INTRODUCTION: VALUES AND TRADITION

Liberation is the transformative elimination of unjust and oppressive structures. This takes place through an on-going process of critique of the values and traditions of a given "culture-subject," that is, of a culture as well as the persons and communities who live in its terms. Values and traditions provide the articulated morphological and syntactical matrix from which societal and cultural structures are evolved and through which they are transmitted. As warp and woof of the fabric of societal structures, they are the objects of the liberating critique.

The Frankfort School of critical theory has offered several analytical and methodological approaches to the critique of val-ues and tradition. This chapter will examine the analysis and methodology of one member of this School, Jurgen Habermas,¹ as a means (a) of liberation from what is oppressive, and (b) of growth in self-understanding. This is directed toward continued development in autonomy and responsibility within those specific values and traditions which constitute the grammar of one's self-understanding and one's cultural-societal structures.

Cultural Self-Identity

As both constitutive and dispositive factors in the culture-subject's self-understanding, values and tradition are central to its identity and integrity. They articulate the self-constitution of one culture-subject's² identity as distinct from another's, as well as the channels through which various systems within that culture-subject interact. They maintain its integrity through the transmission of a common or shared grammar to all individuals within the group, who, in turn, identify with, use and pass on this self-constitutive articulation of their values and tradition.

The linguistic anthropologist, Edward G. Hall, sees this as a mechanism of evolution through advanced development of the cortex, to adapt and preserve the human species from negative biological selection, i.e. from extinction.³ In terms of semiotics humans are effected through symbols or signs at a triadic level of true communication, rather than through a mere signal or stimuli-response dyadic type of biological interaction. While Jurgen Habermas agrees with the idea of evolutionary adaptation rooted in biological origins, he rejects a purely positivist notion of human knowledge or a biologically determined self-constitution of the human species. Instead, Habermas emphasizes the transcendental quality of knowing, self-reflection and communication.⁵ From the perspective of semiotics, one can say that the human species transcends the mere external dyadic relationships of biological determinism and adds a third or intentional dimension by becoming self-reflective. Human persons know that they know. They think, will and have a self-constituting interior life. In this there are meaning, values and love, and from this also there flows work, language, politics, history and tradition.

Seen in a more favorable perspective than that of Habermas, values and tradition are this self-constituting wisdom achieved as the culture-subject determines its own history. It progresses not only technologically, but in constant interaction with the natural and social environment. Advancing in its understanding of nature and self, it writes its own history, and thereby progressively frees itself from its biological constraints. For Habermas, in this process the culture subject, by liberating itself from oppressive and exploitive social constraints, achieves autonomy and responsibility (Mundigkeit).

The culture-subject's linguistic nature is its ability to symbolize in word and action this understanding of self and nature. Linguistic transmission of knowledge, values, and tradition is, in turn, always social, for language can occur only when there is a symbol-giver and a symbol receiver. In fact, beginning from one's intra-uterine developmental till one's death, the human person is always interacting with others in the social environment: the person is never outside a social milieu. This sociality is radical to the human person, who is therefore essentially both a symbol-giver and a symbol receiver. Both constitute the basis for language and, in turn, make possible the constitutive and dispositive self-understanding and self-formation of the culture-subject. Values and tradition are the linguistic and ritualistic symbols or expressionsof this. They maintain the identity and integrity of persons in their linguistic and productive interaction with others. By this interaction culture is constituted in all aspects.

If then the person and the culture articulate who and what they are specifically through values and tradition, the effect of these is autonomy and resistance to loss of cultural identity and self-determination. At the dyadic level of signal interaction and stimulus/response a species is continually confronted with the possibility of biological selection and struggles to maintain its existence and to propagate its species. Similarly at the triadic level of symbolic interaction the culture-subject is continually confronted with the possibility of extinction and must struggle to maintain its identity, integrity and autonomy in the face of oppressive and exploitative forces. As this takes place through time and reflects the cumulative free acts of individuals and social groups, the values and traditions of a culture-subject are marked by historicity.

Further, it is through intense linguistic interaction in loving and positive relatedness to one another that persons acquire their self-identity or self-understanding. This is done in terms of the wisdom of the community, as this has been developed in time and passed on as the values and tradition of a culture. All individuals of the culture group are thus bound in sociality, which is the solidarity rooted in each person's intrinsic inclination to relatedness in love. This sustains the group in its identity, integrity, and self-understanding, while preserving it from historical negative selection at the hands of a more dominant, exploitative, oppressive cultural group. This can be seen practically in the Aymara culture's preservation of its identity during Inca-Quechua domination and, in turn, the Inca-Quechua culture's maintenance of its identity under Spanish dominance. The tenacious cohesiveness within the group generates fierce resistance to the imposition of values by a dominant group which would threaten it with loss of both identity and integrity, resulting in total or near total cultural-historical extinction.

Much as the chromosomes, through the particular and unique genetic code bequeathed by one's ancestors, carry the biological identity of the person, values and traditions constitute the linguistic-cultural genetic material from cultural history which bequeath a specific identity to the culture-subject. As the body fiercely rejects the intrusion of a foreign genetic code, so the culture-subject rejects the intrusion of forced values and tradition from an imposing group. Yet these very values and traditions, which are the morphological and syntactical warp and woof of the linguistic fabric of the culture-subject's self-understanding, are also vulnerable to being used for the exploitation and manipulation of the group as a whole or in its parts. It will be necessary, Habermas suggests, to discover the locus of any such debilitating and oppressive factors which limit the function and progress of the subject. The specific purpose of this chapter is to scrutinize the psychoanalytic dimension of the methodology developed by Habermas for discovering debilitating flaws in a culture's linguistically and ritualistically articulated "genetic" code. We shall attempt to protect the project from doing violence to the identity and hence to the self-understanding of the culture-subject. This is a point on which Habermas seems less--though increasingly--concerned.

The Psycho-Social Problematic

Habermas stresses that the transmission of this cultural (`genetic') code of values and tradition occurs through symbols which are linguistic or, one might add, ritualistic in nature.⁶ He understands this to be rooted in the historicity of the culturesubject. He sees three profound similarities between the way in which, seen psychologically, values form the individual's superego (ego ideal and conscience) and the manner in which values and tradition comprise the self-understanding of the culture-subject. First, just as the individual identifies with the symbolic content of the ego ideal and conscience, so the culture-subject identifies with its own values and tradition. Second, the superego may be flawed through reception of defective values or some other symbolic distortion, leading to neurotic behavior whose origin and activity are not comprehended by the individual. Similarly a culture-subject may receive from its past or from significant power groups within itself values and traditions which distort self-identity, self-understanding and self-formation. Third, Freudian psychoanalysis self-reflectively critiques the symbols both of the superego, in order to correct the linguistic and historical distortions of the ego ideal, and of the conscience, in order to cure the neurosis and its behavioral manifestations. Similarly, Habermas would critique the values and tradition of the culture-subject in order to correct the symbolic distortions of rigidified abstractions. This suggests that psychoanalytic insights might provide means both for liberation from linguistically encoded material that is oppressive, exploitative, and stultifying, and for the goal of cultural autonomy and responsibility, that is, for liberation.⁷ This responds to the fundamental problem of how to achieve liberation understood as autonomy and responsibility by restoring or enabling an "authentic" self-identity. More classically it is the issue of how to achieve the truth that makes one free.

In terms of the Marxist notion of rigidified abstractions, Habermas sees a danger within values and tradition. That is, having developed in the historical self-formative process of the community to meet the exigencies of the commonweal at one historical moment, one's values and traditions may become reified and be carried into successive historical sequences to which they no longer apply, thereby becoming stultifying and oppressive.⁸ Historically, as the culture-subject progresses in the sciences of nature and advances technologically toward greater instrumental action for the exploitation of natural resources, small power-elites have tended to maintain control over virtually every aspect of the culture. This is especially true of the means of production and of political-economic structures, both at home and abroad, through forms of colonialism and modern-day neo-colonialism. Thus, values and traditions, developed originally in response to given exigencies, subsequently maintain a status quo which divides the culture-subject's self-understanding between power-elite and common people, managerial caste and working caste, imperial power and colony.⁹

As in Freudian psychoanalytic theory where the individual identifies with parental figures and significant others during the formation of the superego (ego ideal and conscience), so the culture-subject identifies with the values and tradition which, in turn, articulate its self-understanding.¹⁰ Thus, though these subsequently may have become oppressive, there is a very vigorous tendency to maintain them in spite of their social and cultural inequities or contradictions.

As noted, one reason for this is that values and tradition maintain the identity and integrity of the culture-subject, preserving it from historical selection. They are the skeletal structure to which the culture-subject adheres in developing its unique self-formative history with its linguistic-anthropological, socio-psychologica1, philosophical-religious, creative-artistic, and economic-political elements. This overall historical fabric constitutes not only the unfathomable wealth of each group in its special values, but also its limitations in its self-understanding. It typically fails to exceed these categories in perceiving, ordering and evaluating reality; these are the parameters of its selfunderstanding and of its understanding of others.

Another reason for maintaining values and tradition, even after they have become rigidified abstractions, is the particular self-interest of the power elite. Because any contradictions which arise must be critiqued by the very mechanism of values and tradition which caused them; the very understanding of the problem is confused and biased. Thus, the oppressor-exploiter is able to maintain the linguistic structure of self-understanding and self-formation which preserves the contradictions.¹¹ Ironically, even those oppressed and exploited, having identified so completely with these categories of self-understanding as the only linguistic structure in which they can operate, identify in solidarity with the very structure that serves them neither equally nor justly. Freud calls this: "identification with the aggressor."¹² Prior to the elimination or correction of such contradiction the values and traditions of the culture-subject usually are vigorously defended and the contradictions rationalized, much as the neurotic defends inapporpriate behavior through a complex of defense mechanisms and rationalization.¹³

Thus, values and tradition, while positive in the sense of maintaining identity and integrity and preventing negative historical selection by oppressive outside cultural forces, can constitute an obstacle to liberation from within. As categories of self-understanding they can limit perception by those who suffer; because ultimately self-serving, they can result in lack of sensitivity to oppression by those who profit.¹⁴ In Freudian terms, which will be elaborated later, being the core personal structure of self-understanding, identity and integrity, they provide all in the culture-subject--both exploiter and exploited--with a sense of security, regardless of how true or false that security might be. As a result, any attempt to alter or eliminate these core or linguistic structures (values and tradition) is seen as a threat, thereby causing anxiety in the culture-subject and generating resistance as defense mechanisms.¹⁵ The power-elite in whose interest it is to maintain these values and traditions are the least likely to cooperate in dismantling the system; ironically they may find a ready ally in the very group whose interest is not well served.

For this reason, liberation is a complex matter which requires a sophisticated methodology for analysis and response. In these major steps this chapter will attempt to identify the historic hermeneutic method elaborated by Habermas. First it will survey the scientific insights he draws from Marx, Peirce and Freud, noting in each case both the way in which he assimilates those ideas and the way in which he adds his own correctives. Secondly, the chapter will analyze the method constructed by Habermas focusing especially on the role of abduction, hermeneutic and interest. Thirdly, it will review the clarifying critiques he makes of positivism in order to clarify elements of his method which are especially important. This paper will also examine and critique Marcuse's position on liberation. The conclusion will suggest a way of understanding the place of value and tradition in our hermeneutics of liberation.

