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HABERMAS
HANDBOOK
New Directions in Critical Theory presents outstanding classic and contemporary texts
in the tradition of critical social theory, broadly construed. The series aims to renew
and advance the program of critical social theory, with a particular focus on theorizing
contemporary struggles around gender, race, sexuality, class, and globalization and their
complex interconnections.
Preface xi
3. Constitutional Law 36
W I LLI AM E. SC HE UE RM AN
6. Speech Acts 58
P ET ER N I ES E N
vi Contents
7. Psychoanalysis 64
J O EL W H I TE BOOK
8. Postmetaphysical Thinking 71
K EN N ET H BAY N E S
9. Kant 75
I N G EB O R G M AUS
26. Schelling, Marx, and the Philosophy of History: Das Absolute und die
Geschichte: Von der Zwiespältigkeit in Schellings Denken (The Absolute
and History: On the Ambiguity in Schelling’s Thought, 1954) 219
M AN F R ED F RAN K
27. The Theory of the Public Sphere: The Structural Transformation of the
Public Sphere (1962) 245
N AN C Y F R ASE R
38. Democracy, Law, and Society: Between Facts and Norms (1992):
Points of Reference: The Emergence of Political Philosophy from
Theoretical Philosophy 417
CHRISTOPH MÖLLERS
J
ürgen Habermas’s contributions to the theory of society, politics,
and legal and social philosophy represent one of the most widely
read bodies of work in the twentieth century. His work has gener-
ated, in addition to heated polemics, rejection, and criticism—which occasion-
ally took unproductive paths, including neoconservative surveillance efforts
in the 1970s that went so far as to affirm ties between the theory of communi-
cative action and bomb-throwing terrorists—a current of criticism that has
refined opposing positions (especially among other variants of systems theory
in Germany and France). Various approaches have taken up Habermas’s work
and developed it. Since the 1970s, ongoing discussions have occurred on an
ever-broader scale, often adding further depth to his reflections.
As occurred for Hegel and Luhmann, left and right wings have already
emerged among Habermas’s readers. Lateral and sometimes parallel connec-
tions play early writings out against later ones; other efforts address only recent
texts and have long abandoned the author’s points of departure in Schelling,
Heidegger, Marx, and even the social sciences. That said, when discussing a
thinker who publishes roughly an essay a month, all commentary is necessarily
provisional. At least half of Habermas’s writings take stock of current research
and new fields of inquiry and, in so doing, modify his own theory. Observa-
tions to be made depend on the positions and responses offered by an author
who—like Talcott Parsons or Richard Rorty—is engaged in a continuous pro-
cess of critique and response, polemic and discussion, with alternate programs
of theory and research.
xii Preface
B
etween the ages of ten and sixteen, Jürgen Habermas was just old
enough to experience, in conscious manner, World War II and its
aftermath: first, Germany’s victories and conquest of all of
Europe, then, the country’s unconditional surrender and the Nuremberg Tri-
als. In August 1939—under orders from the Führer—Joachim von Ribbentrop,
Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Jodl, Arthur
Seyß-Inquart, Hans Frank, Alfred Rosenberg, Wilhelm Keitel, Julius Streicher,
Fritz Sauckel, and others had carried out the attack and despoilment of Poland,
where they erected camps for forced labor and extermination. Millions of
human beings were deported, enslaved, and murdered. Over the next five
years, the same operation occurred throughout Europe, especially in the east.
In October 1945, the organizers were put on trial; one year later, they were
hanged. The generation that had joined the Hitler Youth during the war and
even served as Flakhelfer (antiaircraft auxiliaries) or participated in the Volkss-
turm at the end—including later intellectual figures such as Niklas Luhmann,
Hermann Lübbe, Ralf Dahrendorf, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Ulrich
Wehler, Odo Marquard, Alexander Kluge, the brothers Hans and Wolfgang
Mommsen, and Günter Grass, as well as politicians including Helmut
Kohl and Johannes Rau (all of whom were approximately the same age as
Habermas)—experienced their primary and secondary socialization (child-
hood and school years, puberty and adolescence) under the National Socialist
regime; their tertiary socialization (that is, the prolongation of youth that
2 Intellectual Biography
“personnel” and “contents” had changed but functions and roles remained the
same. This sociological insight, which represented a theoretical gain for Luh-
mann, necessarily appeared to be a “bad abstraction” (in Hegelian terminol-
ogy) to Habermas, his foremost intellectual opponent in later years; at any
rate, it exemplifies what Habermas, in his debate with Luhmann at the begin-
ning of the 1970s, called the “epitome of technocratic consciousness.”
The change that occurred in 1945 marked intellectual figures belonging to
the generation of Wehler, Habermas, Enzensberger, Luhmann, Kluge, Grass,
and Dahrendorf personally and politically, and it left an imprint on their
writings. One can see the traces in almost every sentence that Habermas has
written. In one way or another, the personal experience of fascism—and, even
more, the shock of liberation—is always there. The intellectual aggression that
Habermas has displayed, time and again, comes from his abiding concern
for the weal of political culture in the Federal Republic, which he means to
defend. This is also the case for Luhmann. Even though he was much less
engaged politically, he avoided, as much as Habermas did, the many thinkers
around Carl Schmitt; in Luhmann’s works, the twelve years from 1933 to 1945
form a constant presence. Just as Habermas replaced Martin Heidegger (with
whose thought his studies began) with Charles Sanders Peirce, Luhmann dis-
tanced himself from Arnold Gehlen and certain other German intellectuals
when he took up the works of Talcott Parsons. Whether they said so or not—
and whether they wished to do so or not—the sixteen-year-olds of 1945 could
hardly, after the fact, perceive the year of 1945 as anything other than the “new
beginning” that Hannah Arendt announced—abruptly yet full of hope—at
the end of her grim book on totalitarianism.
A few exceptions notwithstanding, the vehemently polemical debates that
distinguished this generation’s relationship to its teachers did not concern
relativizing a war of aggression or questioning the legitimacy of decisions at
Nuremberg so much as explaining “National Socialist” or “fascist” (the very
terminology is contested) horror—whether it was at all comparable to other
forms of totalitarianism (in particular, to Stalinism). It is no coincidence that
the idea of a “causal nexus” between the revolution in Russia and Hitler’s
crimes, which later gave rise to the Historikerstreit in the 1980s, came from the
generation immediately preceding the war, whose ideas were then taken up by
younger, neoconservative historians.
For the most part, members of the war generation and parties belonging to
the generation before the war, whose tertiary socialization coincided with the
period of Nazism (or who, indeed, engaged actively for the cause in 1933),
balked at the ideas of egalitarianism, freedom, and political autonomy that
now penetrated Germany from the West. Contempt for liberalism and democ-
racy remained. Intellectuals such as Heidegger, Schmitt, Hans Freyer, Ernst
4 Intellectual Biography
Jünger, and Gehlen belonged to the first group. Habermas’s teacher, the Bonn
philosopher Erich Rothacker (who even published an essay on the importance
of philosophy for the war effort in 1944), Helmut Schelsky, Ernst Forsthoff,
and Joachim Ritter belonged to the second—a generation that was politically
and professionally active in the “Third Reich.” In either case, eloquent silence,
repression, and denial predominated. Carl Schmitt even displayed malicious
defiance and open anti-Semitism in the self-justification he presented in a col-
lection of aphorisms right after the war; still today, the work counts as holy to
his students and apologists. Schmitt acted as if he had always warned of the
demise of the Nazi state, even though he only “discovered” an unambiguous
formulation of this position after the war had ended. In 1963, he added a fore-
word to The Concept of the Political; thereby, he took aim at the Federal Repub-
lic and not at the “Third Reich.”
The only parties belonging to these two generations who could not repress
or deny anything had been illegal resistance fighters like Wolfgang Abend-
roth, who, after his cover was blown in 1937, was imprisoned before being
sent to join the notorious Strafdivision 999 for the remainder of the Nazi
period. Alternatively, they numbered among the few liberal opponents of the
Hitler regime who stayed in the country and did not go underground—for
example, Karl Jaspers. There were also individuals such as Hannah Arendt,
Leo Strauss, Thomas Mann, Karl Löwith, Franz Neumann, Hans Kelsen,
Ernst Fraenkel, Max Horkheimer, and Theodor Adorno, who had to leave not
just Germany but Europe. Finally, a few escaped from concentration camps—
like Eugen Kogon, in 1945. During the war or immediately afterward, these
individuals authored books that, to this day, remain the most important works
on National Socialism and the epoch of fascism: Neumann’s Behemoth (which
he wrote secretly in Germany in the 1930s), Fraenkel’s Doppelstaat, Arendt’s
Origins of Totalitarianism, Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlighten-
ment, and Kogon’s SS-Staat. However, given the public sphere in Adenauer’s
republic—which, despite the occasional emergence of voices of opposition,
stood under hegemonic control and was hermetically sealed—their views
could not be heard until the 1960s. Adenauer, the erstwhile centrist opponent
of Nazism, adopted a strategy of communicative silence whose stakes were
made plain when he knowingly surrounded himself with figures from the
regime such as Heinrich Globke, the coauthor of the Nuremberg Laws.
The opposite occurred among members of the generation following Haber-
mas, Luhmann, Dahrendorf, Grass, Lübbe, and Mommsen—that is, among
the student revolutionaries of 1968. Born after (or at) the end of Hitler’s Reich,
theirs was the first generation to be shaped by the Federal Republic and the
West, by Europe and America—that is, by an upbringing that had become
more liberal. They did not view the events of National Socialism in terms of
their own biographies; whatever parts of their parents’ lives were connected
Intellectual Biography 5
to the regime preceded their birth. They knew about National Socialism only
from newspapers, books, films, and anecdotes. The Spiegel affair and the Aus-
chwitz trial provided the key experiences of their political awakening.
Through these events, National Socialism turned into a present past; at the
same time, it remained an unattainable past present as far as personal biog-
raphy was concerned, for it could not be brought to bear on their own lives
other than by accounts from witnesses, history, literature, art, and acts of
imagination.
Such a mediated presence of history facilitated the perception of the latent
fascism in everyday life in the Federal Republic as well as in the imperialism of
Germany’s western neighbors—especially during the Vietnam War. The state
of affairs also promoted immoderate exaggeration: the copying of left-wing
radicals and communists of the Weimar Era (an act that only seemed to be
revolutionary); the tendency to confuse enduring Nazi sympathies in a coun-
try governed by Christian Democrats with overt, fascist rule; and the overly
hasty equation of imperialistic military engagement with the purposes of
American democracy as a whole. Most fatefully, it encouraged actionistic
efforts to make latent fascism manifest through calculated provocation and
experiments in violence (as in the case of Rudi Dutschke), so that the public
might see what radicals knew was lurking beneath the surface.
While still a student—one year before submitting his dissertation—Haber-
mas published an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (July 1953)
entitled “Mit Heidegger gegen Heidegger denken: Zur Veröffentlichung von
Vorlesungen aus dem Jahre 1935” (“Thinking with Heidegger Against Hei-
degger: On the Publication of His Lectures from 1935”). Here, Habermas not
only took Heidegger to task for his involvement in National Socialism but took
issue with his thought, as well. Heidegger had republished a lecture from the
1930s without any commentary; for the sake of his own reputation and renown,
however, he touched up remarks concerning the “inner truth and greatness
of this movement”—which referred to National Socialism, of course. In the
process, he also added a parenthetical remark to “this movement”: “(namely . . .
the encounter between technology on a planetary scale and modern man).”
Yet Heidegger had explicitly taken issue with technology only after the war;
now, his amended text would appear, to readers familiar with his earlier
writings, to provide an early indication of his distance from the Nazi regime
(cf. Texte, 76).
In the 1950s, Heidegger’s main work of the 1920s, Being and Time, shaped
German philosophy as a whole. Significantly, Heidegger’s abiding respect for
National Socialism did not occasion controversy; rather, it was Habermas’s
critique of his person and work that was considered scandalous because it vio-
lated the commonsensical agreement to observe communicative silence. Phil-
osophical minds were shocked and dismayed not so much by the fact that
6 Intellectual Biography
Habermas has freed Adorno’s “negative dialectics” from the paralysis of thor-
oughgoing negativity and transformed the latter’s project into a theory of soci-
ety that both is postmetaphysical and possesses normative content.
Habermas’s proximity to Adorno becomes clear, above all, in his approach
to moral points of view. This approach is animated by the “negative idea of
abolishing discrimination and harm” (Inclusion, xxxvi)—even though Haber-
mas rejects Horkheimer and Adorno’s gloomy philosophy of history (see
chapter 70). Habermas dismisses the previous generation’s conception of uto-
pia: a state wherein mankind has been freed from all constraints. In taking
distance from his own early thesis of “communication free of domination”
(herrschaftsfreie Kommunikation), Habermas has also come to reject Adorno’s
negativism. Totality is neither the True (Hegel) nor the Untrue (Adorno);
rather, its substance depends on coincidental circumstances that are variable
and on the results of our practical activities. In matters of thought and the
world, truth and falsehood represent practical concerns (a point on which
Habermas agrees with Heidegger, pragmatists, and the early Marx).
Habermas’s examination of critical theory has occurred in an entirely
dialectical spirit. Horkheimer and Adorno always stressed that their social-
theoretical reflections were to be situated historically—that a “seed of time”
(Zeitkern) formed part of their truth. Accordingly, it is only logical for
Habermas to understand his version of critical theory as a “theory of society
which has renounced all the certainty of a philosophy of history without hav-
ing renounced its claims to have a critical edge” (Habermas 1991, 260). Here,
the indeterminate utopia of a wholly different world gives way to a notion of
intersubjective understanding meant to enable agreement when and where
the better argument prevails. In this way—by presenting critique as a method
of resolving contested claims by argument and subjecting their validity to
verification—Habermas can repair the absence of a normative foundation in
critical theory, which otherwise is guided primarily by moral intuitions.
Such praxis-oriented reorganization has led to intellectual connections
that extend far into the political mainstream—that is, into the platforms and
activities of both the main parties in the Federal Republic, from which Haber-
mas has otherwise held his distance. (At any rate, he has always expressed
reservations and offered ironic commentary on their initiatives and policies;
consider, for example, his venomous endorsement of Gerhard Schröder before
the 1998 elections.) In addition—and especially in recent years—the rework-
ing of critical theory has led to numerous attempts to put Habermas (along-
side Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler, among others) in the
service of radical social critique that need not endorse social democracy or
parliamentarianism (see chapters 11 and 20).
In his many diagnoses of contemporary ills and numerous intellectual
interventions, Habermas is concerned with philosophical norms, sociological
Intellectual Biography 9
theory, and the reflexive self-description of the society in which we live. For
decades, he has, time and again, provided the Federal Republic with keywords
marking sites of political debate and conflict. Thus, Habermas has combined
the antifascist consensus (a phrase coined for the period before 1945) with a
phrase from when the Federal Republic was founded in 1949: constitutional
patriotism. This terminology, which came from the “conservative liberal” Dolf
Sternberger, he has reinterpreted along the lines of a postnational constellation
(thus the title of a book from 1992); in the 1980s, the idea circulated to great
effect (see chapter 48).
The notion of the public sphere stems from the late 1950s (chapter 27). This
concept, which combines theory and critique, lies at the core of Habermas’s
intellectual enterprise. His Habilitation, in which he first elaborated the
notion, critiqued the depoliticization of 1950s society. This period—after the
constant mobilization of the preceding years—was characterized by powerful
media conglomerates that dominated public life, on the one hand, and, on
the other, by the social conformism of a populace that the expanding welfare
state had pacified and atomized (and not just in Germany). One consequence
of the gentle and democratic Gleichschaltung engineered by the Christian
Democratic government occurred when, in the Spiegel affair, the state cur-
tailed freedom of the press; another example may be seen in the active and
passive resistance that occurred when National Socialists began to be tried in
German courts. To be sure, countermovements arose, but they were slight
compared to the call for a repoliticization of public life that provided the slogan
for the student movement in the following decade.
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere exercised great influ-
ence on budding student radicals. This book—a combination of acute social
critique and academic jargon from the fields of sociology and political
science—fit well into the milieu of smoky gatherings of the Sozialistischer
Deutscher Studentenbund (Socialist German Student League, SDS). (Haber-
mas was part of the organization’s founding generation—and a member of its
Förderverein [friends’ association]—after it split from the Social Democrats.)
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere articulates the central
demand of the revolutionaries of 1968: the creation of deliberative space in all
bodies and organizations where matters of general concern are presently
decided in processes closed to public supervision and participation. Democ-
racy should be a shared undertaking and not just a feature of the political
system—a matter left to parties, parliaments, and executive committees. Soci-
ety as a whole and the groupings that constitute it (e.g., unions) should take
part in political life.
Since then—that is, after efforts in the 1970s (some of which were success-
ful, others less so)—the hope that democracy might be renewed through
public spaces within organizations has vanished, but the core idea that
10 Intellectual Biography
into class compromise: political criteria determine how the gross national
product is distributed.
Under normal circumstances, the economically induced crises of late capi-
talism can be minimized (even if, in the tumult of globalization, the safe-
guards afforded by traditional forms of the state are becoming fewer and
fewer). Even when the worst is averted,
Habermas does not exclude the possibility that legitimation crises will
escalate—and that, consequently, societies will grow less democratic in seek-
ing to avoid needing to justify their existence with reasons anchored in state
constitutions. Crises of legitimation menace the integrity of society, which
depends on the renewal of reliable structures of intersubjectivity providing
justified and credible norms. When disruptions of norms occur, crises of
motivation may result: tradition ceases to “hold” and assure societal integra-
tion when its fundaments stop being believable (as occurred, for example,
when the ideology of “achievement”/“success” [Leistung] broke down in the
1960s).
Habermas has pointedly rejected all strategies of compensation of the
technocratic or neoconservative varieties, which seek to engineer legitima-
tion, credibility, and meaning by artificial means: “there is no administrative
production of meaning” (Legitimation Crisis, 70), he affirms. Instead, he
emphasizes that enlisting norms to produce societal integration will likely
occasion resistance: “Only if motives for action no longer operated through
norms requiring justification, and if personality systems no longer had to find
their unity in identity-securing interpretive systems, could the acceptance of
decisions without reasons become routine, that is, could the readiness to
conform . . . be produced to any desired degree” (Legitimation Crisis, 44). For
Habermas, technocratic expediency of this kind is both improbable and
undesirable.
Instead, he affirms that a real social value may be found in the normative
potential of democracy—a matter that political and economic actors must
consider when pursuing their interests. In Habermas’s eyes, progressive
democratization remains the only way to avoid the systemic dangers within
14 Intellectual Biography
democracy and the pressures of hegemonic class structures that weigh upon it.
(Just because class conflict has been neutralized and institutionalized does
not mean that it has disappeared.) The well-known words of John Dewey—
that the only therapy for the ills of democracy is “more democracy”—express
the political stakes of Habermas’s theorem. Only an egalitarian democracy
nourished by the communicative power of the “untamable” and “anarchic”
public sphere (see Between Facts and Norms) can control the dynamics of
power and money—which always pose the risk of crisis—without destroying
the productivity they unleash.
The Theory of Communicative Action (which appeared in German in 1981)
fleshes out the matter of problems of legitimation, revising earlier ideas and
defining them with greater precision. At the same time, however, the base
assumption of an irreconcilable polarity between capitalism and democracy
does not change. Habermas remains convinced that only a strong democracy,
constantly renewed and enlarged by social struggles “from below,” can check
the dangers of capitalist expansion:
The balance between the three principal media of societal integration achieved
over the course of modernity is being jeopardized because markets and
administrative power are displacing social solidarity—i.e. the coordination
of action through values, norms, and language use oriented to reaching
understanding—from ever more domains of social life.
(Naturalism, 111)
The same year, Habermas intervened in the growing debate about bioethics
for the first time. In two newspaper articles, he criticized genetic manipula-
tion as a “presumption” that led to “subjugation.” Clones, he wrote, seem like
the slaves of their makers (Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 17, 1998; Die Zeit,
February 19, 1998). More than anything else, Habermas sought to defend the
autonomy of the subject—a condition that obtains only when one has a free
relationship to one’s natural existence (as cannot be the case for an artificially
produced, “enslaved” being). Displaying open horror at “genetically manufactured
chimeras,” Habermas spoke of the “history of the species” (Gattungsge-
schichte)—thereby employing terminology he had abandoned in the 1970s.
Although it was no longer a suitable carrier for critical theory, he maintained
that the concept was valid for limit cases—when, as occurs with genetic
manipulation, “the ethical self-understanding of language-using agents is at
stake in its entirety” (Future, 11).
In the fall of 2001, Habermas published The Future of Human Nature: On
the Way to Liberal Eugenics? This book, which addresses the reification of
human nature through biotechnical intervention, is sparing in ethical pre-
scriptions; instead, the author relates his deontological moral philosophy, by
way of Kierkegaard, to the (negatively) good—thereby reconnecting with
anthropological considerations he had abandoned in his “linguistic turn” dur-
ing the 1970s.
In his renewed engagement with politics and public matters, Habermas
also addressed the war in Kosovo, when—under a Red-Green government, no
less—the Bundeswehr was deployed for the first time in the history of the Fed-
eral Republic. Despite lingering doubts, Habermas defended the govern-
ment’s decision to intervene in a front-page article for Die Zeit. Even though
the use of military force (and especially without a mandate from the United
Nations) seemed questionable to him, he held that it was occurring for the
legitimate purpose of asserting human rights; therefore, it served the long-
term goal of securing the “cosmopolitan law of a society of world citizens”
(Time, 21). The fact that Habermas appealed to the creation of a new legal order
when justifying military engagement (to say nothing of the fact that military
action violated the law as it stood) prompted a great deal of criticism—which
also came from parties who generally shared his political views.
Indeed, Habermas’s argument declaring NATO to be the international
police force of the future was problematic, for international law did not pro-
vide for any such function. (This is why Christian Tomuschat, for example,
spoke out against international law when he endorsed NATO’s intervention.)
Whereas the military operation—which the international community
accepted, for the most part—might have marked a shift toward international
law centered on human rights going beyond the UN Charter, nothing of the
kind in fact occurred. In 2002, Habermas was prompted to revise his position
Intellectual Biography 21
when the broad international consensus that would have been necessary to
support the second Iraq War was not forthcoming—and, moreover, after the
manipulations of the U.S. State Department before the Kosovo War had come
to light (to say nothing of “collateral damages” that subsequently occurred).
In the spring of 2001, Habermas traveled for the first time to China—a
country that had long fascinated him. At Tsinghua University (Beijing) and
Fudan University (Shanghai), he lectured before audiences numbering in the
thousands. “I was counting on conversations among academics. Now, I found
myself suddenly speaking in giant halls. Everything is much more political
than I thought” (Die Weltwoche, April 26, 2001), he reflected. Over two weeks,
Habermas addressed globalization, the postnational constellation, and human
rights, taking part in exchanges at academies, the Party Institute for Higher
Education, and informal gatherings. Many of his works had been translated
into Chinese, which meant that his interlocutors were thoroughly informed
about Western philosophy. Habermas’s thesis that human rights are para-
mount—surpassing even the sovereignty of state governments—proved contro-
versial. (At the same time, he affirmed—with a skeptical look to the West—that
human rights should not be used as a political weapon.)
When Habermas returned, the media reported that the philosopher and
sociologist was to receive one of the greatest honors in Germany: the Peace
Prize of the German Book Trade. This distinction is reserved for a party “who
has accompanied the Federal Republic of Germany in both a critical and an
engaged fashion . . . and is considered by an international readership to be the
decisive German philosopher of the age.” When the prize was bestowed at St.
Paul’s Church (Frankfurt) on October 14, 2001, the audience of some thousand
people included numerous political figures: the German president, chancellor,
foreign minister, minister for economic affairs, chief justice of the Federal
Constitutional Court, and Kulturstaatsminister were all in attendance.
Habermas’s acceptance speech, which appeared in all major newspapers
the following day, took the recent attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.,
as the occasion to reflect on modernity and secularization. Right away,
Habermas announced the basic concerns underlying his remarks. On Septem-
ber 11, “the tension between secular society and religion exploded in an entirely
different way” (Terror, 179). Habermas called upon his listeners to keep events
in perspective and enjoined them to consider the course that secular society
had followed in Europe and the United States. Like Jacques Derrida—who, just a
few days earlier, had been awarded the Adorno Prize at the same location—
Habermas drew attention to the fact that this mad and criminal act might con-
tain elements of justified criticism concerning the instrumental rationality that
prevails in the West.
Since the 1990s, Habermas’s interests and political positions have focused
increasingly on international politics and law. One of his books, The Divided
22 Intellectual Biography
West, addresses the lines of division and partisanship that are emerging
within the global public sphere and polarizing all lands and groups within
them.
Habermas’s enduring presence as the author of both academic works and
essays certainly represents an uncommon level of self-discipline; at the same
time, it is a sign of his canny sense of publicity and politics. Habermas does
not just devise theories of discursive reason; he also knows how to engage in
effective discursive practice. Besides presenting reasoned arguments, Haber-
mas is a masterful polemicist—a skill he has employed, time and again, to
stimulate political debate in Germany by awakening its citizenry from self-
righteous slumber. Habermas presents oppositional viewpoints, and he risks
daring hypotheses. At the same time, he practices politics within the standing
order and with an extremely realistic sense of power relations (which would be
for naught, of course, if he lacked strong arguments).
From the 1950s until the present day, Habermas has repeatedly entered the
political fray as a public intellectual. In the process, he has come to exercise a
degree of influence that is not inconsiderable. “Influence”—unlike the purely
instrumental media of administrative power and money—operates by means
of arguments (whether good or bad), and it exercises hegemonic—or, in Haber-
mas’s case, counterhegemonic—attraction. As Habermas writes:
References
Adorno, Theodor W. 1981. Negative Dialectics. Trans. E. B. Ashton. New York: Continuum.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1971. “Vorbereitende Bemerkungen zu einer Theorie der kommunika-
tiven Kompetenz.” In Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie, by Jürgen Haber-
mas and Niklas Luhmann, 101–141. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1991. “A Reply.” Trans. Jeremy Gaines and Doris L. Jones. In Communicative Action:
Essays on Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action, ed. Axel Honneth and
Hans Joas, 214–264. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Intellectual Biography 23
I
t would be nearly impossible to describe the concerns Habermas
articulates and addresses in his theory without referring to the three
intellectual traditions named above. All his innovations—indeed, the
motivational bases for his project as a whole—are so strongly shaped by
the philosophy of history, philosophical anthropology, and Marxism that even
the attenuated presence of these traditions in his later writings cannot conceal
how much, in changed form, they have always determined his work. The fol-
lowing brief sketch will provide a kind of archeology of Habermas’s social phi-
losophy in its mature phase and make plain the theoretical elements that form
the core of his thought.
If one digs for the deepest-lying and most fundamental intellectual stratum
of Habermas’s thought, one strikes the bedrock of philosophical anthropol-
ogy. At the first stage of his career, Habermas (whose studies in Bonn con-
cluded in 1954 with a dissertation supervised by Erich Rothacker) received a
significant impetus from Arnold Gehlen’s anthropological theory of action
(Gehlen 1988) and from Martin Heidegger’s Daseinsanalyse (Heidegger 1962).
Although these thinkers’ projects—which were enormously influential at
midcentury—stand at odds in many respects, they share the assumption that
human beings essentially create their own lifeworld/existence by means of
practical operations enabling them to master deep-seated constraints imposed
by the process of social reproduction. From Gehlen Habermas took the model
of human action within a natural environment, the idea of distinguishing
28 Contexts
between different forms of behavior in this setting, and, above all, the meth-
odological task of empirical verification.
Heidegger’s Being and Time, in turn, gave Habermas the idea that the his-
torical development of forms of action (such as Gehlen identifies) can be
viewed in a critical light—when, that is, one considers the original/originary
constitution of human Dasein. The effort to combine these intellectual
projects—the anthropological theory of action and the diagnostic criticism
of the same—yielded the essay “Dialektik der Rationalisierung” (“Dialectic of
Rationalization,” 1954), which articulated concerns that would distinguish
Habermas’s critical social theory at a later stage. Here, in his diagnosis of alien-
ation, Habermas elucidates the negative effects that technological progress
leaves in the social lifeworld inasmuch as it promotes orientations focused on
“making available” (Verfügbarmachen); in this process, the material world of
things, instead of being experienced by the senses, vanishes from the horizon
of experience (Habermas 1954).
Habermas’s early diagnosis of the times (Zeitdiagnose) amalgamates philo-
sophical anthropology and existential analysis. Following Gehlen, Habermas
considers the optimization of instrumental action by technological means the
defining feature of human history; as a result—and here he takes up Heidegger’s
reflections—alienation mounts, and our lifeworld undergoes progressive deob-
jectification (Entgegenständlichung). At the same time, Habermas’s view
of highly developed modern societies holds that this imperfect state of
affairs stems from one-sided, technical/instrumental rationalization—a
condition that entails social anomie and pathological relations to life as it is
given.
When—to his great dismay—Habermas learned the extent of Heidegger’s
ideological entanglement with National Socialism, he distanced himself from
the philosophy that had inspired this early essay (Profiles, 53–60) and dropped
the normative framework of Daseinsanalyse he had found in Being and Time.
Habermas kept the anthropological theory of action, however. In the follow-
ing years, it assumed greater importance as he generalized its theoretical
implications and expanded his empirical focus (Kultur und Kritik). In broad,
architectonic terms, Habermas devised an empirical philosophy of history
oriented on German idealism.
Habermas’s dissertation—albeit in peripheral fashion—addresses Marx’s
adaptation of Schelling’s idea of a “contraction” of God to suit his own, mate-
rialist project: faulty and corrupted social relations in the present day can be
interpreted as a “fall of Man” in a secular sense; this condition, Marx avers, is
to be replaced by a project of emancipation in which humanity, by uniting as
producers, liberates itself from the domination of matter (Theory and Prac-
tice). Habermas never incorporated into his own theoretical framework
Marx’s call to negate or sublate, through revolution, the “natural” necessities
The Philosophy of History, Anthropology, and Marxism 29
that bedevil human life. However, Marx’s idea that we can assure ourselves of
the faultiness or pathology of our current condition by reflecting on the
entanglements for which mankind is responsible proved sufficiently convinc-
ing that Habermas assigned it a productive role in his own project.
Habermas’s early writings adopt historical figures of philosophical thought
insofar as they establish a norm against which modern, instrumental action
orientations may be diagnosed and critically assessed. Instead of invoking an
originary, authentic mode of relating to the world (à la Heidegger), critical
theory should reflect on the shortcomings of the human species as such—
especially insofar as instrumental attitudes have produced forms of domina-
tion and problems of communication in the present.
Habermas soon recognized that this approach—which draws on the his-
tory of philosophy but is ultimately modeled on psychoanalysis—rests on the
fiction that the human species is something like a subject conceived as a
collective entity, which can reflect on the infelicities of its evolution through
the ages (Kultur und Kritik). Therefore, in his debate with Niklas Luhmann in
the early 1970s, he replaced the scheme he had used with the less speculative
notion that development in human societies occurs by rationalizing—along
lines that can be theoretically reconstructed—different types of action, labor,
and communication. All the same, Habermas found himself obliged to retain
aspects of the conception of evolutionary progress that he had learned from
the philosophy of history; after all, the theory of communicative reason is sup-
posed to be an organ of critique, which articulates claims to reason and does
so on the basis of structures that have developed through rational progress.
Of the three intellectual traditions that inform Habermas’s early writings,
only the last has survived the author’s revisions, expansions, and reconfigura-
tions without significant alteration. While Habermas has held fast to aspects
of Gehlen’s anthropological theory—especially the notion that action and
knowledge derive from the same source—he has substantially reworked his
views along the lines of pragmatism and speech-act theory. Similarly, Habermas
has replaced the philosophy of history with an empirical theory of evolution/
development based on the works of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg. Only
a few core tenets of Marxism have retained their central position in Haber-
mas’s thought.
Although he critiqued aspects of Marx’s thought in his early works, Haber-
mas made his own the idea that social pathology in modern society must, in
some way, relate to market pressures to increase profit and revenue. The dynamic
that “Dialectic of Rationalization” already understands in terms of instru-
mental attitudes—a phenomenon Habermas later called the “colonization of
the lifeworld”—occurs when calculations of economic interest contaminate
discrete spheres of social activity. As much as Habermas, in subsequent addi-
tions to his theory, has reformulated and qualified—by way of empirical
30 Contexts
References
Gehlen, Arnold. [1940] 1988. Man: His Nature and Place in the World. Trans. Clare
McMillan and Karl Pillemer. New York: Columbia University Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1954. “Die Dialektik der Rationalisierung.” Merkur 8, no. 78: 701–724.
Heidegger, Martin. [1927] 1962. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Rob-
inson. New York: Harper.
2
THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL AND
SOCIAL THEORY
A XEL HONNETH
I
n 1950, when the Institute for Social Research reopened in Frankfurt,
its activities resumed without a direct connection to the way the orga-
nization had operated in the 1930s and 1940s. There was no continuity
between the sociological studies that were now being conducted and the
philosophical, cultural, and critical projects that Horkheimer, Adorno, and
Marcuse (who remained in the United States) were continuing to pursue.
Henceforth, critical theory ceased to be a “school” of unified endeavor, at least
in terms of method.
Despite their differences, the three representatives of the “original” insti-
tute (who shared a background in, and assumptions about, the philosophy of
history) interpreted historical development as a process of technological ratio-
nalization culminating in the closed system of domination that beset contem-
porary society. Another project—which initially went unrecognized as a new
beginning—distanced itself from the historicophilosophical premises that
underlay this diagnosis. Although Jürgen Habermas served as Adorno’s assis-
tant in Frankfurt, he had little in common, in terms of training and orienta-
tion, with traditional critical theory. Ultimately, he would incorporate the
perspectives of philosophical anthropology, hermeneutics, pragmatism, and
linguistics into his project. But already in the 1950s, Habermas’s work included
elements of theories that members of the older generation surrounding Adorno
and Horkheimer had always held at arm’s length—which, indeed, they viewed
with hostility.
Gradually, it became clear that Habermas’s works, although they came
from a different perspective, shared the goals of critical theory and, as such,
renewed the project in a manner one should take seriously. Even though it had
occurred at the margins of the Institute for Social Research, a concern with
intersubjectivity had been voiced early on. Now, in Habermas’s writings, the
matter attained self-awareness: a distinct theoretical framework within which
to view society and social relations stood at the ready.
At the basis of Habermas’s innovations lies the insight that intersubjective
structures inform social action. Habermas found his way to the conceptual
32 Contexts
References
Bernstein, Richard J. 1985. Habermas and Modernity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Brunkhorst, Hauke. 1983. “Paradigmenkern und Theoriedynamik der Kritischen Theorie
der Gesellschaft.” Soziale Welt 34:22–36.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1971. “Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Niklas Luhmann: Systemtheorie
oder kritische Theorie der Gesellschaft.” In Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnol-
ogie, by Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann, 142–290. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Honneth, Axel. 1982. “Von Adorno zu Habermas. Der Gestaltwandel kritischer Gesell-
schaftstheorie.” In Sozialforschung als Kritik, ed. Wolfgang Bonß and Axel Honneth,
87–126. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1991. The Critique of Power. Trans. Kenneth Baynes. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
McCarthy, Thomas. 1981. The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press.
Wellmer, Albrecht. 1977. “Kommunikation und Emanzipation. Überlegungen zur sprach-
analytischen Wende der Kritischen Theorie.” In Theorien des Historischen Materialis-
mus, ed. Axel Honneth and Urs Jaeggi, 465–500. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
3
CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
WILLIAM E. SCHEUERMAN
W
hen reminiscing about his student days in Frankfurt during
the 1950s, Habermas has occasionally mentioned Hork-
heimer’s worries that he and other young leftist students
would get hold of old copies of the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, safely locked
away in the cellar of the Institute for Social Research apparently in order to
repress the memory of its radical past. Although the young Habermas had
already read Marx, Lukács, Bloch, and Dialectic of Enlightenment before com-
ing to Frankfurt, he admits he initially had little knowledge of the interdisci-
plinary Hegelian-Marxist research program that the institute had brilliantly
pioneered in the 1930s (Dews 1986, 94–95). Although his assistantship under
Adorno quickly altered this surprising state of affairs, at least some credit for
initiating Habermas into the rich tradition of interwar and especially Ger-
man-Jewish leftist thought should go to the jurist and political scientist Wolf-
gang Abendroth (1906–1985), long the Federal Republic’s only Marxist tenured
professor and whom Habermas in an appreciative 1966 Die Zeit essay dubbed
the “Partisanenprofessor” (Habermas 1966). The label was well chosen: the
left-socialist Abendroth had been active in the anti-Nazi underground, fought
among antifascist partisans, and spent his entire life deeply involved in left-
wing political movements and parties.
Those familiar with Habermas’s biography already know the sad tale of
Horkheimer’s hostility to the young Habermas and how Habermas was driven
to leave Frankfurt and pursue his Habilitation—the path-breaking Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962)—under Abendroth’s guidance at
Marburg. What sometimes gets lost in the story, however, is Abendroth’s rela-
tively significant intellectual and political impact on the young Habermas.
In 1950s West Germany Abendroth represented a rare link not only to a
Marxist political tradition that Nazism had nearly extinguished but also to the
vibrant intellectual culture of left-wing Weimar jurisprudence and political
theory (Dietrich and Perels 1976; Balzer, Bock, and Schöler 2001). A student of
the socialist jurists Hugo Sinzheimer and Hermann Heller, Abendroth’s great-
est intellectual and political achievement in Adenauer’s Germany was to sal-
vage the original interpretation of the idea of a “social Rechtsstaat,” which
Heller (and, though sometimes forgotten, also the young Franz L. Neumann)
Constitutional Law 37
those of either Abendroth or his Weimar leftist forebears for normative politi-
cal theory and especially the normative foundations of democracy. Yet his
far-reaching debts to leftist Weimar political and legal thought in Structural
Transformation and even more so in “Zum Begriff der politischen Beteili-
gung,” the lengthy introduction to Student und Politik (1961), remain indisput-
able. Especially in the latter, Habermas updated a core thesis that Neumann
and Ernst Fraenkel (both also Sinzheimer students) had formulated in the
1930s: with the transition from competitive to monopoly or organized capital-
ism, the classical rule of law and especially the central place of the general
legal norm necessarily found itself under attack. Citing extensively from the
mostly Jewish émigrés, including Otto Kirchheimer, whom Abendroth later
described as “the most gifted and most intelligent” of the Weimar socialist
jurists (Dietrich and Perels 1976, 146), now based in the United States, Haber-
mas reiterated an argument that directly echoed their most radical writings:
organized capitalism was resulting in parliamentary decay, administrative as
well as judicial discretion, and increasingly authoritarian forms of political
domination. Directly taking up Heller’s central claim from Rechtstaat oder
Diktatur? (1930), Habermas similarly prophesized that either decisive steps
toward social democratization would have to be taken, or fledgling liberal
democracies like Germany faced nothing less than the terrifying prospect of a
resurgence of political authoritarianism. Here as well, he endorsed Abend-
roth’s view—directly influenced by the Weimar debates—that social-demo-
cratic state intervention could preserve the normative kernel of the rule of law
by guaranteeing social rights as well as relatively predictable forms of state
economic activity in accord with regularized procedures.
No wonder that an increasingly cautious and even conservative Hork-
heimer was so hostile to this and other writings by the young Habermas: they
must have brought back painful memories of 1930s Germany, for him a trau-
matic period in his view apparently best left buried deep in his psyche—and in
the institute basement.
Habermas has on many subsequent occasions praised Abendroth’s political
and intellectual integrity while gradually but unambiguously distancing him-
self from the reformist Marxist vision of democratic socialism his Marburg
teacher always defended. Apt appreciation for the fact that ours is necessarily
a functionally differentiated society, Habermas has argued, proves inconso-
nant with holistic models of a planned democratic-socialist economy in which
the rightful autonomy of market mechanisms necessarily must be neglected.
Traditional socialists like Abendroth succumbed to a naïve view of bureau-
cratic state intervention and failed to grapple sufficiently with the necessary
limitations of the legal medium and the perils of juridification (Verrechtli-
chung). In his magnum opus in political and legal theory, Between Facts and
Norms, debates in Weimar political and legal theory make a peripheral
Constitutional Law 39
and legal theorists of the Institute for Social Research, also focused their theo-
retical and political ire on Schmitt and his disciples. Habermas’s writings sim-
ilarly reveal an impressive familiarity with Schmitt’s far-flung writings, along
with deep political and moral revulsion (“The Horrors of Autonomy,” in New
Conservatism, 128–139). On one reading of Neumann and Kirchheimer, they
attempted to proffer a social-democratic rejoinder to both Schmitt’s normative
dismissal of modern democracy and the rule of law and also to his empirical
diagnosis that “normativistic” legality inexorably must decay under contem-
porary political and social traditions (Scheuerman 1994). Interestingly, Haber-
mas has pursued a parallel strategy of attack, repeatedly criticizing Schmitt
and at times envisioning his own theorizing as best capable of providing the
requisite antipode to the dangerous temptations of Schmitt’s decisionism.
Opposition to Schmitt runs like a red thread throughout his political and legal
theorizing: Schmitt is a key target not only in Habermas’s early political writ-
ings but also in his latest discussions of globalization and the prospects of
postnational democratization. As Habermas revealingly noted in a 1984 inter-
view with Peter Dews and Perry Anderson, “I was critical of decisionism from
the very beginning—from the minute when I read Schmitt, for instance”
(Dews 1986, 194).
Although in fact deeply critical of Schmitt even at the outset of his career,
Habermas’s early political writings occasionally marshaled Schmitt and his dis-
ciples (e.g., Forsthoff and Werner Weber) in order to document worrisome
empirical trends—for example, the decay of deliberative parliamentarism—
which Habermas, in contradistinction to Schmitt, hoped to counter. In these first
jousts with Schmitt, Habermas—directly echoing Neumann and Kirchheimer—
seems to have interpreted Schmitt’s troublesome authoritarian political and
programmatic preferences as reifying disturbing real-life empirical trends
(Structural Transformation, 205). When Structural Transformation thus out-
lined the ominous prospects of an executive-dominated plebiscitarian regime
in which uncoerced debate, the rule of law, and parliamentary rule had been
jettisoned for manufactured publics, legal arbitrariness, and acclamation
mobilized from above, Habermas’s description of its main components mir-
rored Schmitt’s defense of mass-based authoritarianism. By way of countering
a decisionist model of law and politics, Habermas early on turned to precisely
that feature of classical liberalism which Schmitt had scorned: whereas
Schmitt had denounced the liberal bourgeoisie as a mere “talking class” whose
impulses were harmlessly apolitical at best and dangerously anarchistic and
power dissolving at worst, Habermas proposed a deliberative conception of
political legitimacy that hinted at the possibility of a fundamental transforma-
tion of the modern state and perhaps even the dissolution of “the political” as
conventionally understood. Pace Schmitt, power and law could be reduced to
ratio, if properly interpreted in a deliberative fashion. When combined with
Constitutional Law 41
References
J
ürgen Habermas’s intellectual itinerary can hardly be understood
without considering its critical and constructive interplay with
the thought of Karl-Otto Apel—interactions between the two
theorists have often marked significant turning points in Habermas’s project.
Without the theoretical-architectonic alternatives that Apel’s reflections open,
it would be impossible to evaluate the philosophical course Habermas has
steered. Apel and Habermas are united by a lifelong professional friendship,
which began when they studied together in Bonn in the early 1950s; since then,
the liberating encounter with American pragmatism—of which Apel was
one of the first German translators (1967, 1970)—has strengthened their ties.
Although it is a simplification, it is not false to compare the differences
between Apel and Habermas—and they have grown larger since the mid-
1980s (Apel 1988, 103–153) and now run deep (Apel 1998, 24–27, 649–838)—with
the two different strains of American pragmatism represented by Charles
Sanders Peirce, on the one hand, and John Dewey, on the other.
Apel’s Transformation der Philosophie (1973) continues figures of thought
that have characterized transcendental projects since Kant: the effort to
uncover, through philosophical reflection, the “necessary conditions of possi-
bility” for rationality; in a further step, Apel renews Peirce’s realist conception
of semantics in the context of the linguistic turn. What connects Peirce with
Apel at the deepest level is the conviction that regulative ideas hold value for a
postmetaphysical, sense-critical philosophy and the insistence that philosoph-
ical argumentation should encompass forms of argument whose specific
validity claims are not subject to revision through progress made in the
empirical sciences. The keywords “ultimate justification” (Letztbegründung)
and “a priori of discourse” (Diskursapriori)—which relate, in dialectical fash-
ion, both to an ideal community of communication and to the real one here
and now (Apel 1998, 598–607)—name central aspects of Apel’s “transcenden-
tal pragmatics of language” (1998, 9–32). In contrast, Dewey, Rorty, and Haber-
mas wish to eliminate transcendentalism and affirm continuity between
44 Contexts
to Apel, with only sociological methods on board, such claims admit proof only
superficially, and they founder entirely with respect to cases of openly strategic
action, where language is used without even the pretense of being oriented on
reaching a common understanding. That strategic use is parasitic on the com-
municative use of language can only be demonstrated in and relative to a theo-
retical framework that Habermas’s universal pragmatics cannot provide, i.e.,
the framework of a philosophical theory of different types of rationality that
would also elucidate the relations of interdependency, as well as mutual sup-
port, that hold between these types. Apel maintains that it is only within the
context of argumentative discourse that we can prove, by reflecting on discur-
sive practice from within, that purely strategic bargaining is derivative, since it
depends, in this context, on communication aimed at reaching consensus
about validity claims (Apel 1998b, 701–726, esp. 723–724; Apel 1994a).
A third set of objections that Apel, thinking “with Habermas against
Habermas,” presents is directed against Habermas’s theory of discourse as
it concerns democracy and law in Between Facts and Norms (Apel 1998c,
727–838, esp. 738). If Habermas both wishes to account, in historical terms, for
how the process of normative differentiation yields a universalist morality of
justice, the ethics of the good life for individuals and groups, and positive law
founded in democracy and also wishes to reconstruct and justify this process,
which encompasses manifold discourses and spheres—up to and including
the model of a deliberatively democratic constitutional state as a process of
progressive rationalization across various normative fields—then he would
have to work out justifications of standards of justification that can only be
elaborated by recourse to a discourse principle that must have morally norma-
tive content and unassailable rational credentials. However, the discourse
principle Habermas comes up with in Between Facts and Norms—“Just those
action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree as
participants in rational discourses” (Facts, 107)—is supposed to have so scant a
normative content—pure impartiality—that Habermas proclaims its “neutral-
ity” vis-à-vis the indifference between moral normativity and juridical-legal
normativity. In other words, it has no determinate moral content. But once
outsourced, such content cannot be reintroduced into the construction of the
theory without a petitio principii. The architectonics of ramifications that
Habermas introduces in Between Facts and Norms lacks a normatively inte-
grating apex and is thus susceptible to collapse (Apel 1998c, 735–742; Kettner
2002).
The alternative Apel proposes is a theoretical framework of an “ethics of
responsibility that relates to history” (geschichtsbezogene Verantwortungs-
ethik) (Apel 1998c, 759–837; see also Apel 1988). The basic moral norm of this
framework involves the “demand to solve all morally relevant conflicts of
Pragmatism and Ultimate Justification 47
References
Apel, Karl-Otto, ed. 1967. Charles Sanders Peirce, Schriften, Bd. I: Zur Entstehung des Prag-
matismus. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1970. Charles Sanders Peirce, Schriften, Bd. II: Vom Pragmatismus zum Pragmatizis-
mus. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1973. Transformation der Philosophie. 2 vols. Vol. 1: Sprachanalytik, Semiotik, Herme-
neutik. Vol. 2: Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1988. Diskurs und Verantwortung. Das Problem des Übergangs zur postkonventionel-
len Moral. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
48 Contexts
I
n the foreword to the second edition of On the Logic of the Social Sci-
ences, Habermas writes that the incorporation of hermeneutics into
his project during the 1960s played a key role in transforming critical
theory from an enterprise based on the philosophy of the subject into one
founded on communication. This undertaking culminated in his main work,
The Theory of Communicative Action (1981). Although Habermas indicates
that his encounter with analytic philosophy (see chapters 6 and 30 in this vol-
ume) is also of central importance, in examining his turn toward the philoso-
phy of language it is necessary to take a closer look at the fraught role that
Heidegger’s philosophy played in this development.
The best-known biographical fact about Habermas’s “broken” relationship
with Heidegger is the article he published in July 1953 in the Frankfurter Allge-
meine Zeitung, “Mit Heidegger gegen Heidegger denken: Zur Veröffentlichung
von Vorlesungen aus dem Jahre 1935” (“Thinking with Heidegger Against Hei-
degger: On the Publication of His Lectures from 1935”). Here, Habermas criti-
cized Heidegger for publishing lectures in which he had spoken of the “inner
truth and greatness” of the Nazi movement without further commentary or
expressions of regret—to say nothing of apology—about his involvement in
the Nazi regime.
Besides directing a personal reproach at Heidegger, Habermas examined
how his moral failure related to the structure of his philosophy. This is a ques-
tion that Habermas has confronted and answered in slightly different ways
in several publications over the past four decades (Profiles, 53–60; Discourse,
131–160; Texte und Kontexte, 49–83). In all these discussions, Habermas main-
tains that Heidegger’s path to his famous “turn” (Kehre) is better explained by
external factors related to Heidegger’s political involvement with Nazism than
by the internal development of his philosophical project as originally con-
ceived in Being and Time. This diagnosis makes Habermas’s strongly critical
attitude toward Heidegger’s late philosophy compatible with another element
of his evaluation of Heidegger that has equally remained constant, namely, his
claim that Being and Time is the “most significant philosophical event since
50 Contexts
Hegel’s Phenomenology” (Profiles, 55). Even though Habermas does not always
make it clear why, precisely, he esteems Being and Time so highly, it is plain
that the self-imposed task of “thinking with Heidegger against Heidegger”
would be meaningless without such a positive underlying assessment of his
predecessor. The comparatively simpler alternatives of thinking against Hei-
degger rather than with him or leaving his philosophy by the wayside would
seem more appropriate.
Certainly, the meaningfulness of the task Habermas sets himself can be
understood in a purely historical light. By the 1950s, Heidegger’s main work
had achieved a position of incomparable influence both in Germany and
abroad; indeed, its influence only grew over the following decades. What is
more, the influence of Being and Time on Habermas’s philosophical develop-
ment is unmistakable. Habermas has observed on multiple occasions that he
was “a Heideggerian through and through” until 1953 (Dews 1986, 194). Even a
cursory glance at Habermas’s dissertation on Schelling confirms this state-
ment. These historical and biographical details notwithstanding, it is more
interesting to address the systematic question of the nature and extent of the
internal relationship between Heidegger’s and Habermas’s philosophy. Taking
Habermas’s self-imposed task as a guide, I will identify first the most signifi-
cant overlapping elements of both approaches. Once it becomes clear how far
Habermas’s “thinking with Heidegger” goes, it will be possible to address, in a
second step, the question of how far his “thinking against Heidegger” suc-
ceeded. Needless to say, with such philosophically complex approaches as Hei-
degger’s and Habermas’s it would be hopeless to aim at a complete account of
their interconnections. Thus I am going to focus exclusively on some core ele-
ments that, in my opinion, are particularly significant to the extent that they
have directly influenced the development of Habermas’s own approach.
If one situates Heidegger’s and Habermas’s approaches in the context of the
philosophical programs they aimed to continue and transform, the crucial
element they share is the attempt to articulate an alternative to the philosophical
paradigm of mentalism (what Heidegger calls the “subject-object model” and
Habermas the “philosophy of consciousness”). This is the explicit objective of
Heidegger’s hermeneutic transformation of phenomenology in Being and
Time; the same idea guides Habermas’s realignment of critical theory toward
language in The Theory of Communicative Action.
To overcome the subject-object model that underpins traditional philoso-
phy, Being and Time transforms hermeneutics from a method for interpreting
authoritative texts (mainly sacred or legal ones) to a way of understanding
human beings as such. Heidegger’s hermeneutics offers a radically new con-
ception of humanity’s unique status: to be human is not primarily to be a
rational animal but first and foremost to be a self-interpreting animal, in
Charles Taylor’s (1985) terms. Precisely because human beings are nothing but
Hermeneutics and the Linguistic Turn 51
interpretation all the way down, the activity of interpreting a meaningful text
offers the most appropriate model for understanding any human experience
whatsoever.
This change of perspective amounts to a major break with traditional phi-
losophy, which had been guided, for the most part, by a diametrically opposed
impulse to model human experience on our perception of physical objects. Hei-
degger confronts this attempt with two major objections. First, he argues that
by trying to model human experience on the basis of categories taken from a
domain of objects radically different from human beings (i.e., physical objects),
traditional philosophy provides an entirely distorted account of human
identity. To show this, Heidegger articulates an alternative, hermeneutic
model that makes it possible to understand human beings as essentially self-
interpreting creatures. Second, Heidegger argues that by focusing on percep-
tion as the private experience of an isolated subject, the subject-object model
incorporates a methodological individualism (even solipsism) that entirely
distorts human experience (giving rise to nothing but philosophical pseudo-
problems such as the need to prove the existence of the external world).
Heidegger offers an account of our experience that makes it possible to
understand human beings as inhabiting a symbolically structured world in
which everything they encounter is already understood as something. As a
consequence, the central feature of Heidegger’s hermeneutic turn lies in the
introduction of a new notion of world. After the hermeneutic turn, the world
is no longer the totality of entities but a totality of significance, a web of meanings
that structures Dasein’s understanding of itself and of everything that can
show up within the world (Lafont 2000, 2005). Following Heidegger, Hans-
Georg Gadamer, in Truth and Method, significantly expanded this model of a
linguistically articulated and intersubjectively shared lifeworld that enables
mutual understanding. As Habermas aptly put it, Gadamer “[urbanized] the
Heideggerian province” (Profiles, 189).
Habermas’s appropriation of hermeneutic concepts played a key role in his
split with the paradigm of mentalism. He blames this model for the gravest
shortcomings of the works by the first generation of critical theorists. As
Habermas observed in an interview with Peter Dews, his predecessors’ theo-
retical systems left “no room” for “ideas of the lifeworld or of life forms”; con-
sequently, those who came before him “were not prompted to look into the
no-man’s-land of everyday life” (Dews 1986, 196). This is also why the writings
of first-generation critical theorists provide no sustained engagement with
linguistic communication as the mechanism for reproducing the structures of
the lifeworld. In On the Logic of the Social Sciences (1967), Habermas already
observed the superiority of the hermeneutic conception of language over the
phenomenology of the lifeworld articulated by A. Schütz from a Husserlian
point of view and over the “positivist analysis of language” that at the time he
52 Contexts
saw exemplified by the early and later Wittgenstein. Whereas the latter con-
ceptions share an instrumental view of language as a mere tool for communi-
cation, the hermeneutic conception articulates a constitutive view of language
as world disclosing. According to Habermas, the crucial methodological dif-
ference between these conceptions is that the Husserlian and positivist
approaches rely on the possibility of adopting an observer or external perspec-
tive from which language can be objectified (i.e., become the object of analy-
sis), whereas hermeneutics recognizes the impossibility of adopting such a
perspective. In “The Hermeneutic Claim to Universality,” Habermas (1990)
describes the issue as follows: “Hermeneutics has taught us that we are always
a participant as long as we move within the natural language and that we can-
not step outside the role of a reflective partner” (254). At the same time, how-
ever, Habermas is well aware of the difficulty this claim poses for any attempt
to combine the internal perspective of a participant in a linguistically articu-
lated lifeworld with the external perspective of a social critic that the project of
a critical theory requires. It is precisely this methodological difficulty that
motivates Habermas’s criticism of the hermeneutic claim to universality,
which is the main target of his article as a whole. We can distinguish two
slightly different problems involved in this methodological issue, problems he
had already identified in this article and has continued to elaborate in the fol-
lowing decades. One is descriptive, the other normative.
At the descriptive level, there is an unavoidable explanatory limitation
built into the hermeneutic approach, since speakers, as participants in a
shared cultural lifeworld, do not have access to the type of external empirical
knowledge that the reconstructive sciences provide. Hermeneutic self-reflec-
tion, as Habermas (1990) indicates, “throws light on experiences a subject
makes while exercising his communicative competence, but it cannot explain
this competence itself” (249). This explanatory deficit is not only obvious
with regard to the reconstructive sciences that Habermas discusses in this
context, such as linguistics and developmental psychology. It is equally the
case with regard to most of the causal knowledge provided by the empirical
sciences, including the social sciences. In particular, as Habermas will argue
in his Theory of Communicative Action, systemic mechanisms that affect the
lifeworld from the outside are inaccessible from the participants’ perspective.
Access to them requires that the social theorist adopt an external perspective,
as articulated in the broad tradition of functionalism by authors such as
Marx, Parsons, or Luhmann. From this point of view, Habermas’s criticism
of hermeneutics’s structural blindness toward the material (social and eco-
nomic) circumstances of the reproduction of the lifeworld echoes the main
arguments against Heidegger’s approach that members of the first generation
of critical theory, most notably Marcuse, had already articulated in the 1930s
(McCarthy 1991, 83–96).
Hermeneutics and the Linguistic Turn 53
Now, it is one thing to recognize the need to integrate the functionalist and
hermeneutic perspectives in social theory. It is quite another to provide a con-
vincing account of society as constituted by both self-sufficient systems and
the lifeworld. This difficult question, however, need not be explored here, for it
concerns that part of critical theory least related to hermeneutics. Let us
instead turn to a different normative difficulty resulting from Habermas’s
attempt to integrate hermeneutics and critical theory.
While the limited explanatory potential of hermeneutics makes it plain
why critical theory needs to incorporate empirical knowledge from the social
sciences, the same cannot be said concerning the normative limits that herme-
neutics imposes on the critical aims of the social theorist. Recognizing that “as
long as we move within the natural language we are always participants and
we cannot step outside the role of a reflective partner” poses a normative chal-
lenge to the authority claimed by the theorist to criticize the prevalent societal
understanding as ideological. Gadamer made this point in his famous debate
with Habermas (see Gadamer 1986a; 1990a, 147–158; 1990b, 273–297; as well as
Habermas 1990, 245–272) when he observed that in adopting an external
perspective the social theorist engaged in the critique of ideologies breaks
the symmetrical dialogue among participants and, in so doing, can only
impose her own views about the good society under the presumption of a
knowledge monopoly or a privileged access to truth. Thus, the critical theorist
becomes a “social technocrat” in disguise (Gadamer 1990b, 274–275). In a criti-
cal theory with these characteristics, the emancipatory interest of the critical
theorist simply collapses into the technical interest of a “social engineer” who
prescribes without listening. In sharp contrast to this conception, Gadamer
argues, the hermeneutic perspective of a symmetrical dialogue oriented
toward understanding prohibits its participants from ascribing to themselves
a superior insight into the “delusions” of other participants that would elimi-
nate the need for the validation of their own views through dialogue. Seen
from this perspective, the normative limitation of the hermeneutic approach
poses a real challenge to the aspirations of critical theory. Any departures
from the symmetrical conditions of dialogue among equal participants auto-
matically raises questions concerning the legitimacy of the theorist’s criti-
cisms as well as her right to impose her conception of the good society upon
others.
To avoid giving up the possibility of social critique, Habermas confronts
this challenge with two main strategies, which together constitute the original
core of his distinctive approach to critical theory. The first concerns the idea
that lies at the heart of hermeneutics, namely, the view of language as constitu-
tive of the lifeworld. Habermas’s conception of communication cannot be
described in detail here (see chapter 30), but let me briefly indicate what I
consider to be the main break with the hermeneutic approach. The main
54 Contexts
concerning the good society under the aegis of their self-proclaimed epis-
temic authority.
With this proposal, critical theory definitively breaks with the paternalistic
tendencies of the Marxist tradition and emphasizes the normative importance
of citizens’ political self-determination. In so doing, however, it does not give
in to the hermeneutic temptation to cede to the participants and their tradi-
tions the only say about the significance of the social practices they engage in.
The theoretical reconstruction of the communicative and social conditions
under which any political proposals could be validated or falsified by citizens
themselves provides the critical theorist with a powerful criterion for measuring
current social conditions and criticizing those responsible for the perpetua-
tion of injustices. At the same time, insight into the validity of such a criterion
does not derive from any privileged access to truth on the side of the critical
theorist but is anchored in the communicative practices that the discourse
participants already share. Consequently, this kind of criticism is not only
open to all participants but is also publicly addressed to them.
It remains an open question whether the Habermasian approach to critical
theory can succeed in its goals and thus offer a solid basis for a fruitful research
program. The scope of the theory of communicative rationality on which it is
based is breathtaking, so it is too early to say whether future research will vali-
date or undermine the numerous claims on which the success of the whole
approach depends. All the same, it is incontestable that Habermas offers a
genuinely critical alternative to the hermeneutic approach.
References
Dews, Peter, ed. 1986. Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews with Jürgen Habermas. London:
Verso.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2011. Truth and Method. Trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G.
Marshall. London: Continuum.
——. 1986. Hermeneutik II. Gesammelte Werke 2. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
——. 1986a. “Rhetorik, Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik. Metakritische Erörterungen zu
Wahrheit und Methode.” In Hermeneutik II. Gesammelte Werke 2, 232–250. Tübingen:
Niemeyer.
——. 1990a. “The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem.” In The Hermeneutic Tradi-
tion: From Ast to Ricoeur, ed. Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, 147–158. Albany:
SUNY Press.
——. 1990b. “Reply to My Critics.” In The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, ed.
Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, 273–297. Albany: SUNY Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1990. “The Hermeneutic Claim to Universality.” In The Hermeneutic
Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, ed. Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, 245–272.
Albany: SUNY Press.
Hermeneutics and the Linguistic Turn 57
Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson.
New York: Harper.
Lafont, Cristina. 1999. The Linguistic Turn in Hermeneutic Philosophy. Trans. José Medina.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
——. 2000. Heidegger, Language, and World-Disclosure. Trans. Graham Harman. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
——. 2005. “Heidegger’s Hermeneutics.” In A Companion to Heidegger, ed. Hubert Dreyfus
and Mark Wrathall, 265–284. Oxford: Blackwell.
McCarthy, Thomas. 1991. Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstruction and Deconstruction in
Contemporary Critical Theory. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Taylor, Charles. 1985. “Self-Interpreting Animals.” In Human Agency and Language: Philo-
sophical Papers, 1:45–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6
SPEECH ACTS
PETER NIESEN
S
ystematic philosophical engagement with speech acts began
when John Langshaw Austin corrected his original conception of
performative utterances. Previously, Austin had maintained that
philosophy of language had overvalued the declarative aspect of linguistic
utterances and underestimated the acts one can perform/convey in making
them. Whereas he initially held that constative utterances (which can be true
or false) may be distinguished from performative utterances (which meet with
success or failure but are neither true nor false), he found himself forced to
admit, in the final installment of his William James Lectures, that some per-
formative utterances claim to be true or false and that some constative utter-
ances can prove unsuccessful (Austin 1962). A warning about conditions that
do not hold proves false; similarly, a factual account involving the current
king of France must fail because such a person does not exist. Austin distin-
guishes two kinds of possible miscarriages: when no successful utterance is
performed (e.g., when one tries to give orders but lacks authority), and when a
speech act is successful but defective (e.g., when one makes a promise that one
does not intend to keep). Finally, no lexical or grammatical markers exist that
might permit one to differentiate between constative and performative utter-
ances. For these reasons, in the second part of How to Do Things with Words,
Austin replaces the distinction between performative and constative utterances
with a distinction between different types of performatives—to which he now
assigns constative speech acts.
Austin now holds that one says something (locutionary act) and, at the
same time, does something by saying it (illocutionary act). Locutionary and
illocutionary acts cannot be performed separately, but their relationship may
vary: what one says can remain the same while the force of illocution (the role
of the utterance) changes—and vice versa. However, Austin’s conception of
the locutionary act did not survive intact, either. In addition to partial—
phonetic and lexical (“phatic”)—components, the locutionary act was to
include “rhetic” elements, i.e., expressions that possess a linguistic meaning.
John Searle (1968, 407) has objected to Austin that indicators belonging to the
illocutionary act—for instance, verbs like “order” and “assert”—also possess
linguistic meaning. Invoking Frege, Searle introduces the more abstract dis-
tinction between propositional and illocutionary acts. He now distinguishes
Speech Acts 59
between the “contents” of a proposition and its force or the role it plays (illocu-
tion) but no longer between what is said and what is done. In addition to their
illocutionary forces, Austin and Searle note the perlocutionary effects of
speech acts—for example, the fact that one can make someone afraid or happy
by saying “pass the salt.” As effects of verbal actions, perlocutions do not directly
form part of communication, whereas this is always the case with illocutionary
acts/successes.
