PhilosophyattheCrossroads

PhilosophyattheCrossroads

bySeylaBenhabib

Source: PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:3/1985,pages:350364,onwww.ceeol.com.

The following ad supports maintaining our C.E.E.O.L. service

350

Praxis International

COMMENT

PHILOSOPHY AT THE CROSSROADS*

Seyla Benhabib
Philosophy is its own time grasped in thought.1 Hegels well-known phrase contains the seeds of its own dissolution. While Hegel himself viewed his own system as grasping in thought the spirit of the new age, and as reuniting into an encyclopaedia of the philosophical sciences logic, epistemology, morality, jurisprudence, and aesthetics, which the Kantians had taken apart, nineteenth-century philosophers from Marx to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard drew quite the opposite consequences. If philosophy was its own time grasped in thought, then it had to become a science of the society of the presentso argued Marx. If philosophy was its own time grasped in thought, then it had to become a moral genealogy of bourgeois-Christian civilization, maintained Nietzsche. If philosophy was its own time grasped in thought, according to Kierkegaard, it could no longer affirm the absolute but had to deal with the paradoxeven more, the absurditythat I, this concrete, finite individual, could claim to stand in an immediate relationship to the absolute. So absurd seemed Hegels self-assurance to Kierkegaard that he named his own tortured attempts to step outside the Hegelian system Concluding Unscientific Postscript. The title is revealing: not a script but a postscript, not scientific but unscientific. Kierkegaard might as well have added not concluding but inconclusive. Since the end of the nineteenth century we have thus become familiar with various sublations of philosophy into social theory, genealogy, and the discourse of the absurd. In our days a new Aufhebung of philosophy into poetry, literary criticism, playful prose, cultural anthropology and the like is being advocated. Richard Rorty has recently declared the end of philosophy as a master discourse of epistemic justification and validation, which would allow us, in our capacity as professional philosophers, to specify the universal, transhistorical, contextindependent criteria of scientific, moral, and cultural practices.2 With this characterization of philosophy as a master discourse of justification, Rorty goes back from Hegel to Kant, and to the neo-Kantian tradition on the Continent and in the Anglo-American countries. While Hegelian philosophy, with its attempt to synthesize the given corpus of knowledge into a system of the absolute, appears as one last aberration in a long history to be overcome by its own internal contradictions, according to Rorty, it is the Kantian and the neo-Kantian understanding of philosophy which has dominated the profession and which has provided it with its raison dtre. Whatever the idiosyncrasies of
* Critical review of Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983). References are given in the text in parentheses.

Access via CEEOL NL Germany

Praxis International

351

Rortys version of the history of philosophy, and they are many, he is undoubtedly correct on one point. Those who have accepted Kants concern with the demarcation between philosophy and mainly the natural sciences, and who have found plausible his justification of philosophy as a meta-discourse concerned with the quaestio juris, have seen the task of philosophy in the twentieth century in the clarification, distillation and systematization of the logic and language of these sciences. Rorty maintains that attempts to transcendentalize, absolutize or more humbly to reconstruct the logic and language of that one paradigm of successful knowledge have failed. Instead of treating the paradigm of Galilean-Newtonian natural science as one more vocabulary among others that enables us to cope with the world, that is to predict and control it, philosophers have tended to argue that the contingent success of modern natural sciences rested on something else, and most commonly upon the fact that this language mirrored, represented reality and the essences of things.3 The mind, declares Rorty, is not the mirror of nature, but at the most our creative capacity to generate new vocabularies to deal with a contingent universe. If we take the pragmatic-hermeneutic turn of the late Wittgenstein and Heidegger, and of John Dewey, we will move from the master discourse of epistemology to the edifying conversation of mankind. The task of philosophy is not to ground, justify, or legitimize the possibility of conversation berhaupt and an sich but simply to keep the conversation going.4 It is at this point that Richard Bernstein enters the debate with his new book, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis. Writing from a perspective that accepts both the sublation of philosophys claim to the totality, and Rortys metacritique of epistemology, Bernstein nevertheless argues that what we are faced with at the present is not yet another end of philosophy but the emergence of a new understanding of rationality. Bernsteins work provides a sobering antidote to the current mood of epochal crisis in philosophy, and to temptations to seek its facile sublation in one or another discipline. As I will argue below, however, even among the adherents of this new paradigm of rationality, radically different conceptions as to how to carry on philosophy continue. These strong disagreements cast doubt on Bernsteins claim that Gadamer as well as Rorty, Habermas as well as Arendt share the same vision, and that they furthermore, in some deep sense are engaged in the same project. Even if ones sense of epochal crisis is tempered by Bernsteins new work, I, at least, remain unconvinced that there is a consensus at the present as to where to go from here. Contemporary philosophy remains at the crossroad, and the path that leads beyond objectivism and relativism is not as clearly marked as one would have wished. II In the Preface to Beyond Objectivism and Relativism Bernstein writes that the spirit of our times is characterized by a movement beyond objectivism and relativism (xiv). Bernstein defines objectivism as the view that there exists some permanent, ahistorical matrix or framework to which one can ultimately appeal in determining the nature of rationality, knowledge, truth, reality,

