Jürgen Habermas
Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays
Jürgen Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays, Ciaran Cronin (trans.), Polity Press, 2008, 361pp., $26.95 (pbk), ISBN 9780745638256.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Flynn, Fordham University
Habermas's central aim in this collection of essays is to articulate the appropriate relation between "postmetaphysical thinking" and science and religion. He takes up issues related to both the philosophical and the public use of reason, and makes interesting proposals regarding their interrelation. Habermas is clearly worried about the spread of naturalistic worldviews ("scientism") and religious fundamentalism, but he dismisses neither naturalism nor religion. Rather, he defends what he calls "soft naturalism," which embraces a non-reductionist account of human language and thought in which normativity and intersubjectivity are central. Regarding religion, Habermas maintains that philosophy has long been enriched by secular "translations" of religious ideas. Moreover, he views at least "modernized" religions as allies in the public sphere in combating the effects of uncontrolled capitalist modernization and the spread of reductionistic thinking.
Postmetaphysical thinking tries to avoid promoting any particular worldview and focuses on procedural rationality and reconstructing the normativity inherent in linguistic practices. Although heavily indebted to Kant, Habermas maintains that postmetaphysical thinking must be detranscendentalized, that is, reason must be properly situated within history and social reality. Habermas thus follows in the traditions of hermeneutics and pragmatism, but attempts to avoid historicism or contextualism by emphasizing immanent idealizing presuppositions made by speakers. Chapter 2, "Communicative Action and the Detranscendentalized 'Use of Reason'," details the genealogical connection between ideas of reason in Kant's transcendental philosophy and their analogues in Habermas's formal pragmatics. The first half of the essay provides not only an excellent overview of Habermas's central ideas but also sets the stage for engaging analytic philosophy of language from Frege up through two paths that diverge according to how they treat the normativity of language: the Carnap-Quine-Davidson branch, which attempts to "defuse" it, and the Wittgenstein-Dummett-Brandom branch, which attempts to reconstruct it.
Chapter 2 ends with a continuation of Habermas's critical engagement with Brandom, while Chapter 3, "On the Architectonics of Discursive Differentiation," extends his longstanding exchange with Karl Otto-Apel. Together these debates form part of a family quarrel among pragmatist conceptions of language: the first goes back to the publication of Brandom's Making It Explicit,[1] while collaboration with Apel goes back much further, to their graduate work in Bonn (97). One dispute with Brandom is whether there are actually universal presuppositions implicit in linguistic practices, while Habermas and Apel agree on this point but disagree on their nature and status. Habermas's position between the two can thus be viewed in terms of getting at the right level of transcendental analysis. He tries to push Brandom up a notch, to take note of the "unavoidable" presuppositions made by participants in argumentation, which he characterizes as "(weak) transcendental presuppositions" (83) in contrast to Apel's more transcendental approach. Chapter 3 is also an important further clarification of Habermas's version of discourse theory with regard to the notions of and relation between legal and moral validity.
Two essays focus directly on the critique of reductionistic naturalism: Chapter 6, "Freedom and Determinism," and Chapter 7, "'I Myself am Part of Nature' -- Adorno on the Intrication of Reason in Nature." Both essays share Kant's aim of doing justice to our intuitive understanding of ourselves as free while satisfying the "need for a coherent picture of the universe that includes humans as part of nature" (153). Habermas wants to explain how we are socialized into an irreducibly normative "space of reasons" in a way that is consistent with our being products of natural evolution, thereby reconciling Kant with Darwin and establishing the "right way to naturalize the mind" (152-3). The challenge is whether we can maintain the "reflexive stability" of our consciousness of freedom in the face of "destabilizing" knowledge of the world as a closed causal system and specific knowledge provided by natural sciences, in particular cognitive science and neurobiology (Ch. 6) and possibilities for manipulating the human genome (Ch. 7).
The main arguments distinguishing "hard" from "soft" naturalism rely heavily on the distinction between participant and observer perspectives, which has long been central to Habermas's methodology in philosophy and social theory. Only from the participant perspective can one reconstruct the norm-laden internal point of view of agents engaged in speech, action, and argumentation. This contrasts with the external, objectifying perspective of an observer on speaking and acting subjects or social institutions. Neither perspective can be reduced to the other and not everything accessible from one can be encompassed by the other (206). Consistent with detranscendentalizing Kant, Habermas maintains this perspectival dualism is methodological, not ontological. Moreover, he is critical of any reductionistic approaches that naturalize language and thought in a way that ignores or eliminates the participant perspective. In Chapter 2, for example, Davidson is criticized for analyzing language from the perspective of an empirical theorist making behavioral observations (56).
In brief, one of the core arguments against hard naturalism in Chapters 6 and 7 is that perspectival dualism is inescapable for us (169-70, 206-8). The observer perspective does not undermine the participant perspective if we can show that the two are complementary but irreducible, and then show how perspectival dualism is itself "part of our nature." Forced to adapt to both natural and social environments, we have evolved into beings capable of dealing with both "observable causes" and "understandable reasons" (165). Habermas supports his position with accounts of the origins of human cognition within the species and in the socialization process of individuals, focusing on our ability to attribute intentionality to fellow human beings (170-3).
It might seem that, based on its considerable capacity for explanation and prediction, scientific knowledge deserves priority over hermeneutic knowledge. But Habermas points out that even knowledge acquired through experimental observation, along with theory choice, must be defended with arguments, which requires the performative stance of understanding. Since the complementary relation between the two epistemic perspectives cannot even be avoided within the activity of research itself, Habermas maintains that strong reductionism is implausible: "We can learn something from the confrontation with reality only to the extent that we are at the same time able to learn from the criticism of others. The ontologization of natural scientific knowledge into a naturalistic worldview reduced to 'hard' facts is not science but bad metaphysics" (207).
The main point here seems right: scientific knowledge acquired through the objectifying attitude, which has the potential to destabilize our sense of freedom, ultimately still has to be defended through arguments with others, a process that presupposes the participant perspective, which is the very perspective from which our sense of ourselves as acting freely and being accountable to others for beliefs and actions is operative. This move undermines the idea of the objectifying perspective as the "unquestioned yardstick against which the reflexive stability of acting subjects' consciousness of freedom must be measured" (200). But once undermined as the unquestioned yardstick, can the problem just arise again at a higher level? If the dualism is ineradicable, is the instability too? Our sense of freedom can still be continually destabilized by arguments based on specific scientific knowledge. Perhaps modern science has permanently destabilized the participant perspective and the most we can hope for is recovering relative stability based on a shift in the default position away from natural science as the sole yardstick for understanding ourselves. Habermas might agree with this, but I am unsure how far his arguments are supposed to go on this point.
