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 The Teaching Arm of St Francis Community                      

STATE  OF  THE  WORLD  FORUM

CULTURE  AND  PERCEPTION
– public culture becomes personal

Lindsay  Mell

State  of  The  World  Forum
Occasional  Paper  2006/3

ACADEMY OF THE WORD
September  2006

‘Give me life, give me love, give me peace on earth … 

Give me hope, help me cope, with this heavy load

Trying so hard to reach you, with heart and soul.’ 

–  George Harrison

Dedicated  to  Stacey

Among the most resonant images which informs how we proceed with our lives in the context of ‘what appears to be’ is the reality of a quest, often realised in an all-pervasive universal sense. 

Often this sense of a continuous perpetual quest is experienced as a life journey, through which all the distinctive threads of whatever constitutes our being are interpreted in the broad context of universal significance.  

As participants in the life journey, as people collectively and personally, our tendency is to locate and pursue particular aspirations in this life context exploratively, often through an abundant sense of adventure. 

What is inimitably palpable throughout such experience is that this broad phenomenon of a pervasive quest implies the endeavour and/or initiative to seek out what seems evident in this.  This phenomenon and implied relationship could be considered most resonant of the famous maxim – ‘seek and you shall find’. 

Realised in this context, to ‘seek’ through such a ‘quest’ implies the sense of something which is already there to be ‘found’.  Therefore, the sense of something already provided which forms the purpose of such a quest and/or journey is thereby implied through these formative elements. 

Further, what is thence implied through this situation is the interaction of complementary elements which basically constitute what is ‘given’, or providential, in this context. 

Therefore, it is through Hans-Georg Gadamer’s affirmation of the formative place and significance of what can be interpreted as ‘given’ in any particular context that the significance of what can be construed as providential from this aspect becomes apparent. 

Hence Gadamer’s concern to elucidate the primary place of authenticity in the context of what essentially constitutes reality.  Gadamer further interposes what could be potentially configured as ‘a [reality] game’, or virtual reality, in this context, or the aspect of mutual interaction as a form of ‘play’. 

It remains mandatory for ‘good will’ to provide the basis or foundation for any form of ‘moral responsibility’ in this, and thence ‘context of moral justification’, following Anthony Giddens.  

Faith, as a form of reason, could thence be validly invoked to substantiate, continuity and tradition, along with perception and perspective. 

Resonance and relevance characterise the quality of what is brought forward into being and experience through this providential aspect and its endemic nature.  This is how significance acquires substance.  Thereby through the ‘internal connections’ whereby ‘life interprets itself’, as Gadamer puts this, the continuity of reason acquires resonance, imaginatively and intuitively, through the elements of authenticity, purpose and perspective. 

All these integrative elements culminate through a ‘harmony’ of perspective and understanding for Gadamer.  Correspondingly, ‘phenomena’ require ‘interpretation’.  ‘Trust’ is such a phenomenon, which reaches us innately through reality, for Gadamer, therefore constituting a form of providential experience derived intuitively, from my perspective. 

Yet, just as ‘all performance is interpretation’ for Gadamer, our attitude(s) substantially influences this as we interact and engage in ‘the world’, notably through interpretation and conversation, and/or language. 

Consequently, ‘moral order’ is vital in this as we engage in a ‘context of moral justification’, which ‘stays indeterminate’ while our nature is represented in this through ‘coherent clusters of traits’, following the work of Rom Harre and 
Luc van Langenhove.  Our identity and nature could well thence be posited as ‘the content of our character’ from this perspective, as Martin Luther King pronounced famously. 

Accordingly, it is vital for ‘personal’ and ‘social identity’ to be regarded from multivariate dimensions and myriad perspectives, thence to mediate ambiguity and ambivalence through incremental discernment, thereby to expand awareness and realisation. 

‘Images and metaphors’ become clearly vital in the ‘unfolding narrative’ which constitutes life and experience, and thence substantiates awareness and perception.  Thus cultural, social and personal dimensions are blended into the life context.  Thereby, the form of ‘psychological symbiosis’ effectively interpreted by Floyd Allport (1955) as perceptual ‘balance’ and ‘cyclical’ synthesis, may feasibly proceed from an intuitive perspective. 

Through this ‘messy’ between time of ‘transition’ between millenniums we face the prospect of invoking either ‘legislative’ or ‘interactive’ principles, or some synthesis of these, as our communal reference base, as Seyla Benhabib recognises, following Martin Buber. 

‘Endowment’ and ‘disposition’ are vital providential elements of personal attributes and qualities, as Benhabib reveals.  While the ‘qualities of civic friendship and solidarity’ and ‘the standpoint of the other’, cited by Benhabib, serve to substantiate the prospect of broad collective mutual awareness. 

Moreover, ‘the perspective of the margins’ Benhabib cites provides the pretext for bringing forward the distinctive contributions of each person through the ‘web of stories’ which constitute ‘the right and the good, justice and the good life’, which corresponds to Alfred North Whitehead’s theme:  ‘to live, to live well, and thence to live better’. 

So what ‘concept of reason’ is pertinent and resonant for us to invoke in this quest? 

It is in the context of this enquiry I here present extensive and now broadened commentary/ discussion of the material brought forward for my University of Western Sydney Honours Masters Thesis Research, as derived from the United Nations Association of Australia – NSW Division Community Project research participant interview respondents for my thesis. 

Moreover, I have here extensively presented substantially broadened commentary/ discussion of my literature review material for this thesis, based on my original material, submitted to my supervisor, Dr Hilary Byrne-Armstrong, in September 2003.   

Accordingly, further editorial work I then carried out on this material with my later supervisor, Dr Deborah Horsfall, also appears here in its now substantially expanded form.   

Ideas, intuition and imagination

It could be envisaged Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutic approach to interpretation and analysis was tested when he sought to apply this approach to meaning generated through sign and symbol in his 1981 ‘encounter’ with Jacques Derrida.  

The Derrida paradigm culminated in the application of ‘deconstruction’ as a technique in meaning analysis, now predominantly associated with the so-called phenomenon of ‘post-modernism’. 

What emerged from my considered discernment of these respective paradigms was that the broad phenomenon of paradox could be construed to intervene in this context as characteristic of the entrenched espoused modalities evident, expounded by Gadamer and Derrida respectively. 

My perspective that the respective theoretical tenets involved fell short of being either mutually interactive and/or mutually exclusive seems to feed into the reality that a form of blended phenomenon of paradox is really implied through this situation whereby elements of either dimension could be accommodated in the whole to establish the existence of common ground. 

As Gadamer sought to develop perspectives based on understanding and appreciation, the mutuality this implied for me epitomised the sense of resonance which derived from appreciation discerned from a ‘felt’ interpretation.  Such discernment and/or interpretation would be the essence of what is intuited and/or imagined for me.  This would be a process whereby an idea or ideal proceeds to form into image, and thence to perceived and/or actual reality. 

Whereas understanding derives from reason, which remains an essential element of ideas, intuition and imagination, just as it permeates understanding.  

Intuition and imagination are also sustained as much through faith, which in itself is a form of reason, as Chesterton revealed.  Correspondingly, faith is grounded in purpose and is sustained through this, following Whitehead. 

However, in this context it can be truly posited that reason can be cited as ‘speculative’, as Whitehead maintains.  Such a form of reason would be as evident an aspect of understanding as appreciation. 

Moreover, my perspective of appreciation implies that greater awareness, rather than understanding, is consistent with such attributes as intuition, imagination and speculative reason being much more infused with greater extensive deeper qualities of awareness.      

My position on the hermeneutics and deconstruction duality, as the parameters of this condition were broadly stated in the Introduction to Dialogue and Deconstruction (Michelfelder and Palmer 1989), was that hermeneutics and deconstruction were different paradigms of method and interpretation. 

This was because deconstruction depended on the signage of language as its key interpretive criterion, whereas hermeneutics was derived from extensive ‘antecedents’ (Gadamer) over centuries of metaphysical theory, with a somewhat emphatic purpose of possibly establishing truth, and certainly authenticity (1).  So I didn’t believe there was enough ‘common ground’ for these paradigms to be analysed such as to presume they could engender mutually interactive dialogue.

Moreover, somewhat paradoxically, because these were such divergent paradigms and perspectives, neither did I consider it was possible to presume they were ‘mutually exclusive’.  This followed from the perspective that some common ‘ground’ was at least crucial to theoretical constructs being considered as dualities, or opposites.  However, I considered such common ground was not evident enough in this instance. 

Gadamer’s challenge and problem, evident from the outset of his Text and Interpretation from my perspective, was that he seemed to seek some form of mutuality in the notions of ‘understanding’ and ‘appreciation’ (22ff).  
This was not possible because ‘understanding’ was a state achievable through comprehensive analysis, derived through the attributes of mind and human faculties, such as reason.  Whereas, ‘appreciation’ presupposed a substantially felt regard for the other person or item.  This culminated in an emphatic resonance, which could not be simply incorporated in formal notions of knowledge, in my view. 
Other interpretations dissent from this, of course.  
However, my acute sense was that ‘appreciation’ actually required much more of a deep sense awareness from a person than understanding.  
Whereas this reality was clearly acknowledged in the tenor of Gadamer’s position stated in Text and Interpretation. 

Appreciation would be more closely associated with ‘risking prejudices’, which might be a consequence of appreciation, rather than understanding (26), in my view.  
Moreover, Gadamer considered ‘ironic discourse’ to be much more ‘communicative’ of ‘meaning’ than ‘straightforward and unambiguous’ discourse.  Whereas irony was actually often highly disruptive to communication and meaning in that the pretext which supported such discourse was often obscure.  This could culminate in suspicion and lack of trust in the receiver … and sometimes even in the communicator if the message was not received as intended!
However, where Gadamer raised the ‘temporal’ and clearly contextual aspects of discourse presentation (47ff), I considered he was justified in interposing these as perhaps problematic in deconstructive analysis.  Any aspect considered mandatory to analysis, context and teleology, along with continuity and ontology, may as well not exist if it is omitted from analysis, or not accepted as essentially relevant.  Meanwhile it was through consideration and interpretation of context that aspects of research could be deemed relevant. 
Yet, I considered Gadamer laboured his privileged ‘unity of meaning’ as a requirement in hermeneutic analysis.  While I recognised the clear continuity in the theme of metaphysical analysis which Gadamer interpreted through his chosen antecedents, the case through which he advocated such unitarian meaning was subjective, in my view.  This was because I considered there was ample room in the historical teleology of these antecedents for dissenting interpretations, as explored later in this research.  

‘Risking prejudices’ would connote a sustained relatively open aspect, such that authentic interaction and sharing would proceed accordingly.  
Correspondingly, irony may prove to be more permeated with broad perspectives and dimensions of meaning because of its complex cryptic aspect.  
This could operate to frustrate open veracity and clarity in communication, even while it encourages the disclosure of greater substantial detail through the scope and pertinence of the discourse established. 
The point to be realized in this is whether deconstructive analysis as a method can be broad enough to accommodate the intricate details and contingencies of contextual considerations.  Relevance is required to appropriate all these diverse and anomalous facets of interpretive analysis. 

Continuity of metaphysical and hermeneutic analysis may be incorporated into the basic ‘unity of meaning’ Gadamer infers as the catalyst for interpretive analysis.  However, as a more pervasive generalized phenomenon, such unity can be more broadly perceived as a harmony or blended synthesis through which many diverse elements could contribute to a universal tapestry of distinctive contributions.  
Whereas, it seemed to me Derrida was not obtuse in his response to Gadamer, although his questions and the substance of his challenge were perhaps tersely stated.  However, actually he seemed to respect Gadamer in observing that the consensual ‘good will’ sought by Gadamer in this encounter ‘… is the point where ethics begins for any community of speakers’ (52).  
However, Derrida was justified in asking how a ‘pyschoanalytic hermeneutics’ would assist a ‘general hermeneutics’, and how this would ‘enlarge the context of interpretation’ (53).
Derrida advanced the pertinent observation that ‘understanding one another’ was in some substantial sense all about ‘understanding the other’ (53). 
It is unclear to me why Gadamer could not ‘understand’ Derrida’s response, or why he sought to impute various intentions and motives to this response. 
Thence Derrida, in Interpreting Signatures took up the place of ‘the sign’ in discourse, deconstructing the name of ‘Nietzsche’ in the context of this discussion.  Presumably, he sought to situate Nietzsche in the historical context of metaphysics through his analysis. 

The point about the dynamic of ‘the game’ being potentially ‘over-played’ is that the game is a narrative which basically constitutes and therefore epitomizes reality.  This narrative thence comprises the definitional agent which comes to form reality and its aspect over time.  Effectively, it constitutes the reality through which we are each and all collectively forming what ontologically becomes reality for us. 
Therefore, the phenomenon of ‘over-playing’ effectively serves to launch reality into an extraneous dimension from that which we would envisage for it.  
While Gadamer’s observation that ‘All playing is being played’ reveals pertinently the whole somewhat synthetic nature of game as reality. 
It is difficult and complex to locate ‘feelings’ in this perspective, for the sharing and expression of feelings requires an aspect of authenticity and equanimity not realizable through such a ‘life-game’ approach. 

Meanwhile, Gadamer pertinently realizes the actual confluence of purpose implied in the narrative of reality in which he coexists with Derrida, and which they respectively seek to discern, despite their apparent differences.  
Their ‘difference’ is their ‘identity’, and their ‘deferred thought’ through lack of suitable expression is the reality of their situation relative to ‘thought’. 
Hence what Gadamer reveals is that there is no necessary incompatibility of their respective threads, themes and streams of analysis in this.  Therefore, it is not necessary for these substantial facets of their endeavours, all of which can be cited as basic elements of the pervasive aspect of reality in which we all exist, to be considered as mutually exclusive, and thereby consequently polarized. 

Through his commentary on all this, Fred Dallmyr observed pertinently that hermeneutic analysis had become focussed on meaning and significance as the contemporary ‘turn’ in the hermeneutic paradigm (75ff).
Dallmyr presented a comprehensive review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method, particularly dealing with the aspect of ‘play’ (79) as presented in this work.  Through this aspect of play Dallmyr highlighted the risk of ‘over-playing’.  
The prospect of the experience of play actually serving to ‘prevail against us’ linked and resonated with my perspective of irony being so complex it ultimately tended to confuse clarity, eventually culminating in lack of trust.
As Gadamer proposed, quoted by Dallmayr:  ‘All playing is being played.’ (88)
Gadamer wasn’t confident of a place for ‘feelings’ in this perspective.  
‘Absolute discontinuity, that is, the disintegration of the unity of the aesthetic object into a multiplicity of experiences, is the necessary consequence of an aesthetics of feeling (90).’ Dalmyr quotes Gadamer. 
There is a clear sense in which Gadamer does recognise the confusion inherent in language … And also ‘… the possibility of overcoming confusion (106) …  
‘For language is a conversation (106) …   
‘One must look for the word that can reach another person (106) …  
‘And it is possible for one to find it; one can even learn the language of the other person.  One can cross over into the language of the other in order to reach the other.  All this is possible for language as language,’ Gadamer observed in Destruction and Deconstruction (106).

Moreover, Gadamer clearly recognised Derrida’s contribution in all this, from his perspective.  ‘Like Heidegger, Derrida immerses himself in the mysterious multiplicity lodged in a word and in the diversity of its meanings, in the indeterminate potential of its differentiations and meaning … In some way, Derrida appears to be on the track of those traces that are to be found only in the act of reading,’ Gadamer writes. (112) 
‘So I think that in a certain sense Derrida has pursued a path extending from Heidegger’s thought very much like my own.  But it seems to me that his path is marked by an ontologically unclarified dependence on the semantic starting point involved in his view of language.  The unavoidability of the hermeneutic standpoint is the theme of confrontation with Derrida … Difference exists within identity.  Otherwise, identity would not be identity.  Thought contains deferral and distance.  Otherwise, thought would not be thought,’ Gadamer proclaimed in Hermeneutics and Logocentrism (125). 

Any notion of the Gadamer/Derrida encounter being intended as an adversarial dialogue was offset by Philippe Forget, who arranged their meeting in 1981.  
In Argument(s), Forget noted the event was to be an ‘exchange’, rather than a ‘debate’ (129-130). 
It is revealing to consider how Forget extends the line of discourse analysis potentially implicit in one of the key foundation issues framed by Derrida in response to Gadamer. 
‘For this examination, we will adopt an angel that is the reverse of Derrida’s.  ‘What would good will mean in psychoanalysis?  Or even just in a discourse that follows the lines of psychoanalysis?’ … Instead, we will ask:  ‘How does a discourse which assumes a non-voluntaristic idea of ‘good will’ as a precondition of understanding understand ‘psychoanalysis?’ ‘ (134) 
Forget seemed to explore the potential implications of given lines of research analysis.  Through this quest it seemed he sought to tease out potential parameters through which he might arrive at the optimal focus for research in the context of the Gadamer/Derrida encounter and its theoretical consequences. 
The intended ‘apprehension of unity’ implicit in Gadamer’s position, posed ‘the question of prejudices’, Forget maintained (135).  
Hence: ‘Gadamer’s reasoning rests on a particular concept of truth, truth as the adequation of the individual to what is said and what is said to the individual, and so also on a particular concept of coherence’ all of which Forget considered to be ‘prejudice transmitted by the authority of tradition’ (140).  

Dialogue in the context of trust and tradition

Meanwhile, Manfred Frank in Limits of the Human Control of Language, posited two predominant currents in dialogue – ‘neo-structuralism and hermeneutics’ – each suspicious of the other.  Although Frank maintained it would be ‘going too far’ to position these as in ‘enmity’ (150). 
Frank regarded the main current in contemporary philosophical linguistics as ‘a gradual displacement of th[e] romantic experience’ (154). 
This process of analytical linguistic development through the context of hermeneutics represented a perpetual renewal in conversation. 
‘The meaning of a sign or an expression is separated from itself by every new use; it is dis-placed (160) … Conversation and literature only flow in a certain warm temperature, like a river:  this warmth allows exchange and the new arrangements of signs.  Conversations are always transformations of other and earlier conversations, just as signs are always new articulations of other and earlier signs (161).’ 

Unity is potentially prejudicial in that it implies a given orientation which can impair diversity.  This is why Whitehead’s ‘speculative reason’ grounded in ‘purpose’ can be so difficult to discern and establish.  This becomes the basis of the form of ‘coherence’ Chesterton sought when he realized what Forget describes as ‘the authority of tradition’. 
Such specific structural parameters, particularly when associated with a correspondingly stipulative function, will clearly culminate in what would be deemed a form of prejudice.  However, to establish any form of discernible and/or perceptible ‘truth’ will consequently require coherence around specific and/or established principles, as Santayana observed. 
Thence, as Frank states, a dichotomy of structure and hermeneutics seems to intervene in this context, while he admits it is aberrant to position these as an inherently polarized configuration. 
Whereas, however, if ‘the narrative experience’ is to be ‘displaced’ through this interpretation, then what is to be there as an alternative to accommodate feeling, intuition, resonance, and all such essentially spontaneous forms of realization and expression which are not basically structural in nature and aspect. 

‘Conversation’ provides the fluidity and blended equilibrium through which these facets can become integrated and ‘coherent’, as Frank appreciates.  However, such conversation needs to be formed and applied in this respect.

As Gadamer observed, conversation requires perpetual modification and amendment to be truly resonant, fluid, and thence authentic.  
Sensitivity to feeling, and appreciation of this dimension, requires greater awareness and realization of perception than conformity to mere pragmatic analysis.  This is why structural/ functional parameters, such as are in general perpetuated through language, are often relatively impervious to coherent analysis, even though they enable a form of coherence and continuity.  
Hence inherent consistent continuity as an ontological phenomenon, realized through the perpetuity of form and purpose as posited by Santayana and Whitehead, is essential to the corresponding perpetuity of tradition and cultural antecedents, as proposed by Chesterton, for instance. 
  
Accordingly, this very process implied an inevitable consequence expressed by Josef Simon in Good Will to Understand and Will to Power:  ‘to expose oneself and to risk oneself’ (164).
For Gadamer, communication assisted rather than hindered the individual, for ‘… it is an opportunity to correct one’s own understanding through that which is to be understood’ (165).  ‘In conversation one always retains, in contrast to one’s encounter with a written text, the opportunity, in case of objection, to clarify or defend what was meant.’ (165) 
However, wherever a certain form of ‘understanding’ was directly linked to language and written text, such a pragmatic perspective implied an ‘understanding’ distanced from the sense of ‘appreciation’ advanced earlier by Gadamer.  This perspective of appreciation seemed to imply some form of feeling with, or sensitivity to, the other in the context of their perspective.  
Such a dimension could not be accessed through purely pragmatic parameters. 
There was a pragmatic duality of positioning which emerged here, epitomised through the tension of the claim that ‘… certainly not everything is understandable but … it is a matter of understanding at least something about matter or a person … Position is saying that in understanding as such lies the impossibility of being able to understand the other without a prior concept, which, in the view of Counterposition, simply means the impossibility of being able to understand the other at all in its being as other’ (174). 