According to Austin, one difference between illocutionary aspects of
speech and perlocutionary effects lies in the fact that the latter cannot be
included in communicative action on the basis of convention. For example,
the speech act “I hereby convince you. . .” does not exist. In contrast, for Aus-
tin and Searle, illocutionary acts depend on convention. The conventionality
of illocutionary acts has social, grammatical, and semantic dimensions. Insti-
tutional speech acts—which Austin often uses as examples—presuppose
established social practices. If I claim to christen a ship or order a person to do
something, I need to occupy a certain social position; otherwise the condi-
tions for success will not be fulfilled. Another aspect of conventionality comes
into play when Austin and Searle affirm that it is always possible to determine
the force of an utterance by the choice of words. I can promise that I will
leave the country by employing a performative verb: “I promise that I will leave
the country.” Linguistic convention entails the overt (or, at least, the poten-
tially open) quality of illocutionary roles, but the same does not hold for perlo-
cutionary effects. By employing suitable indicators of force, the speaker makes
clear what kind of illocutionary act is occurring in the utterance. On the basis
of the grammatical conventions observed, the performance of illocutionary
acts (assuming, that is, that the utterance is understood) occurs at the speaker’s
command. A third dimension of conventionality involves the rules governing
linguistic meaning, which extend both to illocutionary and to perlocutionary
elements of speech. Austin and Searle maintain that linguistic action is based
on invoking the literal meaning of expressions in “serious and genuine” utter-
ances and that the nonstandard employment of linguistic expressions is “para-
sitic” and derives from standard usage (on which their significance ultimately
depends).
Yet not all speech acts fulfill the requirements of explicit, serious, or genu-
ine literal utterances. Austin qualifies, for example, ironic, monologic, drama-
turgical, and poetic speech as nonstandard uses of language. Jacques Derrida
(1985) has ironically commented on the “parasitic” quality attributed to nonlit-
eral uses of speech and affirmed that the “iterability” of linguistic signs—
which stay the same even as contexts vary—forms the core of linguistic behavior.
Searle (1977, 205) has rejected such criticism: “There could not, for example, be
promises made by actors in a play if there were not the possibility of promises
made in real life.” Searle does not address whether the possibility of drama-
turgical (insincere, ironic, etc.) usage is not, in the same sense, a necessary
60 Contexts
condition for the existence of genuine promises in real life. Even if the comple-
mentarity of standard and deviant usage did not hold, the critic of linguistic
conventionalism could rightly observe that the possibility of deviant usage
always accompanies standard usage. The existence of conventional verbal
indicators of force, for example, entails that they can be exploited in inauthentic
speech (Davidson 1982). Even if serious and literal utterances rely on convention,
the seriousness and literalness of linguistic usage itself cannot be signaled by
convention.
Peter Strawson (1964) has sketched a continuum extending from linguistic
actions that are entirely conventional to those that are not conventional at all.
He replaces the purely conventionalistic theory of meaning with one that
combines Austin’s rule-based semantics and H. P. Grice’s nominalistic notion
of “speaker meaning” (see, also, Searle 1969). Grice holds that a person, in
order to mean something by an utterance, must intend at least three things:
(1) that he or she seeks a certain reaction on the part of the listener, (2) that this
intention be recognized, and (3) that the recognition of the intention give the
hearer a reason to display the intended reaction (Grice 1976). Space prohibits
discussion of the research that has expanded on—and contested—this notion
(see Avramides 1989), but it is distinctive of Grice’s program to disregard con-
ventionality and, by focusing on achieving a reaction instead, equate the illo-
cutionary and perlocutionary aspects of linguistic actions.
The question remains whether the terminological distinction between illo-
cution and perlocution can be retained if we label a particular kind of effect an
illocutionary, but not a perlocutionary, success (that is, when the meaning of
an utterance is understood but its intended effect does not obtain [Hornsby
2006])—or if, instead, one should consider illocutionary acts a special kind of
perlocution, namely, one reached by an openly declared intention (Meggle
1997). Conventionalist approaches continue to claim completeness, if only to
maintain a meaningful distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary
acts (Alston 2000).
Habermas has taken up speech-act theory for reasons stemming from the
philosophy of language and the theory of rationality. With regard to the
former, speech-act theory helps us avoid an impoverished conception of
meaning. Traditional semantic theory, favoring the analysis of propositional
contents, dispenses with examining the aspect of force and assimilates the sig-
nificance of all utterances to that of statements. Speech-act theory gives
Habermas a way to discern the “seat of rationality” in the illocutionary com-
ponent of utterances (Postmetaphysical, 74); that is, a way to correct individu-
alistic and teleological abstractions made by theories of action and the means
to uncover an alternate mode of reasoning in linguistic communication.
In his critique of semantic abstractions, Habermas finds a point of orienta-
tion in Karl Bühler’s taxonomy of linguistic functions, which distinguishes
between communication concerning states of affairs in the world, the
Speech Acts 61
counts as the original mode, whereas strategic speech acts have a derivative
status (Communicative Action, 1:316).
Habermas adopts Austin and Searle’s thesis of “parasitism” for undeclared
strategic utterances—when a hidden goal can be achieved only if a quite dif-
ferent illocutionary objective is accomplished. Openly strategic speech acts
such as threats, bargaining, and (some) commands prove more difficult to
assess: they do not seem to focus on freely reaching agreement at all inasmuch
as they owe their acceptability exclusively to the status of the speaker and are
meant to be accepted independently of possible objections to the normative cor-
rectness of what they propose. However, such “simple exhortations” are also
comprehensible to hearers we do not credit with high-level linguistic compe-
tence involving reasoned agreement (Habermas 1991, 291n56); understanding
openly strategic speech acts cannot be a purely derivative matter, then. For
this reason, Habermas considers “simple exhortations” to represent limit
cases. In recent works, he has responded to the problem and elaborated a new
distinction within the theory of communicative action: between communica-
tive action in a weak sense, which includes speech acts that rely solely on sta-
tus and authorization, and communicative action in the strong sense, which
rests on an intersubjectively shared foundation (Truth, 107).
Another aspect of Habermas’s “original mode” thesis is that he defends,
with Austin and Searle and against Derrida and Davidson, the primacy of lit-
eral meaning over nonstandard uses of expressions. The norm that one is to
use words in a commonly accepted way is thus akin to the three validity commit-
ments. Unlike Searle, however, he stresses that it is false—“counterfactual”—
under normal circumstances to assume that speakers and hearers will use and
understand expressions in a consistent fashion over time. The ability to appre-
hend literal meaning, as Habermas views it, does not represent a condition suf-
ficient for actual comprehension. The question, then, is why Habermas should
take it to be a necessary condition, in contrast to Davidson, who cites misstate-
ments and jokes to illustrate that, in some cases, literal meaning is neither
sufficient nor necessary to understand an utterance (Davidson 1986).
Although Habermas sides with conventionalists against intentionalists, he
presents arguments taken from his more comprehensive conception of rea-
son in so doing. In a Gricean sense, the rationality of linguistic action must
be limited to the pursuit of individual aims. To be sure, the category of
“weakly” communicative action that Habermas introduces includes Gricean
“meaning” as the attempt to have a hearer understand an illocution as com-
municative action, not strategic action. The basic phenomenon characteriz-
ing linguistic communication as such remains the fact that illocutionary
goals (in the broader sense) can be realized only inasmuch as the validity claims
they imply are not contested (which is necessary for “strong” communicative
action).
Speech Acts 63
References
Alston, William P. 2000. Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press.
Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Avramides, Anita. 1989. Meaning and Mind: An Examination of a Gricean Account of Lan-
guage. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Bühler, Karl. 1934. Sprachtheorie. Jena: Gustav Fischer.
Davidson, Donald. 1982. “Communication and Convention.” In Inquiries Into Truth and
Interpretation, 265–280. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
——. 1986. “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs.” In Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on
the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, ed. Ernest LePore, 433–446. Oxford: Blackwell.
Derrida, Jacques. 1985. “Signature Event Context.” In Margins of Philosophy, 308–330. Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press.
Grice, H. Paul. 1957. “Meaning.” Philosophical Review 66, no. 3: 377–388.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1991. “A Reply.” In Communicative Action: Essays on Jürgen Habermas’s
The Theory of Communicative Action, ed. Axel Honneth and Hans Joas, 214–264.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Hornsby, Jennifer. 2006. “Speech Acts and Performatives.” In Oxford Handbook of Philoso-
phy of Language, ed. Ernest LePore and Barry C. Smith, 893–909. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Meggle, Georg. 1997. “Theorien der Kommunikation – Eine Einführung.” In Kommunika-
tionstheorien – Theorien der Kommunikation, ed. Geert-Lueke Lueken, 14–40. Leipzig:
Universitätsverlag.
Searle, John. 1968. “Austin on Locutionary and Illocutionary Acts.” Philosophical Review
77, no. 4: 405–424.
——. 1969. Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
——. 1977. “Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida.” Glyph 1:198–208.
Strawson, Peter F. 1964. “Intention and Convention in Speech Acts.” Philosophical Review
73, no 4: 439–460.
7
PSYCHOANALYSIS
JOEL WHITEBOOK
T
he way Horkheimer and Adorno formulated the dialectic of
enlightenment left only two options: political resignation or uto-
pianism. Herbert Marcuse took the second and tried to break out
of the seemingly implacable logic of Horkheimer and Adorno’s position inso-
far as it was formulated in psychoanalytic terms (Habermas 1985, 74ff.). Where
the utopian idea of a nonrepressive society had only been advanced as a the-
oretical possibility in Eros and Civilization, by the late sixties, Marcuse,
under the influence of the New Left, was advocating it as a concrete political
program.
Habermas, on the other hand, a self-proclaimed radical reformer who
rejected both political quietism and the idea of revolution, chose a different
strategy. He challenged the underlying assumptions of Horkheimer and
Adorno’s construction and thus freed himself from having to choose between
two equally unacceptable alternatives. His debate with Freud in Knowledge
and Human Interests represents, among other things, a contestation of the
psychoanalytic presuppositions of Dialectic of Enlightenment.
When Horkheimer and Adorno formulate the dialectic of enlighten-
ment with the help of Freud—they also draw on Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and
Weber—they make the assumption that the formation of the self is always
self-defeating and violent. They arrive at this position by applying the general
law of equivalence—that is, everything that happens has to be paid for—to the
development of the self, where it assumes the form of “the introversion of
sacrifice” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1972, 55). Mythical cultures, they argue,
attempted to influence the course of human and natural events by offering
sacrifices to the gods, hoping the deities would reciprocate and intervene on
their behalf. Odysseus, whom they see as the prototype of the modern bour-
geois man, thought he could emancipate himself from the prerational and
preindividuated world of myth and escape the law of equivalence through
renunciation. Rather than sacrificing a piece of the external world, he would
sacrifice a part of his inner nature, of himself. He figured that by bringing the
formlessness of his internal nature under the control of a unified ego, that is,
by repressing his unconscious-instinctual life, he could outwit the law of
equivalence and survive the numerous dangers—which represent the various
Psychoanalysis 65
References
Adorno, Theodor W. 1968. “Sociology and Psychology (Part II).” Trans. Irving N.
Wohlfarth. New Left Review 47:79–97.
Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1987. The Imaginary Institution of Society. Trans. Kathleen Blamey.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1978. “Cogito and the History of Madness.” In Writing and Difference,
trans. Alan Bass, 36–76. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Freud, Sigmund. [1910] 1957. “Wild Analysis.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psy-
chological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, 11:219–227. London: Hogarth.
——. [1923] 1961. “The Ego and the Id.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychologi-
cal Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, 19:1–66, London: Hogarth.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1976. “On the Scope and Function of Hermeneutical Reflection.” In
Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. David E. Linge, 44–58. Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1970. “Toward a Theory of Communicative Competence.” In Recent
Sociology, No. 2: Patterns of Human Communication, ed. Hans Peter Dreitzel, 115–148.
New York: Macmillan.
——. 1979. “Moral Development and Ego Identity.” In Communication and the Evolution of
Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy, 69–94. Boston: Beacon.
——. 1980. “The Hermeneutic Claim to Universality.” In Contemporary Hermeneutics:
Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy, and Critique, ed. Josef Bleicher, 181–211. Boston:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
——. 1985. “Psychic Thermidor and the Rebirth of Rebellious Subjectivity.” In Habermas
and Modernity, ed. Richard J. Bernstein, 67–77. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. 1972. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John
Cumming. New York: Continuum.
Ricoeur, Paul. 1970. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay in Interpretation. Trans. Denis Savage.
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Wellmer, Albrecht. 1991a. “Truth, Semblance and Reconciliation.” In The Persistence of
Modernity: Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics, and Postmodernism, trans. David Midgley,
1–35. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
——. 1991b. “The Dialectic of Modernism and Postmodernism.” In The Persistence of
Modernity: Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics, and Postmodernism, trans. David Midgley,
36–94. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Whitebook, Joel. 1995. Perversion and Utopia: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Critical The-
ory. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
——. 2005. “Against Interiority: Foucault’s Struggle with Psychoanalysis.” In The Cam-
bridge Companion to Foucault, ed. Gary Gutting, 312–347. New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
8
POSTMETAPHYSICAL THINKING
KENNETH BAYNES
H
abermas’s endorsement of what he calls “postmetaphysical
thinking” can easily be misleading. It is not intended as a rejec-
tion of the sort of inquiry pursued, for example, in the more
recent revival of “analytic metaphysics” associated primarily with David Lewis
and the “Australian metaphysicians.” Rather, at least in the first instance, it is
directed against both the tradition of metaphysical thought that reached a cul-
mination in the philosophy of Hegel and German idealism and in the vari-
ous—and, ultimately, for Habermas, still “metaphysical”—attempts to escape
that tradition in the writings of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida. The charge
that these latter thinkers remain metaphysical is likely to be controversial.
However, it should be recalled that Heidegger read Nietzsche as the last of the
great metaphysicians and also that Derrida claimed that Heidegger had not
sufficiently broken with the “metaphysics of presence.” As a rejection of these
forms of philosophical reflection, the call for “postmetaphysical thinking” is
another way of formulating Habermas’s attempt to move beyond the “philoso-
phy of the subject,” or Bewusstseinsphilosophie, in a manner that would be
more decisive than what he considers to be the failed attempts of much recent
continental philosophy. It is thus also consistent with his earlier arguments
presented in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity that Nietzsche and his
“postmodern” successors remained ensnared in the philosophy of the subject
despite their own intention: In their efforts to overcome the deficits of the phi-
losophy of the subject, these thinkers either relinquished too much (sacrific-
ing, for example, the achievements of modern reason) or continued to regard
philosophy as a privileged form of inquiry that yielded insight distinct from
the empirical sciences. Or they did both (roughly, Habermas’s controversial
interpretation of Heidegger).
In Postmetaphysical Thinking, Habermas does, however, also take issue
with the return of metaphysics found in the post-Kantian metaphysics of
Dieter Henrich. In fact, the career-long engagement of these thinkers with
each other’s positions presents a concise and fascinating way of formulat-
ing Habermas’s reservations about the continuation of metaphysical thinking.
In a series of works, Henrich has repeatedly sought to show the indispens-
able need for a philosophical clarification of the structure and role of
72 Contexts
hand, and the more mundane self-understandings and social practices that
constitute the everyday lifeworld. In neither case, however, does philosophy
possess a unique methodology or claim a special source of authority distinct
from other disciplines or even from that of a self-reflective citizen (see Truth,
277–292). Thus, though it must relinquish the privileged position that meta-
physics once claimed for itself, philosophy nonetheless retains an important if
nonexclusive role in capturing and making explicit its own time in thought.
References
H
abermas’s thorough engagement with the works of Kant is evident
in every aspect of his philosophy. The following discusses this
engagement with respect to moral philosophy; the theory of law
and democracy, including the theory of international law; and epistemology.
Moral Philosophy
mediation between material purposes. Kant explains the instruction: “act that
you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other,
always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.” From this recogni-
tion of every person as an “end in itself,” Kant deduces the demand “to further
the ends of others” and to contribute to “the happiness of others” (2012, 52;
emphasis added).
The comparison above leaves open whether identity obtains between Kant’s
notion of everyone’s “ends” and “everyone’s interests” as articulated by Haber-
mas. Either way, the point is to refute the claim—made by Reinhard Brandt
(2002, 55–56)—that a “salto mortale” into the sphere of pure freedom separates
Kant’s moral philosophy from the perspectival weighing of interests that
occurs in Habermas’s discourse ethics. While one may agree with another
thesis advanced by the same critic—that Habermas’s “discourse-theoretical
way of reading” the Categorical Imperative (first version) misses Kant’s inten-
tion inasmuch as it expects everyone “to occupy the perspective of all others,
in order to evaluate whether a norm could be desired from the view of any one
of them” (Brandt 2002, 54; regarding Habermas’s Inclusion of the Other)—it is
not possible to agree with Brandt’s mode of reading “intelligibility.” Kant’s for-
mulation admits an interpretation compatible with the self-deception of nar-
row-minded egoists: each individual has to ask whether he or she would wish
that the maxim of his of her own actions—a maxim elevated to the generality of
law—should be used against him or her. Conversely, the formulation of the Cat-
egorical Imperative that incorporates material purposes in general—those of
anyone else at all—is doubtlessly altruistic and requires changes of moral
perspective. (On the reflexivity of the relationship between moral principle
and happiness in Kant, see Maus 1992, 265, 267ff.)
On the whole, Habermas agrees with Kant’s moral philosophy to such an
extent that he applies “Hegel’s objections Kant” to his own discourse ethics
and analyzes them in great detail (Justification). Above all, this involves
Hegel’s criticism of the formalism of the Categorical Imperative, the objec-
tively given “primacy of morality over the ethical life,” and, finally, the “impo-
tence of the mere ought” (Ohnmacht des blossen Sollens). In responding to the
criticism Hegel aims at Kant, Habermas refutes misunderstandings that
impede the reception of discourse theory even today. Hegel’s critique of for-
malism holds that the Categorical Imperative is ensnared in tautology insofar
as every determinate maxim corresponds to the pure indeterminacy of the
abstract principle of generalization. As Habermas shows, this objection is
invalid because formal evaluation does not demand logical or semantic con-
sistency. Instead, it involves assessing the generalizability of the will with
respect to the generalizability of a maxim into law; at the same time, the tested
“contents” of maxims are actual standards of behavior (Justification, 9). Both
Kant 77
the Categorical Imperative and practical discourse derive such positive con-
tent from the “lifeworld” (Justification, 9; Moral Consciousness, 106).
Habermas criticizes Hegel’s “primacy of the ethical life over morality”—an
argument directed against Kant’s “abstractions” (Maus 1992, 267ff.)—for
declaring habitual and institutionalized modes of behavior within the “life-
world,” which he identifies with the ethical life, to be normative. If they are
viewed in this way, they can no longer be criticized on the reflexive level of
cognitive morality (Moral Consciousness, 107–108). At the same time, however,
Habermas manages to derive meaning from Hegel’s argument inasmuch as it
serves to clarify the field of application for ethics in the Kantian tradition:
they concern only what norms of conduct should accomplish—not what val-
ues are to be deemed preferable.
Habermas does not respond to the “impotence of the mere ought” by reject-
ing Hegel’s objection. Instead, he answers by pointing out how he has modi-
fied Kant’s moral philosophy. By undercutting Kant’s dualism between ideas
given a priori and empirical praxis, Habermas negates the specific difficulty
inherent in this kind of moral philosophy. Kant was able to present freedom
(as the precondition for moral action) only as a possibility, not as a reality;
therefore, he ultimately invokes the simple “fact” of (moral) reason (Kant 2012,
62). Habermas reformulates the problem along the lines of the philosophy of
language: he refers to the idealizing excessive self-demands settled at the heart
of the everyday praxis of linguistic communication (Facts). Thereby, Kant’s
opposition between being and ought is mediated in the factual force of coun-
terfactual presuppositions (Justification, 81) that every speaker is forced to
make because he or she must observe the pragmatic and linguistic demand for
reciprocal recognition among all interlocutors. At the same time, these pre-
suppositions remain standing as normative criteria. Even if the linguistic
coordination of social action that occurs could never be “ideal,” counterfac-
tual presuppositions prevent language from being abused and used to repres-
sive ends.
The very fact that Habermas presents his most fully articulated theory of
democracy—Between Facts and Norms—as the core of his legal philosophy
attests to his agreement with Kant in the highest degree. Habermas’s early
engagement with Kant addressed, above all, the principle of the “public
sphere” (Structural Transformation, 89–90); subsequent works retained this
orientation in the conceptions of critical public space, deliberative politics,
and structures of civil society they presented. Between Facts and Norms is the
78 Contexts
first book to describe, in reference to Kant, (1) the reciprocal relations between
democracy and law and (2) a distinction earlier works did not address: the dif-
ference between law and morality. Habermas translates Kant’s ideals into an
exceedingly complex form of discourse theory—and, in so doing, he modifies
the way he understands his own project (Facts, 118–119). Finally, (3) Habermas’s
reasons for a “logical genesis of rights,” which implies the “equiprimordial” sta-
tus of rights to freedom and popular sovereignty, develop a conception that is
one of the reformulated elements of Kant’s theory. (The latter are discussed
subsequently, in describing Kant’s principles of a democratic constitution.
Kant’s very special constructions are mentioned later, in a comparison
between Habermas and Kant.) In this context—and before taking up Kant’s
theory of democracy—we should observe that Habermas does not commit a
common error concerning Kant’s view of systems of governmental authority
(and the demands placed on them), namely, that they are to be endured “pro-
visionally” until the united people is the only legislator and sovereign (Kant
1996, §52 [111–113].)
The deep connection between the radical principle of popular sovereignty
and constitutionality is evident in the fact that Kant avoids the word “democ-
racy.” In the eighteenth century, this term referred to ancient democracy,
which knew no division of powers. This is why Kant uses “republic” to refer to
his strong conception of a democracy, which is distinguished by the strict
division of power between legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Only
the lawgiver wields sovereignty, while the executive and judiciary act “in con-
formity to law” and “in accordance with the law” (Kant 1996, §45 [90–91]).
When Kant affirms that “legislative power . . . can only belong to the unified
will of the people,” he establishes a connection between popular sovereignty
and constitutional government in which the division of powers not only limits
popular sovereignty but also—and above all—provides the condition of its
possibility. Because “the people” (directly or through representation [Kant
1991, 76]) only wield legislative power yet wield it all, they are not authorized to
perform individual acts of government and judicial decisions. However, the fact
that individual determinations of the government and the judiciary are bound
to general rules (this dependence is even formulated in terms of the logic of
subsumption: Kant 1996, §45 [90–91]) means that state apparatuses are subor-
dinate to the will of the people, all the same: the state’s monopoly on force
(Gewalt) can be employed only according to directives given by the social base.
Such a division of power matches the form of government established by
Locke and Rousseau and has characterized the parliamentarianism of Eng-
land and continental Europe since the nineteenth century. It is the opposite of
the structure foreseen by the American constitution, which—because it dis-
tributes legislative sovereignty between the legislative, executive, and judi-
ciary (by presidential veto and judicial review) along lines foreseen by
Kant 79
explode all the borders the state places on citizens through legal structures:
the state’s claim only to require external conformity of individuals would
expand into the right to punish beliefs, the re-ethicization of the law would
increase the areas subject to control, and the multiplication of laws that
would occur by legislating ethical obligations would negate the freedom of
all citizens. If, for example, one compares a typical legal formulation involv-
ing, for example, defamation with the indeterminately broad ethical norm
“Thou shalt not lie,” it is clear that shifting from legal norms to ethical ones
would delimit the power of the state in such a way that open terror would
result (cf. Maus 1992, 308–328). A frequent misunderstanding of Kant’s call for
the “agreement between politics and morality” (Kant 1991, 125) occurs only
because of the language Kant employs when affirming that morality super-
sedes ethics and law. In fact, his position could not be clearer: “Politics can
easily be reconciled with morality in the former sense (i.e., as ethics), for both
demand that men should give up their rights to their rules. But when it comes
to morality in its second sense (i.e., as the theory of right), which requires that
politics should actively defer to it, politics finds it advisable not to enter into
any contract at all” (130).
While Kant affirms the interconnection between rights of freedom and
popular sovereignty, he makes a pointed distinction between “natural law,”
“which rests upon manifold a priori principles,” and positive law, which stems
from the will of the legislator. The sole “inborn right” (angeborenes Recht—the
eighteenth-century term for “human right”) that he names is “freedom”; this
principle already implies “equality” in exercising freedom in general and free-
dom of speech (Niesen 2005) in particular (Kant 1996, §44 [89–90]). Kant
again mentions “inborn” rights as “inseparable” legal attributes of “citizens of
the state” (that is, members of a society who have united in order to legislate)—
modified as “freedom,” “equality,” and (economic) “independence” (§46 [91–92]).
Because some secondary literature makes the latter the key of its understanding
of Kant’s theory of democracy as a whole, a side remark is warranted. Kant holds
that only “independent citizens” should have voting rights as “active citizens.”
Although this distinction is scandalous, it is a variant of the principle of inclu-
sion/exclusion that occurs everywhere in the eighteenth century (including in
the writings of the “radical democrat” Rousseau—e.g., Constitutional Project for
Corsica), and it should not be confused with democratic popular sovereignty,
which is its opposite. Ironically, in today’s democracies—where the right to vote
extends to so many formerly disenfranchised groups—the principle of popular
sovereignty (which constitutions continue to invoke) has no substance inas-
much as elections influence legislative agendas, but laws, which are more and
more deformalized in actual fact, prove nonbinding for the instances of appli-
cation. The self-programming that occurs in state apparatuses produces a
populace that enjoys equality only as “passive citizens.”
Kant 81
that Kant upholds, then, represent the rights of private autonomy and political
autonomy in one; private freedom to act is secured through participation in
legislation. In this way, the rights of freedom and popular sovereignty are—as
Habermas puts it—“pre-understood.”
In contrast to Kant, Habermas considers that equal, subjective rights to act
occupy a position of structural opposition to the right of political autonomy
and that a much more complex theoretical framework is required to bring
them into agreement. He qualifies the difference between rights to private
autonomy and political autonomy in discourse-theoretical terms: the first
group “delivers” one from the “obligation of communicative freedom” to take a
position on validity claims that are raised intersubjectively, whereas the second
guarantees “entitlements to the public use of communicative freedom” (Facts,
119–120, 127). This opposition yields the “paradox” that intersubjectively deter-
mined rights must also be guaranteed by the legal form invested by subjective
freedom (130–131). To bridge this contradiction within the legal institutionaliza-
tion of strategic and communicative action, Habermas elaborates discursive for-
mations (157ff.) that ground the communicative rationality of parliamentary
procedures and, ultimately, the “legitimacy of law” (102).
Habermas rightly contests Kant’s mediation of rights to freedom and popu-
lar sovereignty because it is not based on discourse; however, he unfairly
denies that Kant’s mediation as such, because it makes no distinction between
law and morality, entails subordinating the democratic legislator to morally
substantive norms (Facts, 105–109). Readers of Kant disagree—as far as the
level of grounds is concerned—whether he derives the principle of law from
that of morality. It is worth noting that—already in the “introductions” and
“divisions” at the beginning of The Metaphysics of Morals—Kant discusses the
separation of law and morality over the course of thirty-one pages; this
fact, however, is obscured by terminology that differs from vocabulary in use
today: in contradistinction to natural laws, Kant calls “moral” all “laws of
freedom” that provide the object of practical philosophy—which he then
divides into “juridical” and “ethical” ones (Kant 1996, 14). Kant, therefore,
treats “morality” as an umbrella term covering law and ethics when he speaks
of the ability (Vermögen) to bind others—that is, “the concept of law” (Begriff
des Rechts) can be developed because the “moral imperative” commands obli-
gation (347). In other words, with respect to law and ethics, Kant’s conception
of morality is “neutral”—like Habermas’s revised principle of discourse.
That said, one should take issue with Habermas when he affirms not only
that Kant’s “merely” “inborn” right to equal freedom but also the multiplicity
of concrete laws existing in the state of nature (which Kant calls “private
rights” [cf. Maus 1992, 148ff.]) possess a moral foundation that the democratic
legislator need only positivize (Facts, 104ff.). To do so would mean voiding
Kant’s principle of popular sovereignty. Rather: according to Kant, in
84 Contexts
opposition to “inborn” freedom, the “mine and yours” that exists in the state
of nature is merely an “acquired” right, and its acquisition—qua pure act of
force—occurs in a manner so unencumbered by morals that Kant accords it
only “provisional” validity (Kant 1996, §15 [51ff.]) (a point where he differs
from Locke). No “commandment”—just a “permissive law” of reason (16, 41;
see the fundamental remarks in Brandt 1982, 233ff.)—demands that rights that
obtain in the state of nature hold until the “public” (öffentlich) democratic leg-
islation of civil society recognizes them as permanent, whereby “the will of the
legislator” is “irreproachable” (Kant 1996, §48 [93]).
Only the theoretical premise of “private rights” in a “legal postulate” of
practical reason holds that the “external usable” should belong to someone in
general (§1 [37ff.]). This relationship between property at all and the need to
assure its legal foundation corresponds, approximately, to two formulations
guaranteeing rights of possession in the German constitution (Grundgesetz):
the first holds that “property” is “guaranteed”; the second reads: “their content
[!] and limits shall be defined by the laws” (article 14, paragraph 1). Here,
Habermas’s “circular process” of legal genesis is repeated both in terms of the
relationship between rights that the constitution concretizes and in their (sub-
sequent) elaboration in positive law.
The acquisition of a state does not injure it as such; rather, it offends the
state as a “moral person” (in contemporary usage: as a juridical person), that
is, the state as an association of citizens. In such a case, the latter are demoted
to “things” and deprived of their right, as citizens, to self-determination (as
occurred, in Kant’s day, when Genoa sold Corsica to France). Likewise, in the
case of “forcible interference” (for the purpose of changing a bad constitution
or when a constitution is threatened by internal separatist movements), this
“scandal” “make[s] the autonomy of all states insecure” by involving the viola-
tion of “the rights of an independent people which is merely struggling with its
internal ills” (Kant 1991, 96; emphasis added). It follows directly from these
formulations that state sovereignty deserves international recognition because
it is the external aspect of domestic popular sovereignty. This normative qual-
ification of state sovereignty by popular sovereignty provides the basis for
Kant’s rejection of a world republic that melts all states together. Admittedly,
the grounding in the “idea” of the original contract (which, for Kant, involves
free and equal individuals and already contains the structure of democratic
legislation) leaves open the question of what to do with regard to the internal
state structures actually in place—a matter that can be explored only after
interpretation of the extremely controversial Second Definitive Article (Kant
1991, 102ff.).
Some readers interpret Kant’s decision against a world republic—and for
the “negative surrogate” of a federation—as a provisional compromise with
international law and its practice as it stood in his day; his objective, then, is to
work—by secret, as it were—toward a world republic, after all. Against such a
view stands the argument that Kant’s objections to a world republic are exclu-
sively normative in nature (on the following, see Maus 2006). The disputed
passage in “Perpetual Peace” reads:
There is only one rational way in which states coexisting with other states can
emerge from the lawless condition of pure warfare. Just like individual men,
they must renounce their savage and lawless freedom, adapt themselves to
public coercive laws, and thus form an international state (civitas gentium),
which would necessarily continue to grow until it embraced all the peoples of
the earth. But since this is not the will of the nations, according to their pres-
ent conception of international right (so that they reject in hypothesi what is
true in thesi), the positive idea of a world republic cannot be realized. If all is
not to be lost, this can at best find a negative substitute in the shape of an
enduring and gradually expanding federation likely to prevent war.
(Kant 1991, 105; emphasis added)
Kant’s central declaration—that the peoples of the earth “reject” the interna-
tional state “in hypothesi” even though it “is true in thesi”—should not be
Kant 87
Epistemology
References
Brandt, Reinhard. 1982. “Das Erlaubnisgesetz, oder: Vernunft und Geschichte in Kants
Rechtslehre.” In Rechtsphilosophie der Aufklärung, ed. Reinhard Brandt, 233–285. Ber-
lin: de Gruyter.
——. 2002. “Habermas und Kant.” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 50, no. 1: 53–68.
Eberl, Oliver. 2008. Demokratie und Frieden: Kants Friedensschrift in den Kontroversen der
Gegenwart. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Kant, Immanuel. 1991. Political Writings. Trans. Hans S. Reiss. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
——. 1996. The Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
——. 1998. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
——. 2004. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics: That Will Be Able to Come Forward as
Science. Trans. Gary Hatfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
——. 2012. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Mary Gregor. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Maus, Ingeborg. 1992. Zur Aufklärung der Demokratietheorie. Rechts- und demokratietheo-
retische Überlegungen im Anschluss an Kant. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1995. “Freiheitsrechte und Volkssouveränität. Zu Jürgen Habermas’s Rekonstruktion
des Systems der Rechte.” Rechtstheorie 35, no. 4: 507–562.
——. 2006. “Kant’s Reasons Against a Global State: Popular Sovereignty as a Principle of
International Law.” In Kant’s Perpetual Peace: New Interpretative Essays, ed. Luigi
Caranti, 35–54. Rome: LUISS University Press.
——. 2007. “Verfassung oder Vertrag: Zur Verrechtlichung globaler Politik.” In Anarchie
der kommunikativen Freiheit. Jürgen Habermas und die Theorie der internationalen
Politik, ed. Peter Niesen and Benjamin Herborth, 350–382. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Niesen, Peter. 2005. Kants Theorie der Redefreiheit. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
10
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
GERTRUD NUNNER-WINKLER
B
ehaviorism understands cognitive learning as a cumulative pro-
cess of forming associations based on the perception of contin-
gencies, and normative learning as a process of adopting desired
modes of behavior in response to punishment and reward (that is, as a pro-
cess of conditioning). From a psychoanalytic perspective, development is a
matter of constructing mental patterns on the basis of the relationships
experienced in early childhood. Norms are observed because the child
wishes to avoid pangs of conscience (i.e., the revenge of the superego, which
internalizes the fear of castration); alternatively, this occurs because the
structure of biological needs has undergone change in response to the child’s
fear of losing the affection of others. Both these theoretical traditions rely on
a functionalistic understanding of truth, present a conventionalist conception
of correctness, and acknowledge only instrumentalist motivations for devel-
opment. Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, in contrast, hold that the
development of cognitive and moral capacities of judgment progresses because
of the subject’s intrinsic interest in the truth and the universal justifiability of
moral norms.
For Piaget (1963), cognition is neither a copy of reality nor simply a mental
construction. Instead, it is determined by the competencies that a subject has
already developed, which, seeking to grasp reality in a manner that is increas-
ingly accurate, undergo further evolution. In this perspective, mental structures
emerge in keeping with a developmental logic: the process occurs in a universal,
irreversible sequence of stages; each is a structured whole, and they build on
one another as a matter of logical necessity; it is impossible for intermediate
phases to be skipped. This progression tends, increasingly, toward generaliza-
tion, abstraction, and adequation to reality. The motor of development lies in
active engagement with the environment: the child identifies contradictions
and seeks to resolve them on a higher cognitive level. In other words, thinking
evolves in the measure that actions are interiorized.
Cognitive Psychology 93
Piaget (1962) identifies two stages of moral development. In the child’s initial,
heteronomous understanding of the world, authorities establish norms, and
violations are to be punished. When the stage of autonomy is achieved, the
child recognizes that norms hold on the basis of agreements, and it observes
them for reasons of contractually established self-obligation. According to
Kohlberg’s (1984) revised developmental model, moral consciousness unfolds
in six steps, whereby—as is the case for Piaget—the understanding of the
validity of norms and the motives for following them correspond. In the pre-
conventional stage (until the age of ten or eleven), children believe that norms
are valid because they are set by authorities and either involve sanctions
(level 1) or open, mutually advantageous possibilities of exchange (level 2). On
the conventional level—which is the characteristic stage of operation for most
adults—norms are valid either because they are factually prevalent in the sub-
ject’s own group (level 3) or because they prevail in society as a whole (level 4);
one observes such rules in order to achieve social acceptance or to avoid pangs
of conscience. In the postconventional stage (which few adults achieve), insight
into universal acceptability provides the foundation of morality. Norms are
founded on contractual agreement (level 5) or through universal principles
such as equality and respect for personal dignity (level 6); they are observed to
honor an agreement or because of a voluntary commitment to principles the
subject recognizes as valid.
For various reasons, higher stages count as “better”: they increasingly inte-
grate relevant considerations—positive and negative consequences, loyalties,
94 Contexts
the observance of law and contracts, and universal justifiability. The process
of evolution extends the range of perspectives considered; it leads from ego,
over the dyad, the small social unit and society, until the subject adopts a per-
spective that takes all reasonable beings into account. Increasing expansion of
role-taking abilities provides the structural basis for the development of moral
competence. Subjects in fact prefer higher-level arguments.
Piaget and Kohlberg employed the method of the hermeneutic-recon-
structive interview in their studies. Subjects explained the solutions they
developed to the various cognitive tasks and moral dilemmas they were pre-
sented with; subsequently, they justified their decisions when the inter-
viewer raised objections. In this way, researchers were able to reconstruct
and understand examinees’ points of view. By raising objections, interview-
ers could distinguish between opinions that had been casually adopted, on
the one hand, and firmly anchored convictions, on the other; this permitted
them to evaluate subjects’ levels of competence even when their performance
was hampered by fatigue, disinterest, and the like. Stage assignment is based
not on the content of answers but on the structure of justification set
forward.
Anthropological View
Developmental Logic
A constitutive element of the approach is the idea that cognitive and moral
competence universally follows an immanent logic of developmental
improvement. The motor of this process is provided by the experience of
contradiction—conflicts between action schemes so far developed and new
experiences and between judgments from one’s own perspective and that of
Cognitive Psychology 95
Research Methods
Bracketing Content
Especially during his tenure at the Max Planck Institute in Starnberg, Haber-
mas recognized the importance of developmental cognitive psychology. Basic
points of theoretical and strategic agreement with his own project stimulated
him greatly, and he employed the empirical findings of this field of study
extensively to lend support to the core tenets of his own theory. Below are
some points of overlap.
96 Contexts
Theory of Socialization
Morality
Developmental Logic
the objective world (the sum total of conditions that exist, will exist, or will
be brought about), the social world (the sum total of valid norms, opinions,
and motivations), and the subjective world (the sum total of personal experi-
ences) are brought together, and the subject capable of language, action, and
reflection is deemed competent to take a rationally motivated stand on valid-
ity claims raised in any and all of these spheres—the realms of truth, right-
ness, and authenticity. Actions can now be coordinated by agreement that
occurs through cooperative interpretation, and they are complemented by
validity claims concerning the universal justifiability of moral norms.
Bracketing Content
References
Gibbs, John C. 2003. Moral Development and Reality: Beyond the Theories of Kohlberg and
Hoffman. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE.
Hopf, Christel, and Gertrud Nunner-Winkler, eds. 2007. Frühe Bindungen und moralische
Entwicklung. Weinheim: Beltz.
Inhelder, Bärbel, and Jean Piaget. 1958. The Growth of Logical Thinking from Childhood to
Adolescence. New York: Basic Books.
Killen, Melanie, and Judith Smetana. 2006. Handbook of Moral Development. Mahwah,
N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Kohlberg, Lawrence. 1981. Essays on Moral Development. Vol. 1: The Philosophy of Moral
Development. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
——. 1984. Essays on Moral Development. Vol. 2: The Psychology of Moral Development. San
Francisco: Harper & Row.
Oerter, Rolf, and Leo Montada. 2008. Entwicklungspsychologie. Weinheim: Psychologie
Verlags Union.
Piaget, Jean. 1962. The Moral Judgment of the Child. New York: Collier.
——. 1963. The Origins of Intelligence in Children. New York: Norton.
Turiel, Ellot. 1983. The Development of Social Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
11
THE EPITOME OF
TECHNOCRATIC
CONSCIOUSNESS
MARCELO NEVES
T
he debate between Habermas and Luhmann goes back to the
end of the 1960s—a time of extreme “ideological” confrontation
in the fields of social science and philosophy. Matters became
especially intense upon the publication of Theorie der Gesellschaft oder
Sozialtechnologie—Was leistet die Systemforschung? (Social theory or social
technology—what does systems research accomplish?; Habermas and Luh-
mann 1971). This book occasioned heated discussion and, in almost no time
at all, two supplementary volumes. Over the years, the matter has grown
more complex inasmuch as Habermas has tempered his earlier criticism on
a few points—or, at the very least, relativized it.
From the outset, Habermas recognized the social-theoretical and philo-
sophical significance of Luhmann’s systems theory. In this context, the fol-
lowing quotation is revealing:
Despite the words of appreciation, Habermas did not integrate the systems-
theoretical view of society into his own project. As he put it, “systems theory
shares the plane of theoretical reflection [Theoriebildung] with critical social
theory, but it pursues an opposing strategy” (143). At this early stage, Haber-
mas held that Luhmann’s project represented a mode of “sociotechnically
The Epitome of Technocratic Consciousness 99
201; 1981, 133)—that is, institutionalization. In his later works, Luhmann once
again distanced himself from Weber and Schmitt and presented legitimation as
the “contingency formula” of political systems. From an internal perspective,
this means that “no politics would be necessary without the possibility that
legitimation will be required” to justify decisions. In external terms, it means
“there would be no problems of legitimation if an out-differentiated [ausdif-
ferenziert] political system did not exist” (2000b, 126).
In the 1990s, Habermas did not change much in his critical appraisal of
Luhmann. In his own theory, he continued to discuss the latter’s ideas in rela-
tion to the opposition between systemic and intersubjective (democratic)
autonomy. Although Habermas connected the concept of constitutional gov-
ernment to the idea of legal autonomy, he justified autonomy in terms of
morality—thereby setting his conception apart from Luhmann’s law as auto-
poiesis (see above all Facts, 49–55; and Habermas 1988, 251–259). Law, for
Habermas, does not represent a self-steering and self-legitimating functional
system, as it does for Luhmann; instead, it requires procedural justification.
Especially in his discussions of Weber, Habermas had already expressed
reservation on this point: “The particular accomplishment of the positiviza-
tion of the legal order consists in displacing problems of justification, that is, in
relieving the technical administration of the law of such problems over broad
expanses—but not in doing away with them” (Communicative Action, 1:261; cf.
Communicative Action, 2:304). Now, he formulated his opposition to the
positivity of autonomous systems—a matter that Luhmann emphasizes—in
stronger terms:
A legal system does not acquire autonomy on its own. It is autonomous only
to the extent that the legal procedures institutionalized for legislation and for
the administration of justice guarantee impartial judgment and provide the
channels through which practical reason gains entrance into law and politics.
There can be no autonomous law without the realization of democracy.
(Habermas 1988, 279; see Habermas 1987, 16, for a similar view
formulated in terms of ethics instead of morality)
this amounts to negating the autonomy of the legal system. In other words, as
Habermas views matters, the autonomy of law—which stands opposite to
(administrative) power and the economy—depends on the emergence of uni-
versalistic, postconventional morality. For Luhmann, in contrast, the legal
system possesses autonomy to the extent that it is immune to the immediate
constraints of political power and other systemic media (or codes) and to the
extent that laws are neutral with respect to morality (which is socially repro-
duced in a diffuse and fragmentary fashion through the binary code, esteem/
disesteem, that applies to persons).
According to Luhmann,
and 21, 1992. Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms provided the focus of dis-
cussion (see Habermas et al. 1996). At this meeting, Luhmann finally took up
the matter of Marxism, which Habermas had often challenged him to address.
With a measure of irony (especially in reference to Facts, 46), Luhmann now
affirmed that he— Luhmann—stood closer to critical theory of the truly
Marxian variety, which focuses on factual conflicts in society. Habermas, he
observed, seeks only (ideal) consensus (Luhmann 1996, 899).
This prompted Habermas to abandon, once and for all, his earlier criticism
(that systems theory represents “the epitome of technocratic consciousness”)
and to acknowledge that he had “always learned” from his “long-lasting dis-
cussion” with Luhmann. Without a trace of irony—albeit with an element of
poison in his praise—Habermas called Luhmann “the true philosopher” (1998,
448). With these words, he pointed out that Luhmann—at least in his later
writings—had, to some degree, given up a scientific perspective and fallen
back on the metaphysical premises of classical philosophy. Now, his earlier
criticism of his rival no longer held. The following year—in 1997—Luhmann
expressed a deeper level of agreement with Habermas apropos of the book
they had coauthored decades earlier: “The irony of the title was that neither
author wished to stand up for social technology, but we differed on what a
theory of society ought to be” (Luhmann 2012, 1:xi).
References
Brunkhorst, Hauke. 1997. “Abschied von Alteuropa: Die Gefährdung der Moderne und der
Gleichmut des Betrachters: Niklas Luhmanns ‘Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft.’ ” Die Zeit
(June 13, 1997): 50.
——. 2001. “Globale Solidarität: Inklusionsprobleme der modernen Gesellschaft.” In Die
Öffentlichkeit der Vernunft und die Vernunft der Öffentlichkeit: Festschrift für Jürgen
Habermas, ed. Lutz Wingert and Klaus Günther, 605–626. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 2005. Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community. Trans. Jeffrey
Flynn. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Günther, Klaus. 1995. “Vom Zeitkern des Rechts.” Rechtshistorisches Journal 14:13–35.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1971. “Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie? Eine Ausein-
andersetzung mit Niklas Luhmann.” In Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie
– Was leistet die Systemforschung? by Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann, 142–290.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1987. “Wie ist Legitimität durch Legalität möglich?” Kritische Justiz 20:1–16.
——. 1988. Law and Morality. Trans. Kenneth Baynes. Salt Lake City: University of Utah
Press.
——. 1998. “Reply to Symposium Participants, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.” In
Habermas on Law and Democracy: Critical Exchanges, ed. Michael Rosenfeld and
Andrew Arato, 381–452. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Habermas, Jürgen, et al. 1996. “Habermas on Law and Democracy: Critical Exchanges.”
Cardozo Law Review 17, no. 4–5: 1477–1558.
104 Contexts
Habermas, Jürgen, and Niklas Luhmann. 1971. Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnol-
ogie – Was leistet die Systemforschung? Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Honneth, Axel, and Hans Joas, ed. 1991. Communicative Action: Essays on Jürgen Haber-
mas’s Theory of Communicative Action. Trans. Jeremy Gaines and Doris L. Jones.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1965. Grundrechte als Institution: Ein Beitrag zur politischen Soziologie.
Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
——. 1971. “Systemtheoretische Argumentationen: Eine Entgegnung auf Jürgen Haber-
mas.” In Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie – Was leistet die Systemforsc-
hung? by Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann, 291–405. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1973. Zweckbegriff und Systemrationalität: Über die Funktion von Zwecken in sozialen
Systemen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1981. Ausdifferenzierung des Rechts. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1983. Legitimation durch Verfahren. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1984. Religious Dogmatics and the Evolution of Societies. Trans. Peter Beyer. New
York: Edwin Mellen.
——. 1985. A Sociological Theory of Law. Trans. Elizabeth King-Utz and Martin Albrow.
London: Routledge.
——. 1990a. “Verfassung als evolutionäre Errungenschaft.” Rechtshistorisches Journal
9:176–220.
——. 1990b. Paradigm lost: Über die ethische Reflexion der Moral − Rede anläßlich der Ver-
leihung des Hegel-Preises 1989, mit einer Laudatio von Robert Spaemann. Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp.
——. 1996. “Quod Omnes Tangit: Remarks on Jürgen Habermas’s Legal Theory.” Cardozo
Law Review 17, no. 4–5: 883–899.
——. 1998. Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy. Trans. Jeremy Gaines and Doris
L. Jones. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
——. 2000. Die Politik der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 2012. Theory of Society, vol. 1. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
——. 2013. A Systems Theory of Religion. Trans. David Brenner and Adrian Hermann. Stan-
ford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Müller-Doohm, Stefan, ed. 2000. Das Interesse der Vernunft: Rückblicke auf das Werk von
Jürgen Habermas seit “Erkenntnis und Interesse.” Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Neves, Marcelo. 2000. Zwischen Themis und Leviathan: Eine Schwierige Beziehung – Eine
Rekonstruktion des demokratischen Rechtsstaats in Auseinandersetzung mit Luhmann
und Habermas. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Schmitt, Carl. 2004. Legality and Legitimacy. Trans. Jeffrey Seitzer. Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press.
——. 2008. Constitutional Theory. Trans. Jeffrey Seitzer. Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Press.
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther
Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: University of California Press.
——. 2003. “The Three Pure Types of Legitimate Rule.” In The Essential Weber: A Reader,
ed. Sam Whimster, 133–145. London: Routledge.
12
EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES
KL AUS EDER
T
he theory of social evolution plays a key role in the foundation of
Habermas’s theory of communicative action. Since Marx, the
evolutionary perspective has struggled with the fact that the posi-
tion the observer occupies must necessarily be, at the same time, the endpoint
of the process in question—and therefore a point of teleological narrowness
restricting the scope of social theory. Over time, this problem has lost none
of its actuality for projects that seek to address processes of societal develop-
ment. Durkheim, for example, was wedded to the model of phase-specific pro-
gression as much as, more recently, Parsons, Luhmann, and Habermas have
been. Moreover—beyond the specific details of historical developments as
they occur in spatially and temporally distinct societies (e.g., Germany, pre-
Columbian Mexico, or Papua New Guinea)—evolutionary theory permits one
to establish a general concept of society. As Habermas views it, the matter
involves the social bond tying human beings and their capacities to one
another (whether constructively or destructively) in processes of linguistically
mediated communication.
Two problems arise when one seeks to provide theoretical grounding to
this perspective on society (alternatively, this perspective on the evolution of
society). The first concerns the danger of homogenizing distinct historical
forms of social evolution by declaring the existence of a single evolutionary
path for societal development. Above all, it involves causal explanations,
which must account for the numerous variants and many constellations to be
considered. The second problem, which stands independent of the first,
concerns differences between human and nonhuman forms of social evolu-
tion. This is not a matter of determining causality but of theorizing the consti-
tution of the “object” to be examined.
Since its earliest formulation, the idea of social evolution has represented a
scandal inasmuch as it views the process of social evolution among humans in
relation to biological theories and associates causal assumptions with the
mechanisms at work. Sociobiological approaches to the matter suggest that,
“in the final instance,” one should view sociality in biological terms. Although
reservations are warranted, such assumptions do not, in principle, lack an
empirical foundation. Indeed, social evolution—understood as changes that
106 Contexts
(secret) teleology that he does not declare openly—namely, the idea that
Reason achieves progressive realization through the process of social evolu-
tion. This Hegelian remainder in Habermas’s theory can be resolved—and
dissolved—if one considers that the social evolution of reason (i.e., sociality
constituted through “reasonableness” [Vernünftigkeit]) forms a dimension
that is impossible to circumvent—a thorn in the flesh of the Social, as it were,
which subjects its other parts to the demand for justification.
Finally, the status of evolutionary theory is problematic from a historical-
empirical perspective—that is, one that concerns how social evolution relates
to the actual development of historical societies. When one incorporates
communicative socialization into the evolutionary process, it makes many—
contradictory—options available. Marx had already surmised that social evo-
lution takes place not just through forces and relations of production but
through the state and ideology, as well—and that the interaction of multiple
factors determines the concrete forms that societies assume in the course of
history. This intuition suggests that one should qualify social evolution in
three (or four) regards: the aspect of the Social that results from forces of pro-
duction, the part that derives from relations of production, and, finally, the
component produced by the state and ideology. The way that social evolution
occurs, then, would be a matter of combinations and links between different
processes. At the same time, one would no longer be able to assign the func-
tion of guidance or orientation—to say nothing of teleology—to any one of
these formative dimensions. One may privilege social evolution in the medium
of reason and investigate to what extent this particular mode of development,
grounded in communications theory, produces causal effects in historical
processes—observing, in so doing, the constellations where its effect are more
pronounced. However, this does not offer a theoretical “guarantee” of causal-
ity. Ultimately, then, Habermas’s view of social evolution amounts to a partial
theory. Specifically, it reveals a factor in the couplings and uncouplings of
social processes that is conceived in terms of communications theory and
historical development: the part played by structures of rationality (Rational-
strukturen) in the evolution of other social (e.g., technological and bureau-
cratic) structures. Habermas’s perspective offers more than Marxism inasmuch
as its arguments run counter to reductionistic ways of assessing ideas and
ideologies (e.g., through the lens of relations of production).
Viewed in this light, Habermas’s theory of social evolution is compatible with
the notion that multiple historical developments are possible (including—and
especially—the idea of “modernity”); moreover, it can be adapted to questions
concerning the particularities of modernity in space and time (that is, it
addresses the matter of “multiple modernities”). Modernity—in the Haberma-
sian sense of a “project”—then, would represent a particular form of the
Social, which emerges (or emerged) in particular locations and at particular
110 Contexts
References
T
he topic of power—and especially power that is exercised in an
illegitimate, oppressive, or violent manner—stands at the center
of many articulations of critical theory (Honneth 1993). Habermas’s
work occupies a special place in the tradition, for it conceives power—or, as
the case may be, the ways it is produced and functions—as a matter bearing
(and in necessary fashion, at that) on the constitution of both theory and soci-
ety; indeed, it may even be seen to express freedom. As a consequence, the
critique of power and the role of this critique in critical theory must also
change in Habermas’s view. Above all, Habermas arrives at his conclusions by
engaging with the writings of Talcott Parsons and Hannah Arendt on power.
Their reflections permit him to counter Michel Foucault’s conception of dis-
course and power while incorporating more convincing aspects of the latter’s
approach into his own theory (see chapter 67).
To explain how consensus formation is relevant all the same, Habermas takes
up Arendt’s distinction between power and violence (Profiles, 171–188). Arendt
affirms, in a modern context, the Aristotelian notion that politics is to be held
strictly separate from the social sphere (or, as the case may be, from the eco-
nomic sphere). According to this view, politics is the pure constitution of free-
dom—that is, political disagreement should not express class struggle, for in
such a case, social actors remain “stuck” to their contingent socioeconomic
interests and fail to employ their truly human and political capacity for new
beginnings.
When freedom is achieved, Arendt maintains, actors can join together and
act in agreement with others; as a consequence, power originates among all
parties involved and, at the same time, transcends them. This power involves
actors being mutually (wechselseitig) bound to a collective project, which
affords them the ability—paradigmatically expressed in revolutions—to
establish law (Recht setzen) and found institutions. At the same time—inas-
much as power closely depends on (continued) human praxis and consensus
production—it can dissolve at any point, thereby imperiling the existence of
law and its institutions (Arendt 1970, 36ff.).
For Habermas, it is only when power is conceived in this way that one can
understand why consensus formation represents an indispensable foundation
of its existence. Arendt’s considerations make it clear that arrangements (Ein-
richtungen)—whose factual effectiveness is often explained in reference to an
external instance of power—themselves express constituent (gründend) power
(Facts, 147). Consequently, at least some legal principles and entitlements—to
say nothing of institutions—must be understood as having been produced by
communicative power and therefore being “founded” by it. Law, then, is not
merely a demand to be asserted by force (Gewalt); rather, it is because poten-
tial/power for agreement exists that law can be constituted and claim validity
in the first place.
At the same time, however, the communicative perspective only permits one
to discern how power is produced. It cannot explain how power functions
within governmental/administrative structures or the ways these structures
relate to individual actors. Power can only endure through organizations that do
not require that their foundational practice be repeatedly reactualized
(Communicative Action, 2:271). Consequently, the requirement that power, as a
114 Contexts
preserved by this same means. However, his theory of discourse holds that this
does not mean that power is therefore bound to the rationalizing effects of
communicative agreement; instead, power may be exercised in an particularly
concerted fashion inasmuch as its effects are only felt indirectly—because, that
is, they occur through the process of communication itself (Foucault 1972).
Determining how relations are shaped—or, alternatively, what form collective
goals should assume—requires the application of standards and procedures
concerning what should be considered—or adjusted—in communicative prac-
tice. When externally or transcendently justified instances of power are absent,
then, communication opens the way for structures and systems of control to be
imposed by stealth.
According to Habermas, Foucauldian theory considers Power, writ large, to
provide the transcendental concept for understanding history in its entirety. It
explains the integration and coordination that occur in societies solely in
terms of achieving the control, selection, and exclusion of social actors’
options; in the modern world, this can only be assured when actors (presum-
ably) “discipline” themselves—as Foucault puts it—by means of communicative
understanding (Discourse, 261–265). Habermas grants that Foucault’s revised
conception of the critique of ideology is interesting and lends a new dimension
to the question of how the social sciences and humanities in fact represent
forms of (repressive) social technology. However, such a conception of power
does not confront Habermas’s version of critical theory with an insurmount-
able difficulty, for Foucault cannot explain the status of his own reflections
without contradiction. Power cannot at once be the necessary and problematic
effect of truth-oriented discourse; at the same time, the theory that presents
matters as Foucault does itself raises a claim to truth (Discourse, 266–293).
All the same, Habermas holds that Foucault is right to point out that “dep-
roblematizing” power—even partially—means one must be alert to the com-
municative conditions whereby it is produced—and especially to strategies of
political deliberation that exclude or stigmatize dissenting opinions and con-
tributions whose irrelevancy or inadmissibility has not yet been demonstrated
(Unübersichtlichkeit, 126–131). In offering a two-tiered conception of power,
Habermas affirms that communication is open to contingency precisely to the
extent that it reduces elements of arbitrariness in systems of administrative
and political action (Niederberger 2007, 199–213).
References
Arendt, Hannah. 1970. On Violence. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
Foucault, Michel. 1972. “The Discourse on Language.” In The Archeology of Knowledge,
trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith, 215–237. New York: Pantheon.
116 Contexts
Honneth, Axel. 1993. The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory.
Trans. Kenneth Baynes. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Kelly, Michael, ed. 1994. Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Niederberger, Andreas. 2007. Kontingenz und Vernunft: Grundlagen einer Theorie kommu-
nikativen Handelns im Anschluss an Habermas und Merleau-Ponty. Freiburg: Alber.
Parsons, Talcott. 1967. “On the Concept of Political Power.” In Sociological Theory and
Modern Society, 297–354. New York: Free Press.
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther
Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: University of California Press.
14
JURIDICAL DISCOURSES
KL AUS GÜNTHER
A
mong the controversies of jurisprudence that gripped the Fed-
eral Republic of Germany in its early days, one of the most press-
ing concerned the “social and constitutional state” (sozialer
Rechtsstaat). In the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) (1949), one reads the pithy com-
mandment (article 28, paragraph 1): “The constitutional order in the Länder
must conform to the principles of a republican, democratic, and social state
governed by the rule of law, within the meaning of this Basic Law.” In similar
fashion, article 20, paragraph 1 affirms that the Federal Republic of Germany
is “a democratic and social federal state.” Debate concerning the meaning and
function of the adjective “social” has not occurred only in an academic con-
text; behind such exchanges stands a disagreement—which goes back to the
time before the foundation of the Federal Republic and has set the course of its
development—about the country’s economic order and the distribution of
property that underlies it.
In the early days of the Federal Republic, the matter went beyond the legal
and constitutional question whether the new state order should accept prop-
erty relations as they stood and the economic power relations this arrange-
ment had produced—whether, that is, the state should and simply order them
by means of formal rules about property, contracts, and competition or
whether, conversely, the state was authorized and obligated, on a constitu-
tional basis, to alter property relations through acts of intervention with a
legal foundation (e.g., through efforts to redistribute wealth, achieve social
justice, or establish participatory rights in matters of business). The issue that
prompted political activity of nearly every kind in the founding years of the
Federal Republic was whether—and to what extent—the capitalist economic
system and relations of private property had been responsible, at least in part,
for the collapse of civilization under National Socialism and during the Sec-
ond World War. Even if the Economic Miracle (Wirtschaftswunder) and the
Cold War gave rise to measures seeking distance from the planned economy
and collectivization now in place in the German Democratic Republic—which
meant that the question ceased to be posed as insistently—disagreement about
the meaning and function of the “social-state” provision echoed a fundamen-
tal dilemma.
118 Contexts
exist within the law when society is marked by economic polarities; such con-
tradictions, which are “resolved” on the basis of unvoiced political orientations
in the courts, are to be made explicit and subjected to critique (see, for exam-
ple, the works of David Trubek, Jerry Frug, and Duncan Kennedy).
In this context, Ronald Dworkin contested legal positivism’s claim that law
is independent of morality. He based his objection on two points. The positiv-
istic view holds that the normative order of law admits only all-or-nothing
decisions—so that, in difficult cases that do not admit determination accord-
ing to a valid rule of law, the judge is authorized to make the law on his or her
own qua political decision. Against this position, Dworkin observed that,
even in such cases, judges make decisions according to normatively justified
measures—and they do so by appealing to principles whose weight differs
depending on the case at hand (which, moreover, are conditioned both by
other applicable principles and by political objectives). His second point con-
cerns the positivistic thesis that laws do not derive their validity from moral
norms but from a system of primary and secondary rules, whose validity is
ultimately determined by a basic standard or rule of recognition. Dworkin
countered such claims by affirming that judges, in difficult cases, justify their
decisions through arguments from principle. Moreover, he contended, judges
do not choose these principles arbitrarily; rather, they justify them from a
moral standpoint because this gives them the best means to offer a coherent
interpretation of all the normative elements of the legal system (constitution,
precedents, common law, etc.) as well as the moral principles underlying their
decisions (Dworkin 1978, chaps. 2–4). In other words, the judge is measured
(and measures him- or herself) on the ideal of a Hercules capable of taking all
relevant considerations into account. Only because of the justificatory need that
arises from a moral demand do subjective (basic) rights “trump” the political
objectives that are pursued through legal norms (Dworkin 1985, 158ff.); only as a
consequence of the moral obligation to arrive at the best possible interpretation
do judges bow to the regulative idea of seeking the “one right answer” to a diffi-
cult case (Dworkin 1978, 448ff.; Dworkin 1986, 119ff.). In anticipation of the
charge that he was seeing matters through “rose-tinted glasses,” Dworkin
declared that his perspective does not conceal contradictions—rather, it is only
possible to uncover and critique the contradictions that invariably arise if one
demands the best possible justification for rulings (Dworkin 1986, 271ff.).
Taking up Dworkin’s distinction between rules and principles, Alexy
(2002) developed a theory of the form of basic rights (Grundrechtsform), which
asserts that legal decisions must be optimized; in so doing, he provided a
rational basis for assessing conflicts that occur between equally fundamental
rights. Alexy’s thesis concerning the mode of argument in exceptional cases,
his perspective on evaluating basic rights that stand in conflict, his reflections
on the “discourse of application,” Dworkin’s theory of coherent interpretation,
Juridical Discourses 121
and the writings of the “Critical Legal Studies Movement” offer points of ref-
erence for Habermas’s own theory concerning legal indeterminacy and the
rationality of case law (Facts, 238–286). In particular, the position Dworkin
assigns to judicature prompted Habermas to take a stand on the relationship
between democracy and justice—above all, with regard to the Federal Consti-
tutional Court and its authority to reject decisions made by democratic legis-
lators (Facts, 287–328; Dworkin, Habermas, and Günther 1997).
References
Abendroth, Wolfgang. 1968. “Zum Begriff des demokratischen und sozialen Rechtsstaates
im Grundgesetz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.” In Rechtsstaatlichkeit und
Sozialstaatlichkeit, ed. Ernst Forsthoff, 114–144. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft.
Alexy, Robert. 1989. A Theory of Legal Argumentation: The Theory of Rational Discourse as
Theory of Legal Justification. Trans. Ruth Adler and Neil MacCormick. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
——. 1995. Recht, Vernunft, Diskurs. Studien zur Rechtsphilosophie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 2002. A Theory of Constitutional Rights. Trans. Julian Rivers. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Dworkin, Ronald. 1978. Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press.
——. 1985. A Matter of Principle. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
——. 1986. Law’s Empire. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Dworkin, Ronald, Jürgen Habermas, and Klaus Günther. 1997. “Regiert das Recht die
Politik?” In Philosophie heute, ed. Ulrich Boehm, 150–176. Frankfurt: Campus.
Frankenberg, Günter, and Ulrich Rödel. 1981. Von der Volkssouveränität zum Minderheit-
enschutz. Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt.
Forsthoff, Ernst. 1968. “Begriff und Wesen des sozialen Rechtsstaates.” In Rechtsstaatlich-
keit und Sozialstaatlichkeit, ed. Ernst Forsthoff, 165–200. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft.
Günther, Klaus. 1989. “Ein normativer Begriff der Kohärenz für eine Theorie der jurist-
ischen Argumentation.” Rechtstheorie 20:163–190.
——. 1993. The Sense of Appropriateness: Application Discourses in Morality and Law.
Trans. John Farrell. Albany: SUNY Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1990. Die nachholende Revolution: Kleine politische Schriften VII.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1988. Nachmetaphysisches Denken: Philosophische Aufsätze. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Kübler, Friedrich, ed. 1985. Verrechtlichung von Wirtschaft, Arbeit und sozialer Solidarität.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Lieber, Tobias. 2007. Diskursive Vernunft und formelle Gleichheit. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Wiethölter, Rudolf. 1989. “Proceduralization of the Category of Law.” In Critical Legal
Thought: An American-German Debate, ed. Christian Joerges and David M. Trubek,
501–510. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
15
THE THEORY OF DEMOCRACY
RAINER SCHMALZ-BRUNS
A
look at the 1958 introduction to Student und Politik—“Zum
Begriff der politischen Beteiligung” (On the concept of political
participation)—makes plain that Habermas chose, early on, to
pursue his research on democracy in conjunction with a discussion of
German constitutional law. More than twenty years later, the first pages of
The Theory of Communicative Action confirmed—in the context of political
science—that his decision involved the theory of rationality as a matter of
principle. Considerations of this kind have remained key throughout the
philosopher’s career; at least in terms of theoretical strategy, Habermas has
consistently explored the interconnection (Verzahnung) between democratic
participation and a certain conception of the law (Facts, 437ff.).
