For some reason, I felt I needed to know Habermas’ theory of communicative reason or communicative rationality. When I first read Habermas, back in my early masters days, I learned of his theoretical wranglings with Foucault, and how the German philosopher/sociologist had called the French philosopher/historian a Young Conservative.
According to Nancy Fraser (1985), “this epithet was an allusion to the ‘conservative revolutionaries’ of interwar Weimar Germany, a group of radical, antimodernist intellectuals…To call Foucault a ‘Young Conservative,’ then, was to accuse him of elaborating what Habermas calls a ‘total critique of modernity.’ Such a critique…is theoretically paradoxical because it cannot help but presuppose surreptitiously some of the very modern categories and attitudes it claims to have surpassed. And it is politically suspect because it aims less at a dialectical resolution of the problems of modern societies than at a radical rejection of modernity as such. In sum, it is Habermas’ (1981, 1982) contention that, although Foucaualt’s critique of contemporary culture and society purports to be postmodern, it is at best modern and at worst antimodern.â€
When I told My Friend of Habermas’ critique of his beloved Foucault, his retort was, “Who? Haber-ass?â€
I was all, good one.
Anyhoo, reading Theory of Communicative Action is the equivalent of chewing on cardboard, albeit more (mentally) nourishing but certainly not tasty, or easy to get down. What is with these German philosophers and their dry, dense writing style (Marx’s flourishes not withstanding)? Communicative reason is different from the rationalist tradition, which locates rationality in the structure of either the knowing subject, or the cosmos. Rather, Habermas grounds rationality in structures of interpersonal linguistic communication. As a social theory, this advances the goals of human emancipation as it maintains an inclusive universalist moral framework. Such a framework rests on universal pragmatics, the notion that speech acts have an inherent telos, that is, a purpose or determined end. “Reaching understanding is the inherent telos of speech†(287). He is assured that people have the ability, the communicative competence, to achieve such understanding. Habermas is concerned to carry the Enlightenment project forward, and seeks a more humane, just and egalitarian world by developing human potential for reason through discourse ethics.
Habermas distinguishes communicative rationality from its strategic counterpart (cmns oriented toward success); the former attempts to explain human rationality as the outcome of successful communication. He contextualizes reason in the everyday practices of modern individuals; he further examines the presuppositions and validity dimensions of everyday cmns, which in turn explain deep structures of reason, defending against relativism. He identifies three validity dimensions of communicative rationality. These “worlds†are: normative rightness, theoretical truth and expressive or subjective truthfulness. These validity claims must be criticizable; that is, the speaker is expected to be able to justify her statements, to give acceptable reasons for her position. Thus the hearer is rationally motivated to accept the conditions of the speech act, and ultimately, the content. Communication is successful only if there is agreement regarding the validity claims raised in the speech acts exchanged.
Through his formal-pragmatic analysis of cmns, Habermas has shown that rationality shouldn’t be limited to objective concerns – indeed, the very structure of cmns indicates that normative and evaluative concerns can and should be addressed rationally.
Easy.