Freundlieb - Why Subjectivity Matters - Critical Theory and the Philosophy of the Subject

Critical Horizons 1:2 (2000)© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2000

Dieter Freundlieb

Why Subjectivity Matters: Critical Theory and thePhilosophy of the Subject

ABSTRACT

In this paper it is argued that Habermas’ critique ofGerman Idealism is misguided and that his rejection ofthe philosophy of the subject is unjustified. Critical Theoryneeds to recognise the importance of subjectivity for allsocial philosophy if its theoretical aims are to be achieved.In order to demonstrate the relevance of subjectivity toCritical Theory the essay draws on analytic philosophyof mind and on the work of Manfred Frank and DieterHenrich.

KEY WORDS: critical theory, subjectivity, intersubjectiv-ity, German Idealism, philosophy of mind

The significance of subjectivity for philoso-phy was not discovered for the first time byRen� Descartes. St. Augustine and even ear-lier Greek philosophers in the Stoic traditionhad already explored subjectivity to a certainextent. But it is widely accepted today that itwas Descartes who launched a new paradigmin philosophy, a paradigm often referred toas either the philosophy of consciousness(Bewu§tseinsphilosophie), the philosophy of the

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subject, or, as J�rgen Habermas sometimes prefers to call it, the ÔmentalistparadigmÕ. Subjectivity as a grounding principle for all philosophical systembuilding, especially for all knowledge claims, was subsequently made thefocal point by both Kant and the post-Kantian idealists Fichte and Schelling,though both Fichte and Schelling later discovered the limitations of any phi-losophy that relies entirely on the subject as ultimate ground. With HegelÕsmove from subjective to objective idealism the role of subjectivity becamemore complicated and less clear than in SchellingÕs and FichteÕs systems.1

There is no need, however, to address this difficult issue in this paper.2

With the collapse of German Idealism around the middle of the 19th century,the subsequent rise of positivism and, in the early 20th century, of analyticphilosophy, subjectivity was removed from centre stage. It had retained someof its centrality, of course, in neo-Kantianism and moved to the forefront againin HusserlÕs phenomenology. But this revival was short-lived. Soon Heideggerwas to interpret the philosophy of subjectivity as a central part of the historyof Western metaphysics, a history Heidegger wanted to overcome. Its focuson the subject was seen as a manifestation of the subjectÕs preoccupation withself-preservation (Selbsterhaltung) and self-empowerment (Selbsterm�chtigung)which prevented it from addressing the prior and ultimately more importantquestion of Being. Today it is often argued that Heidegger and the Ôlinguis-tic turnÕ have once and for all made the philosophy of the subject obsolete.Interestingly, this view is shared by two otherwise opposed contemporaryschools of thought: postmodern philosophy and Critical Theory. The oncefashionable dictum about the Ôdeath of the subjectÕ was never quite true, ofcourse, and philosophers such as Jacques Derrida always claimed to be re-configuring the subject, not abandoning it altogether. Nonetheless, in bothpostmodern philosophy and Critical Theory the subject is usually thought of as somehow ÔconstitutedÕ by language, albeit in different ways and by different mechanisms.

In spite of the strong anti-subjectivist currents that have reigned since theend of German Idealism, there are now signs that the philosophical sensi-bility is shifting. After some early attempts in the late 1960s the last twentyyears or so have seen a genuine return to the subject and to subjectivity asa focus of philosophical interest. This has occurred in at least two areas: ana-lytic philosophy of mind3 and in the work of Manfred Frank and Dieter

230 • Dieter Freundlieb

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Henrich, two major German philosophers engaged in the exploration of theconnections between German Idealism and analytic philosophy of mind.4 Inmy paper I will draw freely on their work because I believe it is of crucialimportance for the future of Critical Theory and for social philosophy in gen-eral. In fact, both Frank and Henrich have already begun to investigate someof the consequences of the return to subjectivity for Critical Theory,5 but fur-ther work needs to be done if the full implications of the new approach areto be drawn out and recognised. Before I begin to show in some detail whysubjectivity matters for Critical Theory, let me briefly indicate why analyticphilosophers have focussed on subjectivity and why they have found that itcannot be reduced to something else, either naturalistically or linguistically.

