Habermas in your bedroom
by westwood
There is a phenomenon in psychology known as kitchen-sinking… namely, you and your beau are having some kind of problem, but can’t seem to bring up the issue directly. Thus, you discuss ‘everything but the kitchen sink’, as the phrase goes. This adds delays to mind-numbingly fantastic make-up sex, so please don’t do it. Once you actually have the talk you need to, try keeping Habermas in mind to ensure your discussion ends in moaning and groaning of a more pleasant variety (but promptly forget him post-discussion, unless a wrinkly old man with a cowlick is your kind of thing).
So what does Jürgen Habermas have to do with your relationship drama? Although this dude has opinions on just about everything, he has a rather interesting point in Struggles For Recognition (which is a comment on Charles Taylor’s Multiculturalism, if you’re at all interested in this sort of thing). Technically, he’s talking about how to deal with conflicts between two cultures, but lets see how it applies here. Habermas lays out the distinction between two terms that goes a bit like this:
Compromise - agreeing to the same thing for different reasons
Consensus – agreeing to the same thing for the same reasons
That may have been obvious to some of you (not me, but I’m obtuse). It brings up an interesting point, though. Compromising starts early in relationships and can be pervasive, and usually isn’t thought of as a bad thing until compromise starts to breaks down. However, if you take it Habermas’ way, you actually start running into trouble when consensus breaks down.
So what’s consensus about? Think the way you would on a jury. Taking an attitude towards consensus says that you and your honey-bunchkins are co-contributors in the search for truth. Even if you approach the problem from different angles (for example he/she/it thinks that giant fishtanks in your living room is a great idea, and for some strange reason you disagree), you both agree on the terms of debate. If you’re both committed to tackling the problem by rational discussion (eg. costs), then you at last start out with the presupposition that mutual understanding can be reached. That means that if you follow the process (meaning yes, you actually have to talk about it, oh my!) you can probably reach a consensus.
However, as soon as you assume your sweetymuffintop is nuts, you abandon a communicative attitude and adopt a strategic one. The point of compromise is an objective, not to understand an issue or each other. You may offer loverlumpelstiltsken a compromise of, say, building a fishtank toilet, but you have now basically set out to get what you want without truly respecting the point of view of the other. You may think you’ve solved the issue, but you’re actually just widening the divide. And I absolutely guarantee the sex won’t be nearly as satisfying.
Next time, think about what you’re trying to achieve… consensus or compromise. Wrinkly, cowlicked Habermas could hold the key to ending up in the bedroom, not the kitchen. In you’re into happy, healthy relationships (although I know some love the drama), then keep an eye out for compromise, because it’s not actually a sign of mutual achievement, but communication breakdown at its finest.
So, tell us about your last argument. Did you achieve a consensus or a compromise? Did it make you stronger or weaker as a couple? Test the theory and let us know how things, um, made out.
Later,
westwood
Filed under: proceduralism, understanding | 6 Comments
Tags: argument, bedroom, compromise, conflict, consensus, debate, discussion, diversity, fishtanks, german philosophers, habermas, kitchen, multiculturalism, politics, psychology, relationships, sink
-
Recent Comments
You kill me. Hehe. This is interesting- I hadn’t thought about things in terms of compromise/consensus quite like this before. I like!
It’s funny how “relationship” and “compromise” always appear to go hand-in-hand, when you take into account how many unhealthy relationships there are and how many relationships fail… I think we should draw a graph to show the correlations here.
I would have said that my wife and I have made plenty of compromises in the thirteen years we’ve been together. But by Habermas’s definitions, we were actually arriving at a consensus.
Each of us was making a small sacrifice for the greater good of the relationship. Therefore, we were agreeing not only on the outcome, but also on the reason for that outcome.
In most of those cases, we were probably each giving up a little — moving toward the middle, which is how we usually define “compromise”.
Habermas’s definition sidesteps the issue of one individual getting 100% of what s/he wanted (e.g., no giant fishtank in the living room), with the other individual getting 0%. All the sacrifice is on one side. Usually, I wouldn’t call that either a compromise or a consensus — there’s a clear winner, and a clear loser.
If they both agree that the relationship is more important than the fish tank, that’s a consensus?
I’m pressing you on this point because, in many relationships, one partner routinely makes sacrifices, whereas the other partner rarely or never does so. Ultimately, I think this behaviour would have to be categorized as compromise (by Habermas’s definition), even though it may feel like a consensus in each individual instance.
I’m not seeing how Habermas’s definitions help to clarify that situation.
I agree with you on a number of these points.
It is definitely negative when the sacrifice-making becomes extensive or one-sided. And I think that the decisions made would probably qualify as compromises, but the sacrifices themselves are outside this term of labelling. In your question, if both people agree that the relationship is more important than the fish tank, it’s a consensus… if both people agree for the same reasons. If one person sacrifices the fish tank because they feel it is good for the relationship to please the other person, and the other accepts the sacrifice because they feel it is good for the relationship to get what they want, the sacrifice is a compromise that only reinforces a deeper, initial divide.
You are correct that in my representation of Habermas here, the issue of complete sacrifice is side-stepped… but that’s because under a consensus-based schematic, there is no sacrifice. If one works on an assumption where you are working towards understanding with another, if a demand is unreasonable, rather than sacrificing this unreasonable demand, one would realize that it is unreasonable and abandon it. This, of course is highly idealistic. This approach, though, allows for flexibility and greater mutual understanding.
However, with compromise, it assumed that the other person cannot be addressed on a rational level and are offered a ’swap’… an alternative to gratify a need (or avoid a fear). While a decision may be reached, this kind of exchange doesn’t foster mutual exploration.
So (as I think you’ve noticed) the point here that I am trying to make (through Habermas) is a bit underhanded. Habermas’ definitions can’t give us a prescription for navigating rough relationship waters, however, they do allow us to note the dangers in the traditional definition of compromise, which is conventionally thought as a good thing. Closer examination shows that compromise may not be nearly as positive as it is generally accepted to be, and Habermas gives us an alternative.
Anyone who can bring Habermas into a conversation and make it accessible is AOK. I’m going to be saying “Sweety muffintop” all day.
Okay I am also in look for of Flash tutorials, since I desire to learn more concerning flash, thus if you have please post it at this place.