Rectification Redux:

Jürgen Habermas Meets Confucius

Robert Ferrell & Joe Old El Paso Community College

New Mexico-Texas

Philosophical Society

2014 Spring Conference

University of Texas at El Paso

Version 1.5 April 1, 2014

Solving the problems of society

Confucius (551 BC – 479 BC)

Jurgen Habermas (1929 to Present)

Rectification of Names

Communicative Action Theory

It’s about the community

… signify by a show of hands.

All in favor ….

“Cueva de las Manos.” Wikipedia. 2 June 2014. Web. 30 March 2014.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cueva_de_las_Manos

Cueva de las Manos. Santa Cruz, Argentina.

9,000 to13,000 Years old.

This paper is about ….

…the deplorable state of

our political discourse.

“The single most important

thing we want to achieve is

for President Obama to be

a one-term president.”

– US Sen. Mitch McConnell (D-KY)

Source: David M. Herszenhorn. “Hold onto Your Seat: McConnell Wants Obama

Out.” New York Times 26 Oct. 2012. Web. 3 March 2014. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/hold-on-to-your-seat-mcconnell-wants-obama-out/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Our impulse...

Media lies and distortion lead to anything but democracy.

Abortion is “well over 90 percent

of what Planned Parenthood does.”

John Kyl's statement on

Planned Parenthood on

the floor of the US Senate

on April 8, 2011.

The claim was false

The facts are that only three percent of Planned Parenthood’s

resources are devoted to abortions.

Called on the falsehood, his office said of Kyl’s assertion in

Senate debate…

“[H]is remark was not intended

to be a factual statement.”

Source: Alex Seitz-Wald. “Kyl Walks Back Planned Parenthood Claim: It ‘Was Not

Intended To Be A Factual Statement.’” ThinkProgress.org. 8 April 2011. Web. http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/04/08/157415/kyl-walks-back-claim-about-planned-parenthoo/

Kyl’s remarks are iconic

For a wide variety of issues, ranging from

• Weapons of Mass Destruction

• To Voter Suppression

• To Obamacare

• To Deregulation and trickle-down economics

"The problem here is that there will always be

some uncertainty about how quickly he can

acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want

the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Source: “Search for the Smoking Gun.” Wolf Blitzer Reports. 10 Jan. 2003. CNN.

Web. 3 30 2014. http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/10/wbr.smoking.gun/

The problem: Part 1

• Kyl's statement represents instrumental reason (even

when it's not based on reality) to achieve the strategic

goal of eliminating Planned Parenthood

• This approach does not represent the beliefs of the

majority of the community (the US population)

• Such reasoning is widely used in American politics today,

e.g.,

• Obstructionism directed at entire Obama agenda from

inauguration day

• Filibuster in the Senate and continued attempts to repeal

Obamacare

This is not a new issue

Solon (638 – 538 BCE)

“[F]or a mere law to give all men equal rights is but useless, if the poor must sacrifice

those rights to their debts, and, in the very seats and sanctuaries of equality, the

courts of justice, the office of state, and the public discussions be more than

anywhere at the beck and bidding of the rich.”

Confucius (551 – 479 BCE) [See below]

Thomas More (1478 – 1535)

“And so, when I examine and consider all the flourishing republics in the world today,

believe me, nothing comes to mind except the conspiracy of the rich, who seek their

own advantage under the name and title of the republic. They also devise and think

up all sorts of ways and means to hold onto their ill-gotten gains with no fear of

losing them, and then hire the labor of all the poor at the lowest price and abuse them.

When once the rich have decreed that all these devices are to be observed in the

public name (in other words, in the name of the poor too), they then become laws.”

James Madison (1751 – 1836) [See below]

Jürgen Habermas (1929 – Present) [See more below]

Rectification of Names

If the names of things are not correct, “language will not be

in accord with truth. If language is not in accord with truth,

then things cannot be accomplished.” The end result is that

“people will not know how to move hand or foot,” i.e., chaos

and confusion abound in society.

正名 (Zheng Ming) Confucius 孔丘

(551 – 479 BCE)

Though he never held major office, when asked what his first act would be if he were to become

Prime Minister, he said his first priority would be to perform a Rectification of Names.

Communicative Action Theory

For Habermas, the chief problem of contemporary society is

that instrumental reason is “colonizing” what he calls

Lifeworld, a term he borrowed from Edmund Husserl (1859

– 1936) representing the totality of human existence – going

well beyond the abstractions of science and scientism.

