3.5 - Simpson, Lorenzo C. - On Habermas and Particularity. Is There Room For Race and Gender On The Glassy Plains of Ideal Discourse¿ (EN)

OnHabermasandParticularity:IsthereRoomforRaceandGenderonthe GlassyPlainsofIdealDiscourse?
OnHabermasandParticularity:IsthereRoomforRaceandGenderontheGlassy PlainsofIdealDiscourse?

byLorenzoC.Simpson

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Source: PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:3/1986,pages:328340,onwww.ceeol.com.
ON HABERMAS AND PARTICULARITY: IS THERE ROOM FOR RACE AND GENDER ON THE GLASSY PLAINS OF IDEAL DISCOURSE?*
Lorenzo C. Simpson
We find ourselves situated at an historical juncture where transcendentaluniversalist and historicist philosophical strategies vie intensely for our allegiance. Contemporary debates concerned with the structures of intersubjective recognition rage over the issue of objectivism versus relativism, over arguments purporting to establish the ultimate commensurability of forms of life vs. those which purport to establish their irredeemable incommensurability. In the Anglo-American context the names Searle, Davidson, Rorty, Kuhn and Feyerabend come to mind; in the continental, Habermas, Apel, Gadamer, Foucault, Lyotard and Derrida. Discussions of the role of particularizing features like race and sex in patterns of intersubjective interaction have often foundered on a dichotomy that is informed by these competing strategies. Where the universality of human characteristics is emphasized, where emphasis is placed upon similarities among persons, and the distinguishing features of particularity are relegated to the accidental, the inessential, we tend to find ourselves having to do with abstract, bloodless creatures somehow hovering over history and culture. When, on the other hand, particularity is emphasized, where emphasis is placed upon differences among persons, and particularistic features like race and gender are construed as essential, we can, if the emphasis is excessive, move dangerously close to racism and sexism. Not surprisingly, I view this accidental/essential dichotomy as a false one to be overcome, and in the course of my discussion I hope to point to a way beyond it. Opposed to the various forms of emotivism and historicism, Jrgen Habermas holds that normative judgments are claims about social objectivity and not only about ourselves that is, that such judgments are not merely autobiographical so that conflicts and disagreements are real rather than apparent and that such conflict can be meaningfully adjudicated. Habermas has, along with his colleague Karl-Otto Apel, mounted perhaps the most sustained and influential attack upon that historicizing tendency that denies the universality of reason in proclaiming the irreducible incommensurability of local and fragmentary communities and/or regimes of discourse. His attack is not a realist one, as was Platos against the relativizing tendencies among the
* An earlier version of this paper was presented in the Mellon Foundation Lecture Series sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at Howard University in April 1985. I wish to thank Neale Mucklow, Hugh West, Marsha Abrams and Robert Gooding-Williams for helpful comments on earlier drafts.