Turning to religion, the core idea that comes up in four of the five remaining essays is that of viewing secularization in the modern West as a complementary learning process between the perspectives of reason and religion, which "compels the traditions of the Enlightenment and religious teachings to reflect on each other's limits" (102). This has both philosophical implications for working out the relation between postmetaphysical reason and religious traditions, and political implications for the role of religion within the modern constitutional state. Chapter 4, "Prepolitical Foundations of the Constitutional State?," develops the core idea and embodies it performatively insofar as it was prepared for a discussion with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in January 2004.[2] It also briefly touches on most of the themes more thoroughly developed in the other essays: the relation between philosophy and religion (Ch. 8), the role of religion in the public sphere and the relation between secular and religious citizens (Ch. 5), and the idea of toleration (Ch. 9).
Chapter 8, "The Boundary between Faith and Knowledge: On the Reception and Contemporary Importance of Kant's Philosophy of Religion," engages Kant's philosophy of religion and traces its critical reception up through Hegel, Schleiermacher, and Kierkegaard. Although Habermas accepts many of their criticisms, he still maintains the twin Kantian ideas of (i) appropriating the content of religious ideas on a rational basis, while (ii) maintaining the right boundary between faith and knowledge. Regarding the latter, Habermas situates postmetaphysical philosophy between the two poles of regression (a return to metaphysics) and transgression (attempts to "go beyond" the limits between philosophy and religion, e.g., late Heidegger) (243-7).
Regarding the first Kantian idea, Habermas notes the following successful translations of the "cognitive content" of religious ideas into ideas not dependent on religious revelation for their validity: Kant's translation of the idea of creation in the image of God into that of equal and unconditional dignity (110), Marx's translation of the idea of the kingdom of God on earth into that of an emancipated society (231), and Walter Benjamin's translation of ideas about messianic hope and redemption into "anamnestic solidarity" with those who suffered past injustices (241). "Reflexive appropriation" of religious ideas is still needed because postmetaphysical philosophy simply does not have the resources to respond to some of the most pressing challenges in modern society, such as (i) the spread of "scientistic" self-understandings that encourage instrumentalizing ourselves and (ii) an "uncontrolled process of modernization" (107, 238) in which markets and state bureaucracies displace social solidarity. The result is an "atrophied normative consciousness" (240) and a decline in sensitivity to social suffering. In the face of that, a "sober postmetaphysical philosophy" simply lacks the "creativity of linguistic world-disclosure" needed to "regenerate" a declining normative consciousness (211).
This is partly why it is important, as Habermas argues in Chapter 5, "Religion in the Public Sphere," that religious language be allowed in the informal public sphere. On the ethics of citizenship, Habermas forges a middle path between Rawls and his critics (e.g., Nicholas Wolterstorff and Paul Weithman), agreeing with Rawls that a secular state requires an "institutional filter" that prevents religious reasons from entering into formal justifications of laws and court decisions, but agreeing with Rawls's critics that citizens within the informal public sphere should be allowed to use religious language without restriction. Translating religious arguments into secular terms is still required at some point in order for them to potentially pass through the institutional filter, but this burden does not rest solely on religious citizens. The cooperative task of translation is also to be shared by secular citizens, which is supposed to mitigate to some extent the asymmetrical burdens of citizenship that arise because religious citizens must ultimately have their religious convictions translated into secular variants while secular citizens bear no such burden. But this can only be expected of secular citizens if they are also "expected not to exclude the possibility that [religious] contributions may have cognitive substance" (139). That is, they must take a "postsecular stance" toward religion as opposed to a "secularist stance" (my terms): the former matches up with Habermas's philosophical position of being open to learning from religious traditions, while the latter might say, among other things, that religions are merely "archaic relics" that "will ultimately dissolve in the acid of scientific criticism" (138-9).
There is a nice convergence here between the philosophical task Habermas sets himself in working out the self-critical relation of reason to religion in Chapter 8 and the burden placed on secular citizens in a "postsecular society." This turns the translation project carried out until now monologically by philosophers into a dialogical enterprise to be taken up by citizens themselves. But maybe this fits together too nicely. Cristina Lafont has objected that Habermas strangely places no restrictions on religious citizens' contributions in the informal public sphere while requiring secular citizens to take up the postsecular stance. But what if the latter are deeply committed secularists or atheists?[3] It might be helpful here to more clearly distinguish several claims, as Habermas does at the end of Chapter 4. He maintains that secular citizens (i) should not challenge religious citizens' to use religious language in the informal public sphere, (ii) nor "deny religious worldviews are in principle capable of truth," and (iii) can even be expected to participate in translation efforts (113). Lafont does not contest (i), but I think she is right to challenge (ii) by arguing that taking religious contributions seriously should only require that secular citizens "engage them seriously . . . regardless of what their personal cognitive stance toward the cognitive substance of religion may be."[4] Thus, (ii) should not be required of secular citizens. However, Habermas is probably right that accepting (ii) is a precondition for (iii), that for the most part something like the postsecular stance is the kind of epistemic attitude one must have in order to seriously engage in the demanding project of translation. But surely this project cannot be reasonably expected of all citizens. Most secular citizens lack, as Habermas admits many religious citizens lack, the "knowledge or imagination" for this task (127), especially given that his exemplars are all great philosophers.
Two other chapters make significant contributions to the discussion of toleration and multiculturalism: Chapter 9, "Religious Tolerance as a Pacemaker for Cultural Rights," and Chapter 10, "Equal Treatment of Cultures and the Limits of Postmodern Liberalism." It is worth noting that Habermas's work in political philosophy is often accused of empty proceduralism, but many of the essays here explore normative virtues and epistemic attitudes required of citizens in a way that goes well beyond procedural analysis.
The final chapter, "A Political Constitution for the Pluralist World Society?," is one of the most recent installments in Habermas's articulation of Kantian cosmopolitanism in terms of global constitutionalism.[5] The core idea is that of a multilevel system -- including states, strong "transnational" regimes such as the E.U., and "supranational" organizations like the UN -- that establishes "a politically constituted world society without a world government" (316). The point most relevant to themes in this collection is Habermas's claim that actions at the supranational level -- which are based on the "negative duties of a universalistic morality of justice" -- are legitimated by a thin "worldwide background consensus" that transcends cultural and religious differences. Moreover, "shared moral indignation" in response to "egregious human rights violations and manifest acts of aggression . . . gradually produce[s] traces of cosmopolitan solidarity" (344). Elsewhere I have expressed doubts about whether this account of cosmopolitan solidarity is fully adequate, not because this form of shared moral indignation is not minimal enough but because there are growing de-legitimizing forces arising from moral indignation over the failure of the international community to take seriously the rights of the global poor, rights which are not given the same status in this framework as the "negative duties" Habermas tends to privilege.[6]
I should also mention Chapter 1, "Public Space and Political Public Sphere," which is a rare autobiographical reflection in which Habermas identifies the roots of his scholarly and political "obsession" (13) with certain concepts -- "public space," "discourse," and "reason" -- in various episodes in his life. This collection extends those core concepts into diverse areas and engages such a wide range of interlocutors that the demands on the reader are quite high. But so is the payoff, since Habermas is one of the few contemporary philosophers who successfully cross so many of the standard divisions: between analytic and Continental philosophy, between practical and theoretical philosophy, and between philosophy as a theoretical enterprise and public intellectual life.[7]
[1] On their earlier debate, see Jürgen Habermas, "From Kant to Hegel: On Robert Brandom's Pragmatic Philosophy of Language," and Robert Brandom, "Facts, Norms, and Normative Facts: Reply to Habermas," both in European Journal of Philosophy 8:3 (2000).