Jürgen Habermas (1929 – Present)

For Jürgen Habermas, the social and political problems are best solved by

Communicative Action and Discourse Ethics.

Communicative Action Theory - 1

For Habermas rationality is inherent in the very attempt at

communication

• Involves the very expectation of understanding

• Without which there would be no point in even trying

Communicative Action Theory is directed at norm development

through consensus, which instrumental reason is not prepared

to deal with

He gets there through “universal pragmatics”

• The conditions necessary for communication to take place

• People with different goals are able to create norms

Communicative Action Theory - 2

Regarding the rationality inherent in communication,

Habermas says that

“Reaching understanding

inhabits human speech as

its telos.”

Source: James Gordon Finalyson. Habermas: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005: 34. Another translation reads, “Reaching understanding is the inherent telos of human speech.” See Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, V-1. Thomas McCarthy, translator. Boston: Beacon P, 1984: 287.

What is the Lifeworld?

“The stock of skills, competences, and knowledge that ordinary members of society use, in order to negotiate their way through everyday life, to interact with other people, and ultimately to create and to maintain social relationships.”

Source: Andrew Edgar. Habermas: The Key Concepts. New York: Routledge, 2006: 89.

Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938)

Source: Andrew Edgar. Habermas: The Key Concepts. New York: Routledge, 2006: 89.

Habermas formalizes the problem generally

Lifeworld System vs.

All goal-oriented organizations.

Human culture; all human activity.

Instrumental reason IS only

appropriate here.

Instrumental reason is NOT

appropriate here.

Habermas on “instrumental reason”

• He is not opposed to instrumental reason where it is and

has been most effective, e.g., in science and goal oriented

projects

• However, he is committed to a clear separation of systems

analysis (SYSTEM) and the more significant aspects of life

as it's lived (LIFEWORLD)

• Instrumental reason has short-term interests at heart,

subject/object/first-person grammatical structure, and

strategic goal orientation

The ultimate problem: colonization

Instrumental reason threatens the

Lifeworld with domination,

oppression, alienation, and totalizing

objectification, displacing the goals

of the entire community with limited

goals such as profit, ending in

something much like Social

Darwinism, which is quite effective

for the few.

The Problem: Part 2

• Instrumental Reason sees nothing wrong with distortion

(even lies) if it is strategically effective

• This more widespread and important than Kyl's “Noble Lie”

• The biggest problem (we believe) is corporate domination of

the political system, partly via coopting politicians through

campaign contributions (a la Citizens United)

• And manipulating the public through enormous spending on

the media (much of it secretly)

• Congress, for example, often puts vested interests above

community interests

The Problem: Part 3

Habermas argues that instrumental reason is too

narrow for most issues that come up in the Lifeworld.

“Cultural differentiation offers a place for a new kind of rationality that also shapes a modern experience. This is a world in which all assertions, descriptions, claims, and propositions are contentious, open to criticism and review on the basis of their conformity to idealized and differentiated descriptions of their validity.”

Source: Pauline Johnson. Habermas: Rescuing the Public Sphere. New York:

Routledge, 2011: 48

The Problem: Part 3 (cont’d)

There are in fact many different kinds of logic – besides the

instrumental reason that the West settled on following the

Enlightenment

The dominating influence of instrumental reason is what led

Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno to their deep

pessimism in their magnum opus The Dialectic of the

Enlightenment.

The Problem: Part 3 (cont’d)

Pascal’s famous formulation illustrates the potential

for different kinds of logic:

“The heart has its reasons,

which reason does not know.”

“Le cœur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît

point. ” Pensées

Source: Blaise Pascal. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pascal's Pensées. 27 April

2006. Web. 30 March 2014. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-0.txt

There are many other forms of logic, particularly

aesthetic logic. For Habermas, though, intersubjective

reason is the key, and the issue is that it NOT BE

dominated (or COLONIZED) by instrumental reason.