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Sophists. Rather, Habermas can legitimately be seen as embracing a transcendental-reconstructive, or at least a universalistic, strategy. Criticism of his strategy abounds and need not concern us here.1 What I wish to focus on is the general charge, which emanates from many quarters, that the universalistic tendencies in Habermas5 critical theory, especially in his idea of the ideal speech situation, make it impossible for him to do justice to the legitimate claims of particularity, of racial, sexual and cultural diversity.2 I shall suggest that this standard critique is misplaced, but that his work does invite another kind of criticism in this regard. Prominent in my defense of Habermas against unwarranted charges will be a distinction that is, I think, not sufficiently thematized in the philosophy of science, namely, that between an anomaly and a counterexample. Such a distinction will, I believe, prove helpful in suggesting how we are to understand Habermas5 notion of the distinction between generalizable or universalizable interests, on the one hand, and. sheerly particular interests, on the other. I shall invoke this distinction with the intention of highlighting the unavailability of a priori criteria for distinguishing generalizable from particular interests. I shall then relate the notion of consensus concerning generalizable interests to the hermeneutic question of what it is to be human, saying something in a general way about strategies for overcoming the accidental/essential distinction in discussions about particularity. Finally, I shall suggest that, though the charge against Habermas as it is typically lodged will not stick, there is a sense in which his conception of ideology critique, when its implications for practice are explored, does render him vulnerable to those who would claim that his critical theory does not do justice to particularity. I. The Ideal Speech Situation and Generalizable Interests As is well known, Habermas proposes a version of a consensus theory of truth. What is perhaps most novel about his theory is the suggestion that in the very process of communicating through meaningful utterances, we, with something very much like transcendental necessity, anticipate a dialogue situation which is ideal and in which the truth claims of our utterances could be consensually redeemed. Such an ideal speech situation is structured by what Habermas refers to as symmetry conditions, conditions which supposedly insure that interlocutors are swayed only by the force of the better argument. Such conditions amount to the requirement that the participants in dialogue be fettered by no restrictions to the symmetrical exercise of the option to employ various speech acts, i.e., to make various moves in the dialogical language game like asserting, contesting, questioning, disclosing, prescribing, etc., in short, that there be an unlimited interchangeability of dialogue roles.3 The symmetry conditions further allow the freedom to move from a given level of discourse to increasingly reflected levels, say, to meta-theoretical and meta-ethical levels, that is, to call into question and modify the originally accepted conceptual framework. The importance of this freedom becomes apparent once we recognize that the cogency of an argument will depend partly upon the conceptual or linguistic scheme in which it is
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formulated. 4 (For example, theological arguments increasingly lose their cogency after the 17th century in the West.) The point then of the ideal speech situation is to uncouple participation in discourse and acceptance of truth claims from power. Analogous to the idea of truth in theoretical discourse, the idea of generalizable interests stands as a regulative ideal for practical discourse.5 Basically, for Habermas interests are needs that we become aware of when they are not being met.6 Furthermore, he denies that all needs or interests are irremediably subjective and ultimately intersubjectively irreconcilable. Those that are irreconcilable in this way he refers to as particular interests. If all interests were sheerly particular then we would have to resign ourselves to an impenetrable pluralism of apparently ultimate [and incommensurable] value orientations. 7 (An example of this might be Ron Karengas and Imamu Barakas Black Value System as an articulation of ultimately particular interests on the part of blacks.) As opposed to these sheerly particular interests, generalizable interests are those that can be communicatively shared, those that reflect an unforced consensus about what all could want. Therefore, the question to keep in mind when assessing the generalizability of interests is: Would the norm expressing and/or regulating a given interest be one such that every person affected by the norm can with good reasons accept the consequences and side-effects that are expected to result from the general observance of that norm?8 A particular interest is one that fails to meet the conditions of this test. Generalizable interests, for Habermas, are not simply pre-existing attributes or properties of persons that can be empirically found (through, say, questionnaires), nor can they be simply imposed from the outside (say, by a totalitarian regime or by radical theorists claiming a privileged access). They are rather shaped and discovered through the linguistic medium of communication in a practical discourse among all persons concerned.9 It becomes convenient, therefore, to speak in terms of need interpretations. Both norms regulating interests or needs and the interpretation of the needs themselves form