Inherent in Gadamer’s position, as considered by James Risser in The Two Faces of Socrates: Gadamer/Derrida was the initiative to extend analysis beyond ‘sign’ expressed through the position that:  ‘ ‘Writing is more than a mere repetition in print of something spoken’ ([TI 39/34]180) … 
‘A performative dimension is at work in every interpretation (181) … 
‘It is in the context of this performative dimension of textual interpretation that Gadamer emphasises how both partners in a conversation must have a good will to try to understand one another’ (181). 
Essentially, ‘… by focussing on good will, Derrida thinks he has focussed on the structure that governs the totality of the phenomenon of understanding’ (184).  Hence Derrida attributed the ‘vigilance of intervention’ to Gadamer as constituting his basic position: ‘… Repression enters the system in the form of exclusion, and exclusion is precisely what occurs when one seeks unity rather than difference.  The community sought must be a community of difference’ (184). 
Yet, paradoxically, Risser submitted that ‘any reference to community is a reference to unity’ (184).  So, ‘Can intervention remain outside the community?’ (184) 
For Gadamer:  ‘Understanding is always a form of dialogue, a coming to agreement within a structure of openness.’ (185) 
However, openness requires trust.  
Trust is an elusive quality, dissolved readily, either more or less, through the evocation of pseudo-unity based on compromise and/or compliance as much as through an evocation of difference.  Hence some other dynamic would be required to sustain trust. 
‘We need to see that here too there is a preparation for a form of community (185) …   
‘In the conversation that we are, the community would not give way to difference, but rather within the difference seek unity.  For Gadamer the ideal of democracy is that there are common opinions, that the other is possibly right.‘ (185) 
This ultimately seemed preparatory ground for Gadamer’s position on the prospect of personal transcendence, expressed by Charles Shepherdson in Imagine Understanding …:  ‘… effective historical consciousness is so radically finite that our whole being, achieved in the totality of our destiny, inevitably transcends its knowledge of itself’ ([WM xx/xxii] 188). 

Hence Gadamer’s project, substantially stated, seems to be ‘… to develop … a concept of knowledge and truth that corresponds to the whole of our hermeneutic experience’ ([WM xxvi/xiii] 188).

The reality is that antecedents are required to establish any cohesive and/or coherent position based on ‘prior concept’, while clearly a tension with a perceptive case of ‘the other’ also obviates the inherent aspect of paradox emergent in this context.  For each mode of realization coexists with the other in this tension. 
However, the ‘performative dimension’ of ‘interpretation’ provides something of the substance of relevance and resonance in that it enables the expression through which awareness of and sensitivity to feeling and phenomena can be channeled and appropriated accordingly.  Santayana described this as a form through which being was ‘canalised’ into reality, which can be realized as an aesthetic phenomenon.  Hence the ‘romantic experience’ can be realized authentically. 
Consequently, the imperative to focus on community as a form which allows difference to resonate in a holistic context becomes evident.  
However, Derrida is justified in his emphasis of Gadamer’s invocation of the veracity of ‘good will’ in this from my perspective, as this is the element through which the moral dimension is broached.  If any form of moral responsibility and/or mutual maturity is to be advanced and perpetuated then this element of ‘good will’ must be fostered and consolidated.  Only through such support of the moral/ ethical substance of experiential reality could the Giddens continuum of agency implied in moral responsibility and a context of moral justification be perpetuated. 
Throughout all these contingencies, Gadamer’s observation of ‘understanding’ as ‘a coming to agreement within a structure of openness’ (185) substantiates the importance of intuition, spontaneity and autonomy in this, as expressed through Whitehead’s principle of ‘speculative reason’. 
Clearly, it is vital for ‘difference’ to remain mediated through this process, otherwise extremity prevails.  The concern here is the form which is to substantiate this process.  Gadamer cites the aspect of destiny as primary in this, which thereby enables the element of purpose to be sustained.  
However, this is not a form of destiny which remains fixed in an entrenched dimensionality.  This preferred dimensionality would be based on expansive ‘knowledge’, which implies continuous expansive awareness and perception.   

Accordingly, Donald Marshall in Dialogue and Ecriture described Gadamer as accepting ‘the core obligation of hermeneutics’ when Gadamer stated:  ‘Openness to the other … includes the acknowledgement that I must accept as valid some things that are against myself, even though there is no one else who asks this of me’ ([WM 343/324] 207).
Marshall regarded ‘the two paths hermeneutics and deconstruction’ to be ‘the paths of dialogue and writing’ (207). 
Derrida became distant from Gadamer theoretically ‘… in the suspicion that in understanding and mutual agreement … hermeneutics confirms the continuity of the understanding consciousness at the price of ceding to the otherness of the other,’ Marshall maintained (211). 
Similarly, Marshall cited Blanchot in this context:  
‘… Blanchot speaks the language of transcendence.  To find the necessity of writing, the writer must withdraw from the world, not into another world, but into the other of world’ (212). 
So as to come to terms with any of the foregoing challenges to the (inter)personal realm of existential being and experience, the person concerned required a certain aspect of trust to broach an unfamiliar different reality and experience.  Also vital in this was the assurance that the source from which those concerned derived such trust retained continuous reliable veracity. 
When Marshall cites ‘hermeneutics and deconstruction’ as somewhat equivalent to ‘dialogue and writing’ respectively, what can be construed from this is that hermeneutics can be considered the epitome of experience.  This could be represented as the life process through which people effectively dialogue with the realm of being and those associated with them in this realm, whereby each person establishes and affirms their identity and/or identities. 
Whereas ‘writing’ epitomizes mutual identity and or identities, culminating in a cumulative process whereby all this experience is then defined and/or refined.  Generally, writing as the epitome of any form of dialogue, is presented as whatever is elaborated from the dialogue which precedes it.  This basic process can be regarded as the epitome of ‘deconstruction’, only that it can also imply reconstruction. 
So, for such ‘writing’ to proceed, it is customary, although perhaps not mandatory, for the person to remain aside privately to write, in a somewhat private situation, to thereby carry out optimally this form of deconstruction, and perhaps reconstruction, just as Seneca cited such technique as optimal and important is establishing self-knowledge and care of the self, as invoked by Michel Foucault. 

‘Understanding begins … when something addresses us … in its own separate validity’ ([WM 283/266] 220).  Richard Shusterman in The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter wrote that Gadamer invoked the persistence of tradition, which Shusterman challenged:  ‘… Gadamer perhaps could better emphasise that the unity of tradition in which we live is far from complete and never guaranteed.  Tradition is more a motley patchwork of diverse practices and divergent language-games that we continuously have to struggle to consolidate and hold together, rather than Gadamer’s unified and all-embracing ‘great tapestry which supports us’ securely …’ (219) 
However, inveighing against the quality of tradition as a resonant pattern was not a sufficient argument to discredit this reality.  If, indeed, tradition did exist as a generic thread of continuity then perhaps we ought to rather consider this quality through its optimal beneficent potential. 
Certainly, as Shusterman noted: ‘Gadamer’s insistence on unity and the authority of tradition encounters Derrida’s polarised insistence on discontinuity, free play, and the repudiation of unity as an unwarranted ‘axiomatic structure of metaphysics’ (221).’ 

Meanwhile, John D. Caputo seemed to conduct something of a campaign to expose what he considered to be Gadamer’s Closet Essentialism in his article under this title.
‘Having a tradition is primarily a matter of trusting it, of letting it have sway so that it can deliver on its promises,’ Caputo wrote (258).
Caputo astutely realised the place of trust in the context of tradition, as this prevailed from my perspective.  However, what Caputo assumed to be ‘tradition’, in and of itself, could not act as if it were human in an independent autonomous way, as a perceived entity.  The agency of human intention emanating from actual individuals, situated and positioned variously, would form the basis of this ‘trust’ initiative, from my perspective. 
Moreover, there seemed to be a constrained reluctance to realise, accept and appreciate the complexity of human existence from Caputo. 
‘Foundationalism thinks that you can actually lay out rigorous theoretical foundations for knowledge and action, that you can really get into a transcendental standpoint.  Traditionalism thinks that while there are indeed foundations, they inhabit the marrow of our historical bone, the interstices of our beliefs and practices, and hence are too deep-seated to be laid hold of theoretically or raised to the level of objectification by a transcendental subject (259) … 

‘Gadamer claims that our foundations lie deeper than we can say, that we are primordially rooted in our tradition before foundationalist questions appear on the scene,’ Caputo wrote (259). 
Yet Caputo provided little of any substance to actually refute the theoretical position allegedly espoused by Gadamer.  His critique (if this is what it is) seemed rather to be based on exposing Gadamer for taking such a position. 
Personally, I consider Gadamer’s alleged foundationalist perspective, along with the traditionalist perspective as presented here, to be quite legitimate and viable given the complexity of what would be the threads and patterns of our traditions, along with the complex intricate socio-cultural historical contexts of these.  
The very reality and humanity of memory would be presumably enough to raise sufficient awareness of this. 
So what would be Gadamer’s contribution, then?  
‘What Gadamer offers is a theory of deep truth or deep essence – where the function of the ‘deep’ metaphor is twofold: 1) it sees to it that the essence is deep enough to forbid definitive formulations or final, canonical versions – the only canon is the longevity and vitality of the tradition itself, and 2) it insures that beneath the multiplicity of historical formulations and multiple applications there rests an underlying, undying truth, deeper than we can say, too rich to be exhausted by a single try, too deep to be tapped in a single draft, but always keeping watch over the multiplicity of forms, seeing to it that they do not get out of hand,’ Caputo  stated (260). 
Apart from the obvious insinuation of human initiative, such a notion of tradition appeared quite credible and plausible to me, even most resonant with my own previously stated perspectives of historical continuity, aside from what may be construed as pertinent to the morality of such reality.
Perhaps, if any form of absolute truth were to exist, it may not be a reality able to be confirmed through analytical investigation, or even comprehensively deciphered through human faculties.  
Finally, in short, a stark brief location of positions from Caputo:  
‘If Gadamer is interested in how the metaphysical tradition passes along its stored-up treasures, Derrida is on the look-out for the police state that inevitably accompanies theories of infinite wealth.’ (264) 

     
The perspective Caputo advances of tradition as a ‘matter of trust’ seems to me to be closer to an authentic sense of how these elements can suitably interact. 

However, it would seem Caputo would be better advised to adopt ‘faith’ as his reference base in this, and thereby invoke the interaction of faith in tradition which may then become the foundation of trust.  Yet whether or not trust may prevail in this would be an open prospect, as trust is essentially intuitive and spontaneous from my perspective. 

Nevertheless, the link ascribed by Chesterton to the interaction of faith and reason through which he cites tradition retains its relevance, and hence resonance, would be consistent with this perspective of faith as a precursor to trust, which may then substantiate tradition.  This would then further constitute a form of substantiation of Santayana’s perspective of the ‘Life of Reason’ affirmed through emphatic faith in the socio-cultural milieu and its elaboration in any given human context, as the pretext for a successive ontology of experience thenceforth. 

Yet Gadamer’s formulation of what Caputo considers to be ‘deep essence’ constitutes a more resonant touchstone in all this, whereby the deeper substance and resonance of the situation pertinent to each individual can be established and affirmed as a vital ontological thread and synthesis for continuity.  

This really basically epitomises what the Deep Friendship series, as established and cultivated through the UNAA Community Project, is broadly about, and which characterises the emphatic quest for identity, significance, relevance and resonance pertinent to life among people as they relate and interact in their respective life-worlds. 

While relativity clearly pervades this context, Santayana, Chesterton and Whitehead respectively all reveal how this quest remains infused with vital moral principles and precepts.  These foregoing theorists have raised their own distinctive contributions to this moral/ ethical context.  Through this means they are thereby effectively fulfilling the Giddens pretext of agency as realised through moral responsibility, and thence the context of moral justification thereby implied. 

However, it is important to recognise they are each thereby purveying their particular distinctive contributions to this context.  Moreover, while there is ‘an underlying, undying truth’ in this, it is only through each and every distinctive ‘single draft’, as these relate to the whole, that this truth can be realised.  

While, to be optimally realised, thorough synchronicity and synergy among these elements is required.   

Situations and moral positions

Rom Harre and Luc van Langenhove define position in ‘the new theoretical developments’ in psychology as based on ‘ever-shifting patterns of mutual and contestable rights and obligations’ which blend to form ‘moral order’ in Positioning Theory (1999: 1).  ‘Rights and obligations’, along with ‘moral order’ are indicative of the structural inference of the theoretical context of ‘social constructionism’.  Thus structure forms around the elements through which construction proceeds.  However ‘ever-shifting patterns’ of rights and obligations seems at odds with the stability usually associated with the terms ‘structure’ and ‘order’. 

Yet, if ‘positions are relational’ (1), then this implies a continuous flow of influence around positions and situations – effectively a state of flux, which is what I would maintain characterises social and communal development.  

This is far from a gravitation around ‘internal lines of coherence’ (2) and renders too rigid the claim that people are generally either ‘positioned as powerful’ or else ‘must be positioned as powerless’ (2).  Actually, the reality would be positions which devolve around relative dynamics whereby these positions are relatively ‘powerful and powerless’, depending on the given situation and perspective, and on how these elements are considered. 

It would be more pertinent to consider positions as either more or less influential, rather than necessarily powerful or not, from this perspective.  Therefore, I would maintain the perspective of ‘situation’ is more reflective of ‘diversity’ and the presumed ‘ephemeral conditions’ of ‘social life’.  Actually, the presumption that any conditions could be discerned ultimately as ephemeral may be considered a questionable notion. 

Consequently, opinions which postulate any given position as either ‘correct/ incorrect, proper/ improper’ (2) are certainly ‘normative’ in their signification of moral positions and standards.  Yet, such normative positioning may not necessarily constitute a form of ‘constraint’ but rather would become an influence on ‘intention’ and behaviour. 

What also would emerge from such a relational situation is that the person and/or ‘self’ is not necessarily the focus or locus of all reality and being.  

There are myriad external influences all relatively involved here.  

So that it would be waywardly simplistic to claim that ‘the criminal insight’ (3) in this is that ‘… the only thing inside people’s heads are their brains’ (30), because it is not possible to categorically postulate from where influences such as intuition, spontaneity, even often insight, really emanate. 

Harre and Langenhove already postulate that ‘private thought’ in the context of ‘psychological phenomena’ (4) is as vital as public discourse or conversation.  Thus already another influence is evident that cannot be defined as an inherently structural or ‘constructionist’ influence … For specific derivation of ‘thought’ is vague and often implicit, therefore not specifically verifiable categorically, although evident, and therefore tangible in some sense.  Moreover, there may be other orientations and preoccupations among people away from the social realm, such as through the influence of personal ritual, dreams or metaphysical being, which cannot be plausibly codified. 

Meanwhile, ‘relative moral standing’ (4) may not be the quintessential influence for people as their ‘storylines … unfold’ in the social context.  They may be influenced through a deeper form of realisation which pertains to their sense of place as they aspire to situate and position themselves authentically.  

This is rather more keenly associated with the perceived significance of their life journeys, as these acquire meaning through the relevance and resonance which is woven through life patterns, as my thesis research from this perspective  reveals. 

As journeys, as such, ‘episodes of everyday life’ (4) do not merely emerge as ‘sequence(s) of happenings … which ha[ve] some principle of unity’ (4), or as basically static structured sequences which build into a cohesive coherent positivist edifice.  Rather, these journeys are epitomised more by fluid ‘folds’ of experience (compare the work of Deleuze) which blend and morph through distinctive threads and snatches of experience, and ultimately meld into some form of relatively distinctive entity.  These elements may not be categorically definitive in any truly cohesive sense. 

Although the notion of ‘episodes’ as ‘social encounters’, which ‘are like melodies in that they come into existence sequentially’ (5), does resonate with the foregoing perspective, even though there may be no particular justification for these episodes of life to be considered as ‘structures’ (5). 

Indeed, even Harre and Langenhove admit that ‘… any episode has something which cannot be understood by referring to general rules and roles’ (6).  Meanwhile, even given the best analytical intentions ‘… there is something that stays indeterminate.  It is that something that makes it impossible to predict what will happen next in an episode.  But this does not mean that one is not able to understand episodes and interactions in detail …’ (6) 

Clearly, discursive practices (6) become vital in any form of interpersonal interaction, ‘… such as telling autobiographical stories, taking responsibility for one’s actions, expressing doubt, declaring an interest in care, decrying the lack of fairness in a situation, and so on …’ (6-7) 

Together with aspects of ‘identity’ (7), these discursive practices serve to constitute ‘self’ through ‘the continuity of one’s point of view … one’s sense of personal agency … [as] oneself acting from th[is] very same point …’ along with ‘… the selves that are publicly presented in the episodes of interpersonal interaction in the everyday world …’ (7)  These form ‘the coherent clusters of traits’ called ‘personas’ (7). 

What is implied here is a process of affirming ‘rights and obligations’ as a form of ‘moral responsibility’ to serve as the basis of a ‘context of moral justification’, as Giddens proposes.  The ‘moral order’ which Harre and Langenhove invoke basically epitomizes Giddens’ ‘context of moral justification’. 

Where I would seek amendment of this process as Giddens, Harre and Langenhove present it is to relinquish the insistence on autonomous moral agency in itself to which Giddens adheres.  Rather, my preferred perspective of what is evident would be a normative moral influence derived from the aspect of those who particularly interpret this as the basic influence which pervades intention and behaviour, with attitude as the vital constituitive element in this.  Structure and order would then be mediated through these contingencies. 

This serves to substantiate the process Whitehead envisages as ‘speculative reason’, oriented around an exploratory experience through which ‘the Art of Life’ as an ontological and existential phenomenon is realized through such relatively autonomously pervasive, and therefore influential, elements as intuition and spontaneity. 

Unless such a context prevails, then the autonomous realization and expression of paradox as a life principle, advocated and discerned by Chesterton, could not be feasibly realized.  Just as Santayana’s confluence of aesthetics and reason would remain deplete of relevance, resonance, and thence expression. 

So all this epitomizes all of that which ‘stays indeterminate’ in this respect.  

Yet the paradox is the ‘detail’ involved remains important as the means through which each respective context and/or situation can be substantiated.  Dependence on any form of specific ‘rules and roles’ in this is thereby transcended. 

Consequently, ‘coherent clusters of traits’ remain vital to substantiate the ‘personas’ implied, which characterize the distinctive (inter)personal and socio-personal interaction of each person in the everyday life-world. 

 Through ‘the singularity of selfhood’ (7) Harre and Langenhove claim then emerges, all these attributes enable us to remain ‘intact as persons if the … [elements concerned here] are organised into one coherent whole …’ (7) 

Moreover, while it is so that   ‘… Each community has its repertoire of recognisable and acceptable person-types …’ (7)  Nevertheless, every person exudes facets of identity and character which are distinctive, especially to them, in some particular ways. 

If it is so that ‘… over a period of time it becomes clear that each person has many personas, any one of which can be dominant in one’s mode of self-presentation in a particular context (7) …’ then it follows that ‘personal identity (self)’ may not proceed ‘formally’ as a ‘structural or organisational feature’ (7).  Because, as a constituted element, personal identity must therefore have actual ‘content’.  Moreover, this content can be constituted through a fluidity of diverse forms devised by each person (or self) often through such innovative personal elements as intuition and spontaneity. 

Even though ‘… each community has its repertoire of recognisable and acceptable person-types …’ (7), each individual can mould, morph, shape and craft these in whatever ways they devise as they are applied by them in diverse forms according to their respective distinctive situations, for everyone is situated differently in life.  Indeed, the very observation that ‘… there are a multiplicity of personas’ (9) supports this perspective, while these are only ‘dependent upon the social context’ (9) to the extent they are reliant on it.  Therefore, while it is evident that ‘… People present themselves, and others, as actors in a drama …’ (8).  Also,  ‘… Technically these presentations create … discursive positions’ (8).  

The difference is they are engaged in real-life situations, which engenders a sense of immediacy and agency not elemental to a drama, or any form of contrived synthetic reality, such as that which is patched together to represent reality television.    

Harre and Langenhove cite the ‘… three major themes or levels of interaction’ through which ‘the reflections’ around positioning theory are ‘organised’ as: ‘… the interpersonal level, the institutional level and the cultural level …’ (10) 

Further, I will hereby interpose a further two levels, those of the social and communal levels, or rather perspectives, which I maintain as worthy of their respective places between the institutional and cultural levels respectively.  These levels can be considered to represent a spectrum of human development which ranges from the interpersonal – with the individual and personal preceding this – through to the institutional, thence to the social, communal and cultural levels respectively.  However, I submit that these so-called ‘levels’ can be considered and viewed more pertinently as dimensions or realms of being, reality, experience and identity, rather than structural levels, as such. 

What I will postulate and seek to substantiate here is that these dimensions of human relations are evident and resonant throughout my research interviews, my analysis of these, along with the narrative and discourse material which thence emerges. 

There is a further difficulty I have with the positioning theory of Harre and Langenhove, as applied as a prospective trajectory in research in that the theory is positioned ‘outside’ the dimension or realm of human relations, and therefore effectively in an estranged mode.  This is evident through the observation that if the ‘… ongoing conversation between people can be regarded as a labyrinthine network, positioning theory offers a possibility to shift from the perspective of the ‘maze traders’ (IT), those who are within the labyrinth, to a perspective of ‘maze viewers’ (IT), those who can see the labyrinth from above’ (13). 

Through the foregoing perspectives, while it can be reasonably justified that  ‘… The concept of positioning can be seen as a dynamic alternative to the more static concept of role …’ (14), this does not serve to render positioning theory any less structural, or determinate in this sense.  And yet ‘… the social realm is all too often pictured as one in which causes are deterministic in a Humean sense …’ (14)  Harre and Langenhove position themselves ultimately as subscriptive of such a determinist perspective, in my view. 

The authors then point out that ‘… by locating social phenomena within the places and times of the natural world, the door is opened for the unnoticed transposing of properties of material things and their relations to the social realm’ (14).  

