Geuss, Habermas, and the Rose of Unreason Martin E. Jay Originally published on Medium by the Hannah Arendt Center on 13 July 2019.
Interaction, let me concede, can ultimately be exhausting. High-minded exercises in inferential logic and evidentiary demonstration descend into ad hominem polemics and clever put-downs. Accusations of misrepresented arguments on both sides grow more heated as civility morphs into a pissing contest. Getting the last word may reward stamina or at least persistence but doesn’t necessarily turn into a conclusive victory, as telling points made along the way continue to reverberate. It is therefore no wonder that Raymond Geuss concludes his response to Seyla Benhabib’s second critique of his original essay on Habermas (and my one entry into the fray) with a vow of future silence: “Since, as I said, I don’t believe that unlimited discussion must necessarily result in consensus (which, to repeat again, does not mean that discussion is never under any circumstances useful), this is the last comment I am going to write on this issue.”1 Because it may seem unfair to counterpunch an adversary who has taken off his gloves, any attempt to continue the argument risks appearing churlish. But not if one takes seriously the concession made in the parenthesis. For the discussion that we have entered had been going on for a long time before Geuss’s initial effort and our responses, and will doubtless continue for a very long time after. It transcends, we might say, the proper names affixed to our little essays, by raising perennial questions that have never been fully resolved. Happily, Geuss’s final entry helps clarify what is at stake, and does so without the tone of misanthropic ressentiment that made his initial essay so inappropriate a way to commemorate a 90th birthday. So it is in the spirit of trying to move the discussion forward rather than to score debating points that the following remarks are intended. But before I take the high road, I have to take one detour to highlight what has so troubled Benhabib and myself in Geuss’s characterization of Habermas’s position. Having admitted that he stopped reading Habermas’s work around 1980, he cannot avoid presenting a cartoon version of the latter’s nuanced and evolving position. One of the exemplary characteristics of Habermas’s extraordinary career has been his ability to listen to and learn from his critics. The issue of transcendental norms has been one repeatedly raised in his encounters with them, resulting in an ongoing attempt to clarify a complicated argument.2 Some of his interlocutors, such as Karl-Otto Apel, have, in fact, chided him for abandoning transcendentalism entirely, 110
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