Two types of compulsions . . .

"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).

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).

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.

Epistemic dualism vs. Ontological monism

Habermas would in principle not contest the claim that even without humans “the universe would still consist of electrons etc.” However, Habermas’ route to this conclusion is different from our normal realist's (whom Habermas dubs rather peculiarly as a metaphysical realist). Habermas believes in what he calls epistemic dualism and ontological monism and his big question is how to reconcile this apparently exclusive positions. Habermas wants to avoid ontological dualism however he believes that epistemic dualism is a fact of our philosophical learning which cannot be wished away. From the perspective of our lifeworld and our subjective constitution we are compelled to use the categories that are “subjective” in order to understand the universe. This “produces” what we call objective universe. Objective universe would not have been possible without our subjective (or intersubjective) input. However, this is true only from the epistemic side of the story. Habermas also believes that the categories which we use to understand the universe attain an “objective” status if they prove their worth by cohering to our existing knowledge and resisting the onslaught of new experiences (if they don’t crumble in the face of new experiences they prove their worth). Obviously Habermas needs a strong notion of “experience” where by experience somehow contains an excess that overflows the bounds of our categories. Here, Habermas brings in his pragmatic conception of knowledge and his weak naturalism to support this notion of experience as excess and provide it both epistemological and ontological ground. What makes Habermas’ position intriguing and difficult to defend is that he wants to grab the best of the both worlds viz. epistemic dualism and ontological monism, idealism and realism.

Does Habermas "naturalize" Kant??

Note: The following notes are a sequel to the abstract I posted earlier.

Habermas definitely wants to “naturalize” Kant but he understands “naturalism” in a broader way than most of Analytic philosophers (I am thinking of Kitcher’s “naturalization” of Kant here which is criticized by Allison among others). Habermas is closer to McDowell (and I assume that McDowell is an analytic philosopher). Habermas’ trick here is to distinguish between “nature” as understood by objectivistic sciences and nature in a broader sense to which (for example) Kantian categories don’t apply. Habermas claims that physics (for example) doesn’t exhaust nature. Our objectification always leaves out “something” of the “object.” This is another way of saying that our categories through which we understand nature in objectivistic sciences are not exhaustive. Kant had tried to do the same thing with the help of his notion of “things in themselves” however he was defeated in his purpose due to contradictions in which this concept involved him given his overall position. Habermas also makes an assumption which seems metaphysical but he claims that it is just a hypothesis which is to be ultimately tested empirically (in a boarder sense of the term). His hypothesis is that human subjectivity emerges out of nature in the broader sense and then through interaction between subjective nature and nature itself, nature in the narrower sense of the word emerges. Objectification is the result of interaction between subjective nature and nature in itself. Habermas thinks that his “nature in itself” can avoid the fate of Kant’s “things in themselves” in two ways: first his is an empirical thesis in the sense that its viability ultimately depends on how best it can explain the overall phenomenon and how it coheres with the empirical findings in the field of objective sciences. His hunch is that if the hypothesis is false it will not be able to cohere with our empirical knowledge in the long run; second Habermas thinks that Kant’s contradictions were results of his adherence to the representational view of knowledge. On the other hand Habermas thinks that if we adopt a pragmatic conception of knowledge we can avoid Kantian contradictions.

