THE POLITICS OF POSTMODERNITY CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHENOMENOLOGY

IN COOPERATION WITH THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY

Volume 42

Editor:

John J. Drummond, Fordham University

Editorial Board:

Elizabeth A. Behnke David Carr, Emory University Stephen Crowell, Rice University Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University J. Claude Evans, Washington University Burt Hopkins, Seattle University Jose Huertas-Jourda, Wilfrid Laurier University Joseph J. Kockelmans, The Pennsylvania State University William R. McKenna, Miami University Algis Mickunas, Ohio University J. N. Mohanty, Temple University Tom Nenon, The University of Memphis Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat, Mainz Gail Soffer, New School for Social Research, New York Elisabeth Stroker, Philosophisches Seminarium der Universitat KOin Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University

Scope

The purpose of this series is to foster the development of phenomenological philosophy through creative research. Contemporary issues in philosophy, other disciplines and in culture generally, offer opportunities for the application of phenomenological methods that call for creative responses. Although the work of several generations of thinkers has provided phenomenology with many results with which to approach these challenges, a truly successful response to them will require building on this work with new analyses and methodological innovations. GARY BRENT MADISON McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

THE POLITICS OF POSTMODERNITY

Essays in Applied Hermeneutics

SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-94-010-3818-8 ISBN 978-94-010-0750-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-010-0750-4

Printed on acid-free paper

AII Rights Reserved © 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2001 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 2001 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic Of mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. TO HANS-GEORG GADAMER AND PAUL RICOEUR

maftres ii penser CONTENTS

Preface by Ingrid Harris ix Notes xiv

Introduction POSTMODERNITY AND BEYOND 1 Notes 8

Part One: Philosophical Reason

COPING WITH NIETZSCHE'S LEGACY RORTY, DERRIDA, GADAMER 13 Notes 31

2 HERMENEUTICS, THE LIFEWORLD, AND THE UNNERSALITY OF REASON (THE CASE OF CHINA) 37 Notes 60

3 PHILOSOPHY WITHOUT FOUNDATIONS 69 Notes 92

4 THE NEW PHILOSOPHY OF RHETORIC 101 Notes 126

5 THE PRACTICE OF THEORYffHE THEORY OF PRACTICE 137 Notes 154

Part Two: Social Reason

6 THE POLITICS OF POSTMODERNITY 163 Notes 179

7 HERMENEUTICAL LIBERALISM 186 Notes 195 viii

8 AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS AND PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS FROM HAYEK TO GADAMER 201 Notes 210

