Marx

The Dialectician

Regardless of which meaning is attributed to the final art of the trivium, Ju?rgen Habermas is by all accounts a dialectician. A philosopher working in social, political, and legal theory, he is a master of the ‘art of critical examination into the truth of an opinion’ [1]. To begin to assess Habermas conception of creativity and human nature, a detour via his programme of theories must be made. Underlying his social, political, and ethical theories is a highly structured theory of discourse, which starts by extending the theory of meaning from the ‘propositional’ to the ‘pragmatic’. Its aim is to encompass all effects of language, beyond the initial condition of simple truth or falsehood. Pragmatic meaning is not truth, but consensus around a Validity Claim. In a tripartite system of communication (as per Bu?hler) the three perspectives of the Speaker, the Hearer, and the Knowledge, have specific functions. A validity claim is expressed by the speaker to the hearer, in cognitive relation to knowledge. And whenever a validity claim is appealed by a hearer, cognitive of knowledge, and to the speaker, a situation of discourse has arisen. Discourse, in other words, is the expression and subsequent appeal of a validity claim, both rooted cognitively to knowledge; it is a rejected validity claim. A sincere speech act, says Habermas, makes one of three validity claims with corresponding types of discourse: truth-theoretical; moral-rightness; and aesthetic-truthfulness:

‘When employing normative utterances in everyday life, we raise claims to validity that we are prepared to defend against criticism [...] But if normative sentences do not admit of truth in the narrow sense of the word “true”, [...] we will have to formulate the task of explaining [...] the meaning of “normative rightness” in such a way that we are not tempted to assimilate the one type of sentence to the other. We will have to proceed on a weaker assumption, namely, that normative claims to validity are analogous to truth claims.’ [2]

Having laid a foundation of a pragmatic theory of meaning, built on rationally motivated consensus, through discourse, arising from validity claims, Habermas proceeds by reducing rationality into two forms. Reminiscent of Weber’s distinction between value-oriented (wertrational) and goal-oriented (zweckrational) actions, where ends and means take precedence, respectively, Habermas arranges the two chronologically. Society consists of the Lifeworld of communicative action (validity claims), which is a precursor to instrumental action (calculative aims) [3], which is embodied in the System. The Lifeworld is the medium through which the cultural reproduction of society is secured. The System provides for the material reproduction of society, and consists of two sub-systems: money and power, which Habermas coins ‘steering-media’.

The place of power

The difference between Habermas’s and Foucault’s conceptions of power is made apparent by the hierarchical definition of their theories. Whilst Foucault deploys power on all scales and as an omnipresence, Habermas confines it to the second-tier of formative effects in society. Moreover, Habermas binds his theory to time to align it with twentieth century society, thus making it (and alluding to Einstein) ‘special’ rather than ‘general’. Perhaps the most successful consolidation of the hypotheses of Foucault and Habermas is Anthony Giddens’ Theory of Structuration. It is also a critique of Foucault’s fetishization of power, and Habermas reliance on rationality, void of a measure of chance. By bringing temporality into the social space, Giddens argues that power is generated ‘in and through the reproduction of structures of domination’[4]. And further, that these structures comprise the domains of, and dominions over, the material world (allocative resources) and the social world (authoritative resources). Thus, the fluctuating Storage Capacity of the two types of resources embeds time in social systems. ‘Power [...] is generated by the intersection of authoritative and allocative resources: the first is expanded through the extension of social control of time-space, the second through control of nature’ [5]. Consequently, the significance of each resource depends as much on the type of society, as the form of society depends on the type of resource that is of highest value.

