Performative / Performativity
Later Philosophy & Our Methodology
Actions or statements that carry out what they state. In the narrower sense (Austin): speech acts such as "I promise," "I baptize." In the broader sense (our usage): acts of thought that apply themselves in their very execution and are thereby self-grounding.
Origin
In 1962, J.L. Austin (How to Do Things with Words) introduces the distinction between constative and performative. Habermas and Apel develop this further into transcendental pragmatics: whoever argues performatively raises validity claims. Karl-Otto Apel develops the criterion of "performative contradiction" (a statement that contradicts itself in its very execution).
Cross-references
Self-Application · Performative Contradiction · Implizite Reflexion · Reflexionsformen
Die zentrale einsicht aus kap. 5.5
The performative method IS the movement through the three forms of reflection -- not their illustration, but their practice: (For positing reflection and determining reflection, the correspondence is direct; for external reflection, performance shows a special case -- the experience of resistance -- which points toward Hegel's broader concept.) | Phase | Form of Reflection | Performative Character | |-------|----------------|------------------------| | Execution | Positing reflection | We invite immediate action | | Resistance | External reflection | What was done fails, runs up against something else | | Seeing through | Determining reflection | We recognize what happened and why | This explains why our reconstruction "works": it is not external description (which always misses its object), but an invitation to co-enact. The reader does not learn about the categories -- they pass through them. The performative method makes the implicit explicit -- not by describing it from outside (that would be external reflection), but by carrying it out (determining reflection).