9 REINTERPRETING CIVIL SOCIETY 215 Notes 231

Appendix PROLEGOMENA TO A HERMENEUTICAL ECOLOGY 241 Notes 255

Acknowledgments 263 Name index 265 Subject index 269 PREFACE

The distinctive feature of Madison's political theory is the Merleau-Pontyan sense of contingency that pervades his writings on the subject and, indeed, is visible throughout his entire oeuvre. The perspicacity of Madison's view of con• tingency was first noted by Paul Ricoeur. In his foreword to the English transla• tion of Madison's now classic study of the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur wrote: "More than anything, the most penetrating view which Gary Madison proposes of Merleau-Ponty's final ontology concerns the paradox of contingency."\ Twenty-eight years after the original French publication of his dissertation, we may look back over Madison's work and interpret it as working out Merleau-Ponty's insights into the implications of contingency for human political reality within the framework of a hermeneutical theory of democracy. The spirit of Merleau-Ponty's understanding of the emergence of Being at the heart of contingency and of contingency at the heart of Being is carried forward in Madison's articulation of a nondogmatic politics of communicative rational• ity. Madison's postmodern liberalism is unique in seeking to articulate a specifi• cally and explicitly hermeneutical politics, one that attempts to draw out the ul• timate praxial consequences of phenomenological hermeneutics. As might be expected from a political-economic theory of communicative rationality, Madi• son's thinking takes shape through a dialectical confrontation with a number of prominent contemporary writers-Derrida, Rorty, and Habermas, in particular. Postmodernists such as Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard cater to relativism and nihilism,2 while Madison rear• ticulates in a manner appropriate to postrnodern circumstances the relationship between such universal values as freedom and human rights and the contingent particulars of concrete existence. Instead of falling into the relativistic isolation• ism that results from the rejection of universalism, Madison rearticulates the lo• gos visible in everyday conversation as the hermeneutical practice of communi• cative rationality.3 The primary question for a postrnodern theory of "the political," i.e., the realm of human coexistence, is how we might refine and correct the communica• tive practices of democratic processes so as better to mitigate the tendencies to• ward violence that inevitably occur in situations of opposition. Communicative rationality, unlike the traditional notion of reason, is conceived as emerging only from and in free and open discussion. Madison shows how establishing laws and institutions that protect the practice of freedom for all gave birth to this new form of rationality.4 Only recently and at the cost of much human suffering has it emerged from the contingencies of history. In resolutely facing up to contin• gency, Madison, along with Rorty and Derrida, recognizes that principles are x THE POLITICS OF POSTMODERNITY culturally emergent and, as such, are relative to the cultural context in which they operate. Madison argues, however, that culturally and historically relative though such ideas may be, they are not necessarily culturally dependent.s This means that postmodern political thinking need not be reduced to incommensurability, particularism, and localism (a la Rorty or Derrida) nor to an endless agonistic jeu (a la Lyotard). Madison provides his readers with what is lacking in Rorty's par• ticularist defense of a merely contingent "solidarity" and of what he calls "a so• ciety based not on rights but on unselfishness,,,6 namely, a theoretical justifica• tion for the philosophical ideas of universal freedom and human rights. At the core of Madison's work is the notion of communicative rationality. Like Merleau-Ponty and Hans-Georg Gadamer, Madison is concerned with the vital, performative role that conversation plays in our experience of the world.? Madison's hermeneutical theory reveals how rational structures (cf. Hayek's spontaneous orders) emerge-in both political and economic domains-from the very contingency of the communicative practice itself. In his application of hermeneutical theory to politics, Madison extends his earlier articulation of Merleau-Ponty's notion of a "blind spirit" that reappropri• ates chance events through language: When an individual radically assumes his language, expresses himself creatively, and makes it say what it had never before said, he is always guided by the general spirit of his language, its incarnate logic, which permits and even solicits certain innovations and excludes others. The writer espouses and is guided by the "instructive spontaneity" of his lan• guage.8 When communicative rationality is based on the "instructive spontaneity" of free and open "agreement," it is a continuous living process through which social order continuously emerges from historical events. In being based on the Gada• merian notion of "agreement", Madison's "discourse ethics" is altogether differ• ent from one based on the notion of consensus.9 As Gadarner says of Habermas: "[T]he concept of reflection that serves as the basis of Habermas' 'critique of ideology' implies a highly abstract concept of coercion-free discourse which to• tally loses sight of the real condition of human praxis.,,10 Madison's account of communicative rationality thematizes actually existing discourse, whereas Habermas' guiding notion of perfect consensus, in Gadamer's words, "appears to me to be clearly recognizable as metaphysical in origin." In other words, Haber• mas "is taking as his model of human understanding the intelligence of an an• gel.,,11 Madison agrees with Gadamer's critique of Habermas' coercion-free ideal speech situation as "counterfactual," and "shockingly unrealistic.,,12 As Madison writes: PREFACE xi

