Utopian Dimension in Communicative Ethics
Seyla Benhabib (born September 9, 1950) is Eugene Mayer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University, and director of the program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics, and a well-known contemporary philosopher. She is the author of several books, most notably about the philosophers Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas. Benhabib is well-known for combining critical theory with feminist theory.
Prior to arriving at Yale, Benhabib taught in the departments of philosophy at Boston University, SUNY Stony Brook, the New School for Social Research, and the Department of Government at Harvard University. She is married to well-known author and journalist Jim Sleeper, who is currently also a political-science lecturer at Yale. She also serves on the editorial advisory board for the Ethics & International Affairs. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995.[3] In the 2008-2009 academic year, she was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin).
In 2012 she was awarded the Dr. Leopold-Lucas Prize by the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in recognition of outstanding achievement in the field of theology, intellectual history, historical research and philosophy, as well as the commitment to international understanding and tolerance.[4]
More and more people live in countries which are not their own, as state sovereignty is not as strong as in the past. Benhabib argues that somebody who is stateless is seen as an outcast and is in a way rightless. Current policy still sees national borders as a means to keep out strangers.
Benhabib's cosmopolitan view is inspired by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant’s Perpetual peace concerns three articles which together are key to creating perpetual peace. In the third article Kant says that the rights of world citizens shall be limited to the right of universal hospitality. In Kant's view, every single person has the right to go wherever they like without fear of hostility from their hosts.
Seyla Benhabib takes this right as a starting point which resulted in her thoughts about migration and refugee problems. Seyla Benhabib goes further than Kant, arguing that the human right of hospitality should not apply to a single visit, but in some cases to long-term stays. For example, a country shouldn't send a refugee back when it is not sure whether they are safe in the country of origin. Nations should have obligations to exiles and refugees, these obligations are different from the obligations to immigrants.
Seyla Benhabib (born September 9, 1950) is Eugene Mayer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University, and director of the program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics, and a well-known contemporary philosopher. She is the author of several books, most notably about the philosophers Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas. Benhabib is well-known for combining critical theory with feminist theory.
Biography
Born in Istanbul, Benhabib was educated at English language schools in Istanbul. She received a B.A. from the American College for Girls in Istanbul in 1970.[1] She traces her family history back to the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain on the "second reconquista." She has cited Istanbul as reminiscent of "big cosmopolitan centers of, in a way, the old Europe." She left for the United States in 1970.[2] She received a B.A. from Brandeis University in 1972 and a Ph.D. from Yale in 1977.[1]Prior to arriving at Yale, Benhabib taught in the departments of philosophy at Boston University, SUNY Stony Brook, the New School for Social Research, and the Department of Government at Harvard University. She is married to well-known author and journalist Jim Sleeper, who is currently also a political-science lecturer at Yale. She also serves on the editorial advisory board for the Ethics & International Affairs. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995.[3] In the 2008-2009 academic year, she was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin).
In 2012 she was awarded the Dr. Leopold-Lucas Prize by the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in recognition of outstanding achievement in the field of theology, intellectual history, historical research and philosophy, as well as the commitment to international understanding and tolerance.[4]
Democratic theorist
Democratic theorists advocate discussion within cultures and support social change. Seyla Benhabib is a democratic theorist who does not believe in the purity of cultures; she thinks of them as formed through dialogues with other cultures. Human cultures are, according to Benhabib, the constant change of imaginary boundaries. They influence each other and sometimes radicalize or conform as a reaction on other cultures. Benhabib argues that in democratic theory it is assumed that every single person should be able to determine their own life. She argues that pluralism, the existence of fundamentally different cultures, is compatible with cosmopolitanism, if three conditions are fulfilled. These conditions are:- Egalitarian reciprocity: Members of minorities must have equal civil, political, economic and cultural rights as the majority.
- Voluntary self-ascription: When a person is born, it should not be expected that he or she will automatically be a member of a particular religion or culture. The state should not let groups define the lives of individuals. Members of a society have the right to express themselves and it is desirable that adult individuals be asked whether they choose to continue membership in their community.
- Freedom of exit and association: Every individual must be able to exit their group. When group members marry someone from another group, they have the right to be a member. Accommodations must be found for inter-group marriages and the resulting children.