[2] Their remarks were published together as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) and Jürgen Habermas, Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion, edited by Florian Schuller (Ignatius Press, 2006).
[3] See Cristina Lafont, "Religious in the Public Sphere," Constellations 14:2 (2007). Lafont is responding to the original publication of this chapter as Jürgen Habermas, "Religion in the Public Sphere," European Journal of Philosophy 14:1 (2006).
[4] Lafont, 249.
[5] See the fuller account in his, "Does the Constitutionalization of International Law Still Have a Chance?," in The Divided West, trans. by Ciaran Cronin (Polity 2006), and his recent defense against critics: "The Constitutionalization of International Law and the Legitimation Problems of A Constitution for World Society," Constellations, 15:4 (2008).
[6] See Jeffrey Flynn, "Human Rights, Transnational Solidarity, and Duties to the Global Poor," Constellations 16:1 (2009).
[7] I want to thank the Fordham graduate students in my seminar on Habermas this past term for helpful discussion of numerous issues raised in this collection.
Copyright © 2004 Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future
Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future
Nikolas Kompridis, Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future, MIT Press, 2006, 333pp., $37.50 (hbk), ISBN 9780262112994.
Reviewed by Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame
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The fate of reason today hangs in the balance. This is no small matter. Ever since its historical beginnings, reason or rationality has been the central focus and point of honor of Western modernity -- a focus enshrined in Descartes' cogito, Enlightenment rationalism, and Kantian (and neo-Kantian) critical philosophy. The result of this focus was an asymmetrical dichotomy: separated from the external world of "matter" (or nature), the cogito assumed the role of superior task master and overseer -- a role fueling the enterprise of modern science and technology. During the past century, the edifice of Western modernity has registered a trembling, due to both internal and external contestations. Subverting the modern asymmetry, a host of thinkers – with views ranging from American pragmatism to European life philosophy and phenomenology -- have endeavored to restore pre-cognitive "experience" (including sense perception and affect) to its rightful place. In the context of French "postmodernism," a prominent battle cry has been to dislodge "logocentrism" (the latter term often equated with anthropocentrism). In the ambiance of recent German philosophy, the battle lines have been clearly marked: pitting champions of modern rationalism, represented by Jürgen Habermas, against defenders of experiential "world disclosure," represented by Martin Heidegger. In his book, Nikolas Kompridis endeavors to shed new light on this controversy, with the aim not so much of bringing about a cease fire but of providing resources for arriving at better mutual understanding.
Kompridis does not exactly assume a position above the contestants (he repeatedly rejects the "view from nowhere"). As the book's subtitle indicates, his point of departure is "critical theory" as championed by the Frankfurt School, and his attempt is to nudge that theory beyond a certain rationalist orthodoxy in the direction of possible "future" horizons. While appreciating some of its merits -- such as the "linguistic turn" and the emphasis on "communicative" rationality -- Kompridis finds Habermas's reformulation of the Frankfurt program on the whole unhelpful and debilitating. In his words (p. 17): "For all there is to recommend it, Habermas's reformulation has produced a split between new and old critical theory so deep that the identity and future of critical theory are at risk." The main reason is that the "normative gain" deriving from the linguistic turn remains attached to narrow rationalist premises that have "needlessly devalued" the theory's potential. In Kompridis's view, Habermas's evolving thought exhibits a break or rupture (quite apart from the linguistic turn): namely, a move toward pure "theory" which happened soon after the publication of Knowledge and Human Interests. "That turn to theory," he writes (pp. 232-234), "refashioned the project of critical theory as a strenge Wissenschaft, less bound by or beholden to the historical and existential exigencies of modernity" -- thereby undermining modernity's intrinsic "relation to time." As a result of this refashioning, critical theory was catapulted in the direction of an abstractly rational universalism disdainful of cultural and practical modes of pluralism. The upshot was a growing "insensitivity to particularity," justifying the suspicion that the basic concepts of communicative rationality had from the start been "rigged in favor of the universal." But, the book adds sharply, "a provinciality-destroying reason is a meaning-destroying reason" and the latter is "a history-destroying reason."
Considerations of this kind serve to buttress the book's basic "thesis" (p. 17) that Habermas's reformulation is "in need of urgent reassessment if critical theory is to have a future worthy of its past." In Kompridis's view (pp. 28-29), critical theory's renewal has to rely on alternative resources, including insights "central to the German tradition from Hegel to Heidegger and Adorno" and phenomenological explorations of the "life-world." In this context, a crucial resource is Heidegger's notion of "world disclosure," articulated variously under the labels of "Erschlossenheit," "Lichtung," and "Ereignis." The basic point of the notion of disclosure is that "we operate 'always already' with a pre-reflective, holistically structured, and grammatically regulated understanding of the world" (pp. 32-33) -- which means that our thinking and reasoning is always embedded in a pre-cognitive experiential setting. In Heidegger's own terms: If there is to be any understanding of something "as something," then "our understanding must itself somehow see as disclosed that upon which it projects." The implications of this insight are obviously immense and bound to reverberate through all modes of philosophizing, including critical theory. Kompridis is by no means naïve about the obstacles facing the recuperation of Heideggerian insights. As he writes (p. 32): "The idea that Heidegger's thought can contribute to the renewal of critical theory is more likely to be greeted with disbelief (if not derision) than with curiosity." For, as is well known, "Heidegger's person and his thought have played the role of critical theory's 'other': he is the very antithesis of the critical intellectual as critical theorists imagine 'him'." Not daunted by these obstacles, Kompridis wagers that the benefits of the recuperation outweigh possible drawbacks. "Rather than regarding it as a threat to reason, as Habermas does," he states (p. 38), "I will argue that disclosure presents us with the possibility of a new, practice-altering conception of reason, a conception upon which the basis for an alternative model of critical theory can emerge."
