Where modern philosophy went wrong...

[gorski]

Habermas:
"But the "new hybrid of humanitarian selflessness and the logic of imperialist power politics" (Ulrich Beck) has a strong tradition in the US. Among the motives for Wilson to enter the First World War, and for Roosevelt to enter the Second, was also an orientation to ideals that are strongly embedded in the pragmatist tradition. It is due to this fact that we, the nation that was defeated in 1945, were freed at the same time. Seen from this very American, i.e. national, perspective of a normative power politics, it must appear plausible that the fight against Yugoslavia has to be seen through, in a straightforward way without compromises and even, if necessary, with the help of ground forces, without regards to all further complications."
http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/press/011habermas.htm

Curious how back then the combination of imperialist power politics and humanitarian intervention didn't seem so obscene. Habermas is a wanker of the first order.

What, you couldn't see the pattern by then: Slovenia, then Croatia, then Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo to follow and it was spilling over... to Macedonia, which was waiting to spell DISASTER once again, in such a short term... My, my, just how big an ostrich are you?

You see, NATO had to deploy its forces BEFORE a conflict erupted AND outside its territory. The first ever! Why? Because they are stupid and nasty? Or was it a problem because you're EXTREMELY short sighted? This is politics a la little Johnny...

Serbian paramilitaries, backed by Milosevic, were caught in the act, on the Macedonian-Serbian border, once again, as before, following a well established pattern, trying to provoke another regional conflict - or can't you remember? Or you don't know? In which case... Oh, well, sometimes I bother a bit too much...

Iraq was completely different. Or can't you see even the bare essentials?

 

[Fruitloop]

Garbage! All of it!

Firstly, you MUST quote properly, in the context, if you are to be taken seriously! This is utter garbage, what you just did! It was but a moment in his deliberation... nothing more! And it was turning away from Iraq, to address the EU itself, hardly a thing to object to!

Morality ought to be the basis of politics. Either that or Machiavelli. The Q is - what kind of principles etc.?

As for ex-YU: the ins and outs are debatable but at least one thing isn't - the domino theory effect was looming over the region. To my mind it was the lesser of evils.

I was a strong critic of how it was done etc. Sure, some war crimes on the US side etc. But what was the alternative? The usual British "keep out of", wait and see? Some "good" it did in Bosnia and Croatia before that...

So, right now you are the hypocrite and utterly confused and muddled!

Well, I'm sorry to say that we disagree on more or less all points then. How can morality be a basis for politics under capitalism, except as the internalisation of already-existing power structures?

The purpose of the Cold War from the perpective of the US ruling class (to whom the British r/c had effectively sold out their empire when their support for fascism as a bulwark against communism had backfired on them, and their incorporation into a thousand-year reich threated) was still the same - the elimination of communism in Europe - an aim that was of course achieved at enormous cost to the people caught up in it.

The situation in Bosnia and Croatia was in an immediate sense made substantially worse by Nato bombing campaigns, and in any case the characterisation of the situation before as 'stay out and see' is unjustified, as UN peacekeepers etc were already in the region. The motivations in terms of US/UK politics were entirely cynical, and originated in the desire of politicians to be seen to be 'doing something', to demonstrate the weakness of the UN in preparation for its circumvention in later 'adventures in disaster capitalism', and to demonstrate that European nations (particularly in areas of former Soviet influence) could be brought to heel by military force just as readily as those in the middle east or the global south.

 

[Knotted]

So it was all Milosevic's fault? The West needed to save the day. The white man's new burden? As if Yugoslavia had been left alone before the conflict. As if Western powers (and Germany in particular!) had not been interfering.

Of course Iraq is different. But if you want to live by one-size-fits-all moralism you should die by one-size-fits-all moralism. Habermas's position is of course highly nuanced, but all the nuances in the world can make up for the hypocracy. He says, clear as day, that the combination of military action and humanitarian aid is "obscene".

Morality ought to be the basis of politics? Its not a question of which principles, but whose morality. The principles are a matter of interpretation and are thus meaningless and Habermas is a professional principle interpreter.

 

[gorski]

1) Well, I'm sorry to say that we disagree on more or less all points then. How can morality be a basis for politics under capitalism, except as the internalisation of already-existing power structures?

2) The purpose of the Cold War from the perpective of the US ruling class (to whom the British r/c had effectively sold out their empire when their support for fascism as a bulwark against communism had backfired on them, and their incorporation into a thousand-year reich threated) was still the same - the elimination of communism in Europe - an aim that was of course achieved at enormous cost to the people caught up in it.