Habermas has analyzed political participation and the conditions under
which it can be achieved in terms of structural changes that occurred as the
liberal, constitutional state transformed, first, into a social-welfare state
(Legitimation, 52ff.; Structural Transformation, 222ff.) and then into a “security
state” focused on “overcoming situations of collective endangerment” (Facts,
433–434). The same concerns are evident in his main work of democratic
theory, Between Facts and Norms (1992). More recently, they have shaped his
reflections on “domestic world politics without world government” (which
Habermas has elaborated in close consideration of changes to international
law).
Habermas’s theory of democracy analyzes shifts in the relationship between
state and society. It moves, in a normative fashion, between considerations of
how social forces are politically mobilized to form public opinion and a public
will, on the one hand, and, on the other, examining the need for a “certain
autonomy within the political sphere” (Kultur und Kritik, 54; see also Logic).
His thought is decisively shaped by engagement (which began early on) with
Weimar constitutional doctrine (Staatsrechtslehre)—the works of authors
such as Hermann Heller, Otto Kirchheimer, Franz Neumann, and even Carl
Schmitt (see chapter 3). At the same time, Habermas has always made it clear
that a critical perspective on the constitutional doctrine of the Federal Repub-
lic holds special significance for his project. Above all, this means the writings
of Wolfgang Abendroth and Helmut Ridder. In the early 1950s (when he
The Theory of Democracy 123
studied with Ridder in Frankfurt), Habermas had already felt their influence.
It is evident throughout his works—and especially in The Structural Transfor-
mation of the Public Sphere (1961). Since the beginning of the 1970s, Ingeborg
Maus has drawn from the same tradition. Beginning in the mid-1980s, her
ideas have flowed back into Habermas’s works on democracy and law, inspir-
ing him to employ Kant’s legal theory to radically democratic ends.
Finally, Habermas has taken up the reflections of Joshua Cohen to add
nuance to his deliberative model of democratic politics—incorporating a dis-
cursive conception of law and a communicative understanding of society into
his theory. While he uses Cohen’s works sparingly, they are of great impor-
tance inasmuch as they permit him to renew the question that has proven
decisive ever since The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: the
relationship between state and society (or, alternatively, between public poli-
tics and spaces that exist within institutional frameworks).
Rather, its essence consists of the fact that it enacts far-reaching social changes
that increase the freedom of human beings—and, ultimately, can perhaps
create them in the first place. Democracy works upon mankind’s self-deter-
mination, and only when the former is real [wirklich] is the latter true [wahr].
Political participation, then, is identical to self-determination.
(Kultur und Kritik, 11)
Without a doubt, these words underlie the radicalism that has led Habermas
to envision reform beyond national borders. In hindsight, however, his con-
viction that democracy ratifies processes of social development seems overly
optimistic—even excessive. Now, greater restraint is evident in his writings.
After engaging with systems theory, basic aspects of his view of society—
which The Theory of Communicative Action (1981) articulates in terms of the
distinction between “system” and “lifeworld”—underwent a change.
All the same—despite the varying contexts in which they have been made
and different points of emphasis—Habermas’s statements on democracy are
conceived along the same strategic lines. The position presented in “Zum
124 Contexts
Habermas avoids all hints of affect-laden statism (a spirit that has long irri-
tated him, especially in Carl Schmitt’s works) when he notes, with program-
matic intent, that the “secularization of the spiritual bases of governmental
authority, by now long under way, suffers from a deficit” that is to be “met”—i.e.,
remedied—“by more extensive democratization” (Facts, 443–444). At the same
time, he notes that capitalist society—especially inasmuch as it runs the risk of
“refeudalization” (Structural Transformation, 195) through the market—can
only provide a sociologically plausible point of reference for democratic evolu-
tion if it can guarantee, in its organizational form, the demands that follow from
the principle of the public sphere; inasmuch as this situation obtains, opinion
and will formation that is both “oriented to the state” (staatsbezogen) (Struc-
tural Transformation, 209) and oriented “in terms of the common welfare”
(198) legitimates the structures in place.
With these considerations in mind, Habermas focuses on structural trans-
formation in democracy in response to (external) change—particularly in the
sphere of administration, which grows increasingly burdened by steering
tasks (Facts, 440). In keeping with the “reciprocal interpenetration [Durch-
dringung] of state and society,” functional losses in both institutionalized and
noninstitutionalized public spaces—as well as the attendant strengthening of
administration, on the one hand, and the increased role played by political
parties and associations, on the other—must be remedied by new forms of
democratic participation (Structural Transformation, 197).
state without coercion” (Ridder 1960, 15) as utopian—makes the many points
of contact and overlap between his thinking and that of Ridder especially
clear. Habermas and Ridder share views not just on diagnostic and analytical
questions but also on the conceptual frameworks in which these matters are
situated.
Ridder’s (1960) program reads as follows: “Free political society encompasses
the organs of the state—which, in keeping with the state’s commandment of
democracy, are obligated to be public—in order, in a permanent process of
public opinion and will formation, to guarantee freedom by acting as a correc-
tive to the governmental exercise of power” (14). To this end, Ridder incorpo-
rates three considerations into his theory of democracy. First of all, he rejects
the “sociological positivism” of postwar German Staatsrechtslehre—the efforts
of Ernst Forsthoff and Werner Weber (among others), who, in opposition to
constitutional law and constitutional reality as it stood, sought to reestablish a
conception of the constitution that included juridical norms (Normbestände).
Their views, Ridder believed, served the conservatives’ “restless” search for
power deriving from statehood itself (1975, 15). In contrast, he insisted that
democratic and constitutional rule could not admit “more state” than what
the constitution provides normatively and in writing (17).
In so doing—and this is the second point—Ridder offered a “therapeutic”
understanding of the constitution (which he first developed in debates about
the “social state” during the 1950s and 1960s). This view enabled him to
identify another dimension of government extending beyond social services
and external relations between citizens. The very idea of liberal (freiheitlich)
democracy, he argued, demands that the social state influence the inner struc-
ture of “collective actors” (businesses, associations, unions, parties) in a way
that assures democratic equality. His call for the normative architecture of the
Grundgesetz to be interpreted as encompassing state and society derived from
a particular connection—which he affirmed early on—between the right to
express opinions freely, on the one hand, and “public reason,” on the other.
The notion of public reason holds that expressions of opinion are not bound to
the guiding, ethical ideas of Truth or Reason (as classical conceptions of free-
dom of opinion had maintained) and seeks to “protect the free formation of
public opinion—that is, to protect the individual parties among whom it
arises” (Ridder 1954, 265).
Such are the outer lineaments of Ridder’s conception of democracy—a pic-
ture he drew by linking, in systematic fashion, the legal and social provisions
of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany. For all that, Ridder
evinced a relatively agnostic attitude toward the actual model of democracy
that had resulted. He insisted that the Grundgesetz does not prescribe that the
political system be founded on “any one of the competing conceptions of dem-
ocratic order” (1979, 11); rather, it provides for “freedom to express and ratify
The Theory of Democracy 127
the will of the popular majority, to legal effect” (10–11). For this reason, norma-
tive barriers to the development of democracy exist wherever “illiberal”
majority rule threatens to bypass the procedural guarantees that stem from
interaction between political (governmental) institutions and public (social)
processes of opinion and will formation (1960, 12).
Inasmuch as it occupies a space beyond this frontier, Ridder maintained,
the constitution can at best provide normative regulations that make it possible
for democratic will formation to influence—reflexively and in a “therapeutic”
manner—the conditions under which public autonomy is exercised. The very
structure of democracy blurs the boundaries separating state and society,
then. This is why liberal democracy is not a form of government among oth-
ers; it englobes the relationship between state and society as well as those
structural elements within society that are relevant to its continued operation
(1960, 13).
Ridder’s interpretation of the Grundgesetz—which, as we have noted, sought
to counter the conservatism of Weimar-era conceptions of government (partic-
ularly, arguments advanced by Carl Schmitt and his students)—embedded
democratic progress within the constitutional state. In his early writings, Haber-
mas was able to build effortlessly on the foundation Ridder had secured. One
sees as much in his many references to Ridder’s works (e.g., “Freedom of Opin-
ion” [1954] and “The Status of Unions in Constitutional Law” [1960], in Struc-
tural Transformation). As a student in the early 1950s, Habermas had attended
Ridder’s lectures in Frankfurt; even if one does not speculate about the extent
of their personal contact, direct influence during the late 1950s and early
1960s can be concretely demonstrated. Over time, Habermas struck out in a
related but new direction. That said, Between Facts and Norms only mentions
Ridder once—in rather summary form, and in a footnote (Facts, 544).
Habermas has charted a new course by engaging with the works of Ingeborg
Maus. Her Zur Aufklärung der Demokratietheorie (Elucidation of the theory of
democracy, 1992) draws on considerations that are not unlike Ridder’s. At the
same time—and much more decisively than Ridder—Maus derives her theory
of the democratic state and constitutionality (as well as inner connections
between the constitutional state and democracy) from fundamental distinc-
tions made by Kant.
Maus’s thought has progressed in three distinct stages. At the same time,
these stages—which are represented by Bürgerliche Rechtstheorie und Faschis-
mus (Bourgeois legal theory and fascism, 1976), Rechtstheorie und Politische
128 Contexts
How—under the conditions of advanced industrial society (with all the devel-
opments this entails), up through organized capitalism in the late twentieth
century and the new forms of trans- and supranational regulation that mark
the twenty-first century—is it possible for democratic self-determination and
individual liberties guaranteed by the rule of law [Rechtsstaatlichkeit] to exist
at all?
(Niesen and Eberl 2006, 12)
the politics of association are intended to promote, across the social spectrum,
conditions favoring will formation through discourse, politically meaningful
equality, fairness in wealth distribution, and civic consciousness (Cohen and
Rogers 1995, 34ff.).
In the framework Cohen elaborates, the significance of democratic group
politics involves, above all, the fact that attention—especially in mass-mediated
public space—can be condensed, concentrated, and stabilized so quickly that
it may increase the visibility and influence of unrepresented or underrepre-
sented groups; the resulting “schools of democracy” ultimately contribute to
the formation of civic consciousness (42ff.). The core idea is not that these
effects will occur on their own, given the world of social organization and the
many-layered asymmetries it hosts. Rather, the matter calls for a purposeful
politics of association with four dimensions: promoting and supporting asso-
ciations, structuring processes of will formation within them, adapting their
structure to those of the political system, and, finally, putting networks
between them in place (48ff.).
The question remains open, to what extent such an egalitarian politics of
group formation—unfolding on many different levels of the political process—
is actually capable of realizing the promises that Cohen and Rogers attach to
it: agenda setting, formulating a political program, and implementing it (55ff.).
Likewise, it remains an open matter why Habermas has, for the most part,
declined to expand his model of deliberative politics—at least a little—in this
direction (especially since it seems to confirm his reservations concerning the
unjustified splitting of deliberative politics into a “structure shaping the total-
ity of society” [Facts, 305]). Perhaps, however, he is following an impulse
behind his discussions of the constitutional state in the 1950s and 1960s—the
belief, namely, that the claims of public and private autonomy are both to be
protected. Habermas’s theory of democracy values the normative substance of
processes of differentiation, which blocks efforts to level the difference between
society and state in the name of democracy.
References
Cohen, Joshua. 1989. “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy.” In The Good Polity: Nor-
mative Analysis of the State, ed. Alan Hamlin and Philip Pettit, 17–34. Oxford: Black-
well.
——. 1997. “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy.” In Deliberative Democracy: Essays
on Reason and Politics, ed. James Bohman and William Rehg, 67–91. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press.
——. 1998. “Can Egalitarianism Survive Internationalization?” In Internationale
Wirtschaft, nationale Demokratie: Herausforderungen für die Demokratietheorie, ed.
Wolfgang Streeck, 175–194. Frankfurt: Campus.
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Cohen, Joshua, and Joel Rogers. 1995. Associations and Democracy. London: Verso.
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Journal 3, no. 4: 313–342.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1988. “Law and Morality.” Trans. Kenneth Baynes. The Tanner Lectures
on Human Values. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
——. 2007. “Kommunikative Rationalität und grenzüberschreitende Politik: eine Replik.” In
Anarchie der kommunikativen Freiheit: Jürgen Habermas und die Theorie der internatio-
nalen Politik, ed. Peter Niesen and Benjamin Herborth, 406–459. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Maus, Ingeborg. 1976. Bürgerliche Rechtstheorie und Faschismus: Zur sozialen Funktion
und aktuellen Wirkung der Theorie Carl Schmitts. München: Fink.
——. 1986. Rechtstheorie und politische Theorie im Industriekapitalismus. München: Fink.
——. 1992. Zur Aufklärung der Demokratietheorie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 2007. “Verfassung oder Vertrag: Zur Verrechtlichung globaler Politik.” In Anarchie
der kommunikativen Freiheit: Jürgen Habermas und die Theorie der internationalen
Politik, ed. Peter Niesen and Benjamin Herborth, 350–382. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Niesen, Peter, and Oliver Eberl. 2006. “Demokratischer Positivismus: Habermas/Maus.” In
Neue Theorien des Rechts, ed. Sonja Buckel, Ralph Christensen, and Andreas Fischer-
Lescano, 3–28. Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius.
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Praxis der Grundrechte, ed. Franz L. Neumann, Hans Carl Nipperdey, and Ulrich
Scheuner, 2:243–290. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot.
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——. 1968. “Ex oblivione malum: Randnoten zum deutschen Partisanenprogreß.” In
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——. 1975. Die soziale Ordnung des Grundgesetzes: Leitfaden zu den Grundrechten einer
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16
MORAL AND ETHICAL
DISCOURSES
The Distinction in General
GEORG LOHMANN
F
rom the beginning, Jürgen Habermas has elaborated his theory of
discursive ethics by engaging with Hegel’s critique of Kant. He
shares both these philosophers’ view that morality, under the con-
ditions of modernity, can no longer be understood—as had been the case for
Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas—by way of all-encompassing prescriptions
concerning the “good” or “happy” life (eudaimonia, summum bonum).
Kant distinguishes between questions involving happiness (which may be
answered in a way that varies from individual to individual) and questions
about what is unconditionally Good in a moral sense (which admits only
responses that are valid in general terms). In like fashion—albeit on a different
conceptual basis—Habermas makes a distinction between moral and ethical
issues. For him, moral discourses raise the question, from an impartial per-
spective, of “what is equally good for all”—that is, what represents a matter of
unconditional duty. Ethical discourses, on the other hand, concern “what is
good for me/us.” “Ethics”—as the phrase “discursive ethics” makes clear—no
longer refers to the “science of morality” (Wissenschaft der Moral); rather, it
has the new, specific meaning of a doctrine concerning individual and/or col-
lective forms of life that deserve to be called “good” on the basis of reflective
evaluation.
Habermas limits moral discourses to matters of interpersonal justice and
solidarity. Ethical discourses, on the other hand, address questions of the
good life in view of the plurality of values (that is, the fact that human existence
and action can assume many different forms). Habermas follows Kant in mak-
ing the difference hinge on the unconditional and universal claim to justifica-
tion that moral duties imply. At the same time, however, he admits there are
ways to conceptualize the connection between morality and ethics that differ
from the notion of the “highest good” his forebear endorses (see chapter 9).
As occurs throughout his writings, Habermas presents his own ideas by
engaging with the writings of both classical and contemporary authors. In a
134 Contexts
first step, he discusses the criticisms that Hegel directed at Kant. His next
move is to elaborate the distinction between morality and ethics by taking up
the findings of developmental psychology and sociology—in particular, the
works of George Herbert Mead, Émile Durkheim, and Lawrence Kohlberg; on
this basis, Habermas elaborates his own comprehensive theory of rationality.
Finally, he makes the finer points of his insights clear by contrasting his views
with those of contemporaries, subjecting the theoretical edifice he has con-
structed to metaethical revision. It remains to be seen whether the incorpora-
tion of bioethics will occasion further modifications in Habermas’s theory.
Habermas tests his distinction between moral and ethical discourses by seeing
whether they stand up to “Hegel’s objections to Kant” (Justification, 1ff.). Hegel
sets his own conception of mediating and foundational ethics (Sittlichkeit)
against both the “abstract universalism of justice” found in Kant’s notion of
autonomy and against the “concrete particularism of the common good”
advocated by the tradition following Aristotle and Aquinas. In particular,
Hegel opposes the empty formalism, abstract universalism, “impotence of the
ought,” and “moral terror” (Gesinnungsterror) of Kantian ethics. In his discur-
sive ethics, Habermas seeks to preserve the Kantian separation of morals
from ethics while, at the same time, reformulating the mediating functions
that Hegel’s Sittlichkeit performs (without, however, granting it positive
substance).
To counter Hegel’s charge of formalism, Habermas affirms that the princi-
ple of moral universalizability, although a schematic notion, is neither empty
nor tautological. Instead—and as Kant had already observed—it verifies, but
does not generate, the moral contents of the maxims (or norms) that govern
action. Habermas recognizes that Hegel’s objection to Kant’s morality of
respect (Achtungsmoral) is more substantive. Verification of maxims, which
occurs regularly in day-to-day existence, entails abstraction—that is, the
separation between moral norms (which can be universalized) and value
declarations (which have an ethical meaning that relates to one “good life” in
particular). This implies the loss of concreteness and meaning (Inhaltlichkeit)
and therefore reveals the arbitrariness and irrelevancy of abstract morality.
Against this view, Habermas declares that universal and formal norms, once
they are verified by discursive ethics, do in fact possess positive moral content,
which then performs the ethical mediation outlined in Hegel’s system, albeit
in a “weak” capacity.
Moral and Ethical Discourses: The Distinction in General 135
Alasdair MacIntyre (1990; cf. Forst 2001) have critiqued this view for amount-
ing to the “privatization of the good.” Habermas avoids such charges by
affirming that questions concerning the good life (“what is good for me or us”)
must be evaluated in a context-specific manner; the issue must always be
examined in terms of what is shared (gemeinschaftlich), even if what is morally
right eludes determination in this way (Wingert 1993, 131ff.).
Moral discourses require that people “distance themselves from the life
histories and forms of life in which they actually find themselves” (Justifica-
tion, 12). That is to say: the fact that moral norms possess cognitive value—as
Habermas has affirmed (Truth, 33ff.)—means that it is necessary to occupy an
impartial standpoint that “explodes” the “subjectivity of the individual par-
ticipant’s perspective” (Justification, 12). At the same time, moral impartiality
is not—as Habermas observes, contra Thomas Nagel (1986)—the “external
standpoint” of an observer (Justification, 180–181). Nor, for that matter, is
impartiality assured when—as Ernst Tugendhat (1993, 287ff.) has argued
(along lines that are ultimately egocentric)—“an uninvolved party [ein Unbe-
teiligter] weighs the goods and harms that are at stake for any individual”
(Inclusion, 274; translation slightly modified).
Instead of following his contemporaries on these points, Habermas sees
parallels between his own view and John Rawls’s complicated, constructivist
notion of “reflective equilibrium” (Justification, 25ff.), which confirms the
conception of impartiality central to discourse ethics: a process (Verfahren)
occurring between affected parties. At the same time, Habermas criticizes
Rawls for holding that one need only conclude a “contract” following instru-
mental purposes, instead of acting on the basis of “moral insight” (Justifica-
tion, 25ff.). For this reason, he endorses Thomas Scanlon’s (1982) critique of
Rawls, which holds that “principles and rules can only meet with general
agreement, if all parties may be convinced that each of them could express
personal assent from his or her own perspective” (Habermas 1991, 58).
Habermas finds support for his position in the fact that Lawrence Kohlberg
assigns the “moral point of view” to level 6 of judgment formation, the “post-
conventional” stage (Kohlberg 1986, 220–221; see also chapter 10 of this vol-
ume); here, Kohlberg takes up Mead’s notion of abstract role playing, which
involves reciprocal changes of perspective between interlocutors. Even if
Habermas ultimately takes issue with Kohlberg’s attempt to combine univer-
sal justice and benevolence (Justification, 78ff.), nevertheless (and like Karl-
Otto Apel) he holds that the “discourse-ethical alternative” of impartiality
represents a process of judgment formation involving all parties in reciprocal
relations (Justification, 114ff.; Truth, 243ff.; Lohmann 2001).
Habermas has held fast to this definition of the moral standpoint guaran-
teeing that “what should be done” can redeem (einlösen) the cognitive and
universal demands that it makes. He defends his understanding of what is
Moral and Ethical Discourses: The Distinction in General 139
If, in these discussions, Habermas has sought to defend the foundational dis-
tinction between moral and ethical discourses, his recent engagement with
the challenges posed by developments in the modern biological sciences sug-
gests a change in the way he understands ethical discourse. Ernst Tugendhat
(1984) already tried to develop a formal concept of the good life that held up
to the justificatory demands of Kantian morality. Habermas, too, spoke of
140 Contexts
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142 Contexts
S
ince the mid-1990s Habermas has been articulating a project for a
future world order involving the “further constitutionalization
of international law.” Wed to the Kantian (1991) conception of
cosmopolitanism, his goal is nonetheless to show that a global legal system
with binding hard law, coupled to a politically constituted world society that is
neither a world state nor a loose confederation of states, is conceptually con-
ceivable. The cosmopolitan multilayered global political system he proposes
would consist not only of individuals (world citizens) but also of states that
would nonetheless not be relegated to mere parts of an overarching hierarchi-
cal superstate. The project is to bind global, regional, and national power to
law to facilitate the peaceful resolution of disputes, while protecting individ-
ual freedom through human rights.
Thus, like other eminent critics of institutional cosmopolitanism (Rawls
1999, Nagel 2005, Walzer 1992) who reject a world republic as the wrong model,
Habermas seeks to develop a “feasible utopia” for the global political system of
world society. Unlike Rawls, he insists that membership in the supranational
political organization of that society be inclusive of all states rather than an
association restricted to liberal and decent societies. Unlike Nagel, who
restricts the circumstances of distributive and procedural justice to the nation-
state, he argues that transnational forms of governance already replacing the
regulatory state entail the requisite degree of coercion and impact on people’s
lives to perpetrate injustice, so they are a suitable referent for a global domestic
politics. Unlike Walzer, Habermas rejects the unmediated moralization of a
global rights-based politics that goes with the revival of just-war discourse.
For Habermas, international law matters but should be transformed into
cosmopolitan law regulating both states and world citizens. A cosmopolitan
condition that does not involve the erection of a world state requires the fur-
ther constitutionalization of international law.
Habermas argues that the concept of a binding legal system and constitu-
tion can be applied to postnational, nonstate orders. Yet under the influence of
Hauke Brunkhorst (2005), Bardo Fassbender (1998), and Klaus Günther (2001),
144 Contexts
the world and thus inform our contemporary global political culture. Back-
ing by a supportive and vigilant global civil public sphere would also help.
Accordingly, the global political constitutional order has neither the same
sort of legitimacy needs nor the same requirements of solidarity as the demo-
cratic nation-state.
This brings us to the debates around the institutional model of the global
political system. Habermas imagines a tripartite structure consisting of a
global, a transnational, and a national level that would be the referent of “lib-
eral” constitutionalization. On the supranational level, the political system
would be organized into a “suitably reformed” world organization based on
universal membership that includes all states and individuals (qua citizens of
the world) but that is restricted to the functions of securing peace and promot-
ing human rights in an “effective, nonselective” fashion. On the transnational
level, the allegedly more political issue of devising a global domestic politics
addressing economic matters is ascribed to continental regimes on the model
of the European Union and/or twenty-first-century great powers such as the
United States, China, Russia, India, etc. Political plurality and international
relations would continue to exist on this level, although recourse to war and
violations of human rights would be precluded. On the national level, states
would continue to exist, retaining their monopoly of force, making this avail-
able when needed to implement human rights and policy decisions of the
other levels and generating the crucial resource of indirect legitimacy for the
supranational level. But they would no longer be sovereign.
This seems like a sober and feasible utopia. However, when framed in terms
of the creation of a cosmopolitan condition, it appears ambiguous and has
generated a series of critiques. As Scheuerman (2008) and Walker (2005) point
out, deep disagreements about which human rights should become hard law
and enforceable on the global level make the argument about the nonpolitical
nature of rights and the lower threshold of legitimacy for the supranational
level unconvincing. Even if there is a general consensus over their function—
legalized human rights in the global political system would determine the
threshold of tolerance below which some kind of forceful intervention is
deemed appropriate—which rights rise to this level is a highly contentious
issue.
Advocates of a more ambitious cosmopolitan reading, such as Lafont
(2008), challenge the specific assignment of competences to the different units
of the system. The claim is that leaving socioeconomic issues (global domestic
politics) to the logic of regional compromises screens out issues of global
150 Contexts
References
Brunkhorst, Hauke. 2005. Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community.
Trans. Jeffrey Flynn. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Fassbender, Bardo. 1998. “The United Nations Charter as Constitution of the International
Community.” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 36, no. 3: 529–619.
Günther, Klaus. 2001. “Rechtspluralismus und universaler Code der Legalität: Globalisier-
ung als rechtstheoretisches Problem.” In Die Öffentlichkeit der Vernunft und die Ver-
nunft der Öffentlichkeit, ed. Lutz Wingert and Klaus Günther, 539–567. Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp.
152 Contexts
Habermas, Jürgen. 2001. “The Postnational Constellation and the Future of Democracy”
and “Remarks on Legitimation Through Human Rights.” In The Post-National Constel-
lation, trans. Max Pensky, 58–129. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
——. 2006. “Does the Constitutionalization of International Law Still Have a Chance?” In
The Divided West, trans. Ciaran Cronin, 115–210. Cambridge: Polity.
——. 2007. Kommunikative Rationalität und grenzüberschreitende Politik: eine Replik.”
In Anarchie der kommunikativen Freiheit, ed. Peter Niesen and Benjamin Herborth,
406–459. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 2008. “The Constitutionalization of International Law and the Legitimation Prob-
lems of a Constitution for World Society.” Constellations 14, no. 4: 444–455.
Kant, Immanuel. 1991. “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch.” In Political Writings,
trans. Hans S. Reiss, 93–130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lafont, Cristina. 2008. “Alternative Visions of a New Global Order: What Should Cosmo-
politans Hope For?” Ethics and Global Politics 1, no. 1–2: 41–60.
Nagel, Thomas. 2005. “The Problem of Global Justice.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 33, no.
2: 113–147.
Rawls, John. 1999. The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Scheuerman, William. 2008. “Global Governance Without Global Government? Haber-
mas on Postnational Democracy.” Political Theory 36, no. 1: 133–151.
Schmalz-Bruns, Rainer. 2007. “An den Grenzen der Entstaatlichung: Bemerkungen zu Jür-
gen Habermas’ Modell einer ‘Weltinnenpolitik ohne Weltregierung.’ ” In Anarchie der
kommmunikativen Freiheit: Jürgen Habermas und die Theorie der internationalen Poli-
tik, ed. Peter Niesen and Benjamin Herborth, 269–293. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Walker, Neil. 2005. “Making a World of Difference? Habermas, Cosmopolitanism, and the
Constitutionalization of International Law.” European University Institute Working
Paper Law no. 2005/17.
Walzer, Michael. 1992. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustra-
tions. New York: Basic Books.
18
EUROPEAN
CONSTITUTIONALIZATION
CHRISTIAN JOERGES
F
or years now—across the continent, in all languages and lands—
talk has been animated: Europe must determine what state it finds
itself in, whether its legal system may be understood as a constitu-
tional order, whether it can—indeed, should—be democratic, what democracy
in a European union means, and what the chances of this really occurring are.
The constitutionalization of Europe involves both the analysis of actual pro-
cesses that make the phenomenon itself comprehensible and a normative frame-
work offering tools of measurement—and specifying conditions necessary—for
determining whether the emergent configurations “deserve recognition.” Yet
analytical and empirical questions are empty—and normative and institu-
tional ones are blind—if they do not relate to one another. The notion of “con-
stitutionalization” concerns this very connection: It names both the form and
the formation of Europe. It holds to what the constitutions of democratic
nation-states have achieved or promised and, at the same time, seeks to
acknowledge the fact that the circumstances framing European unification
are constantly changing. It is impossible to reach back to a blueprint, and so
constitutionalization must be understood as an ongoing process.
Since 1991, Habermas has offered transnational and transdisciplinary
points of orientation for approaching the phenomenon. Two concerns inform
his contributions: on the one hand, an altogether passionate advocacy of the
European project and, on the other, worries about the accomplishments of
democratic states to date. His concerns have come to be shared by scholars
across the academic spectrum—and especially by the political scientists and
legal theorists who dominate the field of European studies. At the same time,
however, the effect of Habermas’s interventions has remained singularly limited
to day-to-day academic activities. This circumstance relates to the twofold
orientation of Habermas’s goals. In his works theorizing legal discourse,
Habermas (1995) has penetratingly analyzed the inner connection (Zusammen-
hang) between the state under the rule of law (Rechtsstaat) and democracy—a
matter that remains inaccessible both to political scientists who observe the
causal and empirical conventions of their field and to jurists who focus on
154 Contexts
The democratic constitutional state did not fall from the sky. The history of
the institution is important because it determines the possibilities open to
us—the tasks we must complete. Habermas has shown as much on the exam-
ple of Germany (e.g., Facts, 109ff., 541ff.). At present, there exists no corre-
sponding reconstruction of the European project as a whole—how it came to
be. All the same, no textbook or Sunday sermon fails to remind one of the
catastrophes and errors of the past—especially in Germany. The oft-quoted
diagnosis by Joseph H. H. Weiler (1994), that the primary concerns of Europe
are securing peace, overcoming discrimination, and increasing prosperity,
involves motivations that are high-minded and trivial at once. Such state-
ments pass over in silence the troubling legacy of the Holocaust, which defines
European identity—in negative terms—to this day, as well as the conflicts of
postwar Europe, the role played by decolonization in the reorientation of the
political map, and the current strategic interests of individual states (Judt
2006). The expansion of the European project to the east has likewise increased
the dimensions of historical factors and deepened points of socioeconomic
divergence.
It is misleading to represent the process of integration occurring in Euro-
pean law simply as a constant, institutional progression that always manages
to overcome obstacles—which, now that Soviet domination has collapsed, will
achieve a happy ending in a ratified constitution. Moreover, there is certainly
nothing more mistaken than the notion that Europe can assemble its legal
code from the bricks left over from the past, which legal historians have now
brought to light (Keiser 2005).
Habermas’s views do not fit into the rosy picture painted by (some of)
his contemporaries. His remarks concerning the historical significance
of European unification address the most sensitive points of European
European Constitutionalization 155
Administration and taxation are matters of the first order, this pupil of Carl
Schmitt maintained. In contrast, Abendroth (taking up the arguments of
Hermann Heller) averred that Sozialstaatlichkeit was now a legal principle
according to the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) and therefore a matter incumbent
on legislators to address.
The debate was witnessed by a school of thought the battling academics
failed to notice—which would soon take the lead and become uncommonly
influential, first in the Federal Republic of Germany and then throughout
Europe, through the model of the “social market economy.” Like the positions
of Forsthoff and Abendroth, the “third way” this party proposed had also
been prepared under the Weimar Republic—by a group of economists and
jurists who were equally skeptical about laissez-faire liberalism and efforts to
shape and steer the economy by political means. They had declared the order-
ing of the economy to be the task of a strong state; with the help of forceful
legal prescriptions, the government would “bring out” and reinforce the inher-
ent stability of private economic activity (Manow 2001). On this view, “the
economic order and the constitution of the state” were connected on a deep
level. Both conditioned the other mutually—and therefore demanded political
recognition while, at the same time, providing the legal guidelines for political
decision making to observe.
Habermas sided with Heller and Abendroth. The positions he articulated
(especially in Structural Transformation, 229ff.) were taken up during debates
about reform in the Federal Republic—particularly by student radicals around
1968. Habermas’s way from here to the discourse theory of law elaborated in
Between Facts and Norms was long, but—at least as far as the principle of the
social state was concerned—it led in a straight line. His theory has preserved
the tradition of the social state established by Heller. Heller had already seen
clearly what Abendroth soon elaborated in detail—the fact that social justice
within the framework of the state cannot be “derived” or simply “imposed”;
instead, it must achieve legitimacy through democratic political processes,
which in turn require legal guarantees. The same insight has prompted
Habermas to proceduralize the category of laws and rights. The matter is
fundamentally compatible with constitutionalization that does not depend
on parliamentary legislation but instead counts on positive justification in
other forums and processes (even though, as Habermas admits, it functions
only to the extent that such processes deserve recognition).
For quite some time, European politics remained unaffected by these
debates. Significantly, however, German jurisprudence proved particularly
sensitive to the tension between, on the one hand, the call for democracy on
the national level and, on the other, the project of European unification.
Indeed, Germans led the effort to “immunize” the European government
against the demands of democracy. The exemplary attempt to do so occurred
European Constitutionalization 157
of the global economy, they must take an interest in the power to shape insti-
tutions and outcomes which would accrue to a politically effective European
Union within the circle of global players.
(Time, 96)
Bad prospects for success would not provide sufficient grounds to abandon
experiments in “new modes of governance.” In terms of constitutional politics,
however, such new methods—and particularly the “open method of coordina-
tion”—have occasioned concern that, if the social state is not preserved, the
rule of law may be imperiled.
Even so, compelling reasons exist to turn away from the “community
method” of governance. Tellingly, forms of coordinated action first emerged
in the sphere of agricultural politics, which is strongly communitarized. As
regulatory practices extended into the spheres of worker, environmental, and
consumer protection—a process that accompanied the development of domes-
tic markets—the need for an active “political administration” increased dra-
matically. The advisory structure that emerged in the context of agricultural
policy flourished as “comitology” in many fields of regulatory politics. Soon,
many “European agencies” that had little legal power but great capacity for
practical intervention had joined in. The “open method of coordination” ini-
tially conceived for the social sector was transferred to, and implemented in,
more and more spheres. In point of fact, this form of rule can now be restrained
European Constitutionalization 159
only with difficulty by legal means. This difficulty involves both the new
“governance arrangements” that solidify connections between national and
European actors and the influence of experts of every kind, who now count as
indispensable in even the slightest matters.
Since irreversible developments in political arenas of great significance are
at issue, the legal problematic of how they relate to the agenda of European
constitutionalism should be considered a high priority. The core question, in
constitutional terms, is whether one may see, in “new modes of governance,” a
kind of “democratic experimentalism” that dissolves legal categories into
communication (for this perspective, see, above all, Sabel and Zeitlin 2008) or
whether law can react constructively to the fact that traditional modes of
steering are being replaced by new forms of procedure (Joerges 2007). In the
meanwhile, European political practice has come to be shaped by institutions
that observe processes of decision making in a precise way but at the same
time—inasmuch as they privilege expert opinion—disregard both regional
differences and the public sphere within civil society. This holds especially for
newer agencies, even though European comitology also resists demands for
any form of constitutionalization that would assign it the reduced role of serv-
ing only in an advisory capacity (i.e., offering regulatory suggestions subject to
reversal); European constitutionalism grants it little more than room for “leg-
work” (Time).
The “social state” has emerged as a stumbling block for European constitu-
tionalization. In the most current redaction of documents, the matter has
been neglected: politicians and political scientists promise “gentle” alterna-
tives, and the citizens of “Old Europe” express their displeasure when asked
directly. The European Court of Justice has not seized the initiative in this
seeming dead-end. In a series of cases involving conflicts of interest between
“New European” wishes to enter the market and “Old European” concerns
about social protection, the rulings of the court have set European primary
and secondary rights above national employment law—emphasizing that the
right to strike remains protected. The details of such case law are extraordi-
narily complicated (see Joerges and Rödl 2009), but the operative principles
are very simple: (1) the precedence of primary rights encompasses national
employment laws, even when it stands in conflict with them; (2) the immedi-
ate effect of civil liberties means that not just member states but also unions
must observe them; (3) despite the limited number of spheres of European
jurisdiction, the incipient European social model takes precedence over
160 Contexts
national law; and (4) the limited compass of European secondary law (that is,
its restricted sphere of precedence) is supposed to take the sense of fundamen-
tal liberties into account.
It may not be immediately apparent how these provisions, formulated as
they are in legalese, bear on constitutional matters. In fact, however, their rel-
evance is dramatic, for here the European Court of Justice has elevated its
position to that of pouvoir constituant in the European Union. In so doing, it
radicalizes the ordoliberal decoupling of the economic from the social con-
stitution—which according to the theory of social market economy, are
“interdependent”—by assigning supremacy to the former. The German Fed-
eral Constitutional Court has opposed such measures in its determinative
rulings—but European legislators cannot follow this lead.
Is critiquing the revocation of the social state hopelessly quixotic? Should
one expect that preserving the national responsibilities of Old Europe will
lead to compensatory developments in the emergent international order? Is
Habermas not right when he criticizes attempts made by the Social Democrats
to “intercept [auffangen], within the framework of the nation-state, the
risks that economic globalization entails for the labor market and systems of
social security”? “Couldn’t this goal be better achieved by harmonizing the
corresponding policies within the larger economic territory of Europe, or at
least within the Eurozone?” (Faltering, 105). The uncertainties posed by these
matters cannot be overcome. At the same time, it is clear that the lines of argu-
ment the European Court of Justice has offered do not hold up to criticism. As
protests by unions across Europe have shown, it is likely that such judgments
will ultimately undermine the court’s authority.
The discourse theory of law, as a consequence of the recent developments
sketched above, has been pushed into a new, oppositional role. According to
the position Habermas has articulated, the social state counts as a constitutive
element of democracy; democracy without the rule of law (Rechtstaatlichkeit)
qualifies as unthinkable; institutionalizing economic freedoms and economic
rationality is no substitute for democracy. What, then, does Habermas call for
in a European constitution? His 1991 essay already offered a response—which
he expanded later (Time, 113ff.): Constitutional democracies can assure,
less and less, that those affected by their politics and policies will be inte-
grated into international processes of decision making. The notion of self-
legislation—which holds that those at whom laws are directed should also
be able to understand themselves as the authors of legislation (Time, 113)—
demands “the inclusion of the other.” Habermas offers cogent normative
reasons for a European constitution. Unfortunately, the prospects for a happy
outcome to the process of constitutionalization are proving ever more
unlikely.
European Constitutionalization 161
References
Abendroth, Wolfgang. 1954. “Begriff und Wesen des sozialen Rechtsstaates, Diskussions-
beitrag.” Veröffentlichungen der Vereinigung der Deutschen Staatsrechtslehrer 12:85–91.
Forsthoff, Ernst. 1954. “Begriff und Wesen des sozialen Rechtstaates.” Veröffentlichungen
der Vereinigung der Deutschen Staatsrechtslehrer 12:8–35.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1995. “On the Internal Relation Between the Rule of Law and Democ-
racy.” European Journal of Philosophy 3, no. 1: 12–20.
Ipsen, Hans Peter. 1972. Europarecht. Tübingen: Mohr.
Joerges, Christian. 2007. “Integration Through De-Legislation? An Irritated Heckler.”
European Governance Papers (EUROGOV) no. N-07-03. http://www.connex-network
.org /eurogov/pdf/egp-newgov-N-07–03.pdf.
Joerges, Christian, and Florian Rödl. 2009. “Informal Politics, Formalised Law, and the
‘Social Deficit’ of European Integration: Reflections After the Judgments of the ECJ in
Viking and Laval.” European Law Journal 15, no. 1: 1–19.
Judt, Tony. 2006. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. New York: Penguin.
Keiser, Thorsten. 2005. “Europeanization as a Challenge to Legal History.” German Law
Journal 6, no. 2: 473–481.
Manow, Philip. 2001. “Ordoliberalismus als ökonomische Ordnungstheologie.” Leviathan
29, no. 2: 179–198.
Mestmäcker, Ernst-Joachim. 1973. “Power, Law, and Economic Constitution.” German Eco-
nomic Review 11, no. 3: 177–198.
Sabel, Charles F., and Jonathan Zeitlin. 2008. “Learning from Difference: The New Archi-
tecture of Experimentalist Governance in the European Union.” European Law Journal
14, no. 3: 271–327.
Weiler, Joseph H. H. 1994. “Fin-de-siècle Europe.” In Europe After Maastricht: An Ever
Closer Union?, ed. Renaud Dehousse, 203–214. Munich: Law Books in Europe.
19
THE THEORY OF JUSTICE
REGINA KREIDE
F
or Nietzsche and Sloterdijk, justice is the enemy of freedom.
Justice restricts freedom, which they both understand—notwith-
standing other differences of opinion—in terms of what affords
the greatest possible space for action. For Jürgen Habermas, on the other hand,
freedom can only be understood insofar as it is afforded by justice. Without
just processes that permit us to determine freedom’s extent and limits, there
exists only arbitrary freedom for individuals—but no freedom in the proper
sense (freedom for all).
Habermas explores this basic moral intuition in his notion of procedural
justice (Verfahrensgerechtigkeit). The matter is not set forward in a single vol-
ume; instead, it forms a normative leitmotif that recurs throughout his theo-
retical writings on morality, legal philosophy, and political theory. Two
domains, while distinct, are closely connected: on the one hand, that of “moral
justice,” which is elaborated in reference to moral theories in the Kantian tra-
dition; on the other, the matter of “political justice,” which he explores above
all in terms of legal philosophy. In the latter context, questions arise about
justice in a transnational dimension—a matter addressed by the author’s
political-theoretical writings on the constitutionalization of international law.
Moral Justice
rationally meet with rejection from anyone in the circle of parties potentially
affected. The process demands justified agreement from all the individuals
concerned. Instead of a view of justice that is “thrust” upon others, parties
must—at least virtually—imagine an intersubjective consensus that others
can accept as just (Justification, 51).
It is no accident that Scanlon—like Habermas—invokes George Herbert
Mead’s (1934) theory of symbolic interaction. The notion that a party engaged
in an exchange takes on the perspective of his or her counterpart is not meant
to enhance the contractual model but to serve as an alternative way of viewing
matters (Moral Consciousness; Justification, 49; Theory of Communicative
Action, 2:141–142). Lawrence Kohlberg (1981)—whose writings hold great sig-
nificance for Habermas’s theoretical grounding of “just principles” and con-
ception of moral action along the lines of developmental psychology—explains
morality as a matter of ideational role playing. Given the simple change of
perspective involving alter and ego—whereby both parties, in the event of a
moral conflict, empathize with the other and, by turns, recognize their coun-
terpart’s expectations, interests, and value orientations—it follows that the
process of universalization must logically extend to all possible perspectives.
Habermas, however, considers the danger of “emotivistic one-sidedness”
unavoidable. When this occurs, the intuitive view of an individual’s situation
supplants the properly intersubjective perspective permitting one to discern
whether actions are right or wrong—which is necessary if these actions are to
be reconsidered and modified. Therefore, he presents discourse ethics as an
“alternative” (Justification, 69) based on the justification of norms. The latter
are just when they are produced by “reflexive” discourse—that is, when the
very procedures that afford just principles are evaluated in terms of the
exchange of roles providing the conditions of argument.
In the early 1980s, Carol Gilligan (1982) critiqued Kohlberg’s thesis that six
developmental levels—deemed increasingly universal in scope—underlie
moral judgments. In particular, she took issue with the one-sided view that
such judgments are based on “reason” alone; because he had disregarded other
forms of knowledge and ways of managing moral conflicts, Gilligan argued,
Kohlberg neglected care—that is, engagement with others, consideration for
the uniqueness of individuals, and thinking about relations of closeness and
intimacy between human beings. Kohlberg recognized the importance of
these objections and responded by trying to derive justice from benevolence
(Kohlberg et al. 1986). He failed to do so convincingly, however, inasmuch as
he maintained that individual perspectives only seem incompatible with mat-
ters of justice at first glance—“care,” he argued, in fact represents an aspect of
“justice” (see chapter 10 in this volume).
Gilligan’s reflections have prompted Habermas to introduce solidarity as
the “other side” of justice (Justification, 70ff.). Any deontological theory of
The Theory of Justice 165
justice must fulfill two demands: equal treatment for all and respect for indi-
vidual dignity, on the one hand, and the preservation of intersubjective rela-
tions of mutual recognition, on the other. Seyla Benhabib formulates the
demands of the discourse-theoretical conception of justice by introducing
points of reference that correspond to the distinction between justice and soli-
darity: on the one hand, the “generalized other” (a category that induces us to
recognize every individual as a being with equal rights and duties) and, on the
other, the “concrete other” (a category that makes us see the other in his or her
individual completeness—that is, as someone who has a particular biography
and a unique emotional/affective constitution) (Benhabib 1995, 182ff.; cf.
Wingert 1993, for the distinction between respect that is “just” and respect
cased on “solidarity”).
According to Benhabib, only when both standpoints are adopted and con-
nected together may “epistemological blindness” (1995, 182) concerning the
good life—and therefore injustice—be avoided (see chapter 36 in this volume).
In all these theories, the discursive model of justice still refers to the reciprocal
and general justification of norms by all parties potentially affected. At the
same time, it undoes—e.g., in the work of Rawls—the rigid separation between
justice and the good life. Habermas addresses the matter in his works of legal
philosophy and political theory (Facts, 447ff.; Inclusion, 253ff.).
Political Justice
Global Justice
Global problems—e.g., worldwide poverty and the fact that entire swaths of
the population lack access to work, education, and legal representation—have
raised the question whether “justice” represents a normative measure extending
beyond the borders of the nation-state. Rawls (2001) limits his recommenda-
tions for international social justice to a “duty to help” foreign peoples
provided they are prepared to develop into “well-ordered” societies (453);
Thomas Nagel (2005), on the other hand, maintains that justice cannot prevail
between states or their citizens as long as no transnational sovereign wields
the power to make them fulfill such duties. Adopting a universalistic perspec-
tive, Peter Singer (1972) calls for a general, “positive” obligation to assist others.
Just as it would be morally wrong not to save a drowning child we might
encounter on a walk, we make ourselves guilty by not regularly donating to
relief efforts.
Habermas’s project of “global domestic politics” presents a twofold under-
standing of supranational justice. On the one hand, the project rests upon the
minimalistic premise that the goal of global domestic politics, above all else,
involves securing peace; hereby, justice is restricted to avoiding war and guar-
anteeing human rights and civil liberties (Divided West, 161–166). On the other
hand, the project harbors the comparatively “utopian” ambition of a global
government organization that would steer domestic world politics in keeping
with the principles of universal justice; such principles would find expression
in a world organization and its charter (Habermas 2007, 450). Thereby, Haber-
mas draws a line dividing, on the one hand, the clearly defined tasks assuring
justice on a supranational level (above all, the preservation of peace) and, on
the other, various transnational matters “of a political nature” (e.g., setting up
economic regulations and measures for environmental protection, promoting
the arts, and establishing social-political standards; see chapter 17 in this
volume).
Read along “minimalistic” lines, negative duties—i.e., curtailing “wars of
aggression, genocide, and other crimes against humanity”—provide the basis
for the administration of justice by international courts and for political deci-
sions made by the United Nations (Divided West, 164). Here, no room exists
for, e.g., fighting poverty on a supranational level; such matters must involve a
transnational agenda, which is an item of political negotiation. However, it
is also possible to read Habermas in more ambitious terms. On this view,
the United Nations provides the normative framework for world politics in
general—including political decisions on the transnational level. Tasks are
divided between two spheres according to functional demands that must be
fulfilled by economic organizations (e.g., the World Trade Organization), but
168 Contexts
they are not determined in advance (Naturalism, 345). A separation that pre-
ceded the discursive process—whether in terms of morality or politics—would
be incompatible with the demand for procedural justice.
According to many theorists, there is much that speaks for the second read-
ing. At least three arguments may be adduced to support it. In the first place,
one can see—in terms of the actual consequences that follow from politics—that
more human beings die each year of preventable diseases caused by poverty
than are killed in wars. This is reason enough to promote the issue to a suprana-
tional level of engagement (Pogge 2002, Kreide 2007). Second, the poverty
that exists across the globe is not the fault of those affected; at least in some
measure, it results from economic, financial, and political practices that
benefit some and put others in desperate situations (O’Neill 2000, Caney
2005). Finally, a response to the question—“What is a matter of justice and
what is best left to political negotiations?”—should “follow the internal logic
of moral discourse” (Lafont 2009). Matters of justice are not “political” inas-
much as compromises can never provide a satisfactory answer to the ques-
tions they raise.
For these reasons—and especially given the crisis of globalization—the
task of determining the relationship between justice, freedom, and politics
beyond the borders of the nation-state has only become more urgent; indeed,
it has hardly begun.
References
Benhabib, Seyla. 1995. Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Con-
temporary Ethics. New York: Routledge.
Brunkhorst, Hauke. 2005. Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community.
Trans. Jeffrey Flynn. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Caney, Simon. 2005. Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Forst, Rainer. 1999. “Die Rechtfertigung der Gerechtigkeit. Rawls’ Politischer Liberalismus
und Habermas’ Diskurstheorie in der Diskussion.” In Das Recht der Republik, ed.
Hauke Brunkhorst and Peter Niesen, 105–169. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 2002. Contexts of Justice: Political Philosophy Beyond Liberalism and Communitari-
anism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a Different Voice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Günther, Klaus. 1992. “Die Freiheit der Stellungnahme als politisches Grundrecht – eine
Skizze.” Theoretische Grundlagen der Rechtspolitik: Beiheft zum Archiv für Rechts-
und Sozialphilosophie 54, ed. Peter Koller, Csaba Varga, and Ota Weinberger, 59–72.
Franz Steiner Verlag.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1996. “Versöhnung durch öffentlichen Vernunftgebrauch.” In Zur Idee
des politischen Liberalismus, ed. Wilfried Hinsch, 169–195. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1996. “Reply to Symposium Participants, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.” Car-
dozo Law Review 17, no. 4–5: 1477–1559.
The Theory of Justice 169
H
abermas’s exchange with Jacques Derrida is situated within the
debate about modernity and postmodernity (see chapters 33 and
37). When he was awarded the Adorno Prize in 1980, Habermas
defended the “unfinished project of modernity” in his acceptance speech; the
opponents of modernity he identified included—in addition to old conserva-
tives and neoconservatives of the recognizable variety—a group of “Young
Conservatives,” among whom he numbered Michel Foucault and Derrida
(“Modernity,” 53). The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1985) devotes
two chapters to Derrida, in which Habermas details, at greater length,
what prompted this judgment. In his estimation, Derrida’s philosophy rep-
resents a radicalized critique of reason (Vernunftkritik), which amounts to
an inadequate response to the diremptions and dualisms of modernity. This
account—as well as the debate in Germany, France, and the United States
that followed—was marked by polemical intensity and political vehemence;
the effect on institutional and theoretical-political lines of allegiance was
far-reaching.
Following a chance meeting in Evanston (1996) and an exchange in Frank-
furt (2000), the two philosophers began to refer to each other’s works more
openly. The changed relationship found expression in a joint publication
(Habermas and Derrida 2004) and a shared call for debate (see Thomassen
2006, 207ff.). Despite the new tone, however, the substantial differences between
their philosophical positions by no means vanished.
There is good reason to doubt whether Habermas, in The Philosophical Dis-
course of Modernity, portrayed Derrida’s writings accurately and whether he
situated them in the appropriate cultural and political contexts. Instead of
tracing, point for point, the specific problems within Habermas’s account and
the critical responses they elicited, it is more illuminating to remain at a
certain remove from the debate. This will allow us to identify the common
points of departure that Habermas’s and Derrida’s projects share and to indi-
cate the way in which they challenge each other in systematically fruitful
ways.
Deconstruction 171
Emancipatory Potential
References
Thomassen, Lasse, ed. 2006. The Derrida-Habermas Reader. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press. [This volume contains central contributions to the debate and an extensive
bibliography.]
Wellmer, Albrecht. 1985. Zur Dialektik von Moderne und Postmoderne. Vernunftkritik nach
Adorno. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 2007. “Der Streit um die Wahrheit. Pragmatismus ohne regulative Ideen.” In Wie
Worte Sinn machen: Aufsätze zur Sprachphilosophie, 180–207. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
21
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
AMY ALLEN
H
abermas’s critical engagement with postmodernism not only
generated a great deal of attention in the 1980s and 1990s, but it
has also laid down the gauntlet for a new generation of critical
theorists who may now take on the task of rethinking Habermas’s stark oppo-
sition between pro-Enlightenment modernity and counter-Enlightenment
postmodernity. Habermas’s critique of postmodernism goes hand in hand
with his staunch defense of the normative content of modernity. Both are most
forcefully articulated in his 1985 book The Philosophical Discourse of Moder-
nity. Although Habermas’s interpretations of particular thinkers in this book
are at times questionable, the book’s overall thesis remains compelling. Haber-
mas argues that both the philosophical discourse of modernity and its coun-
terdiscourses remain mired in a problematic philosophy of subjectivity that
must be left behind if the normative potential of modernity is to be realized.
Habermas’s theory of communicative action breaks out of the philosophy of
subjectivity and thus allows us to see how the promise of Enlightenment
modernity might be fulfilled, despite the pervasive pathologies generated by
capitalist modernization. Why was Habermas so concerned with using his
two-sided historical account of the gains and losses characteristic of moder-
nity to put postmodernism in its place? He rightly saw the growing influence
of postmodernism in social and political theory in the mid-1980s, a trend that
has continued unabated over the last twenty years. Habermas was concerned
about this trend for two reasons. First, he worried that postmodernism, like
the positivist social science he had criticized earlier in his career, leads to a
form of value skepticism that undermines normative social criticism (see
Moral Consciousness, 43–115). Second, he believed that postmodernism is sim-
ply antimodernism in disguise and that, as such, it is a new kind of conserva-
tism masquerading as radical social critique (see “Modernity”).
The term “postmodernism” can refer to a dizzying array of thinkers and
styles of thought; it is perhaps best used, as Habermas tends to use it, to refer
to a broad current of thought. The focus in what follows will be on Habermas’s
critical engagements with two thinkers who fall within that broad current:
Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Foucault will be taken as the primary
representative of poststructuralism (though even this label is somewhat
178 Contexts
self-critique of reason. Because this critique must use the tools of reason, it is
open to the charge of performative contradiction; that is to say, the totalizing
critique of reason relies for its performance on the very rational tools that it
rejects in its substantive critique. As Habermas sees it, Derrida attempts to
escape this problem by turning the standard philosophical primacy of logic
over rhetoric on its head. With this move, the standard of evaluation for the
critique of reason becomes rhetorical success, not logical consistency, and
the charge of performative contradiction misses the mark. This point is related
to what Habermas takes to be Derrida’s broader aim, namely, to dissolve the
genre distinction between philosophy and literature. Habermas objects to
both the reversal of the primacy of logic over rhetoric and the leveling of the
genre distinction between philosophy and literature. Instead, he argues for a
division of labor between philosophy and literary criticism, in which it is
acknowledged that both philosophy and literary criticism “have a family
resemblance to literature—and to this extent to one another as well—in their
rhetorical achievements. But their family relationship stops right there, for in
each of these enterprises the tools of rhetoric are subordinated to the disci-
pline of a distinct form of argumentation” (Discourse, 209–210).
Habermas also connects Derrida’s elision of the distinction between literature
and philosophy with a conflation of the distinction between communicative
uses of language and fictional discourse. Fictional discourse is world disclo-
sive; it involves the playful, poetic creation of new worlds by means of linguis-
tic innovation. Although Habermas acknowledges that these poetic elements
are present in ordinary linguistic communication, they do not predominate in
such contexts. Instead, language in everyday contexts of communication is
predominantly made up of the illocutionary binding force of utterances that
serves to coordinate social interaction. As Habermas sees it, the poetic, world-
disclosive function is not the only nor the primary function of language. To
claim that it is primary, as both Derrida and Heidegger do, is to neglect the
way we use language to solve problems, to coordinate our interactions by reach-
ing understanding about things in the objective, intersubjective, or subjective
worlds. For Habermas, this is tantamount to denying the rational potential
inherent in linguistic communication. Hence, in the end, Habermas main-
tains that Derrida’s attempt to escape the performative contradiction of the
totalizing self-critique of reason by asserting the primacy of rhetoric over logic
and world disclosure over communication “dulls the sword of the critique of
reason itself” (Discourse, 210).
Habermas’s critique of Derrida, like his critique of Foucault, is predicated
on presenting Derrida as an antimodern, anti-Enlightenment, anti-Kantian
thinker who rejects reason in favor of its rhetorical and poetic Other. Yet, as
with Foucault, it is possible to read Derrida as a philosopher who is self-con-
sciously transforming Kantian critical philosophy from within, hence, as one
Poststructuralism 181
References
Allen, Amy. 2008. The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contempo-
rary Critical Theory. New York: Columbia University Press.
Biebricher, Thomas. 2005. Selbstkritik der Moderne: Habermas und Foucault im Vergleich.
Frankfurt: Campus.
182 Contexts
Borradori, Giovanna. 2003. Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Haber-
mas and Jacques Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1988. Limited Inc. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.
——. 1992. “The Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority.” In Deconstruction
and the Possibility of Justice, ed. Drucilla Cornell, Michael Rosenfeld, and David Gray
Carlson, 3–67. New York: Routledge.
——. 1996. The Gift of Death. Trans. David Wills. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
——. 2004. Rogues: Two Essays on Reason. Trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheri-
dan. New York: Vintage.
——. 1978. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New
York: Vintage.
——. 1985. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure. Trans. Robert Hurley. New
York: Vintage.
——. 1986. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 3: The Care of the Self. Trans. Robert Hurley. New
York: Vintage.
——. 1997. “What Is Enlightenment?” In The Essential Works of Michel Foucault, vol. 1: Eth-
ics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, 303–319. New York: The New Press.
Habermas, Jürgen, and Jacques Derrida. 2003. “February 15, or What Binds Europeans
Together: A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in the Core of Europe.” Con-
stellations 10, no. 3: 291–297.
Hoy, David, and Thomas McCarthy. 1994. Critical Theory. London: Blackwell.
Oksala, Johanna. 2005. Foucault on Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Saar, Martin. 2007. Genealogie als Kritik: Geschichte und Theorie des Subjekts nach
Nietzsche und Foucault. Frankfurt: Campus.
22
FEMINISM
AMY R. BAEHR
F
eminist theory is critical theory. It seeks to liberate women from
the conditions that deprive, oppress, and disadvantage them. It
does this by explaining and criticizing those conditions and by
suggesting emancipatory alternatives. Recently, feminist theorists have sought
resources for feminist theory in the work of Jürgen Habermas. Some note
Habermas’s personal commitment to justice for women (Fraser 1989, 7; Flem-
ing 1997, 7; Johnson 2006, 156). But many point to insufficient attention to gen-
der in his work overall and find it lacking well-developed theories of gender
oppression and gender justice. It is debated whether his discourse theory of
democracy, morality, and law nonetheless may be used to illuminate the con-
ditions that deprive, oppress, and disadvantage women and to guide reflection
concerning emancipatory alternatives. The feminist literature on this subject
is extensive. Given space constraints, this entry mentions only major issues
and several important texts.
Feminist responses to The Theory of Communicative Action focus on its
failure to illuminate the gender-oppressive character of the lifeworld. While
Communicative Action emphasizes the socially integrated character of the
family, it pays scant attention to the fact that the family in late capitalism is
integrated by norms prescribing oppressive gender roles, roles that extend to
the public realm, the economy, and the state. And while Communicative
Action emphasizes the threat of system colonization of family life, it fails to
explore the extent to which families are commonly sites of a gendered economic
exchange “of services, labor, cash and sex—and frequently sites of [gendered
exploitation,] coercion and violence” (Fraser 1989, 120; see Allen 2008, 99; Ben-
habib 1986, 252; Cohen 1995, 71).
Some feminists attribute this failure to highlight the gender-oppressive
character of the lifeworld to the understanding of power in Communicative
Action, arguing that “Habermas lacks any theory of power operative within
the modern lifeworld other than that of system intrusions” (“Modernity,”
240). Some argue that gender should be understood as a distinct form of power
at work in the lifeworld, one with profound influence on the systems (Allen
2008; Cohen 1995, 70; Fraser 1989, 121). Once gender is recognized as a form of
power, system colonization remains a concern: it can reinforce oppressive
184 Contexts
gender norms (Fraser 1989, 133) and rob civil society of resources necessary for
their dismantling (Cohen 1995, 72). Nonetheless, juridification of family life
can have emancipatory effects—consider the protection of women’s rights in
the family and material support from the welfare state (Fleming 1997, 86).
Thus from a feminist point of view, decolonization is far from a fully adequate
response to gender oppression (Fraser 1989, 134–135). What is needed is a more
comprehensive account of power, a subtler account of juridification, and an
account of how gender-oppressive lifeworld norms are to be undermined.
Acknowledging inadequate attention to gender in The Theory of Communi-
cative Action, some feminists emphasize Habermas’s claim that modernity
promises progressive democratization of the lifeworld (Benhabib 1992, 81;
Cohen 1995, 58; Johnson 2006, 155). Insofar as the women’s movement is a form
of democratic practice—expanding access to discursive resources, publicly
thematizing and contesting oppressive lifeworld norms, and creating new,
nonpatriarchal norms, as well as the associations necessary to bring such
norms to bear on the systems—the women’s movement may be understood as
the “culmination of the logic of modernity” (Benhabib 1989, 110).
To be sure, The Theory of Communicative Action describes the women’s
movement as, to a significant degree, a failure of modernization, a defensive
reaction against colonization intent on preserving particular identities,
norms, and alternative values (Allen 2008, 158; Benhabib 1986, 252; Cohen
1995, 60–64). Some argue that this appraisal of the women’s movement is con-
sistent with Habermas’s early understanding of public deliberation in The
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. While the women’s movement
seeks to thematize publicly social inequalities and their effect on public delib-
eration, public deliberation in Structural Transformation requires the bracket-
ing of social inequalities. While the women’s movement seeks to thematize
publicly women’s particular needs and interests, public deliberation in Struc-
tural Transformation must focus on generalizable interests. While the wom-
en’s movement seeks to thematize publicly issues conventionally understood
as private—the domestic division of labor, sexual violence, gender identity—
Structural Transformation reiterates a traditional public-private distinction.
While the women’s movement develops its own diverse counterpublics, the
public sphere in Structural Transformation is homogeneous and singular. And
while the women’s movement seeks to bring women’s identities, bodies, and
rhetorical styles into public, Structural Transformation uncritically accepts the
model of the Western public sphere and its male political subjectivity (Fraser
1997, 69–98; Dean 1996; Landes 1995, 98; Young 1990, 96–121).
Indeed, some feminist historians argue, far from hastening the dissolution
of gender, modernity introduced the very understanding of gender difference
as hierarchy with which we now contend (“Modernity,” 242; see also Klinger
2000). According to that understanding, men are suited for participation in a
Feminism 185
public realm in which citizens’ freedom and equality may be redeemed, while
women are the natural inhabitants of a private realm of dependency, intimacy,
and family (Maihofer 1990, 354). Thus women cannot be included in the public
realm as women, but only to the extent that they conform to a standard of
male political subjectivity. The alternative, to petition for inclusion as women,
risks reifying a subordinating understanding of gender difference. To avoid
this “dilemma of difference” (Minow 1990), some feminists suggest that what
is needed is a fundamentally different understanding of citizenship and
democracy (Landes 1996, 307). If this understanding is to avoid the dilemma
of difference, it must allow for nonhierarchical gender difference (Maihofer
1990, 352).
Some find inspiration for such a reconceptualization of citizenship in
Habermas’s discourse ethics (Benhabib 1992, 9; Fraser 1989, 182; 1997, 79;
Young 1990, 34). Practical discourses include all those potentially affected by a
norm and “open one’s eyes to the ‘difference,’ that is, the peculiarity and the
inalienable otherness of a second person” (Habermas 1990, 112). Some argue
that practical discourse makes possible the thematization of difference, social
inequality, and power necessary for undermining masculine standards.
Indeed, some argue, a public/private distinction does not precede but is deter-
mined within discourse (Benhabib 1992, 110–111).
But some reject Habermas’s claim that the aim of discourse should be con-
sensus about the common good, because, they argue, such an aim obscures
the salience of differences. Instead, the aim should be the thematization of
difference itself and a keeping of the conversation going (Benhabib 1992, 38). A
public sphere focused on the thematization of difference is best understood
as “heterogeneous” (Young 1990, 116ff.) and plural—including multiple and
“counter-publics” (Fraser 1997, 80ff.). Some argue that public deliberation must
not privilege rational argumentation but welcome other styles of discourse—
used by the women’s movement—for example, storytelling, rhetoric, and expres-
sive and “embodied aspects of speech” (Young 1990, 118; see also Lara 1998; cf.
Benhabib 1996, 83; and Johnson 2006, 160–162).
Some hold that even such reconceptualized public deliberation will not be
purged of power (Dean 1996). If the power of gender is present at the start—
because gendering precedes discourse—then we should not expect public
discourse to be gender’s antidote (Allen 2000, 56). A truly emancipatory fem-
inist politics will include a politics of the self, afforded by a comprehensive
account of power that illuminates how gender is acquired and functions
(Allen 2008, 19).