In the book's second Part ("Dependent Freedom"), Kompridis seeks to retrieve crucial aspects of Heidegger's work and rescue them from various misreadings -- especially Habermas's charges of "methodological solipsism" and a relapse into "subjectivity." As Kompridis tries to show (pp. 44-46), the salient difference between Being and Time and Habermas's own project is "not between subject-centeredness and intersubjectivity" but rather between the former's focus on "semantic" criteria -- how something becomes mutually intelligible -- and the latter's stress on "justificatory" and "context-transcending" criteria. The difference can also be articulated in terms of the primacy granted respectively to "meaning" or universal "validity." A central Heideggerian teaching lifted up in this context is his notion of "solicitude" and especially of "anticipatory-liberating solicitude" -- a notion which clearly conflicts with subject-centeredness. For Kompridis (p. 49), the notion accentuates how "our freedom for self-determination . . . is both dependent on and facilitated, not just impeded, by our relation to others" -- which means that "the condition under which the other and I can realize our freedom are conditions that must be cooperatively established, preserved, and enlarged." Another important Heideggerian term is "Entschlossenheit" or "resoluteness." As Kompridis insists (p. 58), contra Habermas, the term is "not synonymous with decision or decisiveness, or a manly readiness to take action"; rather, it resonates "with Erschlossenheit, with disclosure or disclosedness." Hence, a better translation would be "unclosednness" which draws attention to "the receptive [though not purely passive] character" of our activity. Refreshingly unconventional are also Kompridis's comments on "das Man." Countering widespread prejudices, he argues (pp. 71-74) that Heidegger's category "displays no more contempt for 'average everydayness' . . . than is to be found in Rousseau's Second Discourse, Emerson's 'Self-Reliance', Thoreau's Walden, or Mill's On Liberty." Specifically, Heidegger is not advocating "an interpretation of 'authenticity' in terms of radical individuality," but rather is guided by an interest "in recovering the everyday, rescuing its semantic resources from daily degradation."
In the third Part Kompridis discusses some of the main strategies employed by critical theorists to debunk Heideggerian "disclosure," by removing it to a realm outside of reason. He conveniently lists Habermas's main objections (p. 98): that Heideggerian ontology "dictates history", that disclosure "precludes the very possibility of learning", and that it is not prior to but "subordinate" to validity claims. For Kompridis, "all of these criticisms fail, often by their own lights," so that Habermas's meta-critique of disclosure "turns out to be rather incoherent." One strategy used to obviate disclosure is to relegate it to a purely "aesthetic" domain, that is, the "value sphere" of art and literature stipulated by Habermas; in that sphere, rational validity "goes on holiday." The strategy fails for the simple reason that disclosure undercuts the division of value spheres (p. 109): "The very idea of an independent sphere of value organized around the world-disclosing practices of art and literature is incoherent." Similarly misguided is the identification of disclosure with an "extraordinary" event or capacity. In Kompridis's words (pp. 112-123), what is neglected here is that "the success of everyday practice depends on the world-illuminating, problem-solving power of disclosure." Hence, Habermas's misconstrual reflects precisely "an inattentiveness to the presence of the extraordinary in the everyday." Other tactics found in critical theory's arsenal are the "debunking strategy" directed mainly at the notion of "ontological difference" (which silently remains presupposed) and the "annexing strategy" where disclosure is somehow assimilated to validation. What all these strategies miss is what Kompridis calls the "test of disclosure" (p. 142). The latter is tested "not against the world as it is, but as it might be; [hence] any new disclosure of meaning and possibility is underdetermined by the 'world'."
In the fourth Part, Kompridis defends a broad conception of "philosophy" transgressing the boundaries of Habermasian rationalism and proceduralism. From the procedural angle, Kompridis asserts (p. 149), philosophy is restricted to "a definition of argument so narrowly 'professional' as to be unphilosophical"; in fact, a history of philosophy employing the procedural criterion "would be a very short, colorless history." A main target of critique in this context is Habermas's definition of philosophy as a "stand-in" (that is, place-keeper for science) and as interpreter -- a definition which Kompridis considers lopsided and untenable (p. 161):
The more it is scrutinized, the more this whole mixed-up conception of philosophy . . . appears to be the product of an expert-culture mentality, exhibiting that mentality's tendency to think in terms of highly distinct 'specializations' and roles within an insufficiently examined division of labor.
A corollary of proceduralism is the rigid distinction of philosophy from literature. Again, Kompridis's response is pointed (p. 178): "Pace Habermas, what distinguishes philosophy from literature is not that the former is a problem-solving enterprise while the latter is a world-disclosing enterprise" -- a spurious distinction "since there is no way to separate world-disclosure from problem-solving in the relevant instances." Above all, what proceduralism and the focus on rationalist theory occlude is philosophy's integral relation to praxis and the practical disclosure of a possible future. Taking a leaf from American pragmatism, Kompridis states (p. 167) that "philosophy receives its concept of itself from the needs of its time, and it is from the quality of philosophy's response to these needs that it can be in a position to react responsibly as an agency of critical enlightenment."
The exploration of possible horizons occupies the remainder of the book. For Kompridis (pp. 192-193), Habermasian thought is not sufficiently open to these horizons because it tolerates only "change that is both familiar to us and controllable by us." To be sure, openness or Erschlossenheit needs to be distinguished from random plasticity, from "contemporary culture's drunken infatuation with the promise of limitless freedom." At that point, Hannah Arendt's theory of action becomes relevant with its accent on radical, but ongoing and sustainable, transformation. In the same manner, Heideggerian disclosive praxis can fruitfully be invoked. In this domain, the charge of "fatalism" often leveled against him serves as a "distorting lens." In one of his most innovative moves, Kompridis links disclosure and "letting be" not with passivity but with a "receptivity" sustaining non-domineering action. "Both Heidegger's early and later writings," he observes (pp. 202-203), "offer a promising starting point for understanding how cooperative, accountable practices of reflective disclosure can facilitate new cultural beginnings, initiate new practices, and found new institutions." What is required here is a rethinking of "agency," away from the deeds of heroic overmen and pointing in a new and "unfamiliar direction": a direction "not only decentering but also reconfiguring what it means to be an agent." Such rethinking makes it possible to see "human beings as cooperative facilitators rather than heroic creators of new beginnings." As has to be admitted, Heidegger did not always live up to the potential of his thought (as shown in his temporary attachment to an ideology which demanded "closed, not open minds"). Intimately associated with this receptive mode of agency is Heidegger's view of human interaction informed by "solicitude." Going beyond narrow formulations of "recognition," recognizing the other from Heidegger's angle involves "a struggle in which one's own self-understanding . . . [is] at stake. That is why such a struggle for recognition is at once cognitive and affective" (p. 210). By contrast to a purely cerebral or "notional" construal, "genuine experiences of self-decentering involve and challenge all of our cognitive and affective capacities, our whole sensibility" (p. 214).