352

Praxis International

goodness, or rightness (8). The relativist, by contrast, argues that there is no substantive overarching framework or single metalanguage by which we can rationally adjudicate or univocally evaluate competing claims of alternative paradigms (8). Bernstein is careful to distinguish objectivism from metaphysical or epistemological realism. An objectivist may, but need not be, committed to the theses that (a) there is a world of objective reality that exists independently of us and whose nature or essence we can know; and/or (b) that there is a fundamental distinction between what is out there and our knowing activity. Kant and transcendental philosophers like Husserl are objectivist in the sense of believing in the presence of such a permanent, ahistorical matrix; they are not objectivist in the sense of being epistemological or metaphysical realists (9ff ). Likewise, a relativist need not be a subjectivist or conversely. The work of the late Wittgenstein can be described as relativist because he accepts the irreducible plurality of conceptual schemes and language games, which are rooted in the multiplicity of life-forms. He is not a subjectivist either in the Husserlian sense of advocating the constitution of these frameworks by the activity of knowing subjects nor in the more mundane sense of believing that all is relative to the subjects preference, taste or bias. According to Bernstein, while neither absolutism nor subjectivism are a live option for us now, the choice between a sophisticated form of fallibilistic objectivism and a nonsubjective conception of relativism does seem to be a liveand indeed a momentousone (13). This last statement is in some ways misleading. If I read Bernstein correctly, his argument is not so much that there is indeed a choice between a fallibilistic objectivism, of the kind advocated by Popper and Lakatos, and a nonsubjective conception of relativism, as represented by Peter Winch and Clifford Geertz. Bernstein is arguing that, when the claims of each position are thought through to their end, then the hermeneutical dimension of science, both natural and social, will be recovered (31). Part Two of Bernsteins book, Science, Rationality and Incommensurability, intends to show that the various debates on rationality, which have reigned in the philosophy of the natural sciences since the publication of Thomas Kuhns The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and in the social sciences since Peter Winchs The Idea of a Social Science, when interpreted correctly, result in the recovery of that hermeneutical dimension which leads beyond objectivism and relativism. What exactly is meant by the recovery of the hermeneutical dimension of science? For Bernstein this dimension becomes visible in the wake of the debates between Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend. Bernstein summarizes the conclusions to be drawn from these debates as follows: (1) The Cartesian dream or hope that we could discover the clear and distinct ideas which would summarize the essence of the new sciences of nature is vacuous. One substantive result, writes Bernstein, of recent work in the philosophy of science has been to show us that any abstract statement of what are supposed to be the permanent rules, methods, or standards of scientific inquiry turns out to be untrue to actual scientific inquiry or consists merely of pious generalities. This is one reason why it is so important to turn to a concrete examination of historical practices and standards that have been hammered out in the course

Praxis International

353

of scientific inquiry (72). (2) No statement of rules for advancing, testing and evaluating competing hypotheses and theories is adequate to define what is acceptable or unacceptable in concrete situations of research. (3) The study of the history of science, and generally the history of human inquiry, is vital to understand the continuity and differences in human rationality. (4) The most important consequence of these developments is an appreciation of the practical character of rationality in science . . . In speaking of the practical character, I want to underscore the role of choice, deliberation, conflicting variable opinions, and the judgmental quality of rationality (74. My emphasis). The recovery of the hermeneutical dimension of the sciences has a two-fold meaning. First, the actual practice of the scientific community in testing, constructing, revising hypotheses and theories is not unlike the practice of a moral agent who is confronted with choice, deliberation, and judgment in facing moral situations and dilemmas. The distinction between theoretical and practical rationality, between the hypothetico-deductive algorithmic model of choice, which natural scientists, according to some accounts, ostensibly follow, and the model of moral choice, which is context-dependent and sensitive, interpetive and focused on particulars, no longer holds. Second, the reconstruction of the history of science itself is a hermeneutical inquiry. In writing the history of any scientific episode, for example, the historian is confronted with a problem of understanding. If scientists of the seventeenth century believed that theological as well as alchemistic arguments served as epistemic reasons in their justification of hypotheses, the historian is faced with the question as to what counts as a standard of rationality in such an inquiry. Should he or she accept the self-understanding of the scientist of the period, and maintain that even if for us today, theological and alchemistic arguments do not serve as epistemic reasons, we should accept the standard of rationality practiced by these scientists? Or should he or she treat such cases as instances of scientific irrationality? Furthermore, suppose there is a discrepancy between our rational reconstruction of the methodology of scientific research programs and the actual historical sequence, and that the implicit rationality of the episode differs from the imputed rationality constructed by the sociologists and historians of science. Should he or she, like Lakatos, assume that socio-psychological factors were responsible for this deviance and that such a discrepancy is to be imputed to non-epistemic factors?5 But would this not be question-begging? That is, would we not be assuming that rationality is what we implicitly, from our vantage point, take it to be? Bernsteins answer here would be that such discussions are paradigm instances of hermeneutic logic. To speak of begging the question betrays a non-hermeneutic understanding of understanding. Since all understanding operates within a certain framework, and with certain standards, it is inevitable that the researcher would bring his or her standards to bear on the inquiry. What is absolutely essential is to distinguish between enabling or disenabling prejudices, and to develop a sensitivity to the subject-matter, such that in reconstructions a genuine dialogue takes place, one in which we are as much

