NOTES

 

NOTES TO INTRODUCTION

          1. The aim of the present study to develop the complementary dimen­sions between the philoso­phies of Habermas and Aquinas was formulated only after completing a doctoral dissertation on Habermas, A Critical Inquiry into Habermas's Philosophy of Eman­cipation: To­ward an Ontolo­gy of the Human Person (Washington, D.C.: The American Uni­versity, 1990). The dissertation concentrated on devel­oping the view that Haber­mas's communicative model provided a novel entry into a non-traditional con­ception of metaphysics as it specifi­cally related toward the develop­ment of an ontology proper of the human person, as well as critical parameters for determining the very conception of transcendental ground that such reflection should embrace in light of his com­municative model.

          2. The topic proposed here represents an origi­nal con­tribution to Habermasian scholarship; current­ly there are no studies available that attempt to make explicit the metaphysical themes toward which his phi­los­ophy of emancipation points. Studies mar­ginally relevant to the dis­serta­tion topic consider Habermas's contribution from a predomi­nantly reli­gious versus metaphysical/ontological perspective. Thus Rudolf J. Sie­bert, in The Critical Theory of Religion, The Frankfurt School: From Universal Pragmatics to Political Theology (Berlin: Mouton Pub­lisher, 1985), challenges Habermas's thesis that tra­dition­al mythical and reli­gious worldviews have be­come obsolete. Helmut Peukert, in Science, Action, and Fundamental Theology: Toward a Theology of Communica­tive Action (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986), endeavors to derive concepts from Habermas's communicative theory, understood as a new recon­structive discipline, in order to ground the "rational core" of theol­ogy in terms of a theory of the pragmatics of religious speech.

NOTES TO CHAPTER I

          1. Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Sci­ence, Her­meneutics, and Praxis (Phila­del­phia: University of Penn­sylvania Press, 1983); henceforth Beyond Objectivism and Relativism. For two critical re­views of this work, see Robert Hanna, Review of Meta­physics 38 (Sep­tember 1984): 109-12; and Christopher W. Go­wans, International Philo­sophi­cal Quarterly 25 (June 1985): 207-11; see also Saguiv A. Hadari, Ethics 95 (Oc­tober 1984): 164-65.

          2. Bernstein's choice of words is precise; the dichotomy, he ar­gues, is not between, say, objectivism and subjectivism or between rela­tivism and absolutism given that, in the case of the former, there are subjectiv­ists that are also objec­tivists (e.g. Kant, Husserl) and, in the latter case, the sense of fallibility which characterizes the contem­porary mood stro­ngly mitigates against professing claims to absolute knowledge in any field. Cf. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Rela­tivism, 11-13.

          3. Ibid., 231.

          4. Fred R. Dallmayr, Notre Dame University, ibid., back­cover. In­deed, Bernstein's book, in the words of Hanna, is "an able defense of post-epistemolo­gical philosophy, and presents what seems to be its stron­gest case" (112, see n. 1 above).

          5. See n. 49 below.

          6. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 8. This defi­ni­tion exhibits the four basic claims of objectivism: (1) that there are neutral, overarching con­ceptual schemes; (2) that these schemes are universal insofar as they transcend space and that they are ahistorical in the sense that they transcend time; (3) that such schemes may be articu­lated for the standard philosophical disciplines in­cluding logic, metaphys­ics, epis­temology, and ethics; and (4) that one or more of these schemes are envisioned as a safeguard against the radical skepti­cism of the relati­vists, who the objec­tivists criticize as self-referential­ly and pragmat­ically in­consistent.