In the concluding sixth Part, Kompridis's focus is entirely on open possibilities "in times of need." He complains first of all of the prevailing cultural skepticism and the apparent "exhaustion of utopian energies": "Skepticism and despair seem to have outstripped hope" (pp. 245-247). This situation is detrimental to philosophy per se, but especially to an outlook which claims to be "critical" of unexamined conditions. "Critique," he states (p. 252), "is unavoidably 'utopian', not in the sense that it depends on the availability of a fully determinate utopia, but in that it depends on the openness and receptivity of the future to utopian thought." The recovery of this dimension requires the restoration of "trust" and confidence in available possibilities. Returning to the book's central theme, and differentiating between pre-reflective and reflective disclosure, Kompridis at this point defines disclosure as a kind of "intimate" or "immanent" critique and critique as the practice of reflective disclosure. In his words (p. 255): "The goal of critique should aim at the self-decentering disclosure of meaning and possibility. . . . Ultimately the test of any newly disclosed possibilities is the degree to which they can initiate self-decentering learning that makes a cooperative new beginning possible." Again, beginning anew here does not coincide with a rupture entirely forgetful of the past. Invoking both Marcuse and Walter Benjamin, Kompridis stresses the need to "preserve the unclosedness of the past" precisely in order to preserve the openness of the future. (A similar point can be found in Heidegger's notion of "the future of the past.") Such an outlook, he writes (pp. 270-272), protects against both reactionary nostalgia and vanguardist euphoria: "It is absolutely essential to the success of possibility-disclosing critique that it lets itself be permeated with the potential of what could be different," and this means "letting oneself suffer one's time, making oneself vulnerable to it by letting oneself be marked by it." By way of conclusion -- and invoking Heidegger's writings on Hölderlin -- Kompridis asserts the need to revive the legacy of a "suppressed romanticism" (p. 275): "In my view, romanticism is not just some superseded period of cultural history; it is the frequently unacknowledged position from which we engage in a critical, time-sensitive interpretation of the present."
This is an important and timely (or time-sensitive) book, both in philosophical and in practical-political terms. Today its plea for a recovery of trust in the future has gained unexpectedly broad resonance. Philosophically, the book in a way signals the end of a period marked by divergent, even opposite tendencies: on the one hand, the "postmodern" fascination with "extraordinary" rupture (or rapture), and on the other, the streamlining of critical theory in the mold of a rule-governed, rationalist normalcy. The book's basic aim -- one which I heartily endorse -- is to rescue critical thought from these limiting parameters and thus to nurture openness for new possibilities. My sympathy with this aim is in part motivated by my own similar endeavors to open critical theory to Heideggerian insights (see, e.g., my Between Freiburg and Frankfurt: Toward a Critical Ontology, of 1991). Like Kompridis, I had been chagrined by Habermas's abandonment of his earlier practical engaged outlook in favor of abstract theorizing; Kompridis's comments on the flaws of such theorizing are pointed and basically on target. Of late, it is true, Habermasian thought seems to have undergone a certain mellowing, softening the harsh edges of his abstract universalism and moving him closer again to hermeneutics and even to modes of religious thought (although the name of Heidegger remains banished from his discourse). Despite such recent modifications, however, the book performs a valuable function: nudging rank-and-file critical theorists away from certain "orthodox" school positions which Habermas himself seems now ready to abandon.
There are numerous other features of the book -- a veritable cornucopia -- with which I heartily agree. One has to do with the reformulation of praxis in terms of a decentered receptivity and open engagement with others. This reformulation gives a crucial new impulse to conventional "action theory," pushing it beyond the confines of self-centered activism and passive self-erasure. In my own thinking, I have tended to view Heideggerian solicitude and "letting be" as prime examples of (what is often called) the "middle voice." The accent on receptivity or receptive generosity also reveals important dimensions of a Heideggerian "ethics" -- dimensions which are usually sidelined or ignored. This neglect is astonishing in view of such salient Heideggerian terms as "solicitude" and especially "anticipatory-liberating solicitude" -- as Kompridis correctly observes. The topics of receptivity and engaged solicitude have a clear bearing on the traditional notion of inter-human recognition -- a notion which, in the past, has often been confined to a purely cerebral level. The reformulation of this concept in terms of a re-connection of cognition with affect and sensibility can obviously rely on the Heideggerian category of "Stimmung," but beyond that on a longer tradition stretching from Spinoza to Emerson, Merleau-Ponty, and Stanley Cavell. Extremely valuable in this context are also Kompridis's comments on the broader social import of self-decentering. As he writes (p. 213), such self-decentering
is not about overcoming our partial view of things in order to arrive at the single right answer to a moral problem. It is not about a 'transcendence' of our parochial self in order to achieve an impartial or objective view of things; it is about an enlargement of self, opening it up to what was previously closed.
In conformity with these comments, Kompridis's view of "utopia" does not involve a bland universalism or cosmopolitanism. What Heideggerian disclosure brings into view, he states (pp. 219-220), is the need to change a monistic conception of being "into a pluralistic one, such that we acquire an increased sensitivity to the presence and endangered state of plural 'local worlds' -- plural understandings not subsumable under a single notion of being." What this underscores is "the interdependent relationship between intelligibility, plurality, and possibility."
Despite my general agreement with the book's orientation, I cannot refrain from voicing some reservations. Although lucidly written, the presentation is often somewhat rambling and repetitive; a tightening of structure might have further strengthened its argument. More serious are reservations having to do with the portrayal of Heidegger's thought. Despite his initial rejection of the Habermasian charges of solipsism and a relapse into the "philosophy of the subject," Kompridis surprisingly ends up echoing these charges in slightly revised form. The section on "Dependent Freedom" castigates the "conspicuous lack of a normatively robust conception of intersubjective accountability and recognition" (p. 48). In large measure, this lack is blamed on Heidegger's allegedly self-centered conception of Entschlossenheit and the "call of conscience." Despite his own translation of Entschlossenheit as "unclosedness," and in the face of a quoted passage where Heidegger describes the "call of conscience" as a call that comes "from me and yet from outside and beyond me," Kompridis states (p. 51):
Regrettably Heidegger chose to develop the meaning of 'resoluteness' one-sidedly, as an openness or receptivity to a 'call' whose disclosed meaning should be understood independently of our relation to others. Thus he made monophonic and monological a call that is inherently polyphonic and dialogical.
From here it is only a short step to the claim (pp. 52-53), that Heidegger decided to "suppress that half of the 'call' that emanates from outside the self," with the result that Being and Time culminates in "a solipsistic rather than a 'fundamental' ontology" hovering at "the precarious edge of subjectivism." A similar re-vindication concerns Habermas's charge of decisionism. Although strongly asserting that "Entschlossenheit is not synonymous with decision," Kompridis in effect revokes his assertion by stating (p. 65) that "Heidegger undermines the illuminating power of his own analyses by uncoupling Entschlossenheit from Dasein's positive dependence on others and thus from positive solicitude." Painting with a broad brush, even Heidegger's famous "turning" (Kehre) is interpreted (p. 67) as "the successful suppression of dependence on others."