354

Praxis International

willing to learn from our subject-matter as we are willing to criticize. I want to suggest that Bernsteins thesis of the hermeneutic dimension of science can be stated in a strong and weak version. The strong version would conclude that in the wake of the post-empiricist philosophy of science no interesting or significant differences remain between the natural and the social sciences. The defenders of the weak version, while admitting that a reconstruction of the logic of the natural sciences in terms of a canon of rational choice is untenable, would maintain that there are still significant differences between a mathematicized physics, chemistry, and molecular biology on the one hand, and sociology, anthropology, history, and psychology on the other hand. Furthermore, they would argue that these differences have theoretical and not only moral import. It is all the more important to address this question since some of the unresolved disputes between Gadamer and Habermas, as well as Rorty and Habermas, concern the logic of the social and human sciences, and their relations to philosophy. It is unclear whether Bernstein wants to defend the strong or the weak version of this issue. Does he mean to say that the natural sciences themselves operate with the double hermeneutic which A. Giddens and J. Habermas, for example, would only like to attribute to the social and the human sciences?6 The double hermeneutic in these sciences means that the researcher is already confronted with a pre-interpreted subject-matter. The social scientist cannot ignore the ordinary language in which meanings are always already found in the social world. What is more, the social actors themselves may in turn adopt the language of social science to explain their situation and condition, such that a dialogue or communication between subject-subject is intrinsic to these sciences. It seems that, according to Bernstein, in the wake of the postempiricist philosophy of science, the thesis of the double hermeneutic is no longer sufficient to draw the distinction between the natural, and the human and social sciences. In defense of their claim, Habermas and Giddens, however, might reply that the double hermeneutic is true of the history, sociology or philosophy of science, since these are themselves social and human sciences, but not true of the practice of natural sciences themselves. Habermas, for example, writes:
Let me add that with the distinction between sciences which are based on hermeneutical procedures and those which are not, I am not advocating a dualism between ontological features of different domains or regions of reality . . . What I advocate, instead, is the methodological distinction among sciences which either do or do not rely on understanding what is said as the condition for access to the object domain. Although all sciences have to, of course, cope with problems of interpretation on the metatheoretical level . . . only some of these with a hermeneutic dimension of research have to cope with interpretation on the basic level of the generation of their data . . . In this methodological definition of hermeneutically based sciences, I am at odds with Rortys conception of hermeneutics as an act confined to abnormal discourses.7

Habermas here is advocating the weak thesis of the distinction between the natural and the hermeneutics sciences.

Praxis International

355

For a strong version of the thesis compare now the following statements by Rorty:
I am basically in agreement with Hesse on the point on which she is at odds with Taylor and Dreyfus. I agree with her that the demise of logical empiricism means that there is no interesting split between the Natur- and the Geisteswissenschaften.8 The idea that only a certain vocabulary is suited to human beings or human societies, that only that vocabulary permits them to be understood is the seventeenth century myth of natures own vocabulary all over again . . . We should look at any new development within the human sciences with two questions in mind: Does it increase our capacity to predict and to control? Does it increase our sense of what it is important to consider in moral deliberation? We should avoid asking several other other questions, for example, Is it really scientific? Is it an instrument of domination? or Is it liberating?9