          7. Ibid., 9.

          8. Ibid., 16. A related and much neglected issue is the relation­ship between cognition and volition in the "creation" and development of a philosophy. What is at stake is of crucial importance, as Harold A. Durfee elucidates, when com­menting on recent American philoso­phy: "It raises in all seriousness the question as to the relationship of the self to the philosophical position which one main­tains, whereas modern concern with objectivity has seriously neglected any such analysis. The dialogue challenges the major self-interpretation of the discipline since the Greeks and thus calls in question the fundamental proposals of most major clas­sic Western philosophers. It raises the crucial question as to the central­ity of the role of reason in philosoph­ical interpretation, and thereby the place of the irrational in philoso­phy itself, leading to a dialogue between rational­ism and voluntarism. . . . At stake therefore, is a grand dialogue regarding the philosophical self-interpretation of philosophy as a purely rational endeavor" ("Free­dom and Cognition in Recent American Philoso­phy," Tulane Studies in Philosophy 35 [1987]: 43-44). For other studies on this question ac­centuat­ing the voluntaristic point of view over the cognitive, see Dur­fee, Foundational Reflections: Studies in Contemporary Philosophy (Dordrecht: M. Nijhoff, 1987).

          9. Influenced by the later Wittgenstein/Heidegger/Dewey, Rich­ard Rorty articulated this now familiar view in his subtle critique of profes­sional "objectiv­ist" philosophy in Philosophy and the Mirror of Na­ture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). For an excellent critical review of this work, see Rich­ard J. Bernstein's "Philosophy in the Con­versation of Mankind," Review of Metaphysics 33 (1980): 745-76.

          10. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 12-13. This defini­tion exhibits the four basic claims of relativism: (1) that there is no privileged access to unconditional verities; (2) that all conceptual schemes are relative to a given place and time; (3) that there are no metalanguages for critically evaluating and adjudicating competing schemes; and (4) that all conceptual schemes should be challenged as a safeguard against the dogmatism of the objectivists.

          11. Ibid., 18.

          12. Ibid., 19.

          13. The work of the later Wittgenstein exerted notable influence in these developments, particularly his view against the purported pretenses of overarc­hing frameworks. His analysis of language in the Philosophi­cal Investigations--as consisting in a tool, a convention, a social practice, a language game, a form of life which serves the needs of a given lan­guage community--expresses a conception of language that repudiates recommending any one language game as somehow superior to any other: "Language is an instrument. Its con­cepts are instruments" (Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe [New York: Macmillan Pub­lishing Co., 1958], sec. 569). This view of language as a functional apparatus consisting of terms and rules adopted to serve pragmatic or perceived needs mitigates against elevating any one lan­guage game to the status of a meta­langua­ge. Words do not repre­sent symbolic signs for fixed meta­physi­cal essences or epistemological foun­dations or uncondi­tional scien­tific or social verities derived by this or that method; they repre­sent, rath­er, signs whose meanings have been stipulated convention­ally in order to fulfill the aims of a given verbal communi­ty. What is of inter­est here is that Bernstein would appear not to interpret Wittg­enstein as espousing a blatant form of skepticism but rather as a central voice committed to the deconstruction of the Cartesian language game so as to lay the groundwork for greater flexibility and dialogue among the propo­nents of conflict­ing views. The work in speech-act theory of J. L. Aust­in's How to Do Things with Words (Cam­bridge, Mass.: Har­vard Universi­ty Press, 1975), has also con­tributed to the emergence and influence of the dialogical model so central to post-Cartesian thought. It is precisely the nature of the rationality that animates this dialogical openness which Bernstein endeavors to articulate in Beyond Obje­ctivism and Relativism.

          14. Besides the work of Thomas Kuhn that follows below, the move beyond the objectivist/relativist framework of the Cartesian dichot­omy is evidenced in other notable authors in the philosophy of science, viz.: Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anar­chistic Theory of Knowledge (London: NLB, 1975); and Imre Lakatos, "History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions," and "Replies to Critics," both in Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science of the Philosophy of Sci­ence Asso­ciation 1970, eds. Roger C. Buck and Robert S. Cohen, n. 8 (Dord­recht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1971). Karl R. Popper, though harder to place as a result of his objecti­vistic tenden­cies, none­theless recognizes that scien­tific hypotheses and theories should be open to serious criti­cism; see Conjec­tures and Refuta­tions: The Growth of Scien­tific Knowl­edge, 4th ed. rev. (London: Rout­ledge & Kegan Paul, 1972) and "The Rationality of Scien­tific Revo­lu­tions," in Problems of Scientific Revolu­tions, ed. Rom Harré (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). Though never explicitly treat­ed by Bernstein, the work of W. V. O. Quine and Wilfrid Sellars has also contributed to this post-empiricist philosophy of science.