Habermas dedicates significant attention to the dilemma of difference in
Between Facts and Norms (425). He identifies it as a failure of democracy and
recognizes the women’s movement’s work toward a solution as “a practical
appropriation of the critical normativity dormant in liberal democratic”
186 Contexts
References
Butler, Judith. 1994. “Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of ‘Postmod-
ernism.’ ” In Feminist Contentions, ed. Seyla Benhabib et al., 35–57. New York: Rout-
ledge.
Cohen, Jean L. 1995. “Critical Social Theory and Feminist Critiques: The Debate with Jür-
gen Habermas.” In Feminists Read Habermas: Gendering the Subject of Discourse, ed.
Johanna Meehan, 57–90. New York: Routledge.
Dean, Jodi. 1996. “Civil Society: Beyond the Public Sphere.” In The Handbook of Critical
Theory, ed. David Rasmussen, 220–242. Oxford: Blackwell.
Fleming, Marie. 1997. Emancipation and Illusion: Rationality and Gender in Habermas’s
Theory of Modernity. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Fraser, Nancy. 1989. Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary
Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
——. 1997. Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition. New
York: Routledge.
Habermas, Jürgen, and Torben Hviid Nielsen. 1990. “Jürgen Habermas, Morality, Society,
and Ethics.” Acta Sociologica 33, no. 2: 93–114.
Johnson, Pauline. 2006. Habermas: Rescuing the Public Sphere. New York: Routledge.
Klinger, Claudia. 1998. “Feministische Philosophie als Dekonstruktion und Kritische The-
orie.” In Kurskorrekturen: Feminismus zwischen Kritischer Theorie und Postmoderne,
ed. Gudrun Alexi Knapp, 242–256. Frankfurt: Campus.
——. 2000. “Die Ordnung der Geschlechter und die Ambivalenz der Moderne.” In Das
Geschlecht der Zukunft: Zwischen Frauenemanzipation und Geschlechtervielfalt, ed.
Sybille Becker et al., 29–63. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
Landes, Joan. 1995. “The Public and the Private Sphere: A Feminist Reconstruction.” In
Feminists Read Habermas: Gendering the Subject of Discourse, ed. Johanna Meehan,
91–117. New York: Routledge.
Lara, Maria Pía. 1998. Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Maihofer, Andrea. 1990. “Gleichheit nur für Gleiche?” In Differenz und Gleichheit: Men-
schenrechte haben (k)ein Geschlecht, ed. Ute Gerhard et al., 338–350. Frankfurt: Ulrike
Helmer.
Minow, Martha. Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion, and American Law.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990.
Pauer-Studer, Herlinde. 1993. “Moraltheorie und Geschlechterdifferenz.” In Jenseits der
Geschlechtermoral, ed. Herta Nagl-Docekal and Herlinde Pauer-Studer, 33–68. Frank-
furt: Fischer Taschenbuch.
Young, Iris. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press.
23
NEOPRAGMATISM
RICHARD J. BERNSTEIN
F
or over forty years Habermas has taken inspiration from and been
deeply influenced by the classical American pragmatists, espe-
cially Charles S. Peirce, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead.
He has appropriated, reconstructed, and integrated many of the primary
themes of these thinkers into his own comprehensive philosophic perspective:
a radical critique of Cartesianism and the philosophy of consciousness; a focus
on the primacy of social practices and action in understanding everyday life
(the lifeworld); a thoroughgoing fallibilism that encompasses both knowledge
of the world and moral reasoning; a development of an intersubjective dialogi-
cal understanding of action and rationality; and a commitment to radical
democracy based on participation, equality, and the reciprocal give-and-take
of citizens. He also shares with the classical pragmatists a naturalistic orienta-
tion. Human beings are endowed with a biological endowment and a cultural
way of life that have a natural origin that can, in principle, be explained by
evolutionary theory. This is a naturalism that takes account of evolutionary
development and holds that human learning processes are continuous with
prior evolutionary learning processes. Habermas calls this “weak naturalism,”
but it might more aptly be called “robust naturalism” because it is opposed to
the varieties of reductive naturalism. In the past few decades he has engaged in
vigorous exchanges with Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and Robert Bran-
dom, who identify themselves as working in a pragmatic tradition. Habermas
now characterizes himself as a “Kantian pragmatist.” In his debates and
exchanges with Rorty, Putnam, and Brandom, he has revised and refined his
own distinctive “Kantian pragmatism.”
The pragmatic movement, from its earliest days, has always been involved
in conflict and disagreement. The disagreements among contemporary prag-
matists are no less sharp and consequential than those of the classical American
pragmatists. Peirce began his philosophic career by seeking—in Habermas’s
expression—to “detranscendentalize” Kant (Peirce appropriated the term
“pragmatic” from Kant). According to Rorty, however, pragmatism begins
with James and Dewey, who repudiate Kant and the Kantian elements in
Peirce’s philosophy. Yet for Rorty’s fellow pragmatist Hilary Putnam, Kant
is the great hero. Putnam argues that pragmatism’s contribution to our
Neopragmatism 189
Richard Rorty
This has happened many times in the past, and there is no reason to believe
that it will not happen in the future.
Despite Habermas’s sharp criticism of Rorty, his lively encounter with
Rorty has provided him with the occasion for rethinking and revising his own
pragmatic theory of truth. He now concedes that an epistemic discursive-
theoretical theory of truth is not sufficient to account for “unconditional
truth.” One cannot characterize the meaning of truth from an exclusively epis-
temic perspective where we specify the formal-pragmatic ideal conditions for
justifying claims about what is true. Even if we could get over the difficulties
of specifying what precisely we mean by “ideal conditions,” a justification
even under “ideal conditions” may still turn out to be false. And for Habermas
“truth” is something that a proposition “cannot lose.” Truth, unlike justifica-
tion, is unconditional. The question that Habermas seeks to answer is: “How
can we reconcile the assumption that there is a world existing independently
of our descriptions of it and that is the same for all observers with the linguis-
tic insight that we have no direct, linguistically unmediated access to ‘brute’
reality?” (Truth, 2). Habermas develops a pragmatic theory of truth that shows
how truth is a “justification-transcendent concept.” Truth refers to conditions
that must be met by reality itself. Habermas’s revised theory of truth repre-
sents a return to the classical pragmatist context of everyday lifeworld actions
and practices.
Pragmatism makes us aware that in everyday practices, we cannot suspend
claims to truth in principle. Everyday routines and communications work on
the basis of behavioral certainties that we take for granted. But when our
behavioral expectations are frustrated or when we encounter resistances, then
our practical certainties become problematic. We no longer “naïvely” accept
what we have taken for granted. There is a transition from action to discourse.
In this transition what was initially taken as practically certain now becomes
problematic; we have to evaluate its truth by the appeal to reasons—by argu-
mentation. Truth can neither be explained solely by reference to the practical
certainties of everyday actions nor solely by reference to the argumentative
procedures of discourse. Habermas’s pragmatic conception of truth is “Janus-
faced”: one face is turned to the lifeworld of action, where we rely on “practical
certainties,” and the other face is turned toward discourse, where argumenta-
tion prevails. Habermas claims that this revised pragmatic theory of truth
does justice to our “realist intuitions.” It enables us to make sense of the for-
mal-pragmatic presupposition that there is an objective world independent of
us but about which we can make true claims. The nonepistemic concept of
truth that is implicit in the lifeworld of action provides a justification-tran-
scendent point of reference for discursively thematized truth claims. The goal
of these justifications is to discover a truth that exceeds all justifications.
When our naïvely accepted convictions about truth become problematized,
Neopragmatism 191
Hilary Putnam
morality. The recognition of the worthiness of a moral norm can only be justi-
fied by all those affected in their role as participants in a practical moral dis-
course. So unlike theoretical judgments that are justified by an appeal to an
objective world independent of us, practical moral judgments can be justified
only by their acceptance of participants in a practical discourse. In short,
Habermas wants to combine epistemological realism with moral constructiv-
ism. He rejects moral realism.
Putnam challenges this entire set of distinctions, which are so vital for
Habermas. Putnam doesn’t think there is a sharp distinction between moral-
ity and ethics; he argues for the entanglement of value and fact in all domains;
he thinks that we can speak of moral truths and objectivity in the same way in
which we speak about truth and objectivity in scientific inquiry. Consequently,
he rejects a sharp distinction between theoretical and practical reason. So
where Habermas (in the spirit of Kant) draws a set of sharp distinctions, Put-
nam (in the spirit of Dewey) argues that there are differences of degree. Haber-
mas argues that Putnam would be a more consistent Kantian pragmatist if he
fully appreciated Kant’s deontological insights about morality and recognized
that there is a danger in “ontologizing” our moral knowledge. Habermas con-
cedes that there is a role for speaking about “truth” and “objectivity” in regard
to moral discourse but that we must realize that “truth” and “objectivity” play
very different roles in theoretical discourse and practical moral discourse. We
must resist the temptation to “ontologize” moral knowledge. Habermas claims
that there is a deep tension in Putnam’s version of pragmatism and his “blur-
ring” of the distinction between norms and values—a tension that results
from the way in which Putnam wants to integrate epistemological realism
with an Aristotelian-Deweyan conception of ethics and eudaimonia—human
flourishing. Putnam would be a more consistent Kantian pragmatist if he
relied more on another pragmatist, George Herbert Mead, rather than on
Aristotle and Dewey. Mead developed a pragmatic Kantian constructivist
account of the moral point of view by showing how an inclusive We-perspec-
tive can be approximated by mutual perspective taking.
To appreciate why Habermas opposes the varieties of moral realism and
strongly advocates a form of moral constructivism, we need to appeal to a
deeper and broader perspective. Habermas has always identified with the
project of modernity that was initiated by Kant. With Kant we come to realize
that there is no higher moral authority than our own practical reason. A
proper account of the role of practical reason enables us to justify the universal
and binding character of moral norms. The communicative turn in philoso-
phy underscores that practical moral reason is dialogical, not monological—
that moral norms can be justified only by participants in a practical discourse.
The justification of moral norms sets a task (Aufgabe) of what is to be done in
order to approximate a society in which these norms are concretely realized. A
Neopragmatism 193
Robert Brandom
We can now more fully appreciate what is distinctive about Habermas’s Kan-
tian pragmatism. Like Rorty, Putnam, and Brandom, Habermas asserts that
pragmatism has been transformed by the linguistic turn. The linguistic turn
enables us to escape from aporias of “mentalism” that dominated much of phi-
losophy from the time of Descartes through the end of the nineteenth century.
In this respect, the linguistic turn initiated a progressive paradigm shift. But
the linguistic turn brings its own set of problems. If we concede that our
knowledge of the world is always mediated by language and that we never have
direct cognitive contact with a “brute” reality, then how are we to avoid a form
of linguistic idealism or a contextualism that fails to do justice to our realistic
intuitions—to our sense that there is a world independent of us and about
which we can make true claims? Furthermore, how can we escape from the
snares of a linguistic relativism that fails to do justice to the recognition that
there are binding universal moral norms that transcend any local context?
Habermas argues that the way to answer these difficult questions is by articu-
lating and defending Kantian pragmatism. Habermas’s Kantianism is far
removed from the “historical” Kant, but he appropriates what he takes to be
the core insight of Kant’s transcendental project—to reconstruct the formal-
pragmatic conditions for speech and action. He rejects Kant’s transcendental
idealism in favor of a pragmatism that does full justice to our realist intuitions
in a postmetaphysical manner. In developing a pragmatic theory of truth he
turns to what was the starting point for the classical American pragmatists—
the everyday world of action with its practical certainties. Truth is a Janus-
faced concept that relates action to discourse. Habermas also argues that we
Neopragmatism 195
can preserve the Kantian insight about binding universal moral norms and
integrate this with a communicative theory that demands that such norms
can be justified only through the discursive practices of all those participants
affected by these norms. He combines pragmatic epistemological realism with
moral constructivism. He follows out the Kantian theme of preserving the
distinction between theoretical and practical reason (and philosophy). And he
resists the attempts by Rorty, Putnam, and Brandom to blur or level the dis-
tinction between theoretical and practical reason—whether it is done in the
name of contextualism (Rorty), moral realism (Putnam), or conceptual real-
ism (Brandom).
Standing back and looking at the development of Habermas’s thinking over
the past fifty years, one can view it as elaborating an increasingly sophisti-
cated critical Kantian pragmatic orientation—one that incorporates many of
the best insights of the classical American pragmatic thinkers and their suc-
cessors. In the best pragmatic spirit Habermas has both learned from and
criticized these thinkers in working out his own distinctive pragmatic
orientation.
References
E
ngagement with Jewish philosophy and exchanges with Jewish
philosophers have played an important role in Habermas’s
thought from his earliest writings. As early as 1961, Habermas
published the essay “Der deutsche Idealismus der jüdischen Philosophie” (The
German idealism of Jewish philosophy); two studies on Hannah Arendt fol-
lowed, joined by essays on Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem. The exis-
tential motivation for these writings, one may surmise, was the responsibility
that Habermas assumed for the war crimes Germany had perpetrated in his
youth. In philosophical terms, Habermas’s interest in Jewish intellectual tradi-
tions came from his study of German idealism; a further essay based on his
dissertation—“Dialektischer Materialismus im Übergang zum Materialismus—
Geschichtsphilosophische Folgerungen aus Schellings Idee einer Contraction
Gottes” (Dialectical materialism’s transition to materialism—consequences of
Schelling’s idea of the contraction of God for the philosophy of history) (1963)—
explored late-medieval Jewish mysticism.
Early in his career, Habermas became convinced that encounters between
Jewish philosophy and German idealism had brought forth “the ferment of . . .
critical utopia” (Profiles, 42) evident in modern thought. Such ferment finds
expression (among other places) in the last aphorism of Theodor Adorno’s
Minima Moralia: “The only philosophy which can be responsibly practiced in
face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present
themselves from the standpoint of redemption” (2006, 247). Jewish philosophy
has played a role for Habermas’s project in other ways, too. Thus, in The Philo-
sophical Discourse of Modernity (1985), Habermas discusses Jacques Derrida as
the most radical exponent of “postmodern” thinking—a Heideggerian who had
tempered the “philosophy of origins” with Jewish ethics (Discourse, 161–184);
precisely this combination of different intellectual traditions had long interested
Habermas for his own projects—and continues to do so, today.
At the end of his life, Walter Benjamin—whom Hannah Arendt called “the
most peculiar Marxist ever produced by this movement, which God knows
has had its full share of oddities” (1970, 163)—wrote his “Theses on the Philos-
ophy of History.” This brief text incorporates theological intuitions, Marxist
insights, and acute awareness of modernity’s apocalyptic demise into a nega-
tivistic philosophy of history: the sole “way out” that remains for humanity, in
Benjamin’s estimation, is offered by the possibility—however remote—of a
messianic revolution on the part of the oppressed and for the sake of their
dead.
Thereby, Benjamin expands the moral universe as it currently exists by
deemphasizing the moment and extolling the completeness of the past and the
future, to which the present stands opposed. His doctrine of historical injus-
tice and “anamnetic solidarity” (Peukert 1980) holds historiographical conse-
quences. “Empathy for the victor,” Benjamin observes, “invariably benefits the
rulers” (1969, 256). For all that, his view of history—which is often misunder-
stood by readers—does not hold that circumstances will improve (or that they
may be improved) progressively. Instead, Benjamin offers his reflections to
counter a perspective that considers time to represent, as it were, an “empty
form” of events. Benjamin opposes such schematism with an existential the-
ory of temporalization (Zeitigung) and moments of fulfillment—a conception
of “living time” that spans the generations as a continuum.
Benjamin presents his true concern—a matter his pedagogical writings and
works on the philosophy of history simply detail, so to speak—in his 1922 essay
on Goethe’s Elective Affinities. This text ends with the following words: “only
for the hopeless ones have we been given hope” (1996, 356). In “Theses on the
Philosophy of History,” the turn toward futurity—which, as a time of fulfill-
ment, undoes all pessimism about worldly affairs—culminates in the doctrine
of the messianic “now” (Jetztzeit). “This does not imply . . . that for the Jews
200 Contexts
the future [turns] into homogeneous, empty time. For every second of time
[is] the . . . gate through which the Messiah might enter” (1969, 261).
All the same, Habermas—who shares Scholem’s view—has criticized Ben-
jamin for the fact that he “could not bring himself to make the messianic the-
ory of experience serviceable for historical materialism” (Profiles, 150).
In his early studies on Kierkegaard and in his collaboration with Paul Tillich,
Adorno addressed theological matters, which were also familiar to him
through Walter Benjamin and his writings. However, he did not take them up
explicitly before 1935. Adorno articulated his position in a letter to Max Hork-
heimer (which he wrote in response to the latter’s objection to Henri Bergson,
whose philosophy failed to discuss death in a satisfactory fashion):
itself and intervene in the temporal world against the ruses of fallen/fettered
nature (human and otherwise). The guarantee for such remembrance is the
prohibition of idolatry, which preserves the notion of redemption by forbid-
ding that salvation itself be depicted (or even imagined).
Only when the austerity of iconoclastic doctrine prevents the thought
of salvation from being betrayed to the present or to the future (which is
commonly—and erroneously—conceived as a prolongation of the present)
does the possibility of redemptive remembrance for the victims of history
exist. Only then does the notion of “redeeming those without hope” possess
meaning. Accordingly, Dialectic of Enlightenment describes the ban on graven
images as “the prohibition on invoking falsity as God, the finite as the infinite,
the lie as truth. The pledge of salvation lies in the rejection of any faith which
claims to depict it, knowledge in the denunciation of illusion. . . . The right of
the image is rescued in the faithful observance of its prohibition” (Adorno and
Horkheimer 2007, 17–18).
The final aphorism of Minima Moralia (already quoted in part, above)
surely offers Adorno’s most complete formulation of messianism. Adorno
(2006) makes his pronouncement in terms of an upswing (konjunktivistisch),
as it were:
These lines are penetrated by the certainty that the very ability to distinguish
between good and evil depends on the capacity to picture another, better
world—even if one can never know whether it will become reality.
This power to envision something else and to identify its meaning points
to what Adorno calls “transcendence”; it leaves behind a glimmer (Schein),
which, ultimately, goes back to the will of human beings not to content
themselves with the dreariness of calamitous (unheilvoll) immanence.
Here, the bodily capacity for suffering and the ability to recall experiences
of injustice occupy a terrain that, traditionally, was administered by theol-
ogy. By invoking corporeal pain, Adorno (2007) offers a synthesis of sensu-
alist materialism taken to its logical end and the insight that arises from
commemoration:
Jewish Philosophy 203
Grayness could not fill us with despair if our minds did not harbor the con-
cept of different colors, scattered traces of which are not absent from the nega-
tive whole. The traces always come from the past, and our hopes from their
counterpart, from that which was or is doomed; such an interpretation may
very well fit the last line of Benjamin’s text on Elective Affinities: “For the sake
of the hopeless only are we given hope.”
(377–378)
Arendt’s distinction between labor, work, and action plays a central role in
Habermas’s critique of orthodox Marxism (elaborated in Knowledge and
Human Interests, in particular). At first, it does not seem that she is important
to Habermas as a Jewish thinker, specifically. Arendt did not understand her-
self in these terms in any conventional way; Habermas, for his part, mentions
how Judaism factors into Arendt’s political critique of power and totalitarian-
ism only in passing (Profiles, 171ff.).
All the same, Arendt always took an interest in Jewish traditions and often
found them in surprising places (Arendt 1976a). Over the course of her profes-
sional life, she reflected on the fate of the Jewish people while also pursuing her
systematic, philosophical studies. In political terms, it was clear to Arendt that
she could only ever speak in the name of the Jews (Pilling 1996, 91–92). Three of
her main works—a study on Rahel Varnhagen addressing assimilation from a
critical perspective (1981 [1933]), The Origins of Totalitarianism (1986 [1951]), and
the highly controversial series of articles that appeared as Eichmann in Jerusa-
lem (1981 [1964])—address Judaism and Jewishness; on this basis, Arendt devel-
oped an existential political philosophy for twentieth-century humanity.
The fact that Arendt approached the problems confronting Jewish life with
theoretical tools shaped more by classical antiquity and German existential
philosophy than by the traditions of Judaism is less a matter of historical irony
than of the paradoxical situation in which all Jews have found themselves
since emancipation, inasmuch as they feel obligated to bring Judaism into step
with the times (auf die Höhe ihrer Zeit). While she offers critical remarks on
Jewish assimilationism’s chauvinism as well as on educated Jewry’s flight to
humanism, she also observes, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, that Zionism
never denied the objective reality of “the Jewish question”; indeed, “the fact
that certain . . . phenomena did not come out as sharply in German and Aus-
trian Jews, may be partly due to the strong hold of the Zionist movement on
Jewish intellectuals in these countries” (1973, 79n).
204 Contexts
At the same time, Arendt subjects the Zionist project of state building (after
1941, at the latest), which she considers to represent a pact with imperialism, to
harsh critique (1976b, 127–128). It follows from her analyses that both aspects
of Jewish assimilation—the role of exemplary victimhood under totalitarian-
ism, on the one hand, and the hubristic sense of election that occurs in
Zionism—ultimately express a defining contradiction of her people; this
unsolved riddle motivated Arendt’s work across her entire life.
References
——. 1992. “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority.’ ” In Deconstruction and
the Possibility of Justice, ed. Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld and David Carlson.
London: Routledge.
——. 2007. “Abraham, the Other.” In Judeities: Questions of Jacques Derrida, ed. Joseph
Cohen and Raphael Zagury-Orly, trans. Bettina Bergo and Michal B. Smith, 1–35. New
York: Fordham University Press.
Derrida, Jacques, and Geoffrey Bennington. 1999. Jacques Derrida. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Gumnior, Helmut, and Rudolf Ringguth. 1973. Max Horkheimer. Reinbek: Rowohlt.
Habermas, Jürgen. 2007. “How to Answer the Ethical Question.” In Judeities: Questions of
Jacques Derrida, ed. Joseph Cohen and Raphael Zagury-Orly, trans. Bettina Bergo and
Michal B. Smith, 142–154. New York: Fordham University Press.
Peukert, Helmut. 1980. Wissenschaftstheorie, Handlungstheorie, Theologie. Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp.
Pilling, Iris. 1996. Denken und Handeln als Jüdin: Hannah Arendts politische Theorie vor
1950. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Rosenzweig, Franz. 1964. Die Schrift: Aufsätze, Übertragungen und Briefe. Frankfurt:
Europäische Verlagsanstalt.
——. 2005. The Star of Redemption. Trans. Barbara E. Galli. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press.
Scholem, Gershom. 1970. “Schöpfung aus Nichts und Selbstverschränkung Gottes.” In
Über einige Grundbegriffe des Judentums, 53–89. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1995. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schocken.
25
MONOTHEISM
FELMON DAVIS
Habermas’s engagement with religion and monotheism has been long and
deep, extending from his doctoral work on Schelling to occasional work on
the religious motifs in Benjamin, Horkheimer, Scholem, and others, work he
has undertaken with great sensitivity. In his masterful synthesis The Theory of
Communicative Action (1981), he considered religion mostly in its function as
promoting “solidarity,” leaving open the possibility that the “domain of the
sacred” might be replaced by a secular morality and culture (2:92).
But from the publication of his 1988 collection of papers Postmetaphysical
Thinking to his recent work, the 2005 volume Between Naturalism and Reli-
gion, he has become emphatic that religious language may well express some-
thing that—at least for now—resists “the explanatory force of philosophical
language” (Postmetaphysical, 51). Consequently, as far as this remains the case,
he calls for a “postsecular society” in which religious citizens reconcile their
“truth” with the pluralism of beliefs in modern society; the secular, mean-
while, are to learn from the insights of religious experience. Thus religious
and secular engage in a cooperative process of truth finding.
Habermas (2008) has recently made clear that by “secularization” he does
not mean the replacement of religion but rather its displacement from its posi-
tions of political and legal power, with the consequent privatization of reli-
gious practice. Still, he acknowledges that unexpectedly (Langthaler and
Nagl-Docekal 2007, 393), in spite of the ongoing world-historical process of
secularization, religion does not seem to be disappearing. Quite the contrary:
religious practice is growing even in Europe and is also assuming new forms.
Habermas refuses to reject this persistence or resurgence of religious belief
as simply an irrational phenomenon; instead, he urges that religious belief says
something that must be taken seriously. Religious belief, specifically certain
forms of monotheism and particularly of Christianity, is possibly an expres-
sion of reason; thus he lays emphasis on the “cognitive content”—the truth
content—of religious belief.
In addition, normative reason is in crisis; it is threatened by a torrential
rationalism that Habermas calls the “derailment of modernity” (Entgleisung
208 Contexts
der Moderne), which threatens the very economy of normative reason (Lang-
thaler and Nagl-Docekal 2007, 371) and against which he looks to religious belief
and experience to counteract the “entropy of the scarce resource of meaning”
(Future, 114). The roots of normative reason in the lifeworld are threatened by
the increasing predominance of the ideology of the global market and by new
developments in science, particularly in the fields of biogenetics, where increas-
ingly the “luck” of nature is shunted aside in favor of whimsical, consumer-
driven control of the genetic endowment of human beings; and in neuroscience,
where the questioning of the existence of free agency threatens the very idea of
political deliberation and choice.
Habermas turns to religious belief for a possible regeneration of the springs
of secular normative reason. Monotheism may contain “semantic potentials”
from which secular reason may learn and that can offer citizens, both believ-
ers and nonbelievers, worthy and compelling ideals of life and community
within the liberal-democratic state.
Habermas finds inspiration in Kant for his own dialectical project of a demar-
cation (Grenzziehung) between religious belief and knowledge combined with
a rational appropriation (Aneignung) of religious content; he finds in Kant the
“incomparable model for any attempt at rational appropriation of religious
content” (Langthaler and Nagl-Docekal 2007, 378); important relevant works
are the Critique of the Power of Judgment (Kant 2001) and Religion Within the
Boundaries of Mere Reason (Kant 1998), among others. In particular:
(a) Kant clearly separates what we can know from what is a matter for faith,
and in the moral domain, Kant insists that the content of moral law is wholly
independent of any assumptions about God or religious “revelation” (“The
Boundary Between Faith and Knowledge: On the Reception and Contempo-
rary Relevance of Kant’s Philosophy of Religion,” in Naturalism, 209–247).
Similarly, Habermas claims that the basic principles of morality rest on
unavoidable presuppositions of communicative reason that are not derived
from individually or culturally variable “ethical” notions of the “Good” or
from ideas about God.
(b) Although Kant left little room for dogmatic beliefs such as the Resurrec-
tion or the Incarnation (Naturalism, 230), he also attempted a kind of “transla-
tion” of some dogmas of positive religion into the discourse of reason. For
example, the doctrine of “Grace” can be understood as expressing an impera-
tive to moral engagement. Kant’s project of finding in religious belief a ratio-
nal core, “of conceiving the essentially practical contents of the Christian
Monotheism 209
tradition in such a way that these could perdure before the forum of reason”
(Habermas 1992, 227), anticipates Habermas’s own idea of a “saving transla-
tion” of the “cognitive content” of monotheism into secular language.
Postmetaphysical Thinking
Radical Naturalism
Habermas maintains that beliefs incompatible with natural science are not
acceptable but that, at the same time, natural science is not the only source
Monotheism 211
of valid knowledge. Accordingly, it does not make sense to reject religious beliefs
on the grounds that they do not fit a scientific Weltbild or models of scientific or
experimental reasoning. “Radical naturalism” (see “Religion in the Public
Sphere,” in Naturalism, 141) also poses a danger to secular normative reason.
When the human mind is understood only in the extensionalist terms of phys-
ics, neuroscience, and evolutionary theory, human existence is desocialized and
“depersonalized” (Future, 106). For instance, the neurosciences are sometimes
falsely believed to undermine the reality of “free will” (Naturalism, 147–148; see
Libet 2000, Singer 2004a, 2004b), which, if true, would also undermine the basis
for moral, legal, and other evaluative judgments.
Methodological Atheism
While philosophy should not simply reject religious revelation, it also cannot
adopt revelation and its “certainties” and consolations. Revelation is for philoso-
phy a “cognitively unacceptable imposition,” and the attempt to forge a “reli-
gious philosophy” is anathema (Naturalism, 242–243). What it can do is decipher
those contents of religion “which can be translated into a form of discourse
decoupled from the ratcheting effect of truths of revelation” (Naturalism, 245).
The proper stance of secular philosophy and reason is “methodological athe-
ism,” which does not commit to either theism or atheism as metaphysical posi-
tions but only as at best fallibilistic hypotheses for which evidence can be adduced
and that may in the course of things be rendered more or less plausible.
To some it is not clear why fallibilism implies the posture etsi deus non
daretur. Fallibilists are not required to work as if atoms did not exist, so why
must they work as if God did not exist? Philip Clayton (2005) argues the posi-
tion should instead be “methodological agnosticism,” accusing Habermas of
the a priori rejection of religious discourse “before the experts on science and
metaphysics have even arrived at the table”; after all, in the longer run theism
may turn out to be the more plausible view (21). Similarly, Maeve Cooke argues
that fallibilism, properly understood, must allow that the nonreligious person
could become rationally persuaded of the truth of religious beliefs (Langthaler
and Nagl-Docekal 2007, 359); she argues that “postmetaphysical thinking” is
not necessarily antimetaphysical; rather it is necessarily antiauthoritarian,
antidogmatic.
Natural Theology
of rights and that his being bears within itself values and norms that must be
discovered—but not invented” (Habermas and Ratzinger 2006, 71). The rela-
tionship between Habermas and Ratzinger can be better described as detente
than accommodation.
Saving Translation
Habermas believes there is insight that has so far been best articulated in
monotheistic religious belief, and thus the philosophical task is to extract the
profane meaning of religious speech (see Time). This requires “translating” the
rational content of religious belief into the “sphere of discursive justification”
(Universum begründender Rede), into secular concepts and arguments ratio-
nally compelling to everyone, for in philosophy, as in politics, “only secular
reasons count.”
The controversy about “liberal eugenics” (Future, 16–74, 113–115) may serve
to illustrate the logic of this process of translation. When parents grow and
select embryos according to their fancy or self-serving ideals (as opposed to
interventions meant to address disease), the heretofore fundamental distinction
between what one may tamper with and what is “not at our disposal” (unver-
fügbar) is lost, and the autonomy of the child is seriously impaired, since
someone else has decided for it how it will be. Now, autonomy is basic to our
“species-ethical self-understanding,” but there is no argument that shows that we
logically must continue in this—just as there is no logically compelling answer to
the question “Why be moral?” But we are still responsive to the attitudes and
“archaic emotions”—for instance, revulsion at the idea of “chimeras”—that arise
from the present scheme of self-understanding, and Habermas thinks it is impor-
tant to find cogent ways to articulate and marshal them to resist what he fears is
becoming a thoughtless slide into consumer-driven genetic manipulation, which
implicitly undermines our capacity to see ourselves as authors of our own indi-
vidual life histories.
The resonance of the religious image of creator/creature may serve to “res-
cue” and articulate these attitudes, which are lost to instrumental rationalism.
In this image the freedom of the creature is preserved, for not only does God’s
love require the free reciprocation of the creature, but God’s status as cre-
ator highlights the necessary parity of one created person with another.
Analogously, one person’s whims may not determine a peer’s genetic fate.
The biblical image of our “God-likeness” can appeal even to the “religiously
unmusical.”
Habermas’s “translation program” has met with some unease among theo-
logians. For instance, Raberger bristles at the idea that religious language is on
hold until the “epistemically superior language of philosophy” catches up with
214 Contexts
References
Alston, William P. 1991. Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience. Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Assheuer, Thomas. 2004. “Auf dem Gipfel der Freundlichkeiten.” http://www.zeit.de/2004
/05/Ratzinger_2fHaberm.
Clayton, Philip. 2005. “The Contemporary Science-and-Religion Discussion.” In Scientific
Explanation and Religious Belief: Science and Religion in Philosophical and Public Dis-
course, ed. Michael Parker and Thomas Schmidt. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1992. “Transcendence from Within, Transcendence in This World.” In
Habermas, Modernity, and Public Theology, ed. Don S. Browning and Francis Schüssler
Fiorenza, 226–256. New York: Crossroad.
——. 2001. The Liberating Power of Symbols: Philosophical Essays. Trans. Peter Dews.
Cambridge: Polity.
——. 2008. “A ‘Postsecular’ Society—What Does That Mean?” http://www.resetdoc .org
/story/00000000926.
Habermas, Jürgen, and Joseph Ratzinger. 2006. The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason
and Religion. San Francisco: Ignatius.
Kant, Immanuel. 1998. Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Trans. Allen Wood.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
——. 2001. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Langthaler, Rudolf, and Herta Nagl-Docekal, eds. 2007. Glauben und Wissen: Ein Sympo-
sium mit Jürgen Habermas. Vienna: Oldenbourg.
Libet, Benjamin: 2000. “Do We Have Free Will?” In The Volitional Brain: Towards a Neuro-
science of Free Will, ed. Benjamin Libet, Anthony Freeman, and Keith Sutherland.
Exeter: Imprint Academic.
Plantinga, Alvin. 2000. Warranted Christian Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Polkinghorne, John. 1998. Belief in God in an Age of Science. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press.
Ratzinger, Joseph. 2005. “Christianity: The Religion According to Reason.” https://zenit
.org /articles/cardinal-ratzinger-on-europe-s-crisis-of-culture-part-4/.
Monotheism 215
Ratzinger, Joseph, and Ernesto Galli della Loggia. 2004. “Dialogo su storia, politica e reli-
gione.” https://it.zenit.org /articles/dialogo-su-storia-politica-e-religione/.
Singer, Wolf. 2004a. “Keiner kann anders sein, als er ist. Verschaltungen legen uns fest:
Wir sollten aufhören, von Freiheit zu reden.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (January
8, 2004).
——. 2004b. “Selbsterfahrung und neurobiologische Fremdbeschreibung.” Deutsche
Zeitschrift für Philosophie 52, no. 2: 235–256.
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 1975. “God Everlasting.” In God and the Good: Essays in Honor of
Henry Stob, ed. Clifton J. Orlebeke and Lewis B. Smedes. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerd-
mans.
PART III
TEXTS
26
SCHELLING, MARX, AND THE
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
Das Absolute und die Geschichte: Von der Zwiespältigkeit in
Schellings Denken (The Absolute and History: On the Ambiguity
in Schelling’s Thought, 1954)
MANFRED FRANK
W
hen, in the mid-1950s, new interest for Schelling’s philosophy
arose—especially its middle and late phases—Jürgen Haber-
mas stood at the forefront; he was the youngest (and the first)
scholar to base his interpretation on “contradictoriness” (Zwiespältigkeit). A
year later, Karl Jaspers followed his lead and published Grösse und Verhängnis
(Greatness and disaster); this book held that Schelling had anticipated the cen-
tral ambivalence of Heideggerian philosophy—more specifically, “the transi-
tion from greatness to [empty] gesture, from truth to absurdity, from clear
communication to magic” (Jaspers 1955, 7; cf. Profiles, 45–52). Around the same
time, Georg Lukács declared that the “course of irrationalism” leading to Hit-
ler had originated in the works of Schelling—a revolutionary in youth and a
reactionary in old age (Lukács 1954; for a discussion that incorporates Hei-
degger’s lectures on metaphysics from 1941, see Köhler 1999). In 1955, Walter
Schulz averred that Schelling’s late philosophy had not abandoned or over-
come German idealism but rather “completed” it. Like Habermas before him,
Schulz held that Schelling’s “existential turn” (existenzphilosophische Wende)
pointed to the writings of Kierkegaard, Marx, and Heidegger. (Also like
Habermas, Schulz examined the double nature of Schelling’s philosophy,
which, by turns, completes metaphysics, displays retrograde tendencies, and
anticipates, in an astonishing manner, postmetaphysical modernity—which
would not be thinkable in the same way without him.)
Habermas wrote his dissertation under Erich Rothacker and Oskar Becker
at Bonn, where it received the distinction of opus egregium. His study and
220 Texts
Lukács’s project differ most noticeably in the ways they attempt to resolve con-
tradictory elements within Schelling’s philosophy at its late stage. The criti-
cism and commentary Habermas provides are more “redemptive” (rettend)
(Benjamin) than “corrective” (bewusstmachend) (see Habermas 1972). Inas-
much as it dispenses with theological discourse, Habermas’s approach resem-
bles that of Ernst Bloch, who (unlike Adorno) detected the seeds of truth
within the false, affirmed the rights of Utopia over the Actual, and observed
that Schelling had demonstrated a “surplus of philosophy” compared to Hegel
(his friend in Tübingen and Jena). That said, when writing his dissertation,
Habermas could more readily have guessed Bloch’s thoughts on Schelling
than known them directly—with the exception of Subject-Object, from 1949
(quoted in the essay on Schelling: Habermas 1971a, 222–223, 227n137; Bloch
1962; 1972; 1985; 1972, 292ff.; 2000, 63ff.).
Habermas goes so far as to place Schelling—even when his philosophy
fails—above Hegel: the former’s “historical materialism” led deeper than the
latter’s “dialectical idealism” ever could. Habermas faults Hegel—his deep
sense of history notwithstanding—for never “having oriented himself on the
historical existence of mankind [der Mensch],” as Schelling had done (Abso-
lute, 7). For this reason, he declares—in a rather Heideggerian tone—“the
understanding of history is more substantive [wesentlicher] in Schelling than
in Hegel” (12). In this context, it is not surprising that Habermas would soon
refer to Bloch as the “Marxist Schelling”—and even identify with his project
to a certain extent (Profiles, 61–78).
Habermas never published his dissertation (which, at 425 pages, was
not small). “Dialektischer Idealismus im Übergang zum Materialismus—
Geschichtsphilosophische Folgerungen aus Schellings Idee einer Contraction
Gottes” (Dialectical idealism’s transition to materialism—consequences of
Schelling’s idea of the contraction of God for the philosophy of history”), in
Theory and Practice (1963), made elements of the dissertation public for the
first time. With this essay, Habermas abandoned the obscurity of academic
chambers for the light of day and drew bold perspectives for the Marxist phi-
losophy of history—which, he observed, could learn much from Schelling’s
The Ages of the World.
To be sure, this later essay—which incorporates matters discussed in the
third part of the dissertation—places an emphasis on Schelling’s first version
of The Ages of the World (1811). According to Schelling’s biographer Xavier
Tilliette (2004, 269), scholars have “blown [this text] out of proportion” (zu
sehr aufgebauscht). However, Das Absolute und die Geschichte does not focus
on this work alone; it also provides a comprehensive and learned interpreta-
tion of the development of Schelling’s philosophy as a whole.
Habermas’s dissertation has three sections. The first, “Freedom and Real-
ity,” is composed of two parts. It begins with early and later (1829–1850)
The Absolute and History 221
Habermas was the first scholar—and the only critical theorist—to explore
Schelling’s work in light of how Hegel’s oeuvre was received (i.e., critiqued).
This occurs in the first half of the first section, which concludes that Schelling’s
late work marks the beginning of the “revolutionary break” that Löwith diag-
nosed in the nineteenth century. Habermas shows no interest in Christologi-
cal connections or those involving—in the broadest sense—the “history of
ideas” (as is the case for Horst Fuhrmans, the great scholar of Schelling’s mid-
career and late work). Instead, Habermas is interested in the philosophy of
history in terms of politics. To this end, he sketches the reception and critique
of Hegel on the part of the Young Hegelians and late German idealists and
then the readings of Kierkegaard and Marx (which proved incomparably
influential). This overview is followed, in the second half of the first section, by
a discussion of the essential points of Schelling’s “late philosophy” itself—
which Habermas, like others, considers to have begun in 1827, when Schelling
was called to Munich.
Schelling originally presented what is now known as Introduction to Posi-
tive Philosophy under the title System der Weltalter (System of the ages of the
world). The work, which was first published by Ernst von Lasaulx in 1990,
provided the basis for lectures first in Munich and then, beginning in 1841,
in Berlin. In 1972, a revised and much more elaborate version from the aca-
demic year 1832–1833 was published by Horst Fuhrmans in a compilation of
posthumous lecture copies entitled Grundlegung der positiven Philosophie (The
grounding of positive philosophy). These important editions were not avail-
able to Habermas, who relied on excerpts published by Schelling’s son Karl
Friedrich August with Johann Friedrich Cotta in Stuttgart (1856–1861). Need-
less to say, despite the editor’s best intentions, the writings—which were
redacted to accommodate paternal interests—hardly meet modern standards
of philology or scholarship. (When not otherwise indicated, the following
quotes from the same edition that Habermas employs: Schelling [1856–1861].
Valuable originals, which cannot be replaced even by copies, were lost when
Munich was bombed in 1944. The best overview of Schelling’s lectures late in
life is found in Fuhrmans’s introduction [Schelling 1972].)
Schelling’s most dutiful pupil, Maximilian II—who ascended the throne in
Bavaria before the philosopher’s death—saw to it that a pious formula stood
on his tombstone in Bad Ragaz: “To the foremost thinker of Germany” (Dem
ersten Denker Deutschlands). Contemporaries in no way shared this view. The
general consensus was that Schelling “had outlived himself” (on the following,
see Frank in Schelling 1993, 11ff.). The Old Hegelians—who considered Berlin
to be firmly in their possession as a citadel of Spirit (Geist)—had reacted with
224 Texts
mockery in 1841, when Frederick William IV (who had just come to power)
summoned Schelling to the university there. The king hoped—and these are
the words of the monarch himself—that the philosopher would uproot “the
dragon-seed of Hegelian pantheism” and prevent “the legal dissolution of
domestic order” (see Max Lenz in Schelling 1993, 477ff.).
Frederick William’s decision prompted derision because Schelling was held
to have received a “princely burial” at Hegel’s hands thirty years earlier. Since
then, he had offered the educated world nothing of import. Schelling was
lying “as if in the grave of oblivion; all truly living philosophers had turned to
Hegel, who now ruled.” Pronouncements on the Hegelian Left were even stron-
ger. Already in 1827, Heine claimed to have seen Schelling, the erstwhile “lumi-
nary,” entangled in the snares of Munich Catholics grouped around Joseph
Görres, Ignaz von Döllinger, and Franz von Baader (on how this assessment is
mistaken, see Frank 1992, 361–395). “Like a poor little monk,” Schelling tot-
tered about, mumbling mystical stuff and cursing Hegel, “who had supplanted
him” (Heine 1997, 3, 633, 433–434).
Friedrich Engels attended Schelling’s colloquium on the “Philosophy of
Revelation” in 1841–1842. He countered what he heard with polemics, warning
Schelling not to dishonor Hegel’s legacy and exhorting the faithful to dedicate
themselves to the “Battle of Nations” (Völkerschlacht) being waged against the
rival philosopher (Marx and Engels 1956–1990, sup. vol. 1, 221). When the lec-
tures began, Engels had written in Telegraph für Deutschland: “If you ask any-
one here in Berlin who has even the slightest idea of the power of Spirit about
the battleground where dominion over German public opinion in matters of
politics and religion—that is, over Germany herself—is being fought, he will
tell you that it is the university, and more specifically: Auditorium 6, where
Schelling holds his lectures” (Schelling 1993, 535).
Karl Marx asked none other than Ludwig Feuerbach to compose a critical
“portrait” (Charakteristik) of Schelling. Alluding to the philosopher’s not-
very-influential appointment to the position of State Council (Staatsrat), Marx
called Schelling the “thirty-eighth member of the Federation” (38tes Bundes-
mitglied). In Marx’s view, the whole police apparatus of Germany—as well as
organs of censorship—“stand at [Schelling’s] disposal”; consequently, “an
attack on Schelling is indirectly an attack on the political order as a whole, and
especially the Prussian establishment” (Schelling 1993, 567–568).
Why did Marx appeal to Feuerbach, of all people? “You are,” he explained,
“the very man for this because you are the inverse of Schelling [der umgekehrte
Schelling]. The . . . upstanding thought of Schelling’s youth . . . which remained
a boyhood dream for him, has become truth and reality for you—a grave and
manly matter.” These words are ambiguous—as Feuerbach no doubt realized,
for he declined the invitation. Marx does not condemn Schelling outright.
Instead, he faults him for having betrayed the romantic philosophy of his
The Absolute and History 225
younger years, according to which Nature precedes Spirit. This notion, Marx
concedes, is “the merit of our enemy” (das Gute von unserm Gegner) (Schelling
1993, 568).
Among contemporaries, judgments were similarly divided. Despite mis-
givings about his anti-Hegelianism, Arnold Ruge—the head of the Hegelian
Left—considered Schelling “politically and religiously liberal [freisinnig]”
(Schelling 1993, 499–500) after meeting him in Karlsbad. Ruge negotiated for
the right to publish Schelling’s Munich lectures and flirted with the idea that
reality should not be declared reasonable in the Hegelian sense until this state
had been achieved through reasonable action. “Nothing world-changing lies
within logic,” Schelling had proclaimed (1856–1861, 1.10:153). Indeed, he had
affirmed that “there is nothing to be done” with the crowning principle of logic
and reason in Hegelian philosophy, the “Idea” or “Absolute Spirit” (2.1:565).
Against Hegel, Schelling claimed that the science of reason leads beyond its
own limits, which forces it to turn back; such a reversal, however, does not
proceed from thought in his estimation. Instead, force of a practical kind is
necessary: “there is nothing practical in thinking; concepts are merely con-
templative and concern only necessity; here, in contrast, it is a matter of what
lies beyond necessity: something willed and intended” (2.1:565; cf. Habermas
1971a, 212). “True dialectics occurs only in the realm of freedom; it alone has
the power to solve all riddles” (Schelling 1993, 168).
In Paris, the “romantic socialist” Pierre Leroux gave Schelling’s philosophy
a warm welcome. Leroux even translated the first part of the Berlin lectures
into French. In Schelling’s religious turn—where others saw the philosopher
renouncing the thought of his youth—he detected a deeper meaning, namely,
that a philosophical project that recognizes nothing above itself is forced,
sooner or later—as one can see in the case of Hegel—to make peace with the
world as it stands. Mikhail Bakunin, who studied under Schelling in Berlin,
awaited his lectures “with unimaginable impatience”: “In the course of the
summer, I have read much by him and found therein such an immeasurable
depth of life, of creative thought, that I am convinced he will still reveal, even
now, great profundities [viel Tiefsinniges]” (Schelling 1993, 539).
Bakunin, who would later embrace anarchism, was probably pleased by
Schelling’s merciless polemic against the state as a “scourge of God”—a “curse”
weighing upon mankind that needed to be “negated” (aufgehoben) (Schelling
1856–1861, 2.1:534ff.; on Bakunin and Schelling, cf. Frank 2007, text 12). He cer-
tainly applauded Schelling for overcoming Hegel’s purely conceptual philoso-
phy through “real and bloody contradictions” (Bakunin 1935, 68; Schelling
1993, 38, 79). Another auditor—Søren Kierkegaard—kept notes (Schelling 1993,
391–467) and paid due attention. Initially enthused by the way Schelling
cracked open the Hegelian armor of abstraction (“when he spoke the word
‘actuality,’ in relation to philosophy, the fruit of thought jumped for joy
226 Texts
determine action; it arises from it. The essence of man/mankind stems from
“the concrete act of self-positing [reales Selbstsetzen], a primal and funda-
mental willing [Ur- und Grundwollen] that makes itself into something and is
the ground of all ways of being [Wesenheit]” (50–51; translation slightly mod-
ified). No dialectical constraint governs this relationship, as must occur
according to the Hegelian formula: “freedom is insight into the necessary
course of the general” (Hegel 1968–1971, 7, 294, §145; 10, 303, §484; cf. Hegel
1952, 428, 436; Absolute, 310–311). Instead, the essence that determines action
ex anankes (as the traditional philosophical idiom puts it) is a matter of pro-
jection (Entwurf ).
For Schelling, freedom does not dissolve into boundless abstraction. On
the contrary, it is the hallmark of our finitude (Absolute, 313ff.). Nor does
Schelling admit a primordial, Platonic decision that sets the course for subse-
quent action. Rather, “we demand of man . . . that he overcome his character”
(Schelling, 1946, 93–94; Absolute, 315). Schelling arrives at this bold declaration
by displacing essence—what a thing or quality is, its quidditas—into a posi-
tion of absolute dependency; indeed, he holds that essence occupies a position
of permanent belatedness relative to its own existence (Dassheit, quodditas).
As Habermas remarks at various points (e.g., Absolute, 243), Sartre’s insight
that existence precedes essence (e.g., Sartre 1991, 385) was already central to
Schelling’s philosophy of the deed.
Schelling affirms that existence precedes essence with regard to self-
consciousness (1993, 110). Indeed, essence is “what exceeds Being” (das
Überseiende)—a positive determination that has persisted beyond raw Being
(das blinde Sein) and left behind only a past or an “outdated” (überholtes)
being. Projecting its essence, the subject stands outside itself and ek-sists, as
Schelling puts it in an etymological phrasing (167). The subject abandons
naked Being “as something that has been overcome and is now past” (169–170).
Through its freedom to act, the agent is “liberated from the inviolable neces-
sity [ananke] of Being” (164). “Mankind [der Mensch] must tear itself free from
its being in order to begin to be freely [um ein freies Sein anzufangen]. . . . To
liberate oneself from oneself is the task of all education [Bildung]. Those [die
Menschen] . . . who do not leave themselves behind remain powerless [unver-
mögend]” (170; on the “temporal constitution” of the Spirit, cf. Absolute, 319ff.).
The second part of the first section addresses “The Absolute and History in
Schelling’s Late Philosophy (1827–54).” Habermas takes on the theme of time—
a matter central to (the) critique(s) of metaphysics performed by Husserl, Hei-
degger, and Sartre. (Along with the “linguistic turn”—which occurred almost
228 Texts
This is the theme of the second part of Das Absolute und die Geschichte, which
addresses matters in chronological succession: Schelling’s Philosophy of
Nature (1774–1800) and his Philosophy of Identity (1801–1806). Once again,
230 Texts
In Philosophy and Religion (1804), the matter becomes urgent, and Schelling
introduces the notion of a “falling away” of the finite from the Absolute.
Schelling defines this act of separation or extraction of the finite from the
Whole (das All) in terms of sin. The most concise and penetrating formulation
occurs in his Wurzburg System:
The ground of finitude, in our view, involves the fact that things not-being-in-
God are not anything in particular; since by their nature [ihrem Wesen nach]
or in themselves, they are only in God, finitude can also be expressed as a
falling away—a defectio—from God or the Whole. The freedom of being lib-
erated from necessity—that is, the particularity of life separated from the
Whole—is nothing, and it can only intuit images of its own nothingness. To
apprehend what is immediately posited through the idea of the Whole as
nothing [das Nichts] as if it were the reality of the things [themselves]—[that
is, to overvalue] their nothingness [eine Nichtigkeit an ihnen]—this is sin. The
life of our senses is nothing but the perpetual expression of our not-being-in-
God, according to particularity. . . . The original evil, therefore, consists in
man [der Mensch] wanting to be something for himself.
(Schelling 1856–1861, 1.6:552, 561)
the name of Identity without relation. In so doing, however, he fails to see that
finitude has assumed a central position in Schelling’s thought in another way:
its principle has “come loose” (Entgleiten) inasmuch as the Absolute is now
transcendent. Dieter Henrich once suggested, in a lecture at Heidelberg, that
the three systematic articulations of German idealism (Hegel, Fichte, and
Schelling) be understood as variations on a core idea: that there is something
unconditional that must be thought in the I (es sei ein Unbedingtes im Ich zu
denken). Schelling, then, accented the formula as follows: What is uncondi-
tional in the I must be thought as such.
The quest for the unconditional ultimately makes Schelling suspicious of
the very idea of an “Identity System.” On the one hand, in a grand-scale vision
inspired by Spinoza, he forges Spirit and Nature into one (in a fashion that
mind-body theories today should still take into consideration). At the same
time, however, he fears that Nature—in the “night of Identity” (Schelling 1856–
1861, 1.2:403) that occurs when Spirit englobes it—might disappear as some-
thing endowed with an independent existence. Therefore, in Philosophy and
Religion (1804)—which marks a turning point in his thought (Absolute, 198ff.)—
the Absolute reduplicates itself through “another Absolute” (Schelling 1856–
1861, 1.4:31ff.); this second Absolute carries the germ of “falling away” within it
as soon as it tears out of the womb of absolute unity and ascends, in the idealism
of the absolute I, the summit of blindness (1.4:38ff.).
In The Essence of Human Freedom (1809), it is a dark “unground” or “primal
ground”— a “will” (which Schelling also called the “real activity” preceding
“ideal activity”)—that underlies consciousness. All consciousness, Schelling
avers, is based on this primal terrain—or else represents a secondary, derivative
phenomenon. At the core of this foundation, however, lies a germinal falling
away. In The Ages of the World, Schelling also speaks of “Being” (Sein) as the
foundation of “being” (Seiendes): once more, he holds that a withdrawal (“con-
traction”) of God—or, conversely—a tearing away of the I as it “pursues” its
fall—occasions catastrophe.
All the same, Schelling never managed, despite his many efforts, to find the
“reality principle” that is truly independent of the Ideal. As Feuerbach wrote
mean-spiritedly to Christian Kapp (February 18, 1842): “the scoundrel in Ber-
lin seeks, yet he cannot find it, for he has no heart in his body” (Feuerbach
1964, 13:132).
have seen, Habermas considers this to have been anticipated by the new con-
ception of freedom Schelling presented in The Essence of Human Freedom
(1809) and the Stuttgart Private Lectures (1810); additionally, one can find indi-
cations in Aphorisms on Natural Philosophy and in the new introduction to
the World Soul (both from 1806), where Habermas remarks on the decisive
influence of Böhme on Schelling’s thought (Absolute, §18). The new orienta-
tion, Habermas writes, makes “the separation between eternal nature and
phenomenal nature obsolete”; the potencies (Potenzen) effect “finitude qua
temporalization” (Verendlichung qua Verzeitlichung). This shift prepares the
“turn” that Schelling (publicly) made in The Essence of Human Freedom (1809).
Matter as it actually exists takes on—at least in part—the qualities of the
Absolute: gravity is multiplicity in unity, and light unity in multiplicity—as
well as, at the same time, the “invisible bond” uniting both terms (Absolute,
208, 213, 218; Schelling 1856–1861, 1.7:224). As Habermas remarks, such a notion
stands in “glaring” (schillernd) opposition to the fixation on eternity that
Schelling would observe later on (Absolute, 217ff.).
In this context, it is worth mentioning a matter that has still not received
due attention from scholars (see Frank 1992, 218–219, 251ff.). Already in his
discussion of Schelling’s natural philosophy, Habermas noted a strange conver-
sion of the principles at work. Schelling had always posited a primary, uncon-
scious, and “real activity extending into the infinite” (reelle, ins Unendliche
gehende Tätigkeit), which is made commensurate to consciousness by an “unre-
strictable, limiting, and ideal activity” (unbegrenzbare limitative, ideelle Tätig-
keit). After 1809/1810, the philosopher privileged attractive or contractive
activity—i.e., gravity—as the real force; against it works expansive, diffusive
activity—light or love—as the ideal force (Absolute, 155, 168–170, 249ff.). At the
same time, the real principle—“gravity,” in physical terms—continues to form
“the basis” for the dynamic he elaborates.
This basic activity does not await reflection (that is, interruption) through
the limitation that is its complement; rather, it is itself marked by closedness,
contraction, and separation, and it needs to be led by Love (ideal, expansive,
and effusive activity) in order to open itself. Schelling also calls the latter
operation “egoity” (Egoität) or “selfness.” Now, there occurs a second conver-
sion. Earlier, Schelling still considered Fichte’s I-hood (Ichheit) to provide the
goal of nature (Naturprozess)—which, as he wrote in 1796, is nothing other
than “the history of self-consciousness” (1.1:380–383). In his new conception,
however, Ichheit appears as a potentiality in God yet independent from God
(Absolute, 249ff.).
As an entity independent of God, I-hood seems rebellious—evil, even. It
ponders its falling away from God and thereby tears the whole of Nature down
with it, into sin:
The Absolute and History 235
This entire relationship of Man to Nature, namely that it has become entirely
external to him, obviously cannot be seen [explained?] otherwise than by
assuming that Man has preferred his particular, individual consciousness to
the place within universal consciousness that was conceived for him. He
should, in fact, assume and affirm the position of the universal subject. The
very fact that Man no longer appears as this subject, that Nature is foreign to
him, is proof that Man has abandoned the position of the universal subject
that was conceived for him and preferred an individual existence [Sein]. Since
then, Nature is merely something external, it is a Whole stripped of its ulti-
mate consciousness [ein seines letzten Bewusstseins beraubtes Ganzes]; it is an
akephalon, something lacking its head.
(Schelling 1972, 471)
“new impulse” through divine “revelation” (1908, 35, 37) and is thereby spurred
to conceive what it could not imagine on its own. This is a matter with which
Schelling also engaged intensively. Quoting the sixth section of Lessing’s
Education of the Human Race, Schelling writes in The Philosophy of Mythol-
ogy: “reason, without that guiding, numinous force [jenes Leitende, jenes
numen],” cannot “afford its own authentication [Beglaubigung]”; “left to its
own devices” as a system incapable of justifying its final ends by immanent
means, it “loses itself in complete meaninglessness” (Schelling 1856–1861,
2.1:239, 43, 61–62; cf. 2.2:241ff., 187; for commentary, see Frank 2008, text 1). It
would be interesting to know what Habermas had to say on the matter.
Once again, the ambiguity within Schelling’s philosophy is evident. His
system cannot conceive of emancipating the natural-historical world from the
Absolute without at the same time branding it with the stigma of evil and
guilt. The use of freedom—understood as arbitrariness (Willkürfreiheit)—is
also the abuse of freedom (Absolute, 273–274).
We can now finish the picture of Das Absolute und die Geschichte in a few
broad strokes (needless to say, Habermas’s study retraces the winding—and
often crisscrossing—paths of Schelling’s thought in painstaking detail). The
most tangible result of Schelling’s profound reflections on finitude is his
remarkably elaborate and modern doctrine of time (Absolute, 319ff.). Haber-
mas recognized the import and structure of this aspect of Schelling’s philoso-
phy well before other modern readers (a full two years before Wolfgang
Wieland, for example). The most important feature of The Ages of the World
for Habermas is the notion that God puts an end to the playful contest of
forces—the “rotating activity” (rotatorischer Umtrieb) (Absolute, 359ff.) of ego-
ity and love, of restrictive contraction and expansive affirmation—through a
decision (Entschluss).
Here, Schelling is following the mystical conception of wisdom (Sophia)—a
matter Habermas discusses in Das Absolute und die Geschichte and “Dialecti-
cal Idealism’s Transition to Materialism” with remarkable erudition. (The dis-
sertation focuses on the model provided by Jakob Böhme, whereas the essay
concentrates on cabbalistic tradition, especially the thought of Isaac Luria.) In
the act of decision, creative nature (die zeugende Natur)—now for the first
time denominated “God the Father”—abandons a position of indifference and
permits Love to free itself from the bonds of I-hood; this decision occurs
through God’s act of ecstatic kenosis (Selbstentäußerung). Free and uncon-
strained, He bows to the spirit of Love, which occurs inasmuch as He concen-
trates (“contracts”) Himself into a state of primal potency, out of which
the begetting of independent Nature—with Man at its summit—becomes
possible.
Habermas summarizes the consequences as follows: the unity of God
breaks apart into a historical entity, to be conceived in analogy to freely acting
The Absolute and History 237
mankind; this being has, in enacting its decision, shed its divinity and permit-
ted itself “to be engulfed [verschlingen] by history” (Habermas 1971a, 202), on
the one hand, while, on the other, preserving a suprahistorical form that
retains (only) the appearance of oneness (Absolute, 372–373, 391). Henceforth,
the fate of Nature lies in the hands of the Son. As Habermas remarks,
Schelling—in a note that went unpublished in his lifetime—went so far as to
declare that eternity was, in fact, projected from a position of finitude:
Already in the second version of The Ages of the World, Schelling sought to
steer another course: because the band of cosmic forces is indissoluble—
because it is grounded in the essence of the Absolute—it does not come undone
in the Son. This line of reasoning, however, merely pulls the “emergency
brake” of speculation in order to deny a process without which the Absolute
itself cannot be conceived (Absolute, 373): the maneuver saves God’s absolute-
ness but gives up on His existence in history (380; cf. Habermas 1971a, 202ff.).
against sloppy idealism, which holds that “an entirely pure concept of eter-
nity” exists “free of admixtures of notions of time” (Schelling 1856–1861,
1.8:259–260). “The experience of our world’s corruption” makes him sympa-
thetic to cabbalistic tradition.
First, however, a “real [wirklich] beginning” to the process must be deter-
mined. Schelling finds it in the power of contraction: “All development pre-
sumes envelopment. . . . The beginning lies in attraction [Alle Entwickelung
setzt Einwickelung voraus. . . . In der Anziehung liegt der Anfang]” (Schelling
1946, 1:23). This is a “methodologically materialistic” point of departure: it
makes what is natural and “lower” the necessary basis for what is higher—if
only in terms of being and not dignity. (“Priority stands in inverse relation to
superiority,” Habermas comments [1971a, 189; see Schelling 1946, 1:25–26].)
The rest of Schelling’s system we know from the dissertation. God makes
the world begin in that He—mythically speaking—ends the “virtuality” of
articulation that occurs in the uneventful activity (Umtrieb) of forces by draw-
ing back to primordial potentiality; thereby, He separates the present from the
past, into which He withdraws. The process of Nature begins, and its summit
is crowned by Incarnation (Menschwerdung)—now, the critical threshold of
theogony has been achieved. Mankind (der Mensch) can come to a “halt” in
the order of forces as it stands, or it can break it apart through action of its
own—tearing the divine bond (the Platonic desmos Schelling discusses in his
commentary of Timaeus [1794]). This bond is “essential” (wesentlich) within
God—and indissoluble—but this is not the case for Man/Mankind. If, then,
God ruptures the bond through a renewed contraction, He reverses the order
of things, corrupting them and Himself—and subjecting them and Himself to
“naturality” (Naturalität); henceforth, Nature (which should exist only to be
overcome through the principle of the Ideal) becomes His master. The process
of Nature no longer pursues the aim of Love; now, Love is beholden to the
commandments of the material age—“anger” and “evil” (Habermas 1971a,
192–193).
In falling away, Man has brought a “curse” upon Nature. Through his deed,
Nature has grown “alienated from the divine Self.” It is worth noting, in this
context, that Schelling here—and elsewhere—employs the expression “alien-
ation” (Entfremdung) (Schelling 1856–1861, 1.2:212; Schelling 1993, 206). Marx—
whom Habermas also presents in Knowledge and Human Interests as a method-
ological (or epistemological) materialist and not a metaphysical one—describes
the “material age” as a time when the “essential forces” (Wesenskräfte) of Man,
which are ideal by nature, are repressed by materiality but not neutralized
(Frank 1992, 319ff.). To put things in Schelling’s terms, matter is not the “where-
fore” (das Worumwillen) of the process of history—that is, “what should be”
(das Seynsollende). It is not dignitate prius; rather, it asserts its primacy only on
the level of actuality (der Wirklichkeit nach). Instead of inaugurating a higher
240 Texts
However, it is God who determines the goal of human action; He has passed
on His claim to existence to a regulative idea that “floats” (vorschwebt) before
mankind’s undertakings and provisionally appears as the “realm of freedom.”
The first concern, then, is to overcome the blunt (herb) pressure of the State
and Law—which both Schelling and Marx understand in terms of “a foreign,
merely factual force” (Gewalt), something that is, “so to speak, woven into and
engraved into human will [dem menschlichen Willen gleichsam Eingewebtes
und Eingestochenes]” (Schelling 1856–1861, 2.1:534ff.), and an “external unity”
in which essential, human forces are oppressed by the pressures of natural
fact.
Schelling and Marx hold that Man—and not Nature—is to be blamed for
corruption. Both consider that the natural order has been disorganized by a
kind of egoism. Both see the domination of the “material age” not as a meta-
physical necessity but as the consequence of historical action. “Marx, too, was
led by the same idea of overcoming materialism, which involves demoting
matter that has been wrongfully elevated to the status of Being back to a basic
position [zur Basis des Seienden]” (Habermas 1971a, 217). Both thinkers orient
their projects on “resurrecting” nature that is fallen, on renewing mankind’s
essential unity (Wesenseinheit) with Nature. To be sure, Schelling devises a
theogony, and Marx pursues economic analysis (215–216); despite his avowed
sympathy for the “inner” will to overcome the state, Schelling denounces rev-
olution as a crime (Schelling 1856–1861, 2.1:547ff.), and Marx counts on noth-
ing so much as revolution inasmuch as only action “from outside” can have an
effect on what has degenerated into externality (Habermas 1971a, 218).