As these statements indicate, there is a crucial dispute here, and it is not obvious that what Bernstein names the recovery of the hermeneutical dimension of science can help settle it. Bernstein wants to assume a middle position between Rorty and Habermas. While agreeing with Rorty that the post-empiricist philosophy of science is deeply questioning the categorical distinctions that separate even the hard natural sciences from what Habermas calls the historical-hermeneutical disciplines,10 unlike Rorty he also wants to insist that questions concerning the nature of the social and human sciences can be debated on cognitive-theoretical and not merely moral-pragmatic grounds.11 Although this particular debate is not at the center of Bernsteins concerns in Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, I have called attention to it, for it points to a crucial issue. Bernsteins concern is to sensitize us to the emergence of a new way of looking at rationality. The failure of attempts to define transhistorical, transcontextual criteria and rules of rationality need not lead, in his opinion, to a relativism, where anything goes. This would be repeating Nietszches mistake in thinking that because God is dead all is permitted. Even if there are no criteria of rationality in the strong sense desired by the objectivist, there are context-immanent, practice-internal standards, rules and reasons, which admittedly change over time, but which govern and should govern our action and inquiry. Aristotles insistence that it is the mark of a true gentleman not to seek more certainty than the subject matter permits is crucial here. In this sense the lines between theoretical and practical rationality, between the canons of reason employed in our inquiries into nature and the canons of moral deliberation and judgment, are more fluid than have hitherto been assumed. Granted this insight, the central problem remains. At the meta-level there appears to be indeed a convergence between Rortys pragmatic-contextualism, Gadamerian hermeneutics and Habermass communicative or discursive concept of rationality (I will deal with Hannah Arendt below). None the less significant differences persist between them around two sets of issues. I believe these differences in turn call into question the apparent meta-theoretical convergence. First, there are unresolved disputes concerning the characterization of conceptual shifts, or the meaning of rational learning-processes. Second, and closely tied to the first, is each thinkers conception of the interchange between philosophy and the human and social sciences.

356

Praxis International

III To elucidate the nature of the dispute between Habermas, Gadamer and Rorty on the question of conceptual change, I will first outline Habermass position. Habermas has developed a research program of rational reconstructions, whose goal is to combine the interpretive-hermeneutic understanding of human action and cognition with an objectivating-theoretical approach. The reconstruction of the internal logic of the object of study, be it the development of world-views, the development of moral judgment, or the ontogenetic acquisition of cognitive, linguistic or sociomoral competencies, is the first step. The second is to outline the transition from one world-view to another, from one stage of moral, interactive or communicative competence to another, as an internally motivated learning sequence. It is assumed that learning is a process of problem-solving in which the learning subject is actively involved, and furthermore, that there is a cumulative or irreversible logic to this process such that a subject who has moved from interpretation X1 to interpretation X2 of a problem can explain in the light of the second interpretation why the former is false, but not vice versa.12 This is the Piagetian idea of sequences or stages that structure the cognitive, moral, interactive competencies of subjects into equilibrated wholes which become increasingly abstract, complex, general, and reversible in the course of development. Habermas even names such rational reconstructions a transcendental philosophy carried on with empirical means, for these reconstructions are supposed to identify formal, universal structures that govern the learning processes of subjects for good, i.e., cognitively defensible, reasons.13 Compare this approach with Rortys claim that history has proved Galileo to be right and Cardinal Bellarmine wrong not on any deep conceptual grounds, but simply because Galilean science turned to be more successful in coping with the world, i.e., in predicting and controlling it.14 On Rortys account, if there is a learning process in this sequence, it is simply that it pays off to adopt a mathematical science of nature rather than to view nature as Gods revealed book. Consider then what a Gadamerian approach to the same issue might be. Gadamer might insist that being the heirs of the Galilean, mathematical science of nature, our initial prejudices might be in favor of upholding the rationality of Galileo over Bellarmine. A deeper inquiry might reveal to us the limits of our own prejudices, such that we may enter into an imaginative conversation with the Christian-Ptolemiac tradition Bellarmine stands for. Suppose we still want to know who is rightGalileo or Bellarmine? What criteria or standards are we to appeal to? Our tradition provides no guide in this respect, for both Bellarmine and Galileo appeal to tradition to defend themselves. Galileo, no less than Bellarmine, believed that nature was the Book of God, albeit written in mathematical language. Traditions are not coherent wholes; incommensurable interpretations of the same tradition belong to the normative logic of traditions. Apart from enlightening us about the range of possible human interpretations, and urging us to extend the limits of our horizon, can a hermeneutic philosophy help settle this dispute?15