From the late 1960s a number of analytic philosophers became convinced ofthe irreducibility of subjectivity when they applied their linguistic analysisto deictic expressions such as ÔhereÕ, ÔthisÕ, and ÔnowÕ, including, in particu-lar, the personal pronoun ÔIÕ and the peculiar kind of self-reference it makespossible. It quickly became obvious that indexicals such as ÔhereÕ and ÔnowÕcan only be fully understood in relation to a first-person perspective, that is,a consciousness with regard to which something is physically or temporallyclose. Furthermore, analytic philosophers of mind such as Hector-NeriCasta�eda argued that knowledge of the self cannot be analysed in terms ofconcepts we use to refer to objects. He also maintained that reference to objectsis only possible on the basis of a previous acquaintance with ourselves inself-consciousness, a point Fichte had made more than a hundred and fiftyyears earlier.6 This knowledge by the self of itself as subject is not the re-sult of an identification but a form of direct and incorrigible awareness orknowledge. As Manfred Frank has pointed out, from the early 1980s a num-ber of analytic philosophers (for example, Gareth Evans) realised that not allphilosophical problems can be reformulated as problems of language. Severalanalytic philosophers of mind acknowledged that self-consciousness is pre-propositional and that knowledge of the self as self cannot be reduced, touse more technical terms, to either de re or de dicto attitudes.7 Rather, as DavidLewis, in spite of his materialist leanings, argued, self-consciousness must beconceived as a de se attitude.8 Self-consciousness is not knowledge of an objectand it is pre-propositional. As early as 1968, Sydney Shoemaker had main-tained that self-reference cannot proceed on the basis of the perception modelof knowledge because perception requires a subject that perceives an object.9

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And such perceptions are always fallible. But in the case of a subject beingaware of itself, observational fallibility is impossible. We can be mistaken inmany ways when we look at ourselves as persons with certain attributes, butwe cannot be mistaken about our own identity as thinking subjects. Thus inhis essay ÒPersonal Identity: A MaterialistÕs Account,Ó Shoemaker had arguedthat perceptual self-knowledge always presupposes non-perceptual acquain-tance with oneself.10

It is obvious even from this very brief sketch that the philosophy of subjec-tivity is alive and well within contemporary analytic philosophy. This is whyHabermasÕ view according to which the mentalist paradigm has become obso-lete as a consequence of the linguistic turn simply does not stand up toscrutiny. On the contrary, there are many signs that a return to subjectivityas a philosophical issue is still on the increase.11 But why did Habermas rejectwhat he calls the philosophy of the subject in the first place? For Habermas(who, it seems to me, is only now beginning to address the relevant issues)12

the philosophy of the subject is primarily associated with the metaphysicalprogram of German Idealism, though his critique is directed at virtually allits continental varieties. His critique basically focuses on two aspects. Thefirst one is his rejection of the philosophy of the subject as a foundationalistprogram. Even in very recent work he argues that the philosophy of the sub-ject is wedded to the ideal of epistemic certainty. In his 1996 essay on RichardRorty, for example, he writes:

The ideas of Òself-consciousnessÓ and ÒsubjectivityÓ imply that the know-

ing subject can disclose for itself a sphere of immediately accessible and

absolutely certain experiences if, rather than focussing directly on objects,

it turns its attention, in an indirect fashion, to its own representations of

objects. . . . The epistemic authority of the first-person perspective is sus-

tained by three paradigmatic assumptions:

Ð That we know our own mental states better than anything else;

Ð That the acquisition of knowledge proceeds essentially on the basis of the

representation of objects;

Ð And that the truth of judgements is supported by apodictic evidences.13

Now the first point to be made about HabermasÕ comment here is that in itsgenerality this characterisation of the philosophy of the subject is simply


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incorrect. The incorrigibility of self-reference does not entail that the philos-ophy of the subject is committed to the ideal of epistemic certainty. HabermasÕdescription seems to fit late 19th century positivism much better than thephilosophy of the subject. Even as a description of the admittedly founda-tionalist program of German Idealism HabermasÕ statements are very ques-tionable. In any case, in a sense Habermas is tilting at windmills here becausehis critique of German Idealism as a form of foundationalism is widelyaccepted by his critics. Philosophers like Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank,while drawing extensively on German Idealism for their own philosophy ofsubjectivity, have been arguing all along that the renewal of a philosophy ofthe subject is not necessarily linked to any foundationalism and should infact abandon any such attempt. As Frank has demonstrated in great detail,the early Romantic philosophers and writers, especially H�lderlin, FriedrichSchlegel, and Novalis, never subscribed to the foundationalist programlaunched by Fichte.14

HabermasÕ second, and in our context more important point, is that he believesthat the idealist philosophy of self-consciousness is tied to a subject-objectmodel of knowledge and that it cannot, therefore, account for the kind ofnon-objectifying knowledge the critical social sciences aim for. What Habermascalls the Ôperformative attitudeÕ, that is, the attitude of a communicating sub-ject to another subject, is non-objectifying but crucial for the entire Habermas-ian project. This is where the real differences between Habermas and hiscritics arise. Habermas thinks he can show that the whole of Kantian andpost-Kantian philosophy of the subject is caught in a certain network of con-cepts from which it cannot escape and which makes it impossible to conceiveof the performative attitude adopted by subjects oriented towards mutualunderstanding.