All the same, Habermas observes, Marx lends a concrete dimension to
Schelling’s vague talk of “pushing back” matter into a position subordinate to
higher life. The realm of necessity will yield to that of freedom when
socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with
nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control instead of
being dominated by it as a blind power. . . . But this always remains a realm of
necessity. The true realm of freedom, the development of human powers as an
end in itself, begins beyond it, though it can only flourish with this realm of
necessity as its basis.
(Marx 1993a, 959)
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244 Texts
NANCY FRASER
T
he public sphere is the most influential of Jürgen Habermas’s sig-
nature concepts. Unlike “communicative action,” “discourse eth-
ics,” and “the colonization of the lifeworld,” which are discussed
principally by specialists, this concept has become a major focus of work in
fields ranging from history, law, politics, and sociology to literature, philoso-
phy, gender studies, and media studies. Designating a central institution of
modern society, one that previously lacked a name, Habermas’s concept of the
public sphere enjoys a status akin to that of a scientific discovery. Widely used
throughout the humanities and social sciences, even by those who do not
share his larger perspective, the expression figures today not only in scholarly
discourse but also in broader, extra-academic discussions in—where else?—
the public sphere.
In Habermas’s usage, “the public sphere” designates a discursive arena in
modern societies where “private persons” discuss matters of common con-
cern. Distinct both from the state and from the market but situated, rather, in
the “lifeworld,” this arena is ideally the site of free, unrestricted, rational com-
munication. A vehicle for unmasking domination, “publicity” is supposed to
constitute a medium for scrutinizing the actions of state officials and the
operation of private powers, holding the first accountable and encouraging
them to rein in the second. While the ideal of the public sphere bears little
resemblance to actually existing arenas of manipulated pseudopublicity, it
affords a normative yardstick for criticizing the latter. In general, then, this
concept supplies a rubric for evaluating the legitimacy and efficacy of what
passes for “public opinion” in modern societies.
To appreciate both the significance and the utility of this concept, it is nec-
essary to reconstruct the process of its theoretical development. Key moments
in this process include: (1) Habermas’s initial formulation of the category of
the public sphere in his 1962 Habilitationsschrift, Strukturwandel der
Öffentlichkeit (The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere); (2) Oskar
246 Texts
Negt and Alexander Kluge’s rejoinder in their 1972 book Öffentlichkeit und
Erfahrung (Public Sphere and Experience, Negt and Kluge 1993); (3) the critical
responses of Anglophone theorists and historians in the 1992 volume Haber-
mas and the Public Sphere (Calhoun 1992); (4) Habermas’s revision of the con-
cept in that volume and in his 1989 book Faktizität und Geltung (Between Facts
and Norms); and (5) recent work on “transnational public spheres.” Let us con-
sider them one by one.
mass democracy” in the twentieth century, society and state became mutually
intertwined. Publicity in the sense of critical scrutiny of the state gave way to
public relations, mass-mediated staged displays, and the manufacture and
manipulation of public opinion. Writing in the early 1960s, Habermas con-
cluded that the public sphere had been “refeudalized.”
In its historical register, then, Habermas recounted the career of the public
sphere as a Verfallsgeschichte, a history of decay. In the normative register,
by contrast, he stressed the idea’s critical force and emancipatory potential.
Here the public sphere was associated with a highly demanding type of
communication—rational, inclusive, unrestricted. In principle open to all,
modern publics of private persons were supposed to generate public opinion
in the strong sense of a rationally warranted consensus about the common
good. Such opinion merited the title “public” only when it survived the unre-
stricted exchange of arguments in a communicative process in which all who
were potentially affected could participate as peers. By bracketing inequalities
of status and excluding merely private interests, such discussion would ensure
that the “unforced force” of the better argument would alone prevail. Linked,
accordingly, to norms of inclusiveness, unrestrictedness, and rationality, the
public sphere was not only a historical institution but also a counterfactual
ideal that served to reveal the democratic deficits of existing societies.
In general, then, Structural Transformation posed a sharp contrast between
the deformed pseudopublicity of contemporary society and a normative ideal
whose emancipatory promise Habermas wished to redeem. But the book
offered little concrete guidance for envisioning a “postbourgeois” mode of
publicity for contemporary societies. From the start, accordingly, it provoked
unease, along with admiration, in many readers.
The earliest sustained response was Negt and Kluge’s 1972 Public Sphere and
Experience, which challenged both the historical and normative propositions
of Structural Transformation. Subtitled Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois
and Proletarian Public Sphere, this intervention took issue with Habermas’s
equation of modern democratic publicity with its bourgeois variant. Antici-
pating later Anglophone arguments, the authors claimed to excavate another,
nonbourgeois form of publicity. Where Habermas saw only the detritus of
decayed bourgeois publicity, they espied the half-hidden outlines of a “prole-
tarian public sphere,” which reflected the organization and experience of
socialized production. For Negt and Kluge, accordingly, the history of the
public sphere could only be adequately grasped as a dialectic of two competing
publicities, unequally empowered but mutually constituting. Likewise, the
248 Texts
Revisions
That is precisely what Habermas was already proceeding to do. His 1989 book
Between Facts and Norms offered (among other things) a substantially revised
250 Texts
account of the public sphere. Resituating the latter in the context of a “Dis-
course Theory of Law and Democracy,” that work seemed to respond the his-
torians’ point about the plurality of modern publicities. No longer suggesting
a single “sphere,” Habermas wrote here of a decentered network of multiple,
overlapping communicative spaces. Then, too, the book sought to address
the legitimacy and efficacy critiques of the political philosophers. Stressing the
“co-implication of private and public autonomy,” Habermas valorized the role
of emancipatory social movements, such as second-wave feminism, in pro-
moting democracy by pursuing equality, and vice versa (Facts, 420–423). By
thus acknowledging the mutual dependence of social position and political
voice, he grappled here with previously neglected aspects of the legitimacy
deficits of public opinion in democratic states.
In addition, Between Facts and Norms was centrally concerned with the
problem of efficacy. Theorizing law as the proper vehicle for translating “com-
municative power” into administrative power, the work distinguished an
“official,” democratic circulation of power, in which weak publics influence
strong publics, which in turn control administrative state apparatuses, from
an “unofficial,” undemocratic one, in which private social powers and
entrenched bureaucratic interests control lawmakers and manipulate public
opinion. Acknowledging that the unofficial circulation usually prevails,
Habermas here provided a fuller account of the efficacy deficits of public
opinion in democratic states (Facts, 360–363).
Not all readers were fully satisfied with the result. In William E. Scheuer-
man’s (1999) reading, for example, Habermas oscillated inconsistently between
two antithetical stances: on the one hand, a “realistic,” resigned, objectively
conservative view that accepts the grave legitimacy and efficacy deficits of
public opinion in really existing democratic states; on the other, a radical-
democratic view that is still committed to overcoming them. Like other read-
ers, Scheuerman worried that Between Facts and Norms represented a step
back from the emancipatory aspirations of Structural Transformation.
profound questions arise about the effects of the relative decline of print, the
new salience of visuality, the advent of the Internet, and the emergence of
communications technologies that permit virtually instantaneous real-time
communication across vast distances (Berdal 2004, Cammaerts and van
Audenhove 2005, Dahlgren 2005, Papacharissi 2002).
None of these debates is likely to be fully resolved any time soon. Thus, it is
safe to predict that discussions of public-sphere theory and history will con-
tinue to proliferate. This most influential of Habermasian concepts seems des-
tined to remain the focus of lively contention for a long time to come. This is
as exactly as it should be, moreover, in an age when public communication is
undergoing a “structural transformation” that is at least as momentous and
profound as when it was first uncovered by Jürgen Habermas in 1962.
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28
TECHNOLOGY AND REIFICATION
“Technology and Science as ‘Ideology’ ” (1968)
T
he concept of reification plays a central role in Marxist and post-
Marxist theories of society—and especially in critical theory—
inasmuch as it offers a way to diagnose various social pathologies
(Brunkhorst 1998, Grondin 1988, Dahms 1998).
Unlike the notion of “objectification” (Vergegenständlichung), to which no
value judgment is customarily attached, the term “reification” (Verdingli-
chung) is most often employed to critical ends. The first of two aspects of its
critical use refers to perceiving and treating someone or a relationship between
people as a thing. Whether this happens intentionally or not, it involves a dou-
ble error: reification represents a kind of misrecognition that is morally, cogni-
tively, and politically problematic. At the same time, and this is the second
aspect, viewed “objectively,” reified phenomena can assume a “thingly” (dinghaft)
quality in actual fact—for example, when social relations escape the control of
social actors. (On some difficulties pertaining to the concept, see Pitkin 1987,
Jaeggi 1998/1999, Stahl 2005, Hartle 2008.)
For Marx and the social theorists who follow his lead, the effects of capital-
ist relations of production—especially as expressed by the “commodity
fetish”—stand behind the diagnosis of reification. The theoretical role of the
concept changes fundamentally in Habermas’s works. Here, reference to capi-
talist forms of socialization is preserved, but the connection is not as direct.
For Habermas—who engages with various theoretical traditions—reifica-
tion plays a role in five distinct contexts. It appears (1) in his early works of
cultural criticism, (2) in his discussion of the ideological dimensions of tech-
nology and science, (3) apropos of the debate concerning positivism and in his
critique of the naturalist conception of knowledge (naturalistisches Erkenntni-
sideal), (4) when he diagnoses social pathologies originating in the “coloniza-
tion of the lifeworld” through systemic imperatives, and (5) in reference to the
ethical issues arising from modern genetic technology and its effects on
human self-understanding. In all of these contexts, the connection between
technology, instrumental reason (or, alternatively, functionalist reason), and
reification is key. To start with, “technology” (Technik) involves the use of
“Technology and Science as ‘Ideology’ ” 257
Critique of Pauperism
Even Habermas’s early works of cultural criticism (which are hardly read
today) address the connection between technology and reification, as well as
its corollary, alienation. “Die Dialektik der Rationalisierung” (Dialectics of
rationalization, 1954) employs the term “pauperism” to refer to the all-perva-
sive changes to everyday life conditions that accompany “machine culture”—
which involves symptoms of impoverishment (which is not primarily mate-
rial) in both the working world and the spheres of leisure and consumption
(Habermas 1970, 8). “Our world is filled by the rhythm of machines” (9), reads
the diagnosis. Entirely in keeping with the “classic” understanding of reifica-
tion, Habermas holds that processes of autonomization have detached the
effects of activity from those who perform it: “the more perfect it becomes, the
more the machine escapes the control of the one who made it and for whom it
was made; it grows autonomous [verselbständigt sich] and erects both visible
and invisible barriers between humanity and the objective world [Mensch und
Ding]” (9).
Thereby, Habermas advances the claim that technology should not be
understood simply as a neutral medium that does not affect the goals for
which it is employed. Unlike cultural critics of the preceding generation,
however, he insists—even in his early writings—that “Luddism [Maschinen-
stürmerei], of whatever kind and origin it may be, misrecognizes technology”
(24). Although he expresses skepticism, Habermas entertains the possibility
that one might “disinfect, so to speak, technological progress from pauper-
ism” (9). The careful solution he proposes anticipates elements of his later
work. Discussing production (in concrete terms: modern industry and the
alienated-pauperized forces of human labor within it), he distinguishes
between different modes of rationalization: on the one hand, technical and
economic rationalization and, on the other—and in opposition to it—a
movement of social rationalization that, instead of obeying the rule of “pro-
gressive organization,” involves “excluding [ausgrenzen] certain spheres
from organization” (17). The point, of course, is that Habermas—who fol-
lows the findings of the contemporary sociology of labor—still assumes that
the limits of a purely technological or economic rationalization also mani-
fest themselves in the sphere of economy and production.
In his early diagnoses, Habermas maintains that pauperism occurs not
just in production but also in the realm of consumption (which, one might
assume, would compensate for the deficiencies experienced in the world of
work, properly speaking). Expressly referring to Heidegger, he laments a loss
“Technology and Science as ‘Ideology’ ” 261
Technology-Science-Ideology
In 1968—at the same time that Knowledge and Human Interests situated the
philosopher’s conception of critical theory in relation to the framework(s) pro-
vided by positivism and psychoanalysis—Habermas published “Technology
and Science as ‘Ideology,’ ” his most thorough discussion of reification. Here,
he contests Marcuse’s core argument, that “the liberating force of technology”
has itself become a “fetter of liberation” and led to the “instrumentalization of
man” (Marcuse 1991, 159); in addition, he takes issue with Marcuse’s underlying
assumption that “scientific-technical progress” performs a “double function . . .
as a productive force,” on the one hand, and as “ideology,” on the other (Ratio-
nal Society, 90). The quotation marks of the title already indicate that Haber-
mas does not mean simply to affirm Marcuse’s Marxian analysis (see chapter
59 in this volume).
Taking up Weber’s theorem of “rationalization,” Habermas begins by diag-
nosing the implementation of instrumental reason in various social spheres:
technology and science have penetrated society and subjected it to fundamental
changes (Rational Society, 82). At the same time, however, it is not technology
per se, which, indeed, is indispensable for the material reproduction of the
species, so much as the universal claims attending the forms it has assumed in
the modern world—that is, the reduction of praxis to technology and of rea-
son to instrumental reason—that pose a problem (Theorie und Praxis, 346ff.).
Habermas observes that Marcuse, because of his totalizing diagnosis, gives
up on rationality as the standard for critical intervention; he is wrong to do so
inasmuch as only a “specifically limited” form of rationality (Rational Society,
82) is operative in the conditions he incriminates. In a second step, Habermas
rejects Marcuse’s call for “qualitatively different” technology and “an alterna-
tive New Science,” since technology and science entertain an intimate (intern)
relationship with instrumental action and cannot be exchanged for something
else (87). Instead, Habermas affirms, one must, on a fundamental level of
theoretical reflection, understand “symbolic interaction in distinction to purpo-
sive-rational action” (92). Doing so entails a new interpretation of Weber’s dis-
tinction between work and interaction—between instrumental and communica-
tive action, that is—whereby the former occurs along technical/technological
rules and the latter follows valid norms (94).
Here, Habermas introduces the distinction—which proves fundamental
for his theory in its later stages—between system and lifeworld. In systems, it is
instrumental action that predominates, which means that rationalization
emerges as the enhancement of efficiency and the augmentation of adminis-
trative power. In the lifeworld, on the other hand, symbolically mediated
interaction is fundamental; here, “rationalization” refers to achieving and
extending communication that is free from relations of domination (98).
Habermas presents capitalist modes of production as the motor for continu-
ously enlarging the subsystems of instrumental action (96). This process
“Technology and Science as ‘Ideology’ ” 263
In other writings from the same period, Habermas argues, on the basis of
the considerations above, that democracy is incompatible with the seemingly
natural (naturwüchsig) fact that technological progress is not subject to reflec-
tion and rational control (which, in turn, has a recursive effect on lived praxis)
(60). The technocratic model presupposes “an immanent necessity of techni-
cal progress, which owes its appearance of being an independent, self-regulat-
ing process only to the way in which social interests operate in it”; moreover, it
presumes “a continuum of rationality in the treatment of technical and practi-
cal problems, which cannot in fact exist” (64). The “integration of technical
knowledge and the hermeneutical process of arriving at self-understanding”
(74) can only be achieved in discourses that are free from domination. If
this does not succeed, the danger arises, under “late-capitalist” conditions,
that “symptoms of reification” (eine Symptomatik der Verdinglichung) will
develop—a matter that not only concerns objective features of system integra-
tion but also produces a sociocultural and motivational legitimation crisis in
the public (Communicative Action, 2:351; cf. Legitimation; see chapters 31 and
75 in this volume).
Critique of Positivism
In keeping with his project of critiquing both society and science (Communica-
tive Action, 2:374–375)—i.e., addressing “the reification and functionalization
of forms of life and interaction, as well as of the objectivistic self-understanding
of science and technology” (Postmetaphysical, 34)—Habermas engages with
forms of thought that he attributes to positivism, which express technocracy
on a theoretical level by obscuring connections between scientific knowledge
and practical interest. He identifies three cognitive interests (Erkenntnisin-
teressen) founded in modes of socialization (work, language, and power
[Herrschaft]) that correspond to—and are reflected in—three types of scien-
tific knowledge: technical interest in the empirical-analytical sciences (which
provide prognostic knowledge that aims for technical utility and organizes
reified processes), practical interest in the historical-hermeneutic sciences (which
seek, by way of interpretation, to expand possibilities of communication [Ver-
ständigung]), and emancipatory interest in the critical sciences (which aim to
initiate—and maintain—processes of self-reflection to achieve freedom from
natural [naturwüchsig] constraints) (Rational Society, 86–87; Knowledge;
McCarthy 1981, chap. 2; see chapters 7, 29, and 55 in this volume).
This critique of positivism—as the one-sided generalization of a particular
model of knowledge that exemplifies reification—is complemented by a cri-
tique of hermeneutics, which simply turns a blind eye to the phenomenon.
“An objective meaning-comprehending theory must also account for that
“Technology and Science as ‘Ideology’ ” 265
In the long run, these processes of reification mean that the continued exis-
tence of the systems themselves becomes doubtful, inasmuch as they can
function only if the lifeworld remains intact. In the meantime, actors are made
to rely exclusively on their use of instrumental reason:
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kommunikativen Handelns.” WestEnd 3, no. 2: 97–113.
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——. 2002. Transforming Technology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fraser, Nancy. 1989. Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary
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sity Press.
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New York: Penguin.
29
CRITIQUE OF KNOWLEDGE
AS SOCIAL THEORY
Knowledge and Human Interests (1968)
WILLIAM REHG
O
ver his long and productive career, Jürgen Habermas has pur-
sued an overriding interest in critical social-political theory. For
Habermas, as for other Frankfurt School critical theorists,
social-political critique requires interdisciplinary social analysis and thus
depends on engagement with the social and cultural sciences. In the 1960s,
Habermas approached such engagement as a problem for methodological and
epistemological reflection, that is, a matter of critique of knowledge (Erkennt-
niskritik): critical social theory had to establish itself as a respectable, distinct
form of knowledge, in large measure through a methodological critique of the
then-dominant positivist philosophy of science and historicist hermeneutics.
Conversely, critique of knowledge could contribute to critical theory, and
thereby serve the aims of social emancipation, only in the form of social the-
ory. But this framework soon proved inadequate. By the early 1970s Habermas
had taken the linguistic-pragmatic turn: thenceforth he would approach social
critique through a theory of communicative action and the critique of knowl-
edge through argumentation theory.
Of the three book-length monographs Habermas published in the 1960s,
two directly addressed questions of knowledge: On the Logic of the Social Sci-
ences and Knowledge and Human Interests (the other monograph was his 1962
Habilitationsschrift, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere; for an
exhaustive bibliography of Habermas’s works up to 1981, see McCarthy 1981;
Müller-Doohm 2000 provides a selected bibliography of his works up to 1999).
social alienation that separate subjects from one another (worker versus capi-
talist) and from their own essential powers (which are split off as the alien
powers of capital).
The problem in Marx arises at just this point, however. As an overarching
category, the idea of labor, or production, commits him to a vocabulary of
instrumental action. To be sure, he understands the “mode of production” to
include both base and superstructure, the forces of production and their insti-
tutional framework. But Habermas regards that move as a “terminological
dodge” (Ausflucht) that masks the inadequate character of the production
paradigm, which obscures the discursive nature of reflection (Knowledge,
328n14). Rather, reflection is more appropriately located in Marx’s dialectical
analysis of class struggle, understood as a “process of reflection writ large”
(Knowledge, 60). Such reflection remains linked with production inasmuch as
technical progress exposes the disproportionate and exploitative institutional
demands on labor, thereby sparking a revolutionary consciousness in the
working class. Nonetheless, class struggle and reconciliation lie at the level of
interaction rather than labor. Marx, however, viewed the entire process of
overcoming alienation in terms of production and placed his critical theory on
a par with natural science, thereby obscuring the differences between labor
and interaction, on the one hand, and empirical and critical-reflective modes
of knowledge, on the other.
Second, Peirce’s account of scientific progress links science with the technical
cognitive interest that positivism ignores. Here Habermas draws a connection
between Peirce’s pragmatic account of belief and his analysis of inference.
From the standpoint of human action, true beliefs “define the realm of future
behavior that the actor has under control” (Knowledge, 120). As the most suc-
cessful method of “fixing belief,” modern science relies on modes of inference
that link empirical concepts with conditional predictions of observable events.
What it means for statements to be valid, or for concepts to have determinate
content, “is determined with reference to possible technical control of the con-
nection of empirical variables” (Knowledge, 121). Thus knowledge, on Peirce’s
account, is inherently linked with the human interest in the control of nature.
Dilthey picks up on the communal aspect of science. Insofar as the natural
sciences depend on communicative processes, they involve hermeneutic com-
petences that members rely on but normally do not articulate as such in their
practice of inquiry. Dilthey sees that the Geisteswissenschaften distinguish
themselves from the natural sciences precisely because they take such compe-
tences as their object domain. More precisely, as “hermeneutic sciences,” the
Geisteswissenschaften are grounded in the everyday use of ordinary language
for stabilizing intersubjective understanding. In contrast to the empirical-
analytic sciences, which attempt to move from particular facts to universal
laws, the hermeneutic sciences attempt to use general categories to understand
what is singular and unique: the historical past, other cultures, a life history,
texts, and the like. How can this happen? Understanding the singular and
unique is possible because ordinary language is reflexive, self-interpreting,
and dialogically structured. In everyday communication, that is, individuals
have three elementary sources (or “forms”) of understanding at their disposal:
what each of them says, how they behave, and the accompanying nonverbal
expressions. Each dimension of expression provides a context and crosscheck
for the interpretation of the other two. In understanding one another, we move
in a self-correcting “hermeneutic circle” until the various expressive resources
fit meaningfully into an integrated whole. A similar circular movement
characterizes the efforts of scholars when they seek to understand a text by
integrating textual clues and available historical accounts into a coherent
interpretation of the whole text in context.
The hermeneutic sciences, then, bring methodical discipline to features of
everyday interaction, and in this sense they are on a par with the empirical-
analytic sciences, which elevate everyday instrumental action to experimental
method. And just as human survival depends on successful intervention into
nature, so also “the survival of societal individuals” depends on reliable
mutual understanding (Knowledge, 173). Consequently, just as the object of the
empirical-analytic sciences is constituted by a technical cognitive interest, so
278 Texts
The lingering objectivism in Dilthey and Peirce reveals their failure to grasp
fully their analyses as initiatives in the self-reflection of the sciences. In his
chapters on those two thinkers, Habermas tries to carry through that self-
reflection more consistently in the form of a critical philosophical analysis
that grasps the object of scientific knowledge together with the knowing sub-
ject, which is understood not as a transcendental ego or absolute mind but as
the community of investigators whose procedures are cognitive expressions of
basic interests in labor and interaction, on which the human species depends
for its survival and cultural self-development. Habermas insists that these
interests are not heteronomous to reason: rather, reason inheres in cognitive
interests. In reflecting on such interests, then, one grasps the unity of knowl-
edge (reason) and interest, freeing oneself from the objectivistic illusion of
knowledge as the disinterested contemplation of a mind-independent reality.
As a form of knowledge that frees one from false consciousness, philosophical
self-reflection realizes the “emancipatory cognitive interest.” In the final four
chapters of Knowledge and Human Interests, Habermas develops the idea of
self-reflection, beginning with Kant’s problematic attempt to link theoretical
knowledge to practical interest and Fichte’s accomplishment of that feat, albeit
within an idealist framework.
Habermas’s critical social theory, however, needs more than philosophical
critique. For a suitable model, he first looks to Freudian psychology as the only
example of a science that incorporates methodical self-reflection. Psychoanal-
ysis involves a form of hermeneutic interpretation, but unlike the cultural sci-
ences, it strives to interpret “not only the meaning of a possibly distorted text
[the patient’s behavior and speech], but the meaning of the text distortion
Knowledge and Human Interests 279
with Marx’s in that both distinguish labor and interaction as two dimen-
sions of human development. Unlike Marx, however, Freud does not give
explanatory priority to the organization of labor. Rather, he embeds the
labor process in institutionalized forms of interaction that are rooted in
family dynamics and structured for the general repression of instinctual
impulses. This repression is accomplished not only through compulsory
social norms but also through traditional rationalizations of authority and
various psychological mechanisms such as substitute-gratifications that
redirect instinctual needs.
The key to social critique lies in Freud’s distinction between delusions,
which are mere fantasies, and illusions: religious narratives, social ideals and
values, art, and so on. Illusions harbor utopian elements that need not be delu-
sional. Ideals of happiness, for example, may be largely unrealized in a society,
but that does not make them mere fantasies, for technical advances might
someday put them within reach of all. Thus Freud’s model allows for a form of
critique of ideology (Ideologiekritik) similar to Marx’s, namely, a critique that
targets rationalizations of institutional repressions that have become unneces-
sary in light of what is technically possible. Because the lower classes are sub-
ject to greater renunciations, “it is they who first critically turn the utopian
content of tradition against the established civilization” (Knowledge, 280; on
ideology critique, see Geuss 1981). However, Freud’s model has this advantage
over Marx’s: unlike the latter, he recognizes ideology as a form of distorted
communication. Moreover, his model implies a soberer view of ideology cri-
tique as a trial-and-error process whose success is not guaranteed by a phi-
losophy of history.
Habermas’s remarks on a Freudian model of critical social theory remain
sketchy at best. But three considerations stand out. First, his primary con-
cern is to set forth the idea of such a critical theory as a self-reflective,
methodical science distinct from both the empirical and cultural sciences,
thereby securing the epistemic credentials of social critique from positivist
and historicist misunderstanding. Second, as a form of self-reflection, social
critique rests on a knowledge-constitutive interest in emancipation. In both
the psychoanalytic process and ideology critique, the desire to overcome
pathology shows that “the interest inherent in the pressure of suffering is
also immediately an interest in emancipation; and reflection is the only pos-
sible dynamic through which it realizes itself ” (Knowledge, 288). Third, like
the technical and practical interests, the emancipatory interest refers to an
“interest in self-preservation” that cannot be reduced to natural needs, for it
cannot be understood apart from the cultural expressions that interpret it in
relation to ideas of the good life (288). Habermas thus concludes Knowledge
and Human Interests with a critique of Nietzsche, who attempted just such a
reduction.
Knowledge and Human Interests 281
domains, which then serves as a standpoint that grounds his critique of knowl-
edge prior to the interest-based constitution of objects. Keat’s question points
to deeper difficulties in the transcendental aspects of Habermas’s analysis,
which we take up next.
Habermas’s idea of cognitive interests occupies an ambiguous no-man’s
land between naturalism and idealism. Not surprisingly, he caught fire on
both sides (see Dallmayr 1972, 213ff). Some attacked his position as overly
speculative and “theological” (Albert 1971, 54–56). Others accused him of nat-
uralism: by attempting to transpose Kant’s transcendental subject onto the
human species as subject to historically invariant deep-seated interests,
Habermas introduced an “objectivistic nature-ontology” and thus “absolutized”
nature, contrary to the historical orientation of critical theory (Theunissen 1969,
13, 23). This objection points to a deep problem in Habermas’s construction: he
regards cognitive interests as both constitutive of the objects of experience—
including nature—and as emergent from the natural prehistory of the species,
thus open to empirical investigation (i.e., by evolutionary biology, anthropol-
ogy). There are at least two ambiguous ideas here. On the one hand, nature is
both a constituted object and the ground of species-constitutive capacities (see
McCarthy 1981, 110ff.). On the other hand, because cognitive interests have a
natural basis and operate in history, they appear as empirical objects poten-
tially open to critique, yet as a priori transcendental structures, they ground
such critique (Bubner 1971, 185–187; cf. Habermas 1966, 295).
Habermas’s response to this nest of problems involved a number of innova-
tive moves. First, he explained that claims about the natural evolution of cogni-
tive interests do not have the strictly empirical status of the empirical-analytic
sciences but rather lie at the level of reflection (Habermas 1973, 21–22). This
response suggests that such claims operate as part of a general critical theory
of sociocultural development—a theory that eventually took the form of a
developmental model of social evolution (see Rekonstruktion). Second, in
response to Theunissen, Habermas attempted to hold on to both the contin-
gencies of history and invariant transcendental structures. But rather than
appeal to deep-seated interests as anthropological constants, he took recourse
in the idea of truth and its connection with discourse. The species can repro-
duce itself in its sociohistorical practices only “though the medium of that
most unnatural idea, truth, which necessarily begins with the counterfactual
assumption that universal agreement is possible” (Knowledge, 2nd ed., 380). As
counterfactual, the ideas of truth and coercion-free consensus transcend the
contingencies of history; nonetheless they have a real (historical) effect on
human practices (Habermas 1985).
In response to Bubner, Habermas (Knowledge, 2nd ed., 371–373) distin-
guished particular (individualistic) interests from “generalizable” interests and
cognitive interests. Generalizable interests are not simply given as empirical
Knowledge and Human Interests 283
facts or posited by sheer decision but are to some extent formed (gebildet)
through consensual processes of rational will formation in practical discourses.
Such interests are thus objects of moral-practical knowledge. Cognitive inter-
ests, on the other hand, are universal interests one “encounters” by rationally
reconstructing the conditions of possible objectivity that undergird fundamen-
tal types of problems that every social system must solve. Thus “reconstructive
science” is the mode of inquiry adequate to knowledge-constitutive interests.
With these moves, Habermas began to shift the normative ballast of his
critical theory from the idea of cognitive interests to idealizations that govern
rational discourse and consensus. To be sure, discursive idealizations had
been operative all along, inasmuch as all inquiry depends on processes of
mutual understanding oriented toward rational consensus. Thus the technical
and practical interests depend for their realization on the emancipatory inter-
est in establishing conditions of communication free of domination, which
first make rational consensus possible. However, Habermas’s new distinction
between objectivity and truth goes hand in hand with a much sharper distinc-
tion between discourse and “life-practice,” i.e., communicative action (Haber-
mas 1973, 16ff.; Knowledge, 2nd ed., 362–363). In discourse, the pressures of
everyday action are put aside for the sake of assessing truth claims (or claims
to normative validity); here the only permissible “force” is that of the better
argument. With the distinction between discourse and action, Habermas con-
siderably loosens the tight connection between knowledge and interests.
Although he still speaks of cognitive interests in the early 1970s, they have in
fact lost their original point of uniting theory and practice by “interlocking”
(Verschränkung) forms of knowledge with the fundamental interests of human
life (Knowledge, 212). With the linguistic turn, the transcendental basis for
social critique henceforth lies not in cognitive interests but rather in the ideal-
izations that participants presuppose in discourse.
Habermas’s notion of an emancipatory interest proved especially problem-
atic. Aside from the question of its status—which Habermas (Knowledge, 2nd
ed., 371) explained was derivative—the two main issues for critique of knowl-
edge turned on the association of this interest with self-reflection and with a
psychoanalytic model for social critique.
As various critics pointed out and as Habermas acknowledged (McCarthy
1981, 94ff.; Knowledge, 2nd ed., 377ff.), the attempt to bring historical material-
ism into a (broadly neo-Kantian) transcendental framework conflated two
different types of reflection: philosophical reflection on the invariant struc-
tures of objective knowledge, on the one hand, and the critical analysis of dis-
torted forms of communication in psychoanalysis and ideology critique, on
the other. Whereas the former attempts to articulate universal deep structures
of human action and experience, the latter targets forms of false consciousness
that afflict particular persons and societies, with their unique life histories
284 Texts
and cultural traditions. Given the moves described above, Habermas had a
ready solution to this equivocation, namely, to distinguish philosophical
reflection as “rational reconstruction” from “critique.” He could also relate the
two: because critique targets distorted communication, it depends on the
reconstructive sciences that articulate the communicative ideals against which
critics can identify the distortions that support false consciousness.
The second main problem concerned the appropriateness of the Freudian
model for ideology critique (see Gadamer 1971, Giegel 1971). In both psycho-
analysis and ideology critique the conditions for a dialogue between equals do
not obtain, because the “enlightened” psychoanalyst/critic and “unenlight-
ened” patient/oppressor are not symmetrically situated. However, situations
calling for ideology critique normally lack features of the psychoanalytic rela-
tionship (its voluntariness, professional codes, etc.) that help maintain its
effectiveness and preserve it from the dangers of manipulation. On the one
hand, groups that benefit from domination usually resist the critic; on the
other hand, what preserves the critic from pushing particular interests under
the guise of universal interests?
In contemporary terms, these questions concern the social critic’s self-
proclaimed expertise vis-à-vis target groups. The problem is a difficult one
for Habermas, given his rejection of the Marxist philosophy of history that
had supplied the Communist Party with its special brand of expertise. In
response, he reformulates the theory-practice relationship as that between dis-
course and action. Specifically, he distinguishes three phases or “functions” in
the connection between theory and practice (Habermas 1973, 32ff.): the develop-
ment of critical theories in scientific discourses, the enlightenment of groups
that experience or are concerned about the oppressive effects of domination,
and the choice of strategies and tactics for actual political struggle. However,
this problem subsequently became less acute once Habermas moved away from
a Freudian/Marxist model focused on ideology critique (Habermas 2000, 14–15).
The fourth problem did not emerge until later: in the heyday of neo-Marxist
theorizing, talk of the human species as a macrosubject could still pass without
notice. Moreover, Habermas’s starting point in the philosophy of reflection
made such talk appear reasonable: in the philosophical tradition, “reflection”
in the sense of self-knowledge was typically regarded as an act of a human (or
divine) subject. But once the idea of reflection is disambiguated and replaced,
in effect, by two distinct types of communicative relationships (theoretical
discourse in reconstructive science, “therapeutic” interventions in critique),
and once the normative weight shifts from cognitive interests to discourse, a
species-subject of enlightenment proves to be a useless relic (Habermas 2000,
13). Moreover, the idea of a macrosubject of species constitution cannot do jus-
tice to the pluralism of cultures and variety of social life forms and their dif-
ferent paths of development. A more intersubjective model is required.
Knowledge and Human Interests 285
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Berlin: de Gruyter.
30
COMMUNICATIVE RATIONALIT Y
Vorbereitende Bemerkungen zu einer Theorie des kommunikativen
Handelns (Preparatory Remarks for a Theory of Communicative
Action, 1971)
CRISTINA L AFONT
I
n the 1970s, Habermas’s efforts to ground a critical theory of society
underwent a “linguistic turn”; henceforth linguistic communication
stood at the center of his project. Although some of his earlier writ-
ings from the 1960s had demonstrated an interest in linguistic analysis (e.g.,
On the Logic of the Social Sciences), the central methodological shift took shape
in the 1970s. As a consequence of this shift, the formal-pragmatic analysis of
communication was no longer to be understood as a metatheory seeking to
provide a “language-theoretic foundation of the social sciences” (Communica-
tive Action, 1:xxxix); instead, it provided the core element of a theory of ratio-
nality in its own right. The principal objective of the project is to extract a
concept of communicative rationality from the unavoidable normative pre-
suppositions of the everyday communicative praxis of reaching mutual under-
standing (Verständigung).
Habermas locates a particular form of rationality in the communicative
use of language, which offers a solution to two fundamental tasks that, in his
estimation, earlier articulations of critical theory had failed to accomplish:
the task of overcoming the narrow concept of instrumental rationality domi-
nant in the social sciences and that of providing a convincing answer to the
basic question of all social theory: how social order is possible. Retrospec-
tively, one must add that the conception of communicative rationality in fact
forms the backbone not just of Habermas’s theory of society but also of his
moral, legal, and political theories as well as his theory of modernity and
social evolution.
Habermas elaborated his conception of communicative rationality in many
different writings. The ground plan took shape in various essays written in the
1970s, most of which are contained in the volume Vorstudien und Ergänzun-
gen zur Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. On the basis secured there,
Habermas developed the ideas of The Theory of Communicative Action, his
main work; subsequently, he refined and improved his findings in his Truth
Preparatory Remarks for a Theory of Communicative Action 289
and Justification (1999). The English translations of his most important essays
are available in On the Pragmatics of Communication (1998). As a first approxi-
mation, it is helpful first to determine the scope of Habermas’s conception of
communicative rationality.
Habermas’s theory of communicative rationality is not supposed to provide
an overarching conception of rationality. As he has made clear in more recent
publications (e.g., Truth), reason—as it is embodied in the communicative
structure of speech—represents only one of three structures of rationality, and
these structures are not reducible to the others. The other two are epistemic
rationality, which is embodied in the propositional structure of knowledge,
and instrumental rationality, which is embodied in the teleological structure
of action.
At the same time, however, discursive rationality—which arises from com-
municative reason—integrates these three core structures:
The model of a general theory of rationality sketched here rests on two impor-
tant assumptions that require a detailed justification. First of all, one must
show that a connection in fact exists between the rational structures of knowl-
edge, action, and speech, on the one hand, and the procedural rationality
inherent in practices of justification (i.e., discursive rationality), on the other.
Second, it must be shown that the rationality inherent in communicative prac-
tices is a genuine universal structure of rationality that cannot be reduced to
instrumental rationality.
It is not difficult to show that a connection exists between the rational
structures of knowledge, action, and speech, on the one hand, and discursive
practices, on the other. After all, we consider others rational to the extent that
they are capable, when challenged, of justifying what they believe, do, and say
by providing reasons. Rationality understood as accountability (Zurechnungs-
fähigkeit) is closely tied, therefore, to the capacity to engage in argumentative
practices—that is, practices of critiquing and justifying problematic claims
by providing reasons and arguments. Habermas designates this kind of activ-
ity “discourse,” and he employs the term “discursive rationality” to refer spe-
cifically to the sum total of competencies a speaker must have acquired in
order to participate in the special, reflexive form of communication that is
290 Texts
Whoever shares views that turn out to be false is not eo ipso irrational. Some-
one is irrational if she puts forward her opinions dogmatically, clinging to
them although she sees that she cannot justify them. In order to qualify a
belief as rational, it is enough that it can be held to be true on the basis of good
reasons in the relevant context of justification, i.e., that it is rationally
acceptable.
(Pragmatics, 312)
The aim of formal pragmatics is to identify and explicate the universal and
unavoidable presuppositions that underlie the communicative competence of
speakers and make mutual understanding possible. This is why Habermas
chose the term “universal pragmatics” when he first delineated it in his pro-
grammatic essay “What Is Universal Pragmatics?” (Pragmatics, 21–104). In
order to distinguish his theory from the “transcendental-pragmatic” approach
of his colleague Karl-Otto Apel (see chapter 4 in this volume), however, Haber-
mas quickly switches to the term “formal pragmatics”; this change in name
also underscores the theory’s kinship with formal semantics.
The basic idea here is that not just language but also speech—that is, the
use of sentences in utterances—admits of formal philosophical analysis and
thus must not be relegated merely to empirical analysis of particular situa-
tions of use, as is done in sociolinguistics, for example. For a comprehensive
Preparatory Remarks for a Theory of Communicative Action 291
propositional content of the speech act, and hence they must assess the truth
claim of the utterance. Second, they must be able to share the normative pre-
suppositions inherent in the interpersonal relation established through the
illocutionary act (i.e., they must assess the rightness claim inherent in it), and,
third, they must also assess the sincerity with which the speech act is uttered.
Thus, truth, rightness, and sincerity are three universal validity claims that
speakers (implicitly or explicitly) raise with their speech acts, according to
whether they refer to something in the objective world (as the sum total of
entities about which true statements are possible), something in the social
world (as the sum total of legitimately regulated interpersonal relations), or
something in their particular subjective world (as the sum total of experiences
to which one has privileged access). These three dimensions of validity, which
Habermas designates as the “validity basis of speech,” are the heuristic “keys”
that speakers employ when trying to understand one another’s speech acts.
Habermas’s basic idea involves generalizing the conception of meaning as
truth conditions, which is characteristic of formal semantics. According to
this conception, we understand the propositional content of an assertion when
we know its truth conditions—that is, when we know what would be the case
if it were true. If one broadens this perspective with a view to theorizing both
the propositional content and the force of the different speech acts that can be
performed with it, one arrives at Habermas’s conception, according to which
we understand a speech act when we know what makes it acceptable. Building
on Michael Dummett’s efforts (1975, 1976) to explain meaning in terms of
assertability conditions, Habermas advances the claim that, in order to under-
stand the meaning of a speech act, it is necessary to know the kind of reasons
a speaker might adduce to redeem the validity claims it raises.
This, in turn, means that an orientation toward the possible validity of
utterances is a necessary component of linguistic understanding. Reasons
cannot be identified as such unless speakers adopt the “internal” perspective
of evaluating their quality as reasons and, in so doing, adopt a rationally moti-
vated yes/no position with respect to them (Communicative Action, 1:70–71).
Affirming this internal connection between meaning and validity represents
the decisive step for justifying both the universality of communicative ratio-
nality and its irreducibility to instrumental rationality.
Over the years, Habermas has offered many different perspectives and
arguments in support of the latter thesis, the details of which cannot be
discussed here. The basic idea, however, can be summarized as follows: if,
as argued above, the meaning of a speech act is given by its acceptability
conditions, and if grasping acceptability conditions demands that one
adopts an evaluative stance toward the validity of the reasons that can
be adduced to justify the speech act, then communicative success cannot be
Preparatory Remarks for a Theory of Communicative Action 293
Since, as we have seen, neither the first nor the second alternative provides a
sufficient basis for enduring communicative praxis, the availability of argu-
mentative practices or “discourses” for repairing the disagreements that inevi-
tably arise among interlocutors is a necessary condition for maintaining such
praxis. Therefore, communicative rationality is just as universal and insur-
mountable for humans as is communication itself. It represents, as Habermas
puts it, “a voice of reason that cannot be silenced in everyday communicative
praxis, whether we want to or not” (Habermas 1991, 243–244).
The same structures that make it possible to reach an understanding also pro-
vide for the possibility of a reflective self-control of this process. It is this
potential for critique built into communicative action itself that the social sci-
entist, by entering into the contexts of everyday action as a virtual partici-
pant, can systematically exploit and bring into play outside these contexts
and against their particularity.
(Communicative Action, 1:121; emphasis added)
Preparatory Remarks for a Theory of Communicative Action 297
mechanism and of giving this mechanism unhindered play. On the one hand,
positive law limits the risk of dissent by assigning to sanctions the role formerly
played by convictions; in this way, it leaves the motives for rule compliance
open while enforcing observance. On the other hand, the modern legal system
must—in keeping with its own claims of legitimation and justification—stand
open to critical testing and potential contradiction in ongoing discourses and
transform the risks this entails into the productive force of presumptively ratio-
nal processes of political-opinion and will formation (see chapter 38 in this
volume).
beyond the narrow limits of instrumental rationality, covering not only ques-
tions of truth or effectiveness but also all other questions that participants in
communication are willing and able to debate by adducing reasons in order to
reach agreement on contested validity claims. In keeping with his analysis of
the three validity claims that comprise communicative action—truth, norma-
tive rightness, and sincerity—Habermas elaborates a typology of discourses in
which every validity claim can be evaluated hypothetically and either con-
tested or justified. Although, over the years, Habermas has made small modi-
fications in how he assigns validity claims to specific forms of argumentation
(Vorstudien, Theory of Communicative Action, etc.), the essential traits of the
picture have remained the same.
Whereas it is impossible for a speaker to redeem the claim of sincerity in
his or her subjective utterances by means of argument—sincerity can only be
evaluated in terms of the consistency between a speaker’s intentions and sub-
sequent actions—claims about the truth of empirical propositions or claims
concerning the normative rightness of social relations can be redeemed in dis-
course. Such claims can be tested in theoretical or practical discourses, respec-
tively. From a procedural point of view, both discourses are subject to the same
normative presuppositions, even though they differ with respect to the spe-
cific rules of argumentation appropriate for each of them. Whereas discourses
about the truth of empirical propositions are guided by the principle of induc-
tion, practical discourses about the rightness of social norms follow a principle
of universalization (see chapter 36 in this volume).
In line with the formal-pragmatic approach, Habermas’s account of practical
and theoretical discourses does not aim to provide substantive criteria sufficient
to generate true beliefs or right norms in argumentative discourses; instead, it
aims to clarify the conditions under which those criteria (arguments, forms of
reasoning, and so on) alone can achieve justificatory force. The aim, thereby,
is to show how the same general, discursive conditions for rational acceptabil-
ity impose restrictions on the possible answers to both theoretical and practi-
cal questions. This is the key argumentative step in the attempt to undermine
a positivist understanding of rationality that denies that practical questions
can have genuinely rational answers.
Inasmuch as interlocutors treat practical questions concerning the right-
ness of social norms as cognitive questions, and inasmuch as the discourse-
theoretical account of the notion of rational acceptability holds, the discursive
conditions for rational acceptability analyzed in the theory of communica-
tive rationality represent necessary conditions for the validity of our claims
about the rightness of social norms just as much as they do for the validity of
any other claims to justified knowledge. Here, the implications of the theory
of communicative rationality for Habermas’s conception of morality are evi-
dent: insofar as the discourse-theoretic account of rational acceptability is not
Preparatory Remarks for a Theory of Communicative Action 301
The consequences of the break Habermas posits here between claims to truth
and claims to rightness for a defense of the formal-pragmatic theory of
meaning—the central piece of his theory of communicative rationality—
have not yet been elaborated.
During the 1990s, Habermas began to expand and develop his discourse-the-
oretical understanding of communicative reason in the context of legal and
political theory. The process culminated in Between Facts and Norms. Subse-
quently, a much more complicated and nuanced understanding of claims to
rightness has been operative within Habermas’s formal pragmatics; this has
also led him to draw subtler distinctions within his broad conception of nor-
mative rightness in order to account for the highly variable dimensions of
validity in social norms (moral, legal, or ethical-political validity, legitimacy,
etc.).
In this context, Habermas has also found it necessary to establish a clearer
distinction between the moral principle of universalization (U) and the dis-
course principle (D). Moreover, he has introduced a new principle—the prin-
ciple of democracy—underlying the procedure of legitimate legislation. It
holds that “only those statutes may claim legitimacy that can meet with the
assent [Zustimmung] of all citizens in a discursive process of legislation that in
turn has been legally constituted” (Facts, 110). This principle articulates the
extent to which the procedural concept of communicative rationality directly
undergirds a normative model of deliberative democracy: the normative
presuppositions of argumentative practices (that is, symmetrical relations
between participants, equal opportunities for participation, inclusion, free-
dom from coercion and deception, openness to criticism, and so on) indicate
the conditions that must be fulfilled so that public-deliberative processes of
opinion and will formation in democratic states can confer legitimacy to politi-
cal decisions (inasmuch as observance of the former justifies the presumption
that the latter are reasonable). Here, one can clearly see the advantages of the
procedural conception of communicative rationality, for the formal-pragmatic
preconditions that are necessary to uphold practices of argumentation can be
recognized as reasonable by all democratic citizens, notwithstanding the sub-
stantive disagreements that unavoidably emerge in pluralistic societies. It is
Preparatory Remarks for a Theory of Communicative Action 303
also evident why Habermas’s discourse model has proved so productive not
only in discussions about normative theories of democracy but also in empiri-
cal studies of political deliberation in contemporary democratic societies that
aim at issuing practical recommendations for the improvement of existing
political institutions.
In contrast to substantive normative assumptions, formal-pragmatic con-
ditions of public deliberation are not only less contentious; they are also easier
to track empirically in the context of analyzing the normative quality of actual
processes of political deliberation (such as parliamentary debates or interna-
tional negotiations). An interesting empirical application of the procedural
conception of discursive rationality is found in the “discourse quality index”
compiled by Steiner, Bächtiger, Spörndli, and Steenbergen (2004). An over-
view of the fruitfulness of the model for empirical political science is provided
by the contributions to special volume 40 of Acta Politica (2005) and in Haber-
mas’s recent book Europe: The Faltering Project. Finally, a rewarding discus-
sion of how communicative rationality can be used to analyze international
politics can be found in Niesen and Herborth (2007).
References
FRANK NULLMEIER
L
egitimation Crisis presents the plan—or, as Habermas puts it, the
“argumentation sketch” (Legitimation, 33)—for a comprehensive
theory of society, indicating the framework of investigations
he will pursue up to The Theory of Communicative Action.
Legitimation Crisis began as the research program for projects at the Max
Planck Institute for the Study of the Scientific-Technical World in Starnberg,
where he assumed the directorship with Carl-Friedrich von Weizsäcker in
1971. The book both draws on the work of researchers there (especially Claus
Offe, Gertrud Nunner-Winkler, Rainer Döbert, and Klaus Eder) and synthe-
sizes theoretical elements from the author’s earlier writings. Finally, in the
wake of student protest movements, it engages with recent political develop-
ments and is, in particular, motivated by engagement with Marxian crisis
theory, on the one hand, and efforts to take distance from Niklas Luhmann’s
systems theory, on the other.
“Technik und Wissenschaft als ‘Ideologie’ ” (1968), in which Habermas
engaged with the works of Herbert Marcuse, had already addressed possible
tendencies of capitalist development. Here, Habermas offered a perspective
that differed from Marxist approaches on two fundamental points: “capitalist
society has changed to the point where two key categories of Marxian theory,
namely class struggle and ideology, can no longer be employed as they stand”
(Rational Society, 107). At the same time, he held fast to the assumption of the
crisis proneness (Krisenhaftigkeit) of capitalism and to the possibility of over-
coming this form of society—even if he provided no concept of another
“socialist” society, as he had in his 1968 lecture “Bedingungen für eine
Revolutionierung spätkapitalistischer Gesellschaften” (Conditions for revolu-
tionizing late-capitalist societies; Kultur und Kritik, 70–86). Against the thesis,
widespread in the 1960s, that social conflicts and economic problems could be
resolved by means of the social-welfare state and Keynesianism, Habermas
stressed that capitalism is inherently prone to crisis.
Legitimation Crisis 307
follows: after traditional forms of social organization come modern ones, which
may be capitalist or postcapitalist (i.e., “state socialist” [staatssozialistisch]). For
Habermas’s theory of crisis, only the distinction—internal to capitalist social
formations—between liberal capitalism and organized capitalism is important.
Habermas’s reflections on other social formations serve only—hence the title of
this section—to “illustrate social principles of organization.”
Before achieving the status of “high culture,” human communities are
structured primarily by distinctions of age and sex as well as by systems of
kinship that, as totalizing institutions, afford both system and social integra-
tion. Because they lack a productive dimension, these classless societies harbor
no internal contradictions that might overtax the organizational principle.
Here, crisis can be occasioned only by external events (ecological changes, war,
conquest, etc.). The next level of evolution occurs when traditional societies are
structured by class in an openly political way. The state—as a bureaucratic
authority apparatus (Herrschaftsapparat)—takes the place of kinship as the
institutional core of the system, and economic relations are regulated by politi-
cal power. In addition, functions of social integration grow distinct from those
of system integration when sacral-religious and secular (political-legal) instances
of power emerge.
This evolution enables considerable increases of system autonomy; at the
same time, however, the augmented productivity creates a class structure that
tends toward instability. The danger arises that religious conceptions of the
world will contradict the exploitative relations between classes as they actually
obtain. Thus, crises occur in traditional societies of this kind as the result of
internal contradictions. They begin as steering problems, which necessitate
heightened repression in order to secure the basis of production. Legitimation
issues then arise, which entail class struggles that will (potentially) overturn
the standing social order. Legitimation crises can occur in traditional societ-
ies, as well.
This situation does not hold—and here is the rub for Habermas—for the
liberal-capitalistic form assumed by modern societies. Whereas, in traditional
societies, political decisions regulate and dominate economic activity, liberal
capitalism (according to Habermas) separates economics and politics. The
sphere in which autonomous agents exchange goods free of state control
involves inequalities that take the form of depoliticized class relations inas-
much as they are matters of private law and not governmental concerns (Legit-
imation Crisis, 20).
Here, no political legitimation crisis can exist in Habermas’s view: the mar-
ket legitimates itself by maintaining (relative) parity in the exchange of equiv-
alent values; for this reason, politics and the state do not intervene.
“Apolitical” economic relations keep the state free from burdens of legiti-
mation (Legitimation, 22). Even if the proletariat remains orderly and obedient
312 Texts
Crisis Tendencies
One must not mistake Habermas’s purposes in the section that follows the
four possible crisis types (Legitimation, 50–91): here, he tests hypotheses and
crisis scenarios to see whether they possess sufficient logical-argumentative
force to diagnose not only variations that occur on a case-by-case basis but
also a crisis that late-capitalist society cannot overcome because of limits
inherent in its very principle of organization. Beginning with the assumption
that at least one of these four possible types of crisis must arise so that one may
be justified in speaking of late capitalism at all (Legitimation, 49), Habermas
arrives at the conclusions below.
314 Texts
Of the four tendencies, only one can become a crisis of the social form as a
whole: that of legitimation. The other tendencies toward crisis may be inter-
cepted: through political intervention, economic crisis tendencies are displaced
into the administrative sphere, and from there into the sociocultural system. In
the course of this “solution,” however, the political system expands—that is, it
extends toward the sociocultural system. (In Habermas’s later works, this line
of argument is taken up with the thesis of the “colonization of the lifeworld.”)
In the course of capitalist development, the political system has not only moved
its borders into the economic system but also displaced the sociocultural sys-
tem. To the extent that organizational rationality expands, cultural traditions
(Überlieferungen) are undermined and deprived of vigor: “the residue of tradi-
tion must . . . escape the administrative grasp, for traditions important for legit-
imation cannot be regenerated administratively” (Legitimation, 47).
Under late capitalism, economic crisis tendencies do not imperil society,
however. Habermas rejects the idea that the law of value still holds—i.e., the
view that economic crisis expresses the tendency of profit rates to fall and
the argument that the state represents the “executive organ” of the law of value
(Legitimation Crisis, 51). Against the thesis of continuity (affirmed, for exam-
ple, by Elmar Altvater and Ernest Mandel), Habermas breaks with purely eco-
nomic logic and argues in terms of political effects that occur on the level of
relations of production as a whole. For him, capitalist structures are shaped by
the logic of economic processes and by political countersteering through
social programs (Konjunktursteuerung und Sozialstaat) (Legitimation Crisis,
53–55). Given the existence of an articulated educational system and a fully
developed research sector, for example, there are now social realms that can
no longer be understood solely in terms of the logic of exchange. (This argu-
ment against the law of value played a much larger role in Habermas’s writings
of the 1960s.)
When crisis tendencies are intercepted economically, the central problem-
atic may be sought in the political sphere. Political crisis tendencies occur in
two forms: as output crises (insufficient administrative steering ability/ratio-
nality crises) or as input crises (insufficient mass loyalty/legitimation crises).
Contra theories of state planning inspired by Marx, however, Habermas does not
consider this circumstance to represent a crisis of rationality (Legitimation, 46ff.).
Neither the thesis that the state unconsciously follows economic law nor the the-
sis that the state is, by nature, the agent of monopoly capitalism—nor theories
that strike a balance between these two positions—can demonstrate that it must
necessarily fail in efforts to right economic imbalances.
Although the state is not in the position to anticipate the problems that fol-
low on its actions, and although these actions occur by stages, the outcome of
administrative steering efforts ultimately involves resolving tension between
the goal of maintaining the capitalist structure as a whole, the interests of
Legitimation Crisis 315
The third section of Legitimation Crisis, “On the Logic of Legitimation Prob-
lems,” seeks to dispel a final doubt: Might it be possible to do without instances
of legitimation—for example, by changing the socialization of citizens in such
a way that their actions are not tied to norms requiring justification? Here, the
optimism Habermas demonstrates toward youthful protesters who demand
moral universalism gives way to skepticism about whether, in the future, legit-
imacy will still be thought to depend on the truth, and whether politics will
continue to be viewed as a matter requiring rationally demonstrable justification.
The reflections of Niklas Luhmann, in particular, prompt these concerns. Against
the latter’s purely empirical theory, which focuses on securing acceptance and
obedience (Folgebereitschaft)—matters that require no justification—Habermas
affirms two core assumptions that must hold for his crisis theory to prove
valid (Legitimation, 96). First: motivations are not primarily—much less
altogether—determined by emotions and desires; in essence, they depend on
interiorizing symbolic structures of expectation (i.e., norms). Obedience of
political authority—as Max Weber already demonstrated—does not depend
only on fear, opportunism, or the eventualities of punishment and reward; it
is also a matter of believing in the legitimacy of power as it is constituted and
of recognizing its validity.
Habermas agrees with Weber on this point. However, he takes leave of him
on a second item. Whereas Weber retains an empirical bearing, Habermas
stresses that factually valid norms can turn out to be correct or not—that is,
they refer to something that is either true or false. In his later writings (e.g.,
Rekonstruktion), he elaborates the idea—at which he only hints here—that
there are stages of moral consciousness (as Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg
have claimed in the context of developmental psychology). Legitimation Crisis
Legitimation Crisis 319
Toward the end of Legitimation Crisis (117–129), the text takes on a dark
tone. All the arguments presented until this point are brought together, and
Habermas entertains the possibility that actions might be viewed without
imputing normativity to their underlying motivations. This reflection is
prompted by the fact that, in modernity— i.e., after the secularization of sci-
entific knowledge, which has dispelled a “comforting” interpretation of the
world—the binding force of morality has been reduced to basic norms guaran-
teeing reasonable speech. Morality is no longer able—at least to its former
extent—to stabilize identity formations; it is inherently “powerless” (Legitima-
tion, 127). Habermas finds confirmation that justification might ultimately be
done away with in the cynicism of late-bourgeois consciousness following
Nietzschean nihilism, in the thesis of the end of the individual (from Hork-
heimer and Adorno up to Gehlen and Schelsky), in understandings of democ-
racy that amount to theories for (selecting) an elite (e.g., Schumpeter), and in
parts of the student movement that have abandoned praxis in favor of projects
of self-realization—or simple self-indulgence.
Ultimately, however, Habermas considers it far from decided that these ten-
dencies will prevail. At the end of Legitimation Crisis, he identifies the negative
utopia of motivation being procured through the abandonment of normative
models; once more, he makes Luhmann’s systems theory the central point of
reference for his own reflections. Giving up social integration through norms
as the pillar of sociological theory and focusing instead on issues of self-stabili-
zation and overcoming complexity—as Luhmann does—means renouncing
the sole point of reference for organizing society along the lines of reason. In
political terms, this methodological shift signifies that theory has replaced
democratic participation with self-legitimating processes of administration.
Ultimately, then, Habermas rejects efforts to restrict reason to instrumen-
tal rationality—or, as is the case in Luhmann’s writings, to systems rationality
(whereby “rationality” means nothing but subordinating oneself to a “funda-
mentally opportunistic life-process” [Legitimation, 141]). He holds fast to his
project of establishing a concept of practice centered on will formation
through discourse based on reason—knowing, all the while, that critical the-
ory of this kind, inasmuch as it relies on practical rationality, can also founder
on bad circumstances (schlechte Realität).
the author’s integration of systems theory into his critical theory of society
and the binary opposition between social integration and system integra-
tion occasioned broad disagreement (which was not limited to Marxist
political theorists [Peters 1993, 311]). When The Theory of Communicative
Action appeared—which concentrated on the opposition between “system”
and “lifeworld”—exchanges became even more heated (Honneth 1991).
In 1975, a translation of Legitimation Crisis appeared in the United States. It
was prepared by Thomas McCarthy, whose own book, The Critical Theory of
Jürgen Habermas (1978; published in German two years later), offered, in the
final chapter, an extensive discussion of problems of legitimation under late
capitalism. This study was responsible for the first wave of Habermas recep-
tion in English-speaking lands—which was soon followed by scholarly engage-
ment with The Theory of Communicative Action (see Thompson and Held
1982, Benhabib 1986, White 1995).
McCarthy held that capitalist legitimation problems express the embar-
rassment that no organized social movement has emerged as an effective vehi-
cle of critique. For this reason, he observed, Habermas “is forced to remain at
the level of pointing out broad crisis tendencies.” “His critique retains an
anonymous character” inasmuch as it is not addressed to any particular social
actor (McCarthy 1980, 385–386).
Now, at the beginning of a new century, questions have again arisen about
the nature of theory that seeks to be critical of society and about groups that
might undertake social protest in an efficacious manner. Axel Honneth’s
incorporation of Habermasian theory into his reflections on “recognition”
(Anerkennung), for example, has attempted to revitalize the notion of legiti-
mation crisis in a manner that relates more explicitly to matters of subjectivity
and identity (Iser 2008, 147). In addition, the notions of “paradox” and “paradoxi-
cal contradiction” (Hartmann 2005) have provided a means of understanding,
in theoretical terms, movements that are critical of society. However, as Offe
has remarked (2005, 269), these efforts focus on phenomena that are less struc-
tural (strukturbedingt) in nature than “essentially contingent.” On this basis,
then, it seems impossible to identify subjective experiences that might provide
the basis for critical, democratic movements (Iser 2005).
Since the end of the 1970s, the notion of crisis has come to seem almost
banal and has lost its “theoretical and political acuteness (Schärfe)” (Beck 1992,
189). In general, it now refers to a situation that does not necessarily represent
a systemic danger. A crisis of legitimation—however one views the analytic
and critical operations that the concept affords—did not occur in actual fact
after the publication of Habermas’s book (e.g., Peters 1993, 218). However, fol-
lowing the economic and financial disaster on a global scale in 2008–2009,
the diagnosis presented in Legitimation Crisis has again achieved currency—
even if (or perhaps precisely because) it is evident, and in massive terms, that
324 Texts
References
Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Trans. Mark Ritter. London:
Sage.
Benhabib, Seyla. 1986. Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical
Theory. New York: Columbia University Press.
Berger, Peter, and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise
in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1966.
Blanke, Bernhard, Ulrich Jürgens, and Hans Kastendiek, eds. 1975. Kritik der politischen
Wissenschaft. Analysen von Politik und Ökonomie in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft.
Frankfurt: Campus.
Ebbighausen, Rolf, ed. 1976. Bürgerlicher Staat und politische Legitimation. Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp.
Geis, Anna, and David Strecker, eds. 2005. Blockaden staatlicher Politik: Sozialwissen-
schaftliche Analysen im Anschluss an Claus Offe. Frankfurt: Campus.
——. 1975. Legitimation Crisis. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon.
Habermas, Jürgen, and Niklas Luhmann. 1971. Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnol-
ogie – Was leistet die Systemforschung? Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Hartmann, Martin. 2005. “Paradoxien des ‘neuen’ Kapitalismus.” In Geis and Strecker
2005, 199–212.
Honneth, Axel. 1991. The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory.
Trans. Kenneth Baynes. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Iser, Matthias. 2005. “Krise und Kritik – mehr als ein Anachronismus?” In Geis and
Strecker 2005, 185–198.
——. 2008. Empörung und Fortschritt. Grundlagen einer kritischen Theorie der Gesellschaft.
Frankfurt: Campus.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1969. Legitimation durch Verfahren. Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1969.
McCarthy, Thomas. 1978. The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press.
Offe, Claus. 1972. Strukturprobleme des kapitalistischen Staates. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. “Rote Fäden und lose Enden. Anmerkungen zu einer Mega-Agenda.” In Geis and
Strecker 2005, 245–277.
Peters, Bernhard. 1993. Die Integration moderner Gesellschaften. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Thompson, John B., and David Held, eds. 1982. Habermas: Critical Debates. London:
Macmillan.
White, Stephen K., ed. 1995. The Cambridge Companion to Habermas. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Wiggershaus, Rolf. 2004. Jürgen Habermas. Reinbek: Rowohlt.
32
HISTORY AND EVOLUTION
Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus (1976)
THOMAS MCCARTHY
T
he essays collected in Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Mate-
rialismus (1976), all written in the mid-1970s, represent a major
juncture in Habermas’s thought. They brought his reflections on
historical materialism since the 1950s together with his work in the early 1970s
on the theory of communicative action, on one side, and with the results of his
recent exchange with Niklas Luhmann concerning social-systems theory, on
the other side. Together they introduced the research program that would
soon lead to The Theory of Communicative Action (1985 [1981]).
By the start of the 1970s, Habermas had begun to move in an even more robust
theoretical direction, which was signaled by his systematic work on theories of
language and of ontogenetic development as well as by his intensified efforts to
get clear on the nature and limits of social-systems theory: both “Vorberei-
tende Bemerkungen zu einer Theorie der kommunikativen Kompetenz” (see
chapter 30 in this volume) and Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie?
appeared in 1971 (Habermas and Luhmann 1971). The new research program
called for a general theory of linguistic communication, in the form of a univer-
sal pragmatics (see chapter 47 in this volume); which was to serve as the basis
for a theory of individual development, in the form of a general account of the
acquisition, in stages, of communicative or interactive competence; and build-
ing on both of these, a theory of social evolution, which Habermas conceived as
an action-theoretic and system-theoretic reconstruction of historical materi-
alism. Though Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus contained
one essay on the development of ego identity and moral consciousness, this
article will focus on social evolution, which is also the main focus of Zur
Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus.