My concern in this paper is Habermas’ defence of the Kantian view that ‘causes’ and ‘reasons’ are different in kind and that they cannot be reduced to each other. They are incompatible in the sense that we cannot understand “reason’ on the model of causality or broadly speaking on the model of natural laws. Habermas wants to maintain this distinction without referring back to Kant’s metaphysics especially his notion of transcendental subjectivity. He aims to explain this within his theory of communicative action. Now my contribution in this regard is twofold. First to simply highlight the fact (Habermas’ position here) as there does not seem to be an appreciation of this in the literature (Habermas’ explanation itself is very cursory in this regard. He almost assumes that everybody knows what he is saying). Second I want to highlight the logic of Habermas’ explanation (or more accurately to make it explicit), which Habermas himself (or the secondary literature) doesn’t do. However, a problem emerges from the explanation which I give, i.e. the problem of idealism. It is a problem for Habermas because he wants to avoid it, because it was the very reason of his own explanation (i.e. to avoid it). So, if Habermas avoids idealism on the level of transcendental subjectivity but reproduce it at the level of language itself then it would be a problem for him. It’s also a problem for him because he has been accusing, Heidegger, among others, of such a linguistic idealism for long time. So I go on to give an explanation of how this idealism is avoided by Habermas. This leads me to explain Habermas’ effort to relate his theory of communicative action and his linguistic model to the notion of realism. Habermas cannot accept what he calls metaphysical realism (by which he means a realism which does not take into consideration Kant’s essential contribution especially his idea that categories of knowledge are human contribution to knowledge). By internal realism he means a position which can reconcile Kant’s ideas about human contribution to the fact that ultimately our knowledge must be “answerable” to experience and the world. Here, Habermas’ weak naturalism combined with his pragmatism is supposed to do the trick. This part of Habermas’ theory is least developed and I have tried to explain it in the thesis and there are obviously many things that need to be answered on Habermas’ behalf. However, this part is not my main concern in the paper. I only need to be seen aware of the problem and to describe Habermas’ proposal to avoid it.

This brings me back to the question of ‘naturalizing’ Kant. Yes, Habermas naturalizes Kant but this is done on two levels. At the level of “reason’ and “causes” he maintains the position that they are incompatible. However, they are not “contradictory” because at the second level Habermas relates both through his weak naturalism. If human subjectivity emerges form nature in itself, and if the interaction between the both gives rise to objective nature, objective nature and subjective nature cannot be ultimately contradictory. They are “product” of the same nature.

Dialogism . . .

"Bakhtin’s central concept of dialogism does not mean bending a courteous ear to others, as some of his more liberal commentators seem to imagine. It means that every word or utterance is refracted through a host of other, perhaps antagonistic idioms, through which alone its meaning can be grasped. It thus bears an affinity with the post-structuralist concept of textuality. There can be no unmediated truth. We come to ourselves, as many modern thinkers have claimed, through a medium which is profoundly strange to us. Language for Bakhtin is a cockpit of warring forces, as each utterance finds itself occupied from within by alien significations. Every sign glances sideways at other signs, bears the traces of them within its body, and faces simultaneously towards speaker, object, context and addressee. Like human subjects, words are constituted by their relations to otherness, and language is always porous, hybrid and open-ended. There was never a first word, and there could never be a last one. The inherent unfinishedness and unpredictability of language – the fact that I can never deduce from any two of your words what the third one is going to be – is a token of human freedom, and thus in a broad sense political. Signs are never self-identical, and always mean more than they say (a surplus that includes what they don’t say). The enemy is what Bakhtin dubs ‘monologism’, meaning the kind of meta-language which seeks to subdue this irrepressible heterogeneity. At times in his work, it is a polite word for Stalinism. Language is torn between ‘centrifugal’ and ‘centripetal’ forces – the former decentring, the latter centralising. National languages aspire to be monological but are in fact thoroughly ‘heteroglossic’, spawning a multiplicity of dialects and speech styles.

In all these ways, Bakhtin’s work marks a momentous shift from language to discourse. Whereas Saussure and his disciples reduced language to a formal, contextless system, Bakhtin is seized by everything in language that cannot be formalised: context, intonation, implication, the materiality of the word, the non-said, the taken-for-granted, ideological evaluations and the social relations between speakers. If communication is what makes us human, linguistics can never be entirely distinguished from ethics."

full here

Habermas on You Tube

Jürgen Habermas Interview

Indian "public sphere"

Habermas get mentioned in the context of a debate on the possibility of a public sphere in India. Relevant excerpt:

"Ninan’s study takes forward Robin Jeffrey’s book, India’s Newspaper Revolution. Written in the ’90s, it encompassed the challenges before the language media, including Hindi, Urdu, and southern language newspapers, and their responses to it. But in both books, there are gaps in comprehending the public sphere in the Indian situation. The application of Habermas’s concept of public sphere in India’s diversified and unevenly developed society has limitations. India’s agrarian society, having passed through colonial rule, is fundamentally different from a liberal, developed society in the West. The basic class character of the Hindi press’s ownership has been mercantile-capitalistic. The changeover from mercantile capitalism to industrial capitalism, and switching over to digital printing technology, do not necessarily cause a shift in the social and professional behaviour of Hindi press barons and mufassil proprietors.Also, the century-old caste character of the Hindi press is fairly intact. Still a caste Hindu-dominated press, proprietors, editors, bureau chiefs and chief reporters invariably come from Vaishya, Brahmin, Kayasth and other upper caste backgrounds. This affects the democratic functioning of the Hindi press."

Kasbah Express, Mofussil Times

Rorty's last words on Habermas!

"When I was told that another figure much discussed in Tehran was Habermas, I concluded that the best explanation for interest in my work was that I share Habermas’s vision of a social democratic utopia. In this utopia, many of the functions presently served by membership in a religious community would be taken over by what Habermas calls “constitutional patriotism.” Some form of patriotism — of solidarity with fellow-citizens, and of shared hopes for the country’s future — is necessary if one is to take politics seriously. In a theocratic country, a leftist political opposition must be prepared to counter the clergy’s claim that the nation’s identity is defined by its religious tradition. So the left needs a specifically secularist form of moral fervor, one which centers around citizens’ respect for one another rather than on the nation’s relation to God.

My own views on these matters derive from Habermas and John Dewey. In the early decades of the twentieth century Dewey helped bring a culture into being in which it became possible for Americans to replace Christian religiosity with fervent attachment to democratic institutions (and equally fervent hope for the improvement of those institutions). In recent decades, Habermas has been commending that culture to the Europeans. In opposition to religious leaders such as Benedict XVI and the ayatollahs, Habermas argues that the alternative to religious faith is not “relativism” or “rootlessness” but the new forms of solidarity made possible by the Enlightenment.

The pope recently said: “A culture has developed in Europe that is the most radical contradiction not only of Christianity but of all the religious and moral traditions of humanity.” Dewey and Habermas would reply that the culture that arose out of the Enlightenment has kept everything in Christianity that was worth keeping. The West has cobbled together, in the course of the last two hundred years, a specifically secularist moral tradition — one that regards the free consensus of the citizens of a democratic society, rather then the Divine Will, as the source of moral imperatives. This shift in outlook is, I think, the most important advance that the West has yet made. I should like to think that the students with whom I spoke in Tehran, impressed by Habermas’s writings and inspired by the courage of thinkers such as Ganji and Ramin Jahanbegloo, may someday make Iran the nucleus of an Islamic Enlightenment."

from here

Philosopher, poet and friend

Jürgen Habermas writes an obiturary for American philosopher Richard Rorty

I received the news in an email almost exactly a year ago. As so often in recent years, Rorty voiced his resignation at the "war president" Bush, whose policies deeply aggrieved him, the patriot who had always sought to "achieve" his country. After three or four paragraphs of sarcastic analysis came the unexpected sentence: " Alas, I have come down with the same disease that killed Derrida." As if to attenuate the reader's shock, he added in jest that his daughter felt this kind of cancer must come from "reading too much Heidegger."

full here

Zum Tod von Richard Rorty

Immer wieder schockiert

Richard Rorty ist gestorben. Ein Nachruf von Jürgen Habermas auf den Philosophen, Poeten, Bush-Kritiker und Freund.