My position ... differs in important ways from that of Apel (and of Habermas as well). In particular, it eschews the kind of transcendental foundationalism pursued by Apel who seeks to "ground" (Apel speaks of a Letzbegriindung) communicative norms teleologically in an "ideal communication community." (The criticism that hermeneutics would address to this way of attempting to understand the actual-in terms of an ideal end-state-is that it perpetuates metaphysical and foundation• alist [and thus, also, utopian] ways of thinking.)I3 Madison's hermeneutical theory provides an alternative to Habermas' speech-act theory.14 On Gadamer's and Madison's accounts, there is a "deep inner convergence between rhetoric and hermeneutics.,,15 Madison traces his spiritual lineage back to "the ancient sophists and rhetoricians (via Montaigne and Sextus Empiricus).,,16 In his elaboration and development of the notion of communicative rationality, Madison emphasizes the role of rhetoric17-main• taining, in fact, that rhetoric and hermeneutics are, so to speak, flip sides of the same coin. Fallibility is central to the Gadamerian sense of agreement that Madison defends. Using rhetorical-dialectical communicative reasoning as his model of a non-dogmatic rationality,18 Madison urges that we adopt as our theoretical and practical standard the rhetorical practice of resolving our differences through communication. He suggests that the process of mutual persuasion characteristic of rhetorical practice permits us to agree in a way that, contrary to the practice of consensus, upholds the principle of freedom of expression: "Communicative reason knows no absolute other than the will to communicate, to resolve differences, and to seek mutual, uncoerced greement.,,19 Promoting an attitude of tolerant solidarity and unity in diversity based on mutual respect and pluralism is not the job of a central power, whether meta• physical, religious, or political. There is no need to attain an angelic consensus. In fact, for Madison, Habermas' idealized consensus radically conflicts with the highest principle of reason, namely, freedom. Coming to consensus, in the sense of unanimous agreement, about some issue or another is the opposite of and, in fact, undermines what "democracy" means. Along with Ricoeur, Madison insists that democracy is a matter of "conflictual consensus": A universality sufficient for human coexistence ... would not amount to a homogeneity of beliefs and convictions as to what constitutes the "good life," and would certainly not be such as to eliminate the "conflict of interpretations." But why should consensus of a substan• tialist sort be held to be an ethical good in any event? Are not the vir• tues of pluralism and tolerance that underwrite the modem, secular liberal state-what Ricoeur often refers to as the Rule of Law (I' 'erat de droit)-sufficient for a genuinely ethical praxis, if not an ethical xii THE POLITICS OF POSTMODERNITY

science? In any event, as Ricoeur says, "1'Etat de droit expresses a deep transformation in mentalites, a cultural mutation" ... The only ethically acceptable consensus is a "conjlictual consensus." Alluding to Claude Lefort, Ricoeur recognizes that democracy is that "regime which accepts its contradictions to the point of institutionalizing con• fliCt.,,20 Madison argues that democratic process requires differences of opinion and exists only in constant alteration, whereas consensus--conceived as an ideal and final end-state of agreement-means the cessation of dialogue and hence the death of democracy. Good sense includes a strong sense for the relative, which does not seek to realize complete uniformity, as if it were a supreme good?) Diversity is a requirement for truth, and pluralism is fundamental to enduring social contracts. Madison's most radical differences with Habermas concerning the supreme value of freedom are especially in evidence in Chapter 7, with regard, in par• ticular, to the way in which Madison conceptualizes the economic realm of civil society. It is Madison's contention that the "logic" of the economic realm is pre• cisely that of the paradigmatic ally human, i.e., of communicative rationality, and not, as Habermas maintains (in agreement with mainstream, neoclassical eco• nomics) that of the human as subordinate to technique, i.e., instrumental ration• ality. In his treatment of economic issues, Madison takes philosophical herme• neutics into a domain that Gadamer has not dealt with, though it is work that he sees as a direct extension of his own.22 Although a number of contemporary political theorists have abandoned radi• cally "leftist" positions and are now engaged in articulating philosophical justi• fications for liberal democracy, Madison's work differentiates itself from that of other such postmodern writers (e.g., Chantal Mouffe and Seyla Benhabib) in moving beyond the modernist ideological oppositions of "left" and "right." Re• appropriating as it does such key philosophical notions of traditional liberalism as the individual, reason, autonomy (freedom), truth, and universalism in a "postmodern" fashion according to the principles of philosophical hermeneutics, Madison's political philosophy could be called a "hermeneutical liberalism." These pages address both the common ground at the center of much current philosophical interest and extend hermeneutical principles to the theory of eco• nomics itself (i.e., to the methodology of economic science). As a consequence, this book goes beyond the "merely political" in articulating a hermeneutical po• litical economy as part of an overall theory of civil society, i.e., in the words of Vliclav Havel, "a society that makes room for the richest possible self-structuring and the richest possible participation in public life.'.23 Madison's postmodern liberalism, in treating communicative reason as the paradigmatically human way of coping with contingency, contributes to a non• dogmatic, nonessentialist universalism. His hermeneutics provides an account of PREFACE Xlll how human values are universalizable, how a value first articulated in one cul• ture can, in principle, be adopted as its own by any other culture?4 Human val• ues, for the very reason that they are linguistic practices, are readily "taken up in another language and become in this way part of its own repertory.,,25 For Madison the meaning of hermeneutical theory lies in its practical conse• quences,26 and the ultimate practical consequence of hermeneutics is a theory of democratic practice, one that discloses the emergence of rationality at the very heart of contingency. In drawing out in a coherent and systematic way the many implications for political theory that are implicit in philosophical hermeneutics conceived of as a general theory of human understanding, Madison extends in a new direction the work of Gadamer and Ricoeur. In the renewed self• organization of the spontaneous forces of civil society presently occurring throughout the world we may see an irrepressible demand for such a rebirth of politics,27 for the transformation of human-being-in-the-world through a postmodern rearticulation of the universal values of freedom and human rights. xiv THE POLITICS OF POSTMODERNITY