Parsons’s structural functionalism interested Habermas as an attempt to
incorporate the action frame of reference into a theory of the social system as
a complex of functionally differentiated subsystems. But he criticized Parsons
for ultimately subordinating the action-theoretic to the system-theoretic per-
spective, especially after he had appropriated ideas from biocybernetics into
his theory of social evolution and thereby short-circuited the hermeneutic
and critical moments of social inquiry. Parsons’s later work led to a revolt on
the action-theoretic front, in the form of a variety of radically interpretive
approaches to social inquiry, from phenomenology and ethnomethodology to
social interactionism, linguistic analysis, and hermeneutics. In the present
context, however, it is the reaction on the other, system-theoretic front, that is
of immediate interest: the resolution of the tensions in Parsons’s dualistic
approach by a more radical and more consistent subordination of the theory
of social action to the demands of social-systems theory. The exemplar of this
approach was Niklas Luhmann, with whom Habermas began an exchange in
the early 1970s (Habermas and Luhmann 1971), which continued until the lat-
ter’s death in 1999 (see chapter 11 in this volume). On this front, the research
program outlined in Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus
328 Texts
Reception
References
Honneth, Axel, and Urs Jaeggi, eds. 1980. Arbeit, Handlung, Normativität: Theorien des
Historischen Materialismus. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Honneth, Axel, and Hans Joas, eds. 1991. Communicative Action: Essays on Jürgen Haber-
mas’s The Theory of Communicative Action. Trans. Jeremy Gaines. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press.
Keane, John. 1977. “On Turning Theory Against Itself: Review of Zur Rekonstruktion des
Historischen Materialismus by Jürgen Habermas.” Theory and Society 4:561–572.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1976. “Evolution und Geschichte.” Geschichte und Gesellschaft.
Zeitschrift für historische Sozialwissenschaft 2:284–309.
McCarthy, Thomas. 1989. “Anhang.” In Kritik der Verständigungsverhältnisse. Zur Theorie
von Jürgen Habermas, trans. Max Looser, 501–616. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Schmid, Michael. 1982. “Habermas’s Theory of Social Evolution.” In Habermas: Critical
Debates, ed. John Thompson and David Held, 162–180. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
33
APORIAS OF CULTURAL
MODERNIT Y
“Modernity—an Unfinished Project” (1980)
CHRISTOPH MENKE
I
n 1980, Habermas enjoyed the distinction of being the first recipient
of the Adorno Prize. On the anniversary of Adorno’s birthday, he
delivered his acceptance speech in St. Paul’s Church in Frankfurt:
“Modernity—an Unfinished Project.” This speech vigorously attacked an
array of heterogeneous positions that, in the speaker’s estimation, all had
abandoned the emancipatory ideas of modernity. Habermas’s name for these
projects as a whole was “postmodern.” In pronouncing this judgment, Habermas
took himself to be following a fundamental intention of Adorno himself, who
had “unreservedly . . . subscribe[d] to the spirit of modernity” (“Modernity,”
38). Habermas’s speech, in other words, sought to address “the question con-
cerning the current attitude with respect to modernity” (38).
According to Habermas, answering this question amounts to providing a
response, in the present, to the older question: “What is Enlightenment?”
Enlightenment, he affirmed, is the “project of modernity.” However, in this
day and age, it is no longer enough simply to repeat Kant’s (1991) injunction a
priori to think courageously for oneself. Rather, one must understand the
“aporias” (“Modernity,” 44) that have beset efforts to translate this call into
action over the last two hundred years. Instead of “unreservedly” subscribing
to the spirit of modernity, then, Habermas’s speech was animated by another
impulse that Adorno followed: to pursue the project of Enlightenment, one
must, first of all, consider its “dialectic”—that is to say, its “aporias.” The proj-
ect of Enlightenment must become self-reflective.
Given this intention, it may, in retrospect, seem surprising how many
polemics Habermas’s speech occasioned—above all, in the poststructuralist,
neo-avant-garde, and “Alternative Left” (Linksalternative) camps (see Kraush-
aar et al. 1980). The biggest reason for the discord was that Habermas accused
these groups—which he labeled “Young Conservative” (“Modernity,” 53)—
of simply giving up the idea of Enlightenment: in their efforts to come to
terms with the “aporias” of modernity, he saw only counter-Enlightenment
“Modernity—an Unfinished Project” 335
tendencies and projects. Since then, the charge has affected the reception of
Habermas’s own work much more than that of his rivals. An account of
polemical exchanges following Habermas’s speech would offer great insight
into the history of theory in the 1980s and 1990s. The discussion at hand, how-
ever, is concerned above all with the argumentative structure of Habermas’s
considerations and the problems that attend them. Habermas’s speech upon
receiving the Adorno Prize, its brevity notwithstanding, presents a sophisti-
cated theoretical program—the blueprint for his major works of the next two
decades.
In “Modernity—an Unfinished Project,” Habermas presents his argument
in three stages: a brief summary of the conditions (which, in fact, cannot be
surveyed in their entirety) in which the question of modernity is situated; an
equally concise rejection of the neoconservative interpretation of this situa-
tion, which Habermas details by way of the distinction between “social” and
“cultural” modernity; and, finally, a discussion, in the main part of the speech,
of the “aporias” of cultural modernity. On this basis, Habermas suggests how
the project of Enlightenment may be reformulated.
over the course of the 1960s and the 1970s (Habermas 1981, cf. Brunkhorst
1987). Whereas in the 1960s debate about modern social change concerned the
possibility of continuing—indeed, radicalizing—the emancipatory promises
made by modernity in its inaugural form, since the 1970s, the question has
been the extent to which such change provides the opportunity to break with
totalitarian tendencies in the logic of modernity. Two items, then, have under-
gone alteration: the concept of modernity itself and, thereby, the expectations
and concepts with which social transformations in the present day are to be
viewed. The zeitgeist, according to Habermas, thinks that the economic, tech-
nological, administrative, and cultural changes of the present herald the end
of modernity.
In the Adorno Prize speech, Habermas demonstrates how his interpretive
strategy permits one to understand the field of the arts. He begins by recalling
the fact that the expression “modern” has always referred to the present as
what is new—i.e., different from what is old (“Modernity,” 40). At the same
time, modernity does not concern novelty for its own sake. Rather, its innova-
tions are motivated by the claim to “authenticity”—that is, the aim to do things
right for the first time by breaking with received practices. The new repre-
sents the emergence of what is true, which can only manifest itself in rupture
with historical tradition. Benjamin’s concept of the Jetztzeit valorizes this
orientation, as does Octavio Paz’s view that modernism—“as a self-negating
movement”—is driven by “a ‘yearning for true presence’ ” (“Modernity,” 40).
Habermas adopts the perspective of Peter Bürger (1984) (and Paz, too) when he
reflects on the “mentality of aesthetic modernity”: “Does it indicate the demise
of modernity? Does the post-avant-garde imply a transition to postmoder-
nity?” (42). Or is it the case that now we are witnesses to a post-avant-garde
modernity—and, analogously, to postmonopolistic, postbureaucratic, posthi-
erarchical, and postrationalist modernity?
The neoconservative view of the end of the avant-garde (Bell 1991) holds that
this movement, although it exhausted itself in artistic terms, generated a
socially destructive force that continues to operate today: “The avant-garde
has supposedly penetrated the values of everyday life and thus infected the
lifeworld with the modernist mentality” (“Modernity,” 42). In this way, neo-
conservatism explains the disintegrative phenomena of consumerism, ego-
tism, narcissism, and individualism in present-day society. Habermas observes
that such a critique occurs by halves: modernity should be combated and sur-
passed in cultural terms; economically, technologically, and politically,
“Modernity—an Unfinished Project” 337
The main portion of the speech (44–53) develops a concept of cultural moder-
nity that not only rejects the neoconservative position (i.e., the view that
cultural modernity causes social disintegration) but also advances a counter-
argument: cultural modernity, Habermas affirms, can develop a convincing
solution to its own aporias. Although this “solution” is not supposed to replace
the task of steering “the process of social modernization . . . into other non-
capitalist directions” (53), it can be understood to demonstrate (vormachen) in
its own sphere—chiefly, that of culture and the arts—what a change of course
might look like.
By Habermas’s account, modernization involves “separation”/“differentiation”
(Ausdifferenzierung) (45–46). The “project of modernity” concerns a fundamental
338 Texts
“false sublation” of the divide between autonomous art and the lifeworld
was destined to fail, however—just as efforts to transform the lifeworld through
morality or science (49–50) have been in vain.
All the same, Habermas maintains that a look at art proves instructive
about how not to resolve the Enlightenment problem of differentiated culture
splitting off from the lifeworld. Examination of art, moreover, teaches how
the Enlightenment can, in fact, solve the problems it has produced: not by try-
ing to change the lifeworld from the position of expert culture but rather
through the “interplay” of different normative considerations, which are treated
in specialized fashion by various expert cultures. The project of Enlighten-
ment involves overcoming the gap between expert cultures and the lifeworld
inasmuch as the claims of both spheres are preserved simultaneously: the
(experts’) claim to specialization in matters of culture, on the one hand, and
the (lifeworld’s) claim to “unconstrained interplay between the cognitive, the
moral-practical, and the aesthetic-expressive dimensions” (“Modernity,” 50;
cf. Seel 1991), on the other.
How—indeed, the fact that—this solution can be coherently conceived is
evident, according to Habermas, in the function that “criticism” performs with
respect to art. Art criticism not only educates lay people but also teaches them
to relate “aesthetic experiences to problems in their own lives”—that is, to
appreciate and understand the “exploratory, life-orientating power” of the
great works (as Peter Weiss demonstrated in The Aesthetics of Resistance)
(“Modernity,” 52). Criticism is Enlightenment that occurs through the appro-
priation of “expert culture . . . from the perspective of the lifeworld”—a “dif-
ferentiated reconnection of modern culture with an everyday sphere of praxis
that is dependent on a living heritage and yet is impoverished by mere tradi-
tionalism” (52).
Habermas’s conception of Enlightenment has two levels, then: the first
concerns the differentiation, by way of rationalization, of forms of knowl-
edge from the lifeworld; the second involves mediating points of reconnec-
tion between separate (differentiated) spheres and the lifeworld. Conversely,
Habermas considers those positions to be “conservative” (or counter-Enlight-
enment) if they do not perform one or both of these functions. Habermas
distinguishes three such positions: “Young Conservative” aesthetes, “Old
Conservative” traditionalists, and “New Conservative” separatists (53–54).
Young Conservatives pursue the one-sided aestheticization of the lifeworld,
Old Conservatives contest the rational achievements of sociocultural differen-
tiation, and New Conservatives abandon the idea of reconnecting with any-
thing at all.
340 Texts
After Habermas’s speech was published, especially the thinkers who had been
labeled “Young Conservatives” rejected being characterized as enemies of
Enlightenment (see Foucault 1984, Kamper 1987). Debate concerning Haber-
mas’s understanding of postmodern and poststructuralist positions—which
only became more pronounced with the appearance of The Philosophical Dis-
course of Modernity—achieved vast dimensions, above all in the United States
(e.g., Passerin d’Entrèves and Benhabib 1996). The following does not address
matters of disputed interpretation but focuses on four objective (sachlich)
dimensions of what Habermas said—the points that gave rise to heated
controversy.
Differentiation as Rationalization
Why, when receiving the Adorno Prize, did Habermas discuss the aporias of
cultural modernity—indeed, more narrowly still, the aporias of aesthetic
modernity? How does this relate to the matter of turning “the process of social
modernization . . . into other non-capitalist directions” (“Modernity,” 53)?
What is the relationship between aesthetic/cultural Enlightenment and politi-
cal/social transformation?
The answer—as Habermas indicates in his speech—is that cultural moder-
nity and social modernity face structurally homologous problems. Accord-
ingly, a solution to the aporias of cultural modernity may provide a model for
solving the contradictions one encounters in social modernization. Haber-
mas’s account of how the “reconnection of modern culture with an everyday
sphere of praxis . . . dependent on . . . living heritage” (52) can occur in the
realm of art illustrates a more general conception of Enlightenment that
applies not just to other spheres of culture but also to the rationalized social
systems that have “separated off” from the lifeworld (i.e., law, administration,
and economy). Cultural and social problems are homologous: in either case, it
is a matter of transformation—under duress—of practices in the lifeworld by
means of procedures and systems of action that have emerged as differentiated
spheres in the course of rationalizing processes. This conception of Enlighten-
ment—which Habermas develops to resolve the aporias of cultural moder-
nity—may also be understood to offer a model for how “the process of social
modernization can . . . be turned into other non-capitalist directions” (53).
Homology obtains between social problems, aporias, and contradictions,
on the one hand, and, on the other, their solutions, which follow the logic of
cultural Enlightenment and social transformation. When Habermas extols
the “exploratory, life-orientating power which can emanate from the encounter
with a great painting” (52), he identifies another closely related matter. Weiss’s
Aesthetics of Resistance—from which Habermas takes the example—discusses
young communist workers standing before, and talking about, the Altar of Per-
gamon in Berlin. These young people were not just “appropriating” a discrete
artistic meaning that corresponded to social change in structural terms;
instead, the Enlightenment they experienced by way of the aesthetic was to lead
the way to social transformation. Here, homology—i.e., a relation that unfolds
on a single plane—did not obtain between art and society; rather, a reflexive
relation emerged. Art is a medium of social transformation: in the first place,
because society appears differently in the medium of art; second, because
“Modernity—an Unfinished Project” 347
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34
STAND-IN AND INTERPRETER
“Philosophy as Stand-In and Interpreter” (1981)
HAUKE BRUNKHORST
I
n 1981, the Hegel Conference in Stuttgart addressed the “Hamlet
debate” of German philosophy: “Kant or Hegel?” The highpoint of the
event occurred when the avant-garde of American pragmatism took
the stage. Richard Rorty (1983), whose groundbreaking critique of philosophi-
cal idealism Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) had just been trans-
lated into German, made a brief introduction. Willard V. O. Quine (1983), who
followed him, took apart the myth of autonomous reference—demolishing the
notion that the statements in which we offer our reflections hold indepen-
dently of the theoretical framework in which we make them (412–413). Don-
ald Davidson (1983) then presented his holistic theory, according to which
no truth may hold without, at the same time, implicating the entirety of our
linguistic praxis (423–438). The three speakers affirmed Hegel’s unqualified
triumph. Kantian dualism had been negated and elevated to a newfound
unity, where continuity obtained between semantics and knowledge of the
world (Bedeutungs- und Weltwissen). Once more, the Whole was the True,
even if “the Supreme Lord of the world [i.e., Hegelian philosophy] swims
unproven in his own blood” (Heine 1964, 250).
Finally, Hilary Putnam (1983), the last speaker on the panel, showed that,
whereas our linguistically constituted forms of life cannot be observed—much
less directed—from an Archimedean standpoint external to them, theoretical
critique and practical transcendence are possible from within. Yet again,
Hegel emerged victorious. He did so not just in positive terms (in der Sache)
but also with respect to the dialectical method of determinate negation—the
erstwhile archenemy of analytic philosophy. A further dualism—theory and
practice—that had prompted Kant to engage in Aristotelian evasions (“judg-
ment”) was eliminated and replaced by a continuum along the lines of John
Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy.
However, this time, too, the price for Hegel was high, for his own method
had been turned against him: if Hegel had managed to present his forebear’s
notion of critique as a mode of progress for scientific/philosophical thought,
practical self-transcendence (praktische Selbsttranszendenz) was precisely what
350 Texts
he had always objected to and warned of. When Hegel’s student Marx (Hen-
rich 1971, 187–208) took up the idea of practical self-transcendence, he did not
conquer the halls of the university, but he did make history on a larger scale—
affirming the idea of a world-changing praxis that, from a position within the
true Whole, turns against it and reveals it to be false. If one duly applies Hegel’s
method and dispenses with the end (Abbruch) of reflection that occurs when
one reaches a speculative conclusion, the Real is no longer the Reasonable.
The nightmare of idealism comes true: Reason finds itself “in the midst of the
‘manure’ [mitten im ‘Dünger’] of contradictions” (Marx 1968, 80)—put there by
Hegel’s own philosophy, which has been forced to break with its own system
inasmuch as reality (Wirkliches) has been recognized as bad reality (schlecht
erkannt). Reason no longer (as in Hegel’s philosophy) guarantees and transfig-
ures reality; instead—and in a manner comparable only to “womankind” (das
Weibliche) in Hegel’s system—it stands, through the process of dialectical rever-
sal, to become “an internal enemy” of the “community” (Gemeinwesen) (Hegel
1977, 475).
That evening, Habermas delivered “Philosophy as Stand-In and Inter-
preter,” which effortlessly connected with these lines of argument. The lecture
provides a—if not the—key to his work as a whole. Habermas observes that
academic philosophy, in keeping with the poststructuralist zeitgeist, has been
shifting from the “Master Thinkers” Kant, Hegel, and Marx to the equally
masterful Nietzsche (Moral Consciousness, 1). Even though he does not support
his contemporaries’ occasional apologetics for the latter thinker, Habermas
concedes that the point of agreement between poststructuralism, deconstruc-
tion, and pragmatism—which follows from the Nietzschean critique of the
element of domination (Herrschaftscharakter) in Kantian foundationalism
(which proves formalist and divisive)—is justified all too well (5).
Henceforth, Kant declared, philosophy would not seek to know the legisla-
tive workings of Nature itself, which remain shrouded by the veil of (human)
ignorance. Indeed, it had always been presumptuous to hold that philosophy
might have access to the innermost will and knowledge of the Supreme Legis-
lator—the Idea as it really exists. Alongside the new “king”—whether People,
Reason, or Nature—philosophy, which had been reduced to matters of form
and function, no longer had a place. Relieved of the burdens of substantial
and formal sovereignty (and situated on the “left” of the parliamentary
arrangement of faculties, immediately adjacent to the Jacobins [Kant 1992]),
it should content itself with executive supervision of the sciences and, in
addition, be the “appointed judge” (Kant 2008, 16 [B XIII]) of culture. The
judge of the constitutional court (Verfassungsrichter), as it were, philosophy
should provide, on the basis of proof by procedure, at least a hypothetical
understanding of legal conditions (die Gesetzeslage) and impose firm limits
on speculation.
Although Kant dethroned the philosopher-king once and for all, he estab-
lished “philosophy . . . as the highest court of appeal vis-à-vis the sciences and
culture as a whole” (Moral Consciousness, 3), to compensate for what had been
lost in terms of pure cognition (Erkenntnis). By granting such judiciary
power—and notwithstanding his critique of “master-thinking” and the “over-
lordly [vornehm] tone” he adopted (Kant 1977)—Kant charged philosophy
with another, undue burden. As Habermas puts it: “Kantian philosophy dif-
ferentiates what Weber was to call the ‘value spheres of culture’ (science and
technology, law, and morality, art and art criticism), while at the same time
legitimating them within their respective limits. Thus Kantian philosophy
poses as the highest court of appeal vis-à-vis the sciences and culture as a
whole” (Moral Consciousness, 2–3; cf. Kant 2008, 569 [B 799]).
Kant also imputes too much to philosophy by equipping it with the legal
authority of synthetic knowledge a priori, for the executive role of assigning
individual sciences their place establishes absolute limits for what can be expe-
rienced (unübersteigbare Grenzen des Erfahrbaren). At the very hour of his fall,
the transcendental philosopher rises again as a master thinker. Yet indignities
lie in store: “[Philosophy] wants to clarify the foundations of the sciences once
and for all, defining the limits of what can and cannot be experienced. This is
tantamount to an act of ushering the sciences to their proper place. It seems
philosophy is overburdened by playing the role of usher” (Moral Conscious-
ness, 2; translation modified).
According to Habermas, the basis of this twofold overburdening lies in the
idea of knowledge a priori, which Kant retains—all formalism and nuance not-
withstanding. Even the formalized and differentiated “foundationalism” of
Reason can be grounded only inasmuch as “cognition before cognition” occurs;
thereby, philosophy “sets up a domain between itself and the sciences” and
352 Texts
maliciously) alleged, time and again, of the ideal, goal, and program underly-
ing Habermas’s theory of communicative action. Instead, Habermas main-
tains that only the better argument may exert “force.” This occurs when a
social actor agrees on the basis of his or her own insight—indeed, it happens
constantly for any and all social actors. Herein lies the power of Reason in
History—when, as Walter Benjamin put it, a “sphere of human agreement that
is wholly inaccessible to violence” emerges: “the proper sphere of ‘coming to an
understanding,’ language” (Benjamin 1996, 245; quoted—with approbation—in
Habermas 1972, 221).
All the same, “discourses are islands in the sea of praxis” (Habermas 1982).
The roles of stand-in and interpreter—like the communicative power that
makes the “philosophization” of science and mass culture possible in the first
place (see chapter 65 in this volume)—involve matters of practice through and
through. Research programs, communities of inquiry, and points of agree-
ment in the public sphere are all contaminated by power—be it communica-
tive, social, or administrative (see chapters 67 and 13 in this volume)—that is,
they are all caught up in struggles for influence and dominance. Benjamin’s
warning, which Habermas (1972, 221) quotes, applies: “Pessimism all along the
line. Absolutely. Mistrust . . . three times mistrust in all reconciliation: between
classes, between nations, between individuals. And unlimited trust only in
I. G. Farben and the peaceful perfection of the air force” (Benjamin 2005, 217).
Unlike the media of money and administrative power, influence and com-
municative power—the spheres where philosophy operates as a stand-in and
as an interpreter, respectively—are doubly coded. Communicative power
degenerates into the ideology of hegemonic power when its protective reserve
of arguments (argumentative Deckungsreserve) melts away. It is altogether
without resource when, faced with flagrant injustice and brutal repression, it
cannot make recourse to the material reserve of “avenging violence” (rächende
Gewalt) (Habermas 1982; cf. Communicative Action, 2:187). That is, communi-
cative power—as the “unforced force of the better argument”—is a protective
reserve that cannot be made binding in order to unburden the actor of the risk
or “danger” (Arendt) involved in all action. (This, too, is a point of difference
between postmetaphysical and “master” thinking.)
All forms of power (Macht) are “covered” by different forms of violence
(Gewalt)—or, to take up Luhmann’s terminology, they are bound, by symbiotic
mechanisms, to the movement of bodies (durch symbiotische Mechanismen an
das Bewegen von Körpern gebunden) (Luhmann 1974). For this reason, Haber-
mas does not place power and violence in opposition, as Arendt does. Rather,
he contrasts communicative power, on the one hand, and administrative
power, on the other. Whereas the protective reserve of social power involves,
e.g., boycotting, strikes, and lockouts, the protective reserve of administrative
power consists of police and military deployments; the ultimate resource of
358 Texts
Kant or Hegel?
References
Benjamin, Walter. 1996. Selected Writings. Vol. 1: 1913–1926, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael
W. Jennings. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
——. 2003. Selected Writings. Vol. 4: 1938–1940, ed. Michael W. Jennings and Howard
Eiland. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
——. 2005. Selected Writings. Vol. 2, Part 1: 1927–1930, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard
Eiland, and Gary Smith. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
“Philosophy as Stand-In and Interpreter” 359
Davidson, Donald. 1983. “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge.” In Henrich 1983,
423–438.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1972. “Bewusstmachende oder rettende Kritik—Die Aktualität Walter
Benjamins.” In Zur Aktualität Walter Benjamins, 173–224. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1982. “A Reply to my Critics.” In Habermas: Critical Debates, ed. John B. Thompson
and David Held, 219–283. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1977. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heine, Heinrich. 1964. “Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland.” In
Sämtliche Werke, 9:153–285. Munich: Kindler.
Henrich, Dieter. 1971. Hegel im Kontext. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——, ed. 1983. Kant oder Hegel? Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Kant, Immanuel. 1977. “Von einem neuerdings erhobenen vornehmen Ton in der Philoso-
phie.” In Werke, 6:377–397. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1992. The Conflict of the Faculties. Trans. Mary J. Gregor. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press.
——. 2008. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Marcus Weigelt. New York: Penguin.
Kesselring, Thomas. 1981. Entwicklung und Widerspruch. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1984. Die Produktivität der Antinomie: Hegels Dialektik im Lichte der genetischen
Erkenntnistheorie und der formalen Logik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
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Programmes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1974. “Symbiotische Mechanismen.” In Gewaltverhältnisse und die Ohn-
macht der Kritik, ed. Klaus Horn et al., 107–131. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1975. Macht. Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius.
Marx, Karl. 1968. Theorien über den Mehrwert. Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt.
——. 1977. Critique of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right.” Ed. Joseph O’Malley. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Putnam, Hilary. 1983. “Was ist Epistemologie?” In Henrich 1983, 439–448.
Quine, Willard V. O. 1983. “Gegenstand und Beobachtung.” In Henrich 1983, 412–422.
Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-
versity Press.
——. 1983. “Zur Einführung.” In Henrich 1983, 408–411.
35
THE THEORY OF SOCIET Y
The Theory of Communicative Action (1981): A Classic of
Social Theory
DAVID STRECKER
K
ey to the social philosophy of Jürgen Habermas is his deeply held
conviction that social evolution represents a history of progress in
principle while at the same time—and as a matter of actual fact—
being the cause of grave social ills. His project is shaped, then, by an awareness
of suffering and crisis—matters that do not even occur to neoconservative and
neoliberal modernizers, entranced as they are by technical and economic
development. Simultaneously, he maintains critical distance from parties
who, when faced with the catastrophes that modernity has produced, take
flight for archaic utopias. In fleshing out this conviction that a single process
has generated both emancipatory and pathological traits, Habermas’s central
idea concerns the fact that the different progressive potentials of modernization
have not all been realized in equal measure over the course of history; hence,
social evolution is to be understood as a process of one-sided rationalization.
Habermas’s project, then, consists in substantiating two propositions: First,
that social modernization releases a comprehensive potential for reason (Ver-
nunftpotential) and, second, that these rational potentials are employed only
in part and thereby become distorted and produce destructive effects. Accord-
ing to this conception, the path leading out of traditional conditions of depen-
dency has not secured personal autonomy and social solidarity; instead, old
constraints on liberty have been replaced by new forms of “immaturity”
(Unmündigkeit), which arise from a structural compulsion to adopt technical-
instrumental orientations toward oneself and the world.
The Theory of Communicative Action (cf. Vorstudien and Postmetaphysi-
cal) is the result of more than two decades of efforts to explicate this intu-
ition in the terms of social theory. Habermas’s monumental magnum opus
spans two volumes, some 1,200 printed pages, and incorporates numerous
and diverse sociological and philosophical approaches. In all this, what
remains crucial to Habermas is the tradition of Western Marxism that he
first worked through systematically in the 1950s: “Everything I have incor-
porated [Alles, was ich mir . . . angeeignet habe] owes its significance to the
The Theory of Communicative Action 361
project of social theory renewed along the lines of this tradition” (Unübersi-
chtlichkeit, 216).
As soon as it was published (1981), The Theory of Communicative Action
was recognized as a modern classic of social theory. Indeed, before it had even
appeared in print, the arguments became the object of academic debates and
occasioned heated international exchanges. Today, three-and-a-half decades
later, the social-theoretical reflections that Habermas presented have become
entrenched in the canon of sociological theory; the basic concepts outlined in
the book are familiar to generations of students and a broad public alike. The
author enjoys a degree of celebrity practically unmatched by contemporary
philosophers.
For all that, only some elements of The Theory of Communicative Action
form a vigorous component of current debates. Above all, Habermas’s philo-
sophical considerations have retained their vitality; his sociological theorems,
on the other hand, have survived more as keywords than as positive
knowledge. In fact, in current discussions on social theory, The Theory of
Communicative Action is absent. One is more likely to find—in addition to
omnipresent diagnoses of the times (Zeitdiagnosen)—discussions of “rational
choice,” network analysis, Anthony Giddens’s notion of structuration, Pierre
Bourdieu’s logic of practice, or (in some settings) Niklas Luhmann’s systems
theory. And as one can gather from debates on discourse analysis and govern-
mentality, far more energy is derived from the works of Michel Foucault than
from Habermas’s social theory.
At least in part, this state of affairs is attributable to the programmatic
nature of The Theory of Communicative Action. Its high level of abstraction
has certainly contributed to Habermas’s aims remaining, for the most part,
unrealized in empirical terms. What is more, social theory is not terribly pop-
ular these days. Given the heightened complexity of social systems in the
twenty-first century, hardly anyone feels confident enough to reflect on phe-
nomena comprehensively, i.e., in their “totality,” and to account for the “big
picture.” The difficulty is only compounded by the fact that the concept of
“society” has, historically, been linked to the organization of the nation-
state—a connection that makes it now seem obsolete. Today, the theory of
society (Gesellschaftstheorie) has, to a large extent, given way to social theory
(Sozialtheorie), which contents itself with outlining the conceptual framework
for empirical research but, in so doing, gives up on explaining discrete social
phenomena in terms of overall context.
For all that, the relative lack of attention currently paid to The Theory of
Communicative Action cannot be adequately explained by the work’s distance
from empirical research or prevailing attitudes of theoretical modesty. The
hulking nature of the project has led Habermas to focus on, clarify, and add to
discrete aspects of his theory (Unübersichtlichkeit, 178ff.; cf. Iser and Strecker
362 Texts
2009); the effect has been to distract from the core feature of his social theory.
It is thanks to just this feature, however, that Habermas’s theory ultimately
proves superior to rival endeavors.
In order to show that the potential for rationality has developed “one-sidedly” in
the course of social modernization, Habermas requires a conception of reason
(Vernunftbegriff) that goes beyond purely instrumental rationality (see chapter
72 in this volume). Since the notion of instrumental reason only allows for judg-
ing means in light of determinate objectives, a diagnosis like Habermas’s, accord-
ing to which it is unreasonable—and not just worthy of critique in some regard—
to judge social development solely by economic standards of measurement, has to
assume that it is not just means that may prove more or less rational but also the
ends to which they are employed. In explicating such a broader notion of ratio-
nality, Habermas does not confine himself to arguing that moral convictions are
subject to rational justification, too; rather, his primary interest is in how such a
broad notion of reason is socially anchored and effects social evolution. By
reconstructing invariable social structures (i.e., ones that do not depend on any
one culture in particular), he aims to show how one can identify a multidimen-
sional conception of reason that goes beyond its purely instrumental moments.
Habermas finds such a potential for reason (Vernunftpotential) in the
structure of human language (see chapters 30, 57, and 64 in this volume),
where it is already socially operative (and implicitly recognized) inasmuch as
everyday interactions presume its existence and efficacy. Habermas’s point of
departure for developing his argument is the widely held belief that the mean-
ing of a sentence is understood when one knows what makes it true—i.e.,
when one knows its conditions of validity. Habermas then lends a pragmatic
turn to this connection between meaning and validity (see chapter 68 in this
volume) by arguing that knowledge about the conditions under which a state-
ment is true also means knowing how the statement may be justified and what
kind of reasons may be adduced to criticize it.
With the tools provided by formal pragmatics—the science of the struc-
tures governing language use in general—Habermas seeks proof that condi-
tions of validity obtain not only for the “what” but also for the “how” of a
given utterance.
Accordingly, he holds that linguistic communication (Verständigung)
is based on speech acts’ connection to validity claims: whoever declares
The Theory of Communicative Action 363
society but also offers generally sharable standards for critiquing its opera-
tions. One camp, which rejects Habermas’s sociological project as a whole,
doubts that it is possible at all, by reconstructing social structures, to identify
a form of rationality (and to ground normative obligations) that is unob-
structed by empirical contingencies and, therefore, holds unconditionally
(Schnädelbach 1991). Whereas Habermas (Naturalism, 101) maintains that
every other method transcends the realm of reasonable, intersubjectively
comprehensible, postmetaphysical argumentation (see chapters 8 and 66 in
this volume), transcendental philosophers and other advocates of universalis-
tic positions insist that justification must be grounded in a philosophical anal-
ysis of the concept of reason (Apel 1989). A second line of objection focuses on
the pragmatic turn through which Habermas makes the connection between
meaning and validity. In order to understand the meaning of a linguistic
utterance, the argument goes, one need not adopt an evaluative position at all
(Tugendhat 1985, Zimmermann 1985).
Therefore, no constitutive connection exists between understanding (Ver-
stehen) and communication (Verständigung); for this reason, they conclude,
speakers have not “always already” (at least implicitly and counterfactually)
entered into context-transcendent obligations of justification (Cooke 1994).
Like the first objection, this argument has, to date, led more to entrenchment
on both sides than to proposals taking the debate beyond the established posi-
tions. Habermas (1991, 252), for example, has spoken of a “counterintuitive
mode of reading” on the part of his critics and declared his intention to “insist”
(beharren) on his views.
Numerous potential objections were already addressed in The Theory of
Communicative Action. Disagreement persists, above all, about Habermas’s
assertion that more than one kind of validity claim exists and that normative
and expressive issues admit rational elucidation in a similar way to questions
of truth. Accordingly, since publishing the book, Habermas has attempted to
lend additional clarity to the different types of discourse it outlines.
While the validity claim to truthfulness and the realm of aesthetics have
remained largely unexplored, Habermas has somewhat lessened the formal-
ism of his approach to moral issues (in Justification), and he has modified his
theory of truth (in Truth). Nothing in the three-dimensional concept of proce-
dural reason has fundamentally changed, however. Surprisingly, neither
Habermas nor his critics have addressed, in any detail, the relationship
between the three dimensions of rationality or the problem of how speech acts
can always be problematized in light of any one of them (Seel 1991); however, it
is just this ability to change and switch effortlessly and without constraint
between these different moments of reason that is at the core of Habermas’s
social philosophy.
The Theory of Communicative Action 365
and the social world—as well as the corresponding differentiation between the
validity claims of truth and rightness—generates a type of action that is not
dependent on legitimation. Only at this historical stage can success-oriented
action disembed itself from understanding-oriented action, can strategic
action develop independently of communicative action, i.e., as a distinct type.
Moreover, the process of rationalization has produced an instrument—mod-
ern formal law (Formalrecht)—that makes it possible to shift the reproduction
of specific social realms from social integration based on communicative
action to the alternative mechanism of system integration, which is compati-
ble with strategic action. The mechanism of system integration, in contrast to
that of social integration, is not based on coordinating partners’ intentions
but on the functional integration of the results of their actions. Thereby, the
shift from social to systemic integration relieves actors of the demands of
understanding (Verständigung), i.e., of every interaction depending on those
involved reaching a shared understanding of their situation. In this context,
the function of modern law is to anchor administrative power as well as money
within the society component of the lifeworld. This is possible through the
legal constitution of hierarchies (office-bound authorizations to issue direc-
tives), on the one hand, and the legal institutionalization of the right to prop-
erty and freedom of contract, on the other. The social institutionalization of
these “delinguistified” media of communication, which permit the coordination
of success-oriented actions, established the preconditions for the development of
the modern administrative state and the capitalist economic system. Freed
from the demand for understanding (Verständigung), the realms of material
social reproduction uncouple themselves from the lifeworld, which in turn
yields the private and public spheres; henceforth, the lifeworld encompasses
only the symbolic reproduction of society.
Accordingly, Habermas describes social development as a two-step process
of differentiation. First, the components of the lifeworld disentangle; then, the
subsystems “economy” and “state” disconnect themselves from the lifeworld
(see chapter 49 in this volume). Whereas the symbolic reproduction of society
necessarily relies on communicative action—meaning, solidarities, and skills
cannot be prescribed but must instead emerge on the basis of agreement (Ein-
verständnis)—administrative and economic functions can, in principle, be
easily and efficiently performed through systematic mechanisms (which
replace the need for understanding [Verständigung]). Habermas, then, does
not consider the administrative state or the market economy problematic
per se.
No aspect of Habermas’s writings has drawn sharper attacks than his
appropriation of systems-theoretical concepts. Behind the attacks stands the
assumption that systems theory is incapable of offering social criticism (Mis-
geld 1985). Such suspicion is surprising in view of the fact that the Marxian
The Theory of Communicative Action 371
Although he breaks with the traditional Marxist critique of capitalism and the
state, Habermas does not claim that social development occurs harmoniously
and free of conflict. Rather, he has long argued that modernization represents
a pathological process of one-sided rationalization. Indeed, The Theory of
Communicative Action pursues the goal of identifying specifically modern
social ills. To this end, Habermas explicitly aligns himself with Marxism inas-
much as he seeks to update Lukács’s analysis of reification and the project of
critical theory as conceived by Horkheimer and Adorno. Equally, he holds fast
to the notion that it is capitalism and the state apparatus that trigger contem-
porary phenomena of reification.
How can the uncoupling of system and lifeworld count, on the one hand,
as unproblematic and be interpreted in terms of evolutionary progress while,
on the other hand, it is this very process that produces the pathologies of
modern societies? For Habermas, two different scenarios are possible, in
principle. Which of these prevails, to him, depends on whether law—through
which the systems are anchored in the lifeworld—functions to “subject system
The Theory of Communicative Action 373
intervention and policies that seek to counter cycles of boom and bust, crisis has
been displaced into the political realm. Under the influence of Keynesianism—
which became the official program of the German Federal Republic in the
1960s (when comprehensive steering [Globalsteuerung] was introduced) and,
indeed, dominated policies in the industrialized West up to the oil crisis—it
was widely assumed that economic crises could be effectively cushioned by
political measures. In this context, according to the theory of late capitalism,
standards of living came to be understood as dependent upon the decisions
of state actors; considering the “indissoluble tension” (Communicative
Action, 2:345) between capitalism and democracy, this politicization of liv-
ing standards poses a threat to state actors who have to fear the withdrawal
of legitimacy, i.e., the loss of political support, if state intervention into the
economy stops short of overcoming the injustice of capitalist appropriation.
The political response, Habermas observes, involves increasingly detailed
programs for administering society. The intuition that politics might actu-
ally succeed thereby—a notion that seems strange today but that still had an
empirical point of reference when The Theory of Communicative Action was
written (insofar as governmental planning schemes had become encompass-
ing to an extent almost incomprehensible today)—provides the background
for his colonization thesis: the idea, à la Adorno, of a thoroughly adminis-
tered world, in which only success in terms of money and power mean
anything.
Entirely in keeping with Marxist tradition, Habermas locates the reason for
the colonization of the lifeworld in the insurmountable crisis dynamic inher-
ent in capitalism. But unlike Marx, he believes—because state and society
have become intertwined—that this dynamic no longer produces direct
effects. Instead, it does so in mediated form: through acts of political interven-
tion. The Theory of Communicative Action describes the process by examining
the juridification by the welfare state, which it critiques from the left.
Hereby, Habermas analyzes how the welfare state eliminates the explosive
potential of economic crises by curtailing extreme forms of misery (such as
were typical of capitalism in the stage of industrialization) through transfer
payments and similar measures. Because such social policy operates through
administrative classifications of persons and living circumstances, it trans-
forms the recipients of social services into objects of paternalistic measures.
Moreover, insofar as the compensation provided by the welfare state takes the
form of payments, bureaucratization promotes monetizing tendencies. These
measures, in turn (and in contrast, according to Habermas, to their effects in
economic and administrative contexts), impair the lifeworld in that they
promote objectivating attitudes in matters of personal identity, group mem-
bership, and solidarity, as well as meaningful orientations; by the same token,
they repress expressive orientations (i.e., attitudes that would enable the
The Theory of Communicative Action 375
It is only with this that the conditions for a colonization of the lifeworld are
met. When stripped of their ideological veils, the imperatives of autonomous
subsystems make their way into the lifeworld from the outside—like colonial
masters coming into a tribal society—and force a process of assimilation
upon it. The diffused perspectives of the local culture cannot be sufficiently
coordinated to permit the play of the metropolis and the world market to be
grasped from the periphery.
(Communicative Action, 2:355)
For all that, however, cultural impoverishment of the lifeworld need not
automatically occur. According to Habermas, a vigorous public sphere (see
chapter 69 in this volume) may avert this development, for it reconnects expert
cultures to everyday communication. In this context, Habermas also grants
philosophy a decisive role (see chapter 34), for it is capable of enriching the
public sphere by translating expert knowledge back into familiar terms and
offering interpretations both of the process of rationalization and of the
The Theory of Communicative Action 377
Precisely this feature, however, points the way out of the dead ends to which
the approaches that are now dominant have led (for an extensive discussion of
the following, see Strecker 2012). Habermas’s social theory also stands in the
tradition of western Marxism inasmuch as it proposes to enlighten members
of society about ills of which they are not even aware. The tradition of ideology
critique, in seeking to raise consciousness about power relations that have not
been identified as such, developed a conception of theory along the lines of a
perspectival dualism. Hereby, the observer of social phenomena adopts an
objectivating attitude and, from this standpoint, offers hypotheses about
social mechanisms that prevent actors (e.g., through false consciousness) from
arriving at an undistorted, authentic, and autonomous understanding of
social conditions and problems. However, unlike what orthodox Marxism and
its notions of an avant-garde affirm, the matter of whether these hypotheses
are accurate depends on those social participants concerned with recognizing
them as correct from their performative perspective. Only in breaking with
the perspective of a participant can one lift the veil of reification, but the
observer’s perspective allows only for hypotheses and is qualified by the par-
ticipant’s perspective, which remains primary.
Ideology critique of the “classic” variety founders on the matter of indicat-
ing the conditions (conventionally designated as “revolutionary”) under which
members of society can pronounce an undistorted assessment of observers’
hypotheses. The Theory of Communicative Action solves the problem by
shifting the focus from the philosophy of consciousness to the philosophy of
language and by transforming the critique of ideology into a critique of condi-
tions of communication (Verständigungsverhältnisse): thereby, the idea of
society as a self-enlightening—but potentially blinded—collective subject is
replaced by a conception of discursive and democratic procedures (based on
communicative rationality) that makes it possible for members of society to
clarify their needs and demands as a plural entity of diverse individuals.
Yet Habermas still maintained, in The Theory of Communicative Action,
that his theory was both obligated and able to determine phenomena of reifi-
cation beyond doubt—a residual element of orthodoxy going back to the
notion that social theorists possess a higher degree of insight. In subsequent
writings, he came to reject this position unequivocally. Now, Habermas views
the distinction between the perspectives of the participant and the observer,
which aims at opening systematically distorted or veiled power relations to
critique, strictly in methodological terms. He rejects the possibility of assign-
ing different kinds of actors to any one perspective—even if the social theorist
undoubtedly has an important role in the democratic public sphere, in prin-
ciple, every person makes use of both perspectives.
No one has made perspectival dualism the central principle of social theory
more than Habermas. Yet such a view plays no decisive role in the current
380 Texts
References
Apel, Karl-Otto. 1989. “Normative Begründung der ‘Kritischen Theorie’ durch Rekurs auf
lebensweltliche Gewißheit? Ein transzendentalpragmatisch orientierter Versuch, mit
The Theory of Communicative Action 381
RAINER FORST
D
iscourse Ethics—Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justifi-
cation,” which was written on the occasion of Karl-Otto Apel’s
sixtieth birthday and subsequently appeared in Moral Conscious-
ness and Communicative Action, offers a programmatic and comprehensive
account of Habermas’s approach to discourse ethics. The text synthesizes a
number of the author’s writings since the early 1970s and provides the point of
departure for a range of further discussions and revisions of the discourse
theory of morality. Although Habermas developed this theory together with
Apel, here he also discusses key points on which his view differs from Apel’s
transcendental pragmatics.
Before proceeding, a few clarifying conceptual remarks are in order: “Dis-
course ethics” stands for a theory of morality in the Kantian tradition. Its
most important feature, however, is that it replaces the reflective evaluation of
moral maxims in light of the Categorical Imperative with a process of
argumentatively redeeming validity claims about moral norms in practical
discourse. Methodologically, transcendental Kantian self-reflection of practi-
cal reason yields to the pragmatic reconstruction of the normative implica-
tions of communicative rationality.
truth, on the one hand, and his analysis of legitimation problems under late
capitalism, on the other.
In “Wahrheitstheorien” (Theories of truth, 1972), Habermas offered his
first sustained analysis—along the lines of universal pragmatics—of the dif-
ferent validity claims of comprehensibility, truth, truthfulness, and rightness
(Vorstudien, 138). Here, he argued that claims to moral rightness are to be
redeemed in practical discourse such that general prescriptions (Sollsätze) can
be appropriately justified (146). Under conditions assessed in terms of an ideal
speech situation (which is defined by the absence of factors distorting com-
munication), it should be possible for free and equal discourse participants to
seek forms of consensus that, in turn, can rationally motivate the observance
of norms (176–177).
In Legitimation Crisis (1973), the idea of rational—i.e., discursively
justified—compliance is meant both to explain crises of legitimation and to
perform ideology critique. The process of social transformation gives rise to
post-traditional expectations of legitimacy, and these point to practical dis-
courses for which few possibilities and places exist under late capitalism—
either in terms of institutional structures or in the realm of socially prevailing
justifications. In order to critique ideologies that mistakenly assume the gen-
eralizability of interests and that, in so doing, legitimate existing relations,
Habermas requires a “capacity of practical questions for truth” (Legitimation,
101ff.) according to the sole principle “in which practical reason expresses
itself”—the principle of “universalization” (108). The procedural idea of ratio-
nal argumentation in practical discourses serves as a critical foil for distin-
guishing “justifiable norms . . . from norms that merely stabilize relations of
force” (111).
In developing his argument, Habermas refers to Apel’s (1980) idea of the “a
priori of the communication community” and to the constructivist approaches
of Paul Lorenzen and Oswald Schwemmer (Legitimation, 109ff.). Both these
projects explain how the validity of moral norms is based on a situation of
communication or discussion (Beratung) that generates the capacity for gener-
alization through discourse. Lorenzen (1969) calls this the principle of “trans-
subjectivity.” Apel, on the other hand, locates it in a dialectic that unfolds
between “real” and “ideal” communication communities:
The work is divided into three parts, which are devoted to the phenomenology
of morality, the universal-pragmatic program of justification, and the critical
engagement with Apel’s transcendental pragmatics, respectively.
Habermas situates his project in the tradition of Kantian, cognitivist ethics,
which holds on to the claim that practical questions are capable of truth and,
more specifically, seeks to see such questions answered through a process of
impartial argumentation that takes place among free and equal autonomous
subjects. In Habermas’s estimation, John Rawls’s theory of justice exemplifies
this perspective (as do the projects of Apel and Lorenzen). All the same, he
does not take up the matter by analyzing communicative-practical reason
along the lines of formal pragmatics. Instead, his point of departure is Peter
Strawson’s discussion of moral reactions. Strawson explains how moral
reproaches—which can only be examined from the perspective of partici-
pants—bring the parties involved into a situation of justification that points
to the cognitive content of morality (Moral Consciousness, 49). Here, the
386 Texts
social connections between people. This would put it at odds with perspec-
tives as diverse as theories of difference and communitarianism. In response,
various efforts were made to affirm the perspective of the “concrete other” in
contrast to acknowledging only a “generalized other” (to employ the phrasing
of Seyla Benhabib [1992], who borrowed the terms from George Herbert
Mead). Accordingly, “interactive universalism” held that the other should be
acknowledged and included both as an equal party and as someone who is dif-
ferent and unique. Lutz Wingert (1993) has analyzed the moral point of view of
discourse ethics in terms of a twofold respect: the other is to be respected
(geachtet) both as an irreplaceable individual (unvertretbarer Einzelner) and,
at the same time, as a member who enjoys equal rights (gleichberechtigter
Angehöriger) in a communicative form of life (179). Axel Honneth (2007), in
turn, has stressed the “communicative virtue” of perceiving and considering
the other as a unique being. To do so, he maintains, one must go beyond the
perspective of equal treatment and adopt a form of care (Fürsorge) that is not
bound to considerations of symmetry and reciprocity—a stance that enter-
tains a tense relation with Kantian conceptions of morality.
Habermas (1990), on the other hand, has sought to incorporate points of
criticism by affirming that solidarity, as the “other” of justice, should stand at
the side of equal treatment (244). But he considers these as “two aspects of the
same thing”: “Justice concerns the equal freedoms of unique and self-deter-
mining individuals, while solidarity concerns the welfare of consociates who
are intimately linked in an intersubjectively shared form of life” (244). Because
this conception of solidarity is not tied to particular forms of belonging,
Habermas views it as a component of postconventional morality. According to
him, it is a specific merit of discourse ethics to accentuate discursively indi-
vidual perspectives—and this not in a way that is merely abstract (Inclusion,
33ff.).
The distinction between ethical values and moral norms has given rise to
much debate (Forst 2012, chap. 3). Of course, this distinction applies not only
to discourse ethics but also—in one form or another—to all deontological
conceptions of morality, while the procedural notion of separating the two
spheres is characteristic for discourse ethics. That said, the notion of “two
spheres” requires nuance, as it does not mean distinguishing them on the
basis of value ontology. The distinction between values and norms is dynamic
in nature, and it remains always the object of discourse—including those dis-
courses in which it remains controversial whether an ethical or moral response
is called for (e.g., debates about the normative status of embryos and “optimiz-
ing” genetic interventions in human nature [see Future]).
The most important points of reference are, on the one hand, what is good
“for me” (or, as the case may be, “for us”)—which does not need to be asserted
in general terms—and, on the other hand, what is “just” (or “binding”) “for
“Discourse Ethics—Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification” 391
all”—which follows its own mode of validity (Justification). The first point
does not mean that ethical questions cannot be answered rationally or that
they are “purely subjective” or “private” in nature; rather, it means that moral
obligation must be justified in strictly reciprocal and general terms. Hilary
Putnam (2002) has criticized the epistemic component of this distinction,
which (he believes) denies cognitive validity to ethical values; this would fail
to do justice to both religious value orientations and “thick” ethical judg-
ments. In response, Habermas (2003) has pointed to the fact that ethical val-
ues are inherently bound to context; nevertheless, they do possess cognitive
content, albeit in a different way than holds for moral norms.
According to Martin Seel (1995), deontological conceptions of morality pre-
suppose an idea of the good as they seek to afford—to all individuals and in
equal measure—the possibility of living properly. For that purpose a formal
theory of the “good life”—or, alternatively, the “succeeding life”—is required.
This view, however, seems to presume the perspective of an objective ethical
theory that antecedes discourse—a possibility Habermas denies (Inclusion,
21ff.). Whatever idea of the good might reciprocally be claimable must prove
itself in moral discourse among free and equal persons—an important impli-
cation of a conception of moral autonomy along Kantian lines.
Finally, the distinction between ethics and morality concerns the matter of
moral motivation. It seems that ethical considerations of “what is good for
me” prove decisive not just when it comes to observing moral norms but also
when it comes to taking up the moral point of view. Otherwise, it is difficult to
explain how abstract considerations can be translated into subjective motives
(Tugendhat 1984, Williams 1981). On this point, Habermas’s position is ambiv-
alent. On the one hand, he objects to an ethical justification of moral motiva-
tion (Justification, 46–47); at the same time, however, he grants to moral
insights only “the weak motivating force of good reasons” (33): “The moral
principle performs the role of a rule of argumentation only for justifying
moral judgments and as such can neither obligate one to engage in moral
argumentation nor motivate one to act on moral insights” (33). Consequently,
morality requires the “support of complementary processes of socialization
and structures of identity” (33), which promote postconventional attitudes and
inspire trust that moral action may, in fact, be reasonably expected (zumut-
bar). In this sense, Habermas’s notion of a “communicative form of life”
includes both ethical and moral motives; its inherent ambivalence is evident,
for example, when Habermas writes that affirming the truth capacity of practical
questions involves the “self-understanding of subjects acting communica-
tively” and “is intertwined with ethical motives” (Truth, 274).
Debates on discourse ethics frequently revolve around the way that moral
norms lay claim to validity or, alternatively, to truth—especially in their dif-
ference from truth claims made in the realm of theoretical reason. On the
392 Texts
latter point, Habermas has retreated from a pure consensus theory of truth
(Truth and Justification). He has stressed, however, the constructivist charac-
ter of discourse ethics in contesting the perspective of “moral realism,” which
holds that “generalizable interests” precede discourse (Lafont 1998). According
to Habermas, the world of moral norms is produced discursively; only in dis-
courses do generalizable interests emerge. His adherence to the requirement
that a “correct answer” for moral questions exists does not mean that there
are truths awaiting discovery. Rather, it is a matter of constructing norms
“that could be accepted for good reasons by everyone affected from the inclu-
sive perspective of equally taking into consideration the evident claims of all
persons” (Truth, 261). Hence, an element of counterfactual ideality—i.e., of
acceptability under ideal conditions—applies to the concept of validity. For
this reason, practical discourses—as they actually occur—may always be
deemed imperfect. In turn, the “incomplete” state can only be made evident
in discourse, since no privileged epistemic mode of access to “moral truths”
exists.
Thus, the construction of moral norms does not occur in a space that is itself
free of norms. Instead it presupposes the discourse principle and the status of
free and equal persons as participants in discourse with (what one can call) a
right to justification. But what do these presuppositions mean—especially in
normative terms? Habermas continues to evince skepticism about Apel’s objec-
tion (1988) that his reconstruction of the discourse principle underdetermines
its transcendental and deontological foundation and that therefore an “ulti-
mate justification” is necessary (Naturalism, 77ff.). Moreover, in Between Facts
and Norms (1992) he defines the discourse principle—which holds that “just
those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree
as participants in rational discourses”—on a level of abstraction that is “neu-
tral with respect to morality and law” (Facts, 107). In this way, the principle is
granted “normative content” even though it is not binding in the way moral
norms are. Habermas stresses that communicative reason cannot be under-
stood along the lines of the Kantian understanding of practical reason—i.e., as
a “source of prescriptions” (Facts, 4; cf. Communicative Action). This, ulti-
mately, marks his greatest departure from Kant, for whom the Categorical
Imperative—as a “moral law” (Sittengesetz)—binds the autonomous will. At
the same time, it poses the question—which is central for a deontological con-
ception of morality—of how the principle of moral justification can be obliga-
tory if it depends on motives that it cannot produce itself. The program of dis-
course ethics, then, harbors a gap of justification (Begründungslücke) that
extends between the “‘must’ of a weak transcendental necessity” and the “pre-
scriptive ‘must’ of a rule of action” (Facts, 4), and this raises the question whether
it is necessary to emphasize discursive reason more as practical reason in order
“Discourse Ethics—Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification” 393
References
Apel, Karl-Otto. 1980. “The A Priori of the Communication Community and the Founda-
tions of Ethics: The Problem of a Rational Justification of Ethics in the Scientific Age.”
In Towards a Transformation of Philosophy, trans. Glyn Adley and David Frisby, 225–
300. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
——. 1988. Diskurs und Verantwortung. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1998. Auseinandersetzungen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Benhabib, Seyla. 1992. Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Con-
temporary Ethics. New York: Routledge.
Forst, Rainer. 2012. The Right to Justification: Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice.
Trans. Jeffrey Flynn. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a Different Voice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Günther, Klaus. 1993. The Sense of Appropriateness: Application Discourses in Morality and
Law. Trans. John Farrell. Albany: SUNY Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1990. “Justice and Solidarity: On the Discussion Concerning Stage 6.”
In The Moral Domain, trans. Shierry W. Nicholsen and Thomas E. Wren, 224–251.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
——. 2003. “Norms and Values: On Hilary Putnam’s Kantian Pragmatism.” In Truth and
Justification, trans. Barbara Fultner, 213–236. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Honneth, Axel. 2007. Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. Cam-
bridge: Polity.
Kohlberg, Lawrence. 1981. The Philosophy of Moral Development. New York: Harper
& Row.
Lafont, Cristina. 1988. “Pluralism and Universalism in Discourse Ethics.” In A Matter of
Discourse, ed. Amos Nascimento, 55–78. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Lorenzen, Paul. 1969. Normative Logic and Ethics. Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut.
Putnam, Hilary. 2002. “Values and Norms.” In The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy
and Other Essays, 111–134. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Rawls, John. 2005. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Seel, Martin. 1995. Versuch über die Form des Glücks. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Tugendhat, Ernst. 1984. Probleme der Ethik. Stuttgart: Reclam.
Wellmer, Albrecht. 1991. “Ethics and Dialogue: Elements of Moral Judgment in Kant and
Discourse Ethics.” In The Persistence of Modernity: Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics, and
Postmodernism, trans. David Midgley, 113–231. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Williams, Bernard. 1981. Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wingert, Lutz. 1993. Gemeinsinn und Moral. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
37
DEFENSE OF MODERNIT Y
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1985): Modernity as
Rationalization and the Critique of Instrumental Reason
SE YL A BENHABIB
S
ince Max Weber’s well-known theory that characterized the fate
of modern societies in terms of the concept of “rationalization,”
the relationship between the project of occidental rationalism
and the structural problems and contradictions of modern capitalist societies
has preoccupied thinkers of the Frankfurt School. The early Frankfurt School’s
critique of “instrumental reason” continues the legacy of Weberian-Marxism
(Lukács 1971 [1923], Löwith 1993, Merleau-Ponty 1968). They combined Weber’s
theses about societal modernization with Marx’s analysis of the commodity
form and predicted that in the major institutions of modern societies, such as
the state, public and private bureaucracies, the capitalist firm, courts, the
army, and the schools, “rationalized” modes of relationship and behavior
would spread. Rationalization and the commodity form involved the segmen-
tation of complex tasks, relationships, and issues (Sachverhalte) into fragments
of equal and fungible units that would be governed by calculable and formal
rules and procedures that in turn would be interchangeable, predictable, and
hence “indifferent” to material qualities. Just as the commodity form reduced
all material objects and human relationships to formal equivalencies that could
be exchanged in the marketplace for money, so too rationalization abstracted
from the personality of the individuals involved in positions of authority and
made them into faceless bureaucrats and taskmasters. As is well known, for
Weber these processes of rationalization were highly equivocal: they did not
result in the augmentation of freedom or of meaning. Quite to the contrary,
societal rationalization produced a loss of freedom, and “narrow specialists
without mind, pleasure-seekers without heart; in its conceit, this nothingness
imagines it has climbed to a level of humanity never before attained” (Weber
2002 [1905], 124).
Rationalization, however, did not only apply to processes of societal
modernization. Rationalization also meant the loss of magic; the rise of
differentiation among value spheres such as science, jurisprudence, ethics,
aesthetics, and theology; the increase of formalism and systematization; and
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity 395
Thus, in respect to science, morality, and art, the argument follows the same
figure: Already the separation of cultural domains, the collapse of the sub-
stantive reason still incorporated in religion and metaphysics, so greatly dis-
empowers the moments of reason (as isolated and robbed of their coherence)
that they regress to a rationality in the service of self-preservation gone wild.
In cultural modernity, reason gets definitively stripped of its validity claim
and assimilated to sheer power. . . . If one reduces the critique of instrumental
reason to this core, it becomes clear just why the Dialectic of Enlightenment
has to oversimplify its image of modernity so astoundingly. Cultural moder-
nity’s specific dignity is constituted by what Max Weber called the differentia-
tion of value spheres in accord with their own logics.
(Discourse, 112)
This shift away from the paradigm of the philosophy of the subject, Habermas
believes, results in a theory of modernity as rationalization quite distinct from
that of Max Weber’s. If we view reason as a contingent and fallibilistic com-
municative process of reason giving, then we see that
structure of “ethical life” (Sittlichkeit), which overcomes the unity but also the
naïveté of the Greek polis, which Hegel had idealized in his early writings.
Modernity and rationality are intrinsically linked in Hegel’s work, for the
modern state is also a rational structure insofar as it is based upon the recog-
nition of subjective freedoms. As is well known, not only this quietistic recon-
ciliation with the modern state, which in Hegel’s presentation still missed all
the elements of universal suffrage and a modern parliament, but also Hegel’s
more general metaphysics concerning the unity of “essence and existence”
(Wesen und Existenz) in “actuality” (Wirklichkeit) fail in view of the strivings
of the modern subject. “Hegel inaugurated the discourse of modernity; the
Young Hegelians permanently established it” (Discourse, 53).
Yet the really radical challenge to the discourse of modernity issues not from
Feuerbach or Marx but from Nietzsche. Nietzsche is the first to give expression
to that decided irreconcilability between self and society, the individual and
the state. Bourgeois modernity needs to be confronted with a more radical
gesture than that of revolutionizing the ownership of the means of production.
First, the bourgeois Christian civilization must be uncovered in terms of its
origins, which lie in the revolt of the slaves against a natural aristocracy. With
this revolt, which leads from Socrates to Jesus, also starts the discourse of
equality, of conscience and of the need to keep promises. The subject of moder-
nity is formed in and through centuries of repression of instincts and the for-
mation of guilt and bad conscience. The philosopher, as a genealogist and as a
physiologist, first tries to understand the sickness of civilization.
The gesture of the physiologist and genealogist who examines the malaise
of the subject of reason returns in the work of Michel Foucault. In Heidegger’s
reconstruction of the history of Western metaphysics in terms of a self-
destructive subjectivity unable to grasp its own ontological grounding,
Nietzsche’s critique of the modern lives on as well. But there is also another
moment in Nietzsche’s work, namely, the turn to art and to the aesthetic as
a medium for healing the wounds of modernity. Through poetry, through
music, through art, a new subjectivity can at least be intimated. In Thus Spoke
400 Texts
In Habermas’s view, much like Heidegger, the early Derrida as well “takes
into consideration ‘the Occident in its entirety’ and confronts it with its ‘other,’
which announces itself in ‘radical upheavals’—economically and politically
(that is, manifestly) by new constellations between Europe and the Third
World, metaphysically by the end of anthropocentric thought” (Discourse,
161). Whereas Lyotard and Rorty use the critique of metanarratives to deflate
the universalistic claims of Western liberalism, Habermas sees the early Der-
rida’s appropriation of Heidegger’s metanarrative of the self-destruction of
modern subjectivity as resulting in a reversal of the constellation between the
West and the Third World. One can conclude that while there is no consensus
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity 403
The second major issue in Habermas’s encounter with Derrida concerns the
philosophy of language. Martin Jay (1992) has named the debate over the “per-
formative” the dividing moment between critical theory and poststructural-
ism (261–279). This debate refers in the first place to the heated exchanges
between John Searle and Jacques Derrida over John Austin’s philosophy of
language, an exchange in which Habermas sides with Searle and against Der-
rida. Furthermore, the dispute around the performative leads directly from
the confrontation in the 1980s between critical theory and poststructuralism
to the heated exchanges among critical and poststructuralist feminist theo-
rists of the 1990s (Benhabib et al. 1995).
Put in a nutshell, the issue is whether what was designated by John Austin
as the performative power of speech acts characterizes speech as a whole, as
Derrida maintains, or whether by distinguishing between “felicitous” and
“infelicitous” speech Austin himself reverts to the myth of “ordinary” versus
“parasitical” uses of speech. Derrida asks:
As this long quote makes clear, Habermas sees Derrida’s reading of Austin
as being potentially a subversion of the “illocutionary binding force of linguis-
tic utterances,” which in his view are a “mechanism for coordinating action.”
But let us be clear that it is not Austin who attributes this force to illocutionary
speech acts but rather Habermas, who, through his theory of communicative
action, has translated the illocutionary power of speech acts into the capacity
of speakers and hearers to coordinate their actions through orientation to
validity claims. The illocutionary power of speech is the potential of all speak-
ers of a language to orient their actions to one another through understanding
validity claims. Insofar as Derrida claims that every performative is already a
“performance” and that there is no distinction between the use of speech on a
stage and its everyday deployment, he is not only misinterpreting Austin
but subverting the very theory of communicative action. So there is a great
deal at stake in the proper interpretation of “performativity.”
There are many other dimensions in this complex debate, such as citability,
iterability, the intentionality of speech acts, and whether Derrida has confused
type with token in his comments on Austin. But Derrida’s rejection of Austin’s
distinction between the ordinary and “parasitic” uses of speech leads, in the
words of Christopher Norris (1996), to the following:
It is the main fault of Derrida’s work, as Habermas reads it, that he has failed
to observe these essential distinctions and thus overgeneralized the poetic
(rhetorical) function of language to a point where it commands the whole
field of communicative action. The result is to deprive thinking of that critical
force which depends on a proper separation of realms.
(103)
show that the lines of this confrontation had been drawn too harshly and that
it was possible, even desirable, to “split the differences” (Hoy 1996, 124–147).
Yet it was not until the fateful month of September 2001, when the World
Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked and both Habermas and Derrida
happened to find themselves in New York, that the ice melted and some kind
of a dialogue on politics and philosophy was resumed (Borradori 2003).
In the early 1990s the concept of the performative migrated from the shores
of philosophies of language and into the center of gender theory and the poli-
tics of identity movements. Judith Butler’s influential work Gender Trouble
(1990) was at the center of this transformation. The concept of the performa-
tive now came to mean that processes of identity formation occurred in and
through the iterative reenactment of gender roles. Identities, including psy-
chosexual identities, were “constructed” in and through iterative perfor-
mances. Butler quoted Nietzsche: there was no doer behind the deed, no self
behind the act. The self was first constituted or constructed in and through
socialization processes.
Butler’s purpose in using performativity in this context was to show that
gender-identity formation resulted from sociopsychic process of construction
and did not correspond to any deep psychosomatic reality. As Simone de
Beauvoir had said, “one is not born but becomes a woman,” and performativity
was the process through which gender, whether as man/woman, gay/straight,
emerged. From Derrida, Butler appropriated the centrality of “iterations,”
whose effects could not be controlled by predictable psychosocial contexts,
and from Foucault she overtook the theses that the formation of the subject
was always also a process of subjugation. There was no “subject” as such, only
historically and socioculturally varying processes of subjectivation and sub-
ject formation.