SCIENTIFIC METHODS: RESOURCES AND LIMITATIONS

Marx's Social Analysis

Where Marx speaks of surplus value and Marcuse develops his idea of `surplus repression,' Habermas moves to values and tradition as the reservoir of contradiction.¹⁶ Let us follow in greater detail this sequence in relation to the thought of Habermas. Marx considered two major factors in the analysis of the Capitalist culture subject to be: (a) surplus value, which pertains to the accumulation of wealth and profit in the hands of those who control the means of production, and (b) continued growth in the knowledge of nature (cognitive progress) with concomitant growth in technology (instrumental action). These two factors combined with certain self-defeating mechanisms in the capitalist system were to bring about a negation in the organic relationships in the culture-subject, specifically between the proletariat and the capitalist power structure leading to revolutionary activity and change. Habermas considers this view severely limited precisely because it does not address itself to the self-constituting and self-formative process of self-reflection and critique.¹⁷ The Marxist view, not unlike the positivist approach, is geared to a reductionistic and hence to a deterministic understanding of the culture-subject which has no room for an interior life, and hence no metaphysics of the person or epistemology in the sense of a study of the origin of meaning. In contrast, Habermas insists that the culture-subject--contrary to being bereft of self-reflection and freedom--is a creature of historicity who, through transcendental linguistic structures and processes, writes its own destiny and thereby freely constitutes and forms itself toward ever increasing autonomy and responsibility.¹⁸

As the transcendental linguistic structure of this self-formation, tradition and values are the means by which the culture-subject evolves in continually expanding freedom beyond the biological and historical constraints imposed upon other species of our planet. On the basis of its essential character as persons existing and acting with others through time, that is, its sociality and historicity as expressed linguistically in word and ritual, the culture-subject strives to realize its total potential. Values and traditions which express the nature of the culturesubject must be seen also as constitutive of, and dispositive toward, continual cognitive progress in understanding nature and the constant development of technology for greater distribution of goods to the members of the group. Thus, the Marxist emphasis upon `surplus value' as the ostensible locus of contradiction arising from the capitalist abuse of cognitive progress and instrumental action must be replaced by a focus upon that of which surplus value is a mere epiphenomenon, namely, upon distortions in values and tradition; this is the true locus of the contradictions.

In this way, Habermas moves from biological and historical determinism, expressed as advancement in productive technology for meeting the physical necessities of the culture-subject, to self-determination and self-formation, manifested in historicity. This is found at the transcendental level of language through a process of self-reflection and critique of values and tradition as a means for the continuous self-constitution of the culture-subject.¹⁹

At this point, one must extend the notion of surplus value beyond the positivist framework of excess capital in order to include its source in the not so obvious concept of values and tradition. Power is accumulated and maintained by an elite in the values and tradition of all levels of the culture-subject. It is here that linguistic distortion takes place in the form of rigidified abstractions which have been reified for the maintenance of the status quo. As these rigidified abstractions are the linguistic categories of self-understanding and self-interpretation, as well as of interpreting the natural environment, they determine and distort all perception for the exploitation and manipulation of the group as a whole or in part.²⁰

In order to correct these rigidified abstractions and distortions present in the culture-subject's values and tradition, Habermas seeks a means of self-reflection for achieving autonomy and responsibility as an ongoing process of self-determined liberation. The problem he encounters in the Marxist and positivist approaches is their objectivism, which reduces all historical hermeneutic sciences to an empirical-analytic status both in methodology and interpretation. Habermas notes that within Marx's materialist re-development of the Hegelian system which had abolished epistemology, he failed to grasp the moment in his metacritique of Hegel to develop a radicalized epistemology.

In the Marxist perspective, truth is the consciousness which nature achieves in the human species as determined by production and its modes.²¹ In the positivist perspective, truth is obtained methodologically through linking empirically obtained data into general laws. Both systems treat the science of the human person with the empirical-analytical method of the science of nature, and thereby fall into the trap of the illusory logic of what I shall term an objectivist cognitive loop. As a result they are not able to critique the ongoing process into which the culture-subject becomes hopelessly enmeshed. For both the Marxist and the the positivist, the very question of the human person, of nature, and of truth is grossly reduced to questions of production, while the question `why', in the sense of meaning or significance, becomes absurd and is therefore ignored.²² This lamentable development carries with it an even more peculiar consequence for Marx, namely, the reduction of the historic-hermeneutic sciences of the human person to the methodology and interpretation of the empirical-analytic sciences. Thus, every time the issue of critique arises with its question of meaning or significance it is reduced to a methodological approach which is incapable of such analysis, and indeed annihilates the very question altogether. Upon asking the question of critique the culture-subject finds itself on the twisted track of an objectivist loop which can only bring it back to the same point. Not only is it frustrated in its effort, but it is unable to grasp the very means by which the loop can be transcended and the logical knot in the process can be untied. Thus, the culture-subject is forced to move along a track without critiquing the reason for the method and direction taken.

The `objectivist illusion' among the Marxists and the positivists is the matrix from which flow the demands for the exclusive use of the positivist, empirical, scientific method for all aspects of nature and the human person. Moreover, in the positivist, empirical, scientific method, this `objectivist illusion' is articulated linguistically in the form of values and tradition as `surplus value' and the control of the power elite. It constitutes the semantic structure of rigidified abstractions, which have been reified and become the constitutive and dispositive means of the self-understanding and formation of the culture-subject. Its result is the conservation of the status quo and of the ancillary self-interests of the power structure.

In a certain sense, Kant feared most the collapse of human understanding into the objectivist-positivist mode of empiricalana1ytic science; the need to avoid this gave impetus to his examination of pure and practical reason and judgment. This objectivist reduction would deprive the human person of freedom and, therefore, of moral action by subjecting the interpretation of human behavior to the same parameters as the physical and biological universe. In fact, without the transcendence of autonomous thought and action such a being would be neither person nor human. Habermas notes emphatically that, whatever the faults of the Kantian critique, it was central to the establishment of a basis for freedom and autonomy. Kant did this through his epistemological analysis of thinking. To establish the fact that the human person is free and autonomous in thinking, judgment, decision, and action, Kant asked how one can know this with the same certitude as a scientific or mathematical postulate. The statement, "the human person is free and autonomous," is an a priori synthetic statement without correlative phenomenological experience; it is postulated in praxis, that is, in action dependant upon pure practical reason. Hence, Kant analyzed knowing itself as a transcendental function of the human person.²³

This is the precise point that Habermas wishes to pursue, albeit in a different manner and direction. He rejects the Hegelian-Marxist and positivist subjection of the culture-subject to biological determinism and objectivism precisely because, without freedom, autonomy and responsibility would be unattainable, liberation an essentially meaningless term, and the critique of values, tradition and society an exercise in futility.

As noted above, with the elimination of personal interiority and meaning in the Marxist and positivist schools and their completely objectivist thrust, one can only explore thinking and learning as a physiological function, devoid of any transcendental significance. Yet, Marx predicates the activity of labor only of the human species precisely as conscious and purposive. The culture-subject is completely subsumed into an empirical-analytic scientific mode of self-analysis which is mechanistic and determined by the laws of the bio-physical universe. Without a transcendental level of freedom and self-understanding, and reduced to an empirical-analytic scientific determinism, the culture-subject cannot engage in the process of self-reflection to critique values and tradition and to correct exploitative, oppressive factors in the cultural environment. Self-reflection is then impossible and critique irrelevant because the culture-subject is carried by inexorable laws and determined by factors which not only are beyond the culture-subject's control, but to which the culture-subject is subjected in all dimensions and modes of existence.

Thus, the culture-subject is thrust into a dyadic mode of existence on a par with any atom, molecule, or biological species, namely, one of action/reaction, stimulus/response, or of signal; it is trapped in a biological-historical determinism. At a dyadic level of simple non-transcendental interaction, such as stimulus and response, the culture-subject cannot ask why because the process of learning and thinking has been reduced to a tautological cognitive loop. This can be illustrated by the following series of questions and answers, in which each loop finally repeats an earlier question:

Q. 1. What is the culture-subject doing?

A. 1. The culture-subject is nature acquiring knowledge of itself?

Q. 2. Why?

A. 2. To realize itself.

Q. 3. How?

A. 3. Through production.

Loop 1

Qa. 4. How?

Aa. 4. By acquiring knowledge of itself.

Q. 2. Why? (i.e., returns to Q. 2 above)

Loop 2

Qb. 4. Why?

Ab. 4. To realize itself.

Q. 3. How? (i.e., returns to Q. 3 above)

Loop 3

Qc. 4. What if there is error in direction or aim?

Ac. 4. The question is without sense as the culture-subject is nature acquiring knowledge of itself.

Q. 2. Why? (i.e., returns to A. 2 above)

In the attempt to critique itself and its direction, the culture subject finds itself linguistically and logically on a track which loops around and reconnects one end with the other, endlessly bringing the inquiry back to the same point. In order to resolve the loops, the culture-subject must move to the transcendental level of self-reflection. This means that epistemology must be reappropriated in order to re-examine the question of freedom toward ever-greater autonomy and responsibility.²⁴ First, the culture-subject must be able to ask the question why it is doing something in a particular way in order for it to be able to change or modify its direction and write its own history--unlike other animal species which are completely fixed genetically, with no possibility of self-determination. This can be achieved only by transcending the positivist objectivist understanding of the empirical-analytical scientific method in order to be free of the cognitive loop at that level. Secondly, if all were determined, critique would be a waste of time better spent in cognitive progress and instrumental action directed toward production.

But, if this be true, then humanity's experience of afflicting suffering upon itself is not an avoidable tragedy, but an inevitable destiny. The concern over colonialism or neo-colonialism; slavery, discrimination or apartheid; right or left-wing dictatorships; first and second world imperial expansionism; the imposition of satellite status on weaker nations and the denial of the right of self-determination to peoples; censorship and religious persecution; lack of respect or wanton disregard for the human person from the womb to the tomb, from abortion to euthanasia; total control of the means of production and of the distribution of the goods by the power-elite of capitalist and communist countries, placing capital and production over the human person; the maintenance and preservation at all costs of socio-economic or political systems which deny work, food, shelter, education, medical care, or full participation in all its dimensions; the use of capital and resources for the nuclear and conventional arms race, rather than for the betterment of the world condition: in effect, any concern over these or other situations is rendered an inane and pathetic exercise in futility if the deterministic objectivist-positivist understanding of the science of the human person be adequate. For then the process of human life could be nothing but one of inevitable evolution--possibly toward oblivion or extinction. Because critique is not possible the culture-subject would be caught in a cognitive loop which makes epistemology either impossible or not necessary, or both. Under such conditions values and tradition would be meaningless, atavistic manifestations which should and will be eliminated altogether. As will be explained below, this would bring the culture-subject into total antithesis and render it vulnerable to negative historical selection and extinction. It would subject the culture-subject to a juggernaut of conditions before which, as biologically and/or historica11y determined, it would lie helpless.

Peirce's Transcendental Logic

Like Kant, Jurgen Habermas seeks to reestablish an epistemology in order to reappropriate freedom and take account of autonomy and responsibility.²⁵ He therefore endeavors to refute the deterministic mode of thinking, to uncover its objectivist illusion, and to unravel the cognitive loop. In this last task he finds help in Charles Sanders Peirce's philosophy of pragmatism where knowledge is critiqued, not by dogmatism or by the interest of a particular party or power elite, but by consensual acknowledgement developed through a process of analysis and experimentation. The questions of how knowledge is acquired and truth is distinguished from error become issues in pragmatism as it undertakes its epistemological inquiry.²⁶

Peirce's study of the nature of deduction, induction, and abduction brings into focus the question of the very mechanism of cognition and learning. He asks how cognitive progress is possible and can be communicated, and how error in cognitive content can be corrected. He sees this as a critique of knowledge and error by the members of the culture-subject. One can say that this is done in a linguistic mode which moves the level of semantic interaction from the dyadic to the triadic, and achieves thereby a certain transcendence. By breaking free from the cognitive loop of the objectivist-positivist mode of thought this makes possible a critique of the stated process, its content, and results.²⁷ Let us examine this in greater detail.