This is the essence of the anthropomorphic perspective, which can be considered inadequate.  Dimensions of reality become more variable and relative in the psychological context, as Harre and Langenhove envisage:  

‘The distinction between past, present and future does not go over neatly into psychological time, partly because the social and psychological past is not fixed.  The social future can influence the social past.  The occurrences of acts are the moments of social time.’ (15)  

Such a broad sweep of existential reality as the epitome of a life journey and/or narrative is a recurrent theme throughout the stories of The Community Project research interview respondents. 

Clearly, people manifest different versions of the same or similar experiences in life, even different versions of their own common experiences in different contexts.  Harre and Langenhove term these ‘ ‘rhetorical  redescription’ … 

The latter can be understood as the discursive construction of stories about institutions and macrosocial events that make them intelligible as societal icons ([Harre 1975] 15).’ 

A further inherent difficulty with the technique of positioning in the everyday context, where competition is so prevalent, is that there is a general tendency to duality, polarity, even contradiction, engendered through such a perspective and approach.  ‘The concepts of ‘position’ and ‘positioning’ that we want to introduce have several sources.  Among their origins is the field of marketing where positioning refers to communication strategies that allow one to ‘place’ a certain product amongst its competitors.  The usage is close to the military meaning of a ‘position’; in that sense a position is always taken against the position of the enemy …’ (16) 

It is somewhat mollifying that Harre and Langenhove basically tend to affirm the indeterminate nature of reality and experience.  ‘… It is important to stress that in our view everything in the human world is, in some measure, indeterminate (16) … positions can and do change.  Fluid positionings, not fixed roles, are used by people to cope with the situation they usually find themselves in (17) …’ 

Consequently:  ‘… A position in a conversation is a metaphorical concept through reference to which a person’s ‘moral’ position and personal attributes as a speaker are compendiously collected …’ (17) 

Therefore, as a position is so established as ‘metaphysical’, this means it is thus in its very nature relative as a perceptual phenomenon and entity.  So, actually, it may not be that ‘… the social force of an action and the position of the actor and interactors mutually determine [my emphasis] one another …’ (17), but rather more pertinently mutually influence one another. 

However, it is nevertheless patently evident that  ‘… Conversations have storylines and the positions people take in a conversation will be linked to these storylines …’ (17) 

Correspondingly:  ‘Positions may emerge naturally out of the conversational and social context.  But sometimes an initial seizure of the dominant role in a conversation will force other speakers into speaking positions they would not have occupied voluntarily … Initial positionings can be challenged and the speakers thereby repositioned …’ (18) 

The very volatility and spontaneity implied through this situation infers relativity, rather than determinacy, particularly in a positivist sense, in position and positioning, which would render any cohesive form of mutually determining interaction invalid. 

Consequently, what ultimately emerges from these considerations is the reality and nature that each person is comprised as much from the distinctive aspect of the person as from any external social and/or behavioural influences which may be applied with a view to determining (inter)personal and socio-personal development as such.  So, in this sense, it may be validly and truly posited, following Martin Luther King’s famous pronouncement, that people are clearly constituted through ‘the content of their character’. 

Yet the reality that people are not thereby engaged in some kind of continuous ‘real-life’ drama, or ‘game’ as Gadamer would have it, is obviated by the immediate reality of each of our circumstances, all of which appears through our respective forms and variants of perception as somewhat different for each of us, and which we each form, mould and shape variously according to our respective tendencies and experiential contributions. 

Therefore, if we live our lives as if we are embroiled in some form of virtual reality which we presume lacks meaning, significance, relevance and resonance for us personally and collectively, then we do so in imminent peril of losing our way in life, and perhaps thereby ostensibly losing our lives as any form of relevant real entities. 

Therefore, although Harre and Langenhove caution about being too prescriptive in applying a positioning approach which would imply deference to role, for instance, they effectively invoke such an entrenched perspective themselves through their elaboration of circumstantial positioning.  This particularly arises through their notion of ‘maze viewers’, who are presented as somewhat estranged and/or distinguished from the ‘labyrinthine network’, as if potentially elitist in aspect.  While the spectrum of human development they advance tends to be stipulatively positional and minimally elaborated as a dimensional phenomenon. 

However, the authors clearly recognize the constrained parameters which can be applied through behavioural and clinical interpretations of psychology through which the continuity of past through present and future dimensions of reality and experience is compromised as a holistic phenomenon, at variance with the more ontologically consistent perspectives of Chesterton, Whitehead and Santayana. 

Meanwhile, the phenomenon of ‘rhetorical redescription’ enables people as relatively autonomous entities to situate their distinctive contributions in a basically universal context. 

Such ‘redescription’ implies a sense of deconstruction through the application of discursive techniques and practices such as Derrida invoked.  

However, there would be correspondingly an aspect of reconstruction implied, through which this process would also be channeled into the phenomenon of a form of renewal of continuity and progression. 

The fluid positionings through which the authors explain reality and experience infer a paradoxical perspective and really epitomize a phenomenon whereby people would negotiate their sense of place through more of a situational relation, rather than positional. 

People tend to locate themselves exploratively and somewhat tentatively as an initial attitude in behavioural situations, then later further substantiate their place(s) through reference to purpose as the basis of their positioning. 

Moreover, given ‘metaphorical concept’ through which the ‘metaphysical’ aspect is so emphatic in personal and mutual relations, then this serves to affirm the perspective that ‘metaphor’ is among the most evident and palpable elements in human interaction, behaviour and communication, as Gordon Allport emphasized.  While it also serves to attest to the veracity of Giddens and Founcault’s respective affirmation of moral responsibility, along with for Giddens the primacy of a ‘context of moral justification’. 

Further, the crucial theoretical and methodological inference which thence emerges here, as Langenhove and Hare have pertinently derived, is that  ‘… This point [or juncture] raises questions in the philosophy of language, namely what counts as ‘the same word’ …’ (18), and perhaps even more imminently the similarity and/or disparity in a range of contextual definitions, all of which may apply to the same word and/or term.  Yet, astoundingly to me, the authors are prepared to just ride by this vital ground with the admission ‘… but we shall slink by this problem, relying on what we unreflectingly understand by it …’ (18) 

So this becomes something akin to what tends to be presumed as ‘common sense’ – that is, something which is assumed to apply simply because a certain party(s) assumes it is self-evident in some sporadicly miraculous or mysterious way. 

‘First and second order positioning’ (20) is amply evident throughout all the research interviews I conducted in that, even at the outset of each of these, I position myself, and am positioned, as ‘interviewer’, while those whom I question and with whom I discuss the research content are positioned and position themselves as ‘respondents’.  Sometimes there is some further intrusion or modification of this positioning, as I am also Coordinator of The Community Project. 

‘Performative and accountive positioning’ (21) also proceeded as a matter of course throughout all the research interviews in that, in each case, the interviewer and respondents discussed conversations which had already taken place in the context of The Community Project and its associated cross-agency interactions and situations, and particularly through the ‘Saturday/ Sunday Session’ project forums. 

Through ‘positioning’ as ‘a discursive practice’ a person inevitably positions others whenever they position themselves, and vice versa for the positioning established by others (22).  Further, the authors maintain  ‘… Most positioning will be of a tacit kind:  the people involved will not position themselves or others in an intentional or even conscious way …’ (22)  This, for me, constitutes further evidence that people tend to situate themselves, at least initially, in the context of their circumstances, rather than positioning themselves, as such.  

Although people can also institute ‘first-order positioning’ by imposing their position most definitively and/or emphatically as a discursive practice. 

The authors draw a direct linkage or correlation between ‘moral orders’ or ‘morality’, and ‘roles’, in a form which cites these elements as diametrically polarised to personal positioning and personal attributes (21-28), which seems to be a dubious duality interposed on the phenomena of reality, from my perspective. 

Moreover, the authors maintain that  ‘… Positioning always takes place within the context of a specific moral order of speaking.  What Jones can say to Smith about Smith is relative to Jones’ rights, duties and obligations within the moral order in which the discursive process occurs …’ (23) 

However, such ‘rights, duties and obligations’ vary in nature, inference and aspect, depending on each particular situation and the nature and character of those involved.  Because ‘… people can … be positioned in terms of their individual attributes and particularities …’ (22).  Indeed, they are necessarily so positioned, I would maintain, even though the authors differentiate these personal attributes from morality as such (22).  While the authors do advance a mediatorial perspective in this: ‘… it should be noted that these situations are merely analytical and that whenever positioning occurs, several forms of positioning are likely to be occurring simultaneously …’ (24) 

This observation effectively attests to the broad diversity and differentiation associated with any position or statement in the context of the variable situations emergent from every and any given set of circumstances. 

However, while people are summarily positioned and repositioned perpetually through the dynamics of conversation and discourse, it is neither mandatory nor necessarily optimal for them to adopt a prescriptive and/or role-based conversational or discursive position.  Although, the discursive influence inherent here can be or become an entrenched facet of the conversation which prevails. 

Nevertheless, the reality positioning can be a consequence of minimal and/or lack of intention or consciousness reveals that such discursive practice and/or conversation can be as much situational as positional, and I would maintain retains a situational aspect as its reference criterion. 

The invocation of the authors of the predominant influence of ‘moral orders … rights duties and obligations’ represents the form of influence Giddens sought to evoke through his deference to ‘moral responsibility’ in a ‘context of moral justification’.  However, the alternative interactive element in this would be the ‘individual attributes and particularities’ cited by the authors, which represent what I call the distinctive contributions of each person in the interpersonal and socio-personal contexts of reality and experience. 

Perception of personal and social identity

‘Deliberate self-positioning’ occurs whenever someone ‘wants to express his/her personal identity …’ (24), according to the authors.  ‘… Human beings must display both a personal identity [‘singularities’] … and a social identity [‘type’] … in order to appear fully as persons …’ (24) 

Meanwhile, ‘forced self-positioning’ (26) is self-positioning through which ‘the initiative’ comes from ‘somebody else’ (26), such as when someone offers ‘an excuse by way of explanation …’ (26).  Thereby those concerned are effectively compromised into such self-positioning.  A particular person can also initiate the ‘deliberate positioning of others’ (27) and/or the ‘forced positioning of others’ (27).

This may well emanate from an institutional focus or locus. ‘ ‘The most dramatic form of forced other-positioning by an institution is no doubt the criminal trial …’ (28) 

The basic gist of my concerns about the methodological implications of positioning theory are broadly addressed in the ‘Conclusion’ of this chapter from Langenhove and Harre.  The challenge here is that these concerns seem to so moderate positioning theory that the prospect for the application of its theory and methodology must surely remain constrained. 

Accordingly,  ‘… It is … important to grasp the inherently dynamic character of positioning …’ (28) Just because each person opens every conversation with a position ‘… does not and indeed could not preempt the future structure of the conversation.  Indeed, positions may modulate a conversation as it unfolds, forever retrospectively redoing the conversation that has already occurred (28-29) … We would also point out, though it ought to be obvious, that the catalogue of kinds of positions that exist here and now will not necessarily be found at other places and times …’ (29)  While, if ‘ ‘moral’ properties are locally and momentarily specified’ with ‘positions unstable’ (29), then this would tend to render ‘rights, duties and obligations’ as a consistently codifiable prospect in the context of ‘moral order’ as basically untenable.  After all, ultimately: ‘… all conversations involve some form of positioning …’ (29) 

When the authors cite ‘personal’ and ‘social identity’ as characteristic of the human entity they are thereby applying a form of duality and/or dichotomy which, while palpably plausible and/or evident, serves to configure forthwith the whole identity dimension they have formulated. 

Thence this dimensional realm will be realized in conformity with this configured and established duality, whereby circumstances and exigencies will be regarded as essentially bi-dimensional, rather than considered endemicly as multi-dimensional, or derived through myriad perspectives.  Thereby it would be difficult to consider such ensuing evolving dimensions as derived form a variety of successive situations, and thence accordingly multiple positions, not just through a certain specific configured duality. 

Moreover, whenever a situation would prevail where ‘positions’ remain ‘unstable’ (29), as the authors concede, this would remain an entrenched anathema to the application or adoption of ‘rights, duties and obligations’ (29).  

So the whole moral foundation which Giddens, along with Harre and Langenhove essentially, sought to affirm basically through recourse to their advocacy of moral responsibility in the Giddens ‘context of moral justification’ would be thereby impaired through such a rigidly configured duality/ dichotomy, surely thereby to culminate in generalized ambiguity and ambivalence. 

Therefore, justification and/or worthiness does not follow from entrenched positioning but from a gradual incremental discernment and expansion of awareness to realization through reflective insight.  As Santayana emphasized through such a holistic perspective:  ‘Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention’.  An entrenched positional standpoint, demeanour and/or attitude reveals ‘inattention’ to the intricate sensitivities and dynamics inherent in all situations.  Therefore, in such a moral context, to ‘be positioned, or do not exist’ (31) appears as an inevitable positional death-wish !!  

Yet perhaps as a so-called ‘global’ society this is what we are each and all moving inexorably towards in some sense through our progressively intransigent positioning demeanour. 

Consequently, from my perspective the broadly ‘immanentist’ positional analysis Davies and Harre seek to advance is basically flawed because it emaciates the vital place of meaning, significance, relevance and resonance of perspectives, and thereby perception, in the whole situational context evident in any given dimensional mode and/or realm. 

What seems to be minimized through such implicitly positional discourse orientation is that for a person to ‘position’ themselves in a given discursive situation, thereby to affirm the ‘determinacy’ of their place in this, does not necessarily imply they must maintain a basically mutually exclusive form of interaction. 

It is at least feasible and plausible for each and all of us as human entities to be able to explore ways through which to braid and blend our respective distinctive contributions into the whole context of life and reality.  Thereby it is then further feasible to realize reality as a consistent continuous narrative in which everyone is situated such that their initiatives and aspirations contribute promotively to this endeavour, much as Chesterton envisaged the circumstances of life. 

After all, whatever happens does actually happen ! … 

And this successive progressive process in itself engenders a form of specific reality.  It is then further implicitly plausible to affirm a common destiny – as a form of destination – in which each person can recognize their respective forms of socio-personal destiny in this context. 

This quality of essence is most resonant of Santayana’s sense of a continuity of human attributes and qualities which form the character of who we become collectively as people, and constitute the reality of each successive historical era, along with how we are each constituted and constitute ourselves in this respect. 

While ‘images and metaphors’ clearly form the basis of who we become through the ‘assumptions’ we form, it is further vital for each of us to realize the transition from idea through to ideal and image through which these images and metaphors thence substantiate our reality as we become acutely aware of this, just as I previously explored this transition as pertinently expressed through the contemporary work of Robert Sardello in the context of love and life through my            ‘State of the World’ Forum seminar paper presentation, entitled ‘Lovee in Context’. 

Later, I explored these insights further through a video discussion session with prominent Jungian analyst and psychiatrist, Dr Anne Noonan. 

The point to be emphasized here is the sequence of awareness and realization from idea (‘image’) through to ideal (‘metaphor’) and thence through to reality requires deep respect for the process through which this basic continuum proceeds, rather than just perception and recognition of the respective basic elements in themselves, formed as categories.  

Among the primary perspectives I emphasise throughout my thesis research is that it is a situational dynamic, rather than a positional one, which predominates from the outset in interpersonal and human relations, thence building into a positional dynamic, while the primary situational element is always retained.  Indeed, there is effectively something of a tacit empathy with such a perspective from Langenhove and Harre, which ultimately seems to become clouded with the ambiguity and ambivalence of deference to the centrality of a ‘positional’ emphasis in this.  This therefore engenders a clear duality and/or polarity in theoretical perspective, in my view. 

‘Clearly, persons are constantly engaged in positioning themselves and others.  The concrete forms such positioning will take differ according to the situations in which they occur.  One individual can thus undertake several varieties of positioning …’ (30) 

‘Positioning’ then tends to become the dominant paradigm, and remains resilient in its prevalence primarily, if not purely, through the advantage of its preponderence in clarity and emphasis.  Yet this does not render it any more worthy or justified.  The effect in the research field is overwhelming, however.  ‘… Every research paper can be understood as a form of tacit and intentional positioning of the authors, which includes rhetorical redescription of both the events that happened … and of publications by other authors (31) … 

‘While oral conversations always imply some reciprocal positioning, the written text is a unilateral act … the old adage ‘publish or perish’ might well be reformulated [now] as ‘be positioned, or do not exist’. (31)’  

Such a perspective in itself almost stands resolutely as an invitation to contradiction, even confrontation. 

Consequently, while Davies and Harre seek to avoid the ‘static, formal and ritualistic aspects of ‘role’ theory (32), the theoretical predominance of ‘speech-act’ and ‘context’ as predominant given sites, in itself serves to redefine yet another form of static perspective and ritual.  Therefore, rather than primary ‘subjectivity’ as ‘generated through … certain discursive practices …’ (32) it is preferable to stay with the notion of subjectivity as ‘constituted’ through these elements among other sometimes less definitive elements, and further constituted through and by itself to avert a more confrontational approach, instigated through the more ultimately potentially mono-dimensional positional variant in situational analysis.  

It is claimed that ‘position’ is substituted for ‘role’ as the basis of the ‘immanentist’ perspective adopted by Davies and Harre.  Whereas, I would maintain a broadly and potentially tight structural perspective of ‘rules’ and ‘order’ based on the primacy of conversation and expression as the former predominant perspective of ‘roles’. 

‘… We shall assume that rules are explicit formulations of the normative order which is immanent in concrete human productions, such as actual conversations between particular people on particular occasions.  These formulations are themselves a special kind of discourse having its own social purposes.  According to an immanentist point of view there are only actual conversations, past and present … It is the actual conversations which have already occurred that are the archetypes of current conversations (33) … 

‘Since ‘positioning’ is largely a conversational phenomenon we must make clear at what level of analysis speaking together is to be taken as relevant to a conversation.  We take conversation to be a form of social interaction the products of which are also social, such as interpersonal relations (33) … 

‘We will argue here that … a conversation unfolds through the joint action of all the participants as they make (or attempt to make) their own and each other’s actions socially determinate … So what it is that has been said evolves and changes as the conversation develops (34) …’ 

Such a definitive situational perspective seems to inevitably drift into an implicitly mutually exclusive and emphatically dualist overview of human development.  ‘… Discourses can compete with each other or they can create distinct and incompatible versions of reality.  To know anything is to know in terms of one or more discourses (33-34) …’ 

The determinate aspect of such situations as proposed by Davies and Harre is then clearly expounded as a rigidly preponderant imperative in all this.

‘In this sense ‘discourse’ plays a similar role in our social theory to that played by ‘conceptual scheme’ in contemporary philosophy of science.  It is that in terms of which phenomena are made relatively determinate (35) …’ 

Such a bold perspective clearly figures as a challenge to the actual derivation of subjectivity, individuality and identity as these emerge as vital in the interpersonal and/or socio-communal, cultural and political contexts. 

‘An individual emerges through the processes of social interaction, not as a relatively fixed end product but as one who is constituted and reconstituted through the various discursive practices in which they participate (35) … 

‘The psychology of personhood has been bedevilled by the ambiguity of the concept of ‘self’, a concept which has played a leading role in psychological discourses of parenthood … It is one and the same person who is variously positioned in a conversation (36) …’ 

Yet Davies and Harre admit:  ‘… Human beings are characterised both by continuous personal identity and by discontinuous personal diversity … Recognition of oneself as having the characteristics that locate oneself as a member of various sub-classes … the development of a sense of oneself as belonging in the world in certain ways and thus seeing the world from the perspective of one so positioned (36) …’ 

The ‘braided’ thread of narrative backgrounds

Then the authors state what I consider to be their real pivotal and definitive analysis in all this.  ‘… It is the fact that one person experiences themselves as contradictory that provides the dynamic for understanding (37) …’ 

This is a ‘position’ I will question throughout the thesis research presented and considered here, given the orientation of the perspectives I explore.    

‘In speaking and acting from a position people are bringing to the particular situation their history as they themselves conceive it, that is, the history of one who has been in multiple positions and engaged in different forms of discourse … There can be interactive positioning in which what one person says positions another.  And there can be reflexive positioning in which one positions oneself … One lives one’s life in terms of the kind of person one takes oneself to be, whoever or whatever might be responsible for its production (37) …’ 

Therefore, positioning is not necessarily, and perhaps is only ever broadly, infused with ‘intention’, according to the authors (37).  This is a point which will be later subject to fine-grained analysis. 

‘… People will … be taken to organise conversations so that they display two modes of organisation:  the ‘logic’ of the ostensible topic and the storylines which are embedded in fragments of the participants’ autobiographies … In telling a fragment of his or her autobiography a speaker assigns parts and characters in the episodes described, both to themselves and others, including those taking part in the conversation.  In this respect the structure of an anecdote serving as a fragment of an autobiography is no different from a fairy-tale or other work of narrative fiction …’ (38) 

Except, even such works are based on an element or thread of reality, which could be termed an essence of reality in some sense, as I would put this.  ‘… But since having been so positioned [those concerned] … may find themselves moving into the fulfilment of that storyline …’ (38) 

Positioning entails speakers proceeding through ‘images and metaphors’ which ‘assume and invoke ways of being’ (38).  Participants may not be aware of such ‘assumptions’ (38).  Various situational dynamics will intervene to influence and/or mediate or compromise the perspectives of those concerned (38) …   

‘The positions which emerge are not of ‘a linear non-contradictory autobiography’ (39).  Those positions may be perceived ‘in terms of known ‘ideas’ (actual or metaphysical) …’ (39)  Positioning can be considered validly as ‘… someone listening to or reading a story … There is the narrative … which incorporates a braided development of several storylines.  Each storyline is organised around various poles, such as characters and moral dilemmas …’ (39). 

This is most reminiscent of The Community Project experience, as it gives the sense of a whole gamut of distinctive narrative backgrounds which ultimately blend and meld together in what is much reminiscent of a ‘braided’ thread of development. 