the subject matter of practical discourse. That need interpretations are themselves discussable in an ideal discourse (where symmetry and freedom to change levels of discourse are present) is an important safeguard against deception and self-deception.10 The freedom to choose levels of discourse means that a participant need not accept any need interpretation in which he/she cannot recognize what he/she truly wants. That is, the deck cannot be stacked against him/her, neither by himself or herself (self-deception) nor by others (deception). For example, think of women whose needs are interpreted within a linguistic or conceptual scheme structured by the following dichotomy: either one restricts oneself to the domestic sphere or one is selfishly ambitious. Could the need for, say, self-fulfillment, find an appropriate interpretation in such a scheme? The interpretation of needs must take place within some linguistic or conceptual scheme. Needs are interpreted as needs for x in linguistic or conceptual scheme y. It is, therefore, important that the chosen language system not be inappropriate. To provide a clearer sense of what I am getting at here, let me
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suggest a few more examples of inappropriate conceptual schemes. They all have to do with the acceptance of situations (and a corresponding conceptual understanding of social life) that are structured in such a way that needs are perceived as being met only in certain arbitrarily (that is, unreasonably) limited ways. Think again of the acceptance of a psychological conceptual bind in which one faces the alternatives be self-sacrificing or you dont love your family so that the need to be responsible gets (falsely) interpreted as a need to relinquish autonomy. Think of, for instance, the need for or interest in opposing disinvestment on the part of American companies with interests in South Africa that has been expressed by some black South African workers on the assumption that the prevailing socio-economic order is the only one in which those workers can earn a livelihood. Think, finally, of the need for or interest in, on the part of, say, an ambitious black person to assimilate into white culture in a self-negating way under the (false) equation of excellence with European ways. (By the way, the accidental/essential dichotomy with which I began this essay is also, I believe, such an inappropriate conceptual scheme.) So, the discourse situation will, or is likely to, alter ones conception of ones needs. But no matter how much it is altered, no need interpretation can be valid in which an individual cannot recognize what he/she wants. In these terms, the distinction between particular and generalizable interests can be posed in terms of the following question: Does a need permit of an interpretation in which everyone can recognize what he/she can want or not? If so, that need gives rise to a generalizable interest; if not, it remains sheerly particular. Much of the concern over the status of particularity in Habermas work centers about claims to the effect that the privileging of generalizable interests has a hegemonic and homogenizing effect.11 Particular interests, it is claimed, are what serve to make us the distinct historical individuals that we are, and granting legitimacy to generalizable interests only threatens to wipe out human diversity. It seems to me that this conclusion would necessarily follow only if Habermas notion of generalizable interests necessarily implied a substantive content, a filling in of just what interests are generalizable. But this is just what his theory will not allow. He speaks instead of a consensus over generalizable interests reached under conditions of ideal dialogue, a consensus whose content cannot be predicted, cannot be stated in advance. There is a sense in which sheerly particular interests are illegitimate for Habermas, but we cannot know that a given interest is sheerly particular until it has failed to withstand the discursive test for generalizability, a test that is effected through the procedures of ideal practical discourse.12 On this view, an interest is presumed generalizable until proven particular. If we understand the claim that non-generalizable interests are illegitimate to be equivalent to the claim that no norm can be valid that results from a practical discussion whose procedures exclude the interests of anyone affected, then it does not follow that a given particular interest claim must be devalued as illegitimate. The situation that we are faced with is, I believe, one where it is always a
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matter of mutual adjustment between putatively valid norms and concrete interests, so that sometimes a norm will have to be revised in order to take a concrete interest into account, and sometimes a concrete interest will have to be devalued in light of its conflict with an achieved, supposedly rational, consensus. There probably are no a priori criteria to tell us under what conditions to do which (reminding one of Rawls notion of reflective equilibrium). There are important similarities between this situation and what can be seen to be the case in science when we consider how an unanticipated event is ultimately treated by the scientific community. Let us use the term phenomenon to refer quite generally to an event or state-of-affairs that is perceived to stand in some tension with the anticipated order of things. (This way of speaking is inspired by Stephen Toulmins distinction between events and phenomena in his little book Foresight and Understanding. ) I want to use the terms anomaly and counterexample to mark a distinction