The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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I ought never to forget that the whole apparatus I learned to use as a result of my study of Habermas and Apel is precisely that: an apparatus for saying technically, and, I hope, more precisely, what I had previously said in other less technical, more generally accessible, if also less precise, terminology.

Thus in earlier writings, I operated simply with the distinction between what merely appears (or, alternatively, is said) to be the case and what really is the case. Correspondingly, I distinguished between "(reflective) understanding" and "(fully) reflective understanding," as well as between "rationalization," as the process of giving reasons for positions already taken, and "critical reflection," as the process of determining in a reasoned way whether positions already taken are, in fact, worth taking.

So far as I can see, there is nothing I have to say that I still couldn't say—clearly and coherently—simply in terms of these fairly obvious distinctions. But, then, I do not have to talk in terms of "validity claims," "redeeming or validating" such claims, and so on. Or, at any rate, I do not need to talk in such terms in order to convey the main burden of what I have to say. And in some contexts, clearly, speaking in these other more technical terms is apt to do more harm than good.

31 May 2000

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