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DavidIngram's"HabermasandtheDialecticofReason"
DavidIngram's"HabermasandtheDialecticofReason"
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PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:1/1988,pages:9198,onwww.ceeol.com.
HABERMAS, ART AND AESTHETIC REFLECTION
INGRAM'S "HABERMAS AND THE
DIALECTIC OF REASON"
Georgia Warnke
David Ingram's Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason,l has two aims: it
seeks both to elucidate Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action
2
and to
indicate the way in which later essays develop and revise its view. Ingram
argues that The Theory of Communicative Action begins to articulate a
conception of rationality that is no longer simply communicative but aesthetic
as well. Moreover, he claims that this conception cannot be adequately
articulated by a "formal notion of procedural justice'; since it implies instead
"an intuitive integration and dialectical harmonizing of substantive values". 3
While The Theory of Communicative Action distinguishes the logic of aesthetic
criticism from that of other types of analysis, more recent essays including
"Modernity versus Postrnodernity"4 and "Questions and Counterquestions"S
suggest an aesthetic form of rationality that cuts acras such rigorous divisons.
In addition, Habermas now allows for an "aesthetic restructuring of social
reality"6 and thereby closes the gap he originally opened up between reflection
and lived experience.
7
Indeed, Ingram argues that the aesthetic domain
achieves a "unity of reason": It shows "what no form of ideal speech possibly
could show - namely, complete realization of a life of freedom and happiness
at the level of individual and collective life.,,8 In this review, I would like to
raise some questions both about Habermas's views on art and aesthetic
reflection and about Ingram's own analysis. I shall begin by exploring
Habermas's account of aesthetic criticism.
The Theory of Communicative Action begins by distinguishing four forms of
argumentation; theoretical practical discourse, aesthetic criticism
and therapeutic critique. The thread uniting these four structures of argument
is a concern with rational justification. Habermas contends that the concept of
rationality must be conceived of widely enough to include not only the ability
to defend descriptive statements and not only the ability to act in instru-
mentally effective ways with regard to states of affairs. It must also encompass
the ability to defend actions or norms of action, to show the sincerity of one's
personal expressions and to indicate the intelligibility of one's evaluative
interpretations. The common feature of theoretical and practical discourse,
therapeutic critique and aesthetic criticism is thus that each is involved in the
justification of criticizable validity claims. We are concerned either with the
truth of descriptive statements, the rightness of actions and norms of action,
the truthfulness of expressions of feeling and desire, or the adequacy of
values. As Habermas concludes:
. . . actions regulated by norms, expressive self-presentations and also evalua-
tive expressions supplement constative speech acts in constituting a communica-
Praxis International 8: 1April 1988 0260-8448 $2.00
92 Praxis International
tive practice which, against the background of a life world, is oriented to
achieving, sustaining, and renewing consensus -and indeed a consensus that
rests on the intersubjective recognition of criticizable validity claims. The
rationality inherent in this practice is seen in the fact that a communicatively
achieved agreement must be based in the end on reasons. And the rationality of
those who participate in this communicative practice is determined by whether,
if necessary they could, under suitable circumstances, provide reasons for their
expressions.
9
Despite this common appeal to argumentation as the means of deciding
controversial claims, Habermas is careful to distinguish the various structures
he differentiates not only in terms of the particular validity claim at issue, but
in terms of the scope of the justification. It is crucial to the force of reasons
given in justifying claims to truth and normative rightness that such reasons
are reasons for everyone. Implicit in the defense of the truth of a proposition is
the idea that were everyone to suspend all motives other than the cooperative
search for truth, the proposition would gain universal assent. Similarly,
reasons that justify norms of action are supposed to be reasons acceptable to
all affected in practical discourse. As Ingram puts this claim: "It would be
irrational for me to believe that I ought to perform some act while not
believing, ceteris paribus, that anyone ,else in a similar situation ought to
perform it also."10 Neither therapeutic critique nor aesthetic criticism pos-
sesses the some universal scope. Defending one's sincerity has more to do with
the way one acts than with any discursive grounding and is therefore restricted
to the specificity of what one claims about oneself and how one behaves.
Cultural values are similarly specific and, as Habermas writes "can be made
plausible only in the context of a particular form of life.