Porous Borders
Seyla Benhabib prefers a world with porous borders. She argues that political boundaries define some as members, but lock others out. She has written: "I think it is possible to have an empire without borders; I don’t think it is possible to have a democracy without borders."More and more people live in countries which are not their own, as state sovereignty is not as strong as in the past. Benhabib argues that somebody who is stateless is seen as an outcast and is in a way rightless. Current policy still sees national borders as a means to keep out strangers.
Benhabib's cosmopolitan view is inspired by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant’s Perpetual peace concerns three articles which together are key to creating perpetual peace. In the third article Kant says that the rights of world citizens shall be limited to the right of universal hospitality. In Kant's view, every single person has the right to go wherever they like without fear of hostility from their hosts.
Seyla Benhabib takes this right as a starting point which resulted in her thoughts about migration and refugee problems. Seyla Benhabib goes further than Kant, arguing that the human right of hospitality should not apply to a single visit, but in some cases to long-term stays. For example, a country shouldn't send a refugee back when it is not sure whether they are safe in the country of origin. Nations should have obligations to exiles and refugees, these obligations are different from the obligations to immigrants.
Benhabib
83
Habermas on Benjamin:
Benjamin regarded the experience of happiness he named
secular illumination as bound up with the rescuing of tradition. The claim to
happiness can be made good only if the sources of that semantic potential we
need for interpreting the world in the light of our needs are not
exhausted."' In the semantic heritage of a cultural tradi-tion are
contained those images and anticipations of a fulfilled life-history and of a
collective life-form in which justice does not exclude solidarity, and freedom
is not realized at the expense of happiness. Certainly, Habermas continues, it
is not possible to achieve freedom and to realize justice without unleasing
(entbinden)th e hidden poten-tials of culture. In that sense, the semantic
unleashing of culture and the social overcoming of institutional repression are
mutually suppor-tive.
Yet the suspicion remains whether "an emancipation without happiness and lacking in fulfillment might not
be just as possible as relative prosperity without the elimination of
repression."
84
“his essay
con-tained a programmatic anticipation of how Habermas proposed to argue not
only against the tradition of counter-Enlightenment (Niet-zsche,
Spengler,Jiinger and Heidegger) but against the messianic uto-pian strand of
critical theory as well - Bloch and Benjamin in par-ticular."”
Increasingly in
recent years, Habermas has pointed to the limits of a theory of practical
discourse which focuses on f"reedom while excluding questions of the good
life; which concerns the validity of normative sentences (Sollsiitze)w
hile ignoring the question of the integrity of values (Werte), which in short,
concerns institutional justice but cannot say much about those quali-ties of
individual life-histories and collective life-forms which make them fulfilling
or unfulfilling.4
It reveals the intimate relation between
"transfiguration" and "fulfillment," between the poles of
utopia and norm within which the discourse of a critical social theory unfolds.
“By "transfiguration" I mean that the
future envisaged by a theory entails a radical rupture with the present, and
that in such a rupture a new and imaginative constellation of the values and
meanings of the present takes place. The concept of fulfillment, by
contrast, refers to the fact that the society of the future executes and
carries out the unfinished tasks of the present, without necessarily forging
new, imaginative con-stellations out of this cultural heritage.” (but how much of this is really based…on
the “golden past”)
Very interesting.
Goes back to de certeau?
“These are concepts which I use to designate an essential
tension in the project of critical theory and which can also be referred to as
"utopia" and "norm" respectively.
Marx – move from
capitalism – abundance for all “This demand did not call into question
the Enlightenment project of combining human freedom and happiness with the
scientific-technologically based pro-gress of productive forces.”
85
“Critical theory
lamented the dialectic of an Enlightenment condemned to leave its own promises
unfulfilled. The project of emancipation was increasingly viewed not as the
fulfillment, but as the transfiguration of the Enlightenment legacy. Their
increasingly esoteric conception of emancipation forced the critical theory of
Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse into a series ofaporias. More and more,
emancipation ceased to be a public project and became a private experience of
liberation achieved in the non-dominating relation with nature and in moments
of revolutionary eros.”
very interesting!!
Habermas –
emancipation back into the public light.