Praxis International

357

Between Habermass program of rational reconstructions, Gadamers model of a fusion of horizons, and Rortys vague concept of learning as coping, there are significant conflicts which point to unresolved disputes about the nature of rationality and the meaning of historical change. Habermas subscribes to a strong concept of rationality as an internally motivated learning process, in the course of which formal and narrative elements interact. Abstraction complexity, generality or decentration are formal-universals in such learning processes that can be isolated from the narrative account of the reasons that also enter into such processes of learning. Another way of formulating this is that for Habermas the narrative logic of the reasons advanced in cognitive or interactive learning processes is less significant than their formal features, that is, the level of cognitive and interactional operations employed. Neither Rorty nor Gadamer would accept such a strong separation between formal and narrative elements of learning processes. Rorty, in particular, dismisses this aspect of Habermass work as a transcendental hangover, and argues that there are no constraints on inquiry save conversational ones . . . But objectionsconversational constraintscannot be anticipated. There is no method for knowing when one has reached the truth, or when one is closer to it than before.16 I want to press these differences between Habermas, Rorty and Gadamer further by turning to the character of the interchange between philosophy and the human and social sciences. It is clear that a dispute between Galileo and Bellarmine cannot be settled by traditional means of philosophical argumentation alone. To pass a really reasoned and defensible judgment on the question of who was right, we would have to know a great deal more about this period, the history of the two men, the institutional position of the Church, the relationship of Galilean science to developments in ballistics and engineering, the rise of capitalism, the shift to the mechanized world-view, etc. We would have to immerse ourselves in both internalist and externalist accounts, drawn from the history and sociology of science. Franz Borkenau would be no less relevant to such a study than Koyr; nor Edgar Zilsel less relevant that Dijksterhuis.17 This proves the correctness of Bernsteins observation that the study of the history of science, and generally the history of human inquiry, is vital to understand the continuity and differences in human rationality (74). Such an exchange between philosophy and the human and social sciences is encouraged by Habermass program of rational reconstructions. In fact, in such a program there is a genuine hermeneutical interplay between the construction of empirically relevant social-scientific theories and philosophical argumentation. It is not my intention to defend here the details of this program. When applied to phylogenesis in particular, such a program runs all the risks of a Whiggish account of history, according to which what triumphs always triumphs for good reasons. There is every reason to want to know what has been forgotten and repressed in history as well as what has been remembered for good reasons. However, I do want to defend the spirit behind this approach, which preserves the intention of truth without giving up the hope that meaning can also be gleaned from truth. Rorty collapses meaning and truth. What allows us to cope as well as what

358

Praxis International

is hammered out in history may well be meaningful but not true. Our neuroses, since they help us to deal with a painful reality, are meaningful without thereby being true. Patriarchy, nationalism, racism are also meaningful since they equally allow us to cope with a contingent universe, in addition to having been hammered out in history, but this makes them neither cognitively defensible nor morally right. Gadamer, by contrast, defends meaning at the expense of truth. Philosophical hermeneutics is neither a methodology of the human sciences nor a theory of rationality, although it has implications for both. Ultimately hermeneutics remains a mode of philosophical reflection, the final goal of which is our Besinnung, namely coining to our senses, by recovering a sense of our own contingency, finitude and the transitoriness of being. Like any worldphilosophy, the truth of such a system is not open to confirmation or refutation. It illuminates our being-in-the-world at one point in time. As long as its light extends longer than our shadow, we bask in it. It cannot be proven untrue; it is either forgotten or becomes irrelevant to the spiritual concerns of the times. Admittedly, a more sympathetic reading of Gadamers project is both possible and plausible. This is the one that Bernstein follows. In an illuminating discussion he writes: Although the concept of truth is basic to Gadamers entire project of philosophical hermeneutics, it turns out to be one of the most elusive concepts in his work. After all, a primary intention of Truth and Method is to elucidate and defend the legitimacy of speaking of the truth of works of art, texts, and tradition. Gadamer tells us that it was not his aim to play off Method against Truth, but rather to show that there is an entirely different notion of knowledge and truth which is not exhausted by the achievements of scientific method and which is available through hermeneutic understanding (151). If one chooses this reading of Gadamer which emphasizes the elucidation of a different conception of truth than the one prevalent in the Kantian-Cartesian tradition, however, it also follows that philosophical hermeneutics has to enter into a serious exchange with the human and social sciences. For if there is an entirely different tradition of knowledge and truth, whose cognitive claims we deem valid, then philosophys role cannot merely be uncovering the ground upon which these sciences rise. If we immunize philosophy as a metadiscipline from such interchanges, then the distinction between truth and meaning collapses. If we want to keep this distinction, then the privileged status of hermeneutics and its claim to universality is suspended, in the sense that our final judgment on both issues can result from the give and take between philosophy and the specialized sciences. Rorty wants to distinguish between hermeneutics as a method and as an attitude.18 I am suggesting that hermeneutics can only retain its claim to truth in so far as it is not merely an attitude but a method as well. I owe this admittedly unusual way of distinguishing between truth and meaning to Hannah Arendt, although her manner of differentiating between them is epistemically questionable. Arendt goes back to Kants differentiation of Verstand from Vernunft. According to her, the intellect (Verstand ) desires to grasp what is given to the senses, but reason (Vernunft ) wishes to understand its

