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--- phd:book-journals:communicative-action [2020/02/26 12:17]
avnerus [Critique of instrumental reason]
+++ phd:book-journals:communicative-action [2020/03/30 12:16] (current)
avnerus [Concluding Reflections: From Parsons via Weber to Marx]
@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 <poem>
-Only with the conceptual framework of communicative action do we gain a perspective from which the process of societal
+//"Only with the conceptual framework of communicative action do we gain a perspective from which the process of societal
 rationalization appears as contradictory from the start.
 The contradiction arises between, on the one hand, a rationalization of everyday communication that is tied to the
 structures of inter-subjectivity of the lifeworld, in which language counts as the genuine and irreplaceable medium
 of reaching understanding, and, on the other hand, the growing complexity of subsystems
-of purposive-rational action, in which actions are coordinated through steering media such as money and power.
+of purposive-rational action, in which actions are coordinated through steering media such as money and power."//
 </poem>
@@ Line 49: / Line 49: @@
 As opposed to Weber who apparently thought that rationalization is inevitable and the future can be brighter only with help of charismatic liberal leaders who will be democratically elected, Lukacs uses Marx's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_theory|Crisis theory]] to demonstrate the limits of rationalization.
-==== Critique of instrumental reason ====
+ ==== Critique of instrumental reason ====
 Lukacs agrees with Marx's criticism of Hegel. Hegel tried to resolve the problem of the fragmented rational thought by the dialectics and synthesis of the unity of reason. However this is still abstract thought grounded in contemplative relations. //"Even a philosophy that reaches beyond the limits of formal rationality merely reproduces the reified structures of consciousness that constrains us to adopt a contemplative relation to a world that we have ourselves created."//
@@ Line 65: / Line 65: @@
 Adorno and Horkheimer are agreeing with Weber, the 'arch-positivist'(I guess this means he just accepts facts as they are and keeps the analysis flat) , that objective reason cannot be restored, not even in dialectics. Through critique of Hagel and an extrapolation of Lukacs' Reification they try to explain why Luckacs' theory didn't hold in the historical developments.
-Adorno speaks on "Negative Dialectics",Showing how Hegel's dialectics rejects the contingency in "things" and see everything as a unified logical deduction with a determined end (the 'absolute' synthesis). Hegel sees the non-identity being always present in the identity (on a different level?). Adorno knows that synthesis is not promised to turn out good, see capitalism and fascism. We must bring forth the non-identical, the other/alien, what is outside of rationality (**post-humanism?**).
+Adorno speaks on "Negative Dialectics",Showing how Hegel's idealist dialectics rejects the contingency between objects and subjects (Kant's noumena and phenomena) and see everything as part of unified logical deduction process, ending in the 'absolute' synthesis. Hegel sees the non-identity being always present in the identity, identity is between non-identicals. Adorno knows that the promise of synthesis is problematic, see capitalism and fascism. We must bring forth the non-identical, the other/alien, what is outside of rationality (**post-humanism?**).
 //"Adorno alleges that Hegel attempts to “ dispute away the contradiction between idea
@@ Line 73: / Line 73: @@
 takes cognizance of that dimension only for the sake of identity, only as an instrument
 of identity. ”// (A companion to Hegel)
-Also interesting book -**//Adorno's philosophy of the nonidentical: thinking as resistance//**
-Habermas contents that negative dialectics this is still not a discursive solution but a contemplation.
+Moreover, Adorno treats the non-identical as principles that you cannot reasonably and discursively justify.
+From secondary source **//Adorno's philosophy of the nonidentical: thinking as resistance//:**
+//That something may be right but unjustifiable, a paradox perfectly
+expressed by Benjamin’s words on the death penalty (“the execution of the
+death penalty can be moral, but never its legitimization” (ND 6:282/286)), is yet another case of
+non-alignment between the world we live in and our conception of it.
+Identity thinking cannot comprehend this hiatus and must never try,
+under no circumstance, lest it abstracts and thus cements the “objective
+insanity” (MM 4:228/200) of our human reality. The contradiction, once
+more, lies “in der Sache”: there should be no deeds so evil in this world
+that the unjustifiable becomes the right response to them. Yet there are,
+and if someone attempts to shift the cosmic imbalance 90 by doing the
+unjustifiable he may be right—unjustifiably so.//
+{{:phd:book-journals:adorno_self_in_mirror.jpg?400|Portrait of nonidentity}}
+Portrait of nonidentity
+Habermas doesn't like the fact that this path cannot be explicated discursively and sees this a a fundamental problem of the Frankfurt school also apparent in Horkheimer.
+Horkheimer criticizes both "Neo-Thomism" (From Thomas Aquinas, philosophies trying to revive traditional/medieval objective truth such as Plato's good/beautiful, and also logical empiricism/positivism that sees scientific facts as objective truths (**similar to Merleau-Ponty**). Regarding  traditionalism, Horkheimer suggests that if these approaches were dissolved, it is because they are indeed too weak. Regarding logical positivism, this is an amplification of reification, of abstraction. Seeing absolute material truth in facts that are of subjective reason. These are two types of theories that lead to groundless constitutions of truth and reason. 'fact' is a product of abstract social alienation, an abstract object of exchange. //"A concept cannot be accepted as the measure of truth if the ideal of truth that it servers in itself presupposes social processes that thinking cannot accept as ultimates"// (Eclipse of Reason).
+However, as noted by Habermas, Horkheimer doens't go deeper into a reflective investigation of science, but stays in this negative line of criticism of subjective reason "from the ironically distanced perspective of an objective reason that had fallen irreparably into ruin". Instead, they radicalize and generalize reification into the concept of instrumental reason.