Habermas's project

• He is a second-generation Frankfurt School theorist

• Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's Dialectic of the

Enlightenment had led to extreme pessimism

• Postmodernism's limitation on rationality (and its assertion of the

indeterminacy of meaning)

• The virtual ignorance (root: to ignore) of positivism, analytics, and

scientism (as opposed to science) of ALL but instrumental reason

at the expense of intersubjective reason

• Enlightenment as an “unfinished project” – the title of a Habermas

essay

• Habermas would maintain Communicative Action against the

onslaught of instrumental reason on Lifeworld

Habermas's Discourse Principle

• Openness and full inclusion of everybody affected

• Symmetrical distribution of communication rights

• The absence of force in which the “forceless force of the

better argument” is decisive

• The sincerity of the utterances of all participants is

assumed

• The outcome of such a rational discourse is a rational

consensus to which all possibly affected persons could

assent as participants

“Ideal Speech Situation”

• In his “linguistic turn,” Habermas adapted JL Austin's Speech Act

Theory to get away from the “philosophy of consciousness” paradigm

• He later changed the term “ideal” to “idealization” because the former

“suggests that it is possible to free discourse from interested positions

and strategic behavior” AND because it smacked of metaphysical

idealism (in the form of an “external yardstick by which we could

measure existing practices”)*

• But it was describing a goal for a process of discourse between persons

with often intense interests. Habermas's Discourse Principle is radically

democratic.

• Instead of a static “ideal” situation, Habermas was referring to a on-

going, “dialogic” learning process always open to revision

* Source: John Sitton. Habermas and Contemporary Society. New York: MacMillan,

2003. p. 54 n. 41.

Once universally seen as major opponents over

Derrida's deconstructive thinking, the two

philosophers ended as “friends” on the issue of

world politics (while agreeing to disagree on

other matters).

Inspired by the problem of terrorism and the

politics related to the European Union, the

originator of deconstruction and the originator of

communicative rationality came together in the

valuable interchange of ideas.

Habermas also “meets” Derrida

This constitutes one of the better illustrations of the productive value of

communicative action discourse.

Derrida’s untimely death sadly brought an end to the possibilities of this

interchange.

The Derrida-Habermas Reader (published 2006)

Madison: Guarding society against itself

# 1: “The one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority that

is, of the society itself.”

#2: “The other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of

citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very

improbable, if not impracticable.”

In Federalist Paper #51, James Madison

warned against factions, saying that it is

necessary “to guard one part of the society

against the injustice of the other part.”

“There are but two methods of providing against

this evil:

Rejecting the FIRST as monarchical, he accepted the SECOND.

James Madison

(1751 – 1836)

Our proposal, following Madison...

We would thus start by creating a “faction” in the democratic

wing of the Democratic Party that would follow Habermasian

principles

• To engender Discourse Ethics in politics and society

• And seek a political following to influence American

political discourse

[Note: While even Habermas felt an element of pessimism over the role of politics in

Lifeworld discourse, his original impulse was to overcome the pessimism of his Frankfurt

School predecessors .]

We would re-interpret (and repunctuate) Madison’s first

proposal, thus correcting the problem of factions. In our

reading, we would

“create a will in the community independent of the majority;

that is, [a will] of the society itself.”

Habermas formalizes the problem specifically

Note: System is a part of Lifeworld.

The “System” is colonizing “Lifeworld”

For Habermas, this is the biggest problem

What is the System? -1

• Corporations • Political Parties • Labor organizations • Lobbying organizations

• Advocacy groups • NGOs • Non-Profit organizations • Trade Groups • The STATE

The advocates for the System head organizations, such as those listed below, which have narrowly defined goals:

What is the System? -2

The hallmark of System thinking is

instrumental reason. It is the main

definition of reason that came out of the

Enlightenment. It is powerful, focused, and

effective. But it is not appropriate for

issues in the Lifeworld.

What is the System? -3

“Instrumental reason appeals to knowable facts about the

world, and in particular to the causal relationships that can be

established between means and ends. The most appropriate

means are therefore those actions and resources that are

judged to realize the desired goals most efficiently (be this in

terms of the least use of resources, the lowest cost, or the

speed of the achievement). Instrumental reason is

fundamental to the development and application of

technology, and thus to the control of the natural world.”

Source: Andrew Edgar. Habermas: The Key Concepts. New York: Routledge, 2006: 74.

What is the System? -4

“The system is

basically society as

a coercive power.” Source: Andrew Edgar. Habermas: The Key Concepts. New York: Routledge, 2006: 89.

What is the System? -5

When system thinking –

when instrumental reason –

is applied to human beings,

they are treated like objects.