Habermas reiterates this critique on numerous occasions, but the followingexamples will suffice to illustrate the point. The philosophy of consciousness,he claims, is based Òon an epistemic model oriented towards the perceptionand representation of objects,Ó and it operates with a concept of the subjectthat is Òdirected towards objects and that turns itself into an object throughreflection.Ó15 Similarly, he claims that in FichteÕs philosophy subjects can onlybe conceived as Òobjects for themselvesÓ16 and that Fichte dissolves inter-subjective relations into Òsubject-object relations.Ó17 In a very recent paper he


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combines the critique of the alleged foundationalism of the mentalist para-digm with his critique of the subject-object model. He describes self-reflectionas the subjectÕs representing of its own representations of objects throughintrospection and argues that this search for the origins and conditions ofknowledge operates with a concept of truth as Òsubjective evidence or certainty.Ó18

These criticisms are rather surprising because surely Habermas is aware thateven in Kant the transcendental self is not and cannot be conceived of as anobject of knowledge since it is precisely this Ôhighest pointÕ in KantÕs archi-tectonic which makes knowledge of objects possible for a unitary subject. ButHabermas seems to assume that the philosophy of the subject is somehowwedded to the subject-object model because it just cannot say how the sub-ject itself is knowable and therefore has no other choice than to fall back onthe subject-object model. To be sure, Habermas points to a real problem herebecause it is true to say that Kant has great difficulties in trying to explain,in what he calls a Ôtranscendental deductionÕ, how we can know the subjec-tive conditions of factual knowledge. Habermas seems to assume that thephilosophy of the subject is faced with a dilemma: it is committed to a reflec-tion model of self-consciousness, that is to say, to a model according to whichthe self knows itself by turning back on itself. But this means that it looks atitself as an object, which by definition it is not, and which it could not evenrecognise as itself if it were not already acquainted with itself in some otherway before bending back on itself. Habermas claims that this dilemma onlybecame obvious in FichteÕs Wissenschaftslehre. Thus he writes: ÒIf the repre-sentation of an object is the only mode in which we can gain knowledge, aself-reflection that operates as a representation of my own representings couldnot but turn the transcendental spontaneity that escapes all objectificationinto an object.Ó19

Post-Kantian philosophers, including Fichte, tried to solve this problem bypostulating, at various points in their intellectual careers, what they calledÔintellectual intuitionÕ, that is, a non-sensory but at the same time non-conceptual access to the self by itself, that is to say, a form of knowledge thatis not a mode of representing. We will have to come back to this question ofhow the self can know itself in a moment because it is crucial for a critique


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of Habermas. But first I would like to look at one more aspect of HabermasÕcriticisms.

He argues that the philosophy of the subject is committed to an inherentlyparadoxical dualist ontology. There is the knowing subject that stands overagainst a world of objects. But at the same time the subject is itself an objectin the world. This dual position of the subject has been dealt with in twoways. Attempts have been made to either reduce it naturalistically, as hashappened in the empiricist tradition from Hume to Quine, or else it canremain in its paradoxical position as both immanent and world-transcendingas is characteristic of the idealist tradition of transcendental philosophy fromKant to the present. Habermas claims that Dieter Henrich is committed tothis second alternative, but like his idealist predecessors he is unable to solveits inherent problems.20 Habermas is obviously alerting us to a conundrumhere that has plagued transcendental philosophy from its inception. How canwe solve the problem arising from KantÕs doctrine of the two realms, therealm of the phenomenal and the realm of the noumenal that according toKant we simultaneously inhabit? According to Habermas we can only solve,or rather dissolve, the problem by switching paradigms. We need to aban-don the philosophy of the subject and move on to the linguistic paradigm.But is this the only option we have? And does it really get rid of the prob-lems we want to get rid of?