+==== Instrumental Reason ====
+Lukacks sees the reified consciousness as an expansion of capitalist thought that is based on exchange value and expanded into wage labor, where workers are identifying themselves with the commodity and the capitalist system. Adorno and Horkheimer, however, see exchange value merely as a particular case of a more general pattern which they name **Identifying Thought** whose force is manifested mostly in philosophy.
+Identifying thought explains not only the commodity fetishism but all interactions of the subject with its environment. It is driven by **self-preservration** : **//"technical mastery and over, and informed adaptation to, an external nature that is objectivated in the behavioral circuit of instruments action//**. Instrumental reason is grounded in subject-object relations and is not formed by subject-subject exchanges (**no intercorporealityt?**). In society it is manifested as a process of **domination**, in which a subject objectifies another subject and then dominates is as part of external nature. This include domination of the self, over inner nature, by the subject self-objectifying itself, all for self-preservation.
+//As soon as man cuts off his consciousness of himself as nature, all the ends for which he keeps himself alive—social progress, the heightening of all his natural and spiritual powers, even consciousness itself—are nullified; ..Man's domination over himself, which grounds his selfhood, is virtually always the destruction of the subject in whose service it takes place.//
+For reconciliation they speak of some merger of human with nature, but it cannot be formulated in the form of reason, because reason is instrumental from its very beginning. They can only stand as a code which they call //mimesis//.
+//The "dialectic of enlightenment" is an ironic affair: It shows the self-critique of reason the way to truth, and at the same time contests the possibility "that at this stage of complete alienation the idea of truth is still accessible."//
+Adorno tried to approach this //mimesis// non-discursively through aesthetics and art, and their correspondence with his //negative dialectics// (**perhaps a relation to Merlaeu-Ponty's theory of the corporeality of art? this hidden qualities of the flesh. Habermas compares Adorno's "mindfulness" to Heidegger's "being"**).
+Habermas resents this approach:
+//As the foreword to Dialectic of Enlightenment clearly explains, they had given up the hope of being able to redeem the promise of early critical theory. Against this, I want to maintain that the program of early critical theory foundered not on this or that contingent circumstance, but from the exhaustion of the paradigm of the philosophy of consciousness. I shall argue that a change of paradigm to the theory of communication makes it possible to return to the undertaking that was interrupted with the critique of instrumental reason; and this will permit us to take up once again the since neglected tasks of a critical theory of society.//
+==== Communicative rationality ====
+Instrumental reason cannot explain social solidarity in metaphysical terms, because it formulated only from the point of view of the subject operating for its own self-preservation. Inter-subjective rationality is explained by the 'non-identical' idea of //mimesis// Something that is outside of reason:
+//Even though they cannot provide a theory of mimesis, the very name  calls forth associations—and they are intended : Imitation designates a relation between persons in which the one accommodates to the other, identifies with the other, empathizes with the other. There is an allusion here to a relation in which the surrender of the one to the example of the other does not mean a loss of self but a gain and an enrichment . Because the mimetic capacity escapes the conceptual
+framework of cognitive-instrumentally determined subject-object relations, it counts as the sheer opposite of reason, as impulse. Adorno does not simply deny to the latter any cognitive function.
+In his aesthetics he attempts to show what hte work of art owes to the power of mimesis to unlock, to open up. But the rational core of mimetic achievements can be laid open only if we give
+up the paradigm of the philosophy of consciousness—namely, a subject that represents objects and toils with them—in favor of the paradigm of linguistic philosophy—namely, that of intersubjective understanding or communication—and puts the cognitive-instrumental aspect of reason in its proper place as part of a more encompassing **communicative rationality**.//
+Adorno:
+//"The state of reconciliation would not annex what is unfamiliar or alien with philosophical imperialism; instead, it would find its happiness in the fact that the latter, in the closeness allowed, remains something distant and different, something that is beyond being either heterogeneous or proper." **(This reminds of Simone Weil)**//
+There is a reference to the theory of reflection and self-consciousness by Henrich, and a critique of it by Tugendhat who exposes its circularity - **Much like Merleau-Ponty's critique of the theories of reflection on //The Visible and the Invisible//**. Thus consciousness is unable to address itself 'naturally' only as an object, as in the theories of instrumental reason and self preservation.
+//"A subjectivity that is characterized by communicative reason resists the denaturing of the self for the sake of self-preservation. Unlike instrumental reason, communicative reason cannot be subsumed without resistance under a blind self-preservation. It refers neither to a subject that preserves itself in relating to objects via representation and action, nor to a self-maintaining system that demarcates itself from an environment, but to a symbolically structured lifeworld that is constituted in the interpretive accomplishments of is members and only reproduced through communication. Thus communicative reason does not simply encounter ready-made subjects and systems; rather, it takes part in structuring what is to be preserved . The Utopian perspective of reconciliation and freedom is ingrained in the conditions for the communicative sociation of individuals; it is built into the linguistic mechanism of the reproduction of the species." //
+In Volume II Habermas will develop a communicative theory of rationality, that decentralizes the focus from studies of consciousness and instrumental reason, to a rationality that is developed through communication, reaching understanding and agreement, and under the effect of steering media such as money and power.
+===== Volume two =====
+==== Concluding Reflections: From Parsons via Weber to Marx ====
+After analyzing society through new paradigms of system's theory, Habermas goes back to Weber's reflection on rationalization and the loss of freedom and meaning - moving from Weber's //purposive rationality// to //'action oriented to mutual understanding', 'symbolically
+structured lifeworld', and 'communicative rationality'//:
+//Then we could analyze the rationali-
+zation of action systems not only under the cognitive-instrumental aspect, but by bringing in moral-practical and aesthetic-expressive aspects
+across the whole spectrum.//

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