Praxis International

359

meaning. Cognition, whose highest criterion is truth, derives that criterion from the world of appearances in which we take our bearings through sense perceptions, whose testimony is self-evident, that is, unshakeable by argument and replaceable only by other evidence.19 Arendt here is developing a theory of truth as correspondence that is unshakeable by argument and replaceable only by other evidence. This view, it seems to me, only holds of such epistemic banalities as sensations, pains, and itches, but even in this domain of experience intersubjective argumentation and validation plays a greater role than Arendt admits. Nevertheless, it is Arendts attempt to elucidate the distinction between Verstand and Vernunft that interests me here. Her point can be captured in another way. There are two traditional ways of conceptualizing the relationship between the intellect and reason which we can associate with Kant and Hegel respectively. According to Kant, reason asserts its rights against the understanding by delimiting the bounds of sense beyond which knowledge should not venture. Thought, which is reasons activity, rightfully pushes the understanding to its limits, in order to uncover another realm which is meaningful even if it can be proven neither true or untrue. The regulative Ideas of God, the soul and the world have this function. They enable us to think of an intelligent purpose that governs the whole, of our freedom as moral beings, and of our dignity as creatures of a noumenal Kingdom of Ends. Hegel rejects this Kantian distinction between understanding and reason, knowledge and thought, truth and meaning. On his view, the Kantian epistemological project is hopelessly circular; it is futile to want to determine what one knows before one embarks upon the path to knowledge. The result of Hegels epistemological critique of Kant is the extension of the concept of science beyond the paradigmatic examples of Newtonian physics and Euclidian geometry. Hegel not only argues that Kants concept of science is limited, but maintains that the reference to experience cannot alone be the basis of science. Hegels own concept of a philosophical science is hopelessly obscure. Ultimately, it seems to refer to a self-referential thought-process, claiming reflexivity, comprehensiveness and closure. If one danger of the Kantian program, as Rorty rightly points out, is the positivist atrophy of philosophy, the greatest danger of Hegels program is the self-immunization of philosophy against the knowledge-claims of the sciences altogether. Is there a third alternative that avoids both the positivistic atrophy of philosophy and its speculative self-immunization against the empirical world? Rorty suggests that since both alternatives are so obviously unacceptable, we should reject them along with the pairs of dichotomies in which they have been embedded. Gadamer carries on the spirit of the Hegelian critique of Verstand and of the specialized sciences, while rejecting the closure of the dialectic. Nevertheless, he shares with Hegel the sense of philosophy as the self-reflection of thought upon its times. Habermas is suggesting a third alternative that preserves the distinction between truth/meaning, intellect/reason, knowledge/ thought without eliminating philosophys role of self-reflection upon the times. In the tradition of critical social theory, this role of philosophy between science and reflection has been named critique.20 Critical social theory

360

Praxis International

differs from the master discourse of epistemology, for its task is not to elucidate the foundations and validity claims of the specialized sciences alone. Critical theory questions the activity of the sciences in two respects: first, it uncovers the relation between the constitution of the object domains of the various sciences and the life-context and interests out of which they arise (Enstehungszusammenhang). Second, critical inquiry analyzes the social context in which the knowledge produced by the sciences is put to use (Verwendungszusammenhang). The purpose of both analyses is to render the sciences themselves more reflexive about the genesis and social validity of the knowledge they produce. The assumption, which critical theory proceeds from and which Rorty denies, is that there is a relationship between these two contexts. The mode in which a science theoretically conceptualizes the object domain and the interests it serves are intimately related. Here critical theorists follow Marxs critique of political economy, which showed that the inability of classical political economy to think some concepts like value to their end was related to the epistemic standpoint assumed by these theorists. Whether or not such an analysis can be successfully carried out is, in my opinion, an open question. Rortys metatheoretical arguments, which often reveal little sensitivity for the internal problems of theory-constitution in the social sciences,21 cannot settle the issue. His sharp separation between the two questions Is it really scientific? and Is it emancipatory? is not an advance of the argument. One must be able to show in the case of concrete instances in the social sciences (and maybe even in the natural sciences) that a theorist was not guided by certain kinds of implicit interests which in turn led to biased and, in the final analysis, unscientific assumptions, concepts, and theory constructions. Critical social theory, precisely because it sensitizes the specialized sciences to their contexts of genesis and application, also enters into a dialogue with them. New modes of theoretical conceptualization, new categories and methods of research are suggested. The best-known example in this respect is the attempt by the Frankfurt School in the 1930s to synthesize psychoanalysis, political economy, sociology, cultural theory and philosophy into a research program that could illuminate the character of the new social formation which they named state capitalism. As a result of this research program, philosophical concepts like autonomy and freedom, for example, were given a concrete, historical and social content. The implicit social-historical preconditions of the Kantian concept of autonomy as well as the implicit ego psychology upon which it rested were thereby brought to light. The purpose of Horkheimer and Adorno was to preserve autonomy as a norm even while indicating the historical, sociological and psychological biases that Kants initial formulation contained. This model of interchange between philosophy and the sciences represents a genuine alternative to the positivist atrophy of philosophy on the one hand and its self-immunization against empirical reality on the other. Unlike in positivism, in the tradition of critical social theory the truth claims of the sciences are not accepted at face-value. Neither are philosophical concepts, however, seen as expressions of eternal verities and of timeless world-views. Such meaning-claims about the human condition are tested against the result of the sciences, while the implicit, unstated meaning-