Habermas knows that reflective theories of self-consciousness are circular,but he refuses to countenance the possibility that the knowledge the self hasof itself might be a genuine form of knowledge but nonetheless escape thesubject-object model, a form of knowledge that is pre-propositional and infact the necessary epistemological basis for any further propositional knowl-edge of the self and the external world. This is precisely HenrichÕs and FrankÕspoint. Since we cannot possibly deny the fact that there is self-consciousness,and since reflection theories are inescapably circular, we must postulate abasic epistemic self-relation which is sui generis in the sense that it cannot beconceived of within the subject-object model of knowledge. This is, of course,what the German Idealists had in mind when they talked about intellectualintuition. Habermas refuses to consider the possibility of such a subjectivebasis for knowledge because he is convinced that all knowledge must be


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propositional or conceptual. He probably fears that if we abandon the ideaof the linguistic nature of all knowledge his crucial concept of communica-tive rationality is at risk of suffering serious damage. For Habermas sees ratio-nality and rational justification as reason giving, and reason giving can onlybe performed through making statements. Like Donald Davidson he thinksthat Ònothing can count as a reason for holding a belief except another belief.Ó21

And beliefs are always considered to be propositional.

This conception of reason giving is unacceptable, however, because it suffersfrom a fatal flaw: it cannot explain what the validity of those statements orbeliefs consist of which function as the ultimate premises of an argument.This is why several analytic philosophers have recently argued that state-ments expressing beliefs must be grounded in pre-propositional perceptualknowledge.22 And such knowledge always has its basis in subjective experi-ence and is therefore only accessible from a first-person perspective.23 Anappeal to publicly available linguistic entities like propositions or statementsdoes not help since their validity (or at least the recognition of their valid-ity) depends on both a unitary subject and its pre-propositional experience.Habermas has always claimed that the move from the mentalist to the lin-guistic paradigm brought with it the methodological advantage that it replacessubjective evidence with publicly available linguistic entities.24 But this hasturned out to be an illusion. The validity of statements must be recognisedby individual subjects whose judgement crucially depends on their own expe-riences. A first conclusion we can draw, then, is that subjectivity matters toCritical Theory because it shows that the epistemic validity claims that fig-ure so prominently in theoretical discourses must be anchored in the subject.What it means to make a knowledge claim and how it can be validated can-not be explicated at the level of pragmatics because any such attempt pre-supposes cognising subjects with privileged access to their own subjectivity.But let me now turn to Dieter Henrich for whom subjectivity can still func-tion as a philosophical principle as long as we avoid the foundationalismthat was once associated with this idea. Let me give you a brief outline ofhis philosophy of subjectivity.

In line with German Idealism, but without attempting to renew the idealistprogram of ultimate foundations, Henrich argues that philosophical reflec-tion needs to start from an analysis of subjectivity because a philosophically


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tenable understanding of ourselves and our place in the world, of truth andobjectivity, must first engage in an analysis of the subjective presuppositionsof knowledge. So, what he proposes is obviously a version of transcenden-tal philosophy. But while Kant had identified transcendental apperception,that is, the ÔIch denkeÕ, as the Ôhighest pointÕ in his epistemology, he had failed,according to Henrich, to analyse sufficiently the intrinsically and irreduciblycomplex structure of the knowing self-relation, even if we have to concedeKantÕs point that the epistemic self-relation cannot be fully explained theo-retically, and that our attempts at its elucidation cannot avoid getting caughtin a certain kind of circularity. Henrich claims that such an elucidation showsthe epistemic priority of the self-relation in which the subject is aware of itsidentity with itself. Its identity is in fact constituted by the irrefutable iden-tity, over time, of its ÔIÕ-thoughts (Ich-Gedanken). Henrich also points out thatin the case of ÔIÕ-thoughts thinking and being coincide, that is, the ÔIÕ existsas a thinking self. In other words, it is normally always possible that what Ithink about does not exist. But this is not possible in the case of ÔIÕ-thoughts.

Henrich also argues, following Leibniz and Kant, that our sense of what isreal in the world is in fact derived from the immediate experience of the real-ity of our own existence. This is what ultimately supports and from whichwe derive our sense of what else is real, apart from our own self. As a con-sequence, he believes that an analysis of the self-relation shows that the objec-tive world can never be conceived of as entirely independent of ÔIÕ-thoughts,that is, that we cannot refer to objects in the world except on the basis of aprior self-consciousness, a point made by Fichte but also, as Manfred Frankhas pointed out and as I mentioned earlier, by analytic philosophers of mindsuch as Hector-Neri Casta�eda.25 In this sense, our account of the world con-tains an irreducibly idealist moment. At the same time, however, our striv-ing for knowledge always goes beyond a world of objects whose basic structureis constituted by subjective conditions of knowledge. Here Henrich sides withpost-Kantians such as Schelling who likewise argued that we need to gobeyond KantÕs view that we can only know a world of phenomena.

