Habermas
• defender of the ideals of modernism /
Enlightenment
• but critical of de facto modernity
• in order to show pathology of modernity,
has to
– extend idea of reason
– rationally ground normative principles
Habermas’ approach
• critical social science / immanent
critique
• widely read
– German philosophy
– American pragmatism
– analytical philosophy
– developmental psychology
– social theory
Frankfurt School
• emancipatory power of reason - Marx
• scepticism in Frankfurt School
– history
– Max Weber
• Zweckrationalität (means-ends rationality)
• Iron cage of bureaucracy
• Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of
Enlightenment
Knowledge and Human
Interests
• critique of positivism
• technical knowledge not the only form of
knowledge
• knowledge determined by “quasi-
transcendental cognitive interests”
Knowledge and Human
Interests
• empirical-analytical sciences -
technical cognitive interest
• historical-hermeneutic sciences -
practical cognitive interest
• critically oriented sciences -
emancipatory cognitive interest
• weakness - reliance on “philosophy of
subject” - need for “linguistic turn”
Communicative Action
• Communication and the Evolution of
Society (CES), published 1976
• Theory of Communicative Action (TCA,
2 vols), published 1981
CES Chapter 1 - Universal
Pragmatics
• reconstruct universal rules underlying
communicative competence
• Wants to distinguish:
– strategic action (oriented to success,
purposive-rational)
– communicative action (oriented to reaching
understanding
CES Chapter 1 - Universal
Pragmatics
• Model of communication that embeds
utterances in three different pragmatic
relations to reality:
– representing facts (“the” world of external
nature)
– establishing legitimate interpersonal
relations (“our” world of society)
– expressing one’s own subjectivity (“my”
world of internal nature)
CES Chapter 1 - Universal
Pragmatics
• These make corresponding validity
claims:
– truth
– rightness
– truthfulness
CES Chapter 1 - Universal
Pragmatics
• Other forms of rationality as lesser
– strategic action suspends validity claim of
truthfulness
– symbolic action suspends validity claim of
truth
• So it gives him his immanent principles
for critique - distorted communication
CES Chapter 2 - Moral
Development
• preconventional level, reward and punishment
– stage 1 (punishment/obedience)
– stage 2 (instrumental hedonism)
• conventional level, social recognition, shame
– stage 3 (good boy orientation)
– stage 4 (law and order orientation)
• post-conventional level, impersonal moral
principles, conscience, guilt
– stage 5 (social-contractual legalism)
– stage 6 (ethical-principled orientation)
CES Chapter 3 - Societal
Development
• rationalisation in instrumental rationality
(economy, technology)
• rationalisation in communicative
rationality (reason, law, morality)
• links ontogenesis (personal
development) with social development
System and lifeworld (TCA)
• system - impersonal institutions of
bureaucracy and markets - coordinated
through strategic rationality
• lifeworld - world of shared human
meanings, - coordinated through
communicative rationality
• system colonises lifeworld and
threatens communicative action
Social movements
• Social movements as defence of
lifeworld and communicative rationality
• Distinguishes
– emancipatory movements (e.g. women's
movement)
– resistance movements
• defending interests (e.g. NIMBY)
• resistance to commercial and bureaucratic
power (e.g. green mvts)
Discourse ethics
• Kantian ethics
– formal / procedural,
– universal
– made social - dialogical, not monological
– made historical - social evolution
Discourse ethics
• oriented towards understanding and
consensus
• possibility of unforced consensus and
coordination of actions
• not negotiation of private interests but
deliberation about public good
• ideal speech situation
• Fonte:
• http://domino.lancs.ac.uk/ieppp/IEP422.
nsf/0/81a62fdc26dc8bc180256c6a005a
6815/Body/M3/Habermas.ppt?OpenEle
ment