Моральное сознание и коммуникативное действие

by Jürgen Habermas, Юрген Хабермас

В том входят четыре работы: В первой статье автор развивает тезисы о разделении труда между философскими и эмпирическими исследованиями, вызванные примером генетической эпистемологии Жана Пиаже. Во второй, используя в качестве модели теорию морального развития Лоренса Кольберга, автор пытался проявить взаимосвязь причинно-следственных объяснений и гипотетических реконструкций. Третья статья должна помочь дальнейшему прояснению начала этики дискурса. Четвертая статья - "Моральное сознание и коммуникативное действие".

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Theory, Nonfiction, Sociology, Political Science, Cultural

384 pages, Hardcolver

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and American pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his work on the concept of the public sphere, the topic of his first book entitled The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. His work focuses on the foundations of social theory and epistemology, the analysis of advanced capitalistic societies and democracy, the rule of law in a critical social-evolutionary context, and contemporary politics—particularly German politics. Habermas's theoretical system is devoted to revealing the possibility of reason, emancipation, and rational-critical communication latent in modern institutions and in the human capacity to deliberate and pursue rational interests.

Reviews

[Turbulent_Architect · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most detailed development of Habermas' discourse theory of morality. Haberman argues that there is, implicit in everyday practices of justification, a principle of universalization: A moral norm is valid only if if its consequences for the interests of each could freely be assented to by all in their capacity as participants in practical discourse. Habermas' discourse theory is, like Rawls' theory of justice as fairness, an interesting enough attempt to rehabilitate a kind of Kantian deontological ethics. The problem, though, is that Habermas' derivation of the principle of universalization is little more than a sketch. And although he acknowledges that he needs to provide a more thoroughgoing demonstration, no such demonstration has been provided to this day. Might be interesting as a historical artifact, but ultimately there's a reason it hasn't had any impact on Anglo-American ethics.

[Infrastructure Logistics · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Unless the subject externalizes himself by participating in interpersonal relations through language, he is unable to form that inner center that is his personal identity. This explains the almost constitutional insecurity and chronic fragility of personal identity -- an insecurity that is antecedent to cruder threats to the integrity of life and limb."

"Moral philosophies of sympathy and compassion (Schopenhauer) have discovered that this profound vulnerability calls for some guarantee of mutual consideration. This considerateness has the twofold objective of defending the integrity of the individual and of preserving the vital fabric of ties of mutual recognition through which individuals reciprocally stabilize their fragile identities.
No one can maintain identity by himself. Consider suicide, for example. Notwithstanding the Stoic view that held that this final, desperate act reflects the imperious self-determination of the lone individual, the responsibility for suicide can never be attributed to the individual alone. This seemingly loneliest of deeds actually enacts a fate for which others collectively must take some of the blame, the fate of ostracism from an intersubjectively shared lifeworld."

"This is why all moralities coincide in one respect: the same medium, linguistically mediated interaction, is both the reason for the vulnerability of socialized individuals and the key resource they possess to compensate for that vulnerability."

"In discourse ethics the idea of autonomy is intersubjective. It takes into account that the free actualization of the personalityi of one individual depends on the actualization of freedom for all."

"How does discourse ethics, which is limited to subjects capable of speech and action, respond to the fact that mute creatures are also vulnerable? Compassion for tortured animals and the pain caused by the destruction of biotopes are surely manifestations of moral intuitions that cannot be fully satisfied by the collective narcissism of what in the final analysis is an anthropocentric way of looking at things."

[Alexandre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je l’ai lu dans le cadre d’un séminaire à l’université. Livre très intéressant à mon avis. Pas une lecture facile, il faut avoir beaucoup de connaissances préalables sur certains concepts. Une livre de philo qui en vaut toutefois la peine selon moi.

[Andrew Noselli · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is Habermas' reaction to the growing neo-conservative movement in society over the last forty years and his claim that the social sciences can "become aware of the hermeneutic dimension while remaining faithful to the task of generating theoretical knowledge." The crucial step that Habermas takes for granted on the part of his readers is that they see postconventional consciousness in the moral sphere as autonomous. The question becomes not just whether the propositions for the moral life are correct, but whether the actions and norms governing them are correct. What right do we have to morally correctness once the truth-claims of rationality have been destroyed? Habermas asks his reader. (Note: When attempting to evaluate these statements, you should consider how and why the claims of deontology have failed, as applied to the sphere of international law.) [Habermas' language is in quotes.]