According to Henrich, as we have just seen, an analysis of the knowing self-relation shows that ÔIÕ-thoughts imply a belief in the existence of a world ofobjects. In other words, the epistemic self-relation is inconceivable without asimultaneous relation to an already (partially) disclosed world that is not a


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mere extension of the self.26 This is the indispensably realist aspect of HenrichÕsphilosophy, a characteristic that sets it off against the radical idealism of theearly Fichte.

At the same time, as embodied subjects, we know that we are not just a sub-ject but a spatio-temporally situated person in the world and thus an objectamong all other objects in the world, even though we know that the relationbetween the subject and its bodily existence as a person is not of the samekind as the relation between the subject and external objects. But, as is thenorm in the case of external objects, we normally do not have privilegedknowledge of what we are as persons with bodies. Also, since we know our-selves as individual subjects, we know that there can be other such subjects.Subjectivity and intersubjectivity are therefore co-terminous.

Far from being self-sufficient or completely transparent to itself, the subjectis aware that it has not created itself and is dependent on a ground that sup-ports its existence. This ground, however, cannot be conceived on the basisof a materialist or purely naturalist ontology. In other words, the reality ofthe subject for the subject cannot be understood entirely as that of a mater-ial object in the world. The ground we depend upon can therefore not beconceived of as the (material) cause of our existence. An analysis of the know-ing self-relation makes us aware of the ground. But at the same time theground remains beyond our cognitive reach in the sense that while it can bethought, it cannot become an object of (objectifying) knowledge (Wissen).

An analysis of the self-relation makes us realise that we are not at home inthe world in the sense that our ÔnaturalÕ, philosophically unaided, under-standing of the world does not make available an internally consistent ontol-ogy but presents us with incompatible ontologies, especially the ontology ofsubjectivity and free agency, on the one hand, and that of things or objectsand their relations in the external world, on the other. In HenrichÕs view, thisis one of the main reasons for the need for philosophy. Once we recognisethat our situation in the world is inherently precarious and lacks clear ori-entation and full intelligibility, the need for a revisionary metaphysics (inStrawsonÕs sense) and a certain kind of speculative thinking becomes in-escapable. In a sense, what we need is a new kind of Vereinigungsphilosophie

as it was postulated by H�lderlin and the early Hegel, a philosophy that can


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unify what seem to be incompatible ontologies and the conflicting tenden-cies of life they give rise to.

According to Henrich, all philosophy which rightfully bears this name arisesfrom and, once developed, should reconnect with existential questions anduncertainties that emerge from the incompatibilities of the ontologies we areconfronted with in our ÔnaturalÕ understanding of the world. By doing this,philosophy should be able to give our lives guidance and orientation, thoughwithout imposing any particular doctrine upon us. And while conflicting butequally legitimate orientations and tendencies arise unavoidably from withinour natural understandings of the relation between the self and the world,it is the task of philosophy to attempt to reconcile or at least come to a finalassessment of the conflicts that arise from within Ôconscious lifeÕ (bewu§tes

Leben), that is, a life led by and in accordance with (regulative) ideas in aKantian sense. Historically, the major religions of the world have offered suchexistential orientation, but they have always given priority to only one of theconflicting tendencies and are therefore inherently unstable. A naturalisticscientific worldview, on the other hand, cannot make the whole of realityintelligible either. An all-encompassing naturalism such as the one underly-ing most of analytic philosophy (paradigmatically manifest in the work ofQuine) must be taken seriously, but it cannot possibly give a complete accountof the world (especially not of naturalism itself as an explanatory approachto the world). Only philosophy, if anything, will enable us to analyse andassess the conflicting tendencies and to give an account of how that whichnaturalism leaves out of consideration can be accommodated within a morecomprehensive understanding.

What is required then, according to Henrich, is a philosophy which is monis-tic in its ontology and guided by the neo-Platonic idea of the Ôhen kai panÕ,that is, the notion that the diversity and multiplicity of the world ultimatelyderives from an all-encompassing unity of which everything is and remainsa part. Only such a monistic ontology would allow us to see ourselves asactually belonging to and having a meaningful place within the world. Andhe sees the enduring achievement and contemporary relevance of GermanIdealism in its attempt to develop new conceptual frameworks (Begriffsformen)and a monistic ontology that could make our precarious and intellectuallypuzzling place in the world intelligible. As in the case of German Idealism,


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a contemporary version of such a philosophy has to be metaphysical in thesense that it needs to develop a speculative form of thinking which tran-scends and unites existing but incompatible ontologies.