Von Jürgen Habermas

Vor ziemlich genau einem Jahr trifft die Nachricht per e-mail ein. Wie so oft in den letzten Jahren äußert sich Rorty resigniert über den "Kriegspräsidenten" Bush, dessen Politik ihn, den Patrioten, der Zeit seines Lebens sein Land hatte verbessern wollen, tief bedrückt. Erst nach drei, nach vier Absätzen der sarkastischen Analyse kommt der unerwartete Satz: "Alas, I have come down with the same disease that killed Derrida." Wie um den Schreck des Lesers aufzufangen, fügt er scherzend hinzu, seine Tochter habe die Hypothese, dass diese Art des Krebses von "zuviel Heidegger-Lektüre" herrühre.

full here

Habermas or Foucault or both?

Mark has posed a great question for all Habermasians and Foucauldians. It would be great to hear from as many Habermas and Foucault students as possible. I will try to formulate my own response in due course:

"Because you have went in the depths of Habermas and Foucault more than me, i was wondering what your thoughts are on if the work of the two are compatible in any way? This idea has played on my mind for a few years, where the communicative action of Habermas is linked to a foucauldian form of discourse analysis in an anatagonistic relationship? this would mean the communicative action of Habermas allows people to speak 'freely' and a foucauldian discourse analysis aims to undercover the discourses occurring/forming the power/knowledge nexus. Or is it the case that Habermas's project is not radical enough for Foucault, and the radical democracy or LacLau and Mouffe would be more 'acceptable' for a foucauldian style of politics?"

(cross posted at Foucauldian Reflections)

Habermas as a philosopher of the present

It will sound strange to many ears but Habermas like Foucault can be regarded as a philosopher of the present. Habermas’ aim is to:

• Understand the present reality in its diversity and in its multifacetedness.
• Analyse the reality (both factually and normatively) and try to understand what is wrong with our situation (and of course what is not wrong).

Moreover;

• The assessment must be based on principles (It cannot be arbitrary).
• However the principles are not eternal (they are things of this word). The principles must be tested by confronting them against the counter arguments and confronting them with the reality itself.

• By the above procedure the principles prove their worth and to the extent they prove their worth they are entitled to “objectivity” (and they attain cognitive status).
• The assessment must be both factual and normative.
• The factual and normative analysis should give us a map of the present possibilities in terms of (a) who are we? (b) what is right and what is intolerable in our situation (c) what are the possibilities, what are the alternatives that are factually possible and normatively desirable. (d) what can be done and what should be done.
• Our assessment of our present situation (both factually and normatively) must lead to a reconstitution of the present.

Habermas and Kantian Idealism: conjunctions and disjunctions

Abstract

In the context of recent encounters on the question of free will and naturalism, Habermas has been described as compatibilist by some while incompatibilist by others. Abstracting from the debates on free will there is one issue on which Habermas is clearly an incompatibilist and that is the issue of the co-existence of what Sellars calls the “space of reasons” and the “space of law.” Habermas believes that the “space of reason” and “the space of law” are mutually exclusive. In this particular belief Habermas is a thorough going Kantian. However, if the story ended here it would not have been very interesting. What makes the story interesting is the way Habermas defends the Kantian incompatibilism about the “space of reason” and the “space of law.” Habermas aims to defend the Kantian incompatibilism about the two spaces without referring back to what Habermas takes to be the otherworldly realm of intelligible in Kant. In this paper I aim to show how Habermas defends the Kantian incompatibilism about the two spaces in wholly this-worldly terms without referring back to the Kantian realm of intelligible. Concentrating on Habermas’ concept of “communicative action” I construct a Habermasian argument for showing how the space of reasons emerges within this- worldly practices of communication without referring to any otherworldly entities. I understand the conditions of the creation of a space of reasons in terms of the conditions of the possibility of communicative action. I discuss in relative detail these conditions and relate them to the possibility of creating and sustaining the space of reasons without falling back on any otherworldly realms. In the concluding section I argue that although Habermas is successful in showing a way to maintain incompatibilism about the two spaces, his account is in danger of being engulfed by linguistic idealism of which he accuses Heidegger. It is in response to this danger, I argue, that Habermas has recently turned towards what he, following Putnam, sometimes calls “internal realism.” One of the functions of the proposed internal realism and weak naturalism is to ward off the suspicion of the aforementioned idealism. Although I would not be able to discuss this recent turn in this paper, I briefly describe how this turn gels with Habermas’ account of the incompatibilism of the two spaces offered in this paper. I also briefly describe the challenges faced by any such account.
--
(I am in the process of writing the above paper, any comments welcome)

Jürgen Habermas: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Much awaited entry on Habermas has been published!

