PREMIUM-Ep. 391: Habermas Defends Modernity (Part Three)

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1:16It would be peculiar if the central direction that modernity is guilty of creating that then causes nihilism would be the faith and reason one, right? That is not what modern political theorists who are worrying about is a focus on liberty, modernity, working, right? Faith is no longer in the, maybe there's a secular equivalent of faith, but certainly the peculiar thing that Hegel wanted to do, have us all have a national civic religion

1:48or something like that, that we all live through in our heart and souls cannot be what Habermas is shooting for.

Authority and Enlightenment

1:55I would tend to formulate the problem and the issue in the Enlightenment, while it may be sort of manifest in an institutional sort of split between secular and theological or faith versus reason, is it ends up really being a question of authority and who has, where does that authority for making decisions both about what is true and how we decide that and what, who and where authority rests for deciding what we do

2:27and what's allowed to be done. So laws and relations between individuals and communities, and it comes down to that question of authority. Breaking that split in terms of art, religion, and science is an interesting one because I haven't analyzed it, but Habermas, I think, would say there's something about the unity of that and that Hegel's appealing to in ancient Greek culture, that there were sort of simultaneous authority between religion, art, and philosophy.

2:58Even if there was tension there, there was something that was held together. Hegel's appealing for a new authority, like we can figure out through the absolute what of the authority we ought to be appealing to so that we can ground all of those aspects of how we interact with each other and how we interact with the world. And that fails because, in the end, it needs a self-grounding. We need to have something from the inside that provides the mechanic

3:29for how we determine authority. And that's, you see that opened up in the quote-unquote postmodern criticisms by someone like Foucault or others like Aderno, where you're formulating the problem in modernity as well. It's all just about power. And that's, again, it's just seizing on where the question of authority is or where the seat of authority is. So certainly Foucault or someone arguing against the Enlightenment wants to reduce claims of justice

3:59and things to power. Subjectivity would put it all in the hands of the individual to be the judge, right? Nobody, you can't tell me what to say. Wait, I don't, I don't understand that. The subjectivity puts it in possession, Kant puts it in possession of each individual. What's... Yes, that is Habermas' whole view of subjectivity is that, that is what is missing. Habermas is looking to put the social back, which Dylan was just characterizing as put the power in the social, right? Yes, but the Kantian position

4:31is not that everyone has the freedom to choose for themselves when it comes to moral norms. Yeah, he has his own universality. Reason is going to issue the same norms for everyone. Yes. It's not subjective in the existential sense of that there is no, nothing to appeal to. But the thing that we appeal to is a vision that each of us gets. And if there is a disagreement, then it's a little unclear what to do, right? Sometimes you can say, obviously, you're not, you know, Kant is going to point

5:03at some guidelines for what reason, what objectivity in the realm of any kind of judgment, but moral judgment is what we're focused on here. But if there are two completely rational agents that think they are applying the principles or have developed, according to reason, slightly different principles or are applying them in a different way, then there's no clear way to judge between them, which is what makes somebody like Sartre say categorical imperative is not actually useful. You think you're appealing

5:33to an objective standard, but it ends up being subjective anyway. Okay. I just want to make clear to listeners, like Habermas is considered to be a neo-Kantian, right? In a way, this is, his inner subjectivity is actually more of an attempt to return to Kant. So the appeal to communicative reason, I think, is more of a Kantian appeal than some attempt to refute it or something like that. It does feel like a neo-Kantian appeal that's along the line of someone like Korsgaard. Yeah. Where you're refining reason,

6:05there's a kind of a critically different disposition with respect to the universal in someone like Habermas and Korsgaard, it seems to me, that it's not doing the same work that it's doing for Kant. And so you have reason rather than having something that, you know, is effectively outside of it anchored to the universal, it's being self-grounded. And the mode of that self-grounding is actually intersubjectivity. It's the interaction between individual human beings to figure out what that is. Well, does that mean it's not,

6:35that rationality is not self-grounded? I guess I'm unclear. According to what I'm calling subjectivity, which is, I think, what Habermas is calling it, then each individual can, there are certain things that are clear and distinct, say. So a clear and distinct contradiction. So the norms of reason are self-grounding in that way, that they're just, any individual can look at it and make the right choice. So we are going to agree because they're self-grounding norms. But if we find,

7:06if we have some sort of radical critique and say, well, either the principle of non-contradiction is relative, which is a very hard, I don't think we need to make that, or at least that, well, when you get to more sophisticated forms of supposedly equally objective reasoning, you get vast differences between developed liberal-minded societies or something like that. So then you end up saying, well, what you thought was self-grounded norms of rationalities, in fact, infected by, insert your hermeneutic of suspicion here.

7:37You know, I take Habermas' point to be something like, we've seen this kind of thing before, that there's not going to be anything abstract, even if it is grounded in reason, that it's going to, there are principles we can appeal to, but there's not going to be anything that just says, the principle itself doesn't say, this is right, this is wrong, like in any given circumstance. Obviously, nobody thinks that, but it becomes this exercise of, there has to be a subjective element of applying reason

8:08to the principle in the context or situation that you're in from the perspective of the individual subject to apply the principle and to interpret it and to make a judgment in, you know, kind of traditional enlightenment thought. If you stick with this notion that, you know, subjectivity somehow poisons the objectivity of the rational principle or something like that, or it becomes a question of judgment and not of something else, then that's where

8:38things get squeaky. Like, that's where Adorno and Horkheimer fall down because they're still stuck in this idea that subjectivity is somehow inherently undermines the project of enlightenment rationality. I think what Habermas is saying is it doesn't. It doesn't undermine it because, of course, we have to use judgment. What undermines it is the idea that there's only one subject making the call and that there's absolutely nothing wrong with multiple subjects or just even two subjects

9:09coming together. And if there's consensus, then we're all good. It's where there's not consensus that we have an issue. And, of course, there are a lot of qualifiers around that. But that's how I see it. Consensus, of course, can be a tyrannical will to which Habermas thinks we have a court of appeal according to communicative rationality. But, yeah, it gets, as Seth was saying, complicated. I mean, I know from our other reading we kind of have some idea what that court of appeal was. I can see why he's considered a neo-Kantian

9:41as opposed to, right, what I was trying to when Dylan had said, well, it's a matter of who has the authority, who has the power. Is it the individual subjectivity or is it the group? I thought that's what you were saying and I was going to say, oh, that can't be what he means because, obviously, a tyrannical group doesn't get to decide what justice is or whatnot. Yeah, so there has to be something within group dynamics that kind of, like, purse, like, well, if these people in good faith kept arguing forever, then they would point at,

10:12you know, this is the built-in transcendence to a basically imminent system, that there are real individuals having a conversation and they could all be wrong, but they're open to suggestion and correction and, you know, maybe this comes with a sort of the truth will out eventually kind of idea. Optimism. If that sounds like the kind of thing that you want to hear more about, then please go to partiallyexaminedlife.com slash support. Thanks for listening.

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