Now let me return to Habermas and Critical Theory. As we have seen,Habermas assumes that the problems of the philosophy of the subject can beavoided by moving from the mentalist to the linguistic paradigm. But if whatboth analytic philosophers of mind and Frank and Henrich are saying hasany validity, HabermasÕ paradigm shift is neither justified nor does it solvethe problems it is intended to solve. For a start, Critical Theory, unlike somepostmodern conceptions of the subject, needs an autonomous subject qua

social agent. But there is no systematic account in HabermasÕ work of sucha subject because for Habermas the subject is a product of social interaction.When he tries to explain the constitution of the subject, intersubjectivity takespriority over subjectivity. He believes subjectivity to be the result of a pro-cess of a communicative exchange with other persons. But this is gettingthings the wrong way around. His attempt to analyse the emergence of self-consciousness and the subject on the basis of George Herbert MeadÕs theoryof social interaction cannot succeed, even if MeadÕs theory is refined in theway Habermas suggests it must be. As Frank has shown, such attempts alwayspresuppose the notion of a subject that is already familiar with itself beforeit can understand and adopt the perspective of a co-subject with whom itinteracts through communication.27 Just as the subject cannot identify itselfby looking at its image in a mirror unless it already knows itself as an iden-tical subject, the subject cannot first learn that it is a subject by being approachedby another subject. Subjectivity is not reducible to the effect of a commu-nicative exchange with others. The development of a personal identity in the social-psychological sense of this term is of course very much dependenton our interaction with others. But this development can only proceed onthe basis of a sense of identity that cannot be learned from being exposed toothers. This also means that the Ôperformative attitudeÕ which Habermasbelieves he can somehow deduce from an analysis of basic presuppositionsof speech acts is ultimately explicable only from within the philosophy of thesubject that Habermas rejects. Only a subject standing in the kind of know-ing self-relation that Henrich has been trying to elucidate is capable of adopt-ing a performative attitude. That it is being addressed as a subject, is again,


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not something the subject can learn by listening to the speech acts performedby others, even if they are directed at him or herself.

In a similar way it can be argued that subjectivity matters in the field ofethics, including the discourse ethics developed by Critical Theorists. Thesubject knows itself as an agent who can act on the basis of freely acceptednorms. It cannot conceive of itself as a mere object in a material world gov-erned by natural laws. The basic principles of HabermasÕ discourse ethics,which again he claims can be rationally reconstructed from the presupposi-tions of communication, would be unintelligible to a subject that does notalready understand itself as free and therefore acting within a space of normsand reasons, not the space of natural laws. In this sense Kant was right whenhe talked about a Ôfact of reasonÕ that is not open to any further explanation.In fact, one could argue that both our sense of what is real and our sense ofwhat ought to be are part of a basic self-understanding that makes factualand normative knowledge possible. They are conditions of possibility andhence not reducible to a result of social learning.

The notion of the recognition of and by other subjects that plays such a pro-minent role in HabermasÕ (and Axel HonnethÕs) social philosophy is then alsoonly intelligible if it is anchored in a theory of the subject, that is, a subjectthat is both capable and in need of recognition. What needs to be recognisedis a subject of a certain kind. And if recognition is to be ethically meaning-ful, it must be of a subject that knows itself as not entirely socially consti-tuted but also as not entirely self-created.

This becomes clearer once we take some of HenrichÕs further considerationsinto account. As we have seen, Henrich argues that the subject is faced witha fundamental uncertainty about its origin as well as an uncertainty abouthow it can make its own position in the world intelligible given that it encoun-ters several incompatible ontologies. The Ôknowing self-relationÕ (wissende

Selbstbeziehung) as Henrich calls it opens up different and equally valid pos-sibilities of leading a meaningful life. And the irreducible self-reflexivity ofthe subject allows the subject, at least in principle, to distance itself from anyconceivable self-interpretation. The formation of a personal identity, whichof course, always proceeds within the context of an ongoing interaction withothers, must be seen as both self- and other-directed. Even more importantly


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perhaps, the subject which has to lead its life and which therefore needs toarrive at a reasonably stable self-interpretation, even if much of its life mightbe taken up with trying to arrive at such a self-interpretation, will not be ableto do so if it sees itself as no more than a social agent. It will want to knowhow it can conceive of itself as occupying a meaningful place not just in itssocial environment but as a human being in a cosmological environment ofwhich it will always have a very limited understanding. It is in this sense,too, that subjectivity matters to social philosophy.

