• Note that I'm not a Habermas scholar per se;  I just seem to understand him pretty well and have found him relevant to my own concerns about political development.  Thus I emphasize his normative theory.
• A brief description of Habermas's concerns and his position in the philosophical pantheon [Put the basic diagram on the board:]

  CONSTRUCTION	CRITIQUE / DECONSTRUCTION
  <————6:   Dialectical thought [e.g., Habermas II]————>
  5.5:  Postmodernism [e.g., Foucault, Derrida]
  5:  Modernity;  spec. Enlightenment thought [e.g., Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Rawls, Habermas I]
  4.5:  Value relativism;  cultural relativism
  4:  Absolutism;  fascism

  • Comes out of a tradition critiquing Enlightenment thought (including Kant and even Hegel) by Marx and others:
    • "Critical Theory" and more specifically the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt (the "Frankfurt School", founded in 1929, which included Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse)
    • "Postmodernists", of whom I will mention particularly Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
  • The critique generally consists of various attacks on the claims of absolute knowledge of any form, including Kant's transcendentalism.  In particular, they argue that "reason" (and especially reason about normative issues) is corrupted at birth by power. However, consciousness of this corruption is repressed, so the resulting normative beliefs constitute an "ideology" (a.k.a. "false consciousness") in the Marxist sense.
  • While a major critical tradition takes the classical Marxian form of looking at social processes, class relations, and social structure — Foucault would be a good example —, another critical tradition ("the linguistic turn") finds traction for critique in an analysis of language, since language is a major means by which we organize and sustain our social relations.  Derrida would be a good example of this latter tradition.  Three simple (non-Derridaean) examples of such analysis:  first, the use of "he" as the generic pronoun for "human" (implying that being a man is the normal state of affairs);  second, the use of "Mrs." and "Miss" as titles (saying that women are defined by marriage but that men — all of whom get the title "Mr." — are not);  and third, the use of "flesh colored" to mean "the color of white people".
  • The problem of modernity:  its susceptibility to such critiques.
  • The problem of postmodernity:  its absolutization of critique and its consequent failure to suggest on what grounds we might legitimately organize ourselves.
  • The inadequacy of modernity's response:  its failure to come to grips with the critiques, disguised behind a demand for better ideas.
  • Habermas's goal:  to rescue reason and Enlightenment thought generally from this sterile conflict.
  • Habermas's multiple roles:  philosopher, sociologist, legal scholar, public intellectual, social critic
• Habermas I:  Grounding ethics on the so-called "Ideal Speech Situation".  Tracing the origins of modernity in the rise of the "public sphere":

  "A public sphere began to emerge in the 18th C. through the growth of coffee houses, literary and other societies, voluntary associations, and the growth of the press. In their efforts to discipline the state, parliament and other agencies of representative government sought to manage this public sphere. The success of the public sphere depends upon:

  • the extent of access (as close to universal as possible),
  • the degree of autonomy (the citizens must be free of coercion),
  • the rejection of hierarchy (so that each might participate on an equal footing),
  • the rule of law (particularly the subordination of the state),
  • and the quality of participation (the common commitment to the ways of logic). (Rutherford 18)" (Marshall Soules)