"Jürgen Habermas currently ranks as one of the most influential philosophers in the world. Bridging continental and Anglo-American traditions of thought, he has engaged in debates with thinkers as diverse as Gadamer and Putnam, Foucault and Rawls, Derrida and Brandom. His extensive written work addresses topics stretching from social-political theory to aesthetics, epistemology and language to philosophy of religion, and his ideas have significantly influenced not only philosophy but also political-legal thought, sociology, communication studies, argumentation theory and rhetoric, developmental psychology and theology. Moreover, he has figured prominently in Germany as a public intellectual, commenting on controversial issues of the day in German newspapers such as Die Zeit.

However, if one looks back over his corpus of work, one can discern two broad lines of enduring interest, one having to do with the political domain, the other with issues of rationality, communication, and knowledge. (In what follows, unnamed citations refer to works by Habermas; quotations are from the English editions, where available.)"

--

Read entry in full here

Thanks to Gary E Davis for the pointer.

What Europe needs now

On the eve of EU's 50th anniversary, German philosopher Jürgen Habermas sets out what he believes are the most pressing items on the European agenda

Read What Europe needs now

The press is a public resource

An new Habermas essay on the crisis of the quality newspapers is available online in an English translation.

See "The press is a public resource"


The article originally appeared in German in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on May 16, 2007 under the title: "Keine Demokratie kann sich das leisten".

Courtesy: Thomas Gregersen

Habermas and compatibilism

Habermas criticises the version of compatibilism that is based on the idea of a “non-aggression pact between neuroscience and common sense.”* This seems to me a brilliant and accurate formulation. If by compatibilism we imply an uneasy co existence of two ultimately incompatible paradigms or visions then this is not what Habermas is aiming at. Habermas aims rather at “a genuine reconciliation of Kant and Darwin.” Kant here stands for “freedom” while Darwin stands for “limits.” Habermas in other words is not just content to show the “compatibility” of freedom and “limits,” he is rather aiming at something more positive, a genuine reconciliation of what is thought of as the realm of freedom and what is normally thought of as the realm of non freedom or even un-freedom.

The difference between the two approaches is roughly this: the compatibilist approach sees the relation between the realm of freedom and that of non freedom as that of negativity; the reconciliation approach on the other hand sees the relation in positive terms. As I have argued previously this involves abandoning a notion of freedom that sees freedom as essentially transgression of the “limits.” The second approach on the other hand sees the "limits" as the conditions of the possibility of freedom and not merely a transgression of the "limits."

Joel Anderson says that Habermas’ critique of compatibilism is not that the cost of accepting its truth is too high. Similarly Habermas’ critique is not that the truth of determinism is inconceivable. Habermas’ basic claims are rather a Kantian one: We can understand the “first person perspective” only performatively and that “not everything can be treated as object.” Moreover, the first person perspective or subjectivity is the necessary conditions “for engaging in the sort of activity that supports our sense of having free agency.”

This shows that Habermas’ main concern is rather different from the traditional concern of compatibilism. Habermas is not really concerned about the existence or non existence of freedom or with the question whether freedom can co exist with non freedom or even unfreedom. These are only secondary concerns for Habermas. Habermas’ main concern is how the Kantian notion of subjectivity can be genuinely reconciled and defended within an overall naturalistic (in the sense of weak naturalism)
framework.

---
* Joel Anderson, "Free will, neuroscience, and the participant perspective." All quotations in this post are from this paper.

Habermas and McDowell (again!)