There are a couple of exigencies proposed by the authors in this:  ‘indexical extension’, when a person presumes certain circumstances on the basis of repetitive perception of a given attribute, such as ‘powerlessness’; and ‘typification extension’ when someone presumes circumstances on the basis of their particular perception of a ‘culturally well-established cluster of attributes …’ (41), such as the role of mother.  

Davies and Harre cite ‘the classical dramaturgical model’ as the focus for ‘ ‘role’ as the determining basis of action’ (41).  

Indeed, this is the model Willem Brugman expounds in the context of the Culture Lab contributions to The Community Project, and the model broadly explored and expounded by him as the source base for Community Project research and interactivity. 
 
For Davies and Harre, as accords with my generic position ‘… lived narratives … can change direction and meaning in ways entirely surprising to the participants … If we are to come close to understanding how it is that people actually interact in everyday life we need the metaphor of an unfolding narrative, in which we are constituted in one position or another within the course of one story, or even come to stand in multiple or contradictory positions …’ (42)  However, through this admission it  is not necessary to infer that perceived divergent positions must stand as contradictory. 

Here the authors relegate the phenomenon of ‘surprise’ to the context of life narrative, along with the elements of meaning, significance and interpretation as these pertain to the narrative context.  This is a vital infusion, for it allows for facets of spontaneity and intuition to be realized and recognized as essential in the perspective of comprehensive life narrative. 

Davies and Harre are further proposing the sense of a form of consistent continuous narrative of life and reality proceeding through to perpetuity is a vital perspectival focus and/or thematic element.  The sense of ‘an unfolding narrative’ which proceeds throughout time, and through which each and all of us realize our life purpose and destiny, therefore becomes crucial to our awareness and perception of our experience as a socio-personal phenomenon, and ‘how things appear to be’ for us. 

As they form out their case for positioning theory, Davies and Harre affirm that  ‘… The closest one might come conceptually to ‘role’ in our framework is ‘subject position’ (43).’  They apply the discourse of ‘romantic love’ to explain.  

‘In everyday life, if two people are living out some version of the romantic love narrative then they will position themselves and each other in the complementary subject positions made available within the discourse of romantic love.  In other words, they will engage in the discursive practices through which romantic love is made into a lived narrative …’ (43).  

However, even within the fictional genre of literature and music, there are myriad forms of what might be a ‘romantic love narrative’.  Moreover, it can well be envisaged those concerned may not position themselves in ‘complementary subject positions’, nor may they necessarily ‘engage in the discursive practices’ customarily expected through the ‘romantic love … narrative’.  

These practices and the narrative in itself are variously configured according to whatever situation prevails.  

Although I would not comprehensively subscribe to Irving Goffman’s notion of interpersonal ‘frames’ of interaction invoked here for me his idea remains commendable, at least from a broad aspect. 

‘Frames vary in degree of organization ([Goffman 1974: 21] 43).  

‘Some are neatly presentable as a system of entities, postulates and rules; others, indeed most others, appear to have no particular articulated shape.’ (Goffman 1974:  21)  

The problem here is that the notion of ‘frame’ itself evokes a sense of structure, and therefore order, which imposes on the theory itself, much as does Langenhove and Harre’s structured predisposition through their ‘positional’ focus.  However, the notion of frame infers a redolence for me of participants basically proceeding continuously to situate themselves mostly relatively, as their preoccupation, rather than positioning themselves from the outset in a circumstantial world which seems like a static photograph of life.  

Yet, paradoxically, circumstances constantly change, rendering the consequences of any other ‘choices’ and/or ‘actions’ substantially relative and variable in the situational context. 

Consequently, it does seem customary, although basically deficient, for people to attempt to ‘make sense’ (43) of their circumstances as if these did constitute such a static, uni-dimensional kind of reality (as in the work of Herbert Marcuse), when actually what exists is a substantially more fluid form of relative situation.  This is why ‘reality television’ – a contemporary form of situational comedy with an often dramatic touch, in many ways – is so popular.  

Because it resonates so much as a cameo of how those involved actually experience real life, however ostensibly simplistic and/or romantic such a perspective may appear. 

However, the problem with such situational comedy is that it is not circumstantially equivalent to each of the respective variants of life as reality we each encounter and face progressively throughout each of our lives.  

Even though this may seem such an obvious observation it might hardly bear mentioning, unfortunately it seems it is often not palpably registered by people situated in each respective complex everyday context, who tend to gravitate to the most familiar plausible mode of life which occurs to them. 

Consequently, people are often observed to invoke the circumstances and principles advanced through contrived situational comedies as a form of referential orientation for their lives, even perhaps actually living daily as if this situation actually constituted their situation.  Thence, in a quite subtle way, they forgo something of their relative autonomy through which to realize and constitute their particular place(s) in the actual life context. 

Then when the form is applied to an actual socio-cultural personal experience, such as the phenomenon of music, and particularly popular music, this resonance experienced blends cultural, social and personal dimensions through forms which integrate with their own distinctive life experiences and narratives.  Such resonance and synchronicity of these dimensions is essential to the continuity and perpetuity of the given form(s). 

Further, the perspective that ‘… one thing may appear to be going on [while] something else is happening …’ (43) essentially serves to emphasise the paradoxical nature of contemporary daily life – along with inherent complexity and change, perhaps its most enduring evident characteristic.  

Whether simplistic or not, the famous declaration which appeared in a song by John Lennon – ‘life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans’ – has become such a resonant contemporary populist perspective.  It is a statement which exudes a deep sense of paradox.  Moreover, it seems to defy any assuredly affirmative positional standpoint or focus. 

Whereas Goffman’s sense of a ‘change of key’ as a ‘systematic transformation across materials already meaningful in accordance with a scheme of interpretation’ (43-44) gives a resonant sense of how people deal with their situations by moving their frame of focus to then situate themselves in this – for a while – until the next grand or fragile perspective, or moral change, is accessed by them and applied.  This phenomenon proceeds much as a popular song changes key in an essentially  A A B A  pattern, at times to be augmented or diminished, depending on the situation.  The form is popular because it resonates so much for people. 

Popular songs and music retain their resonance and appeal most often because these retain an intuitive synchronicity and significance in the personal context of all who appreciate these cultural icons, through their personal stories and narratives.  After all, these are the very elements which comprise our contemporary culture.  So the meanings, metaphors, messages and sentiments retained therein will relate specifically, by association, to each of our own experiences of life and reality, and will be and become directly relevant for each of us in this sense.  We therefore cannot feasibly ignore the implications of this reality, or such songs and music. 

Moreover, perception and discernment will always remain vital in the interpretation of ‘conversations’ and ‘words as utterances’ (48).  

Clearly assumptions, opinions and judgements people have of the character and personal aspect of each contributor to any conversation will palpably influence and consequently shape the way through which interpretation proceeds. 

Whatever the romantic conversation which proceeds between two lovers, if they decide to move their situational ‘frame’ sequentially from a disco or party to a country jaunt, or a downtown bar to a temple or church, it can be fairly assured the nature of their interaction will change with the ambience of the situational frame, whatever may be the nature of their conversation and/or discourse, and expression, all of which is most likely to change with the situation. 

When interviewed at the quiet tranquil bushland location of Yellow Rock for my research, for instance, for me Katherine Hassall and Willem Brugman shared much more comprehensively interpersonally in conversation than they did during the frantic Culture Clubs, or in the fragile context of the Marrickville Addison Road Centre.  While, by this time, in the interviews, they seemed to each identify an intuitive ‘change of key’ in our interaction, such that we could share more substantially. (44)  

The authors maintain that a ‘conception of positioning’ which ‘… takes for granted that alignments exist prior to speaking and shape it [at least in some sense], rather than that alignments are actual relations jointly produced in the very act of conversing … could not be in sharper contrast …’ (45)  

This seems presumptuous for me, as ‘alignments’ must at least have an influence on interpersonal relations, and therefore must ‘shape’ these in some sense. 

The authors cite certain contingencies they maintain as associated with positioning.  ‘Words as utterances do not carry determinate social meaning … The relative nature of positions not only to each other but to moral orders can make the perception of one almost impossible for the other, in the relational position, to grasp … One’s beliefs about the sorts of persons, including oneself, who are engaged in a conversation are central to how one understands what has been said … We have shown the necessity of separating our intended meanings from hearable meanings in the process of developing discursive practices …’ (48) 

Identity is then necessarily linked with narrative in a form through which contradictions ultimately manifest as predominant. 

‘Persons as speakers acquire beliefs about themselves which do not necessarily form a unified coherent whole.  They shift from one to another way of thinking about themselves as the discourse shifts and as their positions within varying storylines are taken up.  Each of these possible selves can be internally contradictory or contradictory with other possible selves, unless they are located in a story.  Since many stories can be told, even of the same event, then we each have many possible coherent selves.  But to act rationally, these contradictions we are aware of must be remedied, transcended, resolved or ignored.  While it is logically impossible to act from a formally contradictory script … most people, most of the time, wittingly or unwittingly accept that their beliefs about themselves and their environment are full of unresolved contradictions which one just lives with (49). 

‘In making choices [acting as agents] between contradictory demands there is a complex weaving together of the positions … that are available within any number of discourses … And it is true we do struggle with the diversity of experience to produce a story of ourselves which is unitary and consistent (49).  

‘If we don’t others demand of us that we do (49) … We take on … discursive practices and storylines as if they were our own and make sense of them in terms of our own particular experiences … How to do being a particular non-contradictory person within a consistent storyline is learned both through textual and lived narratives (50) …’ 

The authors proclaim an ostensible lack of coherence in the beliefs and notions people have of their respective elements of thinking, discourse and storylines.  However, the reality is these aspects are not inherently contradictory and there are many elements of coherence evident among the various respective narratives and ‘stories’ which comprise the reality of collective mutual endeavour. 

The authors themselves affirm that ‘contradictions’ must be addressed, preferably through some form of amelioration, with the prospect of such coherence as an outcome.  This would sustain the augmentation of consistency, which would enable forms of continuity and perpetuity, as advocated by Chesterton, to be fostered and consolidated. 

Thereby the ‘struggle’ with interpersonal ‘diversity’ would optimally devolve around consistency, although not always or generally grounded in a form of ‘unity’, which can culminate in a banal unified perspective.  What seems to be prevalent here is rather a ‘complex weaving’ of narratives, rather than ‘positions’, which is why the form of ‘braided’ discourse which sustains a focus oriented around what Whitehead cited as common ‘purpose’ and ‘speculative Reason’ can thrive and be retained. 

While the authors cite a close interaction in ‘perception of positions’ and ‘perceptions of storylines’, this serves to substantiate my perspective of a perpetual essence of providential perception.  However, I would question the nature of how such perception is constituted through the exigencies of position and situation.   

Psychological symbiosis and mutual cooperation

‘There is an … intimate relation between perception of the positions in which the various characters [in any story] find themselves and the perception of storylines …’ (52) in all this.      

‘In moving from the use of role to position as the central ongoing concept for analysing how it is that people do ‘being a person of a certain sort’, we move to another conception of the relation between people and their conversations … The motto ‘unitas multiplex’ captures the unity in diversity that is the characteristic quality of personal being … This way of thinking explains discontinuities in the production of personhood with reference to the fact of multiple and contradictory discursive practices and the interpretations of those practices that can be brought into being by speakers and hearers as they engage in conversations.’ (52) 

‘Unity in diversity’ is basically a paradox, for it serves to blend ostensibly contradictory notions into a complete reality through which perceptibly the common element can be considered from alternative perspectives.  

However, as the work of Iris Marion Young and Julia Kristeva reveals, contrived interpersonal ‘unity’ can be often conveniently imposed in a form which seems to subjugate and/or banalise diversity.  

Ethical perspectives and contingencies were then interposed to ‘mediate’ the assertion of ‘increasing skill’ through the affirmation of ‘rights’ as the means through which to apply skills pertinently.  Whitehead would surely concur with such a moral pretext for the ethical appropriation of skills.  

Meanwhile, ‘mediated learning’ through a context of ‘psychological symbiosis’ seems to resemble the form of perceptual ‘balance’ Floyd Allport (1955) seeks through his ‘cyclical’ synthesis of ‘how things appear to be’, as he juxtaposes intuitive, behavioural and phenomenological modes of learning. 

Here the perspective of ‘rights’ in this context becomes vital.  

‘A distinction needs to be made between what a person has the right to do in terms of positioning themselves and others, a moral capacity, and what skills or capacity the person has to utilise this right … it sometimes happens that increasing skill may not be matched by a corresponding extension of rights to exercise it …’ (53) 

This can occur when interpretive agents, elite groups or bodies for instance, intervene to determine the dynamics of interpersonal and/or socio-communal interaction.  Accordingly, Feuerstein explored the propensity for ‘mediated learning’ to foster ‘psychological symbiosis’ in this context (54). 

‘… the key criteria of mediated learning, seen as responsible for modification of … learning capacity or traits, are the ‘intentionality’ of the mediator, the ‘transcendence’ of the mediation from the immediate here-and-now situation, and the assignment of meaning by the mediator …’ (54) 

However, the trajectory the authors here advance to describe the recent contingencies associated with the psychological and philosophical streams of endeavour respectively could serve to elucidate how the evident polarity of these fields, which were implied and described by Allport in 1955, eventually proceeded, along with the substantial nature of this dichotomy. 

As philosophers have become preoccupied with ‘personal identity’, and I would add ontology and phenomenology (compare the work of Merleau-Ponty reviewed previously), they have oriented their initiatives around what is the quest for authenticity in the context of identity, form my perspective.  

Whereas psychologists have been preoccupied with the phenomena of behaviour in the context of socio-cultural structure, particularly from an institutional perspective. 

Mediated learning was positioned to transform ‘the zone of personal development’, as Vygotsky (1978) put this – or the extent of learning considered optimal.  ‘… In particular, the encouragement of reflexivity, whereby the learner learns to consider his or her own learning initiatives and responses … facilitates positive development of an autonomous and choosing self …’ (54) 

‘Mutual cooperation’ (55) is cited as vital in this context, thence affirming the place of socio-cultural and communal endeavour in the interpersonal realm.  ‘… The thesis of social constructionism, that our self-manifestations require the mutual cooperation of individuals, can be developed by attempting to elucidate some of the particular moral qualities of the interactive relationship which may enhance positive positioning (54-55).  Here, we can draw on the concept of the ‘between’, as the realm in which the ‘I’ and ‘Thou’ meet, in Buber’s terminology (1966) …’ (55) 

What Harre and Langenhove establish as the interaction of biographical study and discourse analysis then becomes a key emphasis for the authors. 

‘It seems that people have two kinds of identity (60) …   

There is the kind … traditionally studied by psychologists – social and cultural identity – what it is to be, and be seen to be, a certain kind of person.  It has been mainly philosophers who have been concerned with the other kind of identity – personal identity – or what it is to be one and the same individual through the life course …’ (60)  

However, whatever assessment is advanced of any previous situation, the current reality is that there is much cross-consideration of the fields of study among psychologists and philosophers – so the situation has clearly moved on from that described by the authors. 

The notion of ‘personhood’ is then expounded.  

‘The growth of a sense of personal identity is related in complex ways to the development of a person across his/her lifespan …There seems to be a tension between the multiplicity of selves as expressed in discursive practices and the fact that across those discursive practices a relatively stable selfhood exists as well (61) …’ 

Meanwhile, the authors cite ‘contradiction’ and ‘paradox’ as contributory to this ‘tension’.  However, they omit any evident distinction of paradox and contradiction.  ‘… Moreover, in order to make it possible for a person to understand him or herself as an historically continuous unity, (s)he will have to engage in very different – possibly contradictory – forms of biographical talk … Our analysis will show that since both personal and social identities are attributes of discourse, there is no ontological paradox in the evident existence of contradictions and multiplicities in the discourse … Since there is nothing to which the discourse of selfhood refers except itself, the paradoxical air of internal contradiction vanishes …’ (61) 

According to the authors, ‘… much of the present ambiguity of the concept of self and the related concepts of personhood, biography and identity emerges out of the mistaken idea that the literary biography can be a source-model for understanding biographical talk … In positioning theory, the concept of positioning is introduced as a metaphor to enable an investigation to grasp how persons are ‘located’ within conversations as observably and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced storylines (61) …’ 

While it is reasonable and feasible to review how people are ‘located’ in any given context, it is important to realize what people primarily seek through such location of themselves as a means through which they can relate to their respective circumstances.  

So it is more valid and/or pertinent to describe this experience as an endeavour through which people are seeking to situate themselves in their circumstances, rather than to position themselves.  Once they feel or consider they are more or less actualized and congruent in their respective situations then they are likely to proceed to position themselves in their socio-personal context. 

‘Th[e] discursive act of positioning … involves a reconstructive element:  the biographies of the one being positioned, and the positions, may be subject to rhetorical redescriptions (62) …’ Harre and Langenhove maintain. 

As they proceed then with the declaration that ‘… a sense of self is embedded in [any] particular culture’ (63), the authors note that  ‘… All ways of using language, including writing, have structuring effects on thought since they impose structure on expression … in our literate [Western] cultures, personal identity is expressed by biographical stories … Biographical talk has to be understood as stories that resemble the Greek and narrative, the epic, more than they resemble the literary genre of autobiography in the tradition of Augustine and Rousseau.  Unfortunately, within the social sciences … it is the latter which is usually taken as a model in understanding biographical talk.  In our view this choice of exemplar is a mistake (63) …’ 

Yet, if this biographical model is simply ‘a mistake’, how is it that it has come to be embraced and adopted so broadly as a discursive model, and resonates so intuitively, perhaps also instinctively, as a predominant form of interpersonal cultural expression?  And why is it so necessary for the ‘epic’, rather than ‘autobiography’, to be adopted as a narrative model?  Couldn’t this be interpreted as an attempt by the authors to impose their variation of structure and determinacy on narrative expression? 

While autobiography and/or biography purports to ‘represent a truth about [the] given and persisting reality’ of ‘the lifecourse of an individual’ (69), it remains so that the basically persistent perspective among people as they realize form and relate accounts of their experience that these are necessarily a summation of detail in many ways.  Of course, not every life detail can be included in even the most exhaustive and/or comprehensive of works, while many details will be forgotten and circumstances often misconstrued from a the broader perspective.  Yet the point is that basically such works purport to provide some element of truth, at least, which will enable clarification and more acute discernment of the ‘lifecourse’ of the person concerned to proceed in some sense, so as to augment awareness and/or realization.  The inference which seems to proceed through the trajectory of positioning theory as expounded here is that only a form of pure absolute moral truth can prevail as a validly referential phenomenon. 

Yet, in the context of flawed humanity no such entity can be conclusively identified and/or elicited.  So any form of positioning theory loses the veracity of its position on this basis.   It becomes another variant of rationalist dogma in some sense, although behaviourally of course people do eventually and ultimately tend to seek to affirm their basic position and/or perspective, having initially situated themselves in any given life context.  

Meanwhile,  ‘… The most common way to store, organise and communicate what is know in oral cultures is through stories of human actions (64) …  

‘Such oral stories have an important property that distinguishes them from written stories:  they are changeable.  Actually they need to be changeable in order to function the way they do (64) … 

‘We could express the distinction in forms of autobiographical telling as a difference between merely reporting what went on in a life … and narrating the story of a life (65) … 

‘In a literate world … we no longer have to rely solely on our own or others’ memory … In writing, ‘backwards scanning’ makes it possible to eliminate inconsistencies.  There is no equivalence for this in oral performance (66) …’ 

Harre and Langenhove then discuss how this dichotomy ascribed to oral and written personal stories specifically pertains to autobiography and biography.  

‘Probably the first ‘real’ autobiography was written by Augustine (67) …   

‘Although in many ways still resembling the epic literary form, his Confessions have as a main innovation the creation of a narrative sequence of the biographical facts of an individual human life … Its purpose was to tell a story of a conversion.  It chronicles person transformation, development and change.  The true originator of the autobiography as a literary genre in itself was J J Rousseau, whose confessions were published in 1767.  Since that moment autobiography has stood in opposition to fiction.  It is supposed to represent a truth about a given and persisting reality, the lifecourse of an individual (67) … 

‘Within social psychology the self has often been regarded as an ‘information processing structure … that uses memories of past events in order to establish a sense of personal identity.  This theory, proposed first by Locke, has been very much criticised by philosophers on the grounds of internal coherence  (68) … 

‘Of course, all this presupposes the continuity of personal identity (68) … 

‘Moreover, what people present as their selves or think about as their self is always seen as subject to comparison with the ‘real’ self, which is to a great extent to be equated with the ‘real’ biography or personal history of the person.  Within such research the self is reified as something autonomous within the person that uses personal memories to fabricate itself … But that view conflates the self as perceiver with the self as perceived (68-69) … 

‘One of the new emerging [‘mainstream … psychology’] specialties is ‘narratology’ in which the structures and uses of the stories that people tell are the focus of research rather than people’s behaviour conceived as the lawful effects of causes (69) … 

‘The confusion of thought in this idea of the self as narrative … [is it] confuses ‘self’ as the kind of person I think I am … and ‘self’ as the unitary person to whom those events occur … people are constantly engaged in all kinds of self-positioning in which self-narratives occur … When a person has finished writing his/her autobiography, he/she will be a different person, and yet that only makes sense if he/she is the very same person (70) …’ 

Yet the authors still manage to admit these respective ‘oral’ and ‘literate’ dimensions are not contradictory. 