Il
We can justify or
show the intelligibility of a person's desire for a saucer of mud by finding a
reason for it - in this case, by connecting it to the enjoyment of a "rich river
smell". 12 But, despite its plausibility to us, we can ascribe no universality to
it. The task of aesthetic criticism, like that of theoretical and practical
discourse, is to clarify grounds. What has to be grounded, here, however, are
tastes and attitudes and they can be made intelligible only by showing how
they can be made sense of in light of culturally established standards of value.
The standards of value that allow us to appreciate these tastes and attitudes
cannot move us to attribute any universal status to them.
But cultural values have a peculiar status in Habermas's scheme. If, on the
one hand, they cannot be unimperialistically universalized, on the other, they
seem to determine cultural critera of evaluative rationality. Habermas writes;
"Anyone who is so privatistic in his attitudes and evaluations that they cannot
be explained and rendered plausible by appeal to standards of evaluation is not
behaving rationally."13 This claim seems dubious. Why should someone
whose tastes are not those of his or her culture, or cannot be made plausible
within a form of life be, for that reason, evaluatively irrational? Habermas
writes that "Someone who explains his libidinous reaction to rotten apples by
referring to the "infatuating," "unfathomable," "vertiginous" smell ... will
scarcely meet with understanding in the everyday contexts of most cultures"14
but, examples aside, why should the ability to meet with understanding in
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Praxis International 93
everyday contexts be any test of rationality? It may be that the notion of
irrationality can be legitimately extended from theoretical contradiction to
practical contradiction and insincerity; but it is not clear that it can also
include a failure to comply with cultural values. The very consideration that
they are cultural values would seem to confirm their non-obligatory character
and therefore to imply that one who denies their force is not, on these grounds
alone, irrational.
Habermas admits that private evaluations which are distinguished by their
"authentic expression" may have "an innovative character" and points to
works of art as an example. The point here is that works of art can encourage a
culture to adopt new standards of value by teaching it to appreciate what at
first appear as idiosyncratic tastes and attitudes. Since aesthetic criticism is the
form of argumentation that teaches us to appreciate works of art, it would
seem that it, too, can encourage the acceptance of initially unintelligible
attitudes or ostensibly irrational tastes. According to this dimension of
Habermas's analysis, then, the function of aesthetic criticism goes beyond that
implied above, of simply finding the culturally established standards under
which tastes and attitiudes become intelligible. The function of aesthetic
criticism is also to aid in the cultural adoption of new tastes and attitudes by
casting a new light on what first appears as representatives of idiosyncratic
ideas. Habermas argues that "in aesthetic criticism grounds or reasons serve to
guide perception and to make the authenticity of a work so evident that this
aesthetic experience can become a rational motive for accepting the corespon-
ding standards of value."lS Aesthetic criticism thus brings us to an aesthetic
experience through which we can recognize the value of a work of art and, in
recognizing its value, accept the standards of value it represents. This implies
that we can learn to accept the rationality of values that are not yet culturally
recognized.
It appears, then, that Habermas has two different notions of aesthetic
criticism. According to one idea, it is an entirely localized form of reflection. It
appeals to what Habermas refers to as a community's preunderstanding - in
other words, to values that already are either explicitly recognized or
implicitly appreciated within a culture; and shows how and which contoversial
values, tastes, attitudes can be comprehended by it. Habermas goes so far as
to insist that this cultural preunderstanding is not at the "disposal" of
participants in an argument. Thus, whereas practical discourse allow parti-
cipants to examine their ethical presuppositions and to criticize norms,
aesthetic critique rests on cultural presuppositions it cannot explore. Accord-
ing to Habermas's second idea of aesthetic criticism, however, the reflection it
encourages has greater force. In coming to appreciate a work of art, we come
to understand its aesthetic value. But this means both that we come to see the
work of art in a new way and that we change our cultural standards of value to
accommodate our new perception. Art is or can be innovative and aesthetic
criticism is the reflective medium that allows us to change standards of value
that are not sufficiently broad. On this reading, the difference between
practical discourse and aesthetic critique is not that the latter is restricted to
culturally established standards of value. It is rather that aesthetic arguments
94 Praxis International
can never require us to change our view; they can only encourage us to see
things in a different way and hope that we will thereby form different
conclusions.