In the logical process of human thinking there is a step which defies the positivist-objectivist assertion of mechanical thought restricted to the dyadic level, and breaks beyond or transcends this in a most peculiar leap: knowledge is acquired by a flash of insight, as it were, which later is the basis of an hypothesis to be tested experimentally and validated by subsequent repetition and consensus.²⁸ Ostensibly, it is the purpose of science to acquire new knowledge, to make cognitive progress; this is especially the realm of inductive and abductive reasoning.

Deduction, in contrast, appears to add nothing new; it merely draws out and makes explicit what had been included in the major and minor premises. In the deductive syllogistic form "Barbara" (AAA-1):

All mammals are warm-blooded.

All cats are mammals.

Therefore, all cats are warm-blooded.

As such, deduction does not lead to cognitive progress, for it merely states in the conclusion the logical implications of what is already contained in the first two premises.

In contrast, the process of abduction does add new knowledge. Its contribution is the formulation of new generalizations, new statistical hypotheses. However, as the process has very little probative force, these generalizations require independent verification.²⁹ In the abductive syllogism AAA-2:

All cats are warm-blooded.

All mammals are warm-blooded.

Therefore, all cats are mammals.

The conclusion, though correct, links the terms of the major and minor premises in a way which is not legitimated under the normal rules of logic. Such a conclusion must be tested and verified by repeated experimentation, exploration and consensus since, under the conditions of abduction, it can be argued with equal force:

All cats are warm-blooded.

All birds (as a classification) are warm-blooded.

Therefore, all cats are birds.

Though this method obviously defies the principles and rules of positivism and determinism by its rather free-wheeling manner, Habermas insists that the abductive method, rather thatn deduction, is the way of science and cognitive progress.

Yet, as noted, assurance of the truth of the generalization can come only from continued correction through a given experimental procedure. Peirce likens this to a reflex-arc whereby the organism tests its environment to achieve a desired goal. If it should fail to achieve this goal through some specific method, it continues its efforts in different ways until another method succeeds. Thus, the perception of some desired goal sets into motion a specific behavioral pattern. If the behavioral pattern is incorrect or ineffective it will receive stimuli to this effect and pull back, once again attempting another behavioral pattern. This cycle of action will repeat itself until the results of the effort are positive. The crux is correction; the model is the reflex-arc; its nature is that of feed-back controlled instrumental action.

Peirce's theory of inquiry tends to an analogy between the reflex-arc and cognitive progress in the sciences using the inductive and abductive method. Unlike the assurance of the correct conclusion in deductive reasoning, it offers no certainty of reaching the desired conclusion. But it does require that the goal of inquiry be achieved through a precisely communicated set of rules and procedures which clearly specify the methodology for approaching the goal. If failure results, the experimental procedure is redesigned and the goal is attempted once more. This process continues until it is so articulated that others might duplicate the same procedure and achieve identical results. Peirce speculates that induction and abduction as methods of logical inquiry may be rooted in the process of evolution as a quantum advancement in learning enabling one to know and master the environment and its resources for survival, growth, and reproduction of the species.³⁰ He speculates further that these methods of inquiry may be a quantum cortical advancement of the reflex-arc made possible by the achievement of a transcendental level of language. This enables the process of logical inquiry to be structured and communicated linguistically by the one who signifies or symbolizes.³¹

On the sub-human species level there is merely feed-back controlled instrumental action: the negative or positive stimuli received by the organism is fed back to the sensory and nervous systems for subsequent correction in order to modifying its continuous instrumental action until the goal is achieved. Moreover, the human species, by its evolutionary and advanced cortex and its transcendental linguistic ability, is able to be purposive and rational. Thus, cognitive and technological progress are achieved through a method of inquiry which is structured linguistically as an abductive process and results in purposive, rational, feed-back controlled, instrumental action.

Habermas is acutely interested in Peirce's analysis precisely because of its epistemological critique of cognitive progress and instrumental action as transcendental-linguistic processes which are specifically communicated, validated, and critiqued by others. It is of the utmost importance, first, that there be absolute freedom from any dogmatism so that this is never restricted to a power-elite but open to all who wish to duplicate the experiment or the problem under investigation; second, that the results must be experienced tangibly, that is, that they not only be predictable from the procedure but make a difference; and third, that this truth be consensual, that is, that it be linguistically articulated in concepts which can be "tested" by others for their validation and "truthfulness." This is able to produce consensus within the group insofar as all must achieve the same results as stated by the theorist.³² Through this communicative effort cognition itself is critiqued; this is what makes it possible to transcend the cognitive loop.

Habermas laments that in the end Peirce succumbed to the objectivist positivist fallacy, though like Marx he was essentially on the right track.³³ Hence, Habermas continues to develop this process, shifting from a critique of science to a critique of culture, distinguishing from the empirical-analytic sciences to the historical-hermeneutic sciences. His work centers increasingly upon an analysis of language and meaning (i.e., hermeneutics) and of history as the constitutive elements in the self-understanding and self-formation of the culture-subject. We will apply the abductive method of logical inquiry put forth in pragmatism, not on the dyadic empirical-analytic level, but as an historical-hermeneutic method within which the Freudian psychoana1ytic technique can be of service.

Peirce himself had stated that the linguistic apparatus of beliefs and judgements determines the direction of cognitive progress.³⁴ As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the culture-subject identified itself with a linguistic structure that articulates its own self-understanding and the understanding of nature. This self-understanding can be seen as beliefs and judgments in Peirce's sense or as values and tradition in the sense of this chapter. But, whichever is chosen, there is a general agreement in the fallibility of these beliefs/judgments or valuetraditions which determine self-understanding and the scientific processes of inquiry. This error must be discerned through a critique at the transcendental linguistic level in an on-going process of continued liberation from error. In the empirical-analytic sciences this process is utilized as a "liberation" from error in the science of nature. Habermas sees it as able to be applied to the liberation of the culture-subject from the oppression and exploitation inhering in the linguistic structures in which it articulates its self-understanding and self-formation. In this process the Freudian psychoanalytic method can serve to correct these "errors" and open the way toward greater autonomy and responsibility. As this must take place on a transcendental, triadic level it cannot be carried out within a deterministic supposition, but requires reflection on an epistemological and, beyond Habermas, a metaphysical level.

Freudian Psychoanalytic Method

Peirce's transcendental method of inquiry at the triadic level of communication is consistent with Habermas' insistence that the culture-subject is not subject to biological determinism, but is a creature of self-reflective and self-formative historicity. This rejects a deterministic understanding of the culture-subject in favor of freedom or self-determination. Thus, Habermas critiques not merely the "what and how," but opens to the possibility of examining the meaning of the values and traditions of a culture. He develops his method of cultural critique by interpreting Freud's psychoanalytic theory in historico-analytic terms. His intent is to avoid the objectivist fallacy while enabling the restoration of a self-determined thrust toward autonomy and responsibility in a process which can be called liberation.³⁵

Individual Analysis. As noted above, the manner in which an individual identifies with the values of significant others is analogous to the manner in which the culture-subject identifies with its acquired values and tradition. In the first case, under the exigency of reward and punishment or pleasure and pain, the value system and acceptable or desirable modes of behavior are inculcated into the individual at an early age--precisely when the person is both totally dependent and defenseless.³⁶ Through parents and other significant persons, society teaches the child to suppress the primitive impulses of the "id," which seek instant gratification of all needs, in favor of a reduction of all tension, both psychologica1 and physiological.³⁷ Driven by libidinous energy, the impulses of the id if unchecked would disrupt the commonweal. Hence, through such powerful agents as parents and significant others, the society rewards "appropriate" behavior and punishes "inappropriate" behavior.

Thus commences the development of the superego, which consists of the ego-ideal (the "do's" which bring rewards) and the conscience (the "don'ts" which call down punishments.) As the id makes demands for gratification, the superego insists that these demands be met according to the dictates of the ego-ideal and the conscience. The resulting elaboration of the id, known as the ego, mediates between the impulsive id and the restraining superego.³⁸ In this tri-partite Freudian personality the id and the superego are the non-rational elements and the ego is the rational element. This can be likened to a triptych in which the center painting which is seen by the public is the ego, while the id and the superego are attached to either side but turned back and hidden from public viewing. One's personality, which emerges in development and expression through linguistic and ritualistic symbolization or signification within the matrix of social communications, is the constitutive and dispositive element of self-understanding, self-formation, and the individual's Weltanschauung.³⁹ The linguistic structure of personality is the cultural-historical genetic code which is transmitted to the individual, constitutes his/her self-understanding and disposes one to a certain self-formation and interpretation of the world. Thus, the psychological, linguistic structure is the very lens through which one views self, other and nature.

In an analogous manner the culture-subject receives its values and traditions under the exigency of survival. In this regard, the threat is negative selection by a potentially hostile environment; the reward is the goods produced through growing control over natural resources by means of cognitive progress and improved instrumental action.⁴⁰ In whatever environment, to satisfy the basic needs of growth and reproduction and to avoid the risk of negative selection, the culture-subject develops a `superego' which expresses the `ego-ideal' and `conscience' as values and tradition. In this process the natural and cultural environments "teach" the culture-subject by imposing a terrible price for failure to cope effectively with the surrounding risks. The negative consequences are meted out by nature or another culture-subject.

In time, the culture-subject acquires an accumulated body of understanding in order to avoid such natural and historical or cultural selection, while increasing its ability to exploit nature's resources for the distribution of goods.⁴¹ As in the case of the superego this is articulated as values and tradition and transmitted through symbolization in language and ritual.⁴² These values and traditions are developed through a system of reward and punishment, concretized as survival and threat. They are the constitutive and dispositive elements of self-understanding and self-formation, as well as the lenses which form the culture-subject's world view. It is the cultural historical genetic code which linguistically symbolizes the specific culture-subject.

In Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the id, which is the most primitive part of the personality, seeks pleasure and avoids pain; this is appropriately known as the pleasure principle.⁴³ Yet, because the id is both autistic and impulsive, it is governed by automatic reflexes and--more importantly in this consideration--by the primary process of wish-fulfillment through images of the object which would satisfy the need. Because the id does not recognize the outside world per se, but only the immediacy of its needs and the drive to satisfy them by seeking pleasure and reducing tension,⁴⁴ any object, whether imaginary or real, will do.

As in our elaboration of the id, it is the ego that seeks the appropriate object at the appropriate time. Neither fantasy nor an inappropriate object will bring the desired satisfaction; indeed seeking satisfaction at an inappropriate time or manner will bring punishment through greatly increased tension and its resulting discomfort and pain.⁴⁵ For this reason, the ego is said to operate on the reality principle, as opposed to the id's pleasure principle; and by means of a secondary process, in distinction to the id's autistic and primary process. It tests reality, altering instrumental action until success is achieved. In this it is akin to Peirce's reflex-arc model described above as "purposive, rational, feed-back controlled, instrumental action."⁴⁶ Yet as the person can learn to get what he/she wants without regard to the commonwea1, such testing could be in the service of sociopathology. Freud was under no illusion that the person, untouched by social values, might be the "noble savage" fancied by Jean Jacques Rousseau. He did not believe in an innately beautiful and balanced human nature which was distorted by society and religion. Freud saw the person as a libidinous beast which had to be controlled for the weal and advancement of society and civilization. This control was effected by identification with, and subsequent internalization of, society and religion as values and tradition. The superego is precisely this inculcation of values and tradition as ego-ideal and conscience. These internalized linguistic structures direct the individual regarding what is socially appropriate and acceptable or inappropriate and unacceptable--in fine, what is good and what is bad.