3) The situation in Bosnia and Croatia was made substantially worse by Nato bombing campaigns, and in any case the characterisation of the situation before as 'stay out and see' is unjustified, as UN peacekeepers etc were already in the region. The motivations in terms of US/UK politics were entirely cynical, and originated in the desire of politicians to be seen to be 'doing something', to demonstrate the weakness of the UN in preparation for its circumvention in later 'adventures in disaster capitalism', and to demonstrate that European nations (particularly in areas of former Soviet influence) could be brought to heel by military force just as readily as those in the middle east or the global south.

1) What's the alternative?

2) I know that much better than you!

3) The situation in Bosnia has escalated because of NOT doing almost anything for way too long, thanx to the EU's inablity to act, which Habermas is addressing, advocating the common foreign policy etc.

He is consistent and careful. Unlike you, muddles all the way!

 

[Fruitloop]

There seems to be traces of the same mistake Gorski makes in relation to the Anglo-American world i.e. the perception of it as some sort of principle-driven monolith. Of course the much-expressed concern of professional liars like Blair for the 'ordinary people of Iraq' was mendacious in the extreme - not even they believed it, still less anyone else - but the first delivery of medical aid into Baghdad after 'shock and awe' was driven at enormous personal risk by those well-known 'cheese eating surrender monkeys' from Medecins sans Frontieres.

 

[gorski]

1) So it was all Milosevic's fault? The West needed to save the day. The white man's new burden? As if Yugoslavia had been left alone before the conflict. As if Western powers (and Germany in particular!) had not been interfering.

2) Of course Iraq is different. But if you want to live by one-size-fits-all moralism you should die by one-size-fits-all moralism. Habermas's position is of course highly nuanced, but all the nuances in the world can make up for the hypocracy. He says, clear as day, that the combination of military action and humanitarian aid is "obscene".

3) Morality ought to be the basis of politics? Its not a question of which principles, but whose morality. The principles are a matter of interpretation and are thus meaningless and Habermas is a professional principle interpreter.

1) No, actually it was mum who kept doing it...

2) That's just really stupid: don't do anything unless you can do everything and at the same time. Jeez, sounds familiar... Could be an Englishmen or at least a Brit/Anglo-Amrurican or from that "sphere of influence", by any chance? Knotted, indeed...

3) Democracy. Ever heard of it? Preferably a radical variant. Some understanding of Habermas this is...

I really have to go back to work, sorry...

Besides, you guys are really narrow minded on the subject presuming you know a helluva lot and you know jack shit, judging by these half-baked, semi-informed and then seriously muddled posts, so it will be a waste of time anyway...

 

[Fruitloop]

1) What's the alternative?

2) I know that much better than you!

3) The situation in Bosnia has escalated because of NOT doing almost anything for way too long, thanx to the EU's inablity to act, which Habermas is addressing, advocating the common foreign policy etc.

He is consistent and careful. Unlike you, muddles all the way!

1) What, there is no alternative to capitalism? This would undoubtedly indicate a most serious 'parting of the ways' politically speaking!

2) So we agree? In which case, good. I would have thought that such a point of view was commonplace verging on the banal....

3) Why should the EU be the one to act though? This is what I'm driving at. At the moment EU super-state governance is more remote and less democratic even than national 'democracies'. A large number of people have enormous reservations about the military empowerment of such a structure, and not without warrant.

 

[gorski]

There seems to be traces of the same mistake Gorski makes in relation to the Anglo-American world i.e. the perception of it as some sort of principle-driven monolith. Of course the much-expressed concern of professional liars like Blair for the 'ordinary people of Iraq' was mendacious in the extreme - not even they believed it, still less anyone else - but the first delivery of medical aid into Baghdad after 'shock and awe' was driven at enormous personal risk by those well-known 'cheese eating surrender monkeys' from Medecins sans Frontieres.

Don't distort just because you can't be bothered to open your mind and learn...

Unlike you, obviously, I studied it seriously and systematicaly and lived that place a bit, as it were - so you could, if you wanted....

This, however, is utterly silly and completely unfair, as seriously lazy...

You're misrepresenting my position, driving it to the extreme, where I can't recognise it as mine, because of your vanity.

You couldn't possibly learn anything new, from anyone. You have it all figured out. Even though you haven't exactly either lived there, don't speak the language, haven't studied it, only know it from afar - but you couldn't possibly be told anything new, be made to re-think anything at all or even vaguely appear to consider anything new...

Some vibrant intellectual life that is...