In my view, assertions of this kind could easily be corrected by a closer reading of Heidegger's texts, especially his Beiträge and some lecture courses presented during the 1930's (and only recently made available). Less easily resolvable is the central issue announced in the book's title: the relation between critique and disclosure. As one can gather from the subtitle and numerous other statements, the basic tendency is to subordinate disclosure to critique, that is, to make disclosure serviceable to critical theory. As Kompridis states at one point (pp. 31-32): "What I propose to draw from Heidegger does not require abandonment of Habermas's best critical insights; rather, it means reassessing them and recombining them with Heidegger's in order to re-envision the future of critical theory." Yet, taking into account the sustained criticisms of Habermas throughout the book, how plausible or persuasive is this aim? In his most exacting or developed formulations, Kompridis defines critique as reflective disclosure and disclosure as intimate critique (pp. 238, 255). But what about "pre-reflective disclosure"? Would it not be more plausible and sensible to assign critique to what some writers call "secondary reflection" (and Kompridis "reflective disclosure")? Ever since the time of Kant, modern philosophy has been defined or defined itself preeminently as "critique" -- a primacy the book seems to accept. In my opinion, however, Heidegger's work does not entirely subscribe to this tradition; it is not primarily critical, but rather ontological and phenomenological -- honoring Merleau-Ponty's notion of the primacy of "perceptual faith." Looked at from this angle, the title of the book might perhaps preferably read: Disclosure and Critique.
from here
Nikolas Kompridis, Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future, MIT Press, 2006, 333pp., $37.50 (hbk), ISBN 9780262112994.
Reviewed by Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame
==
The fate of reason today hangs in the balance. This is no small matter. Ever since its historical beginnings, reason or rationality has been the central focus and point of honor of Western modernity -- a focus enshrined in Descartes' cogito, Enlightenment rationalism, and Kantian (and neo-Kantian) critical philosophy. The result of this focus was an asymmetrical dichotomy: separated from the external world of "matter" (or nature), the cogito assumed the role of superior task master and overseer -- a role fueling the enterprise of modern science and technology. During the past century, the edifice of Western modernity has registered a trembling, due to both internal and external contestations. Subverting the modern asymmetry, a host of thinkers – with views ranging from American pragmatism to European life philosophy and phenomenology -- have endeavored to restore pre-cognitive "experience" (including sense perception and affect) to its rightful place. In the context of French "postmodernism," a prominent battle cry has been to dislodge "logocentrism" (the latter term often equated with anthropocentrism). In the ambiance of recent German philosophy, the battle lines have been clearly marked: pitting champions of modern rationalism, represented by Jürgen Habermas, against defenders of experiential "world disclosure," represented by Martin Heidegger. In his book, Nikolas Kompridis endeavors to shed new light on this controversy, with the aim not so much of bringing about a cease fire but of providing resources for arriving at better mutual understanding.
Kompridis does not exactly assume a position above the contestants (he repeatedly rejects the "view from nowhere"). As the book's subtitle indicates, his point of departure is "critical theory" as championed by the Frankfurt School, and his attempt is to nudge that theory beyond a certain rationalist orthodoxy in the direction of possible "future" horizons. While appreciating some of its merits -- such as the "linguistic turn" and the emphasis on "communicative" rationality -- Kompridis finds Habermas's reformulation of the Frankfurt program on the whole unhelpful and debilitating. In his words (p. 17): "For all there is to recommend it, Habermas's reformulation has produced a split between new and old critical theory so deep that the identity and future of critical theory are at risk." The main reason is that the "normative gain" deriving from the linguistic turn remains attached to narrow rationalist premises that have "needlessly devalued" the theory's potential. In Kompridis's view, Habermas's evolving thought exhibits a break or rupture (quite apart from the linguistic turn): namely, a move toward pure "theory" which happened soon after the publication of Knowledge and Human Interests. "That turn to theory," he writes (pp. 232-234), "refashioned the project of critical theory as a strenge Wissenschaft, less bound by or beholden to the historical and existential exigencies of modernity" -- thereby undermining modernity's intrinsic "relation to time." As a result of this refashioning, critical theory was catapulted in the direction of an abstractly rational universalism disdainful of cultural and practical modes of pluralism. The upshot was a growing "insensitivity to particularity," justifying the suspicion that the basic concepts of communicative rationality had from the start been "rigged in favor of the universal." But, the book adds sharply, "a provinciality-destroying reason is a meaning-destroying reason" and the latter is "a history-destroying reason."
Considerations of this kind serve to buttress the book's basic "thesis" (p. 17) that Habermas's reformulation is "in need of urgent reassessment if critical theory is to have a future worthy of its past." In Kompridis's view (pp. 28-29), critical theory's renewal has to rely on alternative resources, including insights "central to the German tradition from Hegel to Heidegger and Adorno" and phenomenological explorations of the "life-world." In this context, a crucial resource is Heidegger's notion of "world disclosure," articulated variously under the labels of "Erschlossenheit," "Lichtung," and "Ereignis." The basic point of the notion of disclosure is that "we operate 'always already' with a pre-reflective, holistically structured, and grammatically regulated understanding of the world" (pp. 32-33) -- which means that our thinking and reasoning is always embedded in a pre-cognitive experiential setting. In Heidegger's own terms: If there is to be any understanding of something "as something," then "our understanding must itself somehow see as disclosed that upon which it projects." The implications of this insight are obviously immense and bound to reverberate through all modes of philosophizing, including critical theory. Kompridis is by no means naïve about the obstacles facing the recuperation of Heideggerian insights. As he writes (p. 32): "The idea that Heidegger's thought can contribute to the renewal of critical theory is more likely to be greeted with disbelief (if not derision) than with curiosity." For, as is well known, "Heidegger's person and his thought have played the role of critical theory's 'other': he is the very antithesis of the critical intellectual as critical theorists imagine 'him'." Not daunted by these obstacles, Kompridis wagers that the benefits of the recuperation outweigh possible drawbacks. "Rather than regarding it as a threat to reason, as Habermas does," he states (p. 38), "I will argue that disclosure presents us with the possibility of a new, practice-altering conception of reason, a conception upon which the basis for an alternative model of critical theory can emerge."
In the book's second Part ("Dependent Freedom"), Kompridis seeks to retrieve crucial aspects of Heidegger's work and rescue them from various misreadings -- especially Habermas's charges of "methodological solipsism" and a relapse into "subjectivity." As Kompridis tries to show (pp. 44-46), the salient difference between Being and Time and Habermas's own project is "not between subject-centeredness and intersubjectivity" but rather between the former's focus on "semantic" criteria -- how something becomes mutually intelligible -- and the latter's stress on "justificatory" and "context-transcending" criteria. The difference can also be articulated in terms of the primacy granted respectively to "meaning" or universal "validity." A central Heideggerian teaching lifted up in this context is his notion of "solicitude" and especially of "anticipatory-liberating solicitude" -- a notion which clearly conflicts with subject-centeredness. For Kompridis (p. 49), the notion accentuates how "our freedom for self-determination . . . is both dependent on and facilitated, not just impeded, by our relation to others" -- which means that "the condition under which the other and I can realize our freedom are conditions that must be cooperatively established, preserved, and enlarged." Another important Heideggerian term is "Entschlossenheit" or "resoluteness." As Kompridis insists (p. 58), contra Habermas, the term is "not synonymous with decision or decisiveness, or a manly readiness to take action"; rather, it resonates "with Erschlossenheit, with disclosure or disclosedness." Hence, a better translation would be "unclosednness" which draws attention to "the receptive [though not purely passive] character" of our activity. Refreshingly unconventional are also Kompridis's comments on "das Man." Countering widespread prejudices, he argues (pp. 71-74) that Heidegger's category "displays no more contempt for 'average everydayness' . . . than is to be found in Rousseau's Second Discourse, Emerson's 'Self-Reliance', Thoreau's Walden, or Mill's On Liberty." Specifically, Heidegger is not advocating "an interpretation of 'authenticity' in terms of radical individuality," but rather is guided by an interest "in recovering the everyday, rescuing its semantic resources from daily degradation."