          15. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd. enl. ed. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1970).

          16. In a later work, Kuhn explicitly recognizes the importance of hermeneu­tics: "In my own case, for example, even the term 'herme­neut­ic', . . . was no part of my vocabulary as recently as five years ago. Increasingly, I suspect that anyone who believes that history may have deep philosophical import will have to learn to bridge the long­standing divide between the Continental and English language philo­sophical tradi­tions" (Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientif­ic Tradition and Change [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977], xv; as quoted in Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 31).

          17. Bernstein clarifies the "internal dialectic" that has led to the develop­ment of what is coming to be called the "post-empiricist phi­loso­phy and history of science," a term coined by Mary Hesse in her article, "In Defence of Objec­tivity," reprinted in her "Revolution and Reconstruc­tions in the Philosophy of Science (Brighton, England: Harvester Press, 1980), 167-86. He states, "In the philosophy of the natural sciences, this development has been characterized as having begun with an obsession with the meaning and reference of single terms (logically proper names and ostensive defini­tions), moved to the search for a rigorous criterion for discriminating empirically meaning­ful sentences or proposi­tions, shifted to the evaluation of competing conceptual schemes, and finally turned to the realization that science must be understood as a historically dynam­ic process in which there are conflicting and competing paradigm theories, re­search programs, and research traditions" (Beyond Objec­tivism and Relativism, 171). Three basic tenets of this post-Cartesian philoso­phy of science follow: (1) a move away from proposing rigid "pious generalities" that attempt to state permanent methods of scientific inquiry in favor of examining actual historical practices and standards that have been "hammered out" in the course of scientific inquiry; (2) a move beyond objectivism (the "myth of the given" and relativism (the "myth of the framework") that while recognizing the "self-corrective nature of scientific inquiry" equally recognizes the rationality of the enterprise in the sense that reasons can be advanced to show "why a research program won over its rival"; and (3) a greater sensitivity to  "the role of choice, deliber­ation, con­flicting variable opinions, and the judgmental quality of rationality" in the prac­tice of scientific inquiry. Cf. Beyond Objecti­vism and Relativism, 71-79.

          18. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 23. Kuhn's posi­tion highlights the inadequacy of traditional views concerning the nature of scientific rationality: "As I have said before, . . ., I do not for a moment believe that science is an intrinsically irrational enter­prise. What I have perhaps not made sufficiently clear, however, is that I take that assertion not as a matter of fact, but rather of princi­ple. Scientific behavior, taken as a whole, is the best example we have of rationality. Our view of what is to be rational depends in signifi­cant ways, though of course not exclusively, on what we take to be the essential aspects of scientific behavior. That is not to say that any scientist behaves rational­ly at all times, or even that many behave rationally very much of the time. What it does assert is that, if history or any other empirical disci­pline leads us to believe that the develop­ment of science depends essen­tially on behav­ior that we have previ­ously thought to be irrational, then we should conclude not that sci­ence is irrational but that our notion of rationality needs adjustment here and there" ("Notes on Lakatos," Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science of the Philosophy of Sci­ence Asso­ciation 1970, eds. Roger C. Buck and Robert S. Cohen, n. 8 [Dord­recht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1971], 143-44). See also Kuhn's Essential Tension: Selected Studies in the Scientif­ic Tradition and Change. Yet this is not to say that Kuhn does not recognize the progress of scientific inquiry as a problem-solving enter­prise: "Though science surely grows in depth, it may not grow in breadth as well. If it does so, that breadth is not in the scope of any single specialty alone. Yet despite these and other losses to the individual com­munities the nature of such [scientific] communities provides a virtu­al guarantee that both the list of problems solved by science and the precision of individual problem-solutions will grow and grow. At least, the nature of the communities provides such a guarantee if there is any way at all in which it can be provided" (The Structure of Scientific Revo­lutions, 170).

