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Discourse Theory and Isiah Berlin
Is everything just relative?

Discourse Theory and Isiah Berlin

John-Paul
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Posted 06/07/09 - 09:43 AM: Subject: Discourse Theory and Isiah Berlin	#1
The basis of our culture (I claim - suitably humbly of course) was the Christian Virtue-Ethic: "Act out of Knowledge of God's Love for thee and out of Love for thy Neighbour and for Thyself." The Enlightenment saw this as suspect because God-rooted rather than grounded in Reason. The appeal must surely initially be to Reason? God just complicates the issue. There arose a swathe of moral ideals: The Golden Rule: "So act as you would gladly be acted unto". The Categorical Imperative: "So act that the precepts of your action could become the basis of legislation in your local law-giving assembly". Utilitarianism: "So act that you increase the degree of happiness for the graetest number". Marxism: "So act that you increase the degree of solidarity with your fellow workers". And so forth. Reason admits of many Ideals but nobody succeeded in elevating any one of them to an Absolute Ideal. Then came Fascism ("So act as to advance the Overlordship of the Superior Race" - what utter crap (because philosophically not Reason but Will - another Story)) and the appeal to Reason seemed flawed. For who is to judge (apodictically) where Reason ends and the Will begins? Hm. So let's move to post-Idealism (cunningly disguised by me into a seeming Ideal): "So act that you increase the degree of agreement with your interlocutors". This is of course not an Ideal at all because it does not and cannot inform the ACTION, rather it interposes the need for DISCOURSE (with an interlocutor) between MOTIVATION (or in Nietzschean terms, URGE) and ACTION. "Let's first talk this through", it enjoins. Discourse Theory was first developed by Karl-Otto Apel in the 1960's and taken up and onward by none other than Jürgen Habermas. It has (I think) graet appeal because it brings Ethics right into the gambit of Jurisprudence - which is after all the way our society IN FACT conducts ethical enqiry. I'm a graet believer in CONVERGENCE between Philosophy and Revealed Practice. In Common Law (Gewohnheitsrecht), the way of working towards (if you like, "finding") Equity is defined by jurisprudence, and this contains the wisdom of centuries. But that's my spin on it, Habermas leaves his child undernourished in the boondocks of ethical enquiry. And how, without the benefit of Jurisprudence (which Habermas has no recourse to - that is pure John-Paul ) do we know that our interlocutor is working with the same TRUTH CONCEPT as we are??? To box this in, he and his disciples have come up with a tranche of predicates which must be fulfilled: The discourse must be UNCOERCED, it must be informed of CONSEQUENCES etc. - there are to date about 28 such predicates, tendency upwards. This insecurity about the Truth Measure is one objection. Another (mine) is the a posteriori nature of Jurisprudence and the intermediate nature of the Discourse Principle (there is not always time to argue something through and reach consensus before acting). But the brilliantest objection I have just found due to the occasion of the 100th birthday of Sir Isiah Berlin: It came in his 1988 speech on his acceptance of the Ethics Prize from the Agnelli Foundation (Turin): "...(by reading Machiavelli) it became shockingly clear to me that the determinant values which humans hold to and have in the past held to are by no means necessarily mutually compatible". This is NOT RELATIVISM. On being challenged on this, Berlin answered: "I'd like a cup of coffee. You want to drink Champagne. Our tastes are different. That's all that can be said - that is Relativism." Berlin's objection is more profound and (I say with my dearest Kierkegaard) ultimately existential. YOUR truth is born out of expediency. MY truth is value-borne. Our existence scintillates around these two and within gradations of these two. In conclusion my twin observations: 1. Our society is based on a mercantile ethic (expediency). Moral Philosophy however works best with values (Genuineness). 2. Discourse Ethics is the most contemporaneous form of ethics (my claim). How to establish the basis of Truth? How to establish common ground? Source: Süddeutsche Zeitung 06./07.06.2009 "Was der Igel weiß" Feuilleton p. 14 Edited by John-Paul on 06/07/09 - 09:49 AM
"Christianity is not a religion of morals but of therapy" (Eugen Biser) to which I add "... not properly a religion ..."

ciceronianus
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Posted 06/07/09 - 11:12 AM:	#2
Well, the Golden Rule, like God's golden teeth, existed long before Christianity. And in any case why seek, or covet, an Absolute Ideal?
"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."--C.S. Peirce "There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it."--Marcus Tullius Cicero "Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men."--John Dewey

Crackers
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Posted 06/07/09 - 02:46 PM:	#3
John-Paul wrote: Then came Fascism ("So act as to advance the Overlordship of the Superior Race" So, was Nietzsche a fascist? He certainly believed that the "Overmen" should rule society. The Overmen wouldn't necessarily act as only to advance to their own overlorship however, they would act in what ever way they wanted to. He probably wouldn't even suggest that citizens should act in aid of the Overmen, because the more strongly they oppose the Overmen the more conflict that the Overmen must overcome, and the stronger they are for it. I personally believe that the "superior men" (not neccessarily of any specific race) should be the overlords of society. Does that make me fascist?