in the manner in which a phenomenon is ultimately received by the community of inquirers. An anomaly ultimately leaves the relevant law, expectation or regularity unchallenged, whereas a counterexample ultimately threatens the relevant law, expectation or regularity. An anomaly apparently violates the rule without ultimately threatening the rule, while a counterexample proves ultimately to be a nail in the coffin of an accepted theory. The apparent absence of stellar parallax as a perceived threat to non-geostatic cosmological models provides an example of what I mean by an anomaly. The existence of whales would stand as a counterexample to the belief that all mammals are land creatures. For examples of each from the same realm of study, consider the anomalous motion of Uranus, which Newtonian theory was able, to accommodate, and the precession of Mercurys perihelion, which stands as a counterexample to classical celestial mechanics. Now, there is no a priori procedure for deciding which is which, that is, for determining whether a given phenomenon is an anomaly or a counterexample. Sometimes a phenomenon ends up having instigated a research program to further articulate a given paradigm or expectation of regularity so that the phenomenon can be accommodated; in other instances phenomena are viewed as falsifying cases. Only the future will allow us to say into which category a given phenomenon should be placed.13 Like an anomaly, a particular interest claim may prove itself capable of being accommodated into a somewhat altered, or slightly differently conceived, existing consensus over generalizable interests. Or, it may be rejected as ungeneralizable. As examples of particular interest claims one might consider the desire for maternity leave policies on the part of women and for affirmative action policies on the part of both blacks and women. Since only the outcome of a domination free discourse will decide the issue, we cannot, in general, say beforehand whether or not a specific interest content is generalizable. Accordingly, since there are no a priori criteria for deciding when an achieved consensus should be altered to accommodate a newly proposed interest versus when an interest should be rejected as sheerly particular, it is not clear that Habermas scheme need necessarily discriminate invidiously against specific particularity claims.14
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In concluding this section, I should like to briefly consider what has been taken to be one of the most important systematic challenges to the universalist and non-discriminatory claims of Habermas theory, namely, the studies of female moral development undertaken by Carol Gilligan.15 She has persuasively argued that, instead of being structured in terms of non-contextual principles of abstract equality and notions of rights, female moral development seems to be more adequately construed in terms of contextual notions like those of equity, care and responsibility. To the extent that notions like those of rights, abstract equality, etc., are constitutive of Habermas notion of practical discourse, it has been argued that the concrete ethics of care is a particularity claim made by, say, women that is necessarily denigrated in Habermas5 theory.16 The point is well-taken, but we should keep in mind the freedom to contest and choose levels of discourse or schemes for need interpretation, a freedom which is constitutive of practical discourse in Habermas view. If we do so, then it is not clear that Gilligans conceptual framework would be excluded, a framework where social reality consists not of isolated atoms that are only externally related through contracts based upon rights but rather of fields of concern that are internally related by care and an ethics of responsibility. It is not clear that such a view would not be a , candidate for an appropriate conceptual framework, not only for women, but also for men.17 In other words, it seems that it could meet with generalized . assent. Ronald Dworkins reading of the right to equality might represent a possible fusion of these two horizons, of care and rights, of equity and equality, in such a way that we might see how a discursively achieved general agreement on this matter might look. I have in mind here his understanding of the right to equality, not as the right to equal treatment, but as the right to treatment as an equal, which is the right to be treated with the same concern and respect as anyone else.18 Treatment of others as equals requires, on his terms, not an abstraction from, but a sensitivity to the contexts and needs of others. In the case of Gilligan, and I am sure in others as well, particularity can be viewed as a standpoint from which claims are generated, and perhaps only from which certain claims are generated, which can survive subsequent discursive testing oriented towards universal assent.
II. Consensus over Generalizable Interests and the Notion of What it is to be Human
If a putatively rational consensus over generalizable interests is altered to accommodate a theretofore unexpressed or unrecognized interest, then that newly recognized interest expands our vision of the universally human. The result of the conversation that effects the incorporation of the novel interest or self-interpretation would be a hermeneutic fusion of horizons in which something new gets acknowledged. Insofar as the alien interest fails to be generalizable and remains sheerly particular it may be rejected as a source of the expansion of what it means to be human, at least in the political, if not cultural, dimension, and, at best, an attempt can be made to effect a compromise with it.