• Habermas II:  Grounds his moral system ("discourse ethics") in a complex (= dialectical) way from the structure of language.
  • The Münchhausen trilemma
  • The presuppositions of argumentation
  • (U) and (D):
    • (U):  ... every valid norm has to fulfill the following condition: ... All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects its general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone's interests (and these consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities for regulation) (Habermas 1983/1990a:65;  emphasis in the original).
    • (D):  Only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse (Habermas 1983/1990a:66;  emphasis in the original)
  • Can a skeptic argue against (U) and (D) (and the concept of "performative contradiction")?—Maybe.  This is why discourse ethics has the character of "reconstructive science".
• Reconstructive science and its consequences
  • Reconstructive science as a dialectical relationship between theory and practice.
  • Discourse ethics (and, by the way, Larry Kohlberg's work on the develoment of moral reasoning) as reconstructive science
  • The rejection of philosophy as "judge" (of which theories have been proven) and "usher" (of various disciplines into their proper relationship).  Instead, he sees different roles for philosophy and philosophers, as follows:
  • Philosophy as "stand-in" (for unattainable true theories)
  • Philosophy as "interpreter" (of the three domains of human experience—the empirical, the normative/legal, and the internal/aesthetic—to each other)
• The performative vs. the objectivating attitude;  participation vs. prediction
• Lifeworld and system:
  • Money and power as signalling system—imperfect signalling systems, and with their imperfections organized.
  • The dialectical relationship between lifeworld and system;  neither is normatively prior.
  • Colonization of the lifeworld and the dominance of system logic.
• Criticisms of Habermas:
  • Many of the critiques arise from plain misunderstandings of Habermas.   This comes in part because Habermas did re-ground his work around 1980 but the idea of the "Ideal Speech Situation" lives on regardless.
  • There is also some — how shall I put this? — resentment of Habermas's appropriation of other theorists' work.  Thus Habermas's work, particularly the theory of communicative action, appears to be a black hole into which all other work disappears.  However, this is not a real critique.
  • Because Habermas roots discourse ethics in the presuppositions of argumentation, he is unable to handle very well our relations with animals and other moral patients.
  • Habermas is weak on the problem of praxis:  he notes that social structure needs to "meet morality halfway" — but how do we get there?  I will not say that he has no ideas on the subject, but it doesn't appear to be an important part of his work.  In that he is like Marx:  more concerned with the analysis and critique of the existing social structure than the imagining and practical creation of a new one.

Follow-up to my lecture to Phil 3305 on April 21 & 22:  [From my email of 4/28 to Dave Cole, the course instructor]

Dear Dave,

You and the class raised two issues to which I at last have the time (and wit) to respond.

First, during my discussion of performative contradiction, one of your students (and you as well, I think) questioned the presupposition that one's interlocutor exists. Might one be responding merely to a hallucination?

What I should have pointed out then is that the issue is not whether the presupposition is in fact justified but rather that one  makes it. For example. as I write this note, I can entertain the thought that you are a figment of my imagination, but by sending this argument to you, I have in fact granted your existence, at least for the purpose of writing this. Even if the larger question of our existence remains open, I can't turn around *within this context* to say you don't exist.

Second, you noted that philosophers have long accepted that there can be no absolute knowledge. I'm not sure whether you meant that to apply only to scientific theory or to normative theory as well, but I will assume the latter, since my concerns then were about normative theory. This raises the implicit question, what is new or special about Habermas's theory, if all it does is belatedly recognize something philosophers have long known?

As I see it, Habermas contributes not the recognition of our epistemological difficulties but rather a new way to respond to  them. It seems to me that moral philosophy does not effectively respond to postmodern (and other, related) critique.  Speaking very generally here, of course, I see moral philosophers as reacting to rather than embracing the critical perspective.  They may change their justifications to address the critiques, but they are generally—how shall I say this—impatient with them, as if construction of normative theories was more important than deconstruction of them.

There is a deeper level than this, however. It seems to me that Habermas is not just critiquing existing normative theories, which is pretty easy to do. More than that, he is providing a systematic program, one that shows how to develop such critiques (through the critical standards (U) and (D)) and who to improve/correct the critical standards themselves. In other words, his justification of discourse ethics (and the concept of reconstructive science) shows where the critiques come from (i.e., from comparing the existing normative theory with (U) and (D)) and how these standards might themselves be tested (i.e., from seeing whether the moral skeptic can deny (U) and (D) without committing a performative contradiction). This allows him to escape (or at least to address directly) the postmodernists' problem of having their critiques turned on themselves. (One of your students asked about this issue.) Habermas's discourse ethics is both critical and self-critical at the same time, although the method of criticism is different from that of self-criticism. It is appropriate that it be so, of course, since the target of one criticism—norms & normative theories—is of a different character than the target of the other criticism—the standards of evaluation themselves.