First, I want to refer the readers to Carl sach’s illuminating comments (as usual) on my previous post. Second, this great quote by Joel Anderson which puts the whole issue in a nutshell:

“For many free will theorists . . . the problem of mental causation is clearly at the heart of the free will debate. If actions are not ultimately explicable as merely the causal effects of brain events, it is suggested, it is hard to avoid the dualistic implications of saying that it was ‘the agent himself’ (as distinct force) who generated the actions. Habermas’ strategy to avoid this dilemma involves treating mental causation as essentially an interface between our brains (as a cognitive apparatus that has evolved to do just this) and our environment. Importantly, however, the environment is also cultural-symbolic, and this is what Habermas calls ‘objective mind’ [objectiver Gesit] . . . which includes the culture, language, intuitions, practices, norms, and so on that structure and facilitate our thinking and acting. Mental causation, for Habermas, turns out to be a matter of our brains interfacing with this cultural domain. The important thing for this argument about the objective mind is that it is not expressible in a physicalist vocabulary and can be described only from the perspective of those who have been socialized into it, and yet it is also something which itself has developed and has its own natural history. In this respect, as well as in his defense of a ‘weak naturalism,’ Habermas’ view shares some central tenets with McDowell’s view.” (Joel Anderson, Free will, neuroscience, and the participant perspective, p. 8, italics in the original).

I am not sure about the word “interface.” Apart from it. I would stand for everything in it.

Is Habermas a compatibilist?

Here is the answer in Habermas’ own words.

“ . . . I am also a ‘compatibilit’ of sorts. The human mind, with its complimentary, interlocking epistemic perspective, is part of the universe of nature. Where I depart from the compatibilist mainstream, however, is in rejecting scientistic thesis that this universe is adequately characterized as the object domain of the established nomological sciences (on the model of contemporary physics).”

The text is a footnote to Habermas’ recent piece on free will.

Habermas for Nobel prize in Philosophy?

Professor Leiter on his blog has put a following hypothetical query to his readers:

"if there were a Nobel Prize in philosophy, who among living philosophers should get it and why? Feel free, of course, to nominate Charles Taylor! Some obvious figures from the post-War era--like Quine, Rawls, Sartre, and Foucault--are, alas, deceased."

I thought Habermasians can participate in the survey by nominating Habermas!

Notes on Habermas and Fundamentalism

These are some notes (with occasional comments) I took while reading "The Divided West." Eventually I will like to write a short paper on the theme. Comments or any suggestions welcome.



Difference between Orthodoxy and fundamentalism

•Orthodoxy becomes fundamentalism when: a) it ignores the epistemic conditions of a pluralistic society. b) It claims universal validity for its doctrine at the point of violence c) and it tries to impose its political ambitions on others (even at the point of having to recourse to violence).

•What are the epistemic conditions of a pluralistic society? Myth of pluralism?

•Habermas also evokes “the fact of complexity.” Habermas uses this principle in various contexts without really justifying it.

•Exclusive claim to truth: something shared by fundamentalist and orthodox believers (but see the related note above).


Origins of the idea of “tolerance.”

•Realisation of the existence of other religions.

• The scientific revolution weakened religious claims and their viability. Religions became less confident.

•According to Habermas in Europe the above two lead to the emergence of the idea and practice of “tolerance,” and separation of Church and State.

•Does Habermas really believe that people in medieval ages didn’t really know about “other” religions and denominations? Related question, does he really believe that medieval societies were monolithic societies?

•What does scientific revolution entails? Does it really weaken religious claims?

The Example of Iran

•Iran, according to Habermas, refuses to accept the separation of State and Church and hence can be legitimately dubbed as a fundamentalist regime.

• The Islamic movements that want to re-establish theocracy are also termed as fundamentalist, because they want to impose their political ideals on others.

•Habermas calls such fundamentalism, “obdurate fanaticism.” (The Divided West, p. 11).

Diagnosis

•Habermas ventures few remarks as to the causes of fundamentalism.

•Repression of Cognitive dissonances. Fundamentalist do not take into account (repress) the fact of pluralism and scientific revolution.