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Focusing on the distinction between characteristics which are not yet part of a consensus about the universally human and those which are allows for a softening or relativization of the accidental/essential dichotomy mentioned above, where particularistic features are viewed as either accidental or essential to an understanding of what it means to be human. For, as I have argued, from the universalist standpoint neither category, neither that which is accidental in understanding what it means to be human nor that which is essential, can be given content a priori. One can be a universalist and at the same time not deny the legitimacy of a given particular (as yet not generalized) content. Moreover, insofar as those who deny that particuarlistic features are accidental do so in order to prevent the devaluation of those features, there is much less to fear from a universalist position understood in this way. Since it is an open question whether or not a given particularity claim is sheerly particular, one need not rush so rapidly to the essentialist pole of the dichotomy in order to save the particulars. Of course, this attempt to soften the bite of the universalist position fits in with a reading of the particularist position as a reaction to the universalist move. Historically, this often seems to be the case.19 To see this we need a distinction between two ways of responding non-invidiously to perceptions of falling outside the universal. One response is to argue that the falling outside is only apparent, that, for instance, distinguishable racial minorities do, racist perceptions notwithstanding, share in and are constituted by the universal, and that this is what counts about them. This is the general Enlightenment strategy characteristic of modernity in its better moments. It is a matter of subsuming the particular to the universal and is the general way in which universalistic strategies deal with particularity. The French Revolution, having inauguated modernity through embodying a principled denial of the political significance of natural or particularistic determinations (race, sex, circumstances of birth, etc.), stands as a convenient historical marker here. Many recent and continuing liberation movements, especially those using the vocabulary of rights e.g., those for gay rights, for civil rights for blacks, for womens rights, etc. clearly employ strategies of this sort. Despite the acknowledged progressive nature of these strategies, it seems that it is often as a reaction to this way of swallowing up particularity into universalistic categories or to the repeated failure actually to effect this assimilation (particularly true in the case of blacks) that the other response, the particularist position per se, seem to arise. By the latter I mean the strategy of taking the falling outside to be real and of affirming non-assimilability, of viewing it not as a sign of a deficiency to be rectified but of a difference to be cultivated and appreciated. One thinks here of the Ngritude movement and of some of the various sorts of black nationalism.20 Various particularist strains of this feminist movement also come to mind. The point that I am trying to make here is that even though, of course, particularist features of persons have been taken as signs of their essence (typically in terms of an invidious superiority/inferiority distinction) prior to or simultaneous with preoccupation with conceptions of universal features, the embracing of particularity in a non-invidious way seems to occur often as a reaction to the
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homogenizing threat of universalization, as a response to the question that gets posed in terms of the universal. III. Habermas Methodological A Priorism In response to charges that particularity is left out of his scheme, Habermas replies that, to the contrary, agents must bring their particularities to the discourse table; otherwise practical discourse would be bereft of content.21 The assumption is made that the putative discourse situation really is a situation of discourse and that a grounded consensus on generalizable interests is reachable that is not and could not be decided a priori. Hence he would want to say that particularity is certainly not excluded by the very conceptions of practical discourse and of the ideal speech situation. However, even though this and the arguments that I adduced above suggest that Habermas may well be able to defend himself against certain anti-particularity charges on purely conceptual grounds, there are methodological tendencies in his work, especially in his notion of ideology critique, which make such charges plausible. Habermas understands ideology critique in terms of what he calls the model of suppressed generalizable interests. The standard for critical social theory is the very principle that informs practical discourse, namely, in the case of each set of concrete circumstances we must ask: Do prevailing institutional arrangements (means of securing political representation, etc.) justify the belief that basic political decisions in that society would meet with the agreement of all those affected by those decisions if they were able to participate without restrictions in discourse concerning those political issues?22 From this point of view, the guiding question for critical social analysis becomes, How would the members of a social system, at a given stage in the development of productive forces, have collectively and bindingly interpreted their needs (and which norms would they have accepted as justified) if they could and would have decided on organization of social