The Radical Choice and Moral Theory: Through Communicative Argumentation to Phenomenological Subjectivity

198 Pages·1994·3.4 MB·English

by  Zhenming Zhai (auth.)

THE RADICAL CHOICE AND MORAL THEORY
~txl!ij
Zhenming ZhaÎ
Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA, U.S.A.
THE RADICAL CHOICE
AND MORAL THEORY
Through Communicative Argumentation
to Phenomenological Subjectivity
Published under the auspices of
The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning
A-T. Tymieniecka, President
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Llbrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zhai. Zhenming.
The radical choice and moral theory through communicative
argumentation ta phenomenological subjectivity I by Zhenming Zhai.
p. cm. -- (AnalectaHusserliana; v. 45)
"Publ ished under the auspices of the World Institute for Advanced
Phenomenologlcal Research and Learning."
Includes bibl iographical references and index.
ISBN 978-94-010-4223-9 ISBN 978-94-011-0501-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-0501-9
1. Ethics. 2. Phenomenology. 1. World InstItute for Advanced
Phenomenologlcal Research and Learning. II. Tltle. III. Series.
B3279.H94A129 voI. 45
[BJ10311
142' .7 s--dc20
[171' .21 94-16408
ISBN 978-94-010-4223-9
Printed an acid-free paper.
AII Rights Reserved
© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1994
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1994
N o part of the material protected by this copyright notice
may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without written permission from
the copyright owner.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Editor's Introduction ix
Chapter 1. Introduction: The Issue and the Background 1
§ 1. The Is-Ought Controversy 3
§2. The Continental Tradition 10
§3. Communicative Rationality and My Aim in this Program 18
Chapter 2. Communicative Rationality and the Justification of
Normative Validity Claims 23
§ 1. Communicative Rationality: the Counter-Factual 23
§2. Communicative vs. Cognitive Rationality 26
§3. Initial Principles 30
§4. Human Reason as the Only Justificatory Power of Values 41
§5. Normative Validity Claims and Cultural Relativism 47
Chapter 3. The Necessity of Radical Choice 57
§l. Habermas' Communicative Ethics 57
§2. Alan Gewirth's Attempt 62
§3. The Question of Death 68
§4. Good life No More And No Less Than the Life of Humans 72
§5. The Rationality of Radical Choice 80
§6. Humanitude vs. Human Nature 85
Chapter 4. Meaning, Ideality and Subjectivity 91
§ 1. Recapitulation and Strategy 91
§2. The Naturalistic Notion of "Subjectivity" and Reason vs.
Cwre ~
§3. The Thesis of Subjectivity 99
§4. Ideality and Validity Claims 102
§5. Subjectivity and the Lifeworld Experience 110
§6. The Transcendence of Subjectivity 118
§7. Constitutive as Opposed to Conative Subjectivity 123
v
vi T ABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 5. Radical Choice Fulfilled and the First "Ought" 135
§ 1. Subjectivity and Humanitude 135
§2. Radical Choice fulfilled and the Normative Redeemed 150
§3. Freedom and the Normative 152
§4. "Ought" and Responsibility 161
§5. (Value), (Disvalue) and (Non-Value) 165
§6. Pre-Moralic and Moralic; (Moral), (Immoral) and (Amoral) 168
§7. Semi-Final Remarks and Anticipations 171
Bibliography 177
Index 183
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has evolved and reached its final shape in my responses to
the comments made by Professors in the Philosophy Department of the
University of Kentucky. In this regard, I would especially like to express
my gratitude to Professors Ronald Bruzina and Theodore Schatzki, who
had very insightful comments on its different versions.
Others who were instrumental in precipitating an end to this project
are Professors Thomas Olshewsky, Daniel Breazeale, and Herbert
Reid. Without their support, this project would not have reached its
completion.
z. z.
vii
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
The contemporary philosophical scene no longer sees opposing currents
of philosophical thought locked in fierce argument about presuppositions,
methods, and style.
The great schools of philosophy that dominated the first half of the
century playing ideological roles have faded. Thomism lost touch with
the progress of thought and dropped out of the main stream; Marxism
lost hold of societal life and lingers as pale reprises of the powerful
ideology it once was. The existentialism that swept the world in the years
after the Second World War has, in part, become amalgamated with some
currents of phenomenology and in part become diffused in our culture,
losing in the process its distinctive face. As for phenomenology and
the British-American analytic school, they do not oppose each other
any more, and they are hardly recognizable in the diluted forms in
which they continue on. Analytic philosophy continues to spin out for
itself an ever more complex language, but the frontiers that were once
so clear are now blurred. And it now takes a sensitive ear to distin
guish - and then with difficulty - the reverberations of phenomenology
in all philosophical inquiry and in other realms of research.
Both schools have developed a most complex language, each in
accessible to the non-initiated, but their insights and approaches have
become so interchangeable that, strange to believe, it is from analytically
trained scholars that the initiative to revive the "hard core" pheno
menology of Husserl and his direct disciples now comes. Meanwhile,
a "soft core" phenomenology that is existential in its inspiration and style
still has its followers. And everywhere attempts are made to practice
phenomenology while dismantling its classical schema, devaluing its
principles.
Meanwhile, the strong profile of the phenomenology of life and of
the Human Condition - an original offspring of classical phenomenology
