1.5 - whitebook, joel - reconciling the irreconciliable¿ utopianism after habermas (en)

7/30/2019 1.5 - Whitebook, Joel - Reconciling the Irreconciliable Utopianism after Habermas (EN)

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Reconciling the Irreconciliable? Utopianism after Habermas

Reconciling the Irreconciliable? Utopianism after Habermas

by Joel Whitebook

Source:

PRAXIS International (PRAXIS International), issue: 1 / 1988, pages: 73-90, on www.ceeol.com.
http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.dibido.eu/bookdetails.aspx?bookID=03554d8d-bd83-4e93-9862-8c5f16fb4d72http://www.ceeol.com/


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74 Praxis Internationalheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse differs qualitatively from Habermas's, Ithat, this difference ought to bewell as theoretical reasons.transformed the project the earlyby the fact that he covers the sameof the instrumental reason,istered capitalism etc ..of basic themes,greatlyBefore turning to substance of my lI.4.a.. 1I. .&"- ' ,d. '. . . . '\Iimportant element which enters here, andtopic in its own right for a cultural history thenamely, their almost instinctual contempt for the social Jl'JI...ll."-''-' 'Jl.G.'II.'-'day; as much as they remained from Bolshevism,contemptuous of the social democratic sensibility of time, tlleyviewed' as utterly soft-minded, self-deluding and ineffectua13 - a contemptthat Habermas does not share. the substance politics wasanti-Leninist, the form of their argumentation often was Bolshevik itsvehemence. The old Frankfurt School's diagnosis the crisis of modernityand their solution, if we can call it that, hung together in that dirediagnosis of the dialectic of enlightenment admitted no compromise with thepresent reality, and drove them to a utopian of reconciliation andredemption. Their predicament consisted in the that while they believed autopian solution was impossible, it followed from analysis that only autopian solution could break the dialectic of enlightenment .. Thus, when thediagnosis of the pathologies of lTIodernity is substantially revised, as it hasbeen in Habermas, systematic motives which led Adorno and Marcuse atleast to the utopian terrain and into a politico-theoretical cul-de-sac areeliminated. would also maintain that Frankfurt School's underdevelopedappreciation of democracy and legality also follow from what has beenreferred to as orthodoxy in their position.

A central issue these discussions is the question of historical asubject that is already ambiguous in Marx, who maintained different positionsat different points in his career. YDung Marx, radical liberal, held, ina Hegelian fashion, that intrinsically valid norms had been at least recognizedprinciple with the advent of modernity and the institutionalization of civilsociety. What prevented their complete realization was the inhibiting functionthe capitalist economy. As the rational already existed but an irrationalform, it was not necessary to go outside the sedimented norms of theestablished order modern ethical life to locate a standpoint for critique.political strategy that was called for by this analysis, thus, involved theilnmanent critique of civil society in terms of its own self-professed norms inorder to remove the economic impediments to the complete realization ofthose norms. Whatever social, political or economic dislocation be

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Praxis International 75

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involved, the passage from capitalism to socialism not entail a radicalhiatus or historical rupture with respect to the basic normative structure ofmodern society. Socialism, in short, would represent the completion of thepractical project initiated by bourgeois-democratic revolutions, not itsabnegation or transfiguration. Habermas, as we shall see, is closest to theyoung respect.With late Marx situation is different and more complicated. To besure, after the scientization of his theorizing, the role of normative'considerations in his thinking becomes altogether problematic anyway. But that is notwhat I want to focus on here. Rather, I want to examine his notions of the realmof necessity versus the realm of freedom, on one hand, and thecorresponding notions human pre-history versus human history proper, onthe other.For here we encounter an of a qualitative leap in,or perhaps out of, the continuum of history (despite fact that i tmay rest onthe essential continuity technological development): from pre-history, is mired in the realm of necessity owing to the of theforces of production, to a ofhistory resulting

of mastery of nature of a transi-the ofthan as an

ethical-political accomplishment, is also problematic. again, I notwant to go into this here. I would, however, like to attention to one point,namely, the "ontology the not yet,"- as has it, implicit in thisposition. This ontology assumes that beings as they really are theirpotentiality has yet to reveal itself history, which in fact has far onlybeen prehistory; they have yet to develop on own presuppositions. Correlatively, this ontology tends to devalue the perennial virtues aswe history as being distorted by struggle forsurvival to Adam," (Bloch)4 and, at the same time,immunizes of specifying the new norms as theycannot necessity. of freedom