“Habermas has attempted to reestablish the link between
Enlighten-ment and emancipation, and to bring the project of emancipation into
the light of the public by going back to the Enlightenment legacy of practical
reason.” (so, I am less convinced that there is just 1 great mind that can do
this sort of thing)
in past “Universalism” – class/ race issues
Let me ask, there-fore, if the goal of realizing
bourgeois universalism, of making good the unfulfilled promise ofjustice and
freedom, must exhaust itself in a "joyless reformism," or whether,
speaking with Benjamin, one cannot see a Jetztzeit, a moment of
transfiguration, in this very process? I want to suggest that the seventh stage
of moral development postulated by Habermas as a corrective and extension of
the Kohlbergian scheme, that is, the stage of"universalized need
interpretations," has an unmis-takeable utopian content to it, and that it
points to a transfigurative vision of bourgeois universalism.
(totally … the
play between sustainability and resiliency)
86
looks at communicative ethics and “need interpretations”…
then “My thesis is that Habermas, following Mead, restricts moral autonomy
to the standpoint of the "generalized other," and does not do justice
to the utopian dimension in his own project.”
communicative ethics:
“by Habermas also a "cognitivist ethics of
language." The cognitivism of this theory rests with its assumption that
normative statements like "Child molest-ing is wrong," cannot be
translated into a statement like "I dislike child molesting," as the
emotivists claim. The predicate "is wrong" in this statement is to be
understood as a claim that there are good reasons to adopt the rule in our
practices that children ought not be molested. To establish this meta-ethical
premise Habermas develops the concepts of moral rightness and wrongness by
means of a theory of practical argumentation. Basing himself on Stephen
Toulmin's work in The Uses ofArgument, he maintains thatjust as the truth of theoretical
claims can only be established in light of an argument in which they are shown
to be warranted with good gounds, so too the validity of normative claims can
only be established via practical argumentations”
“Arguments
dealing with theoretical truth claims, with statements about what the case is,
or with practical assertions, with statements about what ought to be done, are
named "discourses." Discourses are described as special argumentation
procedures in which both facts about what is the case and norms about what is
right are challenged and no longer taken for granted. In discourses we
"suspend belieP' in the truth of propositions and the validity of
normative claims that we ordinarily take for granted in our everyday
transactions.”
“The aim of discourses
is to generate a "rationally motivated consen-sus" on controversial
claims. The concept of the "ideal speech situa-tion" is introduced in
this context. The "ideal speech situation" spe-cifies the formal
properties that discursive argumentations would have to possess if the
consensus thus attained were to be distinguished from a mere compromise or an
agreement of convenience. The ideal speech situation is a
"meta-norm" that applies to theoretical as well as to prac-tical
reason. It serves to delineate those aspects of an argumentation process which
would lead to a "rationally motivated" as opposed to a false or
apparent consensus.”
87
Ideal speech
situation
“The four conditions
of the ideal speech situation are: first, each par-ticipant must have an equal
chance to initiate and to continue com-munication; second, each must have an
equal chance to make asser-tions, recommendations, explanations, and to
challengejustifications. Together we can call these the "symmetry
condition." Third, each must have equal chances as actors to express their
wishes, feelings, and intentions; and fourth, the speakers must act as zf in
contexts of action there is an equal distribution of chances "to order and
resist orders, to promise and to refuse, to be accountable for one's conduct
and to demand accountability from others."7 Let me call the latter two the
"reciprocity condition."”
While the
symmetry stipulation of the ideal speech situation refers to speecha cts alone
and to conditions governing their employment, the reciprocity condition
refers to existing social interactions and requires a suspension of situations
of untruthfulness and duplicity on the one hand, and of inequality and
subordination on the other.
(reminds me of
frustrations of teaching)
“More significantly,
Rawls and Habermas share the meta-the-oretical premise: the idea of such
rational consensus is to be defined procedurally. Rawls maintains that his
theory of justice provides us with the only procedure of justification through
which valid and binding norms of collective coexistence can be established.
Habermas argues that the "ideal speech situation" defines the formal
properties of dis-courses, by engaging in which alone we can attain a rational
consensus. The fictive collective choice situation devised by Rawls and the
"ideal speech situation" devised by Habermas are normativeju
stificationp ro-cedures serving to illustrate the consensus principle of
legitimacy.”