Social philosophy must incorporate a philosophy of the subject that conceivesof the subject as much more than a social being. If Critical Theory requires astandard by which it evaluates the chances for self-realisation that a socialorder offers its members, then that standard must take into account the factthat subjects are in need of existential orientation. This does not mean, asHabermas often fears, that philosophy should take on the role religion onceplayed and impose its own conception of the good life on the rest of the com-munity. Rather, it means that philosophy must elucidate options for self-realisation and self-interpretation that would not otherwise be available. Social philosophy cannot pretend to be neutral in this regard anyway becauseit will always operate with a certain conception of the subject, whether thisis made explicit or not. And whatever the open or underlying conceptionmight be that it fosters, its conception will inescapably have an effect on theself-interpretation of subjects. For how we think about ourselves is in partwhat we are or what we are in the process of becoming. Self-interpretationsdo not leave the subject unchanged. This is another important reason whysubjectivity matters.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Critical Theory cannot rightfully ignoreconceptions of the good life and concentrate instead on procedural and uni-versal conceptions of morality or justice. Axel Honneth, for example, hasargued that what is needed is at least a formal notion of a post-traditionalethics ( formale Sittlichkeit).28 But if Henrich is right, it would seem to followthat we even require a return to a certain kind of (non-foundational) meta-physical thinking in philosophy, a philosophy that clarifies the options avail-able to a subject seeking answers to significant and unsettling existentialquestions. These options can only be developed if we overcome the incompat-ible ontologies that prevent us from constructing a coherent self-interpretation.


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Perhaps we must look out not just for pathologies of the social but for patholo-gies of social philosophies. Habermas regards the differentiation of reasoninto different domain-specific rationalities as a cognitive gain of modernity.But he does not offer a plausible way in which a higher, reunified reason canadjudicate between competing rationalities. Henrich is not in a position toprovide any easy solution to this problem either. But it must be acknowl-edged that he has seen the problem with great clarity. In a rather bold move,he even hints that we may not be able to make much progress unless werethink the idealist notion of the Absolute as a grounding concept for an over-arching monistic ontology.29 Whatever we might think of this move - and sofar it remains undeveloped in HenrichÕs work - it seems to point in the rightdirection. Habermas has not been able to avoid the problem of incompatibleontologies built into his own conceptual framework. And his commitment towhat he calls the postmetaphysical role of contemporary philosophy preventshim, it seems, from even addressing the issue.

There is at least one thing the history of philosophy has taught us. ProblemsdonÕt go away by being ignored. Subjectivity and the question of how it fitsinto a unifying view of the world is one of the problem areas of philosophyand human understanding, including social philosophy, that cannot be keptat bay for too much longer. This is especially true of Critical Theory sincewithout addressing these problems it cannot do what it has always aimed todo: provide a normative standard by which society is to be judged.

* Dieter Freundlieb, School of Humanities, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, Australia

Notes

1 See the ground-breaking work of Klaus D�sing, Das Problem der Subjektivit�t in

Hegels Logik, Bonn, Bouvier, 1995. See also the earlier piece by Konrad Cramer,

ÒÔErlebnis.Õ Thesen zu Hegels Theorie des Selbstbewu§tseins mit R�cksicht of

die Aporien eines Grundbegriffs nachhegelscher Philosophie,Ó Hegel-Studien, Beiheft

11, 1974, pp. 537-603.2 As is well known, Habermas claims that in spite of a promising initial move by

Hegel to overcome the mentalist paradigm, he never managed to leave it behind.

The most recent occasion on which Habermas makes this claim is his essay ÒFrom

Kant to Hegel and Back again - The Move Towards Detranscendentalization,Ó

European Journal of Philosopy 7, 1999, pp. 129-157.


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3 The main figures here are Hector-Neri Casta�eda, Roderick M. Chisholm, Gareth

Evans, Thomas Nagel, John Perry, and Sydney Shoemaker. See also the volume

entitled Analytische Theorien des Selbstbewu§tseins, ed. Manfred Frank, Frankfurt

am Main, Suhrkamp, 1994.4 Henrich is best known for his path-breaking historical analyses of German Idealist

philosophy. But he has also produced important systematic work and work that

is both historical and systematic. Frank is known in the Anglo-American world

for his critique of poststructuralism but he is now also recognised as a world

authority on the philosophy of early German Romanticism.5 See Manfred Frank ÒWider den apriorischen Intersubjektivismus. Gegenvorschl�ge

aus Sartrescher Inspiration,Ó in Micha Brumlik & Hauke Brunkhorst, hg., Gemeinschaft

und Gerechtigkeit, Frankfurt am Main, Fischer Verlag, 1993, pp. 273-289, ÒSubjektivit�t

und Intersubjektivit�tÓ in Frank, Selbstbewu§tsein und Selbsterkenntnis, Stuttgart,

Reclam, 1991, pp. 410-477, and ÒSelbstbewu§tsein und ArgumentationÓ Amster-

damer Spinoza-Vortr�ge, July, 1995, Assen, Van Gorkum, 1997. Dieter Henrich has

openly criticised Habermas in his ÒWas ist Metaphysik - was Moderne? Zw�lf

Thesen gegen HabermasÓ in Henrich, Konzepte, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp,

1987, pp. 11-43.6 Casta�eda, Ò ÔHeÕ: A Study in the Logic of Self-Consciousness,Ó Ratio 8, 1966, pp.