          19. It is crucial to note here the parallel problem experienced by natu­ral and social philosophers:  Both are attempting to understand, so as to learn from what is initially different, alien, foreign; in the case of the natural scientist, between distinct conceptual schemes, theoretical frame­works, paradigms; and, in the case of the social sci­entist, between dis­tinct forms of life, cultures, societies.

          20. Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science (London: Rout­ledge & Kegan Paul, 1958).

          21. Clifford Geertz states, "In all three societies I have studied inten­sively, Javanese, Balinese, and Moroccan, I have been concerned among other things, with attempting to determine how the people who live there define themselves as persons, what enters into the idea they have (but, as I say, only half-realize they have) of what a self, Java­nese, Balinese or Morrocan style, is. And in each case, I have tried to arrive at this most intimate of notions not by imagining myself as someone else . . . but by searching out and analyzing the symbolic forms--words, images, institu­tions, behaviors--in terms of which . . . people actually represent them­selves to themselves and to one anoth­er" ("From the Nati­ve's Point of View: On the Nature of Anthropolog­ical Understanding" in Interpretive Social Science: A Reader, ed. Rabinow and Sullivan [Berke­ley: Universi­ty of California Press, 1979], 228; see also Geertz's The Interpretation of Culture [New York: Basic Books, 1973]).

          22. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 29.

          23. As Winch concurs, "My aim is not to engage in moraliz­ing, but to suggest that the concept of learning from which is involved in the study of other cultures is closely linked with the concept of wis­dom. We are confronted not just with different techniques, but with the new possi­bilities of good and evil in relation to which men may come to terms with life" ("Understanding a Primitive Society," Ethics and Action [Lon­don: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972], 42; as quoted in Bernstein, Be­yond Objectivism and Relativism, 29).

          24. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. and ed. Gar­rett Barden and John Cumming (New York: Seabury Press, 1975).

          25. For an excellent historical account of hermeneutics, see Rich­ard Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleier­macher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer (Evanston, Ill.: Northwest­ern Universi­ty Press, 1969). Up until the 19th century hermeneutics was limited to the study of literary and sacred texts; Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher expanded the scope of hermeneutics as a mode of rationality appropriate for defending religious thought from the domi­nation of the positivist model. Wilhelm Dilthey in his Critique of Histori­cal Knowledge (Texte zur Kritik der historischen Vernunft [Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Rup­recht, 1983]) ar­gued that hermeneutics provided the proper methodology for the study of the human sciences (Geistewissenschaften) in contradis­tinction to the positivist model of the natural sciences (Naturwi­ssenschaf­ten). In the 20th century, Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), accentuated the impor­tance of hermeneutics for philosophical reflection. Gadamer's Truth and Method may be read as an explic­it attempt to dissolve the Carte­sian dichotomy by articulating the ontologi­cal nature of historic rea­son. Paul Ricoeur in Hermeneutics and the Human Scienc­es, trans. and ed. John B. Thompson (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981) has endeavored to apply hermeneuti­cal understanding partic­ularly to the philosophy of psychology. Jürgen Habermas has been developing a critical hermeneutics of the social sci­ences. Cf. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 107-115. These studies confirm the suspicion that hermeneutics has been largely a Continental phenomena. The relevance of hermeneutical study in Anglo-American circles was brought about largely by Rorty's Philos­ophy and the Mir­ror of Nature; in the last chapter of this work, titled, "From Episte­mology to Hermeneu­tics," he argues for hermeneutics not as a "suc­cessor subject" to episte­mology, but, rather, as "an expression of hope that the cultural space left by the demise of epistemology will not be filled" (315).

          26. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "The Problem of Historical Con­s­cious­ness," Interpretive Social Science: A Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow and William M. Sull­ivan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 129-30. Cf. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 34.

          27. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 91; Bernstein, Beyond Objecti­vism and Relativism, 120.

          28. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 91-99; Bernstein, Beyond Objec­ti­vism and Relativism, 120-23.