88
differences between
Rawls and Habbermas
1.” ideal speech
situation”
2. “such
argumentations as take place in discourses continue everyday moral dialogue
with other means. What motivates the transi-tion to discourse is not some abstract decision, but the fact that the
self-explanatory character of our life-world often fails, and requires
clar-ification and mutual reinterpretation.” Discourses are continuous with the questioning, puzzling, explaining,
and negotiating which form the matrix of everyday morality
3. since discourses
are not hypothetical thought-experiments that can be carried out by isolated
moral philosophers but are in-tended to be actual processes of moral dialogue
among real actors, we do not need to predefine theoretically a concept of
the person and the identity of moral actors. Such persons need not stand
behind a veil of ignorance or be ignorant about the specific circumstances of
their birth, ability, psychological make-up, status, and the like.
Discourses only require from moral actors a reflexive attitude which enjoins
them to settle normative controversies in a spirit of cooperative dialogue.
4. it is not
necessary to place any knowledge constraints upon such processes of moral
reasoning and disputation, for the more knowledge is available to moral
agents about the particulars of their society, its place in history, and its
future, the more rational will be the outcome of their deliberations.
Practical rationality
entails epistemic rationality as well, and more knowledge rather than less
leads to a more informed and rational judgment. To judge rationally is not to
judge as if one did not know what one could know, as Rawls maintains, but to
judge in the light of all available and relevant information.
5. Fifth, in such moral discourses agents can also change
levels of reflexivity, that is to say, they can introduce meta-considerations
about the very conditions and constraints under which dialogue takes place, and
they can evaluate its fairness. There is no closure of reflexivity in this
model as there is, for example, in the Rawlsian one, which enjoins agents to
accept certain rules of bargaining before the choice of the principles of
justice.
6. if there are no knowledge restrictions upon such
discourses, if the theory does not idealize the identity of moral agents, if
reflex-ivity is encouraged rather than limited by the theory
then…
89
follows that there is no privileged subject matter of moral
disputation. Moral agents are not only limited to reasoning about primary goods
which they are assumed to want whatever else they want.
III.
Habermas –
As early as the essay on "Theories of Truth,"
we encounter the claim that the appropriate language of morals "permits
determinate groups and persohs, in given circumstances, a truthful
interpretation both of their own particular needs, and more importantly, of
their common needs capable of consensus.""
Kant, Rawls,
Gewrith…this construct would “transgress” the limits of practical discourse
“In Kant's case this would be so, simply because the
requisite universality of morality can only be established by abstracting away
from, indeed by repressing, those very needs, desires and inclinations which
tempt moral agents away from duty.”
The disregard in contemporary deontological theory for
"inner nature" is more complicated, but ultimately, it seems to me,
it is based on the classical liberal doctrine that as long as the public
actions of individuals do not interfere with each other, what they need and
desire is their business. To want to draw this aspect of a person's life into
public-moral discourse would interfere with their autonomy, i.e., with their
right to define the good life as they please as long as this does not impinge
on others' rights to do the same. (focus is still on the individual)
Against this assumption of Kantian moral theories, Habermas
draws upon an insight of Hegel's that has both empirical and normative
relevance: this is the insight that the relation between self and other, I and
thou, is constitutivefo r human self-consciousness. Empirically, this leads
to a conception of the human personality as developing only in interactionw ith
other selves."
Normatively, this conception of identity implies a model
of autonomy according to which the relation between self and other is not
external to the ego's striving for autonomy.
right on.
90
Habermas says interpretations
become the subject matter of practical discourse
“From the standpoint of socialization theory, individual
nature, while being "private," is not immutable; individual
need-interpretations and mo-tives carry with them the marks of societal
processes by participating in which alone an individual learns to become an
"I." The grammatical logic of the word "I" reveals the
unique structure of ego identity: every subject who uses this concept in
relation to himself or herself also learns that all other subjects are likewise
"I's." In this respect the ego becomes an I only in a community of
other selves who are also I's. Yet every act of self-reference expresses, at
the same time, the uniqueness and difference of this I from all others.”
(reminds me of Halliday)
“The requirement
that a "truthful" interpretation of needs also be part of discursive
argumentation means that ego autonomy cannot and should not be achieved at the
expense of internal repression. Thus Habermas writes: "Internal nature is
thereby moved in a utopian perspective; that is, at this stage internal nature
may no longer be merely examined within an interpretive framework fixed by the
cul-tural tradition in a nature-like way .... Inner nature is rendered
com-municatively fluid and transparent to the extent that needs can, through
aesthetic forms of expression, be kept articulable or be re-leased from their
paleosymbolic prelinguisticality."''