This point and the following bear heavily on the culturesubject's development of values and tradition, for in the superego, the child does not imitate his/her parents but actually identifies with them.⁴⁷ The child becomes the parents and significant others and identifies with their values, which then become the child's linguistic structure of self-understanding and interaction. Because these values are articulated by the parents at a time of utter dependence and defenselessness, and are transmitted symbolically with reward (pleasure) and punishment (pain), the child begins to feel anxiety (tension/fear of punishment/pain) if he/she acts contrary to the superego, in spite of the demands of the id. It is up to the ego to find the means to negotiate realistically between the demands of the id and the restraints of the superego.

Similarly, faulty superego development is germane to Habermas' critique of rigidified abstractions or erroneous content within values and tradition. Because the superego is irrational, the person's self-understanding and formation can be oppressive and distorted, rendering their relations with others psychodynamically disturbed and without recourse to correction by reason. In understanding this problem, the Freudian concept of "anxiety" plays a most significant role. First, Freud theorized, the person's libidinous impulses originating in the id had to be controlled for the weal and advancement of society and civilization. This was effected through the internalization of religious and social values.⁴⁸ Nonetheless, psychodynamic difficulties in the form of neurotic manifestations arise from severe overcontrol of the libido by an overbearing and equally non-rational superego. This prevents the ego from carrying out its mediating function so that the person cannot achieve reasonable release of necessary libidinous tensions.

The `healthy' individual has a balanced and properly controlled libido, inasmuch as its tensions are suppressed in a conscious and healthy manner rather than repressed in an unconscious manner leading to neurotic manifestations. As a result libidinous tension is sublimated to a higher and more noble goal of working for the good of humanity.⁴⁹ As Freud considered this to be a vital and necessary role of religion--which remained a fanciful superstition--he did not envision a quick demise of religion through science, but felt that it would perdure for ages as socially necessary for channelling otherwise destructive impulses.

Habermas examines the development of neurotic impulses arising from distorted over-control by the superego. He studies this in conjunction with the faulty content of the linguistic structure of the superego which oppresses and exploits. Freud's psychoanalytic technique is essentially a critique of the neurotic's language and behavior which manifests the symbolic, linguistic structure of its superego. By examining its historical distortions, one can reveal the problematic content in the development of the superego. By appropriating the reconstructed historical correction the person would be liberated from the oppressive elements of the superego and function with greater psychological freedom and health. In the light of Peirce's pragmatism, Habermas develops this methodological approach into a linguistic critique through seeking truth in consensus. By examining the oppressive elements in the culture-subject's "superego," it achieves liberation from rigidified abstractions and moves toward greater autonomy and responsibility.⁵⁰

Freud believed that no individual escapes all distortion in the development of his/her superego, and Habermas asserts the same as regards the culture-subject. This can be illustrated by an examination of the three types of anxiety in this distortion: 1) reality anxiety, which originates from real danger within the natural environment; 2) neurotic anxiety, which originates in fear of punishment from a significant other due to instinctual gratification; and 3) moral fear, which originates in the fear of punishment from the superego, i.e., the conscience rendering the person guilt ridden. All three manifestations of anxiety raise tensions which the ego seeks to reduce to a homeostatic level of quiescence by escape and/or avoidance, but the last is the most important because it is the person's own system of selfidentity which causes the tension.

The first two forms, reality and neurotic anxiety, are external to the person who seeks ways of achieving gratification by delay until the danger passes, by some other means of gaining access to the desired goal, or by substitution. Inasmuch as the restraint is external, gratification will be achieved in time through a specific object-cathexis, i.e., the desired object through which the need is met. Thus, reduction of tension can occur in reality and neurotic anxiety when either: 1) the source of external threat disappears or is eliminated, or 2) the object-cathexis is achieved and thereby satisfies the need.⁵¹

Moral anxiety is far more central to Freud's psychoanalysis and Habermas' critique of the culture-subject's self-understanding and self-formation. For, if the threat has its genesis in the very superego of the person, i.e. within the individual's own psychic system, there is no escape; the punitive agent is one's very self. Moral anxiety may reduce or mask libidinous tension temporarily, but soon the id will reassert its demands for the reduction of the drive through an object-cathexis. If, for example, the object-cathexis is altogether or even largely prohibited, i.e. becomes an anticathexis, the ego will seek a substitute object to diminish the tension in a process called displacement. A critical concept in the Freudian construct, displacement is the mechanism by which libidinous energy is trapped through suppression of the instinctual drive and stored within the psyche of the individual to be used appropriately and constructively for the advancement of culture and civilization.⁵²

Thus, the utopian illusion plays a critical and valuable role in challenging the libido and is not to be confused with delusions since it is based on human wishes that are realizable. Moreover, Habermas notes that religion has symbolized a utopian notion into which the culture-subject invests much energy and behavior to realize the goal, not only of the self, but for the common good. It is precisely the illusion--symbolized verbally, and ritually becoming the linguistic articulation of the superego--which constitutes the goal of the ego ideal and conscience. These, in turn, constitute the self-understanding and self-formation of the individual. The person invests his/her store of libidinous energy towards various object-cathexes which are seen as appropriate and socially acceptable inasmuch as they are components of the Utopian ideal or illusion. Because this is done in terms of an ideology which legitimizes the power structure or status quo and thereby, removes the institutional reality from criticism, however, it is a linguistic distortion.⁵³

Socio-Economic Analysis. Freud sets up a permanent antagonism between the individual and group ideals, even though the person identifies completely with them. Though the id always demands gratification through the primary object-cathexis, it is compelled by the superego, through the agency of the ego, to settle for secondary or tertiary object-cathexes which do not directly satisfy the id. This results in constant frustration within the person. The residual energy not used lingers within the system and manifests itself as restlessness. Society has effectively incorporated controls into the person in order to check destructive, self-centered impulsive gratification of the id. Instead, through the mechanism of displacement, the energy is cathected to such higher, civilized goals as science, art, music, literature, and general altruistic behavior.⁵⁴

Moral anxiety drives this mechanism of displacement. It is the source of that tension which persons seek to reduce by shunting their libidinous energy, originating in the id, through the channels of displacement. This transforms `eros' into altruism, motivating the individual to work towards the continual advancement of civilization. Without this moral anxiety and displacement, the individual would remain at the primary-cathexes level, completely and impulsively discharging libidinous energy. The result would be socially disruptive, destructive behavior; for lack of motivation for altruistic development it would result in the collapse of civilization. While this antagonism remains between the needs of the individual's id and the socially incorporated superego there exists the threat that the id will override the superego's control and wreak havoc on the social structure.

In moving from the individual to the society Freud sees a conflict between the impulses of the individual's id and the social constraints which continually frustrate the pleasure principle. He also gloomily concluded that the death wish, `thanatos,' was stronger than love or the life principle, `eros'--both of which are critical, genetically encoded elements which direct the behavior of the individual.⁵⁵ He had experienced the irrationality of antisemitism, other forms of national prejudices, and the massive destruction wrought by the delusions of national grandeur in two world wars. All discovery, interaction and progress have been mixed blessings for humanity, whose history is written in ink mixed with tears and blood--a history of savage wars, senseless persecutions, heartless genocides, brutal oppression and exploitation. All of this, Freud conjectured emanated from the selfish, autistic, egotistical impulses of the id and was directed by `thanatos'.

Habermas does not agree that the relationship between the person and society is one of basic antagonism and, though not overly optimistic, he cautions against Freud's absolutist understanding in this regard. One is compelled by the positive relational quality of sociality found in the nature of the individual. The person is not an isolate in a group of isolates, but a creature of relationships whose very being from the time of conception develops in kinship with others. Freud's positivist frame of reference resulted in a reductionism which separated person from person, and in a deterministic conception of human nature. Habermas, in contrast, sees more clearly the positive relationship and communication within the community through his appreciation of the culture-subject as a creature of symbolization, with a potential for greater autonomy and responsibility based upon emancipatory interest. Though predicated upon human communication as it emerges in a self-reflective critique, this emancipatory activity realizes itself in the praxis of production and interaction.⁵⁶ This attribute of the human person radically distinguishes him/her from other living species by adding positive relationship to, and sharing with, other symbol-givers and symbol-receivers.

This marks the person with the quality of transcendence in terms of which one can speak of love, a quality to which Habermas does not advert in the texts considered. The transcendental ability to signify, symbolize and articulate the understanding of self, to reflect upon the self and to grow in understanding and appreciation of others differentiates the community of persons from any other group of animals, which do no more than signal. Where animals live with a crowd, humans live in community; animals are totally determined genetically, whereas people are self-determined and write their own history in a self-reflective labor process. The distance between the two is infinite and beyond description, and Habermas strongly rejects the positivist-objectivist-reductionist attempt to reduce the human reality to the dimensions of other creatures.

Reaching beyond Habermas, while incorporating his thought, we can say that communication in language through sign and ritual, rather than mere signal, makes sense only in a community which is built upon positive bonds of love with one another. Freud correctly saw as problematic the destructive and impulsively selfish tendency which requires an inculcation of virtues in the growing child through discipline and constraint. But it must be noted also that children identify with, and learn from, those they love and admire. Whether this be due to a wish to gain the affections of the admired person or a fear of loss of love, it reflects a strong desire to be related to and loved by the other. This is not to see the individual as merely epiphenomenal in relation to the group, but to note that, despite the negative and perverse elements in behavior and interaction, there exists also a positive mutuality. This manifests itself among members of the culture-subject inasmuch as they realize themselves through communication and work which is self-determined, articulated symbolically and rooted in love. Sociality and historicity are dimensions of this mutual symbolizing through which learning is shared through either verbal or ritualistic expression. Values and tradition are then the articulated morphological and syntactical matrix from which societal and cultural structures are evolved and through which they are transmitted.

Thus, for Freud antagonism is irrevocably encoded in the individual from the beginning, and history is written by events determined by specific biological and psychological causal factors over which the individual has no control. For Habermas, in contrast, the culture-subject is a creature of historicity, yet not completely independent of behavior and activity rooted in biological necessity. Though not a disembodied spirit, the culturesubject is free, choosing to write its own history through self reflective positive relations and communication among its members in non-antagonistic, nonexploitive production and interaction. The implication of these views for critical social theory needs more extended attention.

In Freud's view the distribution of natural resources in a way that would benefit all members and reduce selfishness is directed by the general mechanism which determines both the development and behavior of the person. Two specific factors shape this process: 1) a lack or insufficiency in the amount of goods to be distributed, and 2) the basically antagonistic, antisocial nature of the id. Together they lead to a social antagonism in regard to the distribution of goods and power which of itself would engender struggle. However, the utopian illusion of reward and punishment induces persons: 1) to act in a way that will bring future reward, rather than punishment; and 2) to channel libidinous energy toward the utopian object-cathexis through the mechanism of displacement for the good of the social group.⁵⁷ Therefore, from the Freudian perspective, individuals within the cultural group are not free to determine their future development. Rather, their formation is governed by the environmental factor of available resources, the intra-psychic factors of the antagonistic, pleasure-seeking, antisocial id, and the values of the superego which act as a harness to control and direct libidinal energy. Since all three factors are non-rational but critical determinants of human behavior the individual is not free and autonomous and the term responsibility is rendered ambiguous.

The individual is compelled to self-denial by the intrapsychic mechanism of moral anxiety. Thus, there is a twofold source of tension: 1) the need which demands the reduction of tension through gratification as directed by the id, and 2) the fear of punishment through guilt deriving from the superego. Under the pleasure principle of the id the tensions must be reduced, but under the reality principle of the ego they must be addressed: (1) in a way that avoids punishment, and (2) through a process of displacement which provides an object-cathexis which is both gratifying and appropriate.

The person can flee from neither the id nor conscience; and, as the needs constantly recur in what Freud calls a repetition compulsion,⁵⁸ the threat of punishment is incessant. This reflects the lament in Book IV of Milton's Paradise Lost as Satan realizes that he carries the process of his torment and perversion within his very being, forever and without respite.