Although at first sight it may be hard to reconstruct the path that leads
from the debate surrounding illocutionary speech acts in Austin to Derrida’s
concept of performativity as performance and to Butler’s theory of gender
as performativity, there is one central assumption interwoven into all these
moves. Whereas for Habermas speech acts can function as performative only
insofar as “the illocutionary binding force of linguistic utterances [as] a mech-
anism for coordinating action” can be preserved, for Derrida, as well as for
Foucault and Butler, this presupposes that the subject and his or her intentions
are present and manifest in every speech act. Try as much as he may, they
argue, Habermas cannot give up the myth of the intentional subject of action
and speech—in Nietzsche’s words, “the doer behind the deed.” When asked
how, then, speech acts fulfill their illocutionary functions at all, there would
hardly be any answer. In Derrida’s case, the focus is not on how speech enables
and enframes social life but rather on speech as a form of arche-writing, which
is infinitely iterable and can be read and reread by an infinite number of
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity 407
In Discipline and Punish (1977 [1975]), for example, Foucault gives an empirical
account of the development of disciplinary technologies, which at the same
time, and in conjunction with techniques of surveillance and control, come to
constitute their objects as objects of manipulation and control. Habermas’s
close reading of Foucault attempts to show that this doubled strategy, which
analyzes the genealogy of structures of power while at the same time showing
the constitution of the subject of power, is full of mistaken aporias and that
ultimately Foucault’s theory of power is “presentist,” “relativist,” and “crypto-
normative” (Discourse, 276, 282).
Despite these harsh words, one cannot but sense that insofar as Foucault
reorients philosophy toward a critical study of cultural and social processes,
Habermas feels a certain affinity to his project. As opposed to the Heideggerian
construction of modernity in terms of a one-sided history of the metaphysics
of power, Foucault provides a conception of power that has empirical force
(McCarthy 1991, 43ff.). Nevertheless, Foucault’s “empirical insights and nor-
mative confusions” (Fraser) are much too intermingled, and his own stand-
point as a social critic is much too self-contradictory. Foucault’s social theory
of power lacks the socially integrative dimension of language and is unable to
explain how “socialization” also enables an “individuating effect” (Discourse,
287). The discourse of the performativity of power only hides these deep prob-
lems, which need to be addressed by a critical social theory.
Unlike the abruptly ended dialogue des sourds between Derrida and Haber-
mas, the exchange with Foucault was a productive one. Almost immediately
after the publication of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity a series of
important commentaries appeared on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1985 Axel
Honneth published The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social
Theory (English ed. 1991), and Nancy Fraser’s early essay “Michel Foucault:
Empirical Insights and Normative Confusions” was included in a 1989 collec-
tion Unruly Practices, which was dedicated to examining the interrelationship
between gender, power, and discourse in contemporary societies. The chal-
lenge for both authors was to integrate aspects of Foucault’s theory of power
into a critical understanding of contemporary society, without dispensing
with social struggles and the role of subjectivity in resisting power and by
doing justice to the significance of normative considerations both for social
actors and the social critic. The encounter with Foucault left significant marks
on the critical theory of the present, and the task of integrating a communica-
tions-theoretic perspective of socialization and individuation with a complex
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity 409
Upon receiving the Adorno Prize of the city of Frankfurt, Habermas held a
lecture called “Modernity: An Unfinished Project.” This lecture provided the
original impetus for the longer book of 1985. In Habermas’s 1980 lecture the
aesthetic dimension of modernity/postmodernity, or, as may be more precisely
expressed, the interconnectedness of aesthetic sensibilities with political posi-
tionings, was stronger and more pointed. Habermas distinguished the anti-
modernism of the “Young Conservatives” from the premodernism of the “Old
Conservatives” and postmodernism of the “New Conservatives.”
The young conservatives are those who, in the spirit of Nietzsche, encour-
age the revelation of a decentered subjectivity; they wish to break the barriers
between art and everyday life through subversive acts of imagination and self-
experience. Foucault, Derrida, and Bataille are young conservatives in this
sense.
The old conservatives are distrustful of aesthetic modernism; they distrust
the differentiation of value spheres diagnosed by Weber and advocate some
reintegration of reason with a sense of objective ethics and the demands of the
natural world. Habermas classifies Leo Strauss, Hans Jonas, and Robert Spae-
mann under this category.
The new conservatives take an affirmative attitude toward the achieve-
ments of modernity, as long as it promotes capitalist growth, technological
advancement, and rational administration. But politically, they are against the
moral and ethical overburdening of politics with extraneous demands and see
no dispensation from democracy in solving the problems of modernity. An
elitist politics, whether of aesthetes or strong leaders, is preferred. Habermas
names the early Wittgenstein, middle-period Carl Schmitt, and Gottfried
Benn as belonging to this group.
Despite these pointed and polemical characterizations, Habermas acknowl-
edges the impetus behind the experience of aesthetic modernism: the experi-
ence of a decentered subjectivity no longer anchored to traditional life forms
and left loose on the shoals of modernity, the transcendence of the spatiotem-
poral disciplinary structures of everyday life through defiant artworks, the
rupturing of routinized perceptions and the dialectic of shock and revelation.
The autonomy of the aesthetic realm has a transfiguring effect on other ratio-
nalized realms of existence.
Yet in advanced modern societies, the autonomization of art also implies
the growth of a culture of experts and interpreters and an increasing distance
410 Texts
between the transformative power of art and the lay people. The rigidity and
cultural impoverishment of the rationalized everyday cannot be overcome
through the gestures of an aesthetic avant-garde. What is needed is the inter-
penetration in the praxis of everyday life of cognitive interpretations, moral
expectations, and affective-aesthetic expressions and evaluations. Here we
reach an ambiguity in Habermas’s conceptualization of this “third” domain.
Distinguished from the theoretical and practical uses of reason is the aes-
thetic-evaluative dimension. But this domain refers not only to one value
sphere, to one cognitive function among others; the “aesthetic-evaluative”
dimension also has the metafunction of setting the tone for the interpenetra-
tion and coexistence of all three domains. This sphere is referred to sometimes
as the “aesthetic-expressive” and sometimes as the “aesthetic-evaluative.” Its
object domain is not clearly delineable in the same fashion as that of the oth-
ers: affects and emotions, aesthetic and therapeutic judgments as well as ethi-
cal concerns find their place here. Just as Kant’s Critique of Judgment suggests
a need to reconsider the place of reflective and determinative judgment in
Kant’s moral as well as theoretical philosophy, for Habermas too, this third
domain opens up a set of problems about the integration and interaction of
the theoretical, moral, and evaluative uses of reason. (The first thinker to
draw our attention to the problem of judgment in Kant as it affected his ethics
and political philosophy was Hannah Arendt [1982].)
In The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, this problem resurfaces with
respect to what Habermas calls the “world-disclosing function of language” in
contradistinction to its “communicative” and “action-coordinating” func-
tions. In a crucial passage toward the end of the work, Habermas writes that
language discloses the horizon of meaning within which knowing and acting
subjects interpret states of affairs, that is, encounter things and people and
have experiences in dealing with them. The world-disclosing function of
language is conceived on analogy with the generative accomplishments of
transcendental consciousness. . . . The linguistic world view is a concrete and
historical a priori.
(Discourse, 319)
Chief among these implications is that some other uses of language, such as in
poetry, in fiction, and in theater, which Austin classified as “parasitic” upon
the “normal” use of language, may be closer to a second-order and reflective
use in which some constraints of literal use are suspended and reflectively
modified by competent speakers. This capacity for “suspending constraints”
(Bohman 1996, 208) is very much like the capacity to integrate within the praxis
of everyday life cognitive interpretations, with moral expectations, and
affective- aesthetic expressions and evaluations. What is assumed in each
case is a certain creativity, a fluidity, a loosening of hardened patterns and
structures, a capacity to see new configurations and to undo blockages.
individual a new mode of considering his or her own history via the loosening
of blockages and of traumatic experiences. Processes of distorted communica-
tion that suffer through the absence of perspectival shifts, through the inca-
pacity to take the standpoint of the other, or through the inability to find new
vocabularies and new forms of expression need these forms of alteration and
repair as well. Art, through the transfiguration of the commonplace (Arthur
Danto), at its best helps us achieve some of this, as do forms of therapy, dance,
theater, music, opera, and literature. Thus, the communicative and world-
disclosive functions of language may need each other more—and are certainly
more interdependent—than Habermas’s threefold scheme of the theoretical,
practical, and the aesthetic-expressive uses of reason would lead us to believe.
Here too the encounter with postmodernism opens up new venues and
inspires future work in critical theory (see Wellmer 1991; J. Bernstein 1989a,
1989b; Seel 1985).
Conclusion
otherness of the other be? Normative philosophy now returned with a ven-
geance: a theory of power alone could not help us answer these questions at all.
The modern/postmodern constellation that emphasized fragmentation
and confrontation between the First and Third World in particular was now
confronted with the phenomenon of globalization. The “clash of civilizations”
was taking place against the background of increasing socioeconomic, trans-
portational, and communicational integration; of increased and intensified
contact among nations, cultures, and peoples. Today the insights and intu-
itions of the postmodernism of the 1980s have flown into the critical theories
of postcolonial anthropology and history, which attempt to consider the
encounter with otherness in the context of a fragmented but nevertheless
global world (Spivak 1988, 1999; Appadurai 1996; Chakrabarty 2000). The
philosophical discourse of, and about, modernity is now a global discourse; it
is no longer confined to the European continent but takes place among intel-
lectuals from many parts of the world who are themselves children of that
potent and ambivalent legacy of Western rationalism. It is a tribute to the
power of Habermas’s theory that he has shown us the way to think the legacy
of the Enlightenment in a new world.
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38
DEMOCRACY, LAW, AND
SOCIET Y
Between Facts and Norms (1992): Points of Reference: The
Emergence of Political Philosophy from Theoretical Philosophy
CHRISTOPH MÖLLERS
H
abermas’s legal theory must be understood as part of a much
larger project that combines theoretical and practical philosophy
in an uncommonly thorough way for the twentieth and twenty-
first centuries. Habermas (in Truth) has lamented the fact that, in a landscape
increasingly distinguished by the division of academic labor, the two perspec-
tives have grown more and more separate (for an expressly different view, see
Rawls 2005, 372ff.). At the same time, his writings have proved that this need
not be the case. Habermas was interested in matters of political theory from
the first, even if he came to address them in systematic fashion only late in his
career (a matter to be distinguished from commentary he has long offered on
current events). Although the subject of democracy surfaced in his writings early
on (Habermas et al. 1961), Habermas was concerned less with how to establish
institutions endowed with legitimacy than with freeing citizens to employ the
resources afforded by democratic society in order to pursue authentic self-
determination. That is, Habermas’s early work did not discuss democracy in a
legal-theoretical context.
A first point of reference for Habermas’s political theory is materialist
social theory. This perspective permits him to understand social analysis,
prima philosophia, and democratic legal theory as elements of a unified proj-
ect. In this light, it is clear how the position Habermas articulated in the debate
on positivism—his refusal to admit either “apolitical” criteria of truth or
empirical falsifications à la Karl Popper—has continued in his later works,
including Between Facts and Norms. Materialist social theory demands that
systematic questions be addressed historically.
Accordingly, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere investi-
gates how the social structure underlying public spaces of critical engage-
ment represents the precondition for democratic self-legislation. In a manner
characteristic of the times, the first edition of the book (1962) evinced
418 Texts
At the beginning of the 1990s, Habermas defined where he stood in the field of
political theory. His position duly continues his previous theoretical reflec-
tions—especially his longstanding opposition to scientistic “positivism,” on
the one hand, and conservative institutionalism, on the other.
The decisive context for the theory of democracy presented in Between
Facts and Norms is the debate between liberalism and communitarianism
in the United States. Characteristically, Habermas articulates his own position
by engaging with the works of others, defining his standpoint as the system-
atic “middle ground” between other schools of thought. In this book, he does
so especially by engaging with liberalism of the Rawlsian variety, on the one
hand, and, on the other, the communitarian views offered by authors such as
Michael Walzer, Charles Taylor, and Michael Sandel. The middle position
Habermas stakes out for himself takes distance from the liberal presupposi-
tion of stable individual preferences, which must simply be integrated into
democratic will formation. (This critique of liberal empiricism—which
treats democratic will formation as a matter of aggregation and views indi-
vidual voices as “facts”—can easily apply to positivism, as well.) Equally,
Habermas objects to views that directly assign legitimating value to tradi-
tions and conventions—views, that is, that reify real (or putative) forms of
cultural identity; here, too, his early critiques of institutionalized thinking
are affirmed.
Especially in this context, it is clear that Habermas’s political theory is
democratic in an emphatic and double sense. For one, it recognizes no politi-
cal legitimation outside of democratic procedure. For another—and as a true
theory of authentically democratic will formation—it rejects reducing legiti-
mation to a matter of “adding up” individual opinions. Beyond what it yields
in immediate terms, this methodology holds a broader significance for politi-
cal theory. In subsequent works, Habermas’s location of a mediating position
between communitarianism and liberalism yields his important systematic
thesis concerning the equiprimordiality of private and public autonomy.
(After all, liberal theories routinely view individual freedom as the primary
point of reference, whereas communitarian theories begin with group forma-
tions [Vergemeinschaftung].)
420 Texts
In Between Facts and Norms, Habermas names Immanuel Kant as the source
(Gewährsmann) of his theoretical reflections. However, he neither employs
Kant’s markedly individualist view of norms, nor does he make use of his
theory of political institutions (which, in fact, is largely absent from his works).
On these matters, Habermas proceeds differently. With his thesis of equipri-
mordiality, he accords public autonomy a greater role than Kant. Moreover, he
addresses the institutional design of the democratic and constitutional state in
terms that are much more concrete. When he invokes Kant, then, Habermas is
concerned, above all, with the uncompromising normativity of his forebear’s
theoretical position. From the outset, Habermas has opposed all institutional
essentialism (Selbstzweckhaftigkeit)—the positions of, e.g., conservative authors
such as Arnold Gehlen and Ernst Forsthoff. On this point, his stance combines
with a conception of reason that, even when it encounters practical cognitive
limits, in no way admits normative exceptions.
The point of such an approach—which, perhaps, also marks its most pre-
carious feature—concerns the extent to which, and in what way, it is possible
to incorporate factual historical and political developments. It is easy to see, in
The Theory of Communicative Action, the role played by the empirical obser-
vation of intersubjective communicative action. Between Facts and Norms,
however, produces a different impression: the work seems to deviate from the
Kantianism Habermas claims to endorse. From an exterior, political perspec-
tive, the critical claims of Habermas’s theory—whether this involves invoking
“first-generation” critical theory in The Theory of Communicative Action or
the mildly benevolent assessment of Western constitutional democracy in
Between Facts and Norms (a matter also in evidence in the foreword to the new
edition of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere)—have clearly
been relativized. This is all the more apparent inasmuch as a change in method
has occurred, as well: the more normative Habermas’s approach is, the more
moderate its results prove in terms of social and institutional critique (Facts);
conversely, the more his approach incorporates empiricism, the clearer its crit-
ical potential seems to be (Communicative Action).
Reading Between Facts and Norms from this perspective, it is evident that
Habermas’s line of argument is less concerned with proving, in axiomatic
fashion, where political order comes from (on the model of Kant’s demonstra-
tion of the separation of powers [Gewaltenteilung] [Kant 1996, §45–46]) than
with examining standing institutions against the background of a theory of
discourse oriented on political processes. In a certain measure, Between Facts
and Norms “submits” its theoretical program for review by the democratic and
constitutional state. At the same time, however, the tension “between facts
and norms” is addressed on a case-by-case basis—especially through the
Between Facts and Norms 421
Law (Recht) came to play an independent role only late in Habermas’s writ-
ings. In The Theory of Communicative Action, it is briefly discussed as a form
of strategic discourse—that is, as a means of concealing validity claims in
instrumental fashion. At this point, Habermas’s view was still strongly
indebted to Max Weber’s notion that the law represents a formalizing tool of
means-end (zweckrational) organization—even though, unlike Weber, Haber-
mas addressed the matter in terms of communicative action and, in so doing,
sought to justify a conception of rationality that is more comprehensive and
normatively substantive. In the course of the 1980s, Habermas modified his
critical—but ultimately disinterested—perspective. Between Facts and Norms
presents his new understanding of the topic, which is informed by the works
of legal theorists who have incorporated the author’s theories of discourse and
communicative action into their own works.
Above all, Robert Alexy (1989, 2002) and Klaus Günther (1993) have helped
Habermas develop a new perspective on the law, which permits the normative
standards of his theory to be inscribed in juridical discourse in a much more
fundamental way. In particular, Alexy’s “special case thesis” (Sonderfallthese)
(Alexy 1989, 211ff.)—which understands juristic discourse to represent a spe-
cial instance of general practical discourse—permits Habermas’s discourse-
theoretical mechanisms for justifying validity claims to be integrated into the
interpretation of the law. Now juristic arguments no longer function only on
the side of the system imperatives of the legal order; instead, they represent a
special form of justificatory discourse. On this basis, the status of the law
changes in Habermas’s work to a certain degree, shifting from the side of the
system toward communicative action—at the very least, it operates at the bor-
der between them. Henceforth, law is to be viewed as a “medium for trans-
forming communicative power into administrative power” (Facts, 169).
This development in Habermas’s theory is not surprising in terms of
the overall design of discourse theory. Conditions of discourse are very
similar to those of legally organized procedure. The structure of discursive
422 Texts
procedure—in which all parties affected are given the opportunity to speak,
every decision must be made plausible by means of arguments demonstrating
that what has been said has also received consideration, and both the validity
claims presented and decisions concerning them are subject to evaluation on a
generalizable scale (which, for its part, is the product of the same kind of
process)—closely resembles fair practices in court.
What is more, the distinction between discourses that apply law and those
that establish it (Rechtsanwendungs- und Rechtssetzungsdiskurse) (Günther
1993) adds a further element to the connection between legal form and dis-
course theory. The discourse of legal application reads discourse theory into
court practices. When applied, positive law (gesetztes Recht) is subject to a
procedure that must be adequate to discourse-theoretical standards. This
model permits Habermas to offer a systematically justified answer to different
questions of theory and practice in legal and democratic theory. The discourse
of legal application enables theory to do without the problematic instance of
“the power of judgment” (Urteilskraft) when analyzing the application of rules
(Regelanwendung). Kant, in affirming that a rule cannot define its own appli-
cation, had appealed to “a common sense” (Gemeinsinn) (Kant 2001, §21) that
shapes decisions. Such a position is incompatible with Habermas’s ideas. The
discourse of legal application does not mean that administration and courts
cease to be bound by democratic legislation; indeed, the very opposite is the
case: being bound to law is central to their possessing legitimacy in the first
place.
All the same, one may ask to what extent theory can, in fact, account for the
actual achievements of legality (Rechtsform)—or whether, instead, it does not
miss precisely what constitutes legality as such (den Eigensinn dieser Form)
(Lieber 2007). That is: if no categorical difference exists between the articula-
tion (Setzung) and application (Anwendung) of the law—inasmuch as both are
subject to the same procedural logic—then it is not entirely clear why the for-
mal “binding effect” (Bindungswirkung) of law is necessary. In principle, all
questions—including those that democratic law is supposed to have already
settled—can be taken up again in discourse. The distinction between legisla-
tive and juridical procedures—to wit: the received combination of courts being
bound by law, on the one hand, and, at the same time, being independent—
ultimately remains obscure. Discourses of legal application must orient them-
selves on the general criteria of discourse theory. Court procedure, then, functions
no differently than legislative procedure—if on a different scale. This means,
however, that the promise of formal equality, which is key for a positive legal
order—which, indeed, constitutes the defining feature of law (der eigentliche
Eigenwert des Rechts)—is pushed aside.
A similar objection may be formulated with respect to Habermas’s theory
of basic rights (Grundrechte). Basic rights may be morally justifiable (Forst
Between Facts and Norms 423
2012), but they must also be enacted by legislation. In Habermas’s view, they
function as “unsaturated placeholders” (Facts, 126). Basic rights “must be
interpreted and given concrete shape by a political legislature in response to
changing circumstances” (125; this point is articulated even more clearly in
Maus 1995). It is not possible, then, that the guarantee of basic rights through
interpretation in constitutional law—which can also be directed against dem-
ocratic legislation—should be justified in this way. Accordingly, Between Facts
and Norms (238ff.) discusses constitutional adjudication in a particularly criti-
cal fashion. (Thereby, Habermas has imported the American debate about the
legitimation of constitutional adjudication to Germany—a pioneering achieve-
ment that is rarely remarked on.)
Also in this context, the question arises: what is left of “basic law” as a cat-
egory if it cannot develop an interpretive meaning of its own (Eigensinn) that—
at least on an exceptional basis—may turn against democratic legislation?
Most democratic constitutions formulate this aspect of basic laws in relatively
straightforward terms (notwithstanding justified criticism to be made of the
all-too-frequent presumption of constitutional courts); the effects do not seem
to promote democratic politics—as Habermas hopes will occur when consti-
tutional adjudication is restricted. For this reason, one may ask whether it
would not be more in keeping with his overall project if Habermas worked only
with the concept of subjective rights guaranteed by democratic law—and gave
up the notion of basic rights that have been secured constitutionally (verfassung-
sunmittelbares Grundrecht) (Lieber 2007, 197). After all, privileging the demo-
cratic elaboration of subjective rights over the juridical verification of basic
rights may be seen to cast doubt on the thesis that private and public autonomy
are “equiprimordial.”
Here, too, the specific sense of legality (der Eigensinn der Rechtsform)
remains uncertain in its relation to political procedures of legitimation. The
strictly public approach to the interpretation of basic law that Habermas
ultimately favors contradicts, in a certain measure, the way he conceives the
constitutionalization of an international order (where he seems to accord
precedence to foundational principles).
time, however, religion factors into the genesis of the democratic and constitu-
tional state. Its positive contribution concerns the cultural underpinning of
democratic legal orders and the willingness of society members to accept
institutional arrangements that are, in fact, secular (Naturalism, 99ff.). In this
respect, the call for religious neutrality follows logically from Habermas’s
model of deliberative democracy and from his distinction between morality
and ethics: moral commandments are not just relevant to democratic will
formation—they constitute it in the first place; ethical imperatives, on the other
hand, are exempt from the justification that the democratic process requires.
They may be constitutionally (grundrechtlich) protected, but they are not sup-
posed to provide an independent contribution to democratic discourse.
To be sure, religion affords especially fruitful terrain for investigating how
“good reasons” may be derived from deliberations that engage with a foreign
worldview. Here, Habermas draws clear borders—for example, when he
declares that democratic parties may not invoke religion in their platforms
(Naturalism, 114ff.). The question remains, however, whether the openness of
democratic will formation would not be endangered were this in fact to occur.
justification. (Were this the case, invoking such qualities would potentially cur-
tail the freedom of others who do not possess them.)
Habermas’s relativization of collective identities also means that the con-
cept of citizenship must be reexamined (Facts, 495ff.). After all, a democratic
community cannot close itself off to other parties’ requests to be granted civil
rights simply by invoking tradition, cultural identity, or ethnicity. Insofar as
such parties are governed (unterworfen) by the rules of the democratic com-
munity, excluding them is a risky proposition. Moreover, refugees and state-
less individuals have a claim to recognition; they, too, must not be excluded
without reason. Inasmuch as the democratic state is open to others, the spaces
of communication within it stand open as well. Under democracy, identities
prove to be formations capable of transformation; consequently, public
spheres in democracy may begin to orient themselves beyond borders and to
form a transnational space of discourse (Postnational, 51ff., 102ff.). The nation-
state must undergo republicanization (Inclusion, 134ff.)—a matter that leads to
the problem of constituting democracy beyond national frontiers.
Europe
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Theory of Legal Justification. Trans. Ruth Adler and Neil MacCormick. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
——. 2002. A Theory of Constitutional Rights. Trans. Julian Rivers. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Arendt, Hannah. 1970. On Violence. New York: Harvest.
Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang. 2007. “Die Entstehung des Staates als Vorgang der Säkula-
risierung.” In Der säkularisierte Staat, 43–72. Munich: Carl Friedrich von Siemens
Stiftung.
Brunkhorst, Hauke. 2005. Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community
Trans. Jeffrey Flynn. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Cohen, Jean, and Andrew Arato. 1992. Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press.
Engländer, Armin. 2002. Diskurs als Rechtsquelle? Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Forst, Rainer. 2002. Contexts of Justice: Political Philosophy Beyond Liberalism and Com-
munitarianism. Trans. John M. Farrell. Berkeley: University of California Press.
——. 2012. The Right to Justification: Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice. Trans.
Jeffrey Flynn. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gerstenberg, Oliver. 1997. Bürgerrechte und deliberative Demokratie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1997.
Grimm, Dieter. 1995. “Braucht Europa eine Verfassung?” Juristenzeitung 50, no. 12:
581–632.
Günther, Klaus. 1993. The Sense of Appropriateness: Application Discourses in Morality and
Law. Trans. John Farrell. Albany: SUNY Press.
Habermas, Jürgen, et al., eds. 1961. Student und Politik: Eine soziologische Untersuchung
zum politischen Bewußtsein Frankfurter Studenten. Neuwied: Luchterhand.
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——. 2001. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Deutschland.” In Europa als politische Idee und rechtliche Form, ed. Josef Isensee,
63–101. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
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Insel.
39
EUROPE, EUROPEAN
CONSTITUTION
“Why Europe Needs a Constitution” (2001)
ANDREW ARATO
E
urope and its constitution are important for Habermas for both
theoretical and political reasons. Modern constitutions that include
fundamental rights, each developed under specific national cir-
cumstances, represent key and even indispensable moments of bringing the
particular and the universal under a single denominator; hence the concept of
constitutional patriotism was developed as the center of an “ethics” that can
both motivate and satisfy universal norms. The preconditions were right,
namely, a liberal democratic constitution and a political culture capable of
recognizing its own highest aspirations in that normative order. In spite of
occasional optimism, Habermas was apparently never fully convinced that
the German tradition could see itself in this way. His turn to Europe is best
explained not so much as a search for a substitute as an attempt to find a more
hospitable context for the development of a genuine civic identity also in Ger-
many (Habermas 1991; A Berlin Republic, 161–182; Time, 89–110; Postnational;
Faltering, 69–106, 138–183).
The crucial set of events that accelerated this move toward Europe was the
unification of Germany in 1990 and its aftermath. For Habermas, this seri-
ously raised the possibility of a re-descent into traditional nationalism. At that
time, he believed that there was also a great chance for establishing the foun-
dations of a broader and deeper constitutional patriotism but that the consti-
tutional moment called for by Article 146 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) had
been inexcusably wasted. Therefore, the preservation and perhaps develop-
ment of the elements of liberal and republican political identities compatible
with a multicultural and federal German and a multinational European polity
would have to be guaranteed in less direct and more complex ways. His solid
“Why Europe Needs a Constitution” 433
political sense seemed to convince him of the need for states to remain the
primary units of even the ideal or projected cosmopolitan order. Given the
dramatic inequality of states, this called for mediations, by intermediate enti-
ties, working in both directions. The European Union could be the model, to an
extent, as it already was “constituted,” and, even more, as it could be “reconsti-
tuted” or refounded. As he recently put it, (strong) regional integrations are
needed to empower (the) weak states as well as to enable the relatively successful
operation of a world society with few coercive means at its disposal. With respect
to Germany, transposing the republican heritage of the nation-state to a recon-
structed European Union, as a state recognizing the equality of other states
under law, could once and for all block the way to the renewal of nationalism.
The same turn to Europe could also lead to far more effective policies, since
there were other convincing political considerations at stake. The model of
social solidarity (refined as one of economic, political, and cultural inclusion)
established by the classical West European welfare states survives, though
shaken by the developmental crisis of that social form, the integration of the
East, the overly long ideological hegemony of neoliberalism, and, most
recently, the explosive issues of immigration in supposedly nonimmigration
countries. Habermas rightly sees even more serious dangers coming to this
model, which is based on redistribution within a market rationality (that he
wishes to conserve), by a form of globalization that rests on deregulation and
the exploitation of cheap labor. Social democracy cannot be continued in how-
ever a reflexively reconstructed form within the limits of any one state. Left
politics will now have to be regionally based and should take the form of
extending the achievements of the democratic welfare state beyond its original
nation-state limits, both for the sake of justice and because of the fundamental
interests of those who today still enjoy its entitlements. That will require a
Europe-wide or at least “harmonized” social policy as well as a common tax
structure to support it. Note that Habermas has been careful to identify the
European project he favors (and articulates therefore mainly on the formal
constitutional level) only as the necessary precondition of a new social democ-
racy, one that other political tendencies could and should also support on dif-
ferent grounds. The achievement of international security and peace is the
most important of these.
It is not surprising that Habermas turns to constitutional theory and the proj-
ect of European constitution making as the vehicles for making the case for
greater integration and to address the democracy deficit. Recovering a dimen-
sion of the philosophy of praxis, he once rightly noted that while something
like a political culture develops, constitutions can be the object of will and
conscious action. While not a major participant in the German constitutional
debate in 1990 (which came before his work in legal theory), he expressed his
disappointment concerning the manipulative and legally dubious avoidance
of what Article 146 mandated. His analysis of the legal and political problems
of the highly accelerated democratic process in Germany is still relevant, even
though his own proposal, centering on a referendum, was unclear, and even
given that certain amendments (in the unification treaty) to the Preamble, to
Article 23 (eliminated), and to Article 146 neutralized the object of his worst
fear, namely, that the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) was being left open to invite
future annexations. It seems very likely that not only his turn to Europe but
also his interest in constitution making dates to this experience. Unfortu-
nately, it also linked him to the classical European model of sovereign demo-
cratic constitution making, with popular sovereignty interpreted in terms of
referenda, understood as the meaning of a “free decision by the German peo-
ple.” This occurred through an unfortunately common but textually and even
doctrinally by no means the only possible (cf. Murswiek 1978; Grimm 1991a,
1991b, 2004, 2005) interpretation of Article 146, which could have been satis-
fied, e.g., by using a newly elected constitutional assembly, deciding under
high consensus requirements, and/or ratifying conventions on the level of the
states, American style, or perhaps other democratic formulas. Justified or not,
his subsequent attachment to this one particular device as an alternative to
governmental decision seems to be based less on his own theory of “popular
sovereignty as procedure” than on the intensity of the conviction of the losing
side concerning what would have been the right road for Germany in 1990.
What he and probably others tended to miss, however, was the priority of a
governmental type of decision concerning the procedures and rules of a refer-
endum that always allows several choices strongly influencing the outcome,
even in Germany at that time, where voting could have been organized in at
least three or four very distinct ways (the Länder, single individuals, by two
states, or by one state—the GDR voting alone, as Grimm suggested, before an
Article 23 adhesion, and then the two together electing a constituent assembly,
436 Texts
on majorities of some kind (Grimm 1991a, 1991b, 2004, 2005). If the admittedly
new convention method, with all its initial weaknesses and later deformations
by the convention president, Giscard d’Estaing, did distinguish the making of
the Constitutional Treaty from mere intergovernmentalism, then it was still
the major part of the process that led to the hardly different substance of the
Lisbon Treaty. But neither constituent process could be seen as beginning the
circular process of citizen production. While the Constitutional Treaty comes
closer to a constitution in the formal sense, by uniting all the treaties in a sin-
gle document, neither treaty satisfied Habermas’s new minimum goals, for
example, a harmonized taxation policy, a common foreign policy (in spite of
different names for the head of foreign affairs), and a directly elected Euro-
pean president, nor, especially, his earlier goals, such as reducing the Council
to a second chamber, genuine parliamentarianism, and the Commission as a
more or less differentiated executive branch.
It is clear, however, that the option for referenda was greatly reduced by the
architects of the Lisbon Treaty, to one country precisely, and perhaps this may
be what Habermas is thinking of as bureaucratic, a funny term for parliamen-
tary democracy. The Constitutional Treaty at least was supposed to involve
several (nine or ten) national referenda, even if its makers did not have the
courage or more likely the power to enact (separate) European referenda on
the same day, as some wished. What he has therefore learned from the French
and Dutch referenda is not (as others, cf. Dehousse 2006) the inadequacy of
this device in complex constitutional matters as the instrument of democracy
but that those who wanted to stress the role of referenda even more were right
all along. He came to think that it is futile to expect the peoples of ten or espe-
cially twenty-seven individual states, voting separately, according to different
rules, all to vote positively in referenda on behalf of a Europe that has not been
(and cannot be) mobilized on behalf of a common constitutional goal. Refer-
enda remain the key, but their rules must be changed in order to favor the
particular result he desires.
Critical Reception
To me, Habermas’s positive view of referenda as they are practiced today, even
when formally freed of their Bonapartist heritage, as particularly democratic
instruments remains inexplicable, especially for the theorist of deliberative
democracy. Granted, the instrument has been procedurally cleaned up in
postwar European practice, starting with the exemplary making of the
Constitution of the Fourth French Republic. (Shortly afterward, early during
the Fifth Republic, it was seriously abused by de Gaulle.) Nevertheless, the
instrument remains singularly unwieldy for deciding complex constitutional
questions, where whole documents can get rejected over heterogeneous
“Why Europe Needs a Constitution” 439
case the countries still voted separately, as the failed plans of 2002–2003 would
have it. Habermas, however, would like really to make sure. Thus he is now
(both before and after the new Irish No) calling for a more radical version, one
where both the citizens of Europe and individual countries would be counted
but where simple majorities of each would decide. This greater radicality,
without a Convention behind him, does not exactly promise success.
Indeed, on the strategic level, it is all too easy to predict that what he is
proposing cannot possibly happen. His proposal now involves, substantively, a
plan for the harmonization (or integration) of European social and taxation
policy (the details presumably to be worked out), the popular election of a
European president (presumably uniting the two presidencies of the Council
and the Commission) in Europe-wide voting (rules unspecified, as usual,
though they would greatly matter!), and the establishment of the office of a
European foreign minister (powers with respect to Council of Ministers and
their voting rules unspecified). So far so good, and it is perhaps not his task to
formulate precise proposals. But Habermas is strangely unaware of the litera-
ture on the perils of plebiscitary presidentialism from Tocqueville and Marx
to Linz and Stepan, and most Europeans in any case are rightly attached to
parliamentary government. It is a more obvious problem that Habermas is
asking the heads of government to agree unanimously on a new proposal that
goes well beyond the Lisbon Treaty, which they could barely agree on in the
first place. But the greatest difficulty with all this has to do with the fact that
the procedure for achieving what is still only a minimum program would be a
Europe-wide referendum, according to a new and unified electoral law (that
would first have to be passed unanimously!), held on the same day as the
European elections, where a (simple!) majority of states and a (simple!) major-
ity of all voters would have to approve the plan, binding only the states who
voted for it.
There is a dimension of this argument that should be taken seriously. If the
scheme could be realized, the result would be a two-track Europe where only
the core would be under the new arrangement, but with easy entry to new-
comers from the periphery. Intended as a transitional solution when first pro-
posed by Fischer in 2000, a two-track or two-speed reform may have perhaps
become unavoidable at some point, since unfortunately the great expansion of
the European Union occurred before the major institutional questions were
solved. The proposal allows the film to be rerun, and the error corrected,
without excluding anyone from the European Union as a whole. Only it is a
matter of the power of the relevant core states whether such a proposal is prac-
ticable and not of an ultrademocratic decision, where the legitimacy of the
arrangements would come in part from “European” voters who will not be
included in that core.
Why would indeed an Intergovernmental Conference, where a number of
states would be opposed to the scheme, accept a referendum that might lead to
“Why Europe Needs a Constitution” 441
Habermas strongly recommends. The implicit threat is once again only the
predicted future failure of functioning. But then why link the procedure to a
substantive scheme that is neither on the table, on the one hand, nor really is
structurally significant enough (both a foreign minister and a weak elected
president could be absorbed in the current hybrid structure, even if perhaps
destabilizing it further because of the new element of plebiscitary legitimacy)
to justify a radically new mode of ratification? If the argument is from realism
(because otherwise even a minimum cannot be accomplished), then link the
new procedure to the passing of the Lisbon Treaty itself. Why try to put a dif-
ferent, even if partially overlapping, scheme on the table?
And if the goal is really to serve the utopian goal of a more perfect union by
means that can be designed, would it not have been better to focus on struc-
tural constitutionalization, on what it takes to create a more consistent “fed-
eration of nation-states” structure? As against a confederation, a federation
should bring the states, previously the masters of the constitution, under the
constitution, where any one state would be bound by the decisions of the rest
in the relevant area of jurisdiction. This would above all require changing
the amendment rule, which could have the added benefit of making future
changes both more democratic and participatory and more easy to achieve.
And in such a context, the threat of a two-track structure through enhanced
cooperation might work much better. Through a new treaty, four or five states
could create a more flexible body that could repeatedly decide further consti-
tutional changes through qualified double majorities, unless, to cut this option
off, the European Union as a whole adopted such a rule for itself. There would
then be no limit to how strong such a federation within the federation (or rather
within the hybrid) could become, except its own qualified majority. In such a
case, states opposed to both far greater integration and a two-track union
would have greater incentives to accept a “revision of the revision,” since by
influencing the majorities it would take to change the constitution in the
future they could retain their role in change, a role that would be lost if a two-
track structure were created unilaterally by a core. Thus if the threat Haber-
mas has in mind is ever going to be used, it would be a pity to blow it because
of democratic expectations that are hopeless shortcuts to European citizen-
ship anyway, rather than focusing on the really important target, a consistent
structure of the European Union capable of legitimately changing itself,
instead of the informal self-alteration processes now relied on that are inevita-
bly more remote from publicity and participation.
At the moment, since the relevant states are not ready for enhanced coop-
eration, the Lisbon Treaty should be passed, and, given its vast support all over
Europe—as well as the probable consequences of its failure—even forced
through. Instead of seeing it as a product of merely bureaucratic compromise,
Habermas should understand it as in some indirect sense a product also of his
“Why Europe Needs a Constitution” 443
own efforts, and especially of the Convention for the Future of Europe, which
represented a disruption in if not a break with the intergovernmental status
quo. And we should all see it as yet another step through which a more perfect
and hopefully more democratic Union of Europe can be built, in a process that
is still in its early stages. There is, in any case, no finalité for constitutions.
References
J
ürgen Habermas understands his thinking as postmetaphysical
(see his eponymous book). The fact that he does not understand
his thinking simply to be postreligious—even though he has
referred to himself as “tone deaf” in matters of faith—met with interest long
before his debate with the future Pope Benedict XVI (Habermas and Ratz-
inger 2006; Naturalism). Discussion began with Habermas’s speech “Faith and
Knowledge,” which he held when he was awarded the Peace Prize of the
German Book Trade in 2001 (Future, Zeitdiagnosen; see Reder and Schmidt
2008, Langthaler and Nagl-Docekal 2007; on themes not addressed here, see
especially Absolute, Theory and Practice, and Texte).
A Postsecular Society?
core”—that is, whether it does not amount to a credo quia absurdum without
belief protesting against the nihilism of modernity.
Such a view would be mistaken. When Habermas delivered these remarks,
he was taking issue with two models of secularization: on the one hand, an
interpretation that considers secularization to represent an illegitimate expro-
priation of religion through worldliness and, on the other, an overly optimistic
view of human progress, according to which “religious ways of thinking and
forms of life are replaced by rational, at any rate superior, equivalents” (Future,
104). That Habermas does not owe his concerns about the “derailing” effects
of secularization to the first model is clear from the demands he places on
religious citizens in culturally modern societies. His expectations are secular
in three ways: first, religious citizens should display epistemic openness to
other religions and worldviews—i.e., they should not shy away from cognitive
dissonance (Future, 104; Naturalism, 135ff.); second, they should recognize the
“authority of ‘natural’ reason”—notwithstanding the “fallible results” of
“institutionalized science”; and third, they should recognize the “principles of
universalistic egalitarianism in law and morality” that underlie the modern
constitutional state (Reder and Schmidt 2008, 27; Naturalism, 136).
Habermas has spoken of the “transformation of religious consciousness”
that has occurred in Western culture “since the Reformation and the
Enlightenment” (Naturalism, 136). This reflexive turn has often been called
the “secularization of religion”—and applauded. Does he agree?
Yes. Even if he speaks of “secularization in . . . postsecular societies” (Future,
103), Habermas defends “secularized” religion as religion. As he views matters,
“secularized” religion continues to be religion in essence, and it must (be able
to) stay this way—i.e., it should remain precisely what is opaque to agnostic
ways of thinking. Habermas seeks to overcome an attitude that understands
religious traditions and communities as “archaic relics of premodern societies
persisting into the present”—an attitude that considers “freedom of religion
only as the cultural equivalent of the conservation of species threatened with
extinction” (Naturalism, 138). Nonreligious citizens should also observe epis-
temic openness. “Religious traditions have a special power to articulate moral
intuitions, especially with regard to sensitive forms of communal life” (Natu-
ralism, 131; translation slightly modified), Habermas affirms. In this light, his
perspective becomes clear. “Secularization has the function less of a filter that
eliminates the contents of tradition than that of a transformer that changes
the current of tradition” (Reder and Schmidt 2008, 30). Habermas holds that
the “current” of presecular tradition has been transformed but that self-reflective
secular modernity has not simply discarded the past. Secular modernity is
also postsecular insofar as what is cumbersome in tradition (das Sperrige der
Tradition) has entered the flow of communicative action and discourse—and
not as a burden but as an opportunity.
446 Texts
Kant, on the other hand, posits an arrangement in which all human beings
have an inalienable inner dignity that goes beyond the relative value of any
“price.” All are to be viewed as “ends in themselves” (Zwecke an sich)—free
beings that can set their own purposes and are therefore capable of self-
determination. In this context, he speaks of “freedom of choice” (Willkürfrei-
heit), but he already knows what Habermas stresses: that the choice of purposes
and means occurs against the backdrop of possible reasons and motivations.
And not just that: Kant extends general freedom of choice into an order of
general autonomy. Ultimately, then, he affirms that human dignity means the
“dignity of a rational being that obeys no law other than that which at the same
time it itself gives” (Kant 2012, 46). The matter exceeds mere self-discovery
and determination inasmuch as it involves the ability to subordinate oneself to
transindividual moral law on the basis of rational insight. Kant pictures a moral
order in which autonomous beings respect one another in their self-legislating
dignity. No human being should be demoted to a mere means for others; at the
same time, however, no human being should be sacrificed on the altruistic
altar of an order deemed eternal.
When Habermas speaks of the redemptive “translation of the theological
doctrine of creation in God’s image into the idea of the equal and uncondi-
tional dignity of all human beings” (Naturalism, 110), this Kantian reflection
proves decisive. Accordingly, Habermas asks whether the first human being
who determines, at his own discretion, the natural essence of another human
being at the same time destroys the equal freedoms that exist among persons
of equal birth in order to secure their difference. All the same, one might ask:
where does this leave the one true God who created mankind—the Almighty,
who alone existed before Creation? Should one not trust in this God more
than in human beings?
In a certain sense, Habermas responds in the affirmative, speaking simply
of God “who is love” and “creates, with Adam and Eve, free creatures who are
like him” (Future, 114). He emphasizes that one does not need to believe “in
order to understand what is meant with ‘in the likeness of God’ [Ebenbildlich-
keit]. One knows that there can be no love without recognition of the self in
the other, nor freedom without mutual recognition” (114). But why, then, do
we need the idea of God at all—why does this idea still say something to “those
who are tone-deaf to religious connotations” (114)?
All of God’s “prior” love notwithstanding, Habermas conceives the rela-
tionship between God and Man on the model of mutual respect and recogni-
tion (Langthaler and Nagl-Docekal 2007, 401). If God really is free and decides
to create an autonomous human being, this means that He always treats the
human being as an end (Zweck) and not just as a means; in other words, “man”
can freely determine the particular difference that he is due. Yet at the same
448 Texts
Habermas responds in the negative (see chapter 41 in this volume). His con-
cern lies precisely in “the absolute difference between Creator and Creature.”
God, who is Creator and Redeemer in one, does not need “to abide by the laws
of nature like a technician, or by the rules of a code like a biologist or computer
scientist” (Future, 115). God does not need to “tinker” (basteln) with humanity:
“From the very beginning, the voice of God calling into life communicates
within a morally sensitive universe. Therefore God may ‘determine’ man in
the sense of enabling and, at the same time, obliging him to be free” (Future,
115). If, however, a human being begins to toy with the natural constitution
(Sosein) of another—even to make this party better—he not only puts the dif-
ference between Creator and Creature in question but also his own autonomy
(and in favor of a sovereign will [Willkür], at that). For all that, he does not
become God.
Habermas maintains that the “aggressive conflict between anthropocentric
and theocentric understandings of self and world is yesterday’s battle” (Natu-
ralism, 211)—at least in the European West. Now, however, danger emerges on
an “intrahuman” front. Until this point, the natural (naturwüchsig) structure
of ways of living has assured the “indisponibility” (Unverfügbarkeit) of human
nature, even if practices of “egalitarian and individualistic universalism” have
eroded it (211). The inheritance of the good Creator God is threatened by “injury
to the communicative constitution of our form of living, which reaches down to
its deepest moral dimensions [bis in moralische Tiefenschichten hinein]”
(Langthaler and Nagl-Docekal 2007, 401). Magnus Striet, a theologian, has
pictured the process culminating in human beings of the future as playthings
of “preceding generations” (Langthaler and Nagl-Docekal 2007, 272).
Habermas does not conceive this genetic engineer on the model of a
God who loves human beings as ends in themselves—nor even as one who
“Faith and Knowledge” 449
Metaphysics
defense against deep-seated fears of death and frailty, of isolation and separa-
tion, of opposition and contradiction, of surprise and novelty” (Postmetaphysi-
cal, 120). All the same, the matter concerns insight that occurs through reasoned
arguments (Gründe).
In contrast, thinking in archaic, ritualized societies does not, in fact, pos-
sess the unity that the thought experiment of a purely sacred community
brings forth. In a mythical worldview, a great array of different kinds of infor-
mation exists, and this information is ordered in terms of analogies and con-
trasts that lend the world meaning but, at the same time, express fear that
humanity stands defenseless before a universe that it does not control; hereby,
the world is explained through invisible forces that, though conceived in anal-
ogy to human beings, are immeasurably superior to them (Communicative
Action, 1:47–49).
Theoria
was not viewed as an argument against its unity. On the contrary: if the world
(as it appears to mortals) were only true—that is, if it existed in a way that could
be described adequately in purely descriptive statements—it would not be real
but rather void (nichtig). Ultimately, the epistemic subject of theoria was less
concerned with the difference between being and nothingness (Sein und Nichts)
than with the difference between what is and what should be (Sein und Sollen).
though his sharp distinction between the intelligible and the empirical world
does not allow for an adequate understanding of individuality/individuation,
according to Habermas (Postmetaphysical, 158–159).
Ever since Kierkegaard, individuation has been viewed as the critical-para-
doxical assumption of a particular “life history” for which one must (be able
to) answer (166). Yet when Habermas discusses the “claim to individuality”
(170ff.), he does not view individuality as the property of the subject (Eigentum
des Einzelnen). For him, the subjective and social worlds meet up and merge
because the individual’s claim to individuality is constitutively dependent on
recognition through others, who raise claims of the same kind (170ff.). One
cannot be an authentic individual for oneself alone: the idea can only arise in
the social world in the first place. The claim can be measured only on the basis
of the critical view that others have on the consistency of intentions and
actions. By fusing the notions of a social and a subjective world, Habermas
arrives at his conception of a freedom for all subjects—a freedom-in-common
inasmuch as mutual recognition occurs, yet one different from person to per-
son. This, in his view, represents a secularized form of the idea of existence in
the divine image.
Kant had translated his insight into the unconditional nature of moral
norms into methodological rigorism—as if it were the case, for example, that
the Categorical Imperative could never conflict with the commandment not
to lie. Underlying this position is a vision of a world of categorical imperatives
admitting no contradiction—a kind of quasi-cosmos of the moral law “within
me,” to which Kant, at the end of Critique of Practical Reason, adds the heav-
ens “above me” (without thereby reintroducing the physical cosmos—for it is
only the law of morality that offers reassurance of self).
Habermas’s reworking of Kantian ethics in terms of communicative action
and discourse takes leave of this vision. His theory no longer conceives ethics
in terms of the individual subject but rather focuses on communication as it
actually occurs—whereby the validity claim of normative rightness still repre-
sents a kind of “transcendence from within” (Facts, 17ff.). Now Kant’s moral
world is understood more deeply as a social world, which—as such—is set
“communicatively aflow.” Habermas’s purposes are clear—and especially in a
political sense: to radicalize the theory of democracy and of the constitutional
democratic state.
nor in legal positivism but instead wants to consider both within the frame-
work of a theory of communicative reason (see Facts), is communicative “flow”
enough to halt the danger of a complete positivization of human nature? How
is the morally sacred—whose penetrating power Habermas invokes—to be
saved by means of linguistification?
Habermas’s first step is to understand society in phenomenological terms—
as a cooperative undertaking. Of course, society also contains conflicts and
potential for further conflict. All the same, however, communicative-cooper-
ative action takes place without problems for the most part, even if misunder-
standings and disagreements can happen. If truly stubborn disagreements
arise in communicative action and yield long-lasting conflicts, one may opt
for a discursive “timeout” as a drastic measure (Rosskur) (Høibraaten 2001),
whereby only factual information and convincing arguments stand at issue. If,
then, a solution is found—either in whole or in part—cooperative action may
be renewed. If this does not occur, parties typically are formed—which may
prove either productive or destructive for society. In the event of enduring
conflicts that do not become all-encompassing, the possibility exists for nego-
tiations containing discursive elements (diskursiv aufgemischte Verhandlun-
gen); inasmuch as there is consensus on fair standards of procedure, sanctions
may then be used (Facts).
In modernity, the cosmos came to be conceived as a field of objects for
the nomological sciences because this permitted “the matter at hand” to be
grasped more readily (präziser). The universe was now held to be equal to the
“objective world” of objects that are available for manipulation through
control of natural laws. Truth, as practiced under such conditions, does not
preclude profound modifications—as is made clear by experiments with the
genetic foundations of sociocultural ways of life that, hitherto, were “naturally
grown” (naturwüchsig). In the discourse of the natural sciences, the linguisti-
fication of the sacred has led to its dissolution (Auflösung), even though the
binding force of criticizable validity claims remains operative.
Are matters any different in the normative discourses of morality and
law—or in sciences where normative discourses accompany theoretical-
empirical ones? When the idea of mankind created in the image of God is
translated into the normative postulate of equal rights, permanent free-flowing
communication determines its meaning. The idea is no longer guaranteed by
a sacred-authoritative instance. In a certain measure, then, one can imagine
how mankind might change itself genetically in a legitimate way—which of
course does not include the possible case Habermas mentions, when a person
alters genetic material “without even presupposing, at least counterfactually, a
consent of the concerned other” (Future, 115). Now, humanity as a whole is
concerned. All human beings would need to be able to give their consent—and
it would be rather paradoxical to exclude future generations from decisions.
458 Texts
However, since it cannot even be expected that all people now living would agree,
it is necessary to imagine a global consensus about procedures that would
lead—after lengthy discourses with many opportunities for revision—to a
majority decision.
Let us assume that such a process is legitimately conceivable. Would this
not dissolve the Sacred in the normative field, too, if the decision favored an
order that threatened to rob a portion of humanity of its autonomy?
References
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Habermas, Jürgen, and Joseph Ratzinger. 2006. The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason
and Religion. San Francisco: Ignatius Press.
Høibraaten, Helge. 2001. “Kommunikative und sanktionsgestützte Macht bei Jürgen
Habermas, mit einem Seitenblick auf Hannah Arendt.” In The Angel of History Is Look-
ing Back, ed. Bernd Neumann et al., 153–194. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
——. 2007. “Post-Metaphysical Thought, Religion, and Secular Society.” In The Holberg
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#nameddest=habermas.
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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Alexander Dru. New York: Dover.
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Zweckrationalität im Anschluß an Kierkegaard. Paderborn: Schöningh.
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Oakley, Francis. 1984. Omnipotence, Covenant, and Order. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
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Diskussion mit Jürgen Habermas. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
41
HUMAN NATURE AND GENETIC
MANIPULATION
The Future of Human Nature (2001)
THOMAS M. SCHMIDT
D
epending on one’s temperament and sensibilities, progress in the
biological sciences occasions enthusiasm or misgivings. Either
way, these advances have prompted calls—which are only grow-
ing in number—for points of normative orientation. Genetic technology and
biotechnology have not only given rise to philosophical reactions along the
lines of applied ethics (e.g., disputes about appropriate standards and codes of
regulation). In addition, discussions concerning stem-cell research and changes
to human genetic material have brought into focus a basic anthropological
question about “the future of human nature.” As Habermas views things, the
fundamental provocation represented by preimplantation genetic diagnosis
(PGD) and embryonic-stem-cell research concerns the fact that the universal
morality of reason—which has hitherto offered a reliable standard for norma-
tive conflicts in pluralistic societies—must now be placed in a new and differ-
entiated relation to ethical notions about the right life of the human species.
It would be mistaken, then, to understand Habermas’s The Future of
Human Nature as if it were just another one of his politically influential
opinion pieces commenting on current debates. This view, while not unjusti-
fied, underestimates the significant revisions of, and changes to, the theory of
discourse that Habermas undertakes in the essay. Here, he broadens the rela-
tionship between morality and ethics—the theory of what is just and doctrines
of what is good—which runs throughout his philosophy as a whole. In consid-
eration of the anthropological challenges catalyzed by new biosciences (and
associated ideologies), Habermas addresses, in decisive fashion, the species-
ethical framework for a discursive theory of morality and law. In a certain
measure, he discusses the “weak” metaphysical preconditions for postmeta-
physical morality. Habermas does not revisit—much less revise—the basic
points of his theory; rather, he reconstructs their conceptual preconditions at
a deeper level. The revolution occurring in the biosciences makes it necessary,
in particular, to reexamine and justify the distinction between “the good life”
462 Texts
and universal moral perspectives of equal respect that are valid for all. The
self-understanding of the human species as a whole stands at issue.
Accordingly, Habermas combines concrete matters of application and
diagnoses of the times with philosophical questions of principle that concern
the basic concepts underlying the overall design of discourse theory. To account
for—and honor—this complex web of arguments, the first part of this article
retraces the steps by which Habermas, in the main section of The Future of
Human Nature, arrives at his position on genetic technology and PGD and
justifies it philosophically (“On the Way to a Liberal Eugenics?”). The second
part (“The Debate on the Ethical Self-Understanding of the Species”) exam-
ines two of the most substantive objections to The Future of Human Nature in
conjunction with Habermas’s responses to them. (Thereby I principally—but
not exclusively—refer to objections collected in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Phi-
losophie [e.g., Honneth 2002], as well as to Habermas’s response, which is
found in the “Postscript” added to the essay from the fourth edition on.) The
third and last part (“Postmetaphysical Answers to the Question: What Is the
‘Good Life’? The Discourse Theory of Morality and Species Ethics”) explores
how these arguments are situated within the larger context of Habermas’s phi-
losophy; here, reference is made, above all, to the general considerations the
author presents in the first chapter of the book, “Are There Postmetaphysical
Answers to the Question: What Is the ‘Good Life’?” (Future, 1–15).
matter of determining the precise nature of the relationship between the inac-
cessibility of human nature as such and the inviolability of persons. Habermas
seeks to give the principle of personal inviolability a meaning that is different
from, and independent of, the principle of natural indisponibility.
In so doing, Habermas takes issue with the utilitarian view that reduces
inviolability to technical matters. According to this position, all that can be
done should occur on the basis of individual preferences. This not only means
combating genetically conditioned handicaps and illnesses but also heighten-
ing human potential—including doping and technologically induced “enhance-
ment”; ultimately, it aims for a “transhuman” “self-transformation of the species”
(42). However, such a perspective fails to account for the taboo-like validity
of the inviolability of personhood, which affirms the principle of inalienable
human dignity. Moreover, it cannot explain, in terms of ethics, the strong feel-
ings of aversion—the sensation of disgust when faced with what seems to be an
obscenity—that is triggered by the “chimeric” beings that result when the bor-
ders between species are purposefully transgressed.
At the same time, Habermas remarks that the opposite, “metaphysical”
strategy of grounding personal inviolability in unchanging characteristics of
human nature is insufficient. For one, this view underestimates, in technical
and pragmatic terms, the plasticity of human nature, which is, in fact, a real-
ity. Accordingly, it proceeds in a politically naïve manner inasmuch as it pre-
sumes that the advances of bioscience—which are already operative—might
yet be “tamed.” Moreover, this line of argument exhibits epistemological
weakness inasmuch as it fails to consider that all substantive ideas about nec-
essary, natural qualities of human beings vary according to the metaphysical
ideas one holds about personhood—a matter that ultimately differs depending
on the contingencies of worldview under conditions of pluralism.
Therefore, Habermas maintains, preserving an autonomous sense of moral
respect for personal inviolability must be uncoupled from the notion that
(human) nature is inaccessible. It is not possible to derive such a sense from
the subjective will of individuals, nor from predetermined, objective, and
(supposedly) essential features of “mankind” as a whole. The call for the “mor-
alization of nature” must be understood correctly. Habermas holds that one
should reject efforts that engage in “dubious resanctification” (25; translation
slightly modified). This means projects that seek to reenchant nature by erect-
ing artificial taboos on the basis of archaic moral feelings of revulsion that
occur in the presence of “chimeras created by genetic engineering”—sensa-
tions that, restored to “second-order” taboos through reflection, would then
perform a functional role in stabilizing human self-understanding.
Instead, Habermas affirms that the borders marking personal inviolability
articulate conditions under which we may continue “to see ourselves as the
authors of our own life histories, and to recognize one another as autonomous
464 Texts
Shifting the “line between chance and choice” . . . makes us aware of the inter-
relations between our self-understanding as moral beings and the anthropo-
logical background of an ethics of the species. Whether or not we may
see ourselves as the responsible authors of our own life history and recognize
each other as persons of “equal birth” . . . is also dependent on how we see
ourselves anthropologically as members of the species.
(28–29)
Thereby, the further course of argument is set: to clarify in what way and in
what precise sense our moral self-understanding depends on species-ethical
preconditions. A main point of interest concerns the fundamental categorical
changes that new technologies of genetic reproduction have produced. Above
all, the matter involves the breakdown of terminological borders between
what is “grown” (Gewachsenes) and what has been “made” (Gemachtes)—i.e.,
the difference between organism (Lebewesen) and artifact (Karafyllis 2003).
The negation of the border between what has “become” naturally and what
has been technologically produced holds consequences for the logic of
The Future of Human Nature 465
for the natural and cultural history of the child; it is left to him or her to decide
what he or she will integrate into life subsequently—what he or she interprets
as an expression of his or her own self-conscious identity. Therefore, it is the
indisponibility of natural history that makes the process of socialization into
something to be shaped and not merely experienced (erlitten). The dialectical
aspect of the irreducible difference between natural destiny, on the one hand,
and the process of socialization, on the other—whereby it is also presumed
that natural disposition continues into individual social history—is what
makes it possible to see every decision and every action as a “new beginning.”
However, when genetic programming occurs, this border becomes blurry, for
the technician has already intervened in the natural constitution (Naturausstat-
tung) of the individual—as otherwise only parents and other responsible
parties do in the course of socialization/education (Erziehung).
Yet does the concept of natality really impose convincing “moral limits” on
eugenics? Why should a “eugenically programmed” individual not make
qualities his or her own that were afforded by engineering in the same way
that he or she accepts natural features such as sex, height, eye color, etc.? Until
now, such traits have been just as unavailable to and unalterable by individuals
by “natural” means as those that genetic engineering will create in the future.
The key difference, according to Habermas, lies in the fact that program-
ming—unlike interactive processes of education—does not treat the child as
“a second person” (62); instead, he or she remains an object “in the third per-
son.” Genetic intervention opens “no communicative scope for the projected
child to be addressed as a second person and to be involved in a communica-
tion process. From the adolescent’s perspective, an instrumental determina-
tion cannot be revised by a ‘critical reappraisal’ ” (62)—unlike a pathogenic
socialization process. For this reason, genetic modifications represent an egre-
gious restriction of personal autonomy; the subject is deprived of authorship
over his or her own life, and at the same time—because of the enduring asym-
metry between subject and object in the process of programming—the pre-
conditions for “the equal respect which every person in his quality as a person
is entitled to” (56) have been abandoned. At best, a genetic engineer “may
interpret . . . this intention,” but it is impossible to “revise or undo” it (64).
Between the party responsible for programming and the person who is pro-
grammed, irreducible intersubjective asymmetry prevails inasmuch as they
cannot exchange their social roles. An entirely new kind of social relation
results, which “jeopardizes a precondition for the moral self-understanding of
autonomous actors” (63).
But why should one not think that such missing interpersonal reciprocity
might be regulated or compensated for by means of democratically legitimated
procedures—as occurs, for example, with problems of distributive justice
associated with genetic technology and modern reproductive medicine? In
The Future of Human Nature 467
The Future of Human Nature has been discussed in two settings, above all. In
autumn 2001, the arguments presented in the work were discussed at the con-
ference “Law, Philosophy, and Social Theory,” which Ronald Dworkin and
Thomas Nagel organized at the New York University School of Law. The first
volume (2002) of Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie honored The Future of
Human Nature by making it the focus of discussions by Robert Spaemann,
468 Texts
Ludwig Siep, and Dieter Birnbacher. Habermas’s response to both events was,
in turn, published in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie (Habermas 2002).
Apart from a few new formulations, it is identical to the “Postscript” added to
the book in the fourth, expanded (German) edition (2002).
Habermas presents his response as a clarification—not a revision—of his
original intuitions and arguments. He first addresses the pronounced differ-
ences between the juristic and philosophical cultures of the United States and
Germany. “For the pragmatically minded Americans,” he observes, “these
new practices, while intensifying familiar problems of distributive justice,
don’t generate any fundamentally new problems of their own” (Future, 75–76);
this position, in his estimation, both represents “a still-unbroken trust in
scientific and technological development” (76) and expresses a tradition of phil-
osophical liberalism (shaped more by Locke than by Kant) that “foregrounds
the protection of the individual legal person’s freedom of choice against the
state” (76). Against the backdrop of such a liberal culture, “it virtually goes
without saying that decisions should not be submitted to any regulation by the
state, but rather should be left to the parents” (76). Habermas grants that “par-
ents’ rights to make eugenic decisions” (77) need not directly conflict with the
well-being of the child or with his or her liberties (Freiheitsrechte). At the same
time, however, adverse effects may occur, in mediated fashion, with respect to
affected parties’ understanding of personal autonomy inasmuch as they cease
to consider themselves the sovereign authors of their own lives and thereby
cease to be able to view themselves as autonomous moral agents.
Habermas holds that changes occurring through liberal eugenics could,
above all, transform the moral self-understanding of those concerned. Thereby,
he stresses, once more, his fear that two essential preconditions for moral
action and judgment—the fundamental equality of parties in interactions and
the individual autonomy of the moral subject—may be threatened by liberal
eugenics. As he views matters, the consequences of liberal eugenics do not con-
cern particular liberties so much as the ways that people are able to understand
themselves as enjoying rights at all. Following this restatement of the main
arguments already presented in The Future of Human Nature, Habermas
addresses four groups of objections to the position he has articulated.
The first set concerns the connection between “the practices of an improv-
ing eugenics and the ‘alien determination’ [Fremdbestimmung], even if always
indirect, of a future person” (79–80). Above all, Thomas Nagel and Thomas
McCarthy have offered objections along these lines. A second kind of
objection—raised especially by Ronald Dworkin (2000)—involves cases one
can easily imagine, when partial modification of characteristics leaves the
moral identity of the person intact and does not necessarily damage it. The
third set of objections—e.g., those offered by Robert Spaemann—takes issue
with the fundamental assumptions underlying a postmetaphysical theory of
The Future of Human Nature 469
morality; here, the call for a stronger ontological basis for species ethics is
voiced. Fourth and last, Ludwig Siep and others have objected that Habermas’s
arguments from moral principle contribute little to the normative regulation
of the problems prompted by PGD and embryonic-stem-cell research.
In the framework of exchanges during “Law, Philosophy, and Social The-
ory,” Nagel and McCarthy declared that it is “counterintuitive” (Future, 80) to
maintain that genetic programming represents a more dramatic interference
with human self-determination than do the biological contingencies of “natu-
ral” inheritance. One may doubt whether “a young person [would] struggle
with manipulated genetic predispositions in the same way as with naturally
acquired ones” (82). In response, Habermas has clarified his position and
argued that alien determination disturbs the moral agency of a person only “if
we assume that the child’s genetic constitution, chosen from among other
alternatives, actually reduces the range of her future life choices” (85). It is pre-
cisely this eventuality that we cannot foresee. Our “knowledge remains falli-
ble”; therefore, it “may be applied only in the form of clinical suggestions for
somebody whom the advisor already knows as an individuated being. . . . A
person who potentially stands to benefit from such a decision must always
preserve the ability to say no” (90).
These remarks are also meant to offer a response to Dworkin, who has
objected that Habermas’s argument about alien determination runs dry inas-
much as it is only certain characteristics—and not the morally relevant identity
of the person as a whole—that are determined by genetic interventions. Haber-
mas counters by affirming, once more, that his argument about alien determi-
nation derives its main force from the fact “that a genetic designer, acting
according to his own preferences, assumes an irrevocable role in determining
the contours of the life history and identity of another person, while remain-
ing unable to assume even her counterfactual assent” (87).