In the third Part Kompridis discusses some of the main strategies employed by critical theorists to debunk Heideggerian "disclosure," by removing it to a realm outside of reason. He conveniently lists Habermas's main objections (p. 98): that Heideggerian ontology "dictates history", that disclosure "precludes the very possibility of learning", and that it is not prior to but "subordinate" to validity claims. For Kompridis, "all of these criticisms fail, often by their own lights," so that Habermas's meta-critique of disclosure "turns out to be rather incoherent." One strategy used to obviate disclosure is to relegate it to a purely "aesthetic" domain, that is, the "value sphere" of art and literature stipulated by Habermas; in that sphere, rational validity "goes on holiday." The strategy fails for the simple reason that disclosure undercuts the division of value spheres (p. 109): "The very idea of an independent sphere of value organized around the world-disclosing practices of art and literature is incoherent." Similarly misguided is the identification of disclosure with an "extraordinary" event or capacity. In Kompridis's words (pp. 112-123), what is neglected here is that "the success of everyday practice depends on the world-illuminating, problem-solving power of disclosure." Hence, Habermas's misconstrual reflects precisely "an inattentiveness to the presence of the extraordinary in the everyday." Other tactics found in critical theory's arsenal are the "debunking strategy" directed mainly at the notion of "ontological difference" (which silently remains presupposed) and the "annexing strategy" where disclosure is somehow assimilated to validation. What all these strategies miss is what Kompridis calls the "test of disclosure" (p. 142). The latter is tested "not against the world as it is, but as it might be; [hence] any new disclosure of meaning and possibility is underdetermined by the 'world'."
In the fourth Part, Kompridis defends a broad conception of "philosophy" transgressing the boundaries of Habermasian rationalism and proceduralism. From the procedural angle, Kompridis asserts (p. 149), philosophy is restricted to "a definition of argument so narrowly 'professional' as to be unphilosophical"; in fact, a history of philosophy employing the procedural criterion "would be a very short, colorless history." A main target of critique in this context is Habermas's definition of philosophy as a "stand-in" (that is, place-keeper for science) and as interpreter -- a definition which Kompridis considers lopsided and untenable (p. 161):
The more it is scrutinized, the more this whole mixed-up conception of philosophy . . . appears to be the product of an expert-culture mentality, exhibiting that mentality's tendency to think in terms of highly distinct 'specializations' and roles within an insufficiently examined division of labor.
A corollary of proceduralism is the rigid distinction of philosophy from literature. Again, Kompridis's response is pointed (p. 178): "Pace Habermas, what distinguishes philosophy from literature is not that the former is a problem-solving enterprise while the latter is a world-disclosing enterprise" -- a spurious distinction "since there is no way to separate world-disclosure from problem-solving in the relevant instances." Above all, what proceduralism and the focus on rationalist theory occlude is philosophy's integral relation to praxis and the practical disclosure of a possible future. Taking a leaf from American pragmatism, Kompridis states (p. 167) that "philosophy receives its concept of itself from the needs of its time, and it is from the quality of philosophy's response to these needs that it can be in a position to react responsibly as an agency of critical enlightenment."
The exploration of possible horizons occupies the remainder of the book. For Kompridis (pp. 192-193), Habermasian thought is not sufficiently open to these horizons because it tolerates only "change that is both familiar to us and controllable by us." To be sure, openness or Erschlossenheit needs to be distinguished from random plasticity, from "contemporary culture's drunken infatuation with the promise of limitless freedom." At that point, Hannah Arendt's theory of action becomes relevant with its accent on radical, but ongoing and sustainable, transformation. In the same manner, Heideggerian disclosive praxis can fruitfully be invoked. In this domain, the charge of "fatalism" often leveled against him serves as a "distorting lens." In one of his most innovative moves, Kompridis links disclosure and "letting be" not with passivity but with a "receptivity" sustaining non-domineering action. "Both Heidegger's early and later writings," he observes (pp. 202-203), "offer a promising starting point for understanding how cooperative, accountable practices of reflective disclosure can facilitate new cultural beginnings, initiate new practices, and found new institutions." What is required here is a rethinking of "agency," away from the deeds of heroic overmen and pointing in a new and "unfamiliar direction": a direction "not only decentering but also reconfiguring what it means to be an agent." Such rethinking makes it possible to see "human beings as cooperative facilitators rather than heroic creators of new beginnings." As has to be admitted, Heidegger did not always live up to the potential of his thought (as shown in his temporary attachment to an ideology which demanded "closed, not open minds"). Intimately associated with this receptive mode of agency is Heidegger's view of human interaction informed by "solicitude." Going beyond narrow formulations of "recognition," recognizing the other from Heidegger's angle involves "a struggle in which one's own self-understanding . . . [is] at stake. That is why such a struggle for recognition is at once cognitive and affective" (p. 210). By contrast to a purely cerebral or "notional" construal, "genuine experiences of self-decentering involve and challenge all of our cognitive and affective capacities, our whole sensibility" (p. 214).
In the concluding sixth Part, Kompridis's focus is entirely on open possibilities "in times of need." He complains first of all of the prevailing cultural skepticism and the apparent "exhaustion of utopian energies": "Skepticism and despair seem to have outstripped hope" (pp. 245-247). This situation is detrimental to philosophy per se, but especially to an outlook which claims to be "critical" of unexamined conditions. "Critique," he states (p. 252), "is unavoidably 'utopian', not in the sense that it depends on the availability of a fully determinate utopia, but in that it depends on the openness and receptivity of the future to utopian thought." The recovery of this dimension requires the restoration of "trust" and confidence in available possibilities. Returning to the book's central theme, and differentiating between pre-reflective and reflective disclosure, Kompridis at this point defines disclosure as a kind of "intimate" or "immanent" critique and critique as the practice of reflective disclosure. In his words (p. 255): "The goal of critique should aim at the self-decentering disclosure of meaning and possibility. . . . Ultimately the test of any newly disclosed possibilities is the degree to which they can initiate self-decentering learning that makes a cooperative new beginning possible." Again, beginning anew here does not coincide with a rupture entirely forgetful of the past. Invoking both Marcuse and Walter Benjamin, Kompridis stresses the need to "preserve the unclosedness of the past" precisely in order to preserve the openness of the future. (A similar point can be found in Heidegger's notion of "the future of the past.") Such an outlook, he writes (pp. 270-272), protects against both reactionary nostalgia and vanguardist euphoria: "It is absolutely essential to the success of possibility-disclosing critique that it lets itself be permeated with the potential of what could be different," and this means "letting oneself suffer one's time, making oneself vulnerable to it by letting oneself be marked by it." By way of conclusion -- and invoking Heidegger's writings on Hölderlin -- Kompridis asserts the need to revive the legacy of a "suppressed romanticism" (p. 275): "In my view, romanticism is not just some superseded period of cultural history; it is the frequently unacknowledged position from which we engage in a critical, time-sensitive interpretation of the present."