‘Orality and literacy, far from being mutually contradictory poles, can interact and support each other.  In our culture both oral and written communication forms exist, and though it is certain that the written work has to a great extent shaped the spoken word, there still seem to be ‘autonomous’ oral worlds (70-71) …’ 

The stark paradox which the authors thence reveal here about what it is to be a person clearly obviates the dimensional relativity which can prevail in this respect.  However, while the person becomes different after they’ve written their autobiography, and yet clearly retain the essence of who they are – their basic authenticity – this does not detract from their particular distinctive contribution(s) to humanity. 

‘If we think of the self as the leading concept of a theory a person has about him/herself, it is in this latter sense:  a person has several and changing representations of him/herself, centred on the theoretical concept of personal unity … We [the authors] think that the study of lifespan development can no longer be equated with the study of (auto-) biographies.  Rather it should be the study of how and for what reason people use autobiographical stories at different ages, in short the dynamics of oral positioning (71) … people have a tendency to reify actions.  Actions are assumed to be real … in the many different stories the people tell about themselves, reference to a limited number of past … actions is made in telling their own life … Once a story is told and re-told, it begins a life of its own (72) … 

‘Lifespan research cannot simply take for granted the widespread idea in our Western culture that we each live one ‘biography’.  Neither can it proceed by studying ‘individual’ lives’… the question is when and why will people think of themselves in such a way?  It might well be that for those who are living in the post-modern era, such a view of oneself is more practical than the idea that one is or has a ‘round’ character (73) …’  

Hence,  it would seem the authors are justified in citing the ‘limited number of past … actions’ to which many people refer ‘in telling their own life’ – which is why life histories need to be comprehensive, substantial and deep, as is perspectively characteristic of my Deep Friendship series of studies for the The Community Project.  However, it does seem most pertinent for the authors to emphasise the aspect of ‘when and why will people think of themselves in such a way’ as the relevant and resonant ground for progressive analysis and interpretation in this respect.  Such analysis would reveal and obviate the place of cultural and social periods in socio-personal transition, as recognized through such anthropological, identity and ontology studies as those of Geertz, Giddens, Aldous Huxley, along with the ideas of phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer. 

Indeed, this does seem to constitute the ground of enquiry into the ‘between’ in which ‘I’ and ‘Thou’ coexist and interact, as Martin Buber acutely discerned ([1966] 55).  While Santayana, Whitehead and Chesterton each really seemed to essentially situate their profound works in this basic context, just as their work substantially reached fruition in the particularly resonant ‘between’ period for the contemporary era – between the two World Wars. 

Continuity through the context of history and transformation 

As the research project respondents testified as to what emerged from The Community Project for them, clearly they considered the years since the inception of the IYOC Proposal, in 1993, as years of substantial social and political transformation for Australia and themselves.  This situation seemed to accord for them with equivalent transformation from an international, or universal, aspect. 

How the interview respondents interpreted the nature of the dynamics of this situation varied from the greater universal aspect, and for each of them personally.  This served to emphasise the diversity and difference evident in the aspect of all these developments for the respondents. 

It could well be interpreted from each of their responses, as diverse as these were, that the ‘messy ironies, contradictions and perplexities’ (1) referred to by Seyla Benhabib through her analyses of contemporary times were as evident in the perspectives and world-views of these respondents.  Yet they seemed to consider ‘history’ as the continuity of development which was evolving still, rather than the situation that history had reached a critical point where it was likely to fade inexorably, as we know it, or else diverge into a completely different stream to its earlier manifestation. 

However, what was apparent from the interviews were profoundly ‘sceptical’ perspectives and attitudes to what could be stated as ‘the moral and political ideals of modernity, the Enlightenment and liberal democracy’ (2).  

‘Some would seem to conjecture the political landscape would carry on regardless, with little prospect of socio-communal reformers and/or progressives being likely to make much difference to this aspect.  Whereas others were already committed to programs of socio-political change before their involvement with The Community Project, and already looked forward to specific prospects for reform in the context of communal and local socio-political ‘transformation’.  

Basically, all those interviewed tended to reveal images of the erosion of what could be deemed ‘bases of solidaristic coexistence in the name of profit and competition’ (2).  How this condition manifested through the socio-communal lives of the respondents was a breakdown of the sense of community and social fabric, and a loss of belonging among themselves.  

The great proportion of those who became involved in the IYOC Community Project did so on the basis of deep concern at growing public insecurity in the face of these issues.  However, it could be validly concluded that all those concerned favoured retention of those ‘legacies of modernity’ they considered to be either beneficial and/or ameliorative in communal terms.  

Invariably, however, they expressed different allegiances to what they considered was the extent of prospects for each form of social reform.  All were concerned at the considerable extent to which ‘human dignity’ in the context of ‘universality’ (2) had been compromised.  

The broad perspectives of those interviewed on the question of their and the Community Project contributions in the ‘wider social, cultural and community contexts’ was that there was clearly a viable place for a cohesive ethos or ‘tradition of universalism’ (2).  While the broad perspective of those interviewed would also seem to support a ‘reconstruction’ of universalism, as was projected by Benhabib (2).  How this might proceed would be a matter for various forms of consideration and redefinition. 

While critiques from feminist, communitarian and post-modern (or late modern) perspectives featured prominently among those advanced by the interview respondents, what I’ve proposed through this research project was to explore critiques which linked most viably with the nature of The Community Project, along with the principles and precepts on which it was based.  

Appreciation of difference and diversity emerged as a core element and consideration, as expressed through the work of theorists such as Julia Kristeva and Gilles Deleuze.  Care of the self in the context of deep friendship was another broad theme emergent from the interviews, yet set in the preponderant context of everyday urban relations.  The work of Michel Foucault and Iris Marion Young seemed most relevant to such perspectives. 

Where communitarian theoretical variants were concerned, M. Scott Peck‘s work epitomised the background ethos of many communitarian initiatives in which I and others in the project group were involved.  As a critique of such a communitarian model, I applied perspectives from the work of Eva Cox and Iris Marion Young.  Meanwhile, the hermeneutic principles of Gadamer were applied to establish the trajectory of personal metamorphosis in the context of socio-communal transformation, and discourse analysis as a process realised from the work of Derrida. 

Thus, each of the Community Project research interview participants recognized a kind of sense, and therefore awareness, of being situated in a milieu and/or time which essentially resembled the ‘between’ time of transition evoked through Buber’s observation.  Their experiences and ideas resonated also, in some sense, with the perspectives of Santayana, Whitehead, Chesterton, and indeed Buber, as expressed throughout the ‘in between’ time between the two World Wars.  Correspondingly, The Community Project participants struggled in this ‘messy’ and perplexing time of transition from late modernity into something else – to a new historical dispensation – as the world edged tentatively yet inexorably from one millennium into the next.  

Meanwhile, there had been certain beneficent outcomes from the modernity era which the respondents hoped could be retained. 

While each research respondent/ participant adopted universal principles as their reference base for socio-personal, communal and cultural amelioration, they each recognized the vital place of resonant antecedents, such as ‘tradition’, in this context, and the importance of any universalist ‘reconstruction’ needing to proceed through a coherent consistent ethos through which continuity and cohesion, as universal elements, would be retained to allow the palpable succession and cultivation of such universal attributes through to perpetuity. 

The respondents were inclined to consider ‘legislative’ universal principles as broadly evident in association with the form of positional emphasis in human endeavour advocated by Harre and Langenhove.  Accordingly, such a basic positional perspective tended to then be interpreted as akin to a rationalist dogmatic ethos pertinent to Whitehead’s protestations relative to obscurantist analysis.  Whereas ‘interactive’ universal principles were considered more communal, mutual, and reminiscent of collaborative collective endeavour.   

Hence the interview respondents, as evident through their commentary and dispositions expressed through the interviews, were inclined to favour ‘interactive not legislative’ universalism (3).  A prevalent theme of the interviews was advocacy for greater interactive interpersonal and agency endeavour in the face of rationalist conventions, practice and process which compromised the realisation of personal socio-communal contributions, along with the significance, meaning, relevance and resonance of these.  Further, the intervention of perpetual legislation tended to be regarded as an aggravation to authentic interpersonal relations. 

‘Gender difference’ (3) as an aspect of socio-communal relations was recognised as vital and required continuous advocacy.  However, in the perspectives from the interviews this tended to be expressed as basic advocacy for marginalised groups and people both generally and interpersonally in more specific terms.   

Probably basic gender balance tended to prevail in the Community Project group, with a slight tendency to majority female representation.  

There was a clear sense those associated with the project group were ‘contextually sensitive’ (3), and committed to the tendency to situate themselves in their respective socio-communal circumstances, rather than insist on a neo-positivist deference to positional dynamics.  This theoretical constitution of situational dynamics was more suitable as a theoretical substantiation of how The Community Project people oriented themselves, rather then the more instinctive invocation of positional theory, offered here as the critique of the more resonant situational approach. 

Benhabib’s concern to ‘illuminate’ the ‘contradictory potentials’ of contemporary ‘intellectual’ endeavour (4) would resonate for those associated with The Community Project.  

Those committed to the project recognised and appreciated the complex intricate dynamics of interpersonal collective initiative.  They tended to appreciate deeply the inherent complexity embedded in public socio-communal interaction, realising that an alternative proposition was untenable.  ‘These opposites and juxtapositions are too simple to grasp the complex criss-crossings of theoretical and political commitments in the present (4) …’ 

There was some sense through which those concerned as Community Project interview respondents (IRs) accordingly sought to reformulate ‘the universalist tradition in practical philosophy’.  However, they remained confident ‘self-grounding reason’, with relative self-transparency, was still possible in this tradition.  Nevertheless, such a deep appreciation would not be possible through the definitive assertion of an ‘Archimedean standpoint’ (4) beamed out through some positivist privileged positioning ‘beyond historical and cultural contingency’ (4). 

What clearly derived from the interviews was the broad perspective that ‘truth’ was derived from the exploratory process of everyday life and experience, and so tended to be less ‘given’ (5) than experiential.  

However, some respondents held quite definitive perspectives of what constituted truth in any given context.  They also tended to warmly support the claim that what was ‘given’ emerged from ‘the discourse of a community of enquirers’ (5).  However, ‘a post-metaphysical universalist position’ based on ‘a discursive, communicative concept of rationality’ (5) may well be a world-view the respondents would have baulked at if it meant such a notion as discourse defined the person, or personal being. 

The tendency among the respondents was to recognise the human entity as a being ‘whose self could develop within the human community’ (5) in which it was situated, rather than merely emanate from ‘the continuity of a substance in time’ (5). 

Each of the respondents was encouraged to state their perspectives of their contribution, along with the overall contribution of The Community Project, in the broad socio-communal context.  Although this method of analysis did prefigure such contributions and perspectives.  Nevertheless, the ‘narrative unity’ of the respondents, based on ‘ ‘social’ … language, interaction and cognition’ (5), was apparent from their comprehensive, cohesive, detailed responses.  

Such elements of socio-communal development were vibrantly evident as aspects of what the respondents ‘can do, have done and will accomplish’ integrated with perspectives of ‘what you can expect of ‘me’ ‘ (5). 

Nevertheless, it would tend to apply to the respondents concerned that ‘… the empiricist illusion of a substance-like self [‘the reduction of self-identity to the continuity of substance in the other’] cannot do justice to those contingent processes of socialisation through which an infant becomes a person, acquires language and reason, develops a sense of justice and autonomy, and becomes capable of projecting a narrative into the world of which she is not only the author but the actor as well (5) …’          

Correspondingly, the process of moving from ‘legislative to interactive rationality’ became relevant here as ‘the conceptualisation of ‘the moral point of view’ ‘ (6).  Except that the respondents revealed a tendency to consider this as a principle derived through the actual medium of lived experience, not simply through a conceptual paradigm.  Throughout the interviews the broad perspective that those concerned seemed to need to realise morality through their distinctive lived experience emanated quite emphatically as a basic definitive moral principle. 

Broadly, each of the respondents was able to question the moral and ethical integument of their circumstances through ‘hypothetical reasoning’, because through The Community Project they were able to situate themselves in this context such that they could appreciate the potential of their mutual interest in affirming the moral social fabric of their circumstances.  They were able to distinguish the quality of this moral fabric and its potential for themselves, rather than rely on established ‘convention’ (6) as the absolute pretext for their perspective and appreciation. 

Thus, rather than having their ‘moral point of view’ on ‘an Archimedean centre from which … [they pretended] to be able to move the world’ (6), they proceeded from ‘the hypothetical validity’ of ‘the standpoint of [their] standard[s] of justice, fairness, impartiality’ (6). 

In this endeavour, the respondents came to apply ‘an interactive form of rationality’ through ‘identity … constituted narratively’ (6).  They based their ‘validity of truth claims’ (6) on the shared interaction of the regular monthly Saturday/ Sunday Sessions, along with other more sporadic and occasional forms of mutual endeavour, through which means they formed, moulded and shaped the respective narrative journeys of their lives and experience.  

They shared in this such that they were able to substantiate the moral and ethical ‘validity’ of their respective situations with cohesive consistent justification.  

All this proceeded from the ‘discourse’ (6) thereby established, along with sustained reflection and reflexivity. 

Clearly, what emerged from the dialogue, discourse and mutual interactive endeavour associated with The Community Project was a ‘broad conception of reason, self and society’ (6-7).  Such an appreciation was amply evident from the rich fine-grained detail each of the respondents shared about the project.  

Also resonant here were ‘intuitive ideas viewed as latent in the public political culture of a democratic society’ (7 [Rawls]), which the respondents attested to having acquired over the course of their experience during and before their involvement with The Community Project.  At various times each of the respondents testified to being able to respond intuitively to the prevailing socio-political context through the discursive and dialogical experience they acquired in this way. 

In some cases, this seemed to figure and/or manifest as a ‘political conception of justice’ (7), rather than a broader ‘vision of reason, self and society’ (7).  

However, such a broad communal dimension was always implied through the discourse as this proceeded. 

The perspectives which emanated from this open discursive dialogic experience were consistently subject to reflexive ‘reformulation’ throughout the experience of engaging in The Community Project over time.  This process would not necessarily serve to discount the intercession of ‘overlapping consensus’ of Rawls in this context.  However, the nature of this experience rather resembled the Deleuzean continuous ‘folds’ of reality, perpetrated through experience.  There was a blending of elements, rather than a continuous structural edifice.  

Although the basis of the legacy and heritage of The Community Project contribution consolidated an ever-evolving substantial body of work in the form of seminar and resource material.  Rather than a ‘comprehensive’ world-view (7), however, this really consisted of a reflexive endeavour carried out over many years.  

Evidence of all this was well stated through the accounts of Willem Brugman particularly, who referred to the ‘dramaturgy’ I particularly contributed in the Culture Lab context.  

Yet, the discursive and perspectival material which emanated from these respondent interviews clearly did not depend on any version of ‘uniform rational moral autonomy’ (8).  Rather, as proposed by Benhabib, the rich diversity of perspectives contributed by each of the respondents seemed to epitomise the very quality of ‘understanding’, while being ‘… sensitive to differences of identity, needs and modes of reasoning …’ (8), which Benhabib proposes and advocates as alternative to the reliance on uniformity she finds in the work of Rawls. 

Ostensibly, it could be presumed that an experientially derived perspective of ‘truth’ based on a less ‘given’ pretext may seem somewhat at variance with the sense of providential awareness, realization and reason implicit in my analysis.  These were perspectives I derive  as derived through my efforts to interpret and explore the work of Santayana, Whitehead and Chesterton, with Vico’s linkage of Providence and communal convention also vital in this context.  

However, the sense through which this perspective is pertinently mediated is that through the exploratory process of life and experience truth is derived in that it is inherently there to be derived, and so is provided in this sense. 

Within such a universal providential context, as universal human entities we can all thence realize exploratively what we ‘can do, have done and will accomplish’ through the vital mediation and orientation of what is ‘expected’ of us prospectively through a collaborative communal aspect.  This would proceed, just as Whitehead envisaged, through the elements of ‘purposive … speculative Reason’, along with such an ethos of universal synchronicity as proposed by Santayana. 

Thereby, rather than constitute any absolute pretext for perspective and appreciation, ‘convention’ would form the context through which people could situate themselves exploratively, intuitively and imaginatively in the universal communal context of precedent and antecedents, just as Chesterton envisaged.  This would then serve to allow, encourage and cultivate the prospect of such ‘intuitive ideas viewed as latent in the public culture of a democratic society’, which Rawls considered to be vital in this context. 

Clearly, it could be maintained each of those concerned through The Community Project context notably formed and applied their specific variants of a ‘political conception of justice’.  However, each of those concerned proceeded with this through what could be deemed to constitute a broad ‘vision of reason, self and society’.  

So those respondent participants concerned were able to realize Rawls’ primary tenet of ‘overlapping consensus’ by evoking the Whitehead principle of ‘purposive reason’ encompassed through a broad ‘cosmology’, or world-view.  As such, each of their respective socio-personal perspectives were not channeled into a constrained ‘obscurantist’ interpretation and/or ideology. 

Thereby each of those concerned retained a basically broad sensitivity to ‘differences of identity, needs and modes of learning’, along with the perspectives which emanated from these.   

Nevertheless, there was an aspect of authenticity which emerged from the perspectives of the respondents, in my view, through which they tended to express and share their dynamic characteristic contributions to The Community Project and the quest of communal endeavour in a broad universal sense.  Indeed, their respective contributions were the source of considerable esteem and fulfilment for them in this mutual collective sense. 

There was ample evidence from the respondents that their experience through The Community Project affirmed their propensity to appreciate and experience the moral situation of other people.  Throughout each of the interviews the respondents attempted to assess where others with whom they were associated were at with their lives and experience.  Local and universal prospects and principles were broadly envisaged by them in this, through reflexive respect, sensitivity and concern for others in The Community Project and other contexts. 

So there was clearly ‘a conversationally conceived model of moral reasoning’ (8) evident here, based on a ‘universalisability principle’ (8) whereby deep attention to, and concern for, ‘the other’ (8) was paramount.  However, it is important to stress that as a general mode of operation and application of such a universal principle, it could be said those concerned did not seek to ‘be’ the other person, as if they could stand in their shoes to apply the popular metaphor, to reason and establish expectations, just as the other person would, for that other person.  Essentially, the respondents tended to respect the other person for who they were, in all their diversity and distinction, thereby also respecting themselves as respondents for whom they were in all this. 

Such situational ethics would seem to be independent of a positivist, strictly positional, approach and demeanour.  The positional approach would seem more likely to result in the prevalence of entrenched interests whereby ‘ ‘the’ general interest’ (9) ascribed to all concerned would tend to be invoked. 

Throughout the proceedings of The Community Project, whether through the Saturday/ Sunday Sessions or other project endeavours, the concentration of interests and outcomes remained focussed around openly participative interaction which was ‘open and fair to all’ (9).  Indeed, such an approach applied in the monthly project sessions and other endeavours as realised through the semi-structured research interviews, where there was ample allowance for the respondents to share as openly as was feasible.  Optimal effort was invested on my part as interviewer to explore intricately the perspectives shared by the respondents, along with the genesis and evolution of these perspectives in the broad project and socio-communal contexts.

The way in which such critical analysis and/or perspectives formed out in the interview context was realised through the recognition of respondents of pervasive socio-political themes, such as the predominance of political policies.  Reflexive response was evident to socio-cultural attitudes which were widespread yet seemed to lack substance, cogency and moral or ethical depth, and so on. 

Analysing from this perspective, what was vital in this mutually respectful Community Project context was the quest for each and every distinctive contribution of the project members, associates and participants to be suitably realised, recognised and valued.  Correspondingly, it was on this basis that the substantial authenticity of each person could be established in the context of The Community Project, and hence in the broad socio-communal context. 

Broadly envisaged, this constituted the equivalent perspective from Benhabib of ‘… every person as a unique individual, with a certain life history, disposition and endowment, as well as needs and limitations … the identity of the other as distinct from the self, not merely in the sense of bodily otherness as a concrete other’ (10). 

However, my caveat to this would be that to be realised, recognised, valued and appreciated for their distinctive contribution(s) to ‘the’ and/or ‘a’ relevant universal context, it would be vital for those concerned to realise their respective place(s) and relevance in this, and for this broad perspective to resonate for them and others.  This would require a greater realisation of them as people than simply or merely the realisation of their ‘uniqueness’ and/or ‘distinctiveness’ as a person in themselves.  It would require a much broader awareness of what constitutes ‘self’ and/or ‘me’ in the greater socio-communal context of universal reality and being. 

As clarification of her thesis concerning the ‘concrete other’, Benhabib explained:  ‘… The standpoint of the concrete other … is implicit in those ethical relationships in which we are already immersed in the lifeworld.  To be a family member, a parent, a spouse, a sister or a brother means to know how to reason from the standpoint of the concrete other …’ (10).  

Yet, if we were to lack realisation and/or awareness of what this position implied and/or connoted in the broader context of our lives, being, experience and existence, and thence in the greater context of humanity and the universal realm, then we would lack the authentic ground to substantiate our place and being in life.  Ultimately, this would then compromise our potential to become aware of how to live our lives in the local, as well as universal, context.  Consequently, realising how to live in this broad context would presuppose realisation and awareness of the meaning, significance, relevance and resonance of our (inter)personal lives in this context. 

Benhabib proceeded to point out the inadequacy of the polarity which developed ‘between legality and morality’ in the context of Kantian ethics (11), especially as this pertained to the position of ‘relations of justice’ as privileged in the ‘moral domain’ (10-11).  The pervasive perspective among the interview respondents tended to be supportive of ‘a universalistic moral point of view as situated within an ethical community’ (11), rather than through relations of justice forged through strict legal convention.  It was clear from the interview responses that those interviewed considered their contributions, along with the respective contributions collectively established through The Community Project initiatives, emanated from moral perspectives of the project participants expressed and explored through the ethical context they established collectively, and through which they participated. 