Horror and doubt distract

His troubl'd thoughts, and from the bottom stirr

The hell within him, for within him Hell

He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell

One step no more then from himself can fly

By change of place: Now conscience wakes despair

That slumbered, wakes the bitter memorie

Of what he was, what is, and what must be

Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue. Sometimes towards Eden which now in his view

Lay pleasant, his grieved look he fixes sad,

Sometimes towards Heav'n and the full-blazing sun,

Which now sat high in his Meridian Towre:

Then much revolving, thus in sighs began.⁵⁹

When persons experience fierce id impulses from which they cannot flee and to which they cannot admit for fear of conscience, they repress what threatens to bring retribution.⁶⁰ Moreover, if the impulses are so strong as to constitute a threat of breaching control, bizarre behavior may arise in the form of defense mechanisms to mask the real situation as a defense against self and others. This manifests itself idiosyncratically as regression, projection, denial, fixation or reaction formation.

Not being able to admit either the existence of the impulse from which it cannot flee, nor the desired, primary object-cathexis for fear of punishment and ostracism, the person reconstructs its content linguistically. This is done by imposing linguistic structures or categories which constitute the superego as ego-ideal and conscience upon the impulses and the desired object-cathexes. This distorts the information in such manner as to make the truth fit the categories. In fact the behavior is bizarre, neurotic as it were--with the impulses periodically surfacing to near visibility in spite of the defense mechanisms. This break through the surface of conscious behavior may manifest itself in a dream whose content is highly symbolic or in a lapsus linguae which embarrasses the person at an appropriately inappropriate moment.⁶¹

A similar mechanism is in operation when a child desires a forbidden object-cathexis, but fears punishment or retaliation by those upon whom the child is totally dependent and before whom it is without any defense. Here anxiety becomes so overwhelming as to surrender the child into total denial of the object desired, i.e., self-denial.⁶² If the parents have reacted with sufficient violence and irrationality to terrorize and bewilder the child, the historical symbolic content of the forbidden desire, and even the actions of the parents, may be plunged into the obscurity of intra-psychic structures--in this case the unconscious--where it is repressed to such an extent that it cannot be remembered. The person has effected a self-imposed amnesia. In fact, so virulent an anti-cathexis is formed that even the memory or slightest hint of the true content brings fierce anxiety and trauma, eliciting within the person psychic barriers or defense mechanisms which act as a buffer to the critical process of self-reflection.⁶³

At some point, when the individual is in a circumstance which threatens to surface the impulse/memory, he/she becomes anxious and befuddled. Either the person will forever flee such situations or bizarre contradictory behavior will emerge. The individual, in both cases, has been given a linguistic structure which does not match the reality or truth of the impulse/object-cathexis: the symbolic structure of the linguistic or ritualistic action has a hidden or obfuscated referent because the egoideal and conscience, which are the values and traditions, have become rigidified abstractions. In a sense, psychic surplus value, in the form of ucathected or unreleased psychic energy, is being stored and/or utilized inappropriately by the oppressive or exploitative force which has been introjected through `identification with an aggressor' rather than with the person's own intra-psychic structure.⁶⁴

This applies specifically to that repressive training which not only establishes the constraints necessary to construct and preserve a just and loving community, but either renders the person incapable of being a value and joy to self and others or savagely enslaves the person to manipulation and exploitation by others. The liberative process of self-reflection, which would have been the means for a critique of the problem, is avoided for it threatens to surface the material which elicits the unwanted anxiety. As shall be seen further on, it would be useless to remove any and all constraints upon the id, as these must be controlled for the positive development of the person and the community.

Because of total identification with the values and traditions linguistica11y introjected as the superego structure, the person's self-understanding is the linguistically articulated structure of history. This constitutes a cognitive loop from which the person cannot easily escape: ever returning to the same point, one repeats the same bizarre behavior. In listening to the dreams, the lapses of tongue, the distorted, fragmented history and in observing, the behavior the psychoanalyst is dealing in symbolic material and must analyze its content and discern its meaning. This is matched against the verbal content of the patient who is speaking under the constraint of repressed material and filtering the content through the defense mechanism. In the instance where the person is rendered helpless or damaged by the repression manifested as neurosis, psychoanalysis endeavors to help the individual critique the symbolic content of linguistic and ritualistic behavior so as to reconstruct the history which is articulated in a broken, distorted or perverse manner through defense mechanisms. In this way, the psychoanalyst takes the individual above the cognitive loop to critique the problem.⁶⁵

HABERMAS' HISTORICO-HERMENEUTIC AS A PROCESS OF

LIBERATION

Analysis and Abduction

Habermas sees this as an abductive process of inquiry, not in an empirical-analytic scientific sense, but as an historic-hermeneutic science; that is, it deals not only with what is but with what it means. Many have charged that the psychoanalytic method is not scientific because it is not repeatable for verification and consensus. Habermas responds that it is as legitimate a method of science as is, for example, a bio-chemical experiment utilizing an empirical-analytic model. The problem is the positivist-objectivist illusion which reduces the person and the culture-subject to an objective fact. Certainly beyond a positivist, tautological transformation of a mere signal or sign, a symbol cannot be reduced to the dyadic level of interaction but transcends to the triadic level of communication. Thus, the psychoanalyst asks not only what this linguistic and ritualistic behavior is, but also what it means, for the psychoanalyst must critique meaning by transcending the level of the cognitive loop which would run the inquirer through endless twisting circuits only to return to the same point.

Hence, Habermas sees the positivist's demand for repeatability, which is a desirable characteristic of the empirical-analytic sciences, as in no wise applying to the historical-hermeneutic sciences. This is true especially of the psychoanalytic method where change in linguistic-ritualistic behavior as attested to consensually by the psychoanalyst, the patient, and others is the observable proof of success, but always in the context of, and in reference to, the self-formative process. Repetition would be an absurd attempt to subject the inquiry to an empirical-analytic scientific standard based upon a reductionist understanding which does not, and should not, apply.

Instead, Habermas perceives a relationship between the psychoanalytic method and the reflex-arc model of purposive, rational, feed-back controlled, instrumental action. The psychoanalyst matches the content of the dreams, the lapses of speech (lapsus linguae) and the observed behaviorism against the distorted or fragmented history as remembered by the patient. He/she does this to interpret the symbolic (linguistic and ritualistic) content and discover its meaning. This is compared to the history which issues through the filter of repressive defense mechanisms and is a linguistic construct of defense mechanisms, manifesting itself in distortion and broken fragments. As the history does not match the meaning of the dream content and neurotic behavior, it is really akin to a rigidified abstraction which indicates to the analyst the past, i.e., what was repressed, why it was repressed, and how it was repressed. This truth--too painful to be admitted for fear of punishment--is imprisoned in the dungeon of the unconscious and kept under strict censorship and beyond the realm of articulation. The psychoanalyst reconstructs the history from the broken, distorted fragments, correcting them from insight into the intention of the dreams, lapses of tongue, and behavior. He thereby gives linguistic content to the unspeakable which, up to this point, lay hidden in the unconscious.⁶⁶

This is an historical-hermeneutic methodological approach not reducible to empirical-analytic inquiry. What the psychoanalyst reconstructs is not necessarily correct, nor does it follow in a deductive sense. Through abduction the psychoanalyst reconstructs history and challenges the patient's inconsistencies in history and behavior. The patient must then appropriate or "own up to" the reconstructed history. If it is a correct reconstruction and defenses are breached, the unconscious material has been given linguistic structure at the conscious level. The meaning can now be analyzed and understood, thereby adding to the self-understanding of the person and his/her subsequent self-formation. In a sense, this is reflexively simultaneous with self-knowledge, because the subject is engaged in self-production through a communicative process of self-reflection. Here the psychoanalyst is midwife to the birth of the newly liberated transcendental process of self-reflection which can now proceed under the terms of a linguistically corrected self-understanding. Accordingly, `a catharsis' or `abreaction' should occur once the censorship has been lifted, releasing the dammed up energy. There should be an observable change in the person's behavior towards `healthier' and more creative activity. This may be perceived as a difference by the psychoanalyst, the patient and others, but must be confirmed or negated within the context of the process of self-formation.⁶⁷ How the abductive process actually works in achieving truth is largely speculative. That this is the case, however, is born out by scientific success in both the empirical-analytic and the historical-hermeneutic sciences which continually grow and advance through greater accuracy by means of further experimentation and correction.

The possibility of achieving truth through the abductive method is confirmed by science, on the one hand, and by the survival of the human species, on the other, for certainly negative selection would have overtaken the species were it otherwise. Furthermore, for the patient, this process is not mere dyadic signal change as in mere mechanical interaction of an empirical-analytic experiment, but a triadic symbolic change which adds to the symbol giver and the symbol receiver the dimension of meaning in an historical hermeneutic inquiry. It cannot be reduced to mere determinism as in positivism, including that of Freud himself--as noted by Habermas, it transcends the categories of biological or historical determinism. His patients decide freely to examine and change their situation in a process of self-reflection catalyzed by the psychoanalyst, to critique their very self in order to be liberated from the problematic elements of their personality.⁶⁸ Thus, they selfdetermine their historical process by critiquing oppressive elements within their psychic system with the intent of continual growth in autonomy and responsibility. This breaks through determination by an outside force.

Should the psychoanalyst be incorrect in his/her abductive insight no change will occur; the investigative, abductive process must start over, much like the reflex-arc model of the organism in the environment mentioned above. The psychoanalyst must continue to alter the variables, i.e. the linguistic content of the material, until the history is sufficiently corrected to effect the desired change. Moreover, the patient's defense mechanism must be breached as this resists threatening material from entering consciousness. At times, the patient may accept an historical reconstruction by the psychoanalist precisely because it is incorrect and, therefore, preserves the neurotic status quo. Nonetheless, at the transcendental linguistic level of meaning, the psychoanalyst proceeds to correct and maneuver towards the desired results which are observed in a positive change within the context of the self-formative process.⁶⁹ In this way, analysis is a process of purposive, rational, feed-back controlled instrumental action.

Relating to autonomy and responsibility, this process cannot be based on a biologically or historically deterministic perspective. As an act of self-determination, a transcendental leap above the cognitive loop of self-understanding through self reflection, psychoanalysis defies reduction to a positivistic, deterministic model. Only in freedom could the person desire to undergo the excruciating and anxiety-inducing process of self-reflection and self-correction which results in partial selfreformation. Were the person totally determined, the pleasure principle would short-circuit the process by forcing the person to flee the tension induced by the analysis and/or to resist the process itself. To the contrary, the person decides a change is necessary in spite of the tension-anxiety. By critiquing his/herself-understanding, the person loosens the bonds of self-understanding in the form of a rigidified abstraction that induced oppression in order to be liberated for greater autonomy (selfdetermination) and responsibility.

Historico-hermeneutic and Cultural Pathology.

Habermas considers this self-reflective process of self-determined reformation to be possible for the culture-subject.⁷⁰ Like the patient, the culture-subject has inculcated an articulated structure of values and traditions with which it identifies. Just as Freud insists that no person is spared the conflicts mentioned above, Habermas sees this same problematic in the structure of the values which have been passed on, namely, the traditions. Hence, rather than conceive an analysis of the culture-subject through the empirical-analytic method, Habermas envisions an analogous use of Freud's psychoanalytic method for culture analysis. Thus, just as the psychoanalytic method is used in a transcendental process of self-reflection to critique the person, an analogous method is applied to analyze the linguistic structure of the self-understanding of the culture-subject as articulated in historically distorted values and traditions.

The culture-subject identifies with values and traditions as the linguistic and ritualistic articulation of its self-understanding and formation. Like the superego, it maintains not only controls which are beneficial for the commonweal, but, at the same time, a status quo which contains historical distortions and oppressive elements. In the process of analysis and self-reflection the culture-subject critiques the unhealthy elements, whether contradictory, disruptive, oppressive or exploitative. Inasmuch as one's values and traditions are one's self-identity, this distorted linguistic structure operates as perverse self-formation.