“Ego autonomy is characterized by a twofold capacity:
first, the individual's reflexive ability to question the interpretive
framework fixed by the cultural tradition - to loosen, if you wish, those
sedimented and frozen images of the good and happiness in the light of which we
formulate needs and motives;”
“second, such reflexive questioning is accompanied by an
ability to articulateo ne's needs linguistically, by an ability to communi-cate
with others about them. Whereas the first aspect requires us to assume a
reflexive distance towards the content of our tradition, the second emphasizes
our ability to become articulate about our own affective and emotional
constitution."”
“In both instances, reflection is to be understood not as
an abstracting away from a given content, but as an ability to communicate and
to engage in dialogue.”
The linguistic access
to inner nature is both a distancing and a coming closer.
91
When we “can name what drives and motivates us, we are
closer to freeing our-selves of its power over us; and in the very process of
being able to say what we mean, we come (harmony…)
If the highest stage of a universalistic ethical
orientation is this open, reflexive communication about our needs and the
cultural traditions in light of which they are interpreted, then a number of
oppositions on which communicative ethics seemed to rest begin to lose their
force: questions of justice merge with questions of the good life;
practical-moral discourses flow into aesthetic-expressive ones; autonomy is not
only self-determination inaccordance with just norms but the capacity to assume
the standpoint of the concrete other as well.
different from Kohlberg’s moral stage 6 (public discourse
about rights) “Neither the needs which drive the actions through which
rights are exercised, nor the concept of entitlement which the ethos of a
right-bearing and invariable adult male implies, are called into question in
such a moral theory.”
Thus, the insistence that "universalizable need
inter-pretations" move into the center of moral discourse is not simply a
further evolutiono f such a perspective; it entails a utopianb reakw ith it, or
what I have named its "transfirguration." "Inner nature is moved
into a utopian perspective," in the sense that its contents, our needs and
affects, become communicatively accessible; in psychoanalytic terms, the
threshold of repression is lowered. The utopia of society in which association
(Vergesellschaftung)is a ttained without domination, namely, justice, and
socialization without superfluous repression, namely, happiness, moves to the fore.
“Discourses in which our needs and the cultural
traditions shaping them are thematized; in which the semantic content of those
inter-pretations defining happiness and the good life are brought to light, and
what is fitting, pleasing, and fulfilling are debated, are named by Habermas
"aesthetic-expressive" ones.•" It is maintained that moder-nity
institutionalizes not only the discursive evaluation of moral and political
questions, but those of aesthetic and expressive subjectivity as well”
92
“On the one hand, it shares with
deon-tological theories like Rawls's the desire to separate the public
dis-course ofjustice from the more private discourse of needs; on the other
hand, inasmuch as it is critical of theories of justice which do not extend to
a critiqueo f consumerista nd possessive-individualistmo des of life, it has to
revert to the critique of needs, false socialization, and the like.”
I want
to suggest that Habermas does not thematize this utopian dimensiona
dequately,fo r,f ollowingG eorgeH erbertM ead,h e assumes the standpoint of the
"generalized other," of rights and entitlements, to represent the
moral point of view par excellence
Mead:
“"In logical terms there is established a universe of
discourse which transcends the specific order within which the members of the
community, in a specific conflict, place themselves out-side of the community
order as it exists, and agree upon changed habits of action and a restatement
of values. Rational procedure, therefore, sets up an order within which thought
operates, that abstracts in varying degrees from the actual structure of
society... It is a social order that includes any rational being who is or may
be in any way implicated in the situation with which thought deals ... It is
evident that a man cannot act as a rational member of society, except as he
con-stitutes himself a member of this wider commonwealth of rational
beings."~'"
Habermas:
Self determination
Self actualization
93
The ideal community
of communica-tion corresponds to an ego identity which allows
self-actualization to unfold oni the basis of autonomous action." ' But whereas the perspec-tive of autonomous
action corresponds to the standpoint of the "gener-alized other,"
what, following Carol Gilligan, I would like to call the standpoint of the
"concrete other," cannot be accommodated within the rather
ego-centered notion of self-actualization. The standpoint of the
"generalized other" requires us to view each and every individual as
a rational being entitled to the same rights and duties we would want to
ascribe to ourselves. In assuming this perspec-tive, we abstract from the
individuality and concrete identity of the other. We assume that the other,
like ourselves, is a being who has con-crete needs, desires, and affects, but
that what constitutes her moral dignity is not what differentiates us from each
other, but rather what we, as speaking and acting rational agents, have in
common. Our rela-tion to the other is governed by the norm of symmetricalre
ciprocity: each is entitled to expect and to assume from us what we can expect
and assume from her. The norms of our interactions are primarily public and
institutional ones. If I have a right to "x," then you have the duty
not to hinder me from enjoying "x," and conversely.
