Universal
Injuries Need Not Wound Internal Values
A Response to Wysman
Jordan Bartol
In his recent article, Internal
Injuries: Some Further
Concerns with Intercultural and Transhistorical Critique,
Colin Wysman
provides a response to my (2008) article, Is Internal
Critique Possible?.
In his article, Wysman offers a very complex and robust account of the
failure
of Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition. Wysman ultimately
supports my
assertion – that Honneth’s theory fails to provide a universal ground
for moral
criticism – while arguing that the route by which I arrived at my
conclusion
was unnecessarily complicated. In what follows, I will
provide a brief
recapitulation of my argument and expand on how I take my position to
be
situated relative to Wysman’s argument. Doing so will
necessarily require an
explication of the difference between my assertion that Honneth must
provide a
universal ground for criticism – as opposed to a culturally relative
ground –
and Wysman’s insistence that Honneth provide an internal form of
critique
rather than an external one. I will conclude with what I
believe to be a very
dense philosophical and meta-ethical question raised by this exchange
about the
relationship between internal moral critique and the universal grounds
for
moral critique.
In
my original piece (Bartol,
2008), I explained that Honneth was forced to rely on a theory of moral
progress when attempting to adjudicate between competing tokens of
recognitive
norms.
In these instances, Honneth (2002) asserts, we must rely on the
presumption of
moral progress to determine which of a set of competing and conflicting
moral
norms are antecedent and which are the latter. It is Wysman’s
contention that
by appealing to diachronically prior norms, Honneth’s theory
necessarily
fails. Wysman is correct in noting that this is an important
departure from my
critique of Honneth. In my 2008 article, I asserted that we
must illustrate
the problems with the application of Honneth’s
notion of moral progress
before concluding that the theory fails. For Wysman, however,
the fact that
Honneth appeals to moral progress at all is
grounds for dismissal
because the historically prior norms to which we appeal when using a
theory of
moral progress are external to the lifeworld in question.
Wysman
was able to arrive at the
conclusion that my approach to finding flaw with Honneth’s theory was
redundant
precisely because his criteria for the success of a moral theory are
different
from mine. This difference is present implicitly in Wysman’s
article but I
will here attempt to make it somewhat more clear.
In
the section of his paper
entitled, “Forms of Social Critique”, Wysman provides the reader with a
brief
explanation of internal critique. In one of many points of
convergence between
our two positions, Wysman’s explanation of internal critique is roughly
congruent with what I refered to as the efficacy of Recognition Theory
in the
section of my paper entitled, “The Intersubjective Construction of
Norms”.
This does not mean, however, that Wysman and I hold Recognition Theory
to the
same yardstick. Though he has not stated this explicitly, I
take Wysman to be
asserting that Honneth’s theory – and perhaps any
moral framework – will
be deemed a successful universal and universally efficacious theory if
and only
if it can meet the criterion of both strong internal/reconstructive
critique and
provide a universal ground for moral criticism. It
is at this point where
the interstice between my position and Wysman’s position begins to
become visible.
As
Wysman rightly surmises,
internal critique is extremely valuable. Internal critiques
lay bare the
implicit and explicit norms of a given lifeworld and demonstrate
incongruence
between these norms and the action, decision, or belief being
criticised. This
process lends a degree of rhetorical power lost when we attempt to
affect
change using norms external to the lifeworld within which we are
working. This
distinction between internal and external critique is often used
interchangeably with the distinction between universal and contingent
(or
culturally relative) grounds for criticism. It is my
contention that the
universal/contingent distinction is not the same
as the
internal/external distinction. Becoming more clear on this
difference will shed
some light on the reason for the differences between Wysman’s approach
and my
own.
When
we are attempting an internal
critique, we begin by identifying values (either implicitly or
explicitly held)
within a given lifeworld. We then utilize those values in our
critique by
demonstrating the way(s) in which they are being violated.
Now we must concede
that it is at least logically possible to identify a value that is held
–
either implicitly or explicitly – in all lifeworlds;
this would be a
universal value and thus a universal ground for critique. Attempts
to
locate such universal values often begin by looking into values
inherent in
human life as these are necessarily universally held by all human
beings.
Regardless, any value that is identified and proclaimed as a universal
value
must also be valued at least implicitly in every extant
lifeworld. For
such a value would hardly be universal were it not valued universally.