intercourse through discursive will-formation, with adequate knowledge of the limiting conditions and functional imperatives of their society?23 If existing institutions fail to conform to those that hypothetically would have been the case had they, all things being equal, been decided upon discursively, then the critical theorist acknowledges a suppresion of generalizable interests and assumes that the existing norms are grounded in force or power rather than in reason. Now, the analytical or ideology critical model of suppressed generalizable interests relies upon the ability of the theorist to project or reconstruct counterfactually what would have been achieved if an ideal speech situation had been in place. That is, the criterion for claiming that generalizable interests have been suppressed is a view of what the consensus would have looked like if certain generalizable interests had not been suppressed. The criterion is then a view of what shape the consensus would assume if certain interests had been given their voice. But this moment of projection is a prejudging, a pre-dicting or saying beforehand that short-circuits the actual and contingent, though supposedly
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rational, discourse whose outcome and only whose outcome is to issue in legitimate norms (norms expressing generalizable interests). This seems to render the practitioner of ideology critique exempt from the requirement of being guided by discursively and conversationally achieved views about what such a consensus would look like in a given situation. As a consequence, his/her view would, at least provisionally, define the human in such a way that it would be immune, or enjoy a moment of immunity, from the implications of the non-aprioristic character of the discourse situation. This monological, as opposed to dialogical, moment could not but have the effect of slighting particularity claims that our critic could not foresee and of prejudging the way in which foreseeable particularity claims would be incorporated into or rejected from a consensus over generalizable interests. Thus, one of the laudable features of the conception of Habermas critical theory its non-aprioristic character is undermined by its methodological implications. Habermas claims that the social scientist who applies the model of suppressed generalizable interests in his/her hypothetical reconstruction is only effecting a methodological setting aside of false consciousness and not a neutralization of particularity.24 But how is the theorist to distinguish a false consciousness from another possibility, namely, from a consciousness that is informed by a consensus shaped in response to a particularity claim that the theorist could not foresee, or which is responsive in a way that the theorist could not foresee to a particularity claim that he/she could foresee? That is, what prevents anything that falls outside the ambit of the theorists hermeneutic anticipation (including that which really is a consensus on generalizable interests) from being pre-judged as false? The theory suggests that such prejudice is out of place, but again the methodology seems to subvert that good intention. Habermas might respond to the posing of this dilemma with the caveat that the application of the model of suppressed generalizable interests is highly problematic in the case of populations and societies which are not (partially? wholly?) post-conventional in orientation.25 But, depending on how this is to be interpreted, this response threatens to reduce the domain of the applicability of the model rather drastically, almost to nought, for we all have some existential, conventional commitment or other. If it does not so reduce the domain of applicability that it does not even apply to the self-understanding of women, minorities and to the non-universalistic aspects of the self-understanding of European males, then it would seem that diversity and particularity get washed out. But, at this juncture, it might quite naturally be objected further that what I have called the monological moment of ideology critique arguably corresponds to what in the philosophy of science is called the context of hypothesis generation and that, therefore, I have focused upon only one part of the story. There remains the context of testing, and paying attention to it might serve to mitigate the charge of a priorism lodged against Habermas. In the following discussion, I shall set aside recent attacks on the generation/testing distinction in order to see what mileage Habermas might be able to get out of such a distinction. Indeed, Habermas himself admits to the merely hypothetical
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character of the reconstruction of generalizable interests.26 He acknowledges the complementary context of testing through suggesting that indirect confirmation of the hypothetical reconstructions can be obtained through an appeal to observable conflicts.27 Now, it must be kept in mind that I am principally concerned with the exclusion of potentially generalizable particularity claims on the part of the critical social theorist (rather than on the part of a given social system). My question to the theorist concerning his/her cognitive state is, therefore: What guarantee is there that a given particularity claim has not been overlooked?, i.e., How does the theorist know when we are confronted with a rational consensus over generalizable interests? (rather than the question more typically put to a critical theorist, namely: What is your warrant for claiming that this social system is not structured by norms that reflect a rational consensus over generalizable interests?). Accordingly, I