On Communicative Actors Talking Past One Another

Abstract

THE GADAMER-HABERMAS DEBATE One of the more entertaining aspects of the debate between Jurgen Habermas and HansGeorg Gadamer is the frequency with which each hurls the same epithets the other's direction. Each accuses the other of holding a dangerous prejudice, of Romanticism anathema to both thinkers-and of harboring an abstract idealism of one form or another. The idealism, turn, reflects a vestigial reliance on positivist commitments, and the task each demands of the other is a more universal reflection.1As J. Mendelson notes, in a sense, both hermeneutics and critical theory make 'universal' claims which seek to one another and which are mutually contested.2 As the scare quotes might have warned us, however, Mendelson is no neutral observer: he goes on to argue that Gadamer is fact the real idealist. Unfortunately, this conclusion does not really clarify the matter. Mendelson and others have ably reported and often clarified the arguments on either side of the debate. But I do not think anyone has succeeded clarifying the point at which Habermas and Gadamer are talking past one another. This essay will attempt to reach that point.3 Using a Gadamerian distinction, I will work out the relation between the two, a relation that-as I hope to show-is much closer than first appears. Careful attention to the types of universal claim each raises will reveal that they need not subsume one another. But the relation between the two is far more intimate than mere non-contradiction. Within this short essay, I will not be able to explore this claim as fully as I would like, yet I hope to remove the appearance of incompatibility, and thus to make the following much stronger claim plausible: Close analysis of Gadamer and Habermas's views shows that each of their projects actually requires the other. To anticipate the structure of the argument: after a brief look at the genesis of the debate, I will proceed to the two prongs of Habermas's attack. The first prong takes the form of a reductio based on the moral, political, and descriptive consequences of Gadamer's account. What is odd is that Gadamer had anticipated these objections and denied that they followed from his approach. A more careful look will show that the theory at which Habermas takes aim-while fully deserving our rejection-is not fact Gadamer's. But Habermas's second argument is independent of the first, for it is based on his own positive proposal of a rationally-reconstructive history of the lifeworld. Gadamer's theory may not have failed as Habermas charges, but it may well be abandoned if Habermas has proposed a better one, and Habermas's positive proposal does seem to the universal claim of Gadamer's hermeneutic. But this subsumption of hermeneutics can only be achieved at a tremendous cost: Habermas's abandonment of fallibilism. Through bringing out the degree to which Habermas has accepted our finitude, I will show that he has implicitly accepted Gadamer's properly interpreted-case. Finally, first from the side of Gadamer and then from the side of Habermas, I will show that each thinker's history must be supplemented by that of the other.4 We may now begin with a look at the genesis of the debate Habermas's critical appropriation of Gadamer. Gadamer's work is a response to the methodological development of hermeneutics the modern era. After Schleiermacher 's attempt to synthesize the common method of the independently developed interpretive traditions of classics, theology, and law, Dilthey generalized the method further as an account of all historical understanding. According to Dilthey, every unit the world of mind has a center within itself.... In it, a conception of reality, valuation, and production of goods are linked into a whole.5 By studying its artifacts, the historicist hoped to discover those aspects which determined-beyond its conscious awareness the unique spirit of a past age. …