be governed unspecified unspecifiable setto Marx's own position, then, is ultirnately utopiangoes ullacknowledged. The reason for this concerns Marx's (or,more precisely Engel's) polemical stance toward utopianism in short run,only in the short run. Which is to say, against the utopian socialists, theyargue, on materialist presuppositions as it were, that the attempt to realize a

communist society immediately is misconceived - is utopian in the badsense. Its institutionalization must wait until material conditions, withoutwhich it remains an empty dream, have been fully developed, first undercapitalism then under socialism; only then can transition to communismand the realization of a realm of freedom take place. The point is, however,that Marx and Engels do not challenge, the ultimate vision of the utopians,only timing its attempted realization.. effect, their entire strategy canbe viewed as a scheme for the "realistic" pursuit of the utopian ideal.


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Against these comments, then, Isystematic. whi'ch ledreconciliatory or JI. ..... _ ...... . l L A J . V ' - Athe turn to a utopian l i . . . .A".Il.A,II.... I j , l i .A....dialectic enlightenment. .&..lI.'-/Jl..JIl. ...JI, ........ JIl..JII..AJl,.l.... Jl,.

and Foucault afteracterized as'Weberian monism. Such a .,....."....r... 1 I " ' ! 1 " l 1 C " ~its various adherents, identifies aunderlying process - 'whether itfication, instrumentalization - asviews all developments - .Il.Jl,.JI.".. J L \ . I ! I . ~ 0 . 4 . . . I I . A J l , F ,innovations modernity - as ~ n l l n n ~ n l n . r ' I r ' 1 I t = J o n ; i ' } mthat 1I- .......1I-n.I .. +""1

1 l J " " " " " . ~ . l l . . a ..II.\'; Inost LJ ' 1' '< lo .4A .. . . .A A & . ...older ,......".. ... , .1r.. "..... ......theorists, and in those elements new were A .A 4all, what is One Dimensional Man e,ssentiallyempirical concretization of The Dialectic ofEnlightenment?be recalled, Marcuse argues that, as long as the system "" .... 'II'"Ill1t'lI'1t"'ll'll'll4:l>C"false needs and remains capable of producing goods tobe to integrate all opposition into a one-dimensionover, all apparent elements of rebelliousness within systempseudo-appositional and can in fact be co-opted and used to " ' ~ ' I I n ' t ~ , " " r r . o .system .. Given this state of affairs, there are two possible ways ofits dissolution. The first was economic collapse (which of courseresulted a political catastrophe): if the system were ...A. ...... l i . l I o i f J _ ...... ',........the goods to satisfy the false needs it created,mechanism would cease its functioning" The other optionattempt to generate non-economistic "true needs" to subvert and C'1l1l1'''\1I''''II.m.r)j1l'''ta1"


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78 Praxis 1nternatidnalare more ornot onlybecause,

anda newecono-

in Marcuse's analysis.less as illusory epiphenomenadisplayed a distinct of interest in traditional questionspresumably, they were formulated within the realm oftherefore belonged to "also justified hissensibility and the adoption of an perspective inmistic terms, namely, that conquest of nature was, at leastcomplete and abundance potentially obtainable. Evenpriation of appears so is deeply forhis basic move, which the entire argument fQllows, is to reduce l ~ r ~ u d ' smuch reality principle to economic scarcity.6

Habermas's theoretical innovation against early Critical Theorists,then, was to introduce, dualistic framework to theirmonism. And his has remained throughout his career,despite the various transformations scheme undergone, i.e.instrumental vs. communicative reason, system vs.gration, now system vs. lifeworld. Indeed, even gone so farrecently as to attempt a "flexible and deliberatewhich construe as a dualist in this sense.Be that as it may, introductio11 the dualistic wasintercOflnected theoretical and considerations. thelevel, it allowed Habermas to argue against positivismof the human including Niarxism, functionalism, ' l l " " - c ' \ { T r - h l r ' l . ' l l ' l t " ' l i n l i ' ( y ( _ " ! C 'And at level, it allowed him to ' - 'V .J I.JI.'-'' ' ' ' 'VII.Iu..Q.JI..JI.LJ''' ' ' 'advances moderllity which, in turn, provided an escapethe dialectic of enlightenment. There was thus a coincidencehistorical analysis insofar as communication theory was meant to ..... J1.\,.&""'.i.'''-''iI.lt"..I:l.l .. _counterfactual norms that are implicitly referred tosome sense, found institutional recognition,