The
studious reader might have
noticed, however, that earlier I referred only to the universal grounds
for
a critique, not a universal value. Such
grounds might be a universal
value – as Honneth asserts recognition to be – but need not take the
form of a
value at all. A universal ground for criticism might be in a
universal human
action or a universally articulated feature of human social
organization.
Although, as stated earlier, an appeal to implicit values is necessary
for a
maximally effectual criticism, I would like to assert that it need not
be those
internal values that are the universal element of the critique.
I
thus disagree with Wysman’s
reasons for rejecting Honneth’s theory. For Wysman, the
appearance of external
values in Honneth’s method of critique was sufficient grounds for
repudiation
since no value can be both external and universal. While it
is certainly true
that no external value can be grounds for universal
critique, it might
still be the case that a universal critique might have a valid
(non-value
based) ground while relying on both internal and external
values. This
assertion is not something I have here the space to explore fully, but
it is an
assertion the validity of which I do not believe either Wysman or I
have
sufficiently ruled out. In an attempt to make this assertion
somewhat clearer,
I will conclude with a brief and preliminary sketch of what I believe a
universally grounded critique relying on values both internal and
external
may look like.
In
the section of his paper
entitled, “Historical Moral Progress as an External Evaluative
Principle”, Wysman
commented on Honneth’s reliance on the concept of a ‘surplus of
value’.
According to this concept, all lifeworlds contain the implicit
conviction that,
“no matter how closely … a [lifeworld] conforms to its implicit norms,
it
always ought to be presupposed that a higher moral reality is
achievable”
(Wysman, 2009). Wysman rejects Honneth’s reliance on this
concept, asserting
that by “using a non-existent and hypothetical future reality as the
yardstick
for normative judgement … Honneth would appear to be appealing to
external
values.” (Wysman, 2009). While Wysman is correct in his
assertion that said
values would be external and thus non-universal values, he might be
wrong to
conclude that this prevents Honneth’s (or any) moral theory from being
universalizable.
While I still assert that Honneth’s theory is not,
as formulated,
grounds for universal moral criticism, the concept of the ‘surplus of
value’
might provide for us a model of a universal criticism that relies on
both
internal and external values.
If
we accept provisionally
Honneth’s assertion that the surplus of value is present in all
lifeworlds, we
can begin to see a possible formulation of the type of universal moral
theory I
have in mind. The values to which such a surplus of value
might point are
certainly external to the lifeworld in which the surplus is to be
found. I
believe Wysman provides sufficient proof of this claim.
Nonetheless, a
critique based on the surplus of value claim would involve appeals to
values
both internal and external while being grounded in a universally
articulated
characteristic of human social organization (the surplus of
value). First,
such a critique would maintain the rhetorical efficacy of an internal
critique
by exposing the implicit norms of the lifeworld. Second, the
critique would
involve an articulation of the external norms of the previous or future
lifeworld in order to expose the current norms as either primary or
secondary
(depending on the purpose of the critique) to the external
norms. Finally,
said critique could be grounded universally in the universal experience
of the
surplus of value.
As
a matter of clarification, I do
not necessarily endorse the aforementioned framework for moral
criticism.
Rather, I am using it to explore the possibility of a theory that is
universally applicable while still using external values. As
it stands, the
above theory is too underdeveloped to either endorse or
reject. What I hope to
have provided is the beginnings of an investigation into the problem of
universal
moral criticism and its relation to internal and external
values. I am
thrilled that Wysman’s response has afforded me the opportunity to
bring some
of these important issues to the surface. As expected, I
leave this exchange
with more questions than I when I entered – but I relish the
opportunity to
address more fully some of the questions that I have today left
unanswered.
University of Windsor
Windsor, Ontario, Canada
About the Author
Bibliography
Bartol, Jordan.
(2008)
Is Intercultural
Critique Possible? An Examination of
Recognition Theory. Lyceum, 10(1),
55-67.
Honneth, A. (2002) Grounding
Recognition: A Rejoinder to
Critical Questions Inquiry, 45, 499-519.
Wysman, Colin (2009) Internal
Injuries: Some Further
Concerns with Intercultural and Transhistorical Critique. Lyceum,
10(2).