What is the Lifeworld? -1

A concept from Edmund Husserl, the philosopher who developed phenomenology. Husserl, concerned that science and technology were concealing the most significant aspect of human existence, developed phenomenology as a new way of thinking about human existence. The “lifeworld” was his term for the totality of human existence – going well beyond the abstractions of science and scientism. Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938)

What is the Lifeworld? -2

Definition: “The stock of skills, competences, and knowledge that ordinary members of society use, in order to negotiate their way through everyday life, to interact with other people, and ultimately to create and to maintain social relationships.” This is the symbolic world, meaning “Life.” Source: Andrew Edgar. Habermas: The Key Concepts. New York: Routledge, 2006: 89.

What is the Lifeworld? -3

Lifeworld is not just a philosophical abstraction. It represents the

complete array of creative, intellectual, cultural, sociological,

physical, sexual, psychological, artistic, scientific, mathematical,

and philosophical possibilities of human existence, present, past,

and future. The existential ground of all human life conceived in

its vastest potentiality is at stake with Lifeworld’s colonization:

the finest human thinking, doing, creating, performing, acting in

an almost infinite number of cultural dimensions. It is all of the

potentialities of human existence, realized and unrealized, even

those beyond our ability to imagine now. It is the uncarved block

of Taoism, the “all things luxuriantly present” of Buddhism as

Chinese Neo-Confucian thinker Wang Yang-ming (1471-1529)

conceived it.

What is the Lifeworld? -4

“Cultural differentiation offers a place for a new kind of rationality that also shapes a modern experience. This is a world in which all assertions, descriptions, claims, and propositions are contentious, open to criticism and review on the basis of their conformity to idealized and differentiated descriptions of their validity.”

Source: Pauline Johnson. Habermas: Rescuing the Public Sphere. New York: Routledge, 2011: 48

What is the Lifeworld? -5

There are no formal advocates for the Lifeworld as there are

for organizations in the system. No one is appointed to

ensure that Lifeworld is protected.

“The tension between Lifeworld and System is central to

Habermas’s understanding of contemporary society.

Habermas’s contention is that, as societies become large and

more complex, so the resources of the Lifeworld are

stretched to [the] breaking point (overburdened) by the

demands of organizing social interaction.”

Source: Andrew Edgar. Habermas: The Key Concepts. New York: Routledge, 2006: 90.

Possibilities for the Lifeworld?

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a

more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic

Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the

general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to

ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this

Constitution for the United States of America.”

This sounds like it could be the framework for safeguarding a Lifeworld. But what happens?

Preamble to the US Constitution

BUT the “System” is constantly colonizing “Lifeworld”

HOW?

Lifeworld gets colonized

It’s an old problem. The definition of an “honest politician”

is attributed to Simon Cameron (1799 – 1889):

"An honest politician is one

who, when he is bought, will

stay bought."

By Campaign Finance, for one

Source: “Simon Cameron.” Wikipedia. 7 Dec. 2013. Web. 4 Jan. 2014.

Lifeworld gets colonized

“Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not

actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may

be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in

fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial

resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise

legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a

compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures

designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in

local and national races.”

The Problem with Corporations -1 Justice John Paul Stevens DISSENTS in Citizens United

Justice John Paul Stevens. “Opinion of Stevens, J[.] Supreme Court of the United States, Citizens United, Appellant v. Federal Elections Commission. Cornell University Law School.” 21 Jan. 2010. Web. 14 July 2013.

Source:

Lifeworld gets colonized

“It might also be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.” “These basic points help explain why corporate electioneering is not only more likely to impair compelling governmental interests, but also why restrictions on that electioneering are less likely to encroach upon First Amendment freedoms.”

The Problem with Corporations -2 Justice John Paul Stevens goes on in Citizens United

Justice John Paul Stevens. “Opinion of Stevens, J[.] Supreme Court of the United States, Citizens United, Appellant v. Federal Elections Commission. Cornell University Law School.” 21 Jan. 2010. Web. 14 July 2013.

Source:

Lifeworld gets colonized

By Voter Suppression tactics -1 A study, conducted by University of Massachusetts Boston professors Keith Bentele and Erin O’Brien, examined restrictive voting laws proposed between 2006 and 2011. These covered voter ID laws, proof of citizenship requirements, voter registration limits, early voting and absentee voting restrictions, and restrictions on felons’ voting rights. They found that “the more that minorities and lower-income individuals in a state voted, the more likely such restrictions were to be proposed.”

