On Wed, 13 Jan 1999, Tony Roberts wrote:
> This is why I can't take Habermas seriously. I just can't imagine
> Herr Doktor, even under ideal speech conditions, having a mutually
> satisfying conversation with a crack whore. What would they say to
> each other?
Certainly, this is a problem. But under Habermas's ideal speech
conditions, interlocutors take up "an attitude oriented toward
understanding". Habermas often speaks favourably of G.H. Mead's idea of
ethical reasoning as involving imagining oneself in the place of the
other. Now, maybe Herr Doktor and the crack whore will stubbornly refuse
to take up an attitude oriented toward understanding each other's
position, and remain in the opposite attitude--that oriented toward
success, where one refuses to consider the other's position except as
something to be defeated. In fact, this is what usually happens, but the
problem has more to do with getting people to submit to Habermas's
idealized conditions of discourse rather than with what happens once those
conditions are accepted.
Matthew
---Matthew A. King---Department of Philosophy---York University, Toronto---
"All refutation in the field of essential thinking is foolish. Strife
among thinkers is the 'lovers' quarrel' concerning the matter itself.
It assists them mutually toward a simple belong to the Same, from
which they find what is fitting for them in the destiny of Being."
----------------------------(Martin Heidegger)-----------------------------
> This is why I can't take Habermas seriously. I just can't imagine
> Herr Doktor, even under ideal speech conditions, having a mutually
> satisfying conversation with a crack whore. What would they say to
> each other?
Certainly, this is a problem. But under Habermas's ideal speech
conditions, interlocutors take up "an attitude oriented toward
understanding". Habermas often speaks favourably of G.H. Mead's idea of
ethical reasoning as involving imagining oneself in the place of the
other. Now, maybe Herr Doktor and the crack whore will stubbornly refuse
to take up an attitude oriented toward understanding each other's
position, and remain in the opposite attitude--that oriented toward
success, where one refuses to consider the other's position except as
something to be defeated. In fact, this is what usually happens, but the
problem has more to do with getting people to submit to Habermas's
idealized conditions of discourse rather than with what happens once those
conditions are accepted.
Matthew
---Matthew A. King---Department of Philosophy---York University, Toronto---
"All refutation in the field of essential thinking is foolish. Strife
among thinkers is the 'lovers' quarrel' concerning the matter itself.
It assists them mutually toward a simple belong to the Same, from
which they find what is fitting for them in the destiny of Being."
----------------------------(Martin Heidegger)-----------------------------