Re: BHA: Truth, Lies irony and In defense of Habermasian

[Colin Wight <Colin.Wight@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

First, unless i am totally misunderstanding the point it seems to me that
Loius has simply shifted his ground from claiming 'all assertions' to now
only illucutionary ones. Still,my claim/assertion about CR and
postmodernism was illu....not pre and hence I fail to see the point.
Moreover in order to make it clear all i need add is: Louis, look I PROMISE
Rorty's new book is brilliant. And Doug (Hi BTW, haven't heard from you for
ages), the issue is not one of whether sentences have a truth content, I
think invariably they do hence my posting of the Derrida quote, no my beef
is with the claim that folks have to be committed to their assertions, or
whether I can make an assertion which I am not committed to (which Louis
seemed to suggest wasn't possible). To say that my irony vis-a-vis Rorty is
a property of the language game and not of the individual is only possible,
because I have admitted I am being ironic. Try this one: I promise
(illucutionary) that i think Fukuyama's original article on the end of
history is masterful. ????

Actually, I haven't even read it, hence i have no opinion on it.  I am
neither committed to my assertion nor being ironic.


>
>If we think of assertion as a language game, then other language games can
>be constructed out of it. So irony is a language game built on the language
>game of assertion, which presupposes the governing rules of assertion to do
>the exact opposite.

But irony doesn't work by doing the exact opposite, or else we could answer
Wallace's question easily. Irony works on the boundaries between an
assertion and its rejection, but it plays on the truth of both.

>So when I read Colin's paean to Rorty, I reinterpret the illocutionary act
>Colin is performing from simple assertion to assertion in the service of
>irony. But the irony is only possible if simple assertion has the validity
>claims it has.

I don't have a problem with this Doug, but this is different from the
original claim that the asserter must be committed to his/her assertion. We
all can and do make many assertions to which we are not committed. This was
the basis of my original slight (in brackets remember) modification of your
understanding of Habermas (I should stop doing this actually, my last small
disagreement over Gary's understanding of real negation mushroomed as well
- maybe I'm getting pedantic in my old age?), since I understood you to be
claiming (and Louis defending) that according to Habermas asserters will
always be committed to their assertions. Whether or not Jurgen actually
does mean this is a moot point, but it is clearly not the case. We make
many assertion to which we are not committed, I mean it seems to me social
life would be impossible if this were the case. Of course, i accept that
everyone on this list is an absolute angel. (Perfect cue for Hsabermas's
angelism)

Anyway, just to say I've had a brilliant day around the second hand book
shops of Hay-on-Wye, spent a fortune mind, but I picked up a nice folio
edition of Hobbes Leviathan amongst other things.

Thanks,

=============================================


Dr. Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Wales
SY23 3DA
Tel: (01970) 621769


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