 

[Fruitloop]

I'm not claiming any knowledge of the region. In fact as a native of the southern hemisphere I would freely admit that my knowledge of it is patchy at best. However I was in the Anglo-American world for the duration of their involvement and watched closely the 'spectacular presentation' of that conflict in the UK and US - something necessarily divorced from the events and history of the region in question. Therefore it is to this that I have mostly limited my observations. The only exception being to draw attention to the casualty figures before and after the beginning of the Nato bombing campaign, which are a matter of fairly undisputed public record as far as I'm aware. Even in this respect my aim was not to prove one way or another that the Nato bombing campaign was simplistically 'good for' or 'bad for' the region as a whole (I don't claim to know) but more to subvert the view here of the bombing as the very model of successful 'humanitarian intervention' (i.e. the 'jus ad bellum' in a flimsy guise).

 

[gorski]

1) What, there is no alternative to capitalism? This would undoubtedly indicate a most serious 'parting of the ways' politically speaking!

2) So we agree? In which case, good. I would have thought that such a point of view was commonplace verging on the banal....

3) Why should the EU be the one to act though? This is what I'm driving at. At the moment EU super-state governance is more remote and less democratic even than national 'democracies'. A large number of people have enormous reservations about the military empowerment of such a structure, and not without warrant.

1) At the moment, following the epochal failure of sur-Real Socialism, there isn't. For quite some time to come. Live with it. Or live in a cloud cookoo land, if you so wish. I can't see the agent of radical change at the moment, for the life of me. No revolutionary subject. Even the reforming one is not that easy to find... So, maybe you need to revisit the argument, with some social substratum to your wishes, which might be very close to mine - but I can't see them substantiated for a while, I'm afraid...

2) WTF are you on about?

3) Because they were pushed to by the then US Administration, who proclaimed it publicly "no longer in their strategic sphere of influence". Work it out for yourself, then, you're a sharp cookie...

 

[Knotted]

1) No, actually it was mum who kept doing it...

2) That's just really stupid: don't do anything unless you can do everything and at the same time. Jeez, sounds familiar... Could be an Englishmen or at least a Brit/Anglo-Amrurican or from that "sphere of influence", by any chance? Knotted, indeed...

Habermas wants an account of moral norms as distinct from more subjective ethical values. The point is that in the real, messy world such a project is a fiction.

3) Democracy. Ever heard of it? Preferably a radical variant. Some understanding of Habermas this is...

We don't have radical democracy. We don't have a neutral media. We don't have 'ideal speech situations' (if I remember the jargon rightly). All this talk about democracy is just about putting a wet finger in the air and seeing which way the wind blows. It has nothing to do with principles. Let me tell you the wind was blowing in a very sour direction in the west in 1999.

 

[Knotted]

You're misrepresenting my position, driving it to the extreme, where I can't recognise it as mine, because of your vanity.

I'm not, and I don't think fruitloop is either. We're talking about Habermas's position.

 

[Knotted]

3) The situation in Bosnia has escalated because of NOT doing almost anything for way too long, thanx to the EU's inablity to act, which Habermas is addressing, advocating the common foreign policy etc.

The EU and especially Germany, encouraged the break-up of SFRY. They supported politically and economically the likes of Tudjman and Milosevic during the war in Bosnia. Why would they move against them? You can't blame a preditor for being predatory.

 

[gorski]

Nonsense. Again, to say that Habermas is just "feeling the wind" is - close to inane...

Over and out! [Bah!]

 

[Fruitloop]

1) At the moment, following the epochal failure of sur-Real Socialism, there isn't. For quite some time to come. Live with it. Or live in a cloud cookoo land, if you so wish. I can't see the agent of radical change at the moment, for the life of me. No revolutionary subject. Even the reforming one is not that easy to find... So, maybe you need to revisit the argument, with some social substratum to your wishes, which might be very close to mine - but I can't see them substantiated for a while, I'm afraid...

2) WTF are you on about?

3) Because they were pushed to by the then US Administration, who proclaimed it publicly "no longer in their strategic sphere of influence". Work it out for yourself, then, you're a sharp cookie...

1) Seems to me to be far too eurocentric, and not for the first time. The class conflicts in Europe are something of a cold war it's true, but not entirely! And it's not as if the other side is asleep, even though the political left apparently is. As with most wars, stalemate is the exception. In general if you have no means to advance then you will quickly find yourself in full retreat.

3) It's important to differentiate the political noises from the actuality. The US does not consider anywhere (not on this planet or even in space) to be truly outside its sphere of political influence, and this conflict was no exception. So 'outside their influence' that at least half of it was executed from their aircraft carriers! Of course if they can achieve their aims via a proxy then they will do so, as has been well demonstrated.

 

[gorski]

3) You don't know what you are talking about. That is '90/'91. Buckle up, FFS...