This second reading of The Theory ofCommunicative Action may come closer
to Habermas's more considered view of the point of reflection on evaluative
claims; nonetheless, the distinction he establishes between practical discourse
and aesthetic criticism remains somewhat undeveloped in another respect as
well. As Ingram reads him, Habermas seems to accept the claim that a reason
morally justifying my action is a moral reason for anyone to act in the same
way under similar circumstances. But surely if I am a pregnant, unmarried
fourteen year-old who decides to have an abortion, I am not irrational in
believing that another unmarried, pregnant fourteen year-old could rationally
decide to act differently. Even if we assume similar circumstances in terms of
finances, family situation and so on, the decision to have or not to have an
abortion is not one we seem to want to legislate universally. It might be argued
that Ingram has simply misunderstood Habermas here since the level at which
he talks about universalization involves practical discourse over more general
norms. To use the example above, a concern of the discourse might be
whether the question of abortion ought to be legislated universally or whether,
instead, it might be seen as a question of legitimate differences in cultural
values. In this second case, however, Habermas's analysis of culture values
and evaluative claims would seem to introduce an alternative he does not
thoroughly explore. The Kantian claim about universalization in ethics is that
universalizing action maxims serves as a test of their moral validity. But
Habermas interposes a third option: non-universalizable maxims may indicate
not the immorality of the proposed action but rather its entanglement with
cultural values. Despite his differentation of forms of argumentation in the
Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas does not pursue this analysis. For
his part, Ingram seems to accept a Kantian view of the universalism implicit in
practical argumentation, as indicated in the statement cited earlier. Precisely
for this reason, he understands the importance of Habermas's more recent
work in terms of the way it suggests new, aesthetically based options for
adjudicating normative claims. Still, it is not clear to me either that this work
does support Ingram's claims about aesthetic reflection or that the connection
he suggests between aesthetic au.d moral reflection can be defended.
Habermas's more recent work clearly goes beyond The Theory of Commu-
nicative Action's ambivalence as to whether aesthetic experience and the
criticism that encourages it can offer insight into standards of value. He now
argues straightforwardly that art can affect not only values but "our cognitive
interpretations", "our normative expectations" and "the manner in which all
these moments refer to one another". This statement is from "Modernity
versus Postmodernity"lO but Habermas makes the same point in his response
to Martin Jay in "Questions and Counterquestions" and draws on important
consequences from it. If aesthetic experience changes the way in which
description, action and evaluation are related to one another, then The Theory
of Communicative Action may have been mistaken in identifying the "truth-
potential" of art with a single validity claim. Habermas writes:
Praxis International 95
The one to one relationship which exists between the prescriptive validity of a
norm and the normative validity claim raised in regulative speech acts is not a
proper model for the relation between the potential for truth of works of art and
the transformed relations between self and world stimulated by aesthetic
experience. 17
In other words, whereas the adjudication of normative claims affects only the
question of their prescriptive validity and hence can alter only the way in
which individuals relate to moral obligations, the adjudication of aesthetic
claims, by encouraging a certain aesthetic experience affects the way in which
individuals relate to cognitive, moral and aesthetic worlds. Hence, the claim
of a work of art must itself be seen as a complicated one: In it, truth,
truthfulness and normative correctness are "metaphorically interlaced" in a
way that Habermas explains by quoting Albrech Wellmer: "The work of art as
a symbolic formation with an aesthetic validity claim is at the same time an
object of the life world experience in which the three validity domains are
unmetaphorically intermeshed. "18
This explanation mayor may not be helpful. My concern, however, is
whether it reflects the "unity of reason" that Ingram claims for aesthetic
reflection. The Theory ofCommunicative Action follows Weber in conceiving of
the process of modernization in the West in terms of the growth of the
autonomous "value-spheres" of science, art and morality according to the
differentiation of cognitive, expressive, and normative elements of culture.
For Weber, this process culminates in the hegemony of a purposive-rational
system of action and the consequent subjectivization of substantive world-
views. Impersonal economic and bureaucratic forces incarcerate the indi-
vidual and no totalizing rational conception exists that could aid in the
retrieval of meaning. But Habermas explicitly denies that the attempt to
reestablish a unity of reason can go back behind the level reached by this
process. Rather it must be "secured at the formal level of the argumentative
redemption of validity claims" and what is needed, therefore, is a "pragmatic
logic of argumentation that satisfactorily captures internal connections
between forms of speech-acts". 19 However, given Habermas's admission that
"arguments play different roles with different degrees of discursively binding
force", Ingram denies that this recommendation carries much weight.