          29. Gadamer puts it in these terms: ". . . the form of operation of every dialogue can be described in terms of the concept of the game. It is certainly necessary that we free ourselves from the custom­ary mode of thinking that considers the nature of the game from the point of view of the consciousness of the player. . . . the very fascina­tion of the game for the playing consciousness roots precisely in its being taken up into a movement that has its own dynam­ic. . . . Now I contend that the basic constitution of the game, to be filled with its spirit‑‑the spirit of buoyan­cy, freedom and the joy of success‑‑and to fulfill him who is playing, is structurally related to the constitution of the dialogue in which language is a reality. When one enters into dialogue with another person and then is carried along further by the dialogue, it is no longer the will of the individual person, holding itself back or exposing itself, that is the deter­minative. Rather, the law of the subject matter is at issue in the dia­logue and elicits state­ment and counterstate­ment and in the end plays them into each other" ("Man and Language" in Philosophical Hermeneu­tics, trans. David E. Linge [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976], 66).

          30. The term 'prejudice', as Gadamer uses it, comprehends three character­istics: (1) that which is handed down via tradition, (2) that which is constitutive of what one is at any given moment and of that which one is in the process of becoming, and (3) that which is always anticipatory, i.e., open to future testing and transformation. See Truth and Method, 235ff., especially 239; Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 127-31.

          31. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 146; Bernstein, Beyond Objec­ti­vism and Relativism, 125-31.

          32. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 235ff, especially 248; Berns­tein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 128-31.

          33. Clearly, the crucial question here is how one distin­guishes between those prejudices that are "enabling" from those that are "blind."  Berns­tein re­sponds, "For Gadamer [against Descartes], it is in and through the encounter with . . . what is generally handed down to us through tradi­tion that we discover which of our prejudices are blind and which are enabling. In opposition to Descartes' monological notion of purely rational self-reflection by which we can achieve transparent self-knowl­edge, Gadamer tells us that it is only through the dialogical en­counter with what is at once alien to us, makes a claim upon us, and has an affinity with what we are that we can open ourselves to risking and testing our prejudices" (Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 128-29).

          34. Ibid., 139.

          35. Against the Wittgenstenian notion of language as a tool, Gada­mer un­derstands language as the medium of all understanding and tradi­tion, i.e., the medium in which Dasein lives. See n. 13 above.

          36. See Book Six of the Nicomachean Ethics for the manner in which Aristotle distinguishes practical knowledge, phroné­sis, from theo­retical knowl­edge, epistéme, and from technical or productive knowledge, tec­hné.

          37. The hermeneutical element of application is developed in Gada­mer's "Hermeneutics and Social Science," Cultural Hermeneutics 2 (197­5): 307-16; and "Practical Philosophy as a Model of the Human Scienc­es," Research in Phenom­enology 9 (1980): 74-85.

          38. As Bernstein indicates, for Gadamer "the appropriation of the classical concepts of praxis and phronésis enables us to gain a critical perspective on our own historical situa­tion, in which there is the constant threat and danger of the domination of society by tech­nology based on science, a false idolatry of the expert, a manipulation of public opinion by powerful techniques, a loss of moral and political orienta­tion, and an undermining of the type of practical and politi­cal reason required for citizens to make responsible decis­ions" (Beyond Objectivism and Relativ­ism, 174-75).

          39. Ibid., 150-65.

          40. Ibid., 154.

          41. Ibid., 155.

          42. Ibid., 156 & 158 respectively.

          43. This consists in "a softening up of the old Cartesian dilem­ma by deny­ing that there could ever be anything like a pure objectivi­sm" (Han­na, 112, see n. 1 above). Once the claim to ultimate founda­tions is relinquished, the force of the relativist counterargument be­comes discred­ited since the point of its critique depends upon and is directed against rigid, uncompromising foundationalist proposals.

          44. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 225.

          45. Bernstein then proceeds to consider, notwithstanding differ­en­ces, the "common ground"--the practical-moral concern--illuminating the views of Gada­mer, Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt and Richard Rorty so as to show how each contributes to the movement beyond objectivism and relativism. With respect to Habermas, Bernstein notes how his focus on the systemic features of contemporary society that undermine, distort, or prevent the realization of com­municative action provides Gadamer with a critical apparatus for examining contempo­rary social practices and institutions. Insofar as Hannah Arendt is concerned, Bernstein calls attention to her persistent reminder that praxis is a permanent human possibility capable of orienting commu­nal