Early in this book, Habermas bids his readers to recall Horkheimer's the ending of his book The Dialectic of Enlightenment, where he concluded that "the idea of an instrumental reason restricted to purposive rationality must let its end be determined by blind emotional attitudes and arbitrary decisions." He points out that this was in direct contradiction to Kant, whose conclusions opposed the idea that cognitive moral philosophers could arrive at practical conclusions that were able to determine the truth of the matter. It seems to me that such an argument begs the questions, and that first, in order to determine why Kant's philosophy has been thrown overboard in such a fashion, such an argument must themselves be justified on the grounds of morality, which seems to lead to an infinite regression. [Habermas' language is in quotes.]

According to Habermas, the solution to this philosophical impasse is discourse ethics, which is an "ethics that does not set up substantive orientations but, instead, establishes a procedure based on presuppositions and designed to guarantee the impartiality of the process of judgment." My question, which you should research, is what is discourse-ethics but a better system of arriving at truth-consensus? Habermas says it conceives "discursive will formation as a reflective form of communicative action and, also, that it is compatible with a constructivist model of learning in that it postulates a change of attitude in the transition for action to discourse." (It seems to me it may perhaps need to be the other way around.) However, after some research, it seems that discourse ethics is a type of argument that attempts to establish normative truths by examining the presuppositions of discourse. The theory states that discourse can help repair consensus by establishing a norm of action that each person can understand and accept. Habermas's principle of discourse ethics "ensures that the universalist principle can be interpreted only as expressing the normative content of a procedure, not the normative content of the argument." [Habermas' language is in quotes.]

Habermas says this is "part of a reconditioning of the coming generations that shall succeed ours, in that this action-oriented theoretical approach suggests we should understand the development of sociomoral perspectives in the context of decentering the young person's understanding of the world." Why must philosophy be de-centered? "Decentering in poststructuralism is a consequence of Derrida’s critique of binary oppositions, especially of speech/writing, where he accused Saussure of privileging speech over writing, owing to the presence, and authority of the speaker. Terming it as phonocentrism, which is a manifestation of logocentrism (centrality of the Word), Derrida argued that the whole of Western philosophical thought is implicitly governed and dominated by the idea of logocentrism. Alternatively, Derrida terms logocentrism as the “metaphysics of presence” and he problematised the very notion of presence, which entails authority, permanence and control, by establishing that presence itself contains traces of absence and hence the centr is always under erasure." Habermas, too, suggests philosophy must be de-centered, but his argument is that truth is a regulative ideal intimately related to knowledge, validity claims, justification, and broader epistemic practices. Habermas's theory is that "the lifeworld is increasingly being taken over by political and economic systems. As politics is about power, attempts at becoming more powerful by politicians and the interests of political parties affect everyday lives." [Habermas' language and other language found on the internet is in quotes.]

Habermas uses Jean Piaget's theory of the stages of psychological development as a propaedutic for this philosophical attempts to de-center philosophy of its claims to rationality. "Jean Piaget was a psychologist and epistemologist who focused on child development. He developed a theory of human cognitive development (known as 'genetic epistemology') based on his interest in biology and particularly the adaptation of species to their environment. His theory of cognitive development suggests that children go through four stages of cognitive development from birth to adulthood, with each stage marked by milestones where the child has a more sophisticated understanding of the world. Piaget believed that learning occurs through the interplay of assimilation (adjusting new experiences to fit prior concepts) and accommodation (adjusting concepts to fit new experiences). This to-and-fro of these two processes leads to short-term learning, but also to long-term developmental change. Piaget developed his theories by watching children and making notes about their progress. The core idea of Piaget's theory is that children develop by acting as “little scientists” who explore and interact with their world to understand people, objects, and concepts. Jean Piaget believed that knowledge acquisition is a self constructive process. He believed that knowledge lies within the individual and it is not out there. He emphasized that children construct their knowledge from their surroundings. The types of knowledge as delineated by Piaget (social, physical, and logico-mathematical knowledge) suggest where instruction should be specific and where it should not be. context within which I believe specific instruction must take place. curriculum for early childhood education." [Language found on the internet is in quotes.]

