Il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel:
The Irresolvability of the Gadamer-Habermas Debate
WILLIAM J. URBAN
NOTES
1 Lacan formally presents the formulae of sexuation on March 13, 1973 in Seminar XX. (Lacan 78)
2 We acknowledge here how Copjec's work forms the crucial theoretical backdrop for this paper. Cf. Copjec (201–36)
3 'The Antinomy of Pure Reason' is Chapter II of the Transcendental Dialectic. (Kant 384–484; A405–567/B432–595)
4 Commentaries vary on which texts constitute the debate proper, but the most direct exchange involves four articles: Habermas' 'A Review of Gadamer's Truth and Method' (1967) and 'The Hermeneutic Claim to Universality' (1970) and Gadamer's responses: 'On the Scope and Function of Hermeneutic Reflection' (1967) and 'Reply to My Critics' (1971). However, we draw from other texts of the period as well, notably Gadamer's Truth and Method (1960) and Habermas' Knowledge and Human Interests (1968). For a list of texts used, see the Bibliography below.
5 The following argument is one way to make sense of Gadamer's 1965 claim that '[c]ontradictions are an excellent criterion of truth but, unfortunately, they are not an unambiguous criterion when we are dealing with hermeneutics.' (Gadamer 2003: 539) Moreover, considering his often deferential commentary on Kant (eg, before Schleiermacher, Kant and Fichte are each credited with using key hermeneutical insights 'to move beyond the contradictions of a given theory'), deepening the usual Gadamerian relation to Kantian thought is not entirely unjustified. (ibid 195)
6 Gadamer (2003:282). All citations in this paper with italic script represent the author’s original emphasis.
7 'Is not the very concept of an "absolute object" a contradiction in terms?' (Gadamer 2003: 451)
8 Here is perhaps the 'secret' to Gadamer's inquiring, exploratory writing style: if he thinks more in terms of negating contrary propositions whose negation is never complete (bearing as it does on the predicate and not the copula terms of those propositions), we would expect him to be more hesitant in making declarative statements on that very remainder which cannot be completely negated than his critics might be, inasmuch as the existence of such subjects is more assured for the latter group. Habermas is one such critic, as we shall see.
9 We can now better appreciate Gadamer's conception of subjectivity as 'historically effected consciousness.' As his translators put it, this is 'Gadamer's delineation of a consciousness that is doubly related to tradition, at once "affected" by history... and also itself brought into being – "effected" – by history, and conscious that it is so.' (ibid xv) Tradition is not something lying in the past to which we are abstractly opposed; rather, it constitutes our very being and thus confronts us as a task. Hence the overriding concern of philosophical hermeneutics with ontology. Paraphrasing an analysis done by Žižek, if the primordial choice is between thought and being, we could read Gadamer's preoccupation with ontology as an effort to deal with that symptomatic return of being which results from the choice of thought. (Žižek 1993: ch. 2)
10 At a more fundamental level, as our '"connection to tradition" means... tradition is not exhausted by the heritage one knows and is conscious of,' establishing said connection is 'an experience in which our plans and wishes constantly outstrip reality, that is, they are without connection to reality.' (Gadamer 1990: 288) Psychoanalytically speaking, we come close here to the hysterical neurotic economy of a subject continuously overtaking the object of desire as it procures for him too little enjoyment. No empirical object encountered is ever 'that.'
11 As the aptly titled section 'Overcoming the epistemological problem through phenomenological research' in Truth and Method makes clear.
12 Again we see here his ambiguous relation to the Enlightenment tradition, utilizing its central idea yet eschewing any discussion of the subject's role in (and his ultimate responsibility for) such a conversion process. Hence he can unproblematically write that the 'fundamental orders of our being are neither arbitrary nor manipulable by us, but rather simply demand our respect' and thus leave himself open to a Habermasian critique that such a stance defends blind submission to authority and condemns the subject to a fundamental passivity. (ibid 147)
13 We can already see how Habermas' characteristic use of practical reason contrasts with Gadamer's predominate use of theoretical reason.
14 Exemplary here is the ambiguous status of pre-linguistic symbols which are included in our linguistic structure precisely as the encountered limit to communicative competence. Cf. Habermas (1990: 260–3)
15 For instance and even more so than Heidegger, the terms interpretation and understanding are so inconsistently defined as to be seemingly without distinction in the end, in contrast to all previous hermeneutic thinkers.
16 Hence Gadamer's usual opening volley when critiquing Habermas is to underscore the latter's overlooked presuppositions (as Heidegger originally did with Husserl), as in the general case where Habermas is reminded how the hermeneutical situation must stand prior to any decision to have hermeneutics serve the methodology of the social sciences. (Gadamer 1986: 284) From the perspective of masculine space the Gadamerian approach aims to complete the causal chain.