and normative advances modernityIt cannot however, a consequeIlce ofsubstantial attenuation of the radicalism of the early criticalit be the purely theoretical radicalism of Adorno or the moreradicalism of Marcuse. I-Iabermas, neither thinks of himself asgarde" nor "dream[s] of a revolutionary subject," is a self-avowed "radicalliberal"g who rejects holistic revolutionary changes in advanced societies on atleast three grounds: (1) Our fallibilistic consciousness - as well as the lessonsof history - ought to deprive of the requisite hubris for such an undertaking.(2) The unintended consequences of attempts at holistic transformation aresimply too uncalculable to be risked in complex societies. And (3) "a piece of'existing reason''', however minimal, has been institutionalized in modern Isocieties, which ought not to be violated, and which can potentially providebasis for radical refornl; indeed, contrary to Adorno and Marcuse, hemaintains that is easier in modern than premodern societies. For


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Praxis International 79the first time history, the requirement for the rational justification of basicnorms has incorporated the self-understanding of a society; theheteronomous appeal to dogmatic tradition can no longer in principle serve asa valid justification for' basic norms.It should be pointed out here, against the argument that Habermas's

recognition of the normative advances of modernity amounts to an uncriticalaffirmation of capitalism, it could be maintained that just the opposite iscase: namely, that Habermas's theoretical advances provide critical theorythe conceptual tools to make a more compelling criticism of capitalism

t h ~ n was possible older version. Whereas Habermas can appeal tosedimented norms, are in some sense existent and publicly acknow-ledged, the old Frankfurt School, of necessity and on principle, could onlyappeal to existential-aesthetic considerations in their critque of capitalistculture and society; in the final analysis, opposition to capitalism was amatter of taste, and fact, in part, accounted for and derived fromelitist character of their theorizing. I should add, moreover, that theintroduction distinction between system and lifeworld makes it possible todiagnose the so-called ofmodernity without falling into a dialecticof enlightenment, to more nuanced analyses of concrete social,

....._... "'-_ ... '''''''... situations than was possible with the global critique of.lI.A.a.... ... .A. ' .. I.\.JIo..ll.Jl"""JL..w.IA...... .ll. reason.is not to say, however, that the attenuation of the early FrankfurtSchool's radicalism which results from Habermas's recasting of CriticalTheory is unproblematic. Indeed, Habermas himself raises some very disturbing points against himself in his important article on WaIter Benjamin.9Because article poses the problem in such a perspicuous manner, I wouldlike to recall its main argument here. Habermas cites a distinction of Bloch'sto formulate the question, namely, the distinction between the natural lawtradition that aimed at dignity and justice, on the one hand, and the utopiantradition, which aimed at happiness on the other. Whereas Marx could stillmaintain these two sets of intentions coincided with the proletarian revolutions, subsequent history has revealed, so Habermas argues, that this is notnfP , . ,... t:=!>cC'r'1l1l"'''III'IT the case; economic prosperity and formal justice can, in short,coexist political and cultural repression. "And it was precisely to capturethis state of affairs that Bloch introduced the distinction.disjunction between justice and happiness is not simply a contingentempiricallnatter, however, and in fact appears as a possibility because of thevery theoretical innovations Habermas introduces in order to overcome thecombination of "pessimistic anthropology" and "utopianism" that comprisedthe dialectic of of enlightenment. Which is to say, a price that Habermas paysfor overcoming the totalized negative philosphy of history of early criticaltheory, demonstrating what "modest" secular progress had occurred inthe realms of legality and m9rality, was to logically dissociate the question of,justice from the question of happiness. With Habermas's theoretical innovations, then, the logical possibility is at least opened of a social democratic orwelfare state comprise that 'would involve justice without happiness anddigrlity fulfillment. Quote the crucial passage:


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80 Praxis InternationalCan we preclude the possibility of a meaningless emancipation? In r"A?" ' ' I I ' ' ' ' IA . , . , l ' 'societies, emancipations mean the participatory transformation of nril" . ." . . . ........,II: ' ' ' t ' ,...,n 't ' l l ' \ ' [YO'decision structures. Is it possible that one day an emancipated human race couldencounter itselfwithin an expande'd space of discursive formation of andbe robbed of the light in which it is capable of interpreting its life as UI'-J'JL.ll.JL ..... II..... . o. .... . o. ... r- ,good? The revenge of a culture exploited over millennia fOf the 1 P , n - ' I l f ' ' I l " M n n 1 " l l A ' l r ' ' I idomination would then take this form: right at the momentage-old repressions, it would harbor no violence but it would have no contenteither. Io

