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The Case of Castoriadis v. HabermasPublished byMark Murphyon November 30, 2011 |Leave a response

(c) Frederik Argazzi

The content ofDirty Looks is strongly influenced by the linguistic

orintersubjectiveturn taken byJrgen Habermas, a key figure in

continental philosophy and in particular critical theory. Habermas made

the move away from the philosophy of consciousness in order to build a

theory of communicative rationality, a theory he hoped could provide a

sound basis for identifying the worst effects of capitalist modernisation.This turn was taken for a number of specific reasons (reasons that became

explicit in hisTheory of communicative action), not least his efforts to

overcome the aporias at the heart of previousFrankfurt schoolcritiques of

capitalism, and his desire to transcend the limitations of Weberian action

theoretic understandings of modernisation and its discontents.This turn

allowed Habermas to deliver a diagnosis of the times i.e., that

capitalism ushered in a one-sided rationality into everyday life, an

instrumental rationality that was obsessed with efficiency, outcomes and

performance. He was able to provide this critique because, thanks to his

shift towards intersubjectivity, he could evidence how this one-sided

rationality undermined a different form of rationality, namely

communicative rationality, which was essential to everyday life but not

reducible to means-ends thinking without causing serious damage.One

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does not have to be a modernist to appreciate the ingenuity deployed to

build this theoretical framework. But like all designers of complex

theoretical frameworks, Habermas was constantly defending his work

against that which, directly or indirectly, could undermine the core

elements of his theory. One of these threats became in the form

ofCornelius Castoriadis(pictured), a Greek philosopher and

psychoanalyst, and most famous for his bookThe imaginary institution

of society. Fellow travellers in many ways (with shared roots in Freud and

Marx), Habermas nevertheless took umbrage with Castoriadis notion of

the monadic core of the psyche, a notion that posited an interior world

separate and prior to intersubectivity. Given that the linguistic turn

depended on the denial of a pre-linguistic unconscious, it is logical thatHabermas would feel duty bound to dismiss Castoriadis in this way.

While this dismissal might be logical in the context of a theory of

communicative action, it might be the case that Habermas was too quick

to gloss over interiority and the unconscious in this manner. Examined

more closely, Habermas (and Axel Honneth likewise) could be said to

suffer from the same problem that he so readily attached to Castoriadis

namely that he cannot provide for the mediation between individualand society. Joel Westbrook (inHabermas and the unfinished project of

modernity) provides a concise summary of the problem:

Habermas himself does not provide a genuine account of the mediation

of individual and society, because he solves the problem, at least in

principle, in advance through the pre-established harmony between an

already linguistic unconscious and an intersubjective social world.

Habermas is correct in arguing that language functions as a kind of

transformer which draws the individual into the intersubjective social

world. But it does not do so without a residuum of private in-itselfness

without which we would all be pre-coordinated clones and it is this

residuum that does not adequately appear in Habermass account.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Castoriadishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Castoriadishttp://www.amazon.com/Imaginary-Institution-Society-Creativity-Social-historical/dp/0745619509%3FSubscriptionId%3D0G81C5DAZ03ZR9WH9X82%26tag%3Dzemanta-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0745619509http://www.amazon.com/Imaginary-Institution-Society-Creativity-Social-historical/dp/0745619509%3FSubscriptionId%3D0G81C5DAZ03ZR9WH9X82%26tag%3Dzemanta-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0745619509http://www.amazon.com/Imaginary-Institution-Society-Creativity-Social-historical/dp/0745619509%3FSubscriptionId%3D0G81C5DAZ03ZR9WH9X82%26tag%3Dzemanta-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0745619509http://www.amazon.com/Imaginary-Institution-Society-Creativity-Social-historical/dp/0745619509%3FSubscriptionId%3D0G81C5DAZ03ZR9WH9X82%26tag%3Dzemanta-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0745619509http://www.amazon.com/Habermas-Unfinished-Project-Modernity-Philosophical/dp/0262540800/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322694880&sr=1-1http://www.amazon.com/Habermas-Unfinished-Project-Modernity-Philosophical/dp/0262540800/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322694880&sr=1-1http://www.amazon.com/Habermas-Unfinished-Project-Modernity-Philosophical/dp/0262540800/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322694880&sr=1-1http://www.amazon.com/Habermas-Unfinished-Project-Modernity-Philosophical/dp/0262540800/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322694880&sr=1-1http://www.amazon.com/Habermas-Unfinished-Project-Modernity-Philosophical/dp/0262540800/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322694880&sr=1-1http://www.amazon.com/Imaginary-Institution-Society-Creativity-Social-historical/dp/0745619509%3FSubscriptionId%3D0G81C5DAZ03ZR9WH9X82%26tag%3Dzemanta-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0745619509http://www.amazon.com/Imaginary-Institution-Society-Creativity-Social-historical/dp/0745619509%3FSubscriptionId%3D0G81C5DAZ03ZR9WH9X82%26tag%3Dzemanta-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0745619509http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Castoriadis

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The recent discussion of the nature ofregretand its place in the relational

world illustrated how the relational, while pervasive and significant, does

not necessarily reach into every nook and cranny of the psyche (although

the denial of regret is decidedly relational). A theory that posits the

individual as always and forever caught in a relational whirlwind with no

place to hide, may be just as guilty of the kind of aporetic thinking

Habermas so derided in theDialectic of enlightenment. His easy dismissal

of the monadic core means that his intersubjective theory glossed over the

question of mediation an oversight that in hindsight was an opportunity

missed. Exploring, for example, how regret is connected and mediated via

the power of others would help not only to reflect on the nature of regret,

but also to understand where thepower of this relational world comesfrom in the first place.

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