17 Note that this will be 'new' only in the sense of a change in the universal and existential quantifying terms of the propositions; the specific dynamical arrangement of (non)negating terms which determine their quality will be maintained. Just as we saw with the mathematical antinomy, as long as the (affirmative and negative) quality of the copula is left unchanged, new antinomies can always be generated while preserving the spatial relations they enunciate. What is important to recognize is how the specific structural arrangement of qualifying terms differs significantly from the mathematical to the dynamical. It is this difference which radically shifts the topology from the feminine to the masculine and thus ultimately accounts for sexual difference.
18 As he says, 'mutilations have meaning as such.' (Habermas 1971: 217) In Chapter 8 of Knowledge and Human Interests, Habermas takes up Dilthey's three classes of life expressions in what amounts to a discussion of the experience of the phallic function (whereby gaps are revealed to exist between intended meaning and what is effectively said). Thus the employment of hermeneutics is justified in order to close the gaps between incomplete objectivated meaning and the latent meaning discernible from the larger context of life. It should be obvious that this conception of hermeneutics qua procedural technique applied to textual ruptures greatly differs from Gadamer and is thoroughly pre-Heideggerian.
19 Psychoanalytically speaking, Habermas' transcendental regulative framework approximates the obsessional neurotic economy of a subject building up an entire system to infinitely delay the encounter with the excessive fullness of the object of desire. Because the object offers too much enjoyment, its encounter must be postponed.
20 See, eg., Gadamer (1990: 287). Concisely said, Habermas overlooks how his regulative system is also constitutive for his project, which of course deeply aligns him with Kant in terms of overall philosophical disposition.
21 Being thus stands heterogeneous to the conceptual world, yet the exclusion of the real object by the negative judgment is what makes thought possible. If the world or tradition could be said to exist with Habermas, it is nevertheless only a claim for conceptual existence. Paraphrasing Žižek again, Habermas' primordial choice of being over thought results in a being that is merely thought. (Žižek 1993: ch. 2)
22 Žižek explains the transcendental status of the authoritative guarantee to S1: 'the gesture which "distorts" a symbolic field, which "curves" its space by introducing in it a nonfounded violence, is stricto sensu correlative to its very establishment – in other words, the moment we subtract from a discursive field its "distortion," the field disintegrates ("dequilts"). (Žižek 1992: 103) That discourse itself is structurally and foundationally authoritarian is lost on Habermas who instead could be said to split the authoritative gesture of S1 into its 'bad' form materialized as empirical forces like historical class domination, which in turn distort its 'good' form manifested as the neutral transcendental regulative framework offering a universal guarantee.
23 Žižek often notes how Habermas' struggle involves a paradoxical call to restrict our free access to, say, bio-genetic advances in order to preserve our freedom. In contrast, the Žižekian solution conceives the very lack of a normative framework as precisely that which opens up the space for the struggle for freedom. (Žižek 2006: 87).
24 Paradoxically, when critics correctly point out the prominent role reason has in the Habermasian project, this is only because of a deviation from reason's own subversive core. Teigas is representative here, but he certainly goes too far to suggest Habermas holds to a teleological 'unfolding of Reason in the history of the species.' (Teigas 117)
25 The symmetry of Ricoeur's solution, tacitly presupposing an illusory common place occupied by Gadamer and Habermas, is stimulated by the negative judgment 'I hasten to say that no plan of annexation, no syncretism, will preside over this debate.' (Ricoeur 299) But who exactly is asking? Such statements which declaratively state that 'the Other does not exist' is one way of ensuring the Other and its desire does exist. In other words, they aim to make the Other forget that It does not exist. The truly radical moment arrives only when 'the subject knows that the Other knows that It does not exist.' This is commensurate with the experience of il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel.
26 To confirm this it is enough to reflect on how the 'space' (of feminine space) must be logically prior to any objectivation (in masculine space) which 'occupies' it, despite how the former is only conceivable with the latter.
27 An illustration may be of use. Consider the well-known example of the donut and the coffee mug: they are certainly different in terms of the respective spaces they carve out, but topologically speaking – as every mathematician knows – they are identical. This is what permits a certain confidence that further manipulations of an established set of antonymic propositions will continue to articulate an identical spatial relation (so long as there is no change to the key structural terms, of course). So while none of the antinomies formulated above could be said to be the antinomy for Gadamer or Habermas, once an antinomy has been convincingly established for each its propositions can be further tailored to suit the desired discussion – exactly as we have done in this paper.
28 At each point along the möbius strip there are two sides, the surface and its other side, yet there is only the one surface. At these points a gap seems to exist between the surface and its other side so that the link between them could be said to be missing. Yet the strip actually traces out a smooth passage (without gaps) between the two sides and in this way they are revealed to be adjacent to one another. This paradoxical figure challenges us to conceive how the very 'missing' of the missing link is what provides the linkage between the two adjacent sides.
Lacanian-themed puzzles
