Freud, Hegel, Habermas, Dove, and Semiotics

A while back Ted said he was trying to understand the Habermas value-add to Freud. That was a big deal with the students/faculty at the Graduate Faculty of the New School, where I went to grad school in philosophy in 1974-75. Most of them had an ideological attitude about it. They believed symbols and signs necessarily mediate human relationships, and so human behaviour cannot be understood using the methods of the physical sciences, which formulate hypotheses and then test them thru a controlled experimental framework. Rather a rational study of human behaviour can only be based on textual interpretation of the signs and symbols that are the basis for human interaction. This of course is hermeneutics (although Habermas did not consider himself to be in this school or any other).

Hermeneutics originated as the interpretation of biblical text. Freud got it right they said with his dream interpretation theory, where he analyzed dreams as texts full of symbols and signs. But he misunderstood his own theory, thinking that all this could ultimately be explained by brain and neural chemistry: "Freud's scientisitc self-misunderstanding", they used to say. Reminds me of how Hegel would say some level of consciousness "was still to itself obscure" (awkward but cool translation from the German).

Habermas fits in here somewhere, as he says human behaviour is about language games and dreams are about unresolved language games and repression is revealed in "systematically distorted communication." In a cruel way, it was funny to hear him say this with his severe hairlip. The repression theme is obviously in line with Freud, as is "systematically": Freud claimed no slip of the tongue is an accident.

Present-day philosophers don't say they do philosophy, they say they do semiotics, often combined with philology. Umberto Eco is an example of a semioticist (?), he was a professor of semiotics for many years before he began writing novels. All mainstream philosophy since Hegel and Nietzche has been reduced to philosophy of language, with the logical positivists and on one side and the hermeneutics and semiotics folks on the other. Semiotics is a meta-discussion of meaning: i.e. what is the meaning of meaning.

Ken Dove, the philosophy professor at Yale who influenced and inspired me the most (I attended the Graduate Faculty in NYC to study under him) had as always a distinctly different view from anyone else, one that was largely based on his interpretation of Hegel. He said that linguistics cannot serve as a model for human interaction, as the domain of linguistics falls short of binding humans to agreements and creating insitututions, and cannot serve as a foundation for legal, ethical or moral behaviour. Hegel's Philosophy of Right is a logical analysis (Hegelian logic) of how legal rules are binding in a way that is ultimately inadequate and gives way to the ethical domain, which in the same manner leads to the moral domain. A "domain of language" is not even considered.

In conclusion: "We must be mindful of Hegel", Ted Zuschlag's summary of a Hegel seminar held at Wesleyan U. circa 1972.

Habermas, semiotics, Dove, Hegel

	to mgburke1
Yup, this was a great letter all right, not to mention that fabulous memory you have !! I have been attracted to semiotics. I became aware of the term after my University days, but I know I would have bee-lined to such areas of inquiry, had I been in school. There's a discipline I honor when writing software ("making things explicit", "providing both the algorithm and its meta-discussion") that probably has connections to semiotics. My social life is hitting a pleasant stride with the help of Otila and her Samoan girlfriends. These women, who come from a collectivist culture, create lively social networks, and I get to tag along! This past weekend, we ended an evening of feasting in Portland, by visiting the Portland blues scene, before we crashed in a spare bed in Portland. It was fun, and reminded me of earlier days, spending a night in NYC, escaping from Connecticut. [ ... ] On 6/21/07, mgburke1@optonline.net <mgburke1@optonline.net> wrote: Hey Ted, A while back you said you were trying to understand the Habermas value-add to Freud. That was a big deal with the students/faculty at the Graduate Faculty of the New School, most of whom had an ideological attitude about it. They'd say how symbols and signs (I forget the difference between them) mediate human relationships, and therefore human behaviour cannot be understood using the methods of the physical sciences, which formulate hypotheses and then test them thru a controlled experimental framework. Rather a rational study of human behaviour can only be based on textual interpretation of the signs and symbols that are the basis for human interaction. This of course is hermeneutics (although Habermas did not consider himself to be in this school or any other). Freud got it right they said with his dream interpretation theory, where he analyzed dreams as texts full of symbols and signs. But he misunderstood his own theory, thinking that all this could ultimately be explained by brain and neural chemistry: "Freud's scientisitc self-misunderstanding", they used to say. Reminds me of how Hegel would say some level of consciousness "was still to itself obscure". Habermas fits in here somewhere, as he says human behaviour is about language games and dreams are about unresolved language games and sexual repression is expressed in "systematically distorted communication." "Systematically" is in line with Freud, who said no action or slip of the tongue is an accident. This all reminds me of how present-day philosophers don't say they do philosophy, they say they do semiotics, often combined with philology. Umberto Eco is an example of a semioticist (?), that's what he was professor of for many years before he began writing novels. All philiosophy since Hegel and Nietzche it seems has been reeduced to philosophy of langauge, with the logical positivists and on one side and the hermeneutics and semiotics folks on the other. I thought it would be cool to study semiotics but never understood what it was. Ken Dove (you remember him ?) had as always a different view from the mainstream, and one that was based on his reading of Hegel. He said that linguistics cannot serve as a model for human interaction, as the domain of linguistics falls short of binding humans to agreements and creating insitututions. This is what the legal, ethcial and moral domains do. Hegel's Philosophy of Right was a logicical analysis of how legal rules are bindig in a way that is ultimately inadequate and gives way to the ethical domain, which in the same manner leads to the moral domain. A domain of language doesn't enter into the picture at all. - Mike "We must be mindful of Hegel", Ted Zuschlag's summary of a Hegel seminar held at Wesleyan U. circa 1972.