This may have developed under certain historical exigencies as the culture-subject experienced a lack of natural resources due to the limitations of the knowledge and technical skills at hand. In this case values and traditions fulfill the superego's function in the culture-subject by maintaining control of the distribution of goods and the preservation of the power structure. Values and traditions developed in those straightened circumstances would probably contain unjust elements; projected into the present, they may no longer apply but have become rigidified abstractions which, along with the unjust elements themselves, must be critiqued and corrected. Thus, an analysis of the culture-subject's behavior and a reconstruction of the linguistic structure of its history are steps in the attempt by the culturesubject to perceive and appropriate its own inconsistencies in order to correct them. As in the psychological order, the defense mechanisms which preserve the self-understanding of the culture-subject must be breached before a proper abreactive catharsis can release and channel more creatively and positively the "neurotically" blocked energies.

This must be done by an abductive analysis which jumps the cognitive loop in which the positive-reductionist perspective traps the culture-subject--a trap which is mentioned also in the Marxist analysis. The analysis is abductive inasmuch as it begins at the conclusion of the syllogistically structured inquiry where the middle term which links the two premises is apprehended and tested against the pragmatic consensual scheme of observable change in the behavior of the culture-subject. The reflex-arc model applies in like manner, constantly adjusting the historical reconstruction until success is achieved through a linguistic, purposive, rational, feed-back controlled instrumental action.

It is useless to subject this process to the demands of the empirical analytic method for it is a search for meaning effected only through a transcendental process of critique as self-reflection--the meaning expressed in a utopian illusion. Moreover, the abductive inquiry is transcendental inasmuch as the middle term in the investigative syllogism is not implied in the starting point, namely, the conclusion of the syllogism, much as in the Kantian synthetic a priori. The arrival at the abductive insight has no obvious determined cause of which it is an effect; its truth is attested through a methodological consensus.

The process has notable similarities to the psychoanalysis of the individual person. First, the culture-subject reasserts its autonomy and responsibility through achieving a greater control over the process of historicity by correcting in the self-reflective process that which distorts, oppresses, and exploits. Second, there is resistance due to the desire to maintain control, and hence to enforce the status quo. Thirdly, like the person, it is the very self-identity which is under analysis and, therefore, under attack. This identity is constituted of the accumulated cultural wisdom which has been developed in order to survive both biological and historical negative selection.

Positivist approaches had subjected the need for investigating values and tradition to the objectivist fallacy that the observer must conduct the inquiry free of interest or passion. Yet, subjecting values and tradition to this perspective would deprive them of meaning, the very quality of their ability to symbolize or signify. To reduce values and tradition to empirical-analytic inquiry is to reduce symbol or sign to signal and thereby to render it altogether meaningless and, hence, useless.

This reductionist tendency of the positivist objectivism of empirical-analytic sciences has been questioned also by Heisenberg's Indeterminacy Principle. The investigations of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg regarding the speed and position of high velocity, sub-atomic particles demonstrates that the observer's instrument of observation effects the field of observation in such wise that the object observed is itself effected and, therefore, restricted to certain parameters of bias and probability regarding what can be known and predicted.⁷¹ This renders calculation and prediction merely probable, By implying also that there are limits to our knowledge due to the very nature of the knower this has renewed interest in the reexamination of epistemological issues.

As mentioned above, Peirce also suspects that the cognitive categories of the investigator biased the perception, analysis, and conclusion of the investigation. For this reason he considered consensus to be imperative in the validation of the results.⁷² Only thus is it possible to correct for, and avoid, the dogmatism of the statements which derive from and support an ideological stance based upon an interest unscrutinized interest and reified in rigidified abstractions.

Phenomenology recognizes that the object of consciousness cannot be assumed to be other than effected and altered by the specific consciousness. Nevertheless the danger of a solipsistic dead end and skepticism can be defended against by the pragmatic method's notion of consensus achieved through continued cognitive progress which integrates the technological advances in instrumental action. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Werner Heisenberg's Indeterminacy Principle, and Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, in raising questions of uncertainty in metaphysics, science and mathematics respectively, are based upon the same dynamic. From all three it might be suggested that the problem rests less with the object than with the subject of knowing, and that it points to the need for a more ample philosophical anthropology, metaphysics and epistemology to integrate the dynamics of historicity, distortion and liberation in the emergence of truth.

Interest and Liberation.

This deeper question of the role of interest in effecting human knowledge retains the critical issue, for, if in the empirical-analytic sciences the observer effects and biases what is observed this will be no less true in the historical-hermeneutic sciences. Freud insisted that interest was the driving mechanism in directing the person towards the object-cathexis, for as an object of desire the object-cathexis does not leave the person in a state of indifference. Vital interest, predicated upon the desire to release the tension of the libidinous energy through the mechanism of displacement from the primary object-cathexis to the secondary and tertiary, is the impetus that drives the person to learn and advance in the arts and sciences. The innate bias or interest towards learning is specified by conditioning, for indifference plays no part in learning.

The ego channels the energy of the id towards the utopian illusion of the superego, the ultimate object-cathexis.⁷³ The engine of science is not a process of cold, detached observation of acts, but interest that is fundamentally rooted in biology and in the superego. This is linguistically structured as values, i.e., as what is meaningful, important, and desirable to the person. Marx, himself, attributes the formal traits of reason to needs, linking the two conceptually so that need becomes the reason for interest in cognititve progress and instrumental action. This is intrinsic to the person as informed by sociality; it always transcends biological and historical determinism.

Habermas notes Nietzsche's insistence that whatever is done is done in self-interest. Knowledge, as unbiased, objective, and disinterested is an inane illusion, foreign to the Dionysian passion according to which the person desires to learn in a continual process of transcendence. What does not serve this end is neither of use nor of interest; passion informs human knowledge, rendering the idea of objective observation and knowledge meaningless.⁷⁴

Interest centered upon maintaining a continuous self-identity as a means of avoiding and preventing historical selection, while undergoing corrective critique in order to evolve greater autonomy and responsibility, has many manifestations. The desire to survive both biologically and historically motivates the culturesubject towards both the empirical-analytic and the historicalhermeneutic sciences. One finds this manifest first in the desire for progress in the sciences of nature and technology in order to acquire more adequate resources, to explore them productively and to achieve a greater distribution of goods. A second manifestation of interest is found in the manipulation and exploitation of this process of learning and production in order to enhance both the position of the power elite and the status quo. Beyond Habermas' explicit categories, one might add a third manifestation of interest, namely, the positive and loving relationships within the culture-subject which give impetus to acquiring and communicating knowledge and to technological progress in solidarity and for the commonweal.

With Habermas it can be said that values and tradition are the articulation of the interest which motivates learning as a self-formative process within self-understanding. More than Habermas, however, it is necessary to stress the fundamental fact that the purpose of analysis, critique, and correction is neither to ignore nor to destroy values and tradition, but to change only those elements which are problematic. Earlier in this chapter, values and traditions were characterized as a cultural, "genetic" code; i.e. the culture-subject's self-identity. Neither biologically nor historically determined--though indeed conditioned--they are transmitted in time as the culture-subject's own self-written history; as its self-identity, they constitute its self-understanding and formation. If one were to consider this in terms of an evolutionary model on the biological level--albeit self-determined in a rational and purposive way-values and traditions would be the historical genetic code which identifies the culture-subject. One would not change the genetic defect of color blindness through the elimination of all genes pertaining to vision thereby eliminating vision, or by altering the genes in such wise that the individual is no longer the person he was before. One seeks the defective gene and alters it in such a way that the person now has what he/she was previously lacking. As one does not eliminate that which constitutes the identity of the person, evolutionary development takes place by accumulating, not rejecting, positive, biological wisdom. Hence, one eliminates or circumvents that which is perverse and debilitating in the structure while preserving continuity and identity so that the result is not a new entity, but a healed person.

Similarly, the identity of the culture-subject must remain continuous through the process of correction. In psychoanalytic and cultural critiques, as processes of self-analysis or self-reflection, the aim is not to eliminate the person's superego or ego identity or the cultural-subject's identity in its values and traditions. That, in itself, would constitute an oppressive act of historical selection; in the case of the culture-subject it would be cultural genocide. The attempt radically to alter the superego of the person or the values and traditions of the cultural-subject, to make over the specific reality so that the identity is no longer continuous, has been exemplified in vastly varying degrees by the Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea (Cambodia) and by processes of attempted anglicization of immigrant populations in North America. Any such case amounts to tampering with the cultural genetic code in such wise as critically to alter the historical linguistic identity. This changes the self-identity--and subsequent self-understanding and self-formation--which it has uniquely become through the accumulated wisdom of the historical experience communicated linguistically and ritualistically through symbolic articulation.

Resistance to the historical, selective process can be observed in such examples as the maintenance of the Quechua (Inca) language and culture under Spanish linguistic and cultural domination; the persistance of the Aymara language and culture under both Quechua and Spanish rule; the affirmation of Mexican identity in its native American racial and cultural roots; the maintenance of a distinct African identity in the Americas under the particularly severe and historically selective processes of slavery. Overall, the culture-subject tends relentlessly to resist attempts to destroy or alter its self-identity. For this is a linguistic articulation of its self-understanding and self-formation, maintained through the relationships of love and concern of its constitutive members united in the bonds of sociality.

This is not to say the culture-subject is without problematic values and traditions. Freud notes that all individuals have some quirks within their intrapsychic structure,⁷⁵ and the same is true of all culture-subjects. However, rather than destroy its identity, within a value or tradition one critiques the linguistic distortion of its self-understanding in a manner analogous in psychoanalysis to targeting the locus of the problem contained in the superego. In this way, the integral self-identity of the culture-subject under critique is preserved through being corrected in a way that promotes creative and positive self-understanding in a process of self-reflection. This, in turn, is the self-formative, emancipatory process.

Freud expressed this point specifically in The Future of an Illusion. The utopian illusion allows for the introjection of mores and folkways in the development of the superego through identification with societal values and traditions. Without this development, predicated upon the introjection of linguistically and ritualistically articulated values and traditions, the person could not develop the anti-cathexes necessary for the displacement of libidinous energy from the primary object-cathexes in order to contribute to the higher pursuits of a well-disciplined, creative civilization realized through the arts and sciences.⁷⁶

In a similar way, for the culture-subject the destruction of values and tradition would destroy the channels of creativity by dissipating energies in idiosyncratic directions. It would become a question of `why,' `for whom,' and `for what' with no answer, because all `meaning' would have been removed from self-understanding. The loss of meaning would then reduce the culturesubject and its constitutive members to a dyadic level where there would be mere signal interaction rather than sign or symbol communication. One could state what a thing is, but not what it means. This would soon degenerate into a destructive cynicism, a materialism with little concern for the altruistic values and traditions necessary for interpersonal relationships and the preservation of the culture-subject. The result would be cultural despair or disorientation due to ambiguity in self-understanding.

The loss of values and tradition, which articulate meaning, would deprive the culture-subject of its `reason' to be, precipitating destructive struggles within the culture-subject as the constitutive members seek ever-increasing self-interest in lieu of ways to be for others. Sociality would be muted due to a failure to articulate its self-identity and self-understanding. As a result self-formation would be carried out in terms of radical individualism, while altruistic acts, having no motivating force, would begin to appear as peculiar manifestations of a neurotic mind a propos of nothing in particular. Eventually, the culture-subject would become terminal, for due to the loss of meaning successive generations would know little or nothing of their historical self-identity or unique wisdom.