This is an important and timely (or time-sensitive) book, both in philosophical and in practical-political terms. Today its plea for a recovery of trust in the future has gained unexpectedly broad resonance. Philosophically, the book in a way signals the end of a period marked by divergent, even opposite tendencies: on the one hand, the "postmodern" fascination with "extraordinary" rupture (or rapture), and on the other, the streamlining of critical theory in the mold of a rule-governed, rationalist normalcy. The book's basic aim -- one which I heartily endorse -- is to rescue critical thought from these limiting parameters and thus to nurture openness for new possibilities. My sympathy with this aim is in part motivated by my own similar endeavors to open critical theory to Heideggerian insights (see, e.g., my Between Freiburg and Frankfurt: Toward a Critical Ontology, of 1991). Like Kompridis, I had been chagrined by Habermas's abandonment of his earlier practical engaged outlook in favor of abstract theorizing; Kompridis's comments on the flaws of such theorizing are pointed and basically on target. Of late, it is true, Habermasian thought seems to have undergone a certain mellowing, softening the harsh edges of his abstract universalism and moving him closer again to hermeneutics and even to modes of religious thought (although the name of Heidegger remains banished from his discourse). Despite such recent modifications, however, the book performs a valuable function: nudging rank-and-file critical theorists away from certain "orthodox" school positions which Habermas himself seems now ready to abandon.
There are numerous other features of the book -- a veritable cornucopia -- with which I heartily agree. One has to do with the reformulation of praxis in terms of a decentered receptivity and open engagement with others. This reformulation gives a crucial new impulse to conventional "action theory," pushing it beyond the confines of self-centered activism and passive self-erasure. In my own thinking, I have tended to view Heideggerian solicitude and "letting be" as prime examples of (what is often called) the "middle voice." The accent on receptivity or receptive generosity also reveals important dimensions of a Heideggerian "ethics" -- dimensions which are usually sidelined or ignored. This neglect is astonishing in view of such salient Heideggerian terms as "solicitude" and especially "anticipatory-liberating solicitude" -- as Kompridis correctly observes. The topics of receptivity and engaged solicitude have a clear bearing on the traditional notion of inter-human recognition -- a notion which, in the past, has often been confined to a purely cerebral level. The reformulation of this concept in terms of a re-connection of cognition with affect and sensibility can obviously rely on the Heideggerian category of "Stimmung," but beyond that on a longer tradition stretching from Spinoza to Emerson, Merleau-Ponty, and Stanley Cavell. Extremely valuable in this context are also Kompridis's comments on the broader social import of self-decentering. As he writes (p. 213), such self-decentering
is not about overcoming our partial view of things in order to arrive at the single right answer to a moral problem. It is not about a 'transcendence' of our parochial self in order to achieve an impartial or objective view of things; it is about an enlargement of self, opening it up to what was previously closed.
In conformity with these comments, Kompridis's view of "utopia" does not involve a bland universalism or cosmopolitanism. What Heideggerian disclosure brings into view, he states (pp. 219-220), is the need to change a monistic conception of being "into a pluralistic one, such that we acquire an increased sensitivity to the presence and endangered state of plural 'local worlds' -- plural understandings not subsumable under a single notion of being." What this underscores is "the interdependent relationship between intelligibility, plurality, and possibility."
Despite my general agreement with the book's orientation, I cannot refrain from voicing some reservations. Although lucidly written, the presentation is often somewhat rambling and repetitive; a tightening of structure might have further strengthened its argument. More serious are reservations having to do with the portrayal of Heidegger's thought. Despite his initial rejection of the Habermasian charges of solipsism and a relapse into the "philosophy of the subject," Kompridis surprisingly ends up echoing these charges in slightly revised form. The section on "Dependent Freedom" castigates the "conspicuous lack of a normatively robust conception of intersubjective accountability and recognition" (p. 48). In large measure, this lack is blamed on Heidegger's allegedly self-centered conception of Entschlossenheit and the "call of conscience." Despite his own translation of Entschlossenheit as "unclosedness," and in the face of a quoted passage where Heidegger describes the "call of conscience" as a call that comes "from me and yet from outside and beyond me," Kompridis states (p. 51):
Regrettably Heidegger chose to develop the meaning of 'resoluteness' one-sidedly, as an openness or receptivity to a 'call' whose disclosed meaning should be understood independently of our relation to others. Thus he made monophonic and monological a call that is inherently polyphonic and dialogical.
From here it is only a short step to the claim (pp. 52-53), that Heidegger decided to "suppress that half of the 'call' that emanates from outside the self," with the result that Being and Time culminates in "a solipsistic rather than a 'fundamental' ontology" hovering at "the precarious edge of subjectivism." A similar re-vindication concerns Habermas's charge of decisionism. Although strongly asserting that "Entschlossenheit is not synonymous with decision," Kompridis in effect revokes his assertion by stating (p. 65) that "Heidegger undermines the illuminating power of his own analyses by uncoupling Entschlossenheit from Dasein's positive dependence on others and thus from positive solicitude." Painting with a broad brush, even Heidegger's famous "turning" (Kehre) is interpreted (p. 67) as "the successful suppression of dependence on others."
In my view, assertions of this kind could easily be corrected by a closer reading of Heidegger's texts, especially his Beiträge and some lecture courses presented during the 1930's (and only recently made available). Less easily resolvable is the central issue announced in the book's title: the relation between critique and disclosure. As one can gather from the subtitle and numerous other statements, the basic tendency is to subordinate disclosure to critique, that is, to make disclosure serviceable to critical theory. As Kompridis states at one point (pp. 31-32): "What I propose to draw from Heidegger does not require abandonment of Habermas's best critical insights; rather, it means reassessing them and recombining them with Heidegger's in order to re-envision the future of critical theory." Yet, taking into account the sustained criticisms of Habermas throughout the book, how plausible or persuasive is this aim? In his most exacting or developed formulations, Kompridis defines critique as reflective disclosure and disclosure as intimate critique (pp. 238, 255). But what about "pre-reflective disclosure"? Would it not be more plausible and sensible to assign critique to what some writers call "secondary reflection" (and Kompridis "reflective disclosure")? Ever since the time of Kant, modern philosophy has been defined or defined itself preeminently as "critique" -- a primacy the book seems to accept. In my opinion, however, Heidegger's work does not entirely subscribe to this tradition; it is not primarily critical, but rather ontological and phenomenological -- honoring Merleau-Ponty's notion of the primacy of "perceptual faith." Looked at from this angle, the title of the book might perhaps preferably read: Disclosure and Critique.
from here
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