Praxis International

361

claims of the sciences themselves are brought to light. In this sense, the research program of critical social theory still remains a live option for us. Although Hannah Arendt herself was primarily concerned with the problem of meaning, and with the light that thought could throw upon the human condition, in her actual practice she followed a collaboration between philosophy and the sciences that is quite akin to the spirit of critical theory, even if radically different in its substantive conclusions. Her work on The Origins of Totalitarianism gave an account of a period approaching its end by making us aware of a new form of political domination that had become possible in the twentieth century. The fundamental concepts of Arendts work, like totalitarianism, the public space, and the much-disputed distinctions between labor, work and action, or between the social and the political realms, are all hybrid concepts which combine the search for meaning with an empirically informed social analysis. They all have a philosophical as well as an empirical research-guiding value, as the many debates still surrounding her work attest. Thus, Hannah Arendts writings, even if not her methodological selfreflections, point to that spirit of interchange between the search for meaning and the constraints of truth which I am claiming is also central to critical social theory. Rorty may also welcome this blurring of lines between discourses and the emergence of abnormal discourse. Since, however, he sees no compelling cognitive issues either in the actual practice of, or in methodological reflection upon, the sciences that should interest us in our capacity as philosophers, he would questionas he frequently doesthe legitimacy of the whole enterprise. The position of philosophical hermeneutics is admittedly ambivalent in this respect. Gadamer, on the one hand, looks fondly upon the many attempts to make hermeneutics relevant to the practice of the human and social sciences. On the other hand, in a personal communication to Bernstein, appended to the book, he sides with Rorty against Habermas and writes: To this extent, I share Rortys criticism of Habermass claim to scientific status (263). Now I intend really to begin reading Habermas and Rorty again; perhaps I can still get something into this old head. Admittedly, to make me into a sociologist is something no one will succeed in doing, not even myself (265). This disconcertingly charming admission diverts from the central problem, namely, how is one to evaluate the cogency of Gadamers various claims on tradition, authority, community, and solidarity? As Bernstein also observes, All of these tensions and problems come into sharp focus in Gadamers elucidation of praxis and phronesis. He has opened us to many questions that he does not adequately answer . . . if we turn our attention to the status of the shared principles and universals required for the exercise of phronesis, . . . or to the legitimate causal explanations that need to be confronted in seeking to understand and explain the dynamics, conflicts, and contradictions of contemporary society . . . then we are led beyond philosophical hermeneutics (169). IV In the final section of his book entitled Beyond objectivism and Relativism: The Practical Task, Bernstein discusses the moral and political implications

362

Praxis International

that follow from the metatheoretical debates on rationality. He claims that the central themes of dialogue, conversation undistorted communication, communal judgment (223) entail a practical-moral project, one that points to the creation of communities where such virtues flourish. Bernstein sees a circularity in this vision, comparable to the hermeneutical circle (226). For the very virtues that are to flourish in such communities are themselves presupposed in order to bring them about. Social change, we may add, always presupposes cultural as well as social resources that are embedded in the collective memory and practice as well as the political culture of our societies. Bernsteins use of the concept of community, which in English usage does not invoke the sharp distinction familiar in Continental sociology between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, raises some puzzles. Is the emphasis on this concept meant to suggest the abdication of general societal reform? Or is it that the nature of power relations have changed in such fashion in our societies that we have to focus on what Foucault has named micro-practices? In a striking passage that is compatible with both readings, but which seems to invoke Foucault indirectly, Bernstein writes: What we desperately need today is to learn to think and act more like the fox than the hedgehogto seize upon those experiences and struggles in which there are still the glimmerings of solidarity and the promise of dialogic communities in which there can be genuine mutual participation and where reciprocal wooing and persuasion can prevail. For what is characteristic of our contemporary situation is not just the playing out of powerful forces that are beyond our control, or the spread of disciplinary techniques that always elude our grasp, but a paradoxical situation where power creates counter-power (resistance) and reveals the vulnerability of power, where the very forces that undermine and inhibit communal life also create new, and frequently unpredictable, forms of solidarity (228). I think Bernstein would agree that the implications of this rich and suggestive observation cannot be dealt with at the level of metaphilosophical analysis he has pursued in this work. Furthermore, I believe that not all of the philosophical positions discussed by Bernstein would lead to a fruitful strategy for thinking about the problems of our societies. At the level of concrete normative social and political theory, the clash between Gadamers concept of authority and Arendts concept of participation and power, between Habermass insistence on formal, institutional norms of justice and Rortys Oakeshottian call for the growth of an analogue of civil virtuetolerance, irony, and a willingness to let spheres of culture flourish without worrying too much about their common ground, their unification,22 would become visible. As I was reading these final sections, a question kept recurring in my mind. Bernstein, in this section in particular, frequently employs phrases like Rortys vision is quite comparable to Gadamer and Habermas (204); all three are concerned to show what is vital to the human project and to give a sense of what dialogue, conversation, questioning, solidarity and community mean (206). Does this emphasis on vision and a common human project imply that every philosophy is ultimately a Weltanschauung, and that it is at this level that philosophical positions, like the various Gestalts of consciousness in Hegels Phenomenology, reveal their truth? They are each correct but somehow