Implied in the whole pervasive context of what constitutes a socio-personal ‘endowment’ and ‘disposition’ is the sense of a providential element through which particular attributes and/or qualities are there to be invoked and appropriated by each and every person mutually in the collective universal context of life. 

These become a form of interpersonal legacy and heritage in themselves.  While any form of ‘disposition’ is so constituted as distinctive and/or characteristic of any given person as it is ameliorative and/or promotive.  What is probably situated or interposed most pertinently in this is the attitude of the person concerned, which would broadly intervene to ensure the disposition in question remained grounded in an affirmative sense of socio-personal place and relevance. 

Our collective awareness and/or realization of these comprehensive facets of experience and being would then serve to substantiate our collective sense of mutual awareness, thereby to affirm our sensitivity and sensibility to (inter)personal responsibility, which would thence substantiate the moral context of Benhabib’s ‘standpoint of the concrete other’.  These facets are thoroughly explored by Santayana in the broad context of experience and being in the life-world through the characters featured in his novel The Last Puritan.  

Meanwhile, the denouements pertinent to the essential elements of paradox and irony in the complexity of everyday life characters are intensively and thoroughly explored through Chesterton’s novel The Man Who Was Thursday, among his other fictional works and his essays.  

Clearly, there are inherent anomalies with the implicit Kantian polarity ‘between legality and morality’ in ethics from the ‘universalistic moral point of view’, as Whitehead emphasized and Giddens, along with Foucault and others, subsequently adumbrated. 

However, Benhabib, along with Foucault among others, prefers ‘values of autonomy, pluralism, reflexivity and tolerance’ to mediate the ‘integrationist’ referential ground and context primarily advanced by Giddens, for instance, and also potentially to be construed from the universalist perspectives of Whitehead, Chesterton, and Santayana.  The iconic classic works of these latter three sages are replete with substantial extensive insights on how universal principles can be applied to teach us ‘to reason, to understand and to appreciate’ others through ‘qualities of civic friendship and solidarity’. 

A consistent participatory ethos 

This is why the participatory ethos and method of operation of The Community Project sessions and proceedings were applied so consistently and persistently, as attested throughout the interview responses, despite some confusion of expression at times.  Primary ‘values of autonomy, pluralism, reflexivity and tolerance’ (11) abounded in the project context.  This was situated at variance with a tightly definitive ‘integrationist version of community’ (11), through which narrow conventional values would be invoked to define and determine communal development. 

However, my perspective would be that rather than universal ‘principles’ in themselves, ‘teaching us to reason, to understand and to appreciate’ others (11), it would be how we invoke these principles in and through our reason, understanding and appreciation that we would learn to appropriate and apply these principles.  How we resolve to apply these would be critical in our ‘cultivating qualities of civic friendship and solidarity’ (11).  While the ‘gaps’ Benhabib ascribed to ‘demands of justice’ and ‘demands of virtue’ would derive as much from established personal perspectives as necessarily from integrationist convictions.    

There could be a disjuncture relative to Benhabib’s notion of the propensity for people to ‘join together in action in concert’ (12) and her assertion that ‘perspectives which constitute the political can only be revealed to those who are willing to engage in the foray of public contestation’ (12), from my perspective.  For acting in concert is not the same as public contestation.  

The Community Project interviews revealed how those concerned were able to encourage collective public action in concert without necessarily sliding into entrenched contestation, yet still retaining robust diversity in the context of the project method and discourse. 

Further, while Benhabib validly asserted that ‘democratic politics redefined and reconstituted the line between the right and the good, justice and the good life’ (12), or at least that people so proceeded with such redefinition (12) through these agencies, there would be universal principles of justice, such as fairness and equity, which could serve as reference criteria in this, and be respected accordingly.  Otherwise there would be no pretext through which to establish ideals and/or ideas of what would or could be definitively ‘the right and the good, justice and the good life’.  Specific criteria of justice formed out the insights of many of the interview respondents, all of whom provided fairly definitive perspectives on what constituted valid principles of justice.  Certainly all would eschew any intervening notion of ‘liberal neutrality’ in this. 

Along with the key themes Benhabib construed from feminist theory, the interview respondents would have tended to question any continued ‘line dividing the public and the private’ (12) spheres of interpersonal communal endeavour.  

If it could be claimed, with Benhabib, that women remain ‘invisible in contemporary theories of justice and community’ (13), then the interview respondents and Community Project group members, certainly addressed this situation through their responses.  The interview response material is replete with references to women and how they could fare more inclusively in the public sphere of communal endeavour. 

Norms of ‘reciprocity’ (13) were correspondingly addressed in this context throughout the responses.  Whereas ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ were more appropriately designated as ‘ideals’, rather than ‘norms’, from my perspective, and would have limited authentic significance and relevance either in the feminist context or elsewhere. 

Benhabib asserted the position that ‘the neglect of everyday moral interactions with concrete others has everything to do with the greater division of labour in western societies’ (13).  This may well have implications for men marginalised in this aspect also.  Broadly, those involved in The Community Project tended to opt for such a mode of communal group interaction, as Benhabib advocated, as they experienced this depletion in the everyday realm of their lives, particularly in the context of employment, which accounted for so much of each person’s life world.  These concerns also pertained as much to the quality as to the quantity of employment in the contemporary context, in which employment of some kind became increasingly mandatory. 

Certainly, the prevalence of polarised dualities associated with a perceived ‘rigid and dogmatic boundary between the public and the private’ (13) spheres of endeavour, and the positing of ‘binary oppositions’ (13) in the more general sense, were aspects of the broad socio-communal and political contexts which tended to be invoked by the interview respondents to explain how they situated and/or positioned themselves in public/ private discourse.  

Among the initiatives, and what The Community Project group members, participants and associates would maintain was a most significant contribution of the project, was to explore and examine ways through which what Benhabib cited as the traditional ‘sphere of activity’ for women (14) could be taken on in a broader socio-communal context.  The responsibility ‘to deal with concrete individuals, with their needs, endowments, wants and abilities, dreams as well as failures’ (14) were aspects situated at the forefront of The Community Project agenda.  Several initiatives were already firmly in place to deal with such challenges through the project as prototypical of what could be inaugurated in the broader public domain through applied Community Project principles in this.  

The ‘normative structure of action’ (14), along with ‘the set of the particular … as … the ‘web of stories’ ‘ (14) in this context, all represented the fertile ground of being, experience and identity explored and substantiated through Community Project initiatives such as the Saturday/ Sunday Sessions and other forums, the life journey material and resources, the Culture Lab dramaturgy, and so on. 

While, what Benhabib described as the one point of ‘commitment’ of ‘the post-modern critique’ – ‘the perspective of the margins, from the standpoint of what and whom it excludes, suppresses, delegitimates …’ and so on (14).  

This was definitely the specific terrain of The Community Project, which was implicit in the research question about inclusion and/or exclusion of The Community Project participants and associates, as the project was intended as an authentic model for socio-communal development in the broader general communal context. 

Meanwhile, Michel Foucault’s project to contextualise the place of interpersonal reason and identity in the broader realm of socialised reason (14) and Jacques Derrida’s exposure of ‘the game of binary oppositions’ which served to marginalise ‘the other’ (14) were further opposite perspectives explored openly through The Community Project proceedings.  Blended and interwoven into this project fabric was always the perspective of ‘the other [as] never merely an other but always also in – and for – itself’ (14) as a form of being and identity. 

Accordingly, The Community Project context served to substantiate Derrida’s affirmation of ‘Difference’ as ‘irreducible’ – ‘the continuing act and process of differing’ (15).  All these perspectives were implied as the ground of consideration and enquiry of (inter)personal change and transformation particularly explored through the first two sections of the key research questions.  The Hegelian ‘logic of binary oppositions’ (15) was also challenged and considered through The Community Project – that there was ‘a contingent relationship’ of any element which ‘ ‘appropriates’ its other[s]’ (15).  

However, the deconstruction advocated through the project ethos retained the Hegelian assumption that all elements have their place in a consistent meta-narrative context.  Yet superimposed on this, basically through my original perspective(s) and insight(s), was the assertion that generalist entities, such as ‘society’ and ‘tradition’, cannot have agency in and of themselves.  

Only human agency, initiative and/or endeavour, as the source of a specific manifestation of human entity and identity, could be presumed to establish any form of agency in and of itself in any socio-communal context.  

This principle intervened to mediate Hegel’s originally asserted principle such that any potential ‘logic of subordination and domination could be thereby subverted, although not necessarily eliminated.                                                   

This analysis also could offset the problem of the so-called smaller narratives, or ‘petit recits’ (15) of so-envisaged ordinary people in the socio-communal context not having the legitimacy and significance of their respective narratives recognised, validated and appreciated.  As a way and means through which to explore prospects for such legitimacy and significance, along with the prospective meaning, relevance and resonance of perceived modest everyday narrative, I proposed to follow the Hans-Georg Gadamer ‘hermeneutic tradition’ (15).  Further, I applied this perspective by interposing the more fine-grained analysis of ‘care of the self’ offered by Michel Foucault as a means through which to further reconstruct, refine and substantiate the Gadamer thesis as applicable, perhaps, to the contemporary socio-communal context. 

The inevitable challenge of any collaboration or association with post-modernism seemed to be the hyper-eclectic nature of its theoretical and analytical edifice, as Benhabib explains.  ‘Post-modernism, in its infinitely sceptical and subversive attitude toward normative claims, institutional justice and political struggles, is certainly refreshing.  Yet, it is also debilitating (15) … The critique of ‘identity politics’ attempts to replace the vision of an autonomous and engendered subject with that of a fractured, opaque self; the ‘deed without the doer’ becomes the paradigm of subversive activity for selves who joyfully deny their own coherence and relish their opacity and multiplicity’ (15-16). 

What it would be important to incorporate through such a perspectival dimension of experiential reality formation and realization would be the transition of idea and ideal to image, whereby these elements derive their respective place, significance and resonance in the broad aspect of reality, as I have previously elucidated Sardello’s primary elaboration of these elements as broadly derived aspects.  Thereby, the respective aspirations each person would espouse and retain as their interpretation of ‘the right and the good, justice and the good life’ would constitute the inception of this transitory process of experiential reality formation.  While, taken together, this whole enunciation of the good life could be construed as broadly equivalent to Whitehead’s exhortation:  ‘to live, to live well, and to live better’. 

Certainly, the increasingly ‘greater division of labour in [conservative] western societies’, such as Australia, is severely wedging a greater rift of marginality  between employment sectors by exacerbating the class distinctions among workers.  Encouraging students to forsake university education when they intend to follow a trade profession marginalizes them from the prospect of a broad general awareness and realization of what is happening around them in socio-personal terms, for instance.  This then interferes with their greater mutual interaction and sense of anticipation in the socio-communal context. 

Vital as a broad aspect of such awareness and realization is what emerges as the particular contribution of each person in ‘the web of stories’ which comprises the expansive spectrum of socio-communal and cultural development.  It is important for each person to be able to locate their respective narratives and/or ‘stories’ in this whole context. 

As the ‘perspective of the margins’ was addressed emphatically through ‘the post-modern critique’, so The Community Project was oriented towards broaching and supporting marginalised initiatives and endeavour. 

Benhabib’s contention that ‘a fractured, opaque self’ tends to replace ‘the autonomous engendered subject’ through the turn to post-modernist deconstruction obviates the agency of Giddens’ attempt to reconstruct an autonomous performative sense of agency for the individual in the face of this critique.  This is why the distinctive contributions of each respective person are vital in this context.  The perspective of ‘the deed without the doer’ is not a viable pretext for a substantial socio-personal and mutual socio-communal cultural ethos to be cultivated and sustained through to perpetuity. 

As with the plight of the marginalised, which reflected the basic situation of those involved in The Community Project, Benhabib’s assessment of the plight of contemporary women was most pertinent for The Community Project participants.  ‘… No less important is that social criticism of the kind required for women’s struggles is not even possible without positing the legal, moral and political norms of autonomy, choice and self-determination …’ (16) 

Accordingly, Benhabib admitted to being baffled by ‘… the lightheartedness with which post-modernists simply assume or even posit those hyper-universalist and super-liberal values of diversity, heterogeneity, eccentricity and otherness (16) …’  Although she omitted to state any instances of how these observations might pertain to specific post-modernist analyses or analysts. 

Correspondingly, it would be important for Benhabib to show how specifically ‘post-modernists … rely on the very norms of the autonomy of subjects and the rationality of democratic procedures which otherwise they seem to blithely dismiss (16) …’ 

However, it could be justly stated that elements of method and methodology are certainly implied in Benhabib’s further observation:  ‘… What concept of reason, which vision of autonomy allows us to retain these values and the institutions within which these values flourish and become ways of life? …’ (16) 

This observation of Benhabib’s, pertinent to the ‘concept of reason’, is precisely and specifically the ground addressed by Santayana through his elucidation of the form and ethos of reason in the everyday context, by Whitehead through his exploration and advocacy of ‘speculative Reason’, and by Chesterton through his application of paradox in reason to the socio-political exigencies of his times, and thereby the period in which he lived. 

The pervasive condition which has been broadly augmented in Western societies since the Second World War is the situation of relative autonomy for individuals in general.  What would be the prospective resonant outcome of this endeavour, relative to the values pertinent to its continuity, is the challenge Benhabib effectively poses through her vital question. 

Such rationality, based on rigidly contained parameters, constitutes the ‘normative’ edifice which comprises the basis through which Santayana, Whitehead and Chesterton form out their respective comprehensive elucidatory analysis of the nature and place of reason in the context of fragile tenuous modernity, with its tendency to struggle and contestation. 

Certainly the reversion to an ethos of broad contestation as inexorable seems to be what substantiates much of the ‘disenchantment’ response to the phenomenon of the ‘modernity project’.  Hence, wherever such contestation could be mediated through basic respect and thorough recognition of the place and relevance of each person’s distinctive contribution to humanity, this has served to affirm the quest to seek broader more expansive perspectives of reason as an interactive socio-communal element. 

Hence the turn to significance and veracity as criteria through which to substantiate interpretations of the broad nature and aspect of modernity in the context of socio-personal development and cultivation through to perpetuity in a universal sense.  However, as my analysis reveals in this respect, further dimensional criteria of relevance and resonance are required to truly authenticate this noble formidable quest.  

Meanwhile, this quest in itself serves as testimony to the further criteria of continuity, purpose and substance as the ground through which the basis of any given ‘chain of circumstances’ can be established, and its broad significance thence authenticated.  This reality applies as much to each distinctive contribution to humanity as it does to the broader personal significance of universal circumstances.  So the situation of each and every person becomes directly pertinent in this endeavour. 

Substantial concerns and considerations

Thence these foregoing principles espoused by Benhabib were also among the substantial concerns and considerations of those who comprised The Community Project.  Consequently, they constituted vital criteria in my research of the lives and transformations experienced by the broad base of contemporary participants in the project over the course of its development since inception, many years ago. 

Ultimately, Benhabib concluded her peremptory analysis of positions with a somewhat wry quip of commentary to highlight her overview of these contentions.  ‘The recovery of a sense of irony in the face of the modernist project and bemusement at its dialectical twists and turns is truer not only to the dilemmas of contemporary feminism but in the face of an epoch approaching its end as well.’ (17) 

My prognosis here is that, because irony is so prevalently dissipated through the infusion of humour so often associated with it, it would have been preferable to appeal to a deeper sense of paradox in this.  Paradox seemed to me more amenable to the acceptance of a form and spirit of earnest authenticity as characteristic of the qualities of insight, perception, perspective and appreciation, which would serve well as a collective prospective touchstone, from my perspective. 

What seemed to emerge most palpably from the research interviews was a broad sense of ‘disenchantment’ with the contemporary socio-communal situation.  

For some of the respondents – perhaps the majority – this manifested as a form of disenchantment with the very criterion of ‘rationalisation’, or rationality, which seemed to characterise the whole project of ‘modernity itself’ whereby it was dependent on a consistently inviolable ‘normative yardstick’, as Benhabib put this (68). 

While, as Benhabib observed, the very ethos of rationalisation was established as the rationale for the modernity project itself, to be thence ‘replaced’ by broad disenchantment with the whole modernity project.    

The other prevalent perspective among the other of the interview respondents was that the modernity project was not necessarily defiled or flawed inherently in itself, only that either ‘it’ – so to speak – had lost its way, or that humanity either had lost, or was losing, its way with this project.

Benhabib interposed a challenge here from Max Weber which served to advocate reflexive consideration of these respective predominant perspectives of modernity relative to the context of the research project.  

Correspondingly, a key methodological principle through which to proceed emerged from this analysis for me:  ‘… which chain of circumstances has led to the fact that exactly in the West, and in the West alone, cultural phenomena have appeared, which nevertheless – or at least as we like to think – lie in a line of development having universal significance and validity?’ (68).  

The response to this challenge would constitute the ground through which any analysis of the transformation(s) and contribution(s) of The Community Project participants, and of the project itself, could be deemed as significant, relevant, resonant, and thereby having meaning in the broad socio-communal context.   

Critical in this, from the deconstructive perspective of Claus Offe, whom Benhabib quoted, would be that:  ‘… the situation of ‘modern’ societies appears just as blocked, just as burdened with myths, rigidities, and developmental constraints, as modernisation theory had once diagnosed to be the case for ‘pre-modern’ societies … ‘modernity’ is no longer exclusively the desirable end point of the development of others, but rather the precarious point of departure for the further development of one’s own (‘Western’) society.’ (68-69) 

However, the basis of each of the respective interview respondent world-view perspectives would probably be what Benhabib cited as ‘… the Promethean conception of humanity … that they view mankind as appropriating an essentially malleable nature, unfolding its talents and powers in the process, and coming to change itself through the process of changing external reality’ (69).  This was the essential legacy of the grand ideologies of ‘Liberalism and Marxism’, according to Benhabib (69). 

Then Benhabib raised two respective critiques of these predominant ideologies – those of communitarians and post-modernists respectively.  But my contention was that these variants, as construed comparatively with the preferred perspectives of The Community Project interview respondents, were too harsh and extreme in definition.  ‘… Faced with the myth of Promethean humanity, communitarians argue that the liberal conception of historical progress is illusory and that history has brought with it irreversible losses such as [of] a coherent sense of community and a moral vocabulary which was part of a shared social universe (69) …’ 

Yet those who professed self-confessed ‘communitarian’ perspectives among the interview respondents certainly didn’t consider that ‘historical progress’ to date was ‘illusory’, ‘irreversible’, not ‘coherent’, or was lacking ‘moral vocabulary’, as their responses revealed; nor do many prominent communitarian theorists such as Scott Peck, or Eva Cox, share such an almost broadly nihilist perspective, as I will later consider. 

‘In a similar vein, post-modernists argue that there is no ‘meta-narrative’ of history … of continuous human emancipation.  Not only has Marxism failed to appreciate irreversibility in history, but as the ideology of many modernising third world elites, it has been complicitous in the destruction of traditional communities and the lives of pre-modern peoples (69) … 

‘The Promethean self privileges mastery over … the joyful enjoyment of otherness; in its narcissistic search for the domination of nature, it is possessed by an instrumental logic and fails to appreciate the mode of being of the non-instrumental ‘others’.  The conception of a homogeneous humanity as the master of nature destroys those ‘others’ whose subjectivity may precisely consist in their proximity to nature and in their denial of instrumentality (69) …’ 

However, as Benhabib pointed out, the contemporary socio-political and communal critique was more precisely a ‘critique of communicative rationality’, interposed by theorists such as Jurgen Habermas, who sustained this critique, than of ‘instrumental reason’ (70), logic, or of instrumentality as such. 

Benhabib proposed the evident elements inherent in this perspective, claiming some principles and political perspectives as common to ‘communitarianism’ and ‘critical social theory’ (70).  ‘The rejection of ahistorical and atomistic conceptions of self and society as common to both, as is the critique of the loss of public spiritedness and participatory politics in contemporary societies … the communitarian insistence that contemporary moral and political theory enrich its understanding of the self and base its vision of justice upon a more vibrant view of political community offers a corrective to the excessive formalism of justice-centred and deontological theories … As a political theory, ‘communitarianism’ must primarily be identified … less in terms of the positive social and political philosophy it offers than in light of the powerful critique of liberalism it has developed (70) …’ 

Those communitarian inclined interview respondents already cited in this context would inevitably challenge Benhabib’s thesis that the ‘critique of liberalism’ should be privileged before ‘the positive social and political philosophy’ advanced through communitarian theoretical initiatives, just as would Scott Peck, Robert Putnam, and other such communitarian theorists.  For all these contributors a proactive ‘historical’ trajectory seemed to be a feasible socio-communal teleology, along with ‘a more vibrant view of political community’. 

Part of the established critique communitarians directed at liberalism was to challenge the ‘… Enlightenment project of justifying morality and of providing normative foundations for politics via the device of a voluntary contract between free and autonomous agents (70) …’ 

Meanwhile, according to Benhabib, the ‘… contention between communitarianism and critical social theory’ was based on the communitarian critique of the notion of an ‘unencumbered self’ in liberalism (70-71), whereby the principle of a ‘priority of the right over the good’ (71) prevails in the context of liberal ideology and theory. 

Vital to the continuity and fervent support of The Community Project was that the project developments proceeded through the least amount of contractual arrangements feasible.  Obligations, duties, rules, convictions, and the like, even if purely verbal in aspect, constituted contractual agreements.  

