Comments | paulhope: Habermas's Introduction

paulhope

Habermas's Introduction

Jan 21, 2008 23:34

I promised you all some Habermas. Here is a brief summary of his introduction. He's super dense, so I'm going to go quickly through it; if you ask me to elaborate on anything, I'd make sure it was as good for you as it's good for me, baby.

By the way, I had an awesome weekend in Cambridge.

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habermas

Comments 5

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics... force_of_will January 22 2008, 07:21:01 UTC

With "rationality" I always get stuck on "ratio". Rational people use numbers to plot their course. Science is rational because ever step of it is tied to math. Even its predictive theories are tied to measurements...

Every other activity is at best, pseudo rational. Pseudo rationality extends to things like "I feel about 80%". The social sciences use statistics. That's their tie to the rational.

Now think about how irrational we are. Text takes a warp to being rational. I don't know how else to describe that we are communicating by numbers via computer without a lot of focus on that fact. But thats just a medium effect. We aren't thinking about numbers generally with text. And yet text, words, are more pervasive and generally then persuasive than numbers.

So I imagine being in your shoes. This is "rational"? I think its quite irrational, and what makes us human...

I'll probably post more at you later today. Took Adorno with me to wait for the new band practice and, well, I had the idea you and I should go through him together.

Re: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics... paulhope January 25 2008, 05:58:29 UTC

I dunno, man. You hear this sort of thing all the time: "numbers are alienating and inhuman. Boo math ( ... )

Re: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics... force_of_will January 25 2008, 06:52:49 UTC

By Adorno I have Aesthetic Theory and a lot of his stuff is online. The left and the Marxists are good for providing such texts online. ;-)

Frankfurt School: The Theodor Adorno Internet Archive

I'm also sorta getting into Marcuse.

The Herbert Marcuse Internet Archive

But I shouldn't take you off task. It's just that he's very aligned with what we discussed about art recently.

Re: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics... paulhope January 25 2008, 06:58:48 UTC

I'm a big fan of things printable off the internet. If it weren't for that, I definitely wouldn't be reading Debord now. Man, do I love printing out stuff at the office.

If you pick out a good, comparatively brief piece by Adorno for us to read that's available on-line, I'll definitely print it out, read it on my commute (with due irony), and get back to you on it.

tcpip January 23 2008, 07:00:38 UTC

Oh man... One of these days I'm going to have to sit down and write up all my notes from TCA... I spent ages on it - like eighteen months of solid reading. Mind you I also read Legitimation Crisis, the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Communication and the Evolution of Society, Knowledge and Human Interests etc in that period..