John-Paul
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Posted 06/11/09 - 07:50 AM:	#4
ciceronianus wrote: <p>Well, the Golden Rule, like God's golden teeth, existed long before Christianity. And in any case why seek, or covet, an Absolute Ideal?</p> Well, yes, the Golden Rule has been around for a while. But also at the time of the Enlightenment Doesn't every moral philosopher or prophet want to establish his Rule as the be-all and end-all? After all what on earth is the point of crouchng next to a woodburner with an old typewriter for twenty years if not to argue that this time, we really have discovered the Golden Grail of Ethics? I can't imagine a John Stuart Mill claiming that his (or Bentham's) Ute-Law is just one of many, yer-takes-yer-pick, everything's relative, that Kant's a good ole cove etc. No, not really
"Christianity is not a religion of morals but of therapy" (Eugen Biser) to which I add "... not properly a religion ..."

John-Paul
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Posted 06/11/09 - 08:40 AM:	#5
Crackers wrote: So, was Nietzsche a fascist? I personally believe that the "superior men" (not neccessarily of any specific race) should be the overlords of society. Does that make me fascist? No, that naked statement taken in isolation does not make you a fascist. Nor was Nietzsche a fascist, he was a Romantic. Maybe his sister was some kind of protofascist, certainly I think it was more her editing than Nietzsche's writings per se which appealed to the Nazis half a century later. None of that makes Nietzsche a fascist retrospectively. I regret having given the fascist example, it makes only a byeway. I was keen to show that Ideal-led Morality can end up on a slippery slope. And this is a historical reason why Habermas wanted to get off that particular slope (indeed with that particular example before his mind's eye). Discourse Theory has the charm that this is the way we solve real moral problems in society - we have arbitrators, mediators and of course the civil courts. They use the methods of Discourse Theory. In Jurisprudence there is the added attraction of Equity - fairness beyond legality. All this has an ethical element. But then Berlin says that your Equity is not necessarily my Equity (to paraphrase him), thus removing access to any universal yardstick. There lies (as we say in German) the hare in the pepper.
"Christianity is not a religion of morals but of therapy" (Eugen Biser) to which I add "... not properly a religion ..."

Kwalish Kid
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Posted 06/11/09 - 11:10 AM:	#6
Isaiah Berlin.
"Scientific truth is always paradox, if judged by everyday experience, which catches only the delusive nature of things." - KM, V, P and P Can you pass Religion 101?

John-Paul
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Posted 06/24/09 - 02:55 PM: Subject: moral entropy maybe?	#7
Ok, so we need to controversialise this a bit I see. John-Paul says: This is the end of Morality. There is no such thing as ethics. Talking about ethics is mere chimerical thrashing. Why? None of the great Ideal Codes has experienced any degree of universal reception. Those who (even on this thread) claim no need for such universality ignore the social mechanics of morality. In other words: Reread your Confucius, you must have been asleep during the relevant lecture. Also (I'm going for controversy, remember), bear in mind that if humankind is to survive the next century, it will be forced into meaningful exchange (or die). Confucians will needs parly with Nicomacheans. And now we have a negation of the recentest great chance: Habermas' Discourse ethics. Because the world (says Berlin) talks in two (or maybe several) tongues. Philosophy refers to truth-based values, business however to expediency. Siemens has developed the software necessary to censor the internet and sells this to Iran (Der Spiegel, 22.06.2009). Their truth: Survival. Our truth: Wonder. There can be no discourse with these people. The same difference is visible between a Neonazi Party such as the BNP and an Idealistic Party such as the Greens or the Social Democrats. They must conspire around each other because there can be no exchange. In such a world, fiddling your expenses claim is legitimate - to resist such theft is to become a martyr for a cause nobody else believes in anyway. Ethical behaviour becomes futile. Why do we not murder our grannies or have sexual intercourse with our daughters? We are restrained by taboo, gut-resistance which can be dressed up as ethical behaviour after the fact. That is no ethics at all. We philosophers have failed to convince the world that the only truth is borne out of wonder (transcendency). Ethics is thus a dead science.
"Christianity is not a religion of morals but of therapy" (Eugen Biser) to which I add "... not properly a religion ..."

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