This is turning out to be a good thread after all:
Bryan Alexander Department of English
email: bnalexan@xxxxxxxxx University of Michigan
phone: (313) 764-0418 Ann Arbor, MI USA 48103
fax: (313) 763-3128
http://www.umich.edu/~bnalexan
On Tue, 12 Mar 1996, jln wrote:
> Sam,
>
> I don't think there is a question about whether people should read
> Habermas. I think they should. He has some very interesting and
> insightful ideas. For example, I find his explanation of the colonization
> of the lifeworld very powerful in explaining just what is goin on. The
> lifeworld, our world of menaning, is being debunked of its
> "meaning-giving" power b the forces of (bad) rationalization. Meaning is
> taken away by the use of money and bureacracy which is not concerned with
> meaning but only with action. This harkens back to my comments about the
> early Frankfurt School in that they hold that architectonic structures like
> Kant's system are devoid of any substantial goals- that is goals of meaning
> and freedom.
I can't see any way Habermas adds to the work of Horkheimer and esp.
Adorno on this. They took on the administered world decades before H.
>...
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