20
In his
view, later essays and, particularly, the claim about art's intermeshing of
validity claims signal a more convincing concept of rational harmony.
But I am not sure I see the development to which Ingram points here.
Habermas responds to questions Martin Jay raises about his account of
aesthetics by admitting the way in which the aesthetic criticism of works of art
can affect the adjudication of cognitive and normative as well as expressive
and evaluative claims. But from this argument it does not seem to follow that
he considers aesthetic criticism the only necessary form of adjudication. Even
if our aesthetic experiences reach into our cognitive interpretations and
normative expectations, theoretical and practical discourse do not necessarily
reduce to aesthetic discussion. If the way we respond to a work of art changes
the way we relate to cognitive interpretations and normative expectations, it
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Praxis International
may still be rationally incumbent upon us to justify our new cognitive and
moral claims and to do so, as Habermas contends, through discursive
justification. From this perspective, Ingram's emphasis on the aesthetic seems
to conflate the experiental level at which we act and understand with the
reflective level at which we try to justify action and interpretation.
Of course, much of Ingram's book is devoted to questioning just this
separation of reflection and experience. Indeed, in his view, this is the value of
insight into an aesthetic form of rationality since aesthetic experience already
includes reflection. We saw that the function of aesthetic criticism is to bring
us to see a work of art in a certain way and thus to accept its standards of
value. But this ability finally to see something in the way the criticism suggests
has the same force, if not the same scope, that discursive justification has in
theoretical and practical spheres. When we understand a work of art precisely
what this means is that we experience it and what it represents in a certain
way. Understanding and experience are therefore identical, But if under-
standing and seeing, reflection and experience coincide in the encounter with
works of art, what implications does this have for practical and theoretical
reflection? Ingram's argument seems to be the following: Habermas admits
that aesthetic experience can have consequences for our theoretical and
practical views. He also contends that aesthetic criticism is more an attempt to
foster a certain experience than to formulate the soundest position. The
reflective level of aesthetic criticism is thus directly related to experience and
the experience, in turn, directly related to theoretical and practical reflection.
Still, the question remains as to whether this is all there is to theoretical and
practical reflection, whether we can justify our "cognitive interpretations" and
"normative expectations" simply by insisting on the way we see or experience
the issues.
The two problems I have briefly explored in this paper are (a) whether the
maxims for all moral actions are universalizable and (b) whether, even if they
are not, moral justificiation can be assimilated to aesthetic criticism. Ingram's
concern is the opposite: namely, whether practical reflection can be assimi-
lated to normative argumentation. In his view, the importance of emphasizing
aesthetics is to show the extent to which it cannot be and he faults Habermas
for failing to complete his own insights on this issue. As he sees it, Habermas's
error here is connected to his assumption that no rationalizable aesthetic
attitude toward social reality is possible. This is a problem with The Theory of
Communicative Action that Thomas McCarthy has also noted.
21
Habermas
argues that the development of a decentered consciousness in the modern age
permits different basic attitudes - objectivating, norm-conformative and
expressive - toward different formally conceived worlds, namely, the
objective, the social and the subjective. If the three basic attitudes are
connected to the three formal world concepts, nine "formal-pragmatic
relations" result between agents and these worlds. Habermas contends that
only six of the relations allow for the accumulation of knowledge and are
therefore rationalizable. These he organizes into three complexes of rationa-
lity. A cognitive-instrumental complex results from the objectivating attitude
directed at objective and social worlds and issues in the social action system of
Praxis International 97
science and technology. A moral-practical complex results from the norm-
conformative attitude directed at social and subjective worlds and issues in the
action system of law and morality. Finally an aesthetic-practical complex
issues from the expressive attitude directed at subjective and objective worlds
and issues in the action system of eroticism and art. The implication of this
scheme that worries Ingram is that no rationalizable action system or province
for the accumulation of knowledge is projected for an expressive attitude
toward the social world.