It seems Habermas fully "believes in the possibility that these social perspectives can be linked with stages of interaction with the lifeworld in such a way as to permit a plausible grounding of moral stages in a logic of development. The very perspectives that make consensus possible cannot avoid accepting the point of view that is independent of contingent commonalities even when their value orientations diverge. This leads to claims that moral action is action guided by moral insight." This, in turn, leads to the claim that to act morally is to act based on insight." Habermas claims that "the justificatory power stems from the fact that this analysis is rooted in communicative action." This seems to be to put the cart before the horse, as existentialism does in that, as Sartre's dictum urges, the demand that one ought to live authentically is simply devoid of content in that it cannot be taken as instruction at all on a primary level, but rather is a philosophy of function disguised as a normative philosophy of rationality. According to Habermas, "the fundamentals of the moral point of view originates, in a way that precedes all controversies, in a fundamental reciprocity that is built into action oriented towards reaching understanding."

To justify his conclusion, Habermas says that "the normatively integrated fabric of social relations is moral in and of itself." He derives this conclusion from the sociological studies of Emile Durkheim, who suggested that "the basic moral phenomena are the binding force for all societies, which are violated when people behave in such a way as to conflict with the judgments and social norms. From the most primitive societies to our own highly technological society, moral certitude is derived from golden rules and obedience to ethical imperatives that are already implicit in social norms and laws that exist prior to our experience of any moral conflict." This returns us to the question of why Kant has failed and why he can no longer do the job and seems to have lost the ethical purpose of his philosophy? Never fear, Habermas solves this problem for us, too, in that he suggests that "at the postconventional contextual stage, the adult who becomes morally mature through conflicts and experiences learns to overcome the abstractions of a strict deontological morality along Kantian lines, which is abandoned because it absolutizes the aspect of normative rightness."

The notion of a stage of contextual moral relativism rests on a basic misconception of the basic problem of how ethical life and morality are to be mediated. According to Carol Gilligan, "the postconventional stage is based on the adult's ability to base morality on the logic of principled decision making based on standards that are thought to be universalizable and not dependent on culture. From her research, she adjusted Lawrence Kohlberg's theory to give attention to gender differences and to bring attention to what she calls the caring perspective. The caring perspective is the feeling that women experience when deciding how their decisions will affect others. Kohlberg's theory of moral development is a theory that focuses on how children develop morality and moral reasoning. Kohlberg's theory suggests that moral development occurs in a series of six stages and that moral logic is primarily focused on seeking and maintaining justice. She believed that Kohlberg's theory was inherently biased against women. Gilligan suggests that the biggest reason that there is a gender bias in Kohlberg's theory is that males tend to focus on logic and rules." [Language found on the internet is in quotes.]

Interpreted from the perspective of discourse ethics, practical reason does indeed require practical prudence in the application of rules. One way of testing postconventional superego structures is by comparing responses to the question of what "should I do" with responses to the question, "what would I do"? Apparently, the normative reality is that master morality is the morality of the majority, whereas slave morality is ensorcelled and hypostatized by the social life of the psychodynamic process of social conditions. What we need is what John Rawls put forth in his book on justice as fairness, universal trustworthiness and good faith even in the face of the most radical questioning of the fundamental underpinnings of society. These are the people in the society we ought to seek to create, people who understand that words can always be false and, therefore, guilty of an oblique doubling of meaning. I believe I am stating the truth when I say that Habermas wants a world of educated individuals who know that the divine cannot be translated into any language. But how can we live up to the concept of discourse ethics, which postulates the consent of all, if we cannot make up for the sense of injustice and pain felt by all previous generations or finally, if we cannot at least promise a day of judgment equivalent to a coming day of redemption for a humanity that suffers not only with a morally injured conscience but physically as well?

Just as Max Horkheimer felt "we must go beyond the morality of the utopian kind of society denoted by Kant's picture of the perfect constitution of a materialist humankind", Habermas's thesis situates us in relation to the dialectic of the enlightenment in that an ethics of speech acts is fixated within us. In terms that are reliant on the logic of a discourse-ethics, Habermas seeks a society structured according to principles of communicative action that are binding on a group of political actors who are free from the appeal to authority and care enough to understand why we must maintain the lifeworld of the public sector. Three stars.

