"To the extent to which persons let their actions be guided by reasons, they
submit themselves to the logical-semantic and broadly ‘grammatical’ commitments of
intersubjectively shared systems of rules that are not up to them. At the same time, these rules do not ‘compel’ in the same way that laws of nature do." (Language Game of Responsible agency, p. 17, italics in the original).
Monday, August 27, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Inconsistency of ultimate description of "the universe'
Habermas in a recent essay quote the following great passage from Martin Seel.
"It is precisely the idea of a transcendent, final, ultimate description of ‘the universe’ that is inconsistent. It is the fiction, on the basis of which—and only on the basis of which—our sense of freedom becomes, as viewed from the outside, a fiction. As soon as one sees that the capacity for participating in justificatory practices is essential for all knowledge—and for every intelligible conception of knowledge—this construction collapses."[Teilnahme und Beobachtung: Zu den Grundlagen der Freiheit. Neue Rundschau 116 (4): 141–53, here, 151]
In the footnote to this passage Habermas writes the following:
"In his well-known book The view from nowhere (1986), Thomas Nagel starts out from the similar problem of ‘how to combine the perspective of a particular person inside the world with an objective view of that same world, the person and his viewpoint included’; and he develops, within the domain of ethics, a similar critique of what he calls ‘excess objectivity’:‘If we push the claims of objective detachment to their logical conclusion, and survey the world from a standpoint completely detached from all interests, we discover that there is nothing-no values left of any kind: things can be said to matter at all only to individuals within the world’ (Nagel 1986, 146). Since Nagel sticks to the mentalist opposition of first- and third-person perspectives, I won’t go into his otherwise quite compelling critique of objectivism." (Language game of responsible agency, p. 46).
"It is precisely the idea of a transcendent, final, ultimate description of ‘the universe’ that is inconsistent. It is the fiction, on the basis of which—and only on the basis of which—our sense of freedom becomes, as viewed from the outside, a fiction. As soon as one sees that the capacity for participating in justificatory practices is essential for all knowledge—and for every intelligible conception of knowledge—this construction collapses."[Teilnahme und Beobachtung: Zu den Grundlagen der Freiheit. Neue Rundschau 116 (4): 141–53, here, 151]
In the footnote to this passage Habermas writes the following:
"In his well-known book The view from nowhere (1986), Thomas Nagel starts out from the similar problem of ‘how to combine the perspective of a particular person inside the world with an objective view of that same world, the person and his viewpoint included’; and he develops, within the domain of ethics, a similar critique of what he calls ‘excess objectivity’:‘If we push the claims of objective detachment to their logical conclusion, and survey the world from a standpoint completely detached from all interests, we discover that there is nothing-no values left of any kind: things can be said to matter at all only to individuals within the world’ (Nagel 1986, 146). Since Nagel sticks to the mentalist opposition of first- and third-person perspectives, I won’t go into his otherwise quite compelling critique of objectivism." (Language game of responsible agency, p. 46).
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Is Habermas discovering religion?
Here is what Ernst Tugendhat had to say on this:
[Habermas] himself has no need for religion, he freely admits it. Just what interests him in religion I don't exactly know. But in any case it's not what interests me. I've certainly got a need for religion. He's interested in the moral components of religious tradition, not religion as such.
[Habermas] himself has no need for religion, he freely admits it. Just what interests him in religion I don't exactly know. But in any case it's not what interests me. I've certainly got a need for religion. He's interested in the moral components of religious tradition, not religion as such.
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