CLARIFYING CRITIQUES

Positivism

The specific mistake of the positivist-objectivist perspective in understanding values and traditions merely as arbitrary manifestations of various culture-subjects can be noted within the field of sociology and, to a lesser extent, in the field of cultural anthropology. This perspective holds critical sway even within the area of contemporary revisionist psychoanalysis, as was noted by Eric Fromm. It is a great irony that Habermas seems to be trapped by this positivistic reductionism through inadequately adverting to the significance of values and tradition for the critical work of preserving self-identity from the most destructive forms of oppression.⁷⁷

In reality, a profound wisdom has been engendered and accumulated through a transcendental process which cannot be subjected to an empirical-analytic methodology or, failing this, categorized as irrelevant or essentially meaningless. This wisdom, articulated in values and tradition, has been largely abductively acquired and tested in a pragmatic manner through the reflexarc model of linguistic, purposive, rational, feed-back controlled instrumental action and attested to in its validity through the cultural consensus typified in the culture-subject's survival of the biological and historical selective process. Positivist analysis can no more account for this phenomenon than it can for the transcendental process of abductive inquiry which in both the empirical-analytic and the historical-hermeneutic sciences.⁷⁸

Applied to social change, the positivist-objectivist perspective finds it impossible to assert the validity of any values and traditions. It is compelled to call upon the force of a new power elite to inaugurate another arbitrary status quo, to enforce stability and to prevent chaos from ensuing, while remaining always vulnerable to an even more powerful element ready to assert its will. Nothing proceeds without interest as the basis for meaningful behavior and action. At the level of the culture-subject, therefore, in circumstances bereft of meaning radically individualistic self-interest among the constitutive members forms the basis of meaning for knowledge and instrumental action as its constitutive members seek only self-gratification and interact only at a diadic level. They are devoid of the ideals which should constitute and dispose the self-understanding and self-formation of the culture-subject as a cultural group united in solidarity, rooted in sociality and self-determined in common historicity.

Eventually, however, sociality should begin to reassert itself in the most primitive and rudimentary way after a ruthless process of selection irrevocably has destroyed the unique beauty, dignity and wisdom of the past, and, therefore, its self-identity. In the inter-regnum between the collapse and the reestablishment of values and tradition, however, reason and truth, based upon the fundamental elements of sociality and love, would be largely suppressed in favor of cunning and force. Where they existed, they would be applied to stark necessity and survival under stressful conditions, for the culture-subject's control over its self-formation for any length of time would be tenuous at best.

Eventually, the nature of sociality in the culture-subject would reassert itself with enough positive force to overtake the force of self-interested knowledge and action. Through linguistic and ritualistic articulation the tartan of self-identifying values and traditions of the culture-subject would be rewoven-- differently perhaps, but nevertheless inevitably--and the warp and woof of the culture-subject's fabric of self-understanding and self-formation would reappear. Such a long, costly and at best questionable process could have been better accomplished at the transcendental level of self-reflection, leaving the self-identity intact while correcting the problem. This process would be impossible within a positivist-objectivist approach and perspective.

Yet to avoid certain problems which accompany a positivist-objectivist approach, Habermas seeks greater autonomy and responsibility through `communicative action or interaction' for the creation of conditions for an unrestricted discussion and democratic resolution of practical issues. This must be seen as a process of communicative self-reflection by the culture-subject at the transcendental level of critique. Because this avoids restricting the process to the limits of a positivist-objectivist perspective, his method of critique can include and account for self-understanding or self-formation based on meaning which is rooted in the values and tradition which articulate the culturesubject's identity as a creature of self determined historicity.⁷⁹ Caught in the objectivist cognitive loop of its limitation, while unable to grasp the principle and more profound problem of triadic communication, the positivist-objectivist perspective remains at the dyadic level of interaction.

For Habermas, the overriding concern is to examine cognition-guiding-interest in an intersubjective, coercion-free communication or dialogue which would exclude no member of the culture-subject. Such a communication must be coercion-free to allow the truthful examination of the interests guiding the direction and momentum of the culture-subject to facilitate real consensus among all members. In this way norms and ethical principles can be established by which to direct the action of the culture-subject in all its dimensions, at all its levels, and for every member. This is the foundation of the methodological approach for examining the oppressive factors, i.e., the perverse and distorted linguistic and ritualistic elements found within values and tradition. Interest must be admitted and understood as being the fundamental force of all action, including scientific action. It is therefore imperative that these values be surfaced in truthful intersubjective, coercion-free communication so that they not become hidden unspoken factors of oppression which are utilized manipulatively by a power-elite or status quo. Rather, it is the exposition of these interests and the explicitation of the interest of all members of the culture-subject which are to be examined and decided upon consensually.

Marcuse

To clarify the limitations of such an analysis in applying Freudian theory to social critique it is helpful to follow Eric Fromm's criticism of Marcuse who rejects the displacement of libidinous energy to the socially approved object cathexes.⁸⁰ Though it is not our intent to discuss Marcuse at length, it is germane to this discussion to see how the superficial character of his approach ultimately misses the mark of critique, results in oppression and exploitation rather than autonomy and responsibility, and becomes thereby, as Fromm observes, anti-revolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Marcuse writes of the exploitation of `eros' by oppressive power structures in the human society and develops a theory of the liberation of libido. He reasons that severe social repression of libidinal energy at its primary pleasure seeking level allows for exploitation through the subversion and distortion of primary drives into anomalous forms, thereby enabling the individual voluntarily to live under oppressive and exploitative systems of depersonalization and alienation.<sup>81</sup> Realizing a systemic imbalance but unable to articulate the problem, one is in bondage to manipulative forces. Moreover, so internalized do these structures and their destructive values become that such an individual diverts and displaces his/her libidinal energy in the service of a conservative, truncated `eros'--really more `thanatos'--to one's own detriment, rather than creatively employing it for the construction of a just and loving society. The libidinous energy is sublimated from self-gratification in terms of the pleasure principle to the socially productive reality principle which Marcuse calls the `performance principle.' This energy is trapped in a common pool for the use of an oppressive and exploitative power structure toward maintaining the status quo. This displaces for its own selfish use all inquiry, knowledge, technological advances, production, and capital. This reservoir of libidinous energy is referred to by Marcuse as `surplus repression' which he deescribes as:

`required' for the maintenance of a society, or the need for systematic manipulation and control of tendencies, forces which can be identified by an analysis of the existing society and which assert themselves even if the policy makers are not aware of them. They express the requirements of the established apparatus of production, distribution, and consumption--economic, technical, political, mental requirements which have to be fulfilled in order to assure the continuing functioning of the apparatus on which the population depends, and the continuing function of the social relationships derived from the organization of the apparatus . . . . They generate common, super-individual needs and goals in the different social classes, pressure groups, and parties.⁸²

The means of liberation for Marcuse is regression from the reality or performance principle to the narcissistic, pleasure seeking, self-gratifying pleasure principle, that is, a regression to the primary level of gratification as Orphic-Narcissistic Eros.⁸³ Since Orpheus is associated with homosexuality and Narcissus with erotic self-centeredness, both are seen by Marcuse to embody the revolt against repressive, procreative, genital sexuality which lead to conservative control of libidinous energy for purposes of production and consumption by an oppressive, exploitative social order. Thus released from social bondage this libidinous energy becomes the means of liberation. Through easing and eliminating surplus repression, and thereby releasing the libidinal energies of the id as a revolutionary force, the power structure is overwhelmed and the system collapses.

Though in Marcuse's construct there are some extraordinary interpretations of Freudian psychoanalytic theory, much as Fromm notes, for our purposes the issue is that of the ultimately negative effects of the impulses of an unbridled id. The positivist-objectivist perspective traps one in an objectivist cognitive loop which renders critique superficial at best and indeed virtually impossible. Habermas' analysis ultimately misses the point of the transcendental level of communication on which values and tradition must be considered, thereby eliminating the possibility of self-reflection and self-identity as articulated in the very values and traditions which are disparaged. As is the case with Marcuse, no attempt is made to discriminate between the positive and negative in the self-identifying values and tradition of the culture-subject. Rather than revolutionary, this is anti-revolutionary and regressive, resulting in cultural, historical selection through the elimination of self-identifying values and traditions.

Moreover, because the superego is seen to be the enemy of the revolution--counter-revolutionary, as it were--it is disparaged and ignored as the spokesperson of the exploitative, oppressive structure of the culture-subject. The validity of this conclusion is ruthlessly correct in its insight, but logic also dictates the disastrous results of leaving the autistic, non-rational, self-centered id as the locus of authority. Beyond this, if true authority is based on truth, the id can by no means measure up, for its only interest is not truth, goodness, justice, love and peace, but its own immediate needs according to the pleasure principle. Thus, the id would discriminate between positive and negative values only in terms of their providing immediate access to primary and immediate gratification. If not, they would be subsumed under the category of obstacles to be ignored or eliminated. Reason would now be placed at the service of, and as spokesperson for, the id--which Freud considered an irascible tyrant. This is perhaps the result of collapsing reason into need, placing far greater trust in this dynamism than either Freud would allow or history has witnessed. Predicated upon Freud's writings, only with the most extravagant license and the greatest abuse of logic could one say that one would ever conceive of the id as a co-operator in the work of liberation towards autonomy and responsibility.

Freud notes that two specific periods are critical for the inculcation of values: infancy and adolescence.⁸⁴ At these times the person is taught the values and traditions which eventually make them a contributing and mature member of the culture-subject. But, if these critical periods are missed or the effort is thwarted or aborted, persons will be undisciplined and narcissistic. He or she would be of little benefit or positive value to their culture-subject, but would look for every opportunity to gratify primary object-cathexes, since the anti-cathexes formed were either too few or too weak. Moreover, the consequences of self-gratification for the group as a whole, whether positive or negative, will seem to be of little significance by and for individuals whose superego are underdeveloped. Culture and civilization will benefit little or not at all from their existence, for their participation will be greatly reduced by poor displacement patterns incapable of shunting libidinous energy to secondary or tertiary object-cathexes. Thus, dissipation of energy can take place only at the primary level. Any linguistic or ritualistic articulation of values and traditions would be jejune--a mere parroting perhaps for the manipulation of the culture-subject for personal ends. This is individualism, in the light of which communication is perverse and distorted.

The generation born during or after a successful Marcusean revolution of the id would lack the articulated morphological and syntactical matrix from which societal and cultural structures are evolved and through which they are transmitted; they would thereby be permanently debilitated. The damage suffered by the destruction of values and tradition would have an overall deleterious effect upon the culture-subject due to a catastrophic collapse in meaning for lack of the hermeneutic structures of articulation. Being of little benefit to anyone, the victory in such a transformation would be a pyrrhic one; the sought-for liberation would prove to be a chimera. Indeed, there would be a continuous threat of worse oppression and exploitation from other sources due to the loss of self-identity and a derivative loss of self-understanding and self-formation, resulting in a possible historical selection.

Collapsing the values and traditions of the culture-subject would be counterproductive to the overall commonweal due to the unbridled forces loosed. The People's Republic of China was wise to see the destructive potential in the Cultural Revolution which, spearheaded by youth motivated by dogmatism and given impetus by unbridled energy, almost resulted in cultural suicide. In the post World War II period, North American and European society tended towards a free expression of selfish, narcissistic, collective id impulses based upon a positivistic-objectivist perspective, which expressed themselves at virtually all levels of society. Fortunately, the radically centrist quality of the people and their adherence to their own values and traditions as a culture-subject reasserted sociality in a subsequent more conservative shift. Self-reflection leading to self-understanding allowed it to move toward reestablishing the linguistic and ritualistic fabric of its self-identity in a continuing and self-determined formative process.