[Alexandria Skinner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book on moral philosophy is written by a philosopher who is in dialogue with other philosophers, but it is well written and probably accessible to a lay audience.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

HABERMAS EXPLAINS THE IMPLICATIONS OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTION FOR MORAL THEORY

Jürgen Habermas (born 1929) is a German philosopher and sociologist who is one of the leading figures of the Frankfurt School.

He begins this 1983 book with the statement, “Master thinkers have fallen on hard times. This has been true of Hegel ever since [Karl] Popper unmasked him in the forties as an enemy of the open society. It has also been intermittently true of Marx. The last to denounce Marx as a false prophet were the New Philosophers in the seventies. Today even Kant is affected by this decline. If I am correct, he is being viewed for the first time … as the magician of a false paradigm from the intellectual constraints of which we have to escape. Though among a philosophical audience there may still be a majority of scholars whose image of Kant has stayed the same, in the world outside his reputation is being eclipsed, and not for the first time, by Nietzsche.” (Pg. 1)

He concludes the first chapter, “Thus, built into the structure of action oriented toward reaching understanding is an element of unconditionality. As it is this unconditional element that makes the validity that we claim for our views different from the mere de facto appearance of habitual practices. From the perspective of first persons, what we consider justified is not a function of custom but a question of justification or grounding. This is why philosophy is ‘rooted in the urge to see social practices of justification as more than just such practices.’ The same urge is at work when people like me stubbornly cling to the notion that philosophy is the guardian of rationality.” (Pg. 20)

He explains, “I call interaction ‘communicative’ when the participants coordinate their plans of action consensually, with the agreement reached at any point being evaluated in terms of the intersubjective recognition of validity claims… I distinguish between communicative and strategic action. Whereas in strategic action one actor seeks to influence the behavior of another by means of the threat of sanctions or the prospect of gratification in order to CAUSE the interaction to continue as the first actor desires, in communicative action one actor seeks RATIONALLY to MOTIVATE another by relying on the illocutionary binding/bonding effect of the offer contained in his speech act.” (Pg. 58)

He states, “From this viewpoint, that categorical imperative needs to be reformulated as follows: ‘Rather than ascribing as valid to all others any maxim that I can will to be a universal law, I must submit my maxim to all others for purposes of discursively testing its claim to universality. The emphasis shifts from what each can will without contradiction to be a general law, to what all can will in agreement to be a universal norm.’ This version of the universality principle does in fact entail the idea of a cooperative process of argumentation.” (Pg. 67)

He notes, “Communicative action can be understood as a circular process in which the actor is two things in one: an INITIATOR who masters situations through actions for which he is accountable and a PRODUCT of the traditions surrounding him, of groups whose cohesion is based on solidarity to which he belongs, and of processes of socialization in which he is reared.” (Pg. 135)

He begins a chapter with the statement, “In recent years Karl-Otto Apel and I have begun to reformulate Kant’s ethics by grounding moral norms in communication, a venture to which I refer as ‘discourse ethics.’ In this paper I hope to accomplish two things; first, to sketch the basic idea of discourse ethics and then to examine Hegel’s critique of Kantian moral philosophy.” (Pg. 195)

In the final chapter, he observes, “Discourse ethics does not see fit to resort to an objective teleology, least of all to a countervailing force that tries to negate dialectically the irreversible succession of historical events---as was the case, for instance, with the redeeming judgment of the Christian God on the last day. But how can we live up to the principle of discourse ethics, which postulates the concept of ALL, if we cannot make restitution for the injustice and pain suffered by previous generations or if we cannot at least promise an equivalent to the day of judgment and its power of redemption? …

"It is just as difficult to answer the basic objection of ecological ethics: How does discourse ethics, which is limited to subjects capable of speech and action, respond to the fact that mute creatures are also vulnerable? Compassion for tortured animals and the pain caused by the destruction of biotopes are surely manifestations of moral intuitions that cannot be fully satisfied by the collective narcissism of what in the final analysis is an anthropocentric way of looking at things.” (Pg. 111-112)

This book is very helpful for understanding Habermas’s often confusing ideas of communicative action; this book will be of great value to anyone studying Habermas’s thought, or the Frankfurt School in general.

[Daniel Hush · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book would be so good if it was published in 1787 or before. The biggest 5 star ever. Since it is published in 1983 and thinking about the 200 year gap, i am willing to give it 1, but only because 0 is not a possibility