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Created: April 22, 2002
Latest Update: April 22, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Habermas and the Lifeworld

Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individaul Authors, April 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This essay is based on a discussion on the Hab List by Martin Blanchard, Fred Welfare, Kenneth MacKendrick, et al. X-Authentication-Warning: lists.village.Virginia.EDU: domo set sender to owner-habermas@localhost using -f User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/10.0.0.1309 Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 12:52:16 -0400 Subject: Re: HAB: dictionary of philosophy? From: Martin Blanchard To: Habermas Sender: owner-habermas@lists.village.virginia.edu Reply-To: habermas@lists.village.virginia.edu Let me reformulate my question. So the lifeworld is, as Fred Welfare reminds me below, a “transcendantal site” where s and h meet. But how does that transcendant site contributes to the meaning of their utterance? Surely a pragmatic theory has something to say about that – about pragmatics meeting semantics. But I wonder how the constraints of semantics – compositionality, for one – is to be accommodated with the transcendance of a background knowledge. Surely, we mustn’t objectivate the opened horizon of social life understood in an maximally enlarged fashion. But how does that horizon contribute to the meaning of this and that utterance? MB from "Ademola Fadipe" Actually it was used the way Weber used it not as Hurssel. Means almost the same as you explained though. In a message dated 4/18/2002 6:16:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time, tintamar@club-internet.fr writes: Another use of “lifeworld” is in the context of a philosophy of language. Here is a definition of “the context of an utterance” by G. Leech (1983) that I just happened to read: “I shall consider context to be any background knowledge assumed to be shared by speaker and hearer and which contributes to the hearer’s interpretation of what the speaker means by a given utterance.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is not necessarily the meaning that Habermas designates; Habermas does utilize this term in a similar sense as did Husserl. He says at one point that "the lifeworld is the transcendental site where speaker and hearer meet, where they can reciprocally raise claims that their utterances fit the world (objective, social, or subjective), and where they can critisize and confirm those validity claims, settle their disagreements, and arrive at agreements." TCA 2, pg. 126. This definition should not be objectivated, however, things in the lifeworld cannot be pointed to like facts, norms, or experiences, he says. It seems claer however that language is not the only or even the main referent here, perhaps action and expression. Habermas is quite crititical of the all pervasive tendency towards positivism. In this sense, the lifeworld is distinct from the system-sub-system contexts but it is not necessarily completely encompassed by the critically reflective attitude, that is, it is not merely 'in' reflection. However, Habermas does hold to a "colonization of the lifeworld" thesis. FWelfare X-Authentication-Warning: lists.village.Virginia.EDU: domo set sender to owner-habermas@localhost using -f From: Kenneth MacKendrick To: habermas@lists.village.virginia.edu MMDF-Warning: Parse error in original version of preceding line at mail.virginia.edu Subject: HAB: Lifeworld Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 14:05:34 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-Authentication-Info: Submitted using SMTP AUTH LOGIN at fep03-mail.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com from [24.157.205.220] using ID at Mon, 22 Apr 2002 14:08:48 -0400 Sender: owner-habermas@lists.village.virginia.edu Reply-To: habermas@lists.village.virginia.edu For those interested: Stephen Crook, "Minotaurs and Other Monsters: 'Everyday Life' in Recent Social Theory" Sociology, 32, August 1998, 523-540. Keywords: Habermas, Maffesoli, nostalgia, socio-technical, vitalism... "... it is suggested that three myths - of unity, life and resistance - give life to the Minoataur of the everyday. The Minotaur of the everyday thus carries a great weight of theoretical baggage and its monstrosity serves, paradoxically, to preseve the homogeneity and purity of the social domain..." ken X-Authentication-Warning: lists.village.Virginia.EDU: domo set sender to owner-habermas@localhost using -f From: "Peterson, Victor - CHI" To: "'habermas@lists.village.virginia.edu'" Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 12:41:29 -0400 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) Sender: owner-habermas@lists.village.virginia.edu Reply-To: habermas@lists.village.virginia.edu Here's a link (via xrefer) to an entry on "life-world" by Bert Koegler in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. lifeworld Vic

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