The Community Project operated, as it had since inception, on the basis of minimal such obligations and conventions.  The Saturday/ Sunday Sessions remained open forums convened and organised through the least element of structure and procedure possible, and through most openly participatory methods of operation.  All other events organised through the project were similarly established.  Consequently, these remained popular and enticing events and forums. 

While, as a working principle for the project core group members and their operations, basically the principle of ‘the Good’ over ‘the Right’ was preferred, particularly as the core group members retained divergent perspectives on what constituted ‘the Right’, and remained reluctant to impose, or seem to impose, particular personal values and principles on the project participants and associates (70-71).  

There were a couple of crucial assumptions from the work of Habermas which became imminent here.  Among these were the perspective of the ‘inter-subjective constitution of the self and the evolution of self-identity through the communicative interaction with others’ (71).  While a further insight was also associated with the work of George Herbert Mead:  ‘The ‘I’ becomes and ‘I’ only among a ‘we’, in a community of speech and action.  Individuation does not proceed association; rather it is the kinds of associations which we inhabit that define the kinds of individuals we will become (71) …’ 

Perspectives from the interview respondents on the innate primacy or otherwise of self-identity would probably vary, even widely, but would be retained given the responses recorded.  The pervasive perspective would be that interpersonal interaction substantially influenced the contributory nature of who people were and became as individual subjects – that is, certainly:  ‘The ‘I’ becomes an ‘I’ only among a ‘we’ ‘ (71) 
	
As the pretext for establishing how these foregoing perspectives pertained directly to contributions to The Community Project, it was important to consider how these were derived from their theoretical context.  

The key to the Habermasian thesis was the claim that the transition to modernity ruptured ‘the teleological world-view, which has rendered ‘moral theory … deontological’ (72).  Therefore, this consequence of ruptured continuity of being through time in any consistent sense meant that ‘questions of justice’ could only be addressed cognitively through the ‘abstraction’ of what Habermas called ‘stylised’ ethical terms (72). 

The key dilemma which derives from the Habermasian emphasis of ‘communicative rationality’ and ‘ethics’ is that such an ethos serves to prioritise linguistic and discursive rationality in favour of the hermeneutic ethos, which could be claimed to be derived from the form of purposive ‘speculative reason’ proposed by Whitehead, which is essentially affirmed in the everyday context of lived experience through Santayana and Chesterton’s analyses.  Habermas leans more towards the Derrida’s analytical variant, through which linguistic discursive interpretation is the primary method. 

If the purposive and speculative variants of interpretation I have cited here could be linked with the form of hermeneutic and communitarian ethos cited by Benhabib, this could serve to substantiate such an ethos through a lived experiential communitarian orientation.  Vico’s ‘talking well’ through a broad socio-communal ethos could be cited as somewhat equivalent to the grounding principle for such an endeavour. 

Broadly, the perspective of ‘the priority of the right over the good’ raised by Benhabib brings into consideration the context of the principles espoused by Whitehead, Santayana and Chesterton respectively.  

When Whitehead advocates the endeavour ‘to live, to live well, and thence to live better’, effectively his referential experiential ground in this is ‘the good life’ – this is what the good life is all about for him.  While Santayana emphasizes aesthetics and Chesterton envisages the phenomenon of paradox as a form of beauty in itself, as if it were a curiously exquisite facet of experience and life. 

All such experience presupposes a sense through which the ‘I’ of experiential and ontological endeavour can only become authentic, mature and substantial as a facet of the ‘we’ through the ‘association’ of these respective facets.  Correspondingly, ‘the kinds of association we inhabit … define the kinds of individual we will become’ (71), means effectively Benhabib is implying whom we become depends on how we are situated throughout our lives and experience. 

However, clearly Habermas makes a valid point in that a ‘ruptured continuity of being’ would dislodge the ‘purposive’ element of life and reason emphasized by Whitehead, rendering any form of hermeneutic endeavour untenable, and thereby relegating ethics to a ‘stylised’ hollow mimetic convention. 

Our challenge thence implied is to ask ourselves:  ‘Is this what we want?’  

Far from a hermeneutic perspective, we collectively are responsible for whatever outcome ensues in this respect.    

Benhabib cited the key challenge which emanated from this analysis:  
‘How can we in fact defend the thesis that judgments of justice and right constitute ‘the moral domain’?’  At this juncture, Benhabib considered the Habermas thesis that formal criteria for ‘the good life’ did not necessarily constitute the ideal analytical method.  ‘… Habermas assumes that only judgments of justice possess a clearly discernible formal structure and thus can be studied along an evolutionary model, whereas judgments concerning the good life are amorphous and do not lend themselves to the same kind of formal study.  Of course this observation, far from justifying the restriction of the moral domain to matters of justice, could also lead to the conclusion that one needed to develop a less formalistic ethical theory (72) …’ 
	
Habermas considered ‘justice’ to be the prime ‘social virtue’ (72).  

According to Habermas ‘the formation of self-identity and moral judgments concerning justice are intimately linked’ (72), as Benhabib construed his thesis.  Therefore,  ‘… Judgments of justice reflect various conceptions of self-other relations (72) …’ 

However, what Benhabib pointed out was that ‘… the evolution of self-other relations is always accompanied by the development of self-understanding and self-evaluation …’ (72)  Consequently, there remained a viable and vital place for ‘the consideration of ‘self-regarding’ virtues and their significance for moral theory’ (72). 

At this point, Benhabib seemed to separate out ‘the strong deontological interpretation’ of the Habermas thesis from what she referred to as ‘the basic insight’ of his ‘project’.  This Benhabib interpreted as that: ‘… the fairness of moral norms and the integrity of moral values can only be established via a process of practical argumentation, which allows its participants full equality in initiating and continuing the debate and suggesting new subject matters for conversation …’ (73) 

So, as Benhabib presented this thesis, ‘communicative ethics’ became a theory of ‘moral justification’ based on moral argumentation.  

Further, as Thomas Scanlon construed this: ‘… what a good philosophical theory should do is to give us a clearer understanding of what the best forms of moral argument amount to and what kind of truth it is that they can be a way of arriving at …’ (73) 

Relative to communicative ethics, then, for individuals:  ‘It is not necessary for them to define themselves independently either of the ends they cherish or of the constitutive attachments which make them what they are.  In entering practical discourses individuals are not entering an ‘original position’.  They are not being asked to define themselves in ways which are radically counter-factual to their everyday identities …’ (73) 

All these contingencies enabled relative autonomy and authenticity to prevail in the application of ethics to everyday interpersonal relations.  

Such a communicative integration of ‘… communicative ethics endorses the modern understanding of the self and contends that moral autonomy means not only the right of the self to challenge religion, tradition and social dogma, but also the right of the self to distance itself from social roles and their content or to assume ‘reflexive role-distance’ (73) …’ 

Thus, while these values are respected and appreciated by Benhabib, thereby fortifying the form of hermeneutic continuity Gadamer interprets and extols, the Habermas thesis prefers ‘judgements of justice’ based on ‘formal structure’ in the context of ‘the moral domain’.  These concerns of Habermas therefore tend to pertain directly to Giddens postulate that ‘agency = moral responsibility = context of moral justification’, as ‘judgements of justice’ effectively imply ‘a context of moral justification’.  Santayana, Whitehead and Chesterton also extol ‘a context of moral justification’, yet from the perspective of ‘the good life’, although presumably expressed formally enough to avoid being ‘amorphous’ !  

This seems precisely the middle ground, or mediatorial perspective, Giddens seems to seek in this context, although falls short of straddling ultimately, despite his ostensibly noble intention, from my perspective. 

What is so refreshing in Benhabib’s affirmation of the lives and experience of authentic ‘everyday’ individuals and ‘identities’ is that the deeply constitutive facets of their being are recognized and validated throughout her work.  Benhabib’s  advocacy of ‘role-distance’ seems well-intentioned. 

However, if individuals are to realize their respective distinctive contributions without having their authenticity in this impaired it is important for them to be able to establish their autonomous place(s) in this through ‘reflexive role-distance’ as required, but also through a sense of authentic equanimity, independent of any consideration of role distance or otherwise, perhaps from a mediatorial perspective. 

Accordingly, while ‘matters of justice’ relative to ‘the good life’ are the consequence of ‘historical and cultural struggles’, the particular form through which socio-personal, cultural and/or communal aspects are configured does not depend on entrenched on entrenched contention, polarity and/or ‘argumentation’. 

Benhabib was concerned to distinguish ‘the significance of constitutive elements for the formation of self-identity’ (73) from conventional role-conformity, this being a distinction she claimed communitarians often overlooked.  They often replaced respect for the influence of constitutive elements with the adoption of ‘a socially conventionalist and morally conformist attitude’ (74).  

‘The specifically ‘modern’ achievement of being able to criticise, challenge and question the content of … constitutive identities and the … duties and obligations they impose on us should not be rejected’ (74), according to Benhabib.  

Benhabib’s claim is that communitarians who do not allow such provocative elements to be contributory to their moral and/or ethical perspectives were positioned to accept ‘social conformism, authoritarianism and … patriarchalism’ (74).  Whereas, through communicative ethics, individuals were accorded ‘the ‘ability’ and the ‘willingness’ to assume reflexive role-distance and … the standpoint of others’ (74). 

The perspectives contributed by Santayana, Whitehead and Chesterton clearly augment and affirm ‘the Good’, as quality of life, as being as important and vital as ‘the Right’ in the collective and personal moral and ethical context.  

However, ‘self-understanding’ is better interpreted and/or explored as self-awareness from my perspective.  Because self-understanding is a more positional form of awareness which may not be feasible in any primarily relative context.  While ‘self-evaluation’, although more amenable to particular self-interpretation than understanding, is more affirmatively feasible, as the analysis implies..  

‘Since practical discourses do not theoretically predefine the domain of moral debate and since individuals do not have to abstract from their everyday attachments and beliefs when they begin argumentation, we cannot preclude that it will be not only matters of justice but those of the good life as well that will become thematised in practical discourses or that the presuppositions of discourse themselves will be challenged (74) … The line between matters of justice and those of the good life … evolves as a result of historical and cultural struggles (75) …’ reasoned Benhabib. 

While Community Project members and associates were certainly amenable to the emphases of ‘the Good’, or what might be termed Quality of Life, the interview responses also revealed that emphatic justice values of what was moral and ethically right substantiated these quality of life perspectives.  It would seem the respondents would be prepared to concur with Mead that ‘individuation’ did not necessarily ‘precede association’.  However, they would also tend to concur with the paradox that association did not necessarily precede individuation.  Actually, as each person entered the world with certain already developed attributes, and early social life was contained, it was apparent that individuation inevitably preceded association, in some sense. 

Moreover, while the context of late modernity had been the site for a rich diversity and plurality of moral and ethical values, there was no prima facie evidence which substantiated a ‘ruptured continuity of being’ (72).   

What substantiated continuity was the reality in this of consistency among people in ‘behaviour, attitudes and response, which did not necessarily constitute conformity, as such. 

This perspective seemed to be actually attested by Benhabib when she observed that ‘self-other relations’ were inevitably ‘accompanied by the development of self-understanding and self-evaluation’ (72). 

This was a vital concession because evidence of the element of consistency in interpersonal and socio-communal relations in this sense was a prime research method and/or technique I applied to evaluate the contributions of Community Project members and participants, as revealed through the respondent perspectives, and as realised through the initiatives and endeavours carried out through the project context.  Benhabib’s analysis revealed clearly that ‘the Good’ (quality of life) was as relevant as ‘the Right’ (justice) as the moral and ethical context for socio-communal development, from my perspective.  

Further, this was a ‘standpoint’ which concurred broadly with the interview respondent perspectives, in my view. 

However, unless ‘self-understanding and self-evaluation’ accompanied mutual ‘association’, then ‘individuation’ figured as only a consequence of association, which served to compromise and deplete the place, significance, meaning, relevance and resonance of (inter)personal contributions in this context. 

What Benhabib eventually asserted as the primary criterion for moral and ethical justification was the process of ‘argument’.  Certainly, in this context, it could be observed that among the advances of The Community Project was for the participants to share perspectives openly and emphatically.  

Consequently, this very process sometimes culminated in volatile passionate expression.  It can be said argument certainly constituted this mode of expression, although this quite genuinely did not necessitate a spirit of competition and/or polarity throughout the project history, since inception in 1993, from those who remained consistent and continuous in their solidarity and adherence to the project.  This reality was among the most vibrant achievements and contributions of the project, from my perspective.  Participants could retain their ‘original position[s]’ and still pursue strong argument, while not prevailed on to be conformist in any sense.  Throughout all this they were situated to retain and express ‘their everyday identities’ (73). 

This was why I proclaimed the importance of relative autonomy and authenticity as the means through which such consistency and continuity could be retained and fostered among the respective contributions of those concerned.  Accordingly, I therefore also advanced these, along with consistency and continuity, as methods and/or techniques through which to consider and evaluate the project contributions, as these were evident through the interview responses. 

However, if the pretext and/or purpose of ‘criticism’ or ‘challenge’ was fixated on conflict, competition, and/or polarity, in themselves, then it was this that would ‘rupture’ continuity and consistency, thereby debilitating prospects for ‘communicative ethics’. 

Yet, as Benhabib refined her thesis, it began to stray from reasonable analysis.  As a premise, Benhabib inferred at the outset ‘a dispute’ between ‘a moral and political aspect’ on the pretext that in ‘moral theory deontology implies that conceptions of justice should precede … those of the good life’ and ‘be justified independently of ‘particular’ conceptions of the good life’ (76).  

Here, I would support the allegations of Benhabib in regard to communitarians that ‘conceptions of justice … imply … conceptions of the good life’ (76). Because any sense of justice would emanate from experientially derived moral and ethical values on the basis of which any conception of the good would be definitively a particular conception.  Ontology and continuity therefore would remain intact from this perspective. 

Benhabib inferred, on the basis of her critique of Rawls ‘… that communitarians are advocates of small, homogeneous, undifferentiated social units …’ (76)  Accordingly, Benhabib questioned the ‘lack of explicitness’ of the communitarian position, as she perceived and portrayed this, in allegedly not addressing the ‘priority of liberty’ issue (76).  For this concern to be explicitly considered, an optimally broad elucidation of what might be implied by the term ‘liberty’ was required, from my perspective, for which purpose I later relied on the work of Michel Foucault.    

Meanwhile, Charles Larmore’s analysis invoked by Benhabib posited a linkage of the prevalent communitarian thesis and ‘… the tradition of ‘political romanticism’ whose chief feature is the search for the reconciliation of personal and political ideals …’ (76) 

Benhabib quoted Larmore,  ‘… We do better to recognise that liberalism is not a philosophy of man, but a philosophy of politics …’ (77)  Yet,  by virtue of being a philosophy of politics it must necessarily be a philosophy of man!  

Here Larmore implicitly attempted to invoke a flawed impression of ‘politics’ acting, or having the capacity to act, in and of itself, as an independent entity with such human agency.  

Hence implied here is the reality that where liberty is construed as freedom it can only feasibly be relegated to the place of an ideal.  Whereas, when construed as autonomy, particularly relative autonomy, it can be realized as a feasible experiential principle and/or value. 

The dilemma here is that ‘a philosophy of politics’ by its nature is necessarily pragmatic.  So the proliferation of pragmatic dogma and the appropriation of considerations and concerns according to prevalently conventional structural parameters culminates by its nature in the more relatively applicable ‘philosophy of man’ being relegated to the margins in this respect. 

Where Benhabib then raised the dimension of the ‘ ‘integrationist strain’ and a ‘participatory’ one’ (77), however, here I concurred with her analysis.  

While in relation to ‘the vacillation between these two strains’ (77), I agreed this tended to be characteristic of communitarian perspectives.  

Moreover, I concurred with Larmore that attempts at ‘reconciliation’ of these strains also tended to be characteristic of ‘contemporary communitarianism’ (77).  Although, my perspective was that there was a further attribute to ‘overlapping consensus’ (77) going on here. 

Integrationist and participatory elements – a coherent value scheme 

Rather, what I advanced as a blend of integrationist and participatory elements and influences would be the preferable constitutive entity here, such that each of the elements effectively formed into the whole through waves of experience and phenomena ‘enfolding’ into each other, as Gilles Deleuze described. 

However, vital in this holistic blend of elements was for each of these to fold into the whole in such a form as they remained authentically distinguished in the whole, not simply a bland mundane mixture. 

Correspondingly, it followed that a ‘coherent value scheme’, or even a ‘code of civility’ (77) was possible on this basis.  Nevertheless, my preference, and undoubtedly that of the Community Project participants on the whole, would be for ‘… a vision of friendship and solidarity which shapes moral character and lends it depth …’ (77)  Consequently, ‘… it is characteristic of the integrationist view that it emphasises value revival, value reform, or value regeneration and neglects institutional solutions’ (77). 

Benhabib then raised her alternative perspective in all this.  

‘By contrast, the view that I shall name ‘participationist’ sees the problems of modernity less in the loss of a sense of belonging, oneness and solidarity but more in the sense of a loss of ‘political agency and efficacy’ (77) …’ 

The problem with this analysis for me was that it ultimately served to bestow independent agency on amorphous entities and/or institutions.  ‘… This loss [of agency] may be a consequence of the contradiction between the various spheres which diminishes one’s possibilities for agency in one sphere on the basis of one’s possibilities for agency in another sphere … Or it may also result from the fact that membership in the various spheres becomes mutually exclusive because of the nature of the activities involved, while the mutual exclusivity of the spheres is reinforced by the system (77) …’ 

The ‘justice’ perspective, when linked with ‘institutional solutions’ and/or a ‘code of civility’ in a context of ‘political agency and efficacy’ tended to invoke a situation which would serve to proliferate and/or exacerbate the application of pragmatic contingencies.  Thus the potential mutual exclusivity of the ‘participationist’ and ‘integrationist’ spheres of political and public influence would emanate from such an alignment.  

This then obviates the imperative of a mediatorial perspective in this which would be required particularly to address the emphasis associated with a hyper-pragmatic ethos raised as antithetical to marginalised humanitarian considerations and concerns, whether or not these are formed out primarily through a ‘coherent value scheme’ based on integrationist principles and/or values. 

Consequently, based on Benhabib’s perspective, the participationist element ultimately tended to emphasise and give priority to considerations based on ‘justice’ perspectives of what is ‘right’, to the reduction of ‘quality of life’ perspectives of what is ‘good’.  It was probably a valid position to maintain that communitarian theorists revealed ‘ambivalence’ about whether or not the emphasis here should be on ‘the reduction of contradictions’ or ‘the encouragement of non-exclusive principles of membership’ (78). 

Yet my perspective here was that this ambivalence constituted the very nature and character of the socio-communal context, such that reform of this phenomenon was not a feasible prospect. 

Clearly, it would seem basically the interview respondents tended to prefer ‘non-exclusive principles of membership’, which was apparent from their acclamatory responses on the question of whether they felt included and/or excluded in The Community Project proceedings.  Here they broadly stated their appreciation of the inclusionary project context.  For most of the respondents ‘reduction of contradictions’ only emerged where conflict through inflated personal agendas was prominent. 

Where ‘distributive justice’ was concerned, the interview respondents would probably tend to agree with the Walzer/Taylor analysis that various ‘principles and criteria of distributive justice’ (78) based on the nature and reasons for the distribution of ‘social goods’ would be optimal.  However, this was not really a topical concern throughout the interviews.  

Benhabib maintained that actual ‘principles of distribution’ which apply ‘… like need, membership, merit, contribution’ were ‘different and at times mutually exclusive’ (78).  However, while clearly ‘different’, they were only ‘mutually exclusive’ if those concerned chose to so consider them, or if their perspectives in this were oriented around the privileging of mutual exclusivity.  

All the respondents tended to recognise a place for each of the principles or criteria of distribution Benhabib applied, with particular emphasis on ‘contribution’.  However, they each recognised, realised and respected these criteria set within a socio-communal context where various perspectives were abundant. 

Meanwhile, there would always be a ‘philosophical framework’ (78) through which all these concerns would be worked out, whatever the situation and circumstances, and which I considered to be the prevailing ideology.  

As ideology was mandatory, and therefore fundamental, in any socio-communal context, consequently there would always be an ‘original position’ in all this, as the ‘appropriate setting for justice, and even for any socio-communal endeavour’ (79).  So, there was already such a position inherent in any socio-‘political community’ or context, for me.  It seemed from the interview respondent analysis there would be broad concurrence from the respondents for this position as I’ve enunciated it. 

There was a substantive aspect through which Benhabib seemed to realise this analytical theme.  The reality that ‘we have to proceed to think about ‘justice’ in the context of ‘political association … on the basis of shared understandings’ meant to ‘follow the integrationist line’ (79).  

Somewhat paradoxically, even conversely, Benhabib observed:  ‘Modern societies are not communities integrated around a single conception of the human good or even a shared understanding of the value of belonging to community itself.’ (79) 

While there was a kind of intrinsic truth in this broad perspective, nevertheless it was evident people do share common values and perspectives.  

Correspondingly, from these common elements there were palpable predominant emphases, even principles, which could be derived.  This was effectively basically why Benhabib could observe: ‘… the search for a publicly acceptable scheme of just distribution is not as ill-guided as [it may seem] … for the question as to how one can distribute goods, services, income, etc, across primary groups which do not share the same moral conceptions is neither irrelevant nor foolhardy’ (79).  

This was precisely because ‘a publicly acceptable scheme’ implied a certain mediation of difference on the basis of mutually integrative values and/or perspectives which could be termed common principles. 

