At last I reach the end of a series of a posts responding to a few requests to expand on a post criticising the more centalisimg-homogonising aspects of the construction of the European polity, and Habermas' association with that attitude. I suppose those who made the requests now have an idea of why I did not cover the points raised, it takes me that many words to cover my ideas about the politics of Europe and my preferred political theory perspectives.
Starting with my attitude to Habermas, I recognise that Habermas puts rational consensus forwards as a final goal, and as a guiding ideal rather than as a description of the here and now, or anything that can be achieved in the future, or maybe ever in its most pure form. I made that clear enough its seems to me in the original, but was still picked for allegedly overlooking these points, so I think it is necessary to establish my position on this early in the post and very explicitly. The guiding ideal is still what guides, and the ideal of a purely rational consensus based on transparent communication detached from individual interests is not the best way to approach the variety and subjectivity of human individuality, and so is not the best foundation for political institutions that provide effective administration and good laws, responsive to the needs, interests, beliefs and desires present among the hundreds of millions who make up Europe.
These critical comments on Habermas broadly apply to some of his rivals for a theory of rationality and communication suitable for ethical and political theory, including John Rawls, and even Robert Brandom whom Habermas suspects of relativistic and historicist tendencies. There is still much to admire in Habermas, though those parts I find most interesting may not appeal so much to the Habermasian in spirit, as in remarks about the difficulties of reconciling state welfare projects that require centralised administration and bureaucracy with the procedures of deliberative democracy.
In general I am criticising any belief in the superiority of institutions designed by the fiat of a rational will, according to the assumptions about ideal norms held by the to some degree privileged intellectuals who come up with these schemes. The aim is not so much to criticise the left-liberal or egalitarian liberal assumptions common to the thinkers mentioned so far, as absolutely the same criticisms apply to attempts at rationalistic designed from above schemes for other models, whether socialist-radically redistributivist, conservative-communitarian, neo-liberal market societies, or any mixture or or variation on those models.
The point is that the building of a European polity through the European Union, the Council of Europe, and all other transnational co-operation schemes in the continent, should allow for national and regional (including transnational regions, and groupings of nations) experimentation and variation, and should understand the decentralised and dispersed nature of knowledge about society and institutions. The decentralised knowledge and perspectives exists in individuals, families, friendship groups, clubs, charities, private companies, markets at many scales, publicly owned economic enterprises, worker co-operatives, trade unions, schools, universities, art galleries, theatres, flash mobs, campaign groups, churches, humanist groups, social media feeds, merchant banks, local credit unions, veterans' associations, peace groups, local councils, national and European political parties.
This list should, I hope, look like a way of representing the diversity and complexity of forms of social existence and community participation, not just a random selection. Even a cross-European political project should build on these forms of experience and knowledge, in ways that allow for revision and variation. That means building upwards not abstract design, and while moments of top down design and co-ordinating unity are necessary, they should be no more than necessary and always open to information and reactions from below. Politics means arguments about which of the elements listed are more desirable, but should always be about unforeseeable interactions between them, not master plans to guide the future.
The thinkers I am most interested in, and that I work on, that are roughly contemporaneous with Habermas are Arendt and Foucault. Both allow for the importance of institution building and the uniqueness of subjective points of view, just as both are aware that we cannot look at the social world as an aggregate of isolated egos or a simple oneness. Individuality or subjectivity is always about entanglement with other individuals and groups. Individuals and groups are always in tension with institutions and centres of power.
In Arendt these elements are expressed in a focus on political action and the centrality of political life, for better and worse, in human societies. In Foucault, such elements are understood through articulations of power, which can always be understood both as restraining and as productive, as always there to be struggled with and transformed in that a process that is also always one of self transformation. Both have a great instinct for, and appreciation, of the ambiguities that we enter into when trying to judge and compare institutions and forms of power, which provides the best basis for experimentation, innovation, and design.
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