- is coming into ever sharper focus but has not yet reached the stage
of a universal controversy.
It is over against this background of partial mutual absorption and
the partial blurring of features between phenomenology and analytic
ix
x ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
philosophy, that the present study is to be appreciated. It is a clearly
outlined and thought through work in which, with emphasis being placed
on the radical differentiation of realms and methods, a deep-seated
connectedness between the thinking inspired by analytic philosophy
and that inspired by phenomenology, between investigation of the human
situation within the lifeworld as phenomenology conceives of it and
the form that analytic philosophy assumes in Habermas's thought is not
only delineated but brought to unusual philosophical fruition.
Zhen-Ming Zhai, a young native of mainland China who completed
his graduate work at an American university, has set for himself an
arduous task: no less than the elaboration of a universally valid moral
theory, one that is free from all partisan dogmatism. His focus is on
the great question of morality: Is there a passage from the description
of a moral situation to the directives that solve it, that is, from the
evaluation of alternatives to principles? The author argues that the concept
that allows the establishment of the passage - and according to him
the passage is possible without recourse to transcendent principles and
ideologies - is that of communicative rationality. Rationality is under
stood here in terms of the "communicative action" proposed by
philosophers such as Habermas and Apel. Putting this approach into
practice, he tackles the great issue that the analytic tradition formulates
as the "is-ought" problem.
In the course of his reasoning, he encounters the question that under
lies communicative action as such, namely, that of "what makes possible
the choice of being a participant in any process of argumentation?" His
answer to that question enables him to go beyond Habermas's discourse
ethics. In fact, it is "engagement in a choice of life and death" that allows
the possibility of being a member of a community in which commu
nicative action is practiced, nay, which even accounts for the possibility
of such a community.
We shall leave it to the reader to follow the fascinating itinerary of
the author's argumentation, which with the discovery of what he calls
the "radical choice" brings him to propose a new conception of "being
human" as well as to discover afresh the specifically moral experience,
which means the subjectivity and intersubjectivity of Husserl, Heidegger,
and Sartre. The author achieves his goal, and arrives at the foundation
of intersubjective moral principles through one single "pre-moral" value,
offering an original proposal for moral theory - a conclusion that
follows from his clear-cut bringing together of analytic thinking and
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION xi
phenomenology. The weave of this philosophical fabric emerges
spontaneously. It is worth it to see it emerge.
This work is in the descriptive style of its reflection a contribution
to phenomenology, and in the argumentative style of its thought a con
tribution to communicative action theory. It is as well a contribution to
the dialogue between continental philosophy/phenomenology and the
author's Chinese culture. This book enriches the Analecta Husserliana
series in a special cross-pollinating way.
ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION:
THE ISSUE AND ITS BACKGROUND
Moral relativism has been in fashion for decades. It is not merely a
philosophical position, but also a way of life in the whole civilized world.
When somebody wandering on campus, for instance, is asked about a
specific incident, whether such and such is morally right, he or she might
give you an affirmative or a negative answer at first. But if you further
ask for a rational justification of this affirmative or negative answer,
the person will very likely say that what he or she just said was only
his or her personal opinion. Chances are that the person will go on to
psychologize the matter, offering an explanation about how he or she has
been brought up in such-and-such a cultural environment that has made
him or her view the world in a certain way. Thus, he or she might add,
"I realize that people from another cultural background may have been
taught to believe something completely different. This doesn't bother me,
though." This implies that insofar as there is a difference between what
each of us has been taught, there is nothing wrong about the fact that
we have different opinions about what is right or wrong. Indeed, to
some extent, people nowadays tend to think that being morally relativistic
is a way of being "open-minded" or "tolerant." In contrast to those
who hold blind dogmatic religious beliefs or those who worship an idol,
the relativistic people are regarded as well educated, and therefore
"enlightened. "
When Nietzsche claimed that "God is dead," he meant, among other
things, that divinity was no longer viewed in Continental Europe as the
ground for moral values. But if God is not the final source of values,
on what are values grounded? People could not but think that values
are groundless in every sense because they had not learned to make sense
of moral values without God as a legislator behind the scene of everyday
life. For them, if religious morality is groundless, morality in general will
have been invalidated once and for all. Thus these people became
nihilists. This type of nihilism has been very well phrased by the Russian
novelist Dostoevsky: "If God is dead, everything is permitted."
Nietzsche himself, however, did not think that God's "death" would
necessarily lead to an irreversible destruction of values in general. He