While this state of affairs might appear as utopian to certain _VJ\,Jl.II-_.II.JI...L!'I-" 'IJ.II.I\,l i l ..II.post-modernists, it would have to be viewed as anperspective of the historical project of critical theory. The ""'II ......'.... u ~ . I I I . . . . , J L J L _.a.,r" ' .n.V'ar"" l l .a.0then, what is the fate of the demand for happiness,Frankfurt school and much of the new left, afterHabermas?In the two remaining sections of this paper, I would first to examineseveral theoretical atempts to reintegrate utopian themes into AA " ' . . . . , ' ....................uversion of critical theory, and then to discuss some of the more _ . . . . , . I L . I L ' II>.involved.

V(1) It was largely in response to the criticism had forfeited tooof the original project of critical theory, I believe, that Habermas has recentlyrevised his attitude toward the concept of "reconciliation," which, of course,was Adorno's emphatically utopian concept. In 1969, Habermas drew a strongdistinction between himself, as a philosopher of Mundigkeit (autonomy ormaturity), and Adorno, as a philosopher of reconciliation. Habermas argued

that had Adorno - in whom theological elements were still discernabledespite his atheism - given up the notion of reconciliation for Mundigkeit, hewould have been able to escape the cui de sac of negative dialectics: "Adorno,undeviating atheist that he was . . . hesitated to moderatereconciliation to that of autonomy and responsibility."ll Adorno C' lI" ' I Io f""" lI1 !ir l lin other words, moved from a philosophy of reconciliation to a II-- 'A.&..L,j\,"" '- ' I ..JI '-J ' j iJ . lLJl.Mundigkeit in order to overcome the aporia of his position.In the more recent Theory ofCommunicative Action, however, Habermas's

treatment of the notion of reconciliation is quite different. thatdoes not argue that Adorno should have abandoned the concept of reconciliation for the concept of Mundigkiet, as he had earlier, but that Adornoshould have retained the desideratum of reconciliation and moved from aphilosophy of consciousness to a philosophy of intersubjectivity order tofulfill it. In other words, Habermas argues that Adorno could have .11. ...... .11..11".&..11..&.'""."""the intentions of his philosophy of reconciliation by abandoning the standpoint of the philosophy of consciousness and moving to his (Habermas's)standpoint of a theory of communicative action.More specifically, Habermas,12 Wellmer,13 and Benhabib14 have all argued


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pernlitted, neither theand nor antithetical hostility wouldcommunication of what was distinguished. Not""""V.lLIl.' I.,,.'-lJIl. of as an objective concept, comeis the same as Habernlas's, J.W.] is

there is, the potential of an agreement between n , . . CN ,,"'-...... to an interchange between subjects according toreason. In its place, even epistemolo-

...."" . . . .. . r . . ......".. and in the realization of peacehAt"'017j::}.t::..n men their Other .15

Adorno was after was..,LJ''''',"Jl.,... . L . . l i . ~ nature, both inside andfulfilled his emprlatic

reconciliation that excludes


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82 Praxis Internationalreconciliation with mute nature, is to offer substantively -the- same dealthat Habermas offered him in 1969 onlywith the terminological pie cut up in adifferent fashion. In my opinion, - while I disagree with Adorno, and'believethat reconciliation with at least external nature is an untenable concept, - Ifind it more i l l u m i n a t i ~ g , as a heuristic strategy, to retain the earlier, sharperdistinction between Mundigkeit and reconciliation, rather than to blur thingsin a night where all cows are reconciled. I believe there is a residual element ofbad conscience about the deradicalization of critical theory which leadsHabermas and others to enlist utopian vocabulary of reconciliation toarticulate a theory which is no longer utopian-.(2) A second place where Habermas attempts ,to mediate the disjunction between formal considerations of justice and substantive considerations ofhappiness, and address the utopian concerns of early Critical Theory is in hsextension of Kohlberg's scheme of moral development to Stage 7. Habermasenlists Kohlberg's theory of moral development in order to challenge thethesis of "the end of the individual." He maintains that Kohlberg's schemecan be used to demonstrate that progress has at least occurred in the importantrealm of moral jU,dgment, and that this fact would be sufficient to refute atotalized logic of decline.Habermas proceeds to criticize Kohlberg, in turn, however, for notextending his scheme far enough. Kohlberg, so Habermas argues, remainsarrested at the Kantian opposition of duty and inclination, where needs arehypostatized as naturally given and are therefore not accessible cultural,rational, and communicative influence. Habermas therefore proposes theaddition of stage 7 to the scheme where.

