Notes on the Philosophical Discourse of Modernity

Notes on The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Habermas

Introduction by Thomas McCarthy-The young Hegelians, in accepting Hegelianism but distancing themselves from Hegel’s ideal of the absolute, were the first group to mark the downfall of reason-the “overwhelming impurity” of reason-reason is unavoidably tangled with history and tradition, society and power, practice and interest, body and desire-this downfall inspired a few crucial thinkers at the turn of the century: Nietzsche’s heroic proclamation of the end of philosophy, Wittgenstein’s therapeutic farewell, Heidegger’s dramatic overcoming

-this turn in thought leads to French poststructuralism, Habermas’ main target in these lectures-Heidegger and Nietzsche set the agenda for these French thinkers-we must look at the whole sweep, starting from Hegel, to understand where their radical critique of reason went wrong-the French poststructuralists offer a pure negation of reason, but we need a “determinate negation”-not just an opposition toward traditional reason, but a way of opposing a specific alternative to traditional reason-for Habermas, we should identify traditional reason as subject-centered reason, and communicative reason should be the specific alternative-the “discourse of modernity” is subject-centered reason, and the French thinkers are still under its influence and thus can’t escape the enlightenment (?)

-the conception of “man” and reason that begins with the enlightenment is the core of western humanism, and its flaws and influence account for western humanism’s long “complicity with terror”-critics or rationality see their project as a prelude to the criticism of the bankrupt western culture that is based on it

-the raise a set of oppositions against the tenets of the enlightenment-necessity <– contingency-universality <– irreducible plurality of incommensurable lifeworlds and forms of life, the local character of truth-a priori <– empirical-certainty <– fallibility-unity <– heterogeneity-homogeneity <– fragmentart-slef-evident givenness (“presence”) <- universal mediation by a differential system of signs (Saussure)-the unconditioned <– a universal rejection of ultimate foundations in any form

-Interwoven with this is a critique of the traditional subject: atomistic, autonomous, disengaged, disembodied, potentially and ideally transparent

two lines of influence run out from Nietzsche: one goes the Heidegger to Derrida, the other from Bataille to Foucault

-Heidegger’s strand-reality is mediated by pre-given understanding based on our lifeworld-language represents worldview (not a “truthful” mapping of world), using language is a world-making exercise-argument, and philosophical argument in particular, sees itself as logical, but it is irrecoverably aesthetic, rhetorical, and metaphorical-philosophy is a form of literature-truth isn’t a viable ideal here, since language isn’t a mirror of the world but a world-making device-Habermas’ main problem with these thinkers is that they ignore the fact that the way we model the world runs into actual practical issues-we can’t just make our worldview in whatever way we want, because practice puts constraints on us and shapes our worldview-truth and reason CAN be talked about in discourse, there is something going on in language more than just play-“social practice submits the background of the lifeworld to an ‘ongoing test’ across the entire spectrum of validity claims”-in derrida and his followers, especially, language’s capacity to solve problems disappears into its world-creating capacity-this is what is at stake in Derrida trying to argue that philosophy is not distinguishable from literature-Habermas argues instead that there is a continuum from philosophy ot literature, both sides having clear functions

-Bataille to Foucalt’s strand-the guiding strand is Nietzsche’s theory of power-modern reason is nothing more than a perverted and disguised will to power-for Foucault, knowledge and truth have normalizing and disciplinary effects-Foucault is interested in how we constitute ourselves as subjects and objects of knowledge, mainly through the human sciences-essentially functionalist account of truth-Habermas’ fight with this strand is the perforative self-contradiction inherent in criticizing reason wit hreason-accuses Foucalt of “cryptonormativity” – he argues against truth and reason, but his motivation for uncovering these falsities is ostensibly to substitute these manipulative discourses for more truthful ones

-ultimately habermas accepts these critiques of the enlightenment-he agrees that the subject-centered account of rationality is exhausted

-but rather than abandoning reason and enlightenment, he believes that the only cure is more enlightenment

Preface

I Modernity’s consciousness of Time and its need for self-reassurance

II Hegel’s concept of modernity

Excursus on Schiller’s “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man”

III Three perspecties: Left Hegelians, Right Hegelians, and Nietzsche

Excursus on the obsolescence of the production paradigm

IV The entry into postmodernity: Nietzsche as turning point

V The entwinement of myth and enlightenment: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno

VI The undermining of western rationalism through the critique of metaphysics: Martin Heidegger

VII Beyond a temporalized philosophy of origins: Jacques Derrida’s critique of Phonocentrism

Excursus on leveling the genre distinction between philosophy and literature

VIII Between eroticism and general economics: Georges Bataille

IX The critique of reason as an unmasking of the human sciences

X Some questions concerning the theory of power: Foucault again

XI An alternative way out of the philosophy of the subject: Communicative versus subject-centered reason

Excursus on Cornelius Castoriadus: the imaginary institution

XII The normative content of modernity

Excursus on Luhmann’s appropriation of the philosophy o fthe subject though systems theory