NOTES

I Gary Brent Madison, The Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1981), p. xix.

2 For a discussion of the relativism and nihilism of Rorty and Derrida as well as its rem• edy in Gadamer, see Chapter 1, Coping with Nietzsche's Legacy.

3 For a thorough investigation of this issue, see Chapter 3, Philosophy without Founda• tions, in which Madison argues that "in fact philosophy's traditional claim to universality becomes a much more defensible claim when it is resolutely divorced from all appeals to 'foundations""(p. 95).

4 See Madison, The Logic of Liberty (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986).

5 See Chapter 3, "Philosophy without Foundations."

6 See Richard Rorty, "Fraternity Reigns," New York Times Magazine (Sept. 29,1996), p. 155.

7 For an account of how the notion of communicative rationality played a central role in Merleau-Ponty's thinking, see the following works of Madison: "Merleau-Ponty and Postmodernity" in The Hermeneutics of Postmodemity: Figures and Themes (Bloom• ington: Indiana University Press, 1988); "Merleau-Ponty Alive", Man and World 26 (1993): 19-44; "Merleau-Ponty In Retrospect", in P. Burke and J. Van Der Veken, eds., Merleau-Ponty in Contemporary Perspective (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1993).

8 Madison, The Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, p. 124.

9 See Madison, The Political Economy of Civil Society and Human Rights (London: Routledge, 1998).

10 Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Reflections on My Philosophical Journey" in Lewis E. Hahn, ed., The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer (The Library of Living Philosophers) (Chicago: Open Court, 1996), p. 32.

II Gadamer, "Reply to My Critics," in Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, The Her• meneutic Tradition:: From Ast to Ricoeur (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), p. 287, empha• sis added.

12 Ibid., p. 292.

13 See Chapter 3, "Philosophy without Foundations."

14 See Chapter 4, ''The New Philosophy of Rhetoric." In this Madison's thinking is similar to the recent work of Calvin Schrag; the difference between them lies in Madi• son's spelling out the political (democratic) implications of rhetorical theory.

15 See Chapter 4, ''The New Philosophy of Rhetoric."

16 Ibid. PREFACE xv

17 The rhetoric in question is the New Rhetoric developed by the Belgian writer, Chaim Perelman.

18 For a detailed account of this way of thinking about reason, see Chapter 4, The New Philosophy of Rhetoric.

19 Madison, The Logic of Uberty, p.218.

20 See Madison, "Ricoeur and the Political" in Richard Kearney, ed., Paul Ricoeur: The Hermeneutics of Action (London: Sage Publications, 1996), p. 193.

21 Madison, The Logic ofUberty, p. 211.

22 See for instance Gadamer, "Reply to G.B. Madison" in The Philosophy of Hans• Georg Gadamer.

23 Vaciav Havel, 'The State of the Republic," New York Review of Books 45, no. 4 (March 5, 1998), p. 41.

24 See Chapter 3, "Philosophy without Foundations."

25 Ibid., p. Ill.

26 See Chapter 5, 'The Theory of Practicel The Practice of Theory."

27 See Chapter 6, 'The Politics of Postmodernity."