n e ~ d interpretations are no longer assumed as given, but are drawn into theprocess of discursive formation of wilL Internal nature is thereby moved into autopian perspective; that is, at this stage internal nature may no longer bemerelyexamined within an interpretive framework fixed by the cultural tradition in anature-like way . . . Inner nature is rendered communicatively fluid andtransparen.t to the'extent that needs can, through aesthetic forms of expression,be kept articulable or be released from their paleosymbolic prelinguisticality. 16

Benhabib is correct in her observation that in this and similar passages"Habermas comes close to ..." - but only close to - " ... subverting [the]bias of traditional normative philosophy,"17 namely, to separate formalquestions of rights, duties and justice, on the one hand, from substantivequestions of happiness and solidarity on the other. She enlists both Hegelianarguments concerning the distinction between Moralitat and Sittlichkeit andfeminist arguments concerning the distinction between the generalized andconcrete other to attempt to resolve this ambivalence in Habermas in thedirection of an unequivocally utopian or transfigurative perspective whichwould overcome the disjunction between formal and substantive issues. I willargue, in contrast, that there are good reasons for retaining this disjunction toan extent and backing away from a full-blown utopian position.There are two possible was in which "inner nature" is to be "renderedcommunicatively fluid and transparent" and "needs released from paleo-


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Praxis International 83symbolic linguisticality" can be interpreted. The stronger version, whichBenhabib advocates, would consist in the direct insertion of the demands ofinner nature into moral discourse. She is correct in observing, moreover, that,were this to happen, it'would violate the "purity of the normati.ve realm" as itis has been defended in the rationalist tradition from Kant to Rawls. Thistradition has consistently sought to separate the "public discourse of justicefro-m the more private discourse of needs,"18 in large part, to secure theobjectivity and universality of normative discourse.Habermas, who wants to fulfill adequately the requirements of this

tradition, adopts the weaker version which envisions a more oblique input ofthe demands of inner nature into moral discourse, namely, through themediation of the aesthetic-expressive realm. Indeed, after the publication ofthe Theory of Communicative Action - which clearly recognizes the differentiation of modern rationality into the cognitive-scientific, moral-legal andaesthetic expressive realms - he could articulate his position better than atthe time the above passage concerning Kohlberg was first written. Habermasnow seems to be maintaining that the realm where ~ n n e r nature can find itsproper expression is the aesthetic-expressive and that the aesthetic-expressivewill somehow inform the moral-legal. Everything turns, of course, on how oneconceptualizes \\That Wellmer has called the "permeability" between thevarious realms.The adoption of the weaker version, so it seems to me, is consistent with

Habermas's softening of his interpretation of the ideal speech situation,which, in turn, is itself a concomitant of the "de-transcendentalization" of hisposition, from a "transcendental anthropology," as he called it at the time ofKnowledge and Human Interests to his more recent "reconstructive science."Habermas states, in "A Reply to my Critics":nothing makes me more nervous than the imputation - repeated in a number ofdifferent versions and in the most peculiar contexts - that because the theory ofcommunicative action focuses attention on the social facticity of recognizedvalidity-claims, it p r o p o s e ~ , or at least suggests, a rationalist utopian society. I donot regard the fully transparent society as an ideal, nor do I wish to suggest anyother idea . . .19

Indeed, following Wellmer, Habermas explicitly affirms the desirability ofmaintaining a between the formal conditions of a free society and thesubstantive instantiations that those formal conditions might receive. The firstbe of discourse ethics, the second of practical politics.I I - - m n h . o r . ' I I " ~ l l l C ' goes on to suggest that any approximation to the concept of the

life that we could speak of today would involve some sort of contingent,unspecifiable felicito'us "balance among moments incomplete in themselves, an equilibrated interplay of the cognitive with the moral and theaesthetic-expressive." cautions us-however, [that] the attempt to specify an equivalent for what was once meant bythe idea of the good life ought not to mislead us into inferring an idea of the goodlife from the formal concept of reason with which the decentered understandingof the world in the modern age has left us.20


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Praxis Intemational 85.. - ........a..a.II,..UJl..lI."JI..Jil. tendencies. for example, arguing against Habermas, has

norm of consensus for politics, and maintained that what isfree society is not consensus, but, on the contrary, dissent. 21Lyotard's concern is certainly well taken. However, his position remainsinadequate because fails to address a key issue concerning the relationbetween consensus dissent. He never asks what sort ofminimal consensus

-""'11 ......JL.A. ......_ in order to have a society that not only tolerated but valuedof lifeforins, difference, ete? Lyotard's counter-phobiapotentially authoritarian or terrorist implications of consensushim from investigating the conditions of the possibility of dissentare left with the danger from the other direction, namely, aneverything-goes frivolity which respect for difference as an ethico-political achievement undoubtedly be lost.