•The medieval religious views were based on epistemological innocence. [Were they?].

•The reasons for the lost of this epistemological innocence are two: a) Cognitive conditions of Scientific Knowledge. b) Conditions of religious pluralism, what Rawls calls “the fact of pluralism.”


Habermas’ position

•Strict universalism, which Habermas construes as “equal respect” for all, be they Hindus, or Muslims or Christians. Equal respect in this context presumably means equal moral worth.

•What does strict universalism means? All inclsivity – non one is excluded based on their faith or other particularistic traits. [But a believer is?].

•What is “strict” about this universalism? And what is universal about this universalism?


Possible Critique

• “Religion” what does it mean? Habermas uses the term “religion” in generic and undifferentiated sense.

•Myth of pluralism.

•Habermas’ genealogy of the emergence of toleration is a Rawlsian one and does not take into account alternative readings of history (for example this one).

•What are the epistemic conditions of science and what do they entail?

•Do the so called Muslim fundamentalists want to impose Islam on others?

• Separation of Church and State. Ignores the fact that the separation was in a sense already present in the early Christianity but not in the early Islam.

•“Tolerance” what is it? How much we tolerate?

Free Will as Part of Nature: Habermas and His Critics

a special issue of Philosophical Explorations: An International Journal of the Philosophy of Mind and Action 10:1 (March 2007), edited by Joel Anderson

Includes:

Joel Anderson, "Introduction"

Lead Article:

Jürgen Habermas, “The Language Game of Responsible Agency and the Problem of Free Will: How Can Epistemic Dualism Be Reconciled with Ontological Monism?” (trans. Joel Anderson)

Commentaries on Habermas's essay:

Randolph Clarke, "The Appearance of Freedom"
Michael Quante, "Habermas on Compatibilism and Ontological Monism: Some problems"
John Searle, "Neuroscience, Intentionality and Free Will: Reply to Habermas"
Timothy Schroeder, "Reflection, Reason, and Free Will"

Rejoinder:

Jürgen Habermas, “Reply to Schroeder, Clarke, Searle, and Quante” (trans. Joel Anderson)

[posting here due to its extreme importance, will eventually move to Habermasian resources]

Habermasian Resources blog

I have created a separate blog (entitled, "Habermasian Resources") for Habermas related resources. From now on this blog will be reserved for more substantial discussion of Habermas' work and for important quotes from Hab's work. In due time, I shall move, all non substantial posts to the new blog. Needless to say, posting on this blog from now on would be less frequent.

Truth and justification - the essential link

“Argumentation remains the only available medium of ascertaining truth since truth claims that have been problematized cannot be tested in any other way. There is no unmediated, discursively unfiltered access to the truth conditions of empirical beliefs. There is no unmediated, discursively unfiltered access to the truth conditions of empirical beliefs. After all, only the truth of unsettled beliefs is subject to question – beliefs that have been roused from the unquestioned mode of functioning practical certainties. Although we cannot sever the connection of truth and justification, this epistemically unavoidable connection must not be turned into a conceptually inseparable connection in the form of an epistemic concept of truth.” (TJ: italics in the original).

This is without doubt a very crucial passage for understanding Habermas’ transition from an epistemic conception of truth to a more ontologically tuned conception of truth. However, I shall mention one key problem with this passage. The passage implies that if we had unmediated access to the truth conditions of empirical beliefs we could have been able circumvent argumentation. However, this is misleading. The reason for argumentation being the sole medium of ascertaining is not just epistemic; it is also “discursive.” The latter follows from Habermas’ rejection of the notion of truth as ‘evidence’ (see his critique of Husserl in OPSI). The game of truth cannot circumvent the game of argumentation because the “truth conditions” of beliefs can support beliefs only by being converted into “reasons.” Truth game is squarely located within the space of reason and since the space of reason is sustained by the game of argumentation even if we had unmediated access to the truth conditions we could not have avoided the game of argumentation. That’s why the problem of bringing “propositions/statements” face to face with the world itself is such an issue for Habermas.