want to focus presently upon situations in which observable conflict is not present, situations of perhaps quiet capitulation and self-denial. Situations of conflict can indeed provide support for hypotheses to the effect that interests have been suppressed. Granting this, there are, however, two quick qualifications that I wish to assert without making much of them here. First, an observable conflict can indeed suggest to the social scientist that an interest has been suppressed, but such a discrepant situation will not of itself indicate whether or not the suppressed interest is generalizable. However, with the admonition that interests are generalizable until proven particular, such a conflict would be prima facie evidence of a suppression of generalizable interests. Secondly, even though empirical indicators such as observable conflicts may suggest that generalizable interests have been suppressed, they cannot uniquely determine what those interests are. The ascription of generalizable interests that serves to explain observable conflict is underdetermined by the data provided by empirical indicators. Such hypothetical ascriptions will have at best a certain heuristic power. This point is a specification of the general one that, like textual interpretations and scientific theories, hypothetical reconstructions are underdetermined, that is, are not uniquely implied, by the relevant data. Perhaps other competing claims about what normative content would reflect a rational consensus over generalizable interests and would thereby facilitate an explanatory account of existing conflict situations would do as well as that proffered by the critical social theorist. I have argued elsewhere that there is an ineradicable role that the hermeneutic situation of the theorist plays here in selecting from among competing reconstructions when he or she lacks empirical criteria of distinction.28 I shall say more below about the significance of the theorists hermeneutic situation, insofar as it limits his/her horizons of expectation, in shaping his/her assessment of a putatively rational consensus over sharable interests. What, then, about situations where the appeal to observable conflict cannot be made? Let me quote Habermas here, for he makes explicit just the assumption that I want to challenge in this connection:
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I make the methodological assumption that it is meaningful and possible to reconstruct (even for the normal case of norms recognized without conflict) the hidden interest positions of involved individuals or groups by counterfactually imagining the limit case of a conflict between the involved parties in which they would be forced to consciously perceive their interests and strategically assert them, instead of satisfying basic interests simply by actualizing institutional values as is normally the case.29 (Italics mine) Questions of the following sort immediately suggest themselves to us. Are the party lines separating and distinguishing the involved parties self-announcing? That is, is the determination of the relevant conflict groups simply a matter for direct observation? Habermas writes as if such a determination is not problematic and open to contention. But it will often be an open question in a given case just what the relevant criteria are for the individuation of conflict groups. Are they to be criteria of gender, race, ethnic origin, class? I would suggest that the theorists hermeneutic anticipation, where that anticipation is partially informed by certain theories about relevant conflict groups, e.g., Marxism,30 plays an ineliminable but suspect role here. The blind spots that form the penumbra of the theorists hermeneutically guided insight are the regions where unsuspected potential parties to conflict reside. This dialectic of blindness and insight implies that even in the absence of observable conflict . there may be suppressed generalizable interests, articulateable as particularity claims, that fall outside the purview of the critical social scientist. And if he/she does not even expect or suspect certain kinds of potentially generalizable interest claims, then the appeal to the confirming power of observable conflicts will be of no avail, for there would be no counterfactually entertained ascribed interest positions to connect with predictions about conflict motivations.31 And so, though the idea of practical discourse does not imply that claims of particularity must necessarily run aground, the methodology of social criticism proposed by Habermas seems to be informed by a monological moment against which particularity might not fare so well.
NOTES 1 See Habermas: Critical Debates, ed. by John B. Thompson and David Held (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1982), especially Thomas McCarthys Rationality and Relativism: Habermass Overcoming of Hermeneutics. I address these issues also in my Habermas and Rationality: A Reply to Ingram, presented at the American Philosophical Association, December 1983 and in my forthcoming Marcuse, Time and Technique: Concerning the Rational Foundations of Critical Theory, The Philosophical Forum 17 (1986). See, for example, Agnes Heller, Habermas and Marxism, in Habermas: Critical Debates, pp. 21-41. J. Habermas, Towards a Theory of Communicative Competence, in Recent Sociology, ed. by Hans Peter Dreitzel, no. 2 (New York: Macmilian, 1970), p. 143. T.A. McCarthy, A Theory of Communicative Competence, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 3 (1973), p. 144. J. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans. by Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), p. 110. Ibid., pp. 113-14.