It is precisely this sort ofminimalist transcendentalism or soft foundationa-lism - has internalized critique of first philosophy withoutfalling skeptical - that Habermas has aimed at throughout hiscareer 0 The first version, transcendental anthropology, it will be recalled, wasalready characterized as "quasi-transcendental," and much of the debateabout J


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86 Praxis Internationalwhich is the very condition this wish seeks to overcome. Castoriadis argues,further, that this wish for unification, which exerts continuous pressure onpsychic life at the same time as more "mature" wishes aim at determinateobjects, is at the origin of both the most monstrous as well as the most sublimeproducts ofmental life. On the one hand, "the monster of unifying madness,"as he calls it, lies behind notonly the clinical madness of psychosis in the strictsense, but also the intellectual madness of an instrumental reason which seeksto reduce "the world [to] a gigantic analytic judgment"24 political madness ofthe totalitarian state as well. On other hand, however, it cannot be deniedthat "[t]he sperm of reason is also contained in the complete madness of theinitial autism. An essential dimension of religion - this goes without saying- but also an essential dimension of philosophy and science derive from this..."25 impulse to discovery unity in diversity.What conclusion, then, are we to draw from the fact that madness andreason have their origins in the same source? Neither that man is a "sickanimal" nor that he is a "rational animal" as such, but that he possess anequipotentiality for sickness and for reason, both deriving from the samesource. This fact finds itself reflected in the Kantian notion of regulative ideasand in the Freudian notion of the ego ideal, which is its psychoanalyticanalogue. Both of these concepts exhibit a similar paradox. Kant, to recall theargument, maintains that the human mind, by its very natures, posits ideas of

finality, totality and consistency, which is to say, ideas of unity, that it mustasymptotically pursue but can never attain. Similarly, Freud maintains thatthe psyche posits an ego ideal which is the heir to the undifferentiatedperfection of primary narcissism: "What he projects before him as his ideal isthe substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood in which he was his ownideaL"26 And, once again, although the ego ideal is to be striven after by theego, its actual attainment would result in manic psychosis. While too great adistance between the ego and the ego ideal results in lethargy, complacencyand depression, its attainment, were it possible, would cause "all [the]acquisitions which have made us human beings [to] collapse like a house ofcards.,,27 The paradox in the case of both Kant's regulative ideas and Freud'sego ideal is that we are compelled to pursue something whose attainmentwould be undesirable; to achieve them would be just as inhuman as not tostrive after them. And just as psychic wellbeing requires the maintenance ofthe proper distance between the ego and the ego ideal, so theoretico-politicalwisdom, as it were, requires the proper tension between the utopian urgetoward completeness and the diffuseness of experience 28-After this long digression, let me return to Benhabib. She argues, as I havealready mentioned, for the stronger version of the articulability of innernature, i.e ., that it can and ought to be inserted directly into moral discourse.

It is precisely at this point that she identifies the utopian or transfigurationalelement which extends her theory beyond Habermas's. In language whichevokes the Freudo-Marxist tradition, Benhabib maintains that, through whatshe calls "moral-transformative experience,"29 the "threshold of repression"can be lowered and inner nature rendered linguistically transparent. From apsychoanalytic perspective, however, her suggestions leave something to be


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attempts to criticize - or at least supplement - Habermasdistinction between the "generalized other" and the

UILUJl.Jl"l . .olJLI!J 'U'. IL.Il.... 1L. of the generalized other, which is assumedtheory, abstracts from all the concrete needs,etc. other, and considers him or her only in his or her