Two principles

Returning to Habermas’s ideas, and ending an expansive detour, the creativity he allows for in human nature can be derived from the crystallization of his discourse theory into his two principles of discourse (D) and morality (U). The discourse principle is the weaker of the two and states that: ‘Just those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree as participants in rational discourse,’ where ‘action norms’ are ‘temporally, socially, and substantively generalized behavioural expectations’ [6]. In other words, within this principle is embodied Habermas procedure for discourse; a validity claim depends on reaching a consensuses, or in this negative form, the absence of consensus renders void any claim to validity of a norm. The stronger principle deals with the justification of moral norms, where morality is taken to be an authority beyond social boundaries, and provides as such a framework for moral argument. As both these principles have evolved throughout Habermas’s career, a late incarnation is chosen, an it states: ‘A norm is valid when the foreseeable consequences and side effects of its general observance for the interests and value-orientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion’ [7]. In contrast to the discourse principle, which can only deny norms, the moral principle can also positively identify norms. Being a second-order principle, it is useful, yet not entirely accurate, to picture only norms surviving the discourse principle being put to the test of the moral, and universalizing, principle. Yet more succinctly, and quoting Thomas McCarthy, Habermas explains the difference between the two principles in that ‘the emphasis shifts from what each can will without contradiction to be a general law, to what all can will in agreement to be a universal norm’ (my italics) [8]. Thus, in relation to creativity, it is the productivity of the moral principle (U) that correlate to the aspects of human nature; only ‘what all can will’ can be said to denote what we are. The near-redundancy of this principle, as very few norms (and possibly none) are generated from it, or found to withstand it, is not a weakness, according to Habermas; it is, rather, strength, affirming the reality of modernity. Finally, Habermas absolves the inability of individuals to create the ideal society; the colonization of the Lifeworld by the System results in anomie, disintegration, alienation, demoralization, and social instability, which leaves the social agent unable to navigate of a ‘pre-established, bewilderingly complex patterns of instrumental reasoning’ [9].

Conclusion

The existing individual, then, arriving in the trivium, is intersected by three conflicting, yet complimentary, notions of who she, or he, is. ‘Human nature’, says Universal Grammar, ‘is your instinct for language; out of nearly nothing you can create nearly anything. You may not necessarily have the capacity to build a better society, but you are obliged to try. This is speech: the continuous reconstruction of existing structures’. ‘But how can you know yourself?’ interjects Universal Power. ‘Trust not in any form of justice; rely rather on recognising the changes in, and transformation of, justice. Understand how your creativity is boundless within certain bounds; and forget human nature.’ ‘That is irresponsible’, says Universal Morality, ‘you must temper yourself! A moral standpoint exists, and it is the creativity of your critique that can elucidate such norms; they are in fact implicitly contained in your practices, and if anything is human nature, that is it.’

For all the appeal of each theory on its own terms, and in isolation, it is the discourse between them that is most illuminating. The biological safe house of Chomsky is challenged by Foucault’s suspicion of the speaking subject; and Foucault’s lack of normative features is condemned by Habermas with his demand for a critique of power. Even though the question of creativity and human nature is not likely to be resolved any time soon, one of its more recent effects may have to be. For some years now the predominant language of the world has been of binary form, delivered electronically; the number of global transactions per day far out-weighs the total of verbal (human) communication. Intrinsically tied to our capacity for technology, self-learning is not yet an aspect of it, and might perhaps never become one. Nevertheless, the emergence of electronic information sharing networks, and their phenomenal growth, has already demonstrated their magnificent ability to reconfigure the distribution of power on a global scale. New virtual social communities are forming (and fading) with a ferocious and ever-growing speed of migration and magnitude of population. As this virtual existence affects, and is closely aligned to, conventional reality, our task becomes one of identifying these pulsating social beacons and to understand the patterns of their modification, in order to reconstruct a matrix of transformation. And were a situation of discourse ever to arise beyond our immediate control, we would have to answer whether technology have the ability to criticise itself?

Endnotes

1. Oxford English Dictionary entry for ‘dialectics’, available online at http://dictionary.oed.com
2. William Outhwaite (ed), The Habermas Reader, Polity Press, 1996, p. 180.
3. The distinction Habermas makes is between communicative action, on the one hand, and instrumental
   and strategic action, on the other. To simplify this distinction instrumental action is taken to include
   strategic action.
4. Anthony Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Macmillan Press, 1995, p. 4.
5. Ibid., p. 105.
6. William Outhwaite (ed), The Habermas Reader, Polity Press, 1996, p. 204.
7. Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff (eds), The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, MIT
   Press, 1998, p. 42.
   
8. William Outhwaite (ed), The Habermas Reader, Polity Press, 1996, p. 186.
   
9. James Gordon Finlayson, Habermas: A Very Short Introduction, Macmillan Press, 1995, p. 58.

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