Nevertheless, this conservative shift must also be critiqued in order to mitigate its negative impact upon social justice issues. This is the vortex where the contradictions meet, i.e., on the one hand, progress toward greater autonomy and responsibility through a self-determined, self-reflective critique, and, on the other hand, correction of the negative elements within the values and traditions of the culture-subject. Here, it is crucial to maintain the positive aspects of these values and traditions in order to preserve one's own identity and avoid selection through their collapse. Maintenance of these positive aspects does not appear to be protected by Habermas, while in Marcuse it seems to be neglected, though in a different manner.

Although Marcuse could not have envisioned it, in the long run the effect of his revolution would be the same as the systems he desired to transform; that is, deindividuation as a result of a positivist-objectivist reductionism. This deindividuation of the members who constitute the culture-subject would result through the collapse of values and traditions, for what could the culture-subject or its members say about themselves? Without an articulated, linguistic, intra-psychic structure the culture-subject would have no more identity than the person but would be truncated and lost. Being alienated from values and traditions by a disruptive and negative process which begins at the point of negation rather than from the original organic unity constituted by its values and traditions, the culture-subject would have no identity.

Bereft of cultural wisdom, it would undergo historical selection through being totally oppressed, exploited and absorbed into another more powerful culture-subject, or through stronger factions within the very culture-subject. The process of deindividuation resulting from the loss of values and traditions is in point of fact a loss of identity and, therefore, a collapse in self-understanding that effects a paralysis in the formative process as self-determined. Others would then define and direct the culture-subject, much as in capitalist systems propaganda seeks to generate through advertising a need for essentially unnecessary products, or in communist systems a dogmatism imposed upon the culture-subject often results in wasteful and unfulfilling production. Both define and direct the culture-subject in ways that are manipulative and exploitive; both are reductionistic and oppressive.

CONCLUSION: DOGMA VS DOGMATISM

In truth, values and tradition should act as a mechanism which generates, not dogmatism, but dogma, that is, the basic principles passed on in the process of history which define the self-identity of the culture-subject as autonomous and responsible. Dogma could be likened to a systemic cultural antibody inasmuch as it manifests itself as a defense structure. It persistently opposes any foreign linguistic intrusion into the culture-subject that would overwhelm its specific cultural self-identity and, thereby, wreak havoc with the culture-subject's selfunderstanding and its process of self-formation. More precisely and positively, dogma is the linguistic and ritualistic articulation of self-identity which it asserts with insistence in order to maintain the autonomy of its self-understanding and self-determined formation.

Dogma always stands in contradistinction to oppressive and exploitative dogmatism, which is the authoritarian articulation of a power structure in order to maintain or impose a status quo which is neither just nor `true.' Dogmatism is a distorted and perverse linguistic structure which diminishes the culture-subject's ability to articulate its self-understanding and self-formation, and thereby reduces its autonomy and responsibility. Authoritarian dogmatism, based on oppressive and exploitative interests which articulate the culture-subject's identity in a broken and distorted manner, is resisted and rejected precisely through self-understanding based upon truth. Linguistically structured in dogma, this renders the culture-subject autonomous and responsible. This truth is achieved through the transcendental process of self-reflective critique.

Because it is simple to identify authoritarianism and dogmatism imposed from without, flaws in the very values and tradition which constitute one's own linguistic and ritualist self-understanding are the more dangerous. There is particular need for identification and correction through self-reflection as a liberative process towards increasing autonomy and responsibility. The morphological and syntactical matrix of the linguistic structure of value and tradition must be examined for the purposes of diagnosing and remedying any inherent oppressive and exploitative elements of authoritarianism. This could be the coercive force of a power elite or a dogmatism expressed as rigidified abstractions and rationalized as values and tradition.

In the process of liberation, the culture-subject critiques itself to eliminate such oppression and exploitation within, while dogma assists by articulating linguistically the self-identity of the culture-subject. This provides continuity to self-understanding and self-formation as these move through processes of analytical self-reflection towards self-correction. As the process of critique continues, authority expresses itself as that force of truth which emerges through consensus and moves the culturesubject from oppressive authoritarianism and exploitative dogmatism towards ongoing liberation for continued growth in autonomy and responsibility.

This continuing abductive process of historical-hermeneutical scientific inquiry examines the oppressive and exploitative elements within the values and tradition of a culture-subject. It makes manifest the way in which elements of rigidified abstraction promote and promulgate distortions and perversions within the utopian illusion, trap creative energy and thereby maintain the status quo for a power-elite. Through such a transcendental process of critique the culture-subject is enabled to self-correct so that values and tradition can come forward and give birth to new life for a self-determining, autonomous and responsible people. Such a resurrection is liberation.

Oblate College

Washington, D.C.

1. This chapter is centered upon Habermas's analysis and development of a critique based on a criticism and development of the ideas of Karl Marx, Charles Sanders Peirce and Sigmund Freud. Nonetheless, it attempts to move beyond Habermas. This is true particularly in its stress upon the reality of the person in society (see note 2); the need of stable values and tradition for a viable self-identity; the vital necessity of both dogma and authority as positive forces of liberation and resistance to oppression, and their distinction from the negative forces of--what will be termed in this paper--dogmatism and authoritarianism, both defined as means of oppression. As Jurgen Habermas does not think along these lines, this work attempts to push beyond his parameters, while drawing logical conclusions from his premises.

2. Precisely because the question of the human person is epiphenomenal to the human species in Marxism, Habermas does not give adequate weight to the role of personal conscience or conscientious objection in ethical considerations. For him, it is not the human person who is free to act, but the human species. Therefore, the establishment of a normative ethics and the freedom to act reside within the group as a consensual reality.

No one can will or be self-conscious for another. Yet, the human person is a creature of sociality and, as also asserted by John Paul II, realizes him/herself only within the context of community with other persons--a communion of self-determined, self-reflective subjects. Within the truth of this intersubjective relationship, each person progresses in a common identity with the others in a cultural or social group. This, in turn, can be said to exhibit self-reflection, self-determination, and communication only inasmuch as it is a mutual effort of free, self-conscious individual subjects within whom freedom and consciousness essentially reside.

In developing this chapter the problem arose of avoiding epiphenomenalizing the human person to the group, while yet depicting the person as social by nature and, therefore, as related to, and participating in, a cultural group within which he/she develops and freely contributes. This corresponds to the problem of isolating each person at the expense of the group, as if their intersubjective relationships were of little importance or weight. What was needed was a term which would bring the two realities to mind almost simultaneously so that the subject was not lost in the group and the importance of the group relationship was not ignored. Such a term would help in avoiding both `individualism' or `totalism,' while expressing the cultural group of free, self-conscious subjects. As no term was found, one was coined: "culture-subject." Its purpose in this chapter on Habermas is precisely to avoid, on the one hand, ignoring the individual subject within which the primary human reality resides and is realized in personal acts and, on the other hand, isolating that very person from those intersubjective relationships (communio personarum) which are essential to the full realization of personhood.

3. Edward G. Hall, The Silent Language (New York: Doubleday, 1959), pp. 69-71.

4. Manley Thompson, The Pragmatic Philosophy of C.S. Peirce (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1959), pp. 160-163.

5. Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (subsequently KHI), trans. J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), p. 196.

6. Ibid., pp. 274-285.

7. Ibid., ch. 12.

8. Ibid., pp. 59-60.

9. Ibid., pp. 164-165.

10. Ibid., 110-111.

11. Jurgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society (henceforth CES), trans. J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 163.

12. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (henceforth CD), trans. J. Riviere (London: Hogarth, 1930), p. 66.

13. Anna Freud, The Ego and the Mechanism of Defence (New York: International University Press, 1946).

14. KHI, pp. 52-54.

15. Ibid., p. 279.

16. Herbert Marcuse, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, trans. J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp. 251-252; KHI., pp. 280-284.

17. KHI., pp. 43-44.

18. Ibid., p. 310.

19. CES., pp. 171-175.

20. KHI., pp. 308-316.

21. Ibid., pp. 34-35, 43-44.

22. Ibid., pp. 62-86.

23. I. Kant, The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics, trans. O. Manthey-Zorn (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1938), pp. 78-83.

24. KHI., pp. 197-198.

25. Ibid., ch. 9.

26. James K. Feibleman, An Introduction to Peirce's Philosophy (London: Allen and Unwin, 1959), pp. 324-325.

27. KHI., pp. 113-118.

28. Ibid., pp. 91, 121-135.

29. Max Black, "Induction," Encyclopedia of Philosophy, IV, 176-177.

30. Ibid., pp. 116.

31. Ibid., pp. 137-139.

32. Ibid., pp. 127-131.

33. Ibid., pp. 137-138.

34. J. Feibleman, p. 238.

35. KHI., pp. 195-198, 316-317.

36. S. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, trans. K. Jones (London: Hogarth, 1932.

37. A.A. Brill, The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud (New York: Random House, 1938), p. l2.

38. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, pp. 182-184.

39. KHI., ch. 10.

40. Ibid., pp. 276-277.

41. CES., pp. 116-118.

42. KHI., pp. 137-139.

43. S. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans. J. Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1961), pp. 2-4.

44. Brill, pp. 518-520.

45. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, pp. 3-4.

46. BWSF, 535-536, 12-13; KHI., pp. 243-244.

47. CD., pp. 64-65.

48. S. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, trans. K. Jones (London: Hogarth Press, 1932), pp. 183-185.

49. Eric Fromm, The Crisis of Psycho-Analysis (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1970), pp. 58-59; BWSF, p. 299.

50. KHI., pp. 263-267, and 314-315.

51. S. Freud, The Ego and the Id, trans. J. Riviere (New York: Norton, 1960), pp. 15 and 46; BRP., pp. 18-26.

52. CD., pp. 34, 40-42.

53. KHI., pp. 279-283.

54. CD., pp. 23-24, 33-34; S. Freud, The Future of an Illusion, trans. J. Strachey (New York: Norton, 1961), p. 7.

55. Freud, The Ego and the Id, pp. 37 and 49.

56. KIH., pp. 283-288.

57. Freud, The Future of an Illusion, pp. 46-51.

58. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, pp. 14-15, 17.

59. John Milton, Paradise Lost in English Minor Poems . . . (The Great Books; London: Brittanica, 1952), pp. 152-153.

60. Freud, The Ego and the Id, p. 41.

61. KHI, pp. 223-228; S. Freud, Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. J. Strachey (New York: Norton, 1977), pp. 37-38.

62. Freud, The Ego, pp. 45-70.

63. Freud, Five Lectures, pp. 24-25, 37; KHI, pp. 237-242.

64. KHI., pp. 274-279.

65. Ibid., 219-220; 238-242.

66. Ibid., pp. 224-242; ch. XI, 254ff, espec., 261-271.

67. Ibid., p. 269.

68. Ibid., pp. 246-254.

69. Ibid., pp. 266-269.

70. Ibid., ch. XII, pp. 274-290.

71. J. Androde e Silva and G. Lochak, Quanta, trans. P. Moore (New York: McGraw Hill, 1969), pp. 150-151.

72. Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, E.C. Moore and R.S. Robin, eds. (Amherst: Univ. of Mass., 1964), pp. 232-235.

73. Freud, The Ego and the Id, pp. 24-27.

74. KHI., pp. 290-300.

75. Fromm, The Crisis, pp. 42-43.

76. Ibid., pp. 51-52, 112.

77. Fromm, The Crisis, pp. 12-25.

78. KHI., pp. 133-135, 308-311. Again, it should be noted that the previous section, while drawing upon Habermas for the general analogy of social critique to psycho-analysis, attempts to maintain a much more positive attitude to tradition and values.

79. Ibid., pp. 314-317.

80. Fromm, The Crisis, pp. 25-31.

81. Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), pp. 10-11.

82. Marcuse, Negations, p. 251.

83. Fromm, The Crisis, pp. 29-30.

84. Freud, The Ego and the Id, p. 38.