U. . . : J IL '_"" I I . .U as a rights-bearing person with whom I am reciprocally1 l " ' O M r a 1 r . o ~ f ' I I as another abstract, rights-bearing person. A theory of the concretecontrast, attempts to colonize the territory formerly occupied byclassical ethics - particularly Aristotle's theory of friendship; it views the

not terms of abstract universality, but of concrete individuality. Thenorms to it appeals, according to Benhabib, are responsibility, bondingand sharing which correspond to the moral feelings of love, care, sympathyand solidarity. Benhabib, correctly argues that "the universalistic ethics ofjustice were attained at cost"31 of silencing this dimension.While I am sympathetic with Benhabib's attempt to rehabilitate theconcrete dimension of classical practical philosophy to correct the one

sidedness ofmodern moral theory, there are nevertheless certain difficulties inher argument that I would like to discuss. These difficulties concern thequestion of the institutional location and the extent of the generalizability ofan ethics of the concrete other. More specifically, Aristotle's theory offriendship presupposed the limited and parochial context of a rather small andrelatively homogeneous community; indeed, one of his reasons for wanting tol imit the size of the polis was to maintain familiarity and solidarity among itsmembers. The question becomes, then, How can this sort of theory be

desired insofar as they fail to consider psychodynamics adequately - anabsence which, it might be added, has characterized Habermas's theory sincehis early Freud interpretation, has only gatten worse with his turn tocognitive psychology.

P s y c h o ~ n a l y t i c e x p ~ r i e n c e can attest to the' fact that any attempt to lower"the threshold of repression" and render the unconscious conscious - whichis, after all, what we are talking about - encounters the ubiquitousexperience of resistance. Any scheme for making the unconscious consciousmust, therefore, provide a means for dealing with the resistances. In the caseof clinical psychoanalysis, of course, the management of the transferenceprovides such a means. And while the management of the transference maynot necessrily present any difficulties in the carefully circumscribed limits ofthe clinical setting, its exportation to the political realm is fraught withdanger.. it will be recalled that this was one of the major criticismsHabermas received his attempt to model political enlightenment onpsychoanalytic enlightenment-inKnowledge and Human Interests: namely, thatthe only possible substitute for the transference to the analyst was thetransference to Party or to a charismatic leader. Likewise, Benhabibherself criticizes for having recourse to an "educational dictator,"30who structurally the function of a transference figure in histheory. she can provide a unobjectionable means forsolving same remains rather naive from a psycho-dynamic pointBenhabib

by introducing"concrete . "In .11,.11..&, ...desires,


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88 Praxis Internationaltransposed to a complex, heterogeneous and pluralistic society? The arlarchistand decentralist traditions, at least, clearly perceived this problem when theyargued for the decentralization, which would mean the de-differentiation ofcomplex societies in order to achieve this sort of solidarity. If one is unwillingto accept the decentralist solution, however, which sacrifices the advantages ofdifferentiation and complexity, how is this question to be answered?Given the situation of institutional differentiation that holds under conditions of modernity, it seems to me that - in addition to the family - theappropriate location for an ethics of the concrete other would be in theself-organizing associations of civil society which Hegel anticipated in hisconcept of the corporation, which are somehow approximated in the newsocial movements. Indeed, Benhabib herself makes a similar suggestion whenshe introduces the distinction between "polity" and "association":It is more correct to speak of a 'polity' of rights and entitlement and an'association' of needs and solidarity. By a 'polity' I understand a democratic,pluralistic unity, composed of many communities, but held together by acommon legal, administrative, and political organization. Polities may benation-states, multi ...national states, or a federation of distinct national and ethnicgroups. An association of needs and solidarity, by contrast, is a community inaction, formed by a set of shared values and ideals, which upholds theconcreteness of the other on the basis of acknowledging his or her human dignityand equality. The perspective of the generalized other urges us to respect theequality, dignity and rationality of all humans qua humans, while the perspective of the concrete other enjoins us to respect differences, individual lifehistories and concrete needs.32

While I am in basic agreement with this conceptualization, what I would liketo stress is its distinctively non-utopian dimension. The ethics of the concreteother does not enter directly into moral discourse nor does it supersede aformal theory of rights. Substantive democracy, in short, does not replaceformal democracy as much of the historical left had imagined and hoped itwould. Rather, an institutional sphere of associations exists where substantiveethics of the concrete other can be practised, but this sphere itself isembedded in a larger polity, which it can influence, but which is neverthelessgoverned by formal justice. The question of the permeability between thedifferent institutional realms, between the associations and the polity, arises atthis point as well. The institutional core of the polity itself, however, is nottransfigured. Thus, although the new social movements - interpreted alongthe lines of the associations of civil society - may have inherited much fromthe traditions of classical ethics, utopianism, council communism, the new leftetc., this arrangement owes an important debt to the modern liberal traditionas well.The pluralistic sensibility of a post-Marxist, de-centered left - which canno longer appeal to the privileged position of an agent of social change or avanguard party and which has developed an appreciation of "difference" cannot assume an ultimate reconcilability of needs, however linguisticallyarticulable they may become. C o n f l . i c t ~ which was formerly believed to be aproduct of economic scarcity and class society, is an uneliminable fact of