Lifeworld gets colonized

By Voter Suppression practices -2 “States where more minorities turn out to vote are more likely to pass vote-suppressing laws, according to an analysis published by the American Political Science Association last week. These findings fly in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent opinion gutting key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, in which Chief Justice John Roberts asserted that race-based disenfranchisement was a thing of the past.”

Original Study: Jim Crow 2.0? Why States Consider and Adopt Restrictive Voter Access Policies

Lifeworld gets colonized

By Voter Suppression practices -3 “Of the 41 adopted voter restrictions

considered here, 34 restrictive changes

(83%) passed in Republican controlled

state legislatures. Further, of the bills

requiring either photo ID or proof of

citizenship (the policies that are the most

unambiguously expected to

disproportionately burden likely Democratic

voters), all were passed in legislatures

under Republican control” (page 20).

Original Study: Jim Crow 2.0? Why States Consider and Adopt Restrictive Voter Access Policies

Lifeworld gets colonized

An ancient practice: Solon (638 BCE – 558 BCE)

Solon, who allowed Athenians exiled for their debts to return

home freely, in the 7th century BCE, was concerned that even if

reforms were passed “for a mere law to give all men equal

rights is but useless, if the poor must sacrifice those rights

to their debts, and, in the very seats and sanctuaries of

equality, the courts of justice, the office of state, and the

public discussions be more than anywhere at the beck and

bidding of the rich.”

Source: Plutarch. “Poplicola [Publius] and Solon Compared,” The Lives of

the Noble Grecians and Romans. Dryden Translation. Great Books

of the Western World. Vol. 14. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica,

1952), 87.

Solon

Lifeworld gets colonized

An ancient practice: Thomas More (1478 – 1535)

“And so, when I examine and consider all the flourishing republics in the world today, believe me, nothing comes to mind except the conspiracy of the rich, who seek their own advantage under the name and title of the republic. They also devise and think up all sorts of ways and means to hold onto their ill-gotten gains with no fear of losing them, and then hire the labor of all the poor at the lowest price and abuse them. When once the rich have decreed that all these devices are to be observed in the public name (in other words, in the name of the poor too), they then become laws.” - Utopia

Source: Jurgen Habermas. Theory and Practice. Boston: Beacon Press 1974:

53. Translated by John Viertel from 1971 original.

Historical Perspective: The “Dual Revolution”

The Political Revolution • Glorious Revolution

• American Revolution

• French Revolution

• Russian Revolution

• Chinese Revolution

• End of European empires – Africa

– Asia

The Industrial Revolution • Steam

• Textiles

• Railroads

• Chemical

• Electrical

• Electronic

• Digital

• Genetic

• Nanotechnology

Both the Industrial Revolution and the Political Revolution unfolded in the 18th

Century. Historian Eric Hobsbawn called this the “Dual Revolution.” Both have had

enormous historical consequences, which we are living through today.

The Industrial Revolution outstrips the Political Revolution

The Political Revolution

What

in the political realm

corresponds

to the almost daily release

of new technology

?

The Industrial Revolution • Telegraph

• Telephone

• Radio

• Television

• Black & white

• Color

• Desktop computer

• Cell phone

• Tablets

• Genome research

• Bioengineering

• Communications technology

The Industrial Revolution CONTINUES to unfold

Instrumental thinking flourishes in the Industrial Revolution & Capitalism

The Industrial Revolution found its home in

the arms of capitalism. The promises of the

Industrial Revolution are fulfilling the dreams

of capitalism. This is the engine the System

and it is driving the colonization of Lifeworld.

Lifeworld has no corresponding “driver” and

is left to its own devices. According to

Jürgen Habermas, the crisis of human

existence today is the threat to Lifeworld.

His answer is Communicative Action Theory.

For Enlightenment and Democracy

It's our

only hope! We try to achieve the Confucian “rectification of names” by

implementing Haberma’s Communicative Action Theory and

Discourse ethics via a fair reading of James Madison’s Federalist

Paper # 51.

For Enlightenment and Democracy

…via a fair reading

of James Madison’s

Federalist Paper

# 51.

We seek to achieve

the Confucian

“Rectification of

Names”…

…by implementing

Jürgen Habermas’s

Communicative

Action Theory and

Discourse Ethics…

Confucius (551 – 479 BCE)

Habermas (1929 – Present)

Madison (1751 -- 1836)

… signify by a show of hands!

All in favor ….