx's prefaces to Capital etc), excludes other
aspects of the human condition. But this represents more than an attack on the
productivism of Marx and more than saying there is more to life than work.
N.B.
Interesting use in the knowledge and human interests article of the Grundrisse.
This is interesting, the year 1968, when Negri and the productivist language of
the social workers were talking about the new form of the mode of production,
that they directly experienced – Habermas is debating the positivism of Marx.
These two things are clearly connected. It would be interesting to draw a
comparison between Habermas and Negri. This might entail:
a) The
autonomy of the political. (Is Habermas a liberal? Darrow Schecter in Sovereign
States or Political communities would argue that he is?)
b) Modernity/Postmodernity
debate – Modernity, for Habermas the modern day enlightenment figure is an
unfinished project. For Negri postmodernity is coincident and directly related
to the political crisis of modernity. (see Politics of Subversion)
c) The
critique of instrumental action. Negri seems to respond positively to the idea
of communicative action, but he sees this as an aspect of postmodernism (EE
notes on Negri
and postmodernism). But Negri’s expressivist ontology and workerism might
seem as evidence to Habermas of positivist residue of Marx.
“With
his positivist demand for a natural science of the social, Comte merely
needed to take Marx, or at least the intention that Marx believed himself to be
pursuing, at his word. Positivism turned its back to the theory of knowledge,
whose philosophical self-liquidation had been carried on by Hegel and Marx, who
were of one mind in this regard. In so doing, positivism regressed behind the
level of reflection once attained by Kant. In continuity with pre-critical
traditions, however, it successfully set about the task, which epistemology had
abandoned and from which Hegel and Marx believed themselves exempted, of
elaborating a methodology of the sciences.” (Knowledge and human interests)
Habermas
has this irritating manner of debate, which in the line of the Philosophical
discourse of modernity always goes, Marx should have said this etc. It is all
about a path that could have been taken but wasn’t because the particular
individuals could not live up to the retrospective expectation imposed by
Habermas. The stuff on positivism is a slur on sophisticated dialectical reason
trapped in a world whose acceptance of epistemological reason was restricted by
their need to reinforce political power. How peculiar is must have been for
Marx to be forced to promote science when the common understanding of it was of
a technique of domination, or a spectral quality of productive power apparently
inhering in capital. This is not Bourgeois consciousness, it is less Romantic
anguish, it is absolutely a question of political consciousness assimilated and
acted back upon with a calculated response. The idea of Habermas that there
could have been another path taken, is to fall foul of the historicity of
science, and its sociality – (would be interesting to look at Popper again on
the socially? objective world of concepts.)
“However,
the ironic circumstances that Marx should still offer us the quotation that
most aptly describes the situation in which capital scrambles into markets
corroded by state socialism, in search of investment oppurtunities, is just as
thought- provoking as the fact that Marx’s doubts have themselves been
incorporated into the structures of the most advanced capitalist societies
[i.e. welfare state]” Habermas pp 10 NLR 183
On Totality
Again partly devised as a response to positivism in Marx, the idea of iron laws of development that precluded determinative action and behalf of the agents involved, the theory of communicative action aims at a way of explaining actions meanings and intentions that can incorporate the ‘reflexivity’ of the agents involved.. This involves an ideal speech situation: most statements and propositions contain validity claims; not necessarily explicitly geared to the truth, the claims can be evaluated through critical discourse, assuming each participant has an equal access to resources to test that validity claim.
According to Habermas knowledge
can take three diffenet forms. The first involves interchanges with nature, generically
termed ‘labour’ by Habermas. The second is ‘symbolic interaction’ which
represents communication between individuals. The third involves domination and
power and is connected to emanicaption and autonomy of action. (See Giddens in
Skinner ed. The return of Grand theory to the human sciences pp 127)
Explicit reference to truth
in propositions is normally the result of interaction and contention when one
calim is contested by another. Hence truth is a discursive entity, the result of
critical discussion.
Denigration of politics away from competing value claims to technocracy. Politics becomes the art of administering policies etc for the functioning of capitalism. Hence government typically experiences crises of legitimacy (legitimation (sic)), new social movements etc question the right and power of technocratic government to order their lives.
Evolutionist view of modernisation, developing technological and scientific basis to productive forces, drawn from Piaget (who viewed child development), but also connected to Weber.
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The Idea of the Theory of Knowledge as Social Theory
from Knowledge and Human Interests by
Jürgen Habermas (1968) Loads of Habermas texts (a lot in German) @ www.sla.purdue.edu |
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