2 3 4 5 6
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7 Ibid., p. 108. 8 J. Habermas,A Reply to My Critics, in Habermas: Critical Debates, p. 257. 9 Habermas, A Postscript to Knowledge and Human Interests, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 3 (1973), p. 177. 10 Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, p. 108. 11 See, for instance, Seyla Benhabib, The Methodological Illusions of Modern Political Theory: The Case of Rawls and Habermas, Neue Hefte fr Philosophie (Spring 1982), no. 21, pp. 71-74, for a perspicacious elaboration of this point of view. 12 Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, p. 112. 13 This brief account is of course somewhat complicated by what can roughly be called social and psychological factors, though, to be sure, they too have epistemological consequences. Adherents of a given paradigm or disciplinary matrix are more likely to treat phenomena as anomalies than are its critics. 14 See Habermas, A Reply to My Critics, p. 258. 15 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982). 16 See Seyla Benhabib, Communicative Ethics and Moral Autonomy, paper presented at 79th annual meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, December 1982. 17 This would be an example of what David Schweickart may have had in mind when he . suggests that certain conceptual frameworks which have arisen not just accidentally from the womens movement should, with good reason, be accepted by everyone (Feminism, Marxism, Habermas and Truth, unpublished manuscript, p. 13). This would render Gilligans work more compatible with the notions of practical discourse and of the ideal speech situation than, perhaps, with Habermas strategies to provide normative foundations for his critical theory (see McCarthys Rationality and Relativism and my Marcuse, Time and Technique). After completing this essay, it was brought to my attention that Benhabib is also now articulating a view similar to the one I am urging here, namely, that a Habermasian communicative ethic provides a suitable framework for challenging, in the light of particular need interpretations, an exclusive orientation to the language of rights and duties, The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Feminist Theory, Praxis International, Vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 416-17. However, insofar as through his notion of communicative ethics Habermas makes claims about how practical disputes ought to be adjudicated, he does hold substantive views about the nature of moral reasoning. Communicative ethics implies that the good is determined in a distortion-free dialogue oriented towards the idea of generalizable interests. This notion is arguably opposed to other conceivable ways of deciding or adjudicating moral disputes. Given this angle of vision, one might say that Habermas engages in what can, in general, be termed an Enlightenment discourse and that such discourse assumes a hegemonic status vis vis competing voices (see Jean-Franois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984]). 18 Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 226-27. 19 Of course, there are often political and strategic reasons for adapting the particularist position given certain social, economic and/or political contexts. One thinks, for example, of affirmative action policies in the U.S. Such socially expedient phenomena are not reactions to universalist moves in the dimension of what can be referred to generally as philosophical anthropology. What is being alluded to here is a distinction between, say, racial designations as significant descriptive categories for referring to or in determining targets of oppression and of invidious discrimination, on the one hand, and racial and
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cultural distinctions as constitutive elements in ones own self-understanding, on the other. Here I am principally concerned with the latter. 20 See Lucius Outlaw, Philosophy in Africa and the African Diaspora: Contemporary African Philosophy, paper presented at 6th National Council for Black Studies Conference, 1982, p. 6. 21 Habermas, A Reply to My Critics, p. 255. 22 McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jrgen Habermas, (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1978), p. 332. 23 Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, p. 113. 24 Habermas, A Reply to My Critics, p. 255. 25 Ibid., p. 313. 26 Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, p. 114. 27 Ibid. 28 Habermas and Rationality: A Reply to Ingram and Marcuse, Time and Technique. 29 Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, p. 114. 30 See Lucius Outlaws, Race and Class in the Theory and Practice of Emancipatory Social Transformation, in Philosophy Bom of Struggle, ed. by Leonard Harris (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1983) pp. 117-129. See also Steven Lukess Of Gods and Demons in Habermas: Critical Debates, p. 140. 31 See Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, p. 114.

3.5 - Simpson, Lorenzo C. - On Habermas and Particularity. Is There Room For Race and Gender On The Glassy Plains of Ideal Discourse¿ (EN)

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