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Praxis Intemational 89collective life which always require a form of justice to mediate it.Moreover, this,is not something to bemoan, for conflict and dissent providethe material for political life; a thoroughly harmonized society would be athoroughly apolitical society. This means that, while the self-organizingassociations of civil society may be based on elective affinities and governed bysubstantive ethics the concrete other, abstract principles of justice will benecessary to adjudicate the unavoidable conflict will inevitably arisebetween them.Finally I would like to raise the question of generalizability of certainmoral sentiments. Freud, it will be recalled, rejected the command to "LoveThy Neighbor" because he thought such an indiscriminate generalizationdebased the idea of love, and I tend to agree him. At the same time,however, it seems to me that we can ask for more than the indifferent attitudeof "respect" as the universal attitude we ought to have toward all persons. Wecan, in short , do better th.an the liberal notion ofmutual indifference. What isrequired I believe is something like a spectrum ofmoral sentiments and of theinstitutional locations corresponding to them, stretching from love, at the oneend, through friendship, solidarity, to respect, at other.

NOTES1. Unpublished manuscript.2. Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study 01 the Foundations ofCritical Theory (NY, 1986).3. See Helmut Dubiel, Theory and Politics: Studies in the Development of Critical Theory, trans. by B.Gregg (Cambridge, 1985), 18-21.4. Cited in Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility (Chicago, 1984), 198.5. See Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston, 1969), and "The End of Utopia," in Five

Lectures (Boston, 1970), 62-82.6. Joel Whitebook, "Perversion and Utopia," Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, (forthcoming).7. Jiirgen Habermas, (The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 1, trans. Thomas McCarthy, (Boston,1984), 140.8. Jiirgen Habermas, "A Philosophico-Political Profile," in Habermas: Autonomy and Solidarity, ed.Peter Dews (London, 1986), 188.9. "WaIter Benjamin: Consciousness-Raising or Rescuing Critique," in Philosophical-Political Profiles,trans. Frederick G. Lawrence, (Cambridge, 1983), 129-164.10. Habermas, Philosophical-Political Profiles, 158.11. "Theodor Adorno: The Primal History of Subjectivity - Self-AffirmationGoneWild," Philosophical-

Political Profiles, 108.12. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, 390.13. Wellmer, "Truth, Semblance and Reconciliation," Telos, 62, (Winter 1984-85), 98ff.14. Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, 213ff.15. Adorno, "Subject and Object," The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, ed. Andrew Arato and EikeGebhardt (NY, 1978), 500.16. Habermas, "Moral Development and Ego Identity," Communication and the Evolution of Society,trans. Thomas McCarthy, (Boston, 1979), 93.17. Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, 342.18. Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, 339.19. Habennas: Critical Debates, ed. J. Thompson and David Held (Cambridge, 1982), 235.20. Habermas: Critical Debates, 262.21. The Postmodem Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi


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90 Praxis International(Minneapolis, 1984), 6S ff. See also Seyla Benhabib, "Epistemologies of Postmodernism: A Rejoinderto Jean F r a n ~ o i s Lyotard," Nw Gennan Critique, 33 (Fall, 1984).

22. Jurgen Habermas Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston, 1971), 314.23. Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society (Cambridge, 1987), 297.24. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic ofEnlightenment, trans. John Cumming (NY, 1972),

27.25. Cornelius Castoriadis, op. cit., 300.26. Freud, "On Narcissism: An Introduction," The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works

of Freud, trans. and ed. James Strachey (London, 1975), Vol. 14, 94.27. Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, "Some Thoughts on the Ego Ideal: A Contr ibution to the Study of the

Illness of Ideality," Psychoanaltic Quarterly, 45 (1976), 352.28. Compare this with my somewhat different treatment of the subject in an earlier article: "Autonomy

and Redemption," Telos '69 (Fall 1986), 155-6.29. Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, 313ff.30. Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, 337.31. Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, 311.32. Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, 351.

1.5 - whitebook, joel - reconciling the irreconciliable¿ utopianism after habermas (en)

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