McCarthy's argument is that such an attitude is no more or less rationaliza-
ble than the expressive attitude toward our subjective world, an attitude the
rationalizability of which Habermas explains in terms of an authentic
interpretation of needs. But if an expressive attitude toward subjectivity
allows for the accumulation of knowledge in these terms, why cannot the same
be said for an expressive attitude toward society: namely, that it involves the
authentic interpretation of social needs or, as McCarthy puts it, an under-
standing of society from the perspective of social ideas of the "good"? He
notes that Habermas seems to recognize this possibility in other contexts,
specifically in his essay on WaIter Benjamin in which he endorses Benjamin's
emphasis on happiness and self-fulfillment. But whereas McCarthy under-
stands such on expressive view of society from the standpoint of the "good" as
a complement to the view of it from the normative standpoint of the "right",
Ingram demands that the aesthetic view be made part of practical rationality
itself. As he writes:
If the aesthetic attitude in social life is . . . proclaimed to be irrational from a
practical standpoint or to be merely a function of subjective expression, the
province of practical reason would appear to be reduced to that of moral
argumentation. If, however, the aesthetic element in practical life is deemed to
be an essential part of practical reason, then the concept of rationality would
have to be to be expanded to include an intuitive element of taste.
22
Ingram does not indicate what form this expansion should take. But this
failure seems to me to be problematic since it remains unclear what the proper
relation is between, on the one hand, the justification of actions and norms of
action in practical discourse and, on the other, their justification through
taste. If aesthetic criticism can bring us to see or experience an action in a
certain way, does this mean, as it does in the case of art works, that no further
justification is necessary? If, to the contrary, we must not only see the action
in a certain way but give reasons in support of it, what is the role of taste? If
actions are to be defended against criticism by bringing interlocutors to
experience them in a certain way, must not both agents and interlocutors be
on more or less the right path from the start? Ingram's basic point is the
Aristotelian one that practical reason involves more than knowing ethical
precepts or norms of action; it also require judgement: properly understand-
ing concrete situations of action so that one knows how to act. But Aristotle
also insists on the necessity of being brought up in the right culture so that one
can learn to experience situations in the right way. Ingram does not explore
this dimension of an intuitively based practical reason, but the reference to
Aristotle suggests the necessity of some such parameters for our tastes.
98 Praxis International
It should also be noted that Habermas does not deny the contextual
moment of practical reason. In answer to McCarthy he argues that although
the abstraction of deontological ethics offers a solution to the problem of
justification, it offers no answer to questions of how justified norms of action
are to be applied to situations of action or internalized as moral motivations.
Still, he argues that "this necessary disregard for the complexity of concrete
forms of life" is compensated for by the gain effected by "the transformation
of questions of the good life into problems of justice". One could argue that
this statement begs the question since Ingram's view seems to be that a regard
for the complexity of concrete forms of life remains the most crucial part of
practical reflection. But then one also has to admit that bringing an intuitive
moment of taste to moral argumentation begs the question as well. Habermas
argues that something is won in abstracting the questions of moral motivation
and intuitive insight. Indeed, he suggests that something is won in rigorously
distinguishing questions of morality from those of culture. Ingram seems to
argue that these claims are overplayed. I do not necessarily disagree with him
but I think more has to be said about what aesthetic reflection involves and
how good taste and judgement are to be assessed.
NOTES
1. Ingram, David, Habennas and The Dialectic of Reason, (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1986)
2. Habermas, Jiirgen, The Theory of Communicative Action vol. 1 Reason and the Rationalization of
Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Beacon Press, Boston 1984)
3. HDR p. xii
4. Habermas, Jiirgen, "Modernity versus Postmodernity", trans. Seyla Benhabib in New German
Critique, 22 (1981)
5. Habermas, Jiirgen, "Questions and Counterquestions" in Habermas and Modernity ed. Richard
Bernstein (MIT Press, Cambridge, 1985)
6. HDR,p.58
7. HDR p. xii
8. HDR p. 184
9. TCA p. 17
10. HDR p. 21
11. TCA p. 42
12. TCA p. 16
13. TeA p. 17
14. TCA p. 17
15. TCA p. 20
16. op. cit., p.12
17. Questions and Counterquestions, op. cit.p15, p.203
18. Ibid, p. 203
19. TCA p. 249
20. HDRp.54
21. See "Reflections on Rationality in The Theory of Communicative Action" in Habermas and
Modernity, pp. 176-191, esp. 187 ff.
22. HDR p. 73