concrete other
94of complementaryre
ciprocity:ea ch is entitled to expect and to assume from the other forms of
behavior through which the other feels recognized and confirmed as a concrete, individual
being with specific needs, talents, and capacities. Our differences in this
case comple-ment, rather then exclude one another. The norms of our interaction
are usually private, non-institutional ones. They are the norms of solidarity,
friendship, love, and care. Such relations require in various ways that I do,
and that you expect me to do in the face of your needs, more than would be
required of me as right-bearing person. In treat-ing you in accordance with the
norms of solidarity, friendship, love, and care, I confirm not only your
humanity but your human individuali-ty.
Says…since Hobbes, the public private divide has been
problematic
The institutional distinction between the public and the
private, between the public sphere ofjustice, the civic sphere of friend-ship,
and the private sphere of intimacy, has also resulted in the incom-patibility
of an ethical vision of principles and an ethical vision of care and
solidarity. The ideal of moral and political autonomy has been consistently
restricted to the standpoint of the "generalized other." while the
standpoint of the "concrete other" has been silenced, I want to
suggest, even suppressed by this tradition.'"
As is evidenced by Kantian moral theory, a public ethics of
prin-ciples entails a repressive attitude towards, "inner nature."
Our needs and affective nature are excluded from the realm of moral theory.
This results in a corresponding inability to treat human needs, desires, and
emotions in any other way than by abstracting away from them and by condemning
them to silence. Institutional justice is thus seen as repre-senting a higher
stage of moral development than interpersonal re-sponsibility, care, love, and
solidarity; the respect for rights and duties is regarded as prior to care and
concern about another's needs; moral cognition precedes moral affect; the mind,
we may summarize, is the sovereign of the body, and reason the judge of inner
nature.
95
“Habermas comes close to subverting this bias of
tradi-tional normative philosophy; but his insistence that the standpoint of
the "generalized other" alone represents the moral point of view
pre-vents this move. It is also inadequate to claim that aesthetic-expressive
discourse can accommodate the perspective of the "concrete other,"
for relations of solidarity, friendship, and love are not aesthetic but
profoundly moral ones. The recognition of the human dignity of the generalized
other is just as essential as the acknowledgement of the specificityof the
concrete other. Whereas the perspective of the general-ized other promises
justice, it is in the relation to the concrete other that those ephemeral
moments of happiness and solidarity are re-covered.”
So this is Berlin!!!
calls for
interaction between two theories
but the necessary interaction and confrontation of these
two perspectives.20 The ideal community of communication corresponds to an ego
iden-tity which allows the unfolding of the relation to the concreteot hero n
the basis of autonomousa ction. Only then can we say that justice without
solidarity is blind and empty.
96
huh?
What is objectionable in this procedure is twofold.
First, who is the "we "in the present such that reconstructions
present a process of development with which all can identify? Why is it assumed
that one is already facing a collective singularity - mankind as stch? This
shift to the language of an anonymous species-subject preempts the expereince
of moral and political activity as a consequence of which alone a genuine
"we" can emerge. A collectivity is not con-stituted theoreticaily but
is formed out of the moral and political struggles of fighting actors.
In the second place, this shift to the language of a
hypostatized sub-ject has as further consequence that the historical process is
naturalized. History begins to appear as the semantic gloss on a structural
process which proceeds with necessity and invariably from one sequence to the
next. But we cannot naturalize the history of the species, forwe have no models
of development to compare it. At this point, a certain antic-ipatory utopia, a
projection of the future as it could be, becomes necessary.
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