This situation also implies the imperative of a palpable element of pervasive continuity throughout the trajectory of history, such as through tradition, heritage and socio-personal legacies (basically ‘contributions’, as such), as Chesterton extols, along with purposive and speculative reason as universal principles and/or elements, as Whitehead advocates, and a sense of culturally aesthetic form and ethos appropriate to each socio-cultural situation, as Santayana embodies throughout his work.  

All these potentially integrationist phenomena, when associated with ‘coherent’ values, could be invoked and applied as the essence and/or source of ‘shared understanding’ and a sense of ‘belonging’ in the context of viable community growth.  

However, without ameliorative development of beneficent ‘distribution’ through ‘justice’ principles and practices, people can, and do, become marginalised in the socio-communal context.  The point is that such distribution must intricately correspond to what is there and becomes evident providentially, through the distinct intervention of a realization of some form of Providence in this, if this experience is to be and remain authentic, purposive, and distinctive in this sense. 

Nevertheless, Benhabib’s insight is propitious in that it alerts us to, and reminds us of, the importance of the imperative for us to suitably situate ourselves amid a burgeoning plethora of myriad values, ‘conceptions’, and perspectives, in the contemporary socio-cultural realm. 

As Benhabib then interposed, the two prominent communitarian critics, Taylor and Walzer, ‘… at times hypostasise … the ‘philosophical framework’ of community, and treat this as if it were not only a methodological framework but also a living political reality’ (79). 

Clearly, this methodological emphasis represented gravitation around integration. 

According to Benhabib’s ‘participatory conception of justice’ the primary purpose was ‘to prevent the ‘illegitimate’ domination of one set of goals by another’ (79).  While ‘available and shared definitions and understandings of social meaning have to be this starting point’ (79).  Achievement in this respect must transcend ‘… just a phenomenological redescription of what agents in our kinds of societies think about various goods’ (79), as Benhabib evaluated the work of Michael Walzer in this respect.  Otherwise such an initiative could become ‘a ‘narrative hermeneutic …’  Proceeding from shared news and understandings of certain goods like citizenship or healthcare, for example, Walzer was refining, systematising, making coherent, criticising and replacing by a ‘better’ understanding of the common perspectives of these issues [Sphere’s of Justice]. 

Whatever the conception of justice, the values which predominate, or the participatory aspect of the socio-communal context, Walzer noted the priority for labor relations to be worked out in any democratic political market situation. 

‘Democratic citizens, then, have a choice:  if they want to bring in new workers, they must be prepared to enlarge their own membership, if they are unwilling to accept new members, they must find ways within the limits of the democratic labour market to get socially necessary work done’ (80).  Political justice was therefore vital in the social context for Walzer.  ‘Political justice is a bar to permanent alienage – either for particular individuals or a class of changing individuals.’ (80) 

However, as Habermas revealed, ‘an autonomous public sphere’ depended on the mediation of ‘particularistic considerations’ from his perspective.  

‘The emergence of an autonomous public sphere of political reasoning and discussion is … central to the project of the moderns … increasingly not the consensual generation of norms but money and power have become modes through which individuals define the social bond and distribute social goods …’ (80)  

Most, if not all, of the interview respondents appeared alert to the efficacy of ‘political justice’ as the means through which socio-communal participation and agency could proceed.  Accordingly, the cultivation of ‘an autonomous public sphere’ from the socio-communal aspect, with broad political contributions, was among the most prevalently espoused prospects of The Community Project which really represented the basic substance of the Saturday/ Sunday Sessions.                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Nevertheless, ‘… as money and power became increasingly autonomous principles of social life, individuals lose a sense of agency and efficacy (80) … the demands of increased role-distance and the continuing subjection of tradition to critique and revision in a disenchanted universe make it difficult for individuals to develop a coherent sense of self and community under conditions of modernity’ (80-81).

Greater substantial public participation could proceed from ‘expanding individuals’ cognitive participation in various branches of knowledge … and by increasing the possibilities of meaningful life-choices on the parts of individuals …’ (81) 

Conclusion:

Deep essence and resonance through a confluence of purpose 

Greater respect and appreciation of harmony in hermeneutic and/or interpretive analysis would provide a broader scope and context to accommodate a greater blend of prospective elements and influences in interpretation.  

Consequently, a more fine-grained sensitively realized sense of synchronicity would enable speculative and purposive reason to thrive in a context of paradoxical enquiry.  Qualities of intuition and imagination would remain resonant in such a context, which would substantiate the only truly feasible prospect for mutual maturity to be acquired gradually as a serendipitous outcome.  

While prejudice from a peremptory perspective would remain an entrenched facet of character, at least it could be feasibly mediated from this aspect. 
The prospect of a narrative of reality purveyed through a confluence of purpose is a form of antidote to mutual exclusivity.  However,  ‘All playing is being played’, as Gadamer noted.  So if reality and/or reason becomes so virtual it drifts into the constrained perspective of effectively ‘a game’ only, then the prospect of any authenticity associated with this situation floats away accordingly through such an artificial imbroglio, where feelings have no room to be expressed, or to acquire credibility. 

Unity based on coherence is always potentially prejudicial.  

However, the fluidity of conversation imbued with feeling, situation and resonance enables the blend of constitutive elements of reality and experience to remain relatively autonomous through the continuum of meaning  significance  relevance  resonance, as this proceeds inexorably. 

Clearly, ‘good will’ constitutes the moral/ ethical dimension through which the Giddens ethos of moral responsibility can be the basis of any context of moral justification.  Thence a ‘prior concept’ of authentic interpretation is implied here, through which difference is able to resonate, as optimally realized through a palpable sense of community, as the pretext for a form of destiny and purpose sustained through an open sense of expansive dimensionality. 

Broadly, ‘dialogue and writing’ are vital in the life process as the substantiation of ‘hermeneutics and deconstruction’, and yet as forms of interpretation which would prospectively imply reconstruction could thence proceed. 

The interaction of faith, as a form of reason, with tradition can substantiate the sense of continuity and coherence through which such an element of perpetuity is purveyed.  This prospectively can culminate in a resonant sense of trust as the ground for such perpetuity in perception and perspective.  Although such reliance on trust may not necessarily proceed in any given situation, it provides the form of context through which the aspect of ‘deep essence’ proposed by Caputo can be cultivated and explored.  Such a deep quality of essence could substantiate the further quality of ‘Deep Friendship’ The Community Project participants and interview respondents have explored expansively through their distinctive contributions to truth and humanity. 

Resonance and relevance, as pervasive qualities and/or criteria, deeply influence the whole continuity and development of life through the particularity of ‘internal connections’, as well as through total ‘temporal, causal succession’.  

Therefore ‘life interprets itself’, although through the respective interpretations of each living entity.  Significance acquires substance through this process.  

So the spirit of life is vitalized through the phenomena of lived human existence.  The ‘striving towards stability’ thereby inherent engenders a ‘unity of meaning’ through an emphatic profound sense of communality.  

Meanwhile, ‘consciousness’ is ‘a life attitude’ … It is ‘self-assertion’ in itself.  

The projective character of all ‘understanding’ is ‘transcendence’ for Heidegger.  Therefore, this is also true of meaning and interpretation for Gadamer.  

So prejudice becomes a partial broaching of awareness.  

While reason is comprehensively realized as a form of faith, as Chesterton revealed. 

Correspondingly, the inherent interaction of reason and authority enables tradition to retain its deep resonance, for Gadamer.  However, tradition must become authentically explicit through reason, imaginatively and intuitively, through purpose, to be grounded through universal principles, from my perspective. 

Gadamer seeks a ‘harmony’ of all these elements, thereby to substantiate understanding.  Any credible historian and/or viable history is therefore situated in an ‘horizon’ of time, which obviates the importance of relevance and resonance in this, for me. 

‘Myth’ is the horizon through which ‘culture’ is ‘bounded’ for Nietzsche.  Meanwhile, ‘phenomena’ require ‘interpretation’ for Gadamer.  

Accordingly, ‘trust’ is a ‘phenomenon innately presented to us’ through reality, Gadamer observes.  Experience must be confirmed, whereby its ‘truth’ orientates us to new experience, just as Santayana realized all this from an aesthetic ethos and perspective.  Experience must proceed ‘beyond mere reconstruction’ through a sense of ‘openness’ and enquiry. 

Gadamer insists that we ‘fall into conversation’, rather than ‘conduct’ it, rendering this as a basically intuitive speculative endeavour.  

However, perspectival continuity and consistency remain pertinent in this, as a fusion of horizons of interpretation characterizes linguistic interpretation.  

‘All performance is interpretation’, while ‘understanding and interpretation’ remain intertwined facets of experience and being.  Expression is potential before it is actualized, thereby rendering a providential aspect to interpretation.  

While attitude is inherent in all this.  As nobody is independent of ‘the world’, this therefore presupposes the reality of subjective attitudes to the world. 

Tradition is situated as a predominant element in this as it represents whatever people experience through a sense of belonging.  However, prior perspective, as in the form of tradition, can be subject to variation, which renders language and philosophy as forms of speculative endeavour.  Unity of meaning and form become pertinent facets of coherence in this, which culminates in a given perspective.  Consciousness, interpretation and hermeneutics thence become basically speculative initiatives, construed through the aspect of paradox.  Hermeneutics thus manifests as a universal phenomenon, along with reason and language, which comprises a broad aesthetic ethos which forms out as a comprehensive blend of paradoxical and speculative elements. 

Harre and Langenhove broadly assert ‘rights and obligations’ as the form of ‘moral order’, thereby proposing what would be a normative substantiation of Giddens’ emphasis on ‘moral responsibility’ as the ‘context of moral justification’.  However, structure and order in this is mediated through intention and behaviour, constituted through attitude, from my perspective.  

Speculative reason, envisaged by Whitehead as ‘the Art of Life’, would be autonomously expressed through intuition and spontaneity, and representing the paradoxical life element which ‘stays indeterminate’ from ‘rules and roles’. 

‘Coherent clusters of traits’ represent the identity and nature of each person as their distinctive aspect, effectively constituting ‘the content of their character’, following Martin Luther King.  Therefore, it is a flawed perspective to deem people are engaged in some form of virtual ‘real-life game’, or drama, as Gadamer presumed.  

However, Hare and Langenhove basically subscribe to a stipulative ontology through their notion of circumstantial positioning, whereas Chesterton, Whitehead and Santayana invoke more ontologically consistent dimensions and interpretations. 

Meanwhile, Harre and Langenhove invoke a process of ‘rhetorical redescription’ through which people are positioned through discursive techniques and practices, which could potentially serve as a reconstructive process through which continuity and progression are renewed.  ‘Fluid positionings’ are cited by the authors as basic in this process, through ‘metaphorical’ and ‘metaphysical’ aspects.  However, it is vital for people to be able to locate themselves exploratively and tentatively, form my perspective.  While people are positioned and repositioned through any form of conversational dynamic it is not mandatory for them to be positioned prescriptively in any relatively autonomous context.  There must remain some ground for them to contribute distinctively through ‘individual attributes and particularities’. 

Consequently, it is important for ‘personal’ and ‘social identity’ to be considered and expressed through multivariate dimensions from myriad perspectives to expand any duality or dichotomy which may constrain the characteristic identity of the human entity realized through successive evolving situations.  

Otherwise ambiguity and/or ambivalence may ensue.  

Justification and worthiness thence proceeds from incremental discernment and expansion of awareness to realization, from my perspective. 

Moreover, ‘determinacy’ does not necessarily imply mutual exclusivity.  

People need to be able to braid and blend their respective contributions in the whole context of life and reality through a consistent continuous narrative which constitutes authentic reality. 

Meanwhile, ‘images and metaphors’ comprise the elements we form, through which we become who we are through the ‘assumptions’ which substantiate the process of awareness and realization from idea (‘image’) to ideal (‘metaphor’) and thence to reality, through which I have affirmed this. 

An ‘unfolding narrative’ which is consistent and continuous throughout time is vital as a process through to perpetuity, based on life purpose and destiny, is basic to our awareness and perception of experience and to who we become through ‘how things appear to be’ for us.  Such awareness must incorporate the elements of ‘surprise’, spontaneity and intuition.  Rather than gravitating to the more familiar mode of life, it is important for people to invest their life orientation in a deeper resonance and synchronicity of dimensions which would become their authentic distinctive situation. 

Cultural, social and personal dimensions are thereby blended into a distinctive actual narrative and life context. 

Thence, for instance, popular songs and music retain resonance and appeal because they retain their intuitive synchronicity and significance in the personal context of authentic stories and narratives in the contemporary context.  

The ‘struggle’ of ‘diversity’ in this comprises a form of ‘braided’ discourse through which a ‘complex weaving’ of narratives, rather than ‘positions’, is evident. 

The aspect of ‘mediated learning’ through a context of ‘psychological symbiosis’ the authors propound resembles Allport’s perceptual ‘balance’ as ‘cyclical’ synthesis, juxtaposing intuitive, behavioural and phenomenological learning.  While the ascribed orientation of philosophers around ‘personal identity’, along with ontology and phenomenology in my view, through which authenticity is asserted, diverges from the psychological preoccupation with behaviour.  

Clearly, how people are ‘located’ in a given context constitutes how they particularly relate to their circumstances, as much as they are so positioned in this. 

Just as Martin Buber recognized ‘tradition’ as the ground for elaboration of universal principles in the ‘between’ time of ‘transition’, so the Community Project research interview participants considered their existential realm to be the ‘messy’ transition time between millenniums in which relevant and resonant antecedent universal principles were vital as a reference base for reconstruction. 

Broadly, ‘legislative’ universal principles were considered positional by the respondents, while ‘interactive’ principles were communal, mutual, collaborative and collective in aspect. 

Truth can be observed as essentially derived through an explanatory process of life and experience through which what is there becomes apparent, and is therefore providential.  Further, following Vico, this is a Providence linked with elements of communal convention.  Moreover, the form of ethos of universal synchronicity evident through Santayana’s ideals served to elaborate a reality context through which such ideals could be to realized. 

Rawls considered ‘intuitive ideas … as latent in the public culture of a democratic society’.  A ‘broad vision of reason, self and identity’ was required through ‘overlapping consensus’, akin resonantly with Whitehead’s broad ‘cosmology’. 

What Benhabib cites as the socio-personal ‘endowment’ and ‘disposition’ raises a further sense of the providential to enable particular attributes and qualities to be cultivated and to thrive.  These facets of character can be ameliorative and/or promotive as the basis of pertinent attitudes grounded in a firm sense of place and relevance.  Collective mutual awareness thence culminates in a substantial sense and place of (inter)personal responsibility.  

Benhabib’s principles of the ‘standpoint of the concrete other’ and the ironic complexity of everyday life characters are comprehensively evident throughout the work of Santayana and Chesterton respectively. 

There are ‘qualities of civic friendship and solidarity evident here, as raised by Benhabib, which substantiate perspectives of experiential reality formation and realization.  The transition of idea and ideal to image, which evoke place, significance and resonance, are thence implied as I have derived these through Sardello’s work.  Hence, ‘the right and the good, justice and the good life’ are emergent here, just as is Whitehead’s ‘to live, to live well, and to live better’. 

The ‘web of stories’ which constitutes the fabric of the socio-communal and cultural development, as is ‘the perspective of the margins’.  While the distinctive contributions of each person in these contexts is vital in displacing the ‘fractured, opaque self’ and ‘the deed without the doer’ of the so-called ‘post-modernist’ predicament. 

Through her quest for a feasible ‘concept of reason’, Benhabib evokes the respective Whitehead and Chesterton quests in this respect.  Benhabib enquires as to what ‘normative’ edifice could substantiate and support the relative autonomy and rationality which pervades Western societies in the context of a fragile, tenuous modernity with its tendency to struggle and contestation.  

The ‘modernity project’ seems inexorably oriented towards and ethos of broad contestation and ‘disenchantment’.  

Consequently, the turn to significance and veracity as substantive criteria vital to socio-personal development and cultivation are authenticated through the dimensional criteria of relevance and resonance in this respect, along with the further criteria of continuity, purpose and substance. 

Meanwhile, linguistic and discursive rationality, through which ‘communicative rationality’ and ‘ethics’, which appears as prioritized through Habermas’ interpretation, seemed to substantiate an ethos and rationality somewhat at variance in aspect to hermeneutics and Whitehead’s ‘speculative reason’, although attuned to the communitarian ethos of Vico’s ‘talking well’ as a grounding principle.  For ‘the priority of the right over the good’ seems somewhat divergent from ‘the good life’ as propounded through Whitehead’s advocacy of ‘the good’ as a foundational ethos in itself.  

However, the ‘association’ of the ‘I’ as a facet of the ‘we’ became the vital interactive link in this, which would thwart the ‘ruptured continuity of being’ from being dislodged from the ‘purposive’ element of life and reason. 

If a sense of abundant mutual maturity is to be progressively acquired as a generalized phenomenon in the whole life context, then a greater appreciation of harmony through rich qualities of intuition, imagination and paradoxical enquiry must prevail as characteristic in our life narrative(s) and purposive endeavour. 

Such an antidote to mutual exclusivity and entrenched prejudice could transform the banal amusement of contemporary virtual life game playing into a most resonant collaborative quest for authenticity.  

Fluid interactive sharing and conversation can together form into a blending agent through which authentic experience and reality can resonate as a relative autonomous phenomenon.  Authentic interpretation is implied through good will which resonates through purpose and destiny in a context of moral justification.  Such expansive dimensionality proceeds from the perpetuity of faith, as a form of reason, which renders life with a resonant sense of coherence.  

Trust may proceed and be acquired through the application of faith to perception and perspective, although this attribute is not a certain outcome of faith. 

Significance as an interpretive element or agent in life acquires substance through the pervasive influence of resonance and relevance, as these interpretive criteria of the life process progressively vitalize the spirit of life.  

Consequently, ‘life interprets itself’, as Gadamer describes this process. 

Unity of meaning can proceed from stability in human relations, but this can only be realized comprehensively through a profound sense of communality. 

As a life attitude, consciousness can become a pervasive form of awareness, perhaps expressed ultimately through self-assertion, which as an outcome of ‘understanding’ becomes ‘transcendence’ for Heidegger.  

Hence Santayana could write:  ‘Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention’, given that consciousness as a life attitude can become the ground through which a profoundly resonant sense of attention and reflection can be cultivated. 

Meanwhile, in all this, Chesterton revealed how pervasive sustained reason, as an attribute of such reflection and attention and an attitude or disposition in itself, could culminate in profound faith.  Tradition could thence become authentically explicit through this process, imaginatively and intuitively, in a universal context. 

An extensive ‘horizon of time’ is therefore implied as the ground of tradition and culture, through which phenomena can be interpreted as elements of experience through a sense of ‘openness’ and enquiry, for Gadamer. 

Performance as a form of interpretation, while the reality that expression remains potential until it is actualized reveals the providential aspect of interpretation, following Gadamer.  Attitudes are inherent in expression and, because they are always socio-personal in aspect and disposition, they constitute a form of implicit engagement with ‘the world’, at least.  Therefore nobody can be independent of the world in a thoroughly subjective sense. 

Therefore, if normative elements of nay ethical and/or moral fabric are to be blended through a sense of ‘moral responsibility’ into ‘a context of moral justification’, then these must be thence mediated through intention and behaviour and thereby constituted through whatever attitude prevails.  Speculative reason, intention and spontaneity will thence form the dynamic through which the paradoxical element in all this can ‘stay indeterminate’. 

Throughout this process, ‘coherent clusters of traits’ will represent the character, nature and identity of each person.  However, rather than circumstantial positioning based on some form of virtual ‘real-life game’, a situational ontology based on a fluid blend of ‘metaphorical’ and ‘metaphysical’ aspects is preferable.  However, this would derive from relatively autonomous mediation of circumstances based on a disposition of authentic equanimity, rather than positioning based on discursive techniques and practices. 

Such an ethos would imply a consistent continuous unfolding life narrative braided and blended from personal distinctive contributions.  

Multivariate dimensions of personal and social identity would thwart any tendency to exacerbate ambiguity and/or ambivalence from the anxiety of limited constrained perspectives.  Ideas (‘images’) and ideals (‘metaphor’) can cultivate substantive awareness and realization in this, thereby substantiating reality, while enabling explorative discernment of the context which comprises ‘how things appear to be’. 

Deep resonance and synchronicity are required to sustain providence and/or destiny from the cultural, social and personal dimensions in the distinctive narrative life context. 

The prospect of ‘mediated learning’ through ‘psychological symbiosis’ would propitiate such dimensional endeavour, with aspects of balance and cyclical synthesis thereby prospectively implied. 

Antecedent elements, such as tradition and heritage, remain pertinent in the collaborative explorative quest for truth, as we all collectively and personally negotiate this messy ‘between time of transition’ from the previous to the early contemporary millennium.  Hopefully, we will prefer interactive legislative principles in this, while sustaining the veracity of all these dimensions. 

The attributes of ‘endowment’ and ‘disposition’ reveal the providential element which can substantiate the ground of place, relevance and resonance the basis of mutual awareness and (inter)personal responsibility. 

Meanwhile ‘qualities of civic friendship and solidarity’ underpin experiential realization.  Hence ‘the right and the good, justice and the good life’ are proposed by Benhabib as values through which Whitehead’s ‘to live, to live well, and to live better’ as ‘the Art of Life’ may be realized prospectively.  Amid such a collective socio-communal ethos the ‘web of stories’ contributed by each and every person could substantiate ‘the perspective of the margins’ to displace the ‘fractured, opaque self’ and ‘the deed without the doer’ of the post-modernist ascendancy. 

 

  
   
REFERENCES

NB:  All page numbers in the text of this Situational Perception seminar paper pertain to each of the books designated by the foregoing year of publication stated in each first page number bracket for that publication in the text.

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