Praxis International

363

incomplete ways of looking at the world. Bernstein also uses another metaphor to describe his approach. This is not vision but conversation. Gadamer, Habermas, Rorty, and Arendt can be read as different voices in a coherent conversation (181). In this sense, the exegetical logic of Beyond Objectivism and Relativism can be seen as illustrating the new concept of rationality as practical, open discourse and communication which the book expounds. Only, I suppose where Bernstein sees a common vision or hears a coherent conversation, I have to look harder beyond the difference to see the commonality; and where Bernstein like a superb maestro coordinates all the strings into a harmonious quartet, I keep wondering which strings are out of tune. Hence my sense that philosophy is at present at the crossroads, and that there are many but not equally desirable paths to be followed. One point is clear, however, no one who is seriously concerned about where philosophical conversation on this side of the Atlantic in particular has been going, and who wants to resist attempts to end philosophy, can ignore Bernsteins book and his elucidation of what is still possible and desirable for us as thinkers and as moral beings.
NOTES
1 2 3 4 5 6 G.W.F. Hegel, Hegels Philosophy of Right, trans. and with notes by T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952). Preface, p. 11. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, pp. 131 ff. Rorty, Pragmatism, Relativism, and Irrationalism, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 53 (1980): 734. See Ernan McMullin, The Rational and the Social in the History of Science (forthcoming), pp. 17-18. Cf. Anthony Giddens, Studies in Social and Political Theory (New York: Basic Books, 1977), p. 12; most recently, J. Habermas, Interpretive Social Science vs. Hermeneuticism, in Social Science as Moral Inquiry, ed. by Haan, Bellah, Rabinow and Sullivan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 251 ff. Habermas, Interpretive Social Science vs. Hermeneuticism, p. 269. Rorty, A Reply to Dreyfus and Tayior, Review of Metaphysics 34 (September 1980): 39. Rorty, Method and Morality, in: Social Science as Moral Inquiry, pp. 164-165. Richard J. Bernstein, The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976), p. 221. Bernstein, Restructuring Social and Political Theory, p. 227. Habermas, Interpretive Social Science vs. Hermeneuticism, p. 262. Ibid., p. 260; for an analysis where this transcendental claim is moderated, see Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalisation of Society, vol. 1, trans. by T.A. McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), pp. 2-3. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, pp. 328 ff. Bernstein addresses this issue. He writes: When it comes to the validation of claims to truth, then the essential issue concerns the reasons and arguments that we can give to support such claimsreasons and arguments that are of course fallible and anticipatory, in the sense that they can be challenged and criticized by future argumentation (Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, p. 154). In the rest of this passage, however, he borrows the phrase hammering out from Rorty, which is really too vague to help us clarify what to do

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15

364

Praxis International
when confronted with traditions, which have indeed been hammered out in history, but which nevertheless are not any less objectionable, i.e., patriarchy, racism, to name but a few. Cf. Bernstein: We judge and evaluate such claims by the standards and practices that have been hammered out in the course of history (154). Rorty, Pragmatism, Relativism and Irrationalism, p. 726. Cf. Franz Borkenau, Der bergang vom feudalen zum brgerlichen Weltbild, European Sociology Series (Ayer Co., 1974); A. Koyre, tudes Galilennes (Paris: Hermann, 1966); Edgar Zilsel, Die sozialen Ursprnge der neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft, ed. by W. Krohn (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976); Dijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World-Picture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961). Rorty, A Reply to Dreyfus and Taylor, p. 39. Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, vol. 1. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978), p. 57. Bernstein rightly criticizes Arendts concept of truth and particularly her emphatic distinction between truth and opinion, cf. p. 221. The pairs truth/opinion; truth/meaning, are not equivalent however. Cf. Max Horkheimer, Traditional and Critical Theory (1937) in: Critical Theory, trans. by Matthew J. OConnell and others (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), pp. 188-244. Cf. the statement, Rather than repeating these, let me merely suggest that anthropologists like Geertz, sociologists like Hughes and Reisman, psychologists like Erikson, and historians like Foucault, dont much care whether they are practicing an art or a sciencewhether they are finding their way about or helping to discover essence by offering a true theory, A Reply to Dreyfus and Taylor p. 45. Even if these theorists may not be concerned with discovering essence, they certainly are concerned with offering a true theory. Rorty, Habermas and Lyotard on Post-Modernity, Praxis International 4, No. 1 (April 1984): 38; for a critique of the political implications of Rortys position, see my Epistemologies of Postmodernism: A Rejoinder to Jean Francois Lyotard, New German Critique, No. 33 (Fall 1984), pp. 103-126.

16 17

18 19

20 21

22