130-157; and ÒSelf-Consciousness, Demonstrative Reference, and the Self-Ascription

View of Believing,Ó in ed. James E. Tomberlin, Philosophical Perspective 1 Metaphysics,

Atascadero, Ridgeview, 1987, pp. 405-454.7 ÒVorwort,Ó Analytische Theorien des Selbstbewu§tseins, p. 21.8 See his ÒAttitudes de dicto and de seÓ in Lewis, Philosophical Papers, Oxford, Oxford

University Press, 1983, vol. I, pp. 133-159.9 ÒSelf-Reference and Self-AwarenessÓ reprinted in Shoemaker, Identity, Cause, and

Mind: Philosophical Essays, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 6-18.10 In Shoemaker and Richard Swinburne, Personal Identity, Oxford, 1984, p. 104.11 D. Henrich has recently diagnosed the current situation in his essay ÒInflation in

Subjektivit�t?,Ó Merkur 586, 1998, pp. 46-54.12 Frank, personal communication.13 J. Habermas, ÒRortyÕs pragmatische Wende,Ó Deutsche Zeitschrift f�r Philosophie 5,

1996 (my translation).14 M. Frank, Unendliche Ann�herung. Die Anf�nge der philosophischen Fr�hromantik,

Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1997.15 ÒDie Philosophie als Platzhalter und Interpret,Ó in Moralbewu§tsein und kommu-

nikatives Handeln, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1983, p. 17.16 J. Habermas, Nachmetaphysisches Denken, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1988,

p. 199.


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17 Ibid., p. 200.18 ÒFrom Kant to Hegel and Back Again - The Move Towards Detranscendentalization,Ó

European Journal of Philosopy 7, 1999, p. 131.19 Ibid., p. 132.20 See Habermas, Nachmetaphysisches Denken, p. 27.21 D. Davidson, ÒA Coherence Theory of Truth and KnowledgeÓ in Truth and

Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, hg. von Ernest

LePore, Oxford, Blackwell 1986, p. 310.22 For example William Alston and Laurence BonJour. See William Alston, ÒPerceptual

Knowledge,Ó in The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, eds John Greco and Ernest

Sosa, Oxford, Blackwell, 1999, pp. 223-242, and Laurence BonJour ÒThe Dialectic

of Foundationalism and Coherentism,Ó pp. 117-142 in the same volume.23 This has serious consequences for HabermasÕ consensus theory of truth.24 For example in the recent essay by J�rgen Habermas, ÒRichtigkeit vs. Wahrheit.

Zum Sinn der Sollgeltung moralischer Urteile und Normen,Ó Deutsche Zeitschrift

f�r Philosophie 46, 1998, p. 189.25 M. Frank, ÒPsychische Vertrautheit und epistemische Selbstzuschreibung,Ó in

Denken der Individualit�t. Festschrift f�r Josef Simon, eds Thomas S. Hoffmann and

Stefan Majetschak, Berlin & New York, de Gruyter, 1995, p. 74.26 In his analysis of SchellingÕs Die Weltalter, Wolfram Hogrebe argues that reference

to objects in the world is only possible on the basis of a Ôpre-semanticÕ cognitive

relation between self and world. I take this to be a similar point to HenrichÕs

argument. See Hogrebe, Pr�dikation und Genesis, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp,

1989.27 See for example Frank, ÒSubjektivit�t und Intersubjektivit�tÓ in Frank Selbstbewu§tsein

und Selbsterkenntnis, pp. 410-477. See also Frank, ÒDie Wiederkehr des Subjekts in

der heutigen deutschen PhilosophieÓ in Frank, Conditio moderna, Leipzig, Reclam,

1993, pp. 115-6.28 A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1994.29 D. Henrich, ÒDie Zukunft der Subjektivit�t,Ó p. 9, Internet http://www.geocities.

com/Athens/Forum/7501/ph/dh/e4.html.


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Freundlieb - Why Subjectivity Matters - Critical Theory and the Philosophy of the Subject