Ach, must write and study and write... Bye!

 

[Fruitloop]

I'm talking about 'Operation Deliberate Force' (bleuch). In 1995. What are you talking about?

I also have to work. Later.

 

[Knotted]

In all seriousness, this article by Habermas and Derrida confirms everything I have been saying. "...European powers also got the chance for reflexive distancing from themselves.... This could support the rejection of Eurocentrism, and inspire the Kantian hope for a global domestic policy."

This is not a social analysis, its not philosophy, its just hippy nonsense.

 

[gorski]

Conditional, K, conditional...

Oh, never mind, you'd never understand...

 

[Jonti]

You seem to think everyone is blighted by ignorance and lack of understanding, gorski. Everyone but yourself.

But I think you are very well understood indeed, gorski. Most folks see through your "leftwing" pose. You come across as just another religious reactionary posing as progressive while spewing mystification and nonsense.

A Vicar, in other words.

 

[gorski]

Heh, speaks a twat who professes social darwinism, while quoting himself, as his own crown witness and arbiter, in his infinite wisdom and self-love, heheeeee...

No, thanx, Vicar, now off you go...

 

[Jonti]

Care to link to where I've "professed social darwinism", gorski?

The fact is, you just made it up. At it's most charitable, you *imagine* people say things they have not. But you just keep doing it (not just to me).

So I think it's clear you are a worthless poseur and liar.

 

[Fruitloop]

For the record, I absolutely reject social darwinism. If I have a boring refrain, it's that exporting ethics from biology is invariably a mistake.

 

[Jonti]

The is/ought fallacy comes to mind. Basic stuff.

Mind you, some would argue it's immoral to blindly and irrationally persist in making counterfactual claims about the world, or other people's beliefs.

So "is" does have some implications for "what ought to be". It is a moral issue when Gorski misrepresents people's views and tells lies about other posters here, for example.

 

[Jonti]

For the record, I absolutely reject social darwinism. If I have a boring refrain, it's that exporting ethics from biology is invariably a mistake.

Why can't I eat my own young?! A lion will sometimes do it, so it must be OK.

 

[gorski]

See...

 

[articul8]

Put it this way, the question, "How does a claim of reason or a commitment to an ideal or goal become part of the fabric of some form of life?" is a fairly standard sociobiological question in an unusual guise.

The question of what these "commitments" consist of is much more interesting in my opinion.

.

To return to the orginal subject (after a detour round Habermas's liberal politics - I didn't mean this as a defence of H's philosophical approach either)

the 2 aspects above need to be thought in their interrelation.

I guess I'm saying that post-Kantian philosophy should be less about Reason as the Subjects' relation to itself, but instead asking what conditions would enable us to make a genuine choice about the kind of social norms we want to govern our relations with each other. This is not just about formal structures of communication (Habermas), but about the historically situated developments of criteria such as Law, recognition, responsibility in relation to the totality of our social relations,

 

[Knotted]

the 2 aspects above need to be thought in their interrelation.

I guess I'm saying that post-Kantian philosophy should be less about Reason as the Subjects' relation to itself, but instead asking what conditions would enable us to make a genuine choice about the kind of social norms we want to govern our relations with each other. This is not just about formal structures of communication (Habermas), but about the historically situated developments of criteria such as Law, recognition, responsibility in relation to the totality of our social relations,

Well I supose that the ability to make a genuine choice about social norms assumes the capacity for Reason (transcendental reason).

I think the idea of such a choice is incoherent. The subject does not have a relation to itself - not in the abstract. A genuine change of social norms is a revolution, and that involves struggle not choice (although we could say in a metaphorical manner that history is making a choice).

 

[articul8]

But social norms can't be simply the product of the Subject - they are necessarily negotiated and sustained between subjects. And we can become retrospectively aware of how certain forms of social life required subjective commitments certain norms and reflective judgements in order to have become what they are - without positing some great transcendental self-grounding ground. Becoming aware of why we find ourselves choosing that which we are unable not to choose - such is the free exercise of reason in so far as it is possible for us.

 

[Knotted]

But social norms can't be simply the product of the Subject - they are necessarily negotiated and sustained between subjects. And we can become retrospectively aware of how certain forms of social life required subjective commitments certain norms and reflective judgements in order to have become what they are - without positing some great transcendental self-grounding ground. Becoming aware of why we find ourselves choosing that which we are unable not to choose - such is the free exercise of reason in so far as it is possible for us.

It depends on what the subject is. If it is all human society then there is no other subject to negotiate with.

It is impossible to choose something which you are unable not to choose. What is choice contrasted with?