Do these reservations—which involve matters of principle—about the
potential moral consequences of positive eugenics offer suitable criteria for
drawing “any meaningful conclusions concerning the current decisions on
PGD and applied embryo research” (95)? Were one to protect embryonic life
by degrees (as Siep and other representatives of the German National Ethics
Council [Nationaler Ethikrat] propose), these points of hesitancy would, at
best, amount to “ ‘slippery-slope’- arguments” (Dammbruchargumente) (95).
The force of such lines of reasoning depends, as a rule, on the dimensions of
harm occurring in a worst-case scenario. Most important, however, is the
question whether the measures criticized—in this case, the admissibility of
PGD and stem-cell research—are really to be viewed as steps in this direction.
Clearly, such a view is controversial. Habermas himself refers to Dworkin,
McCarthy, and Nagel (among others), who do not consider future eugenic
practices to damage the principles of autonomous moral reason. Yet parties
470 Texts
who reject this kind of practice as a matter of principle may respond that one
cannot know, at present, precisely what effects permitting PGD and stem-cell
research will have. At any rate, new biological technologies need not entail the
erosion of autonomy and the demise of moral equality.
All the same, changes in moral outlook can be produced by eugenic practices.
Habermas warns of potentially serious consequences. In his eyes, this is not
alarmism but rather anticipates the outcome of a possible course of development
that may serve as a means to judge present-day events inasmuch as it alerts one
to the change of attitudes that are happening, at least in the long term, to the ways
we have understood ourselves until now as a species of reasonable and moral
beings. With that, Habermas places his thesis that new biological technologies
put the normative self-understanding of the human species into question at the
core of discussion. This, in turn, relates to the matter of how one should view
The Future of Human Nature in terms of Habermas’s project as a whole.
References
Dworkin, Ronald. 2000. “Playing God: Genes, Clones, and Luck.” In Sovereign Virtue.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 2002. “Replik auf Einwände.” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 50,
no. 2: 283–298.
Honneth, Axel. 2002. “Symposium zu: Jürgen Habermas: Die Zukunft der menschlichen
Natur.” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 50, no. 1: 105–126.
Karafyllis, Nicole C., ed. 2003. Biofakte: Versuch über den Menschen zwischen Artefakt und
Lebewesen. Paderborn: Westedeutscher Verlag.
42
THE CONSTITUTIONALIZATION
OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND
POLITICS
“Does the Constitutionalization of International Law Still
Have a Chance?” (2004)
JAMES BOHMAN
F
rom 1999 onward, Habermas has significantly shifted the focus of
his political philosophy from questions of democracy and legiti-
macy within the nation-state to the burgeoning international
political domain. In his first such move to international politics, in the mid-
1990s, Habermas embraced the “Kantian project” of “Perpetual Peace” and
interpreted it as requiring cosmopolitan democracy. In his second phase, in
the late 1990s, Habermas began to see difficulties with any attempt to transfer
democratic ideals directly to the international system and argued for a more
limited conception of a fair negotiating system that cannot in principle attain
full democratic legitimacy. In his third phase, beginning in 2005 and continuing
to the present, Habermas advocates the “constitutionalization of international
law” and moves toward a theory of a multilevel world society characterized by
states, “world domestic politics,” and supranational institutions concerned
solely with human rights.
Habermas’s shift toward international and cosmopolitan political theory
occurred as social scientists and philosophers began to see globalization as a
transformative process that would greatly change the nature of politics. In
particular, many began to see globalization as challenging the assumption
that independent and sovereign states are the primary units of political analy-
sis and the carriers of democracy. Indeed, states now seem both too big and
too small: too big to generate the loyalty and legitimacy needed for the demo-
cratic ideal and too small to solve a myriad of global social problems, from
global capital flows to global warming. Powerful multinational corporations now
evade state power, even as international financial institutions increasingly
dictate the terms of cooperation to weak states. In the interest of promoting
“Does the Constitutionalization of International Law Still Have a Chance?” 475
free markets and trade, states now voluntarily delegate their powers to inter-
national bodies and private authorities. Antiglobalization protesters challenge
such neoliberal policies often in the name of local control and democracy.
What unites these diverse phenomena is a shift to forms of political authority
that are no longer necessarily accountable to a measure of popular influence
and control—one of the necessary but not sufficient conditions for any form
of democracy.
In his essay “Kant’s Perpetual Peace with the Benefit of Two Hundred
Years’ Hindsight” (Inclusion, 165–202), Habermas was optimistic about the
prospects for a global political order as the continuation of the form of democ-
racy based on human rights typical of nation-states. In a properly reformed
United Nations, democratization could be accomplished by organizing its
institutions so as to reproduce parliamentary democracy at the global scale,
with the General Assembly as a legislative branch, various world and interna-
tional courts, and the Security Council as its executive. Habermas soon came
to see that the extension of democracy beyond the state as the basis for the
legitimacy of the cosmopolitan order could not be achieved so easily, espe-
cially given the specific conception of democracy that he developed in Between
Facts and Norms. Habermas thus rejects cosmopolitan democracy and con-
cludes that the modern conception of democracy, where citizens are the
authors and subjects of the law, cannot be extended beyond a delimited politi-
cal community of free and equal citizens. Democracy on the nation-state
model connects three central ideas: that the proper political community is a
bounded one, that it possesses ultimate political authority, and that this
authority enables political autonomy, so that the members of the demos may
freely choose the conditions of their own association and legislate for them-
selves. The normative core of this conception of democracy is the conception
of freedom articulated in the third condition: that the subject of the con-
straints of law is free precisely in being the author of the laws. In the absence of
this demos, global parliamentary democracy is a nonstarter. The argument
here might be seen as a continuation of Habermas’s understanding of the need
for “decentering” democracy under the conditions of pluralism and complex-
ity. If this applies to the modern state, then it would seem that cosmopolitan
democracy would take this trend even further. Yet, when discussing “postna-
tional” legitimacy, Habermas clearly makes self-determination by a singular
demos the fundamental normative core of the democratic ideal, however unat-
tainable it is in the absence of a delimited demos.
In the face of these problems with existing political categories, Habermas
has consistently argued that they can best be understood and dealt with in the
context of “the Kantian project” of creating a “cosmopolitan condition,” that
is, as the extension of the rule of law and institutionalization of peace and
freedom beyond the state. Kant already saw the possibility of the emergence of
476 Texts
a global public sphere, in which human-rights violations “in one part of the
world will be felt everywhere” (Kant 2002, 107–108). While such an emerging
global public provides a necessary condition for a political order beyond the
state, it does not identify the central concern of the Kantian project: in Haber-
mas’s terms, it is the constitutionalization of international law. “Constitution-
alization” here refers to the transformation of existing power relations through
law. In the case of cosmopolitan law, it is the transformation of the law of states
into a condition in which individuals as bearers of human rights are the legal
subjects of international law.
In the last decade, Habermas has come to distinguish the Kantian project
of transforming international law into cosmopolitan law from issues of
democracy and democratic legitimacy. Instead, Habermas suggests a “multi-
level political world society,” where functions are distributed across the
national, transnational, and supranational levels. Rather than constitute the
global demos that makes itself the author and subject of the law, constitution-
alization is now about the mutual limitation of the exercise of power at various
levels, including the power of democratic states, which are nonetheless the
source of legitimacy through popular and public accountability. This is what
Habermas now calls “global domestic politics”; he leaves to formal and legal
global institutions the exclusive task of promoting human rights and human
security. The question shifts from “How and in what institutional form can
democracy be realized beyond the state?” to “If not democracy, what form or
forms of legitimacy are adequate to a multilevel and pluralist world society?”
In his development of a more consistent and feasible Kantian project,
Habermas has offered three different versions: an initial interpretation, devel-
oped in terms of an ideal of cosmopolitan democracy; a second version, in
which democracy is argued to be at home only in the nation-state, leaving only
a system of fair bargaining and negotiation at the international level; and,
finally, a Kantian account of a multilevel political world society in which the
constitutionalization of international law is the main aim.
deal with, even with the ability to exercise legitimate power. Beyond the state
are the transnational and supranational levels, and in both cases processes of
institutionalization have already occurred. Habermas considers the “suprana-
tional level” to be exhausted by those executive and judicial aspects of the
United Nations that make it a fully inclusive “world organization.” The core
institutional achievements of the United Nations as a model of supranational
institutionalization are executive and juridical: the Security Council and vari-
ous world courts, including the International Criminal Court, both of which
must be strengthened and also detached from the many other functional
organizations of the current United Nations. These selectively strengthened
world organizations would limit themselves to two tasks and two tasks alone:
securing the peace and promoting and implementing human rights. Haber-
mas continues to place all other global political issues at the transnational
level in a system of fair negotiation among the relevant actors and stakehold-
ers, including regional regimes such as the European Union. The purpose of
these institutions, which will be functionally distributed according to problems
and functions, will be to create “global domestic policy” (Weltinnenpolitik),
making this structure genuinely transnational and no longer solely concerned
with matters of international foreign policy. Habermas foresees that states will
then also become further integrated horizontally into various networks and
regimes that will produce such policies and remain open to the influence and
deliberation of publics from below. Hence, it is the transnational level that
generates a “pluralist” and multilevel world society, in which governance is
dispersed across networks that incorporate states, state actors, and emerging
forms of civil society but also takes on the burden of a global domestic policy,
including issues of development.
With these distinctions between the national, transnational, and suprana-
tional levels, it is clear that the burdens of legitimation are spread throughout
the system via the division of labor. Legitimacy at the national level is demo-
cratic and ethical, dependent on the implementation of procedures that create
a demos and allow for the development of a public political culture. At the
transnational level, legitimacy is fundamentally a matter of politics and negotia-
tion, so that the complex agreements and policies can be seen to be open to the
influence of all affected and also seen as effective in solving particular prob-
lems. But the supranational level takes up and transforms what Habermas
calls “the classical agenda of international law,” that of promoting peace, secu-
rity, and freedom. But this means that on this proposal there must be a very
strong distinction between law and politics: the development of international
law “follows the intrinsic logic of an explication and extension of human
rights.” Thus, Habermas argues, “the issues the world organization faces tend
to be more of a legal than a political kind” (Naturalism, 343). Consistent
with his view of law and democracy in his earlier works, law and politics
482 Texts
the authority to amend or formulate new legal norms. On the other hand,
supranational organizations are organized solely around universal negative
duties related to human rights and their enforcement as the justificatory bases
of their decisions. While recent developments in the United Nations have
called for a more expansive conception of security to include global redistri-
bution, such an agenda cannot be fulfilled by the United Nations, because it is
currently structured in such a way as to be unable to engage in the construc-
tive tasks of global politics and bargaining. In fact, Habermas emphatically
rejects such political functions for supranational institutions, since they would
overburden and potentially delegitimize them from their appropriate tasks of
constitutionalizing human rights. The aim of this division of labor is to shore
up the legitimacy of the supranational level by tying it exclusively to human
rights and their enforcement.
Does reconstructing this argument about a legitimation deficit as a
dilemma help in identifying a possible way to escape the problem? Democracy
is needed for expanding the notion of security underlying supranational insti-
tutions, on the one hand, and for underwriting redistributive features of global
domestic policy, on the other hand. But the form of democracy that would
make this possible is not available at either level. So is there a way out? As
Habermas sees it, the only solution available under conditions that will hold
for the foreseeable future is to institute a division of institutional labor that
would produce the necessary forms of legitimacy across the institutional sys-
tem as a whole without relying on only one form of legitimacy.
Does the distinction of various levels solve the problem? It does so not sim-
ply by having each level produce its own form of legitimacy. Instead, legiti-
macy at each level is regarded as mutually reinforcing. Consider the Kantian
problem of why law is the solution to the problem of peace: peace is attainable
only if the goals of the international system and of the republican states
are mutually reinforcing, and for this purpose constitutionalization moves
the state away from the self-defeating attempt to secure nondomination at
home through domination abroad. Such mutually enhancing relationships
can be found elsewhere in politically organized world society as well. The
establishment of the International Criminal Court means that the diffuse
global public sphere is given “an authoritative voice” when it is stirred by
moral reactions to political crimes and unjust regimes (Naturalism, 342). At a
more structural level, publics of citizens and their elected representatives
within democratic states provide a basis for accountability for global domestic
politics. They might, for example, put global warming more forcefully on the
political agenda.
At the same time, Habermas argues that these forms of legitimacy should
not be overextended, as when human-rights institutions were to be used to
promote the alleviation of poverty as a human right. While recognizing that
“Does the Constitutionalization of International Law Still Have a Chance?” 485
demonstrate the need for republican political demands at all levels. It is thus
not merely juridical institutions but also necessarily institutionalized political
orders across levels that only together could ensure the right to have rights.
This task is now more complicated, since this “right to rights” requires that all
have multiple memberships, as citizens of states, members of global publics,
and individual subjects of international law.
References
H
abermas’s concept of “cognitive interests” lies at the center of his
Knowledge and Human Interests (1972 [1968]). That work repre-
sents the culmination of his early efforts to ground critical social
theory in a critique of knowledge (Erkenntniskritik), an approach he aban-
doned when he made the linguistic-pragmatic turn in the 1970s (see chapter 29
in this volume). With input from Karl-Otto Apel (1971), Habermas developed
the idea of cognitive interests in hopes of reconstituting the philosophy of
reflection, which had reached its apex in German idealism. Specifically,
Habermas wanted to revive the critical, emancipatory aims of reflection in a
way that was open to sociological and historical research. For that task, he
looked to a systematic framework that had a sufficiently transcendental
character to ground critique yet that did not rest on the accomplishments of a
transcendental ego or the history of absolute mind, which in effect removed
critique from the input of the methodical sciences. The solution lay in critical
reflection on the conditions of possible knowledge in the empirical and cul-
tural sciences. These two forms of scientific inquiry, Habermas argued, rest on
two deep-seated human interests that predetermine what counts as knowledge
in their respective domains of inquiry. The reflective grasp of these two inter-
ests depends in turn on an emancipatory cognitive interest, which Habermas
linked with philosophy, on the one hand, and psychoanalysis and ideology
critique, on the other.
Consider first the empirical sciences, or, as Habermas dubbed them, the
“empirical-analytic” sciences (natural sciences and forms of social-scientific
490 Concepts
the mastery of a lexicon and syntax but also the ability to integrate linguistic
expressions with actions and nonverbal accompaniments of speech in a man-
ner appropriate to the context. As a dialogical ability to understand one’s own
and others’ speech and action for the sake of stable social cooperation, these
communicative competences are of fundamental importance for both indi-
vidual socialization and ongoing social reproduction. Thus, in a manner anal-
ogous to the empirical sciences, the cultural sciences are also grounded in a
deep-seated human interest, namely, the “practical cognitive interest” in over-
coming interpersonal disruptions and reaching mutual understanding for the
sake of stable intersubjective relations. To call this a knowledge-constitutive
interest means that reality can appear as an object of possible knowledge in
the cultural sciences only insofar as scholars engage in the kind of hermeneu-
tic processes that are necessary for any mutually intelligible intersubjectivity
at all and in which human beings must take an interest if they are to under-
stand themselves as social actors.
Before moving on, we should avoid some possible misunderstandings that
could arise with the notion of “knowledge-constitutive interest.” First, this
idea refers neither to the motives of individual scientists nor to a priori struc-
tures of a transcendental ego but to transcendental conditions of collective
human development. More precisely, cognitive interests are “basic orienta-
tions” that are presupposed by social labor and interaction as two dimensions
in which the human species reproduces itself not merely biologically but
through a sociocultural learning process, what Habermas calls “self-forma-
tion” or “self-constitution” (Knowledge, 196, 195). These basic orientations are
built into the social-material practices that structure forms of inquiry in the
natural and human sciences, which have now become an essential element in
sociocultural development. Second, in linking knowledge with “interests”
Habermas does not intend “a naturalistic reduction of transcendental-logical
categories to empirical ones” (196). Because cognitive interests structure the
ways in which we grasp objects of empirical inquiry, an adequate understand-
ing of such interests must always include the human subject, which is to say:
such understanding must involve self-reflection. Habermas now associates his
position with a “weak naturalism”: although one may postulate a continuity
between the natural evolution of the species and cultural development, the lat-
ter unfolds in a linguistic, reflective medium that precludes its reduction to
merely natural processes that work independently of culture and could be
fully explained by the empirical sciences.
The reference to reflection brings us to the third cognitive interest. Haber-
mas associates reflection first of all with the critique of knowledge (Erkenntni-
skritik), specifically with the philosophical analysis of the sciences as rational
modes of inquiry that contribute to the self-formation of the human species.
Giving Fichte a social-materialist turn, Habermas holds that such reflection,
492 Concepts
religious ideals of equality before God were translated into demands for the
abolition of slavery, equal citizenship, etc.
As with psychoanalysis, so also ideology critique depends on an emancipa-
tory cognitive interest. In some passages, Habermas seems to regard this third
interest as equally fundamental as the other two, claiming that social repro-
duction takes place through labor, interaction, and power. But, in fact, that
position is not easily maintained, and he eventually clarified his view, giving
the emancipatory interest a derivative status: it comes into play in situations of
institutionalized domination masked by forms of distorted communication.
Reference
H
abermas’s early writings already contain the leitmotif that finds
full expression in his thesis of colonization. From the beginning,
Habermas has been concerned with social pathologies and polit-
ical blind spots that result when instrumental orientations—embodied, above
all, in the structures of capitalism—distort and even repress practical reason
(or, as he came to put it later, communicative reason).
As early as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Habermas
portrays the interventions of the welfare state as a reaction to the functional
deficiencies of the economic order under capitalism. The means-end rational-
ity that shapes economy and state undermines the conditions necessary for
human discourse oriented toward achieving understanding about values and
norms—an activity that became socially relevant for the first time in bour-
geois public spheres, e.g., literary salons. This concern continues in his critical
discussion of the technocracy thesis in his writings during the 1960s. Borrowing
from systems theory (at first in a loose fashion—which changed subsequently),
Habermas addresses the dominance of “subsystems of purposive-rational
action” (Rational Society, 94) inasmuch as they prove necessary to guarantee
the material reproduction of society through work. In his view, these systems
should remain “embedded” in the normatively regulated institutional frame-
work of society.
Not until the final section of The Theory of Communicative Action can the
reader find the polished version of this diagnosis of the times. Habermas’s
thesis of a “colonization of the lifeworld” is not only meant to actualize the
Marxian critique of reification. It is also intended to disprove the counter-
Enlightenment notion that modern pathologies are caused by the process of
rationalization itself (Communicative Action, 2:143; Discourse). Habermas
argues that pathologies arise when the functionalist rationality (i.e., not just
the instrumental rationality) embodied in systems of governmental bureau-
cracy and of the economy gain the upper hand. Within these systems, actions
are not coordinated by means of communicative action (indeed, they are no
longer coordinated even by strategic action) but are steered, instead, through
the “delinguistified media” (155) of money and administrative power, which
stabilize “functional interconnections that are not intended by them” (150).
Colonization 495
References
Celikates, Robin, and Arnd Pollmann. 2006. “Baustellen der Vernunft: 25 Jahre Theorie des
kommunikativen Handelns.” Westend 3, no. 2: 97–113.
Fraser, Nancy. 1989. Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary
Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Honneth, Axel. 1993. The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory.
Trans. Kenneth Baynes. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Honneth, Axel, and Hans Joas, eds. 1991. Communicative Action: Essays on Jürgen Haber-
mas’s The Theory of Communicative Action. Trans. Jeremy Gaines and Doris L. Jones.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Iser, Mattias. 2008. Empörung und Fortschritt: Grundlagen einer kritischen Theorie der
Gesellschaft. Frankfurt: Campus.
Kneer, Georg. 1990. Die Pathologien der Moderne: Zur Zeitdiagnose in der “Theorie des
kommunikativen Handelns” von Jürgen Habermas. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Strecker, David. 2009. Logik der Macht. Zum Ort der Kritik zwischen Theorie und Praxis.
Weilerswist: Velbrueck.
45
COMMUNICATIVE ACTION
CRISTINA L AFONT
C
ommunicative action” is the central concept of Habermas’s
oeuvre. The term does not refer simply to actions that require
communication or instances of communication that perform
actions. Instead, its key feature is that participants attempt to coordinate their
different action plans on the basis of an understanding that has been mutually
achieved. In the technical sense, “communicative action” refers only to those
linguistically mediated interactions in which the “use of language oriented
to reaching understanding” assumes a “coordinating role” (Truth, 110).
Given that communicative action represents only one kind of social action
among others, it is important to bear in mind why Habermas considers it so
significant.
Despite the many qualifications, elaborations, and corrections he has
introduced to his project over time, Habermas has left his basic conception of
communicative action largely unchanged. According to this view, what distin-
guishes linguistic processes of reaching understanding is that their success
depends on the respective beliefs of all participants, and beliefs cannot be
coerced (for example, through violence or deception). Instead, they depend on
the unforced, rationally motivated agreement among all participants. For this
reason, communicative action represents a particular kind of social action
that cannot be reduced to strategic action (within the framework of which
deception or force are feasible means for achieving goals of action).
Two central assumptions of Habermas’s theory of communicative action
follow from this idea. The first states that communication cannot be explained
in terms of purely strategic action. Rather, communicative practices rely on a
form of rationality that is embodied in communicative action and incompati-
ble with the instrumental rationality operative in strategic action. The second
fundamental assumption underlying Habermas’s theory states that linguistic
understanding through communicative action offers a means of action coor-
dination that has no functional equivalent. For these reasons, a sociological
theory of action that neglects the concept of communicative action and
employs only the concept of strategic action cannot explain how social order is
possible in the first place. The first assumption plays a central role in Haber-
mas’s theory of communicative rationality (see chapter 30 in this volume); the
500 Concepts
second stands at the center of his theory of society (see chapter 35 in this
volume).
relevant to the sequelae of interaction that result from the semantic content of
the utterance (Pragmatics, 223–224).
Of course, the normative presuppositions that enable intersubjective under-
standing can turn out to be wrong in any individual case and at any point in
time. However, if participants could not, in principle, rely on the intralinguis-
tic guarantees and obligations relevant to their exchanges, communicative
practices would have no sense at all, since speech acts would fail to acquire any
meaning. Without a generalized trust on their mutual accountability, partici-
pants in communication would not be able to acquire any information out of
one another’s speech acts. As Habermas argues, if accepting a command or
making a promise did not imply any obligation to carry them out, or if accept-
ing an assertion did not imply believing it and directing one’s behavior accord-
ingly, speech acts such as commands, promises, or assertions would have no
meaning whatsoever. To the extent that a generalized instrumental or strate-
gic attitude toward communication would undermine the general trust of
speakers on their mutual accountability, it would render their speech acts
meaningless. If this view is accurate, then the instrumental/strategic use of
language is parasitic on the communicative use, i.e., the use of language
oriented toward reaching understanding, without which an enduring com-
municative practice is not possible at all (Communicative Action, 1:288; Truth,
86ff.). The rationality embodied in communicative action is a specific form of
intersubjective accountability (Pragmatics, 94) and is therefore irreducible to
the instrumental rationality embodied in strategic action.
said, and this in turn requires that they adopt an evaluative stance toward the
validity of what is said. However, even if this is accepted, it remains an open
question which (and how many) dimensions of validity are necessarily and
unavoidably involved in communicative processes. By Habermas’s formal-
pragmatic account, communication takes the form of a triangulation between
speaker, hearer, and world. Therefore, successful communication depends on
the ability of participants to reach an understanding alongside the three
dimensions of interaction. They must reach an understanding on the sincerity
of the speaker’s communicative intentions, on the truth of the beliefs about
the objective world conveyed in what is said, and on the normative rightness
of the interpersonal relationships that they undertake with their speech acts.
But even if the success of communication involves participants’ understand-
ing in all three dimensions, there is a clear asymmetry between the kind of
understanding that is possible regarding the truth of propositional contents,
on the one hand, and the rightness of the interpersonal relationship offered by
the speech act, on the other. Under the presupposition of a single objective
world, the fact that participants agree on the truth of the propositional con-
tents of speech acts can only be understood in the “strong” sense of an agree-
ment based on the same reasons. That is, if a listener accepts the truth claim
contained in the speaker’s statement “p,” this can only mean that she or he
considers “p” as true as the other party does. However, so long as the listener
does not agree with the reasons the speaker adduces in support of “p,” the dis-
cursive redeemability of the validity claim in question remains up in the air.
This is resolved only when an agreement based on the same reasons has been
achieved; until then, the listener simply does not have sufficient reason to
share the beliefs of the speaker.
The matter is different where the rightness of the interpersonal relation
offered through the speech acts is concerned. In cases of “naked” imperatives,
one-sided announcements, or insults (for example, “sit down,” “I will leave
tomorrow,” or “you’re a pig”), it is highly counterintuitive to assume that
the speaker wishes to bring about “consensus” of any kind—that is, that she or
he aims for reaching understanding in the strong sense of an agreement about
the normative rightness of the speech act in question. Of course, the speaker
must still aim for successful linguistic communication in the sense of the
hearer’s rational “assent,” if the utterance of the speech act is to be meaningful
at all. Yet the success of such communicative intentions depends only on the
recognition of validity claims such as “truth” and “sincerity” and not on an
agreement on the rightness of the interpersonal relationship that has been
offered. An announcement or a threat can be understood to aim for the ratio-
nal assent of the hearer only in the weak sense that the speaker’s reasons give
her or him no cause to doubt the seriousness of the speaker’s intention or the
feasibility of the declared action. But even if the hearer accepts the reasons of
Communicative Action 503
the speaker as rational in this sense, this does not mean that she or he has to
make these reasons her or his own. Consequently, different actors can have
different reasons for recognizing the rightness of the same verbal action; after
all, they find themselves in different situations and have different preferences,
which may all be equally legitimate. For example, the fact that a hearer agrees
completely that the speaker has the best reasons in the world to move to China
or to study medicine in no way entails that she or he (or anyone else) should
also move to China or study medicine. The distinction between actor-relative
and actor-independent reasons that is relevant here—and which has no
equivalent regarding the truth of utterances—makes it necessary to differenti-
ate between a “strong” and a “weak” sense of understanding with respect to
the kinds of interpersonal relations to which participants may aim with their
speech acts. In order to account for these differences, Habermas has intro-
duced a distinction between a strong and a weak sense of communicative
action (Pragmatics, 326ff). In weak communicative action, participants orient
themselves only toward claims to truth and sincerity, whereas in strong com-
municative action, they also consider intersubjectively recognized claims to
rightness concerning the norms and values that are supposed to justify the
actions at issue. This important revision of the concept of communicative
action raises the question: To what extent can the status of normative right-
ness (a key thesis of Habermas’s conception of formal pragmatics) as a neces-
sary condition for understanding any speech act whatsoever, comparable to
truth and sincerity, still be defended? The question whether this view still
holds is likely to determine future debates on the concept of communicative
action.
46
COMMUNICATIVE
ANTHROPOLOGY
DIRK JÖRKE
H
abermas’s engagement with the questions posed by anthropol-
ogy began during his university studies—when he evinced skep-
ticism about efforts to determine the unchanging qualities of
human nature. He presented his reflections in an encyclopedia article (1958)
that received broad attention at the time. According to Otfried Höffe (1992),
this piece is responsible for the hegemony of “postanthropological thinking”
that prevailed in the “human sciences” until the 1990s (7). In keeping with the
conventions of the genre, the first part of Habermas’s encyclopedia entry pro-
vides an introductory overview of the history and essential concepts of anthro-
pological thought; the second part, however, offers decidedly critical remarks
on anthropological projects in philosophy.
From Habermas’s perspective, it is impossible to determine the essence of
human nature, for human beings are woven into history. It is simply a “fact
that mankind [der Mensch] has a history and only becomes what it is through
history. This is an unsettling matter for an anthropology interested in the
‘nature’ of man and in what is common to all human beings at all times”
(Kultur und Kritik, 107). At the same time, Habermas did not object to philo-
sophical anthropology just by insisting on the historical and social nature of
mankind. He also pointed out the perspectival limitations of different anthro-
pological approaches. Epistemological interests that are socially determined
focus researchers’ attention in specific ways. Accordingly, a sociological clari-
fication of anthropology is in order. As Habermas views things here, anthro-
pology that seeks to justify (or even establish) norms and institutions amounts
to a conservative-restorative endeavor, both in terms of form and content. In
other words, such an approach conceals political objectives. In the works of
Arnold Gehlen—at the latest—philosophical anthropology led to “dogmatism
with political consequences, which is all the more dangerous for taking the
form of objective [wertfrei] science” (Kultur und Kritik, 108).
Against the backdrop of this fundamental critique of anthropological think-
ing, then, it is surprising that Habermas—only a few years later—undertook
Communicative Anthropology 505
his own effort to justify norms in terms of human universalia. This occurred
in his project of epistemological anthropology (Erkenntnisanthropologie).
In his inaugural address at the university in Frankfurt and in subsequent
publications, Habermas sought to demonstrate an inherent interest in emancipa-
tion (Mündigkeit) by epistemological-anthropological means (mit erkenntnis-
anthropologischen Mitteln). In so doing, he began with the assumption that
ways of acting (Handlungsweisen) that are fundamental for human beings and
the epistemological interests that result from them transcend cultures: “The
achievements of transcendental subjectivity have their basis in the natural his-
tory of the human species” (Knowledge, 314). Accordingly—he maintained—
three anthropologically anchored interests may be demonstrated. In addition
to the principles of work and interaction, on the one hand, and the empirical-
analytical and hermeneutic sciences that correspond to them, on the other,
Habermas affirmed that there exists an interest in critique—with which specific
sciences/forms of knowledge are associated. The human species, he averred,
not only needs instrumental and symbolic interaction but also demonstrates
(epistemological) interest in emancipation.
To be sure, Habermas took on considerable burdens of proof in advancing
this thesis, which required two kinds of demonstration. First, he had to name
the sciences that exercise an inherently critical function. Psychoanalysis
offered him the paradigmatic example for such a critical science. Accordingly,
Knowledge and Human Interests seeks to employ the psychoanalytic approach
in order to diagnose pathological phenomena in complex societies. While this
assessment may still prove acceptable, the question of how such interest in
emancipation may be grounded in anthropology does not receive a response.
In particular, Habermas fails to demonstrate that interest in emancipation
possesses the same fundamental importance (Stellenwert) as instrumental
and communicative action. It was likely this sticking point that led him to
abandon, shortly after Knowledge and Human Interests was published, all talk
of interest in emancipation based in the species.
In the 1970s, Habermas steered an alternative course in order to found a
critical theory of society by adopting the approach of “universal pragmatics.”
Since then, anthropological motifs appear less frequently in his works—
though they have not disappeared entirely. When Habermas elaborated his
conception of discourse ethics based on Kant, he left anthropological consid-
erations behind, for the most part. Here too, however, one may ask whether in
Habermas’s deontological theory of morality—which discourse ethics claims
to be, after all—there is not “an element of embarrassed [verschämt] anthro-
pology” at work “to philosophical ends” (Honneth 2000, 104).
Recently, in The Future of Human Nature, anthropological motifs have
once again come to the fore in explicit fashion. According to Habermas, the
506 Concepts
References
Habermas, Jürgen. 2000. “Nach dreißig Jahren. Bemerkungen zu Erkenntnis und Inter-
esse.” In Das Interesse der Vernunft, ed. Stefan Müller-Doohm, 12–20. Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp.
Höffe, Otfried. 1992. “Wiederbelebung im Seiteneinstieg.” In Der Mensch – ein politisches
Tier? Essays zur politischen Anthropologie, ed. Otfried Höffe, 5–13. Stuttgart: Reclam.
Honneth, Axel. 2000. “Anerkennungsbeziehungen und Moral: Eine Diskussionsbemerkung
zur anthropologischen Erweiterung der Diskursethik.” In Anthropologie, Ethik und
Gesellschaft. Für Helmut Fahrenbach, ed. Reinhard Brunner and Peter Kelbel, 101–11.
Frankfurt: Campus.
47
CONSERVATISM
MICHA BRUMLIK
C
onservative thinking in its various adumbrations has interested
Jürgen Habermas since the very beginning of his sociological and
philosophical efforts. In 1963, he authored the article “Kritische
und konservative Aufgaben der Soziologie” (Critical and conservative tasks of
sociology). Referring to Scottish moral philosophy—especially the works of
David Hume—as a conservative element of sociology in its early stages, Haber-
mas declared that conservatism “esteems tradition as the peaceful basis of
ongoing development precisely because it does not question the naturalness
[Naturwüchsigkeit] of progress.”
From the beginning, Habermas’s dialectical encounters with conservatism
of all stripes have worked on—and against—Hume’s declaration: “Liberty is
the perfection of civil authority; but authority must be acknowledged essential
to its very existence” (Habermas 1971a, 293). Habermas summarizes the spirit
of nascent sociology in words that might provide the motto for his own proj-
ect: “The tradition of progress is to be protected against the premature demo-
lition of socially useful authorities as much as it is to be critically secured
against the blind affirmation of historically obsolete authorities” (294).
between the institution and the individual” (106), he also draws the basic lines
of his discussion of conservative thinking in works to follow.
In terms of social theory and the philosophy of history, this position has
required Habermas to confront Hegel’s systematic critique of Kant and his
perspective on the revolution in France. Unlike Edmund Burke (who founded
modern conservative thought), Hegel sought to make revolution the principle
of his philosophy—or, to put it more precisely, to pursue “the revolutionizing
of reality without legitimizing the revolutionaries themselves.” Hegel, that is,
undertook the “magnificent attempt to understand the actualization of
abstract Right as an objective process” (Theory and Practice, 126).
The further course of Hegel’s political thinking, Habermas observes,
reveals that the philosopher failed to understand how the rule of law provides
the self-sustaining basis (selbsttragende Grundlage) for modern society. In the
theory of ethics (Sittlichkeit) elaborated in Philosophy of Right, Hegel enlists the
authority of the estates (ständische Authoritäten) to secure legality. Thereby,
he blocks the realization of his own aims by calling for social and political
conditions in which the principle of modern subjectivity—which is based on
civil law—is cut in half by being excluded from the process of democratic leg-
islation (116ff.).
The point is to protect areas of life that are functionally dependent on social
integration through values, norms, and consensus formation, to preserve
them from falling prey to the systemic imperatives of economic and adminis-
trative subsystems growing with dynamics of their own, and to defend them
from becoming converted over, through the steering medium of law, to a
principle of sociation that is, for them, dysfunctional.
(Communicative Action, 2:372–373)
The revaluation of the particular, the natural, the provincial, of social spaces
that are small enough to be familiar, of decentralized forms of commerce and
despecialized activities, of segmented pubs, simple interactions and dedifferen-
tiated public spheres—all this is meant to foster the revitalization of possibili-
ties for expression and communication that have been buried alive. Resistance
to reformist interventions that turn into their opposite, because the means by
which they are implemented run counter to the declared aims of social inte-
gration, also belongs in this context.
(2:395)
of modernity that has achieved economic and political equilibrium, on the one
hand, and, on the other, the hypertrophic fragmentation of the individual
(Aufspreizung des Individuums)—which is only admissible in the realm of art
(at best). This occurs, the argument goes, because intellectuals seek to obtain
illegitimate advantages for themselves as a “new class” at the expense of pro-
ductive elements of the general population. Second, neoconservatives declare
that the extravagant claims of the past have been settled (erledigt) once and
for all. With philosophical arguments, they dismiss (supposed) residues of
humanism and humanitarianism that have failed to provide results and
remain stuck in the positions of subject philosophy. In other fields—first and
foremost in architecture but also in philosophy and literary criticism—this
inheritance is deemed obsolete in light of postmodern/postmodernist cultural
developments. Finally, neoconservatives do not consider social conflicts—
which, however varied in kind, are matters of indisputable fact—in terms of
class relations and uneven access to material and political resources; instead,
they consider problems in society to express “intellectual and moral crisis”
(New Conservatism, 44).
References
Dorman, Joseph. 2001. Arguing the World: The New York Intellectuals in Their Own Words.
Chicago: Free Press.
Gehlen, Arnold. 1988. Man: His Nature and Place in the World. Trans. Clare McMillan and
Karl Pillemer. New York: Columbia University Press.
——. 1956. Urmensch und Spätkultur. Bonn: Athenäum.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1971a. Theorie und Praxis: Sozialphilosophische Studien. Rev. ed. Frank-
furt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1971b. Philosophisch-politische Profile. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Kristol, Irving. 1995. Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea. Chicago: Free Press.
48
CONSTITUTIONS AND
CONSTITUTIONAL PATRIOTISM
RAINER NICKEL
C
onstitutionality received a central position and a positive defini-
tion only in Habermas’s later writings, specifically in the context
of his legal theory. In his early discussion of legitimation prob-
lems under late capitalism, the author voiced suspicion that “bourgeois consti-
tutions” (Legitimation, 101) harbor ideology, but the matter appeared to be
of secondary importance for the task at hand. The Theory of Communicative
Action hinted at a changed interest in structures of (constitutional) law.
Finally, Between Facts and Norms—Habermas’s main work of legal theory—
presented a kind of idealizing phenomenology of the democratic and constitu-
tional state and affirmed the equiprimordiality of democracy and the legal
system (Facts, 118–131). As described here, a constitution is more than an evo-
lutionary achievement that serves to connect and divide law and politics—
something that might disappear again after the divide between them has been
made porous (Luhmann 1990). Now, Habermas contends, “constitution” refers
to a necessary condition for the production of legitimate laws and rights.
For all that, constitutionality must be spelled out in a democratic process.
The five points Habermas enumerates in his system of rights (subjective rights
to act [Handlungsfreiheiten], membership [Mitgliedschaftsstatus], claims to
legal protection [Rechtsschutz], rights of political participation, and social
rights) simply provide “unsaturated placeholders” whose contents cannot be
abstractly determined beforehand but must rather be “filled” through pro-
cesses of democratic will formation (Facts, 126). In theory, the democratic and
constitutional state is oriented on universalistic constitutional principles; in
actual fact, however, it receives an ethical (nota bene, not an ethnic) imprint
inasmuch as every legal order “expresses a particular form of living and does
not just reflect the universal contents of basic rights” (Habermas 1993, 167).
Habermas—like Kant before him, whose republicanism provides the basis
for the procedural theory of law and constitution—has been criticized for
being too abstract and generalizing. His critics contend that he advocates an
idealistic conception of constitutionality that has no temporal or spatial coor-
dinates and, consequently, is rootless—that is, a bloodless abstraction that
514 Concepts
represses the fact that it depends on the shared convictions and communal
feelings of citizens (see, e.g., Michelman 2001 and the tendentious critique in
Isensee 2006, who denounces the author’s unpatriotic “left-wing cultural
hegemony”). For the most part, such objections are based on the assumption
that a constitution depends on prepositive conditions and not ones contained in
the constitutional text itself—i.e., that it depends on what the document itself
can neither generate nor guarantee (such as, for example, “the moral substance
of the individual and the homogeneity of society” [Böckenförde 1976, 60]).
However, even before the publication of Between Facts and Norms (1992)—
and at the end stage of the Bonn Republic—Habermas put a term into circula-
tion that both anticipated the basic traits of the concept of constitutionality he
would soon elaborate and protected it against essentialist and nationalist
objections. In 1987, in the wake of the Historikerstreit, Habermas took up the
matter of “constitutional patriotism”—a phrase coined by the political scien-
tist Dolf Sternberger (1979)—and introduced a semantic displacement that has
proved rich in consequences. Sternberger sought to salvage patriotism as a
variant of “love for one’s country” (Vaterlandsliebe) by understanding the
constitution as expressing a national community of values and the state as an
“association of friendship” (Freundschaftsverband). Habermas, in contrast,
affirmed a postnational version of patriotism free of all reference to cultural
values, shared destinies, and homogeneous populations—a concept that,
moreover, required no doctrine of virtue à la Aristotle for support.
To patriots who mourned a German nationalism unclouded by National
Socialism, Habermas (1987) declared: “The only patriotism that does not
alienate us from the West is constitutional patriotism. Unfortunately, an
attachment to universalistic constitutional principles anchored in convic-
tion was able to emerge in German national culture [in der Kulturnation der
Deutschen] only after—and through—Auschwitz” (135). For Habermas, con-
stitutional patriotism represents a historical learning process that leaves
behind the nation-state of old as culture and state politics split off from each
other (173). The new postnational state is not suited for ecstatic emotional
attachment. As is well known, when Bundespräsident Gustav Heinemann was
asked whether he loved Germany, he responded, “I do not love the state. I love
my wife.” In the postnational constellation, “state patriotism” yields to pride
in—and loyalty to—procedures of democratic will formation and the legal
guarantees of the constitution, which promote “coexistence and communica-
tion between different forms of life possessed of equal rights” (173).
Now, under the Berlin Republic, Habermas’s constitutional patriotism
names consensus in a liberal public sphere that has had enough of national-
ism. At the same time, Habermas’s understanding of the concept opens a new
perspective on the postnational state: constitutional patriotism henceforth
refers to a multicultural republic that has abandoned the idea of a community
Constitutions and Constitutional Patriotism 515
predating the state and possessed of a shared destiny and common cultural
core. In discussing the arguments of Charles Taylor (1994)—which are shaped
by communitarianism—Habermas (1994) has observed:
References
Bellamy, Richard, and Dario Castiglione. 2004. “Lacroix’s European Constitutional Patri-
otism.” Political Studies 52:187–193.
Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang. 1976. Staat, Gesellschaft, Freiheit. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Grimm, Dieter. 1995. “Does Europe Need a Constitution?” European Law Journal 1, no. 3:
282–301.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. Eine Art Schadensabwicklung: Kleine Politische Schriften VI.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1994. “Struggles for Recognition in the Democratic Constitutional State.” Trans. Shi-
erry Weber Nicholsen. In Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed.
Amy Gutmann, 107–148. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
——. 2008. “The Constitutionalisation of International Law and the Legitimation Prob-
lems of a Constitution for World Society.” Constellations 15:444–455.
Isensee, Josef. 2006. “Plädoyer für eine Wiederkehr der Gemeinschaft – Verdrängung und
Wiederentdeckung der Realität.” Die Politische Meinung: Monatsschrift der Konrad-
Adenauer-Stiftung 440:6–14.
Lacroix, Justine. 2002. “For a European Constitutional Patriotism.” Political Studies
50:944–958.
Ladeur, Karl-Heinz, and Ino Augsberg. 2007. Toleranz, Religion, Recht. Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1990. “Verfassung als evolutionäre Errungenschaft.” Rechtshistorisches
Journal 9:176–220.
Michelman, Frank I. 2001. “Morality, Identity, and ‘Constitutional Patriotism.’ ” Ratio Juris
14:253–271.
Müller, Jan-Werner. 2007. Constitutional Patriotism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press.
Müller, Jan-Werner, and Kim Lane Scheppele. 2008. “Symposium Constitutional Patrio-
tism: An Introduction.” I–CON 6, no. 1: 67–71.
Sternberger, Dolf. 1990. “Verfassungspatriotismus.” In Schriften, vol. 10. Frankfurt: Insel.
Taylor, Charles. 1994. “The Politics of Recognition.” In Multiculturalism: Examining the
Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann, 25–74. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press.
49
COSMOPOLITAN CONDITION
KENNETH BAYNES
I
n an essay (Habermas 1998) marking the two hundredth anniversary
of Kant’s essay “Perpetual Peace,” Habermas returns to Kant’s call for
a “cosmopolitan condition” (weltbürgerlicher Zustand) that would
bring about a definitive end to the bellicose “state of nature” between nation-
states. In this essay Habermas suggests that, in his contrast between a global
constitutional order or “world republic” and a weaker voluntary federation
among sovereign states, Kant was not as unambiguously in support of the lat-
ter as is generally assumed. On the one hand, the necessary cultural and social
conditions for a legitimate world republic are lacking, and thus the dangers of
a global despotism loom; yet, on the other hand, if states are to be subject to
enforceable law and obligated by more than (largely impotent) moral norms, a
loose federation will not suffice. Habermas’s initial response to this situation
was his cautious support for calls for a “cosmopolitan democracy” that would
include a reformed and strengthened United Nations (including a “world par-
liament”) (Inclusion, 186–187). Changes on the international scene since Kant’s
time also provide this utopian vision a greater degree of both urgency and
realism. The variety of phenomena that, taken together, have recently been
grouped under the heading “globalization” raises important questions about
the possibility of achieving democracy within the limited framework of the
nation-state. The increased number and expanding influence of multinational
corporations, growing international flows in labor and capital, expanding
population migration, and large-scale ecological threats challenge in new ways
the nation-state’s claim to legitimacy, even on the domestic front. In short, can
the nation-state, given its apparently diminished capacity to act, maintain its
legitimacy in the face of the growing demands of its citizenry? At the same
time, the widening (if fragile) recognition of human rights, the more active
role of the United Nations and other international organizations, and a devel-
oping global “civil society” (including worldwide communication media)
make it meaningful at least to ask whether a “postnational constellation” is not
emerging in which the locus of democratization is no longer centered exclu-
sively on the territorial nation-state.
In several other important essays published since Between Facts and Norms,
Habermas has pursued this idea of a “cosmopolitan condition” in connection
518 Concepts
with the idea of “global governance without a world government” (e.g., Divided
West). Indeed, there is much in his “two-track” model of democracy (with its
distinction between “weak” and “strong” publics) that suggests why this might
be so. On the one hand, there is no inherent reason why his idea of a weak
public sphere cannot be interpreted in the context of a “global civil society,”
and, on the other, there are also some reasons for extending his discursive
account of strong publics—the formal institutions of decision making—in
connection with the idea of a more multilayered and dispersed conception of
sovereignty and the related idea of “subsidiarity.” As he now argues, we need
to think more abstractly and imaginatively to allow for a distinction between
“state” and “constitution” that Kant did not make (Divided West, 131). Simi-
larly, his claim that there has been at most only a historical (not a necessary)
convergence between the political demos and a relatively homogenous nation
or people (Volk) also supports the claim that the former need not be limited to
the traditional (territorial) idea of the nation-state. At the same time, Haber-
mas has also modified his initial endorsement of a “world republic” and now
prefers to speak of a “constitutionalization of international law without a
world government” (Divided West, 146), and he distances himself from the
views of some stronger cosmopolitans (Naturalism, 323). In these subsequent
essays, Habermas advocates a “multilevel federal system” that distinguishes
among three global actors according to their respective functional roles: a
supranational political body limited to the maintenance of peace and protec-
tion of basic human rights (a reformed United Nations with a more modest
mission); an intermediate level occupied by regional bodies devoted to a
“global domestic politics,” including large-scale economic and environmental
policies; and nation-states that have assumed a more limited sovereignty but
continue to play the most important role on the global stage (Divided West,
176). In this context, Habermas has voiced support for strengthening the role
of the United Nations (though now focused on the goal of peace and protect-
ing human rights) and for creating an international criminal court with a
mandate to prevent at least gross violations of human rights. At the same time,
however, he is more cautious than some advocates of cosmopolitan democracy
about the likelihood of achieving on a global scale the kind of “civic solidar-
ity” (as a “solidarity among strangers”) that for him is a necessary condition
for a robust deliberative politics. In this respect, he reflects a limited agree-
ment with some of his more civic-republican critics such as Charles Taylor or
Benjamin Barber. His own constructive proposal (in addition to his support
for a European constitution) is for the development of what he calls “interna-
tional negotiating systems” in which various players (including nation-states,
regional governmental bodies, and nongovernmental organizations) would
fulfill the role of a “strong public,” while citizens motivated by a cosmopolitan
consciousness and active in various ways in a cosmopolitan civil society would
Cosmopolitan Condition 519
constitute a “weak public.” As with the two-track model described at the level
of the nation-state, the challenge again is for imaginative institutional design
leading to a more responsive and accountable “strong public” than is possible
today at the level of the nation-state alone. However, the basic structure of this
proposal for cosmopolitan democracy remains the same: a dynamic division
of labor between a free-wheeling public sphere that functions as a kind of
“receptor” for identifying and thematizing social problems—and ensuring
that they are placed on the political agenda—and the more formally organized
(though multilayered and dispersed) strong publics responsible for “translat-
ing” publicly generated reasons into socially effective policies via accountable
administrative bodies. This is certainly a highly abstract (and speculative)
model of democracy, and many of its more specific institutional details are
still missing. And, as some critics have noted, it is unclear how far it actually
remains from other proposals for a more (state-like) global order (Niesen and
Herborth 2007, Scheuerman 2008). Can a strengthened United Nations suc-
cessfully protect even basic human rights without assuming some of the fea-
tures of a traditional state, and, if not, how will it secure the increased demand
for legitimacy? But, contrary to other critics, it is at least clear that Habermas’s
model of a “cosmopolitan condition” is by no means simply an abdication to
neoliberalism but an attempt to challenge it through proposals for a “realistic
utopia.”
References
Habermas, Jürgen. 1998. “Kant’s Idea of Perpetual Peace: At Two Hundred Years’ Histori-
cal Remove.” In The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, ed. Ciaran P.
Cronin and Pablo De Greiff, 165–202. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Niesen, Peter, and Benjamin Herborth, eds. 2007. Anarchie der kommunikativen Freiheit:
Jürgen Habermas und die Theorie der internationalen Politik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Scheuerman, William. 2008. “Global Governance Without Global Government?” Political
Theory 36, no. 1: 133–151.
50
COUNTERFACTUAL
PRESUPPOSITIONS
ANDREAS KOLLER
T
he notion of unavoidable, idealizing presuppositions of a pragmatic
nature that Habermas elaborates in his later works represents an
effort to nuance—and, ultimately, to replace—the confusing con-
cept of an “ideal speech situation” that he presented in the works of his middle
period. Since Between Facts and Norms, Habermas has understood “counter-
factual presuppositions”—or, alternatively, the “vocabulary of the as-if”—as
“the nerve of my entire theoretical undertaking” (1998, 418). The social sci-
ences in particular have paid little attention to this conceptual move, however.
Accordingly, the matter represents one of the most misunderstood elements of
Habermasian theory.
Idealizing presuppositions do not inhabit language per se; rather, they rep-
resent an aspect of the communicative use of linguistic expressions (Truth,
83ff.). Although an exhaustive inventory of such presuppositions does not
exist, Habermas names the four that are “most important” (Naturalism, 50):
publicity and inclusiveness: the presupposition that no one who is able to make
a relevant contribution be denied participation; communicative equality: the
presupposition that all be afforded equal opportunity to present their views on
a given matter; exclusion of deception and self-deception: the presupposition
that participants mean what they say and, accordingly, raise validity claims
admitting criticism in terms of truth, rightness, and/or truthfulness; and the
unforced force of the better argument: the presupposition that “yes” or “no”
stances be motivated only by the power of superior reasons to convince (and
not by external or internal constraints)—i.e., that only what is said (and not
who says it) plays a role (Inclusion, 44; Naturalism, 50).
The last of these indicates the tripartite structure of argumentative prac-
tice. In competing to make the better “case,” participants in discourse refer to
a third term, which is independent of them—that is, to the authority of reason
(or, in other words, to the logic of justification). In contrast, strategic interac-
tion—where participants’ preferences count as fixed and matters concern only
the balancing of interests within the framework of a given constellation of
power—lacks such reference to a third term (Habermas 2007, 415–416).
Counterfactual Presuppositions 521
however, Habermas has stressed that he never elevated the idea of an unlim-
ited communication community into an ideal that really exists. Even before
Between Facts and Norms, he affirms, he hesitated “to call the communication
community a regulative idea in the Kantian sense, because the notion of an
‘unavoidable idealizing presupposition of a pragmatic kind’ cannot be sub-
sumed under the classical opposition between the ‘regulative’ and the ‘consti-
tutive’ ” (Justification and Application, 164).
Indeed, Habermas has gone beyond the Kantian dichotomy between regu-
lative and constitutive ideas. If one views idealizing presuppositions as the
“illicit objectivation of a regulative idea,” one’s perspective continues to be
shaped by a false opposition. Yet at the same time, even though presupposi-
tions are idealizing, we must make them matters of actual fact if we want to
pursue a course of argument at all. In other words, idealizing presuppositions
have empirical effects: “Every factually raised claim to validity . . . generates a
new fact with the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ responses of its addressees” (Justification and
Application, 165). Accordingly, Habermas considers that the Kantian “‘Doc-
trine of the Two Realms’ has been completely overcome. The structure of a use
of language oriented toward reaching understanding demands idealizing sup-
positions on the part of the communicative actors; yet these notions function
as social facts” (1991, 243).
The course of development leading from the ideal speech situation to
counterfactual presuppositions culminated in Between Facts and Norms.
Here, Habermas—in reference to the works of Hauke Brunkhorst, on the one
hand, and those of Bernhard Peters, on the other—clarifies a basic distinction.
Counterfactual, idealizing presuppositions—which represent inevitable prag-
matic requirements for discursive practice—are to be held separate from the
methodological fiction of an ideal communicative community, which pro-
vides a model for pure, communicative sociation. “The idealizing presupposi-
tions we always already have to adopt whenever we want to reach mutual
understanding do not involve any kind of correspondence or comparison
between idea and reality” (Brunkhorst 1993, 345, qtd. in Facts, 323). The notion
of idealizing presuppositions, then, is a matter distinct from the “projection of
ideals, in the light of which we can identify deviations”—and which can be
“approximately realized” (Facts, 322–323). As already holds for Kant’s regulative
idea (or, alternatively, its methodological elaboration as undertaken by, e.g.,
Weber), the issue involves approximation—which is precisely what idealizing
presuppositions of “as-if” do not allow (Habermas 2007, 426).
Drawing on Peters’s observations, Habermas reformulates regulative ideas
in terms of methodological fiction. As models of an ideal, they provide a “foil
to reveal [hervorheben] and describe empirical deviations from a fictive ideal
condition—and in this way make certain traits of reality visible, through
contrast” (Peters 1993, 240). The “idea of self-organization is projected onto
Counterfactual Presuppositions 523
These and similar idealizing yet unavoidable presuppositions for actual com-
municative practices possess a normative content that carries the tension
between the intelligible and the empirical into the sphere of appearances
itself. Counterfactual presuppositions become social facts. This critical thorn
sticks in the flesh of any social reality that has to reproduce itself via action
oriented toward reaching understanding.
(Postmetaphysical, 47)
524 Concepts
mean what we say, we raise the claim that what is said is true, or right, or
truthful. With this claim a small bit of ideality breaks into our everyday lives”
(Past, 101–102).
Of course, an individual may decide at any point to manipulate others or to
act in a purely strategic fashion. However, it is impossible for everyone to do so
all the time. Were this so, it would be impossible to lie, and, accordingly, the
way language is currently understood would no longer hold. Equally, such
matters as making-tradition-one’s-own (Traditionsaneignung)—socialization,
that is—would become impossible. To be able to live in a world of total manipu-
lation (or, alternatively, a world of purely strategic action), other concepts would
be required. According to Habermas, the conceptual categories (Begriffsnetz) of
language today are not compatible with this possibility (101–102).
In contrast to what happens informally (or, alternatively, in weakly institu-
tionalized, everyday practice), it is somewhat easier, in methodological terms,
to grasp how communicative reason (see chapter 30 in this volume) operates
in opinion and will formation occurring on the level of formally organized/
institutionalized procedures. Because formal conditions—in ways that vary
from case to case—promote the uncoupling of modes of communication from
actors’ attitudes/outlooks, it is possible, in Habermas’s estimation, to assess
the factual effectiveness of counterfactual presuppositions without reference
to the understanding orientation of individual participants (Habermas
2007, 417).
Moreover, the facticity of norms (des Normativen) rests on counterfactual
presuppositions (see chapter 50 in this volume). In contrast to philosophers
such as John Rawls (for example), Habermas does not seek a normative theory
that outlines—on a drawing board, as it were—the foundational norms for a
(supposedly) well-ordered society. Pragmatically inevitable, idealizing presup-
positions “have nothing to do with ideals that the solitary theorist sets up in
opposition to reality; I am referring only to the normative contents that are
encountered in practice” (Past, 102). Normative demands (das Normative) stick
in the flesh of social reality in the form of counterfactual presuppositions,
which act as a “critical thorn.”
Habermas introduced the method of rational reconstruction in the after-
word to the paperback edition of Knowledge and Human Interests (1973). Both
here and in the retrospective discussion of the book thirty years later (Haber-
mas 2000), he concedes that the conceptions of “knowledge” and “human
interests” presented in the first edition (1968) confuse two different meanings
of “self-reflection.” In fact, he observes, one should distinguish
This false course, Habermas explains, is why—in the first edition of Knowledge
and Human Interests and throughout his early work as a whole—he held that
ideological critique provides the central model for a theory of society. The
reversal of perspective means, then, that by beginning to correct the erroneous
assumption in his midcareer works, Habermas worked to establish a new basis
for the critical theory of society—i.e., the rational reconstruction of counterfac-
tual presuppositions as the critical thorn in the flesh of social reality.
This research-intensive path may also explain the thematic (or, alternatively,
disciplinary) change of focus that Habermas’s works have undergone. Espe-
cially in the social sciences in the English-speaking world, this change of focus
has led some to conclude that Habermas has replaced the sociohistorical analy-
sis of the public sphere (such as occurs in his early writings) with the analysis of
language from a philosophical perspective. This statement rests on a twofold
misunderstanding. For one, Habermas holds that it is not a matter of language
analysis per se but of the reconstructive analysis of the communicative use of
linguistic expressions (Truth, 83ff.). Second, the change in focus—from histori-
cal-sociological analysis of structure to reconstructive analysis—is a matter of
empirical research orientation and is not fundamental in nature. Indeed, at the
beginning of the 1980s, Habermas declared that he intended to write another
study on structural change in the public sphere (1992a, 129–130). It is clear that
time constraints rather than a change of principle is the reason this did not
occur. Habermas has not abandoned the analysis of the public sphere in socio-
historical terms; rather, he has completed it by adopting the reconstructive
approach—which follows from the necessity that “the normative foundations
of the critical theory of society be laid at a deeper level” (1992b, 442). Habermas
understands such analysis in terms of complementarity, not opposition.
Despite the fact that his perspective has become increasingly clear regard-
ing the “nerve” of his theoretical undertaking as a whole—and especially
apropos of the shift from an ideal speech situation to pragmatically unavoid-
able, idealizing presuppositions—Habermas concedes that, following Between
Facts and Norms, “there is still much work to be done in this area” (1998, 418).
References
Brunkhorst, Hauke. 1993. “Zur Dialektik von realer und idealer Kommunikationsgemein-
schaft.” In Transzendentalpragmatik: Ein Symposion für Karl-Otto Apel, ed. Andreas
Dorschel et al., 342–358. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Counterfactual Presuppositions 527
A
t its core, “deliberation” refers to processes of argumentation.
From the normative perspective that Habermas adopts, delib-
erative procedures represent a mechanism of legitimate rule
(Herrschaft). To be legitimate, such processes of discussion and debate should
be public and afford all parties who might potentially be affected by decisions
following from them the same opportunities to participate.
Habermas first employed the expression “deliberative politics” in Between
Facts and Norms (1992). Here, it stands at the center of his theory of democ-
racy. In so doing, he adopted a political concept from a broad-scale American
debate that had been prompted by his own discourse theory (Cohen 1989),
which he now reimported into his own writings. Building on his notion of
discourse, Habermas understands deliberative politics to refer to institution-
alized discursive procedures of will formation and decision making within
constitutional political systems.
In his works of legal and democratic theory, Habermas does not discuss the
foundation and conditions for the reproduction of social order(s) per se but
rather the concrete matter of how one may conceive legitimate rule in modern
societies. He remarks that, on the one hand, social spheres of action irrevoca-
bly move apart through the pressures of rationalization; on the other hand,
the remainders of inherited ethics dissolve into a multiplicity of individual
values and worldviews. Under these conditions, communicative action—
which Habermas charges with affording social integration—faces obstacles
both from within and without. From the inside, this occurs inasmuch as
communal values and understandings diminish and are replaced by individu-
alized perspectives; from the outside, it occurs when alternative steering mecha-
nisms such as money and power penetrate—and shape—the lifeworld (see
chapter 35 in this volume).
Habermas offers a two-tiered response to this problem. The first involves
supporting communicative action institutionally by embedding it in the law,
and the second the radical proceduralization of legitimate rule. For if it no
longer holds that decisions are based on shared—and substantive—values,
matters of legitimation (Legitimationsleistungen) must henceforth be achieved
by procedures that inspire confidence that their results are, in fact, reasonable
Deliberation 529
(Inclusion, 264). This is where deliberative politics comes in, which immedi-
ately receives a democratic turn inasmuch as it is constituted by the connec-
tion between discourse and legal form: “the centerpiece of deliberative politics
consists in a network of discourses and bargaining processes that is supposed
to facilitate the rational solution of pragmatic, moral, and ethical questions—
the very problems that accumulate with the failure of the functional, moral, or
ethical integration of society elsewhere” (Facts, 320).
In deliberative democracy, legitimate rule follows from opinion and will
formation that occurs through rational discourses and—coupled to them—
fair bargaining processes; for this reason, it is limited to negotiations that are fair
(see chapter 72 in this volume). The results of exchanges receive legitimacy
through two procedural qualities that are fused with each other: rationality
and participation. Rationality is achieved because of the epistemic nature of
exchanging arguments, which promotes reflection and, in so doing, creates
and assures processes of learning. At the same time, deliberative procedures
perform this function (Leistung) only when they are protected against alterna-
tive steering mechanisms like power and social influence—that is, they occur
solely on the basis of arguments made by participants whose interpretations of
the issue(s) converge (from which results emerge in turn). Moreover, proce-
dures must be sufficiently public so that potentially affected parties may par-
ticipate as equals and, free from constraint, contribute to the discursive
exchange. Processes that are structured in this way require that participants
examine (hinterfragen) their interests and, if need be, revise them, in order to
assure that only considerations that have withstood all critical objections and
therefore lie in the common interest of all enter the equation. Thereby, legiti-
mate results depend on two factors: the deliberative nature of the procedure
and its universal inclusiveness; these two together make certain that all con-
cerned have been able to make their views known.
Under the conditions of complex, individualized society—and given the
pressures of time and contingency—it is inevitable that such ideal conditions
can adequately impact actual processes of political decision making only if the
procedures of opinion and will formation are institutionalized in a way that
incorporates communicative reason. The objectivation, in positive law, of
communicative reason through procedural norms of jurisprudence frees citi-
zens from the substantial cognitive and motivational effort that determining
the truth would otherwise demand—i.e., from processes of argumentation
that are only informally regulated.
Deliberative politics is not specialized in seeking the truth but in the com-
bination of truth-functional (wahrheitsfunktional) discourses of problem
solving and practical procedures of decision making. The conclusions
cannot—or can only rarely—resolve conflicts of interest (which—if they are
not insoluble—are at any rate recurrent); indeed, they often fail to produce
530 Concepts
consensus. All the same, and as a rule, they should (after fair negotiations)
culminate in the (reversible) subordination of minoritarian interests to those
of the majority; that is, they should yield democratic rule (which, for its part, is
non-negotiable [unaufhebbar]). Habermas holds that the evolutionary achieve-
ment of democratic constitutions is to have institutionalized discourses
coupled to procedures of egalitarian decision making in such a way that the
justification afforded by discourse carries over to decisions; thereby, legitima-
tion and acceptability extend far beyond a majority view based only on opin-
ion and will (Facts, 168–193).
To lend concrete, sociological dimensions to the connection between inclu-
sive discourse and egalitarian decisions—between deliberation and rule
(Herrschaft) (Facts, 308)—Habermas employs Bernhard Peter’s “sluice model”
(e.g., Peters 2001), which is meant to explain how communicative power pro-
duced by deliberation transforms itself into administrative power (see chapter
67 in this volume). The sluice model specifies two spheres of deliberation that
are closely connected via the legal system: on the one hand, public spaces
structured by institutionalized procedures for decision making at the center of
the political system (parliamentary bodies, courts, and administration), and,
on the other, autonomous public spheres for informal opinion formation at
the periphery of the political system, spheres that are constituted above all by
organizations in civil society (Facts, 228–229).
The latter exercise pressure on the center and push for demands to be trans-
lated into action. Only when interplay occurs between both spheres can a
deliberative praxis of self-determination result that bears genuinely demo-
cratic traits: “Informal opinion-formation results in institutionalized election
decisions and legislative decrees through which communicatively generated
power is transformed into administratively utilizable power” (Inclusion, 249).
The idealistic quality of Habermas’s theory is not just grounded in the interde-
pendent relations between discourse and decision, on the one hand, and those
between center and periphery, on the other; in addition, the communicative
reason of ethical and moral discourses is transmitted (vermittelt) through
the everyday routines of technical politics (technische Politik). In crises great
and small—whenever communal matters are no longer simply administered
but become public—communicative reason becomes a “weapon of criticism”
(Facts, 357ff.). By the same token, however, should crises be systemically
repressed and the public use of communicative reason effectively substituted
by technocracy, held in a state of latency, and colonized (Communicative
Action) by means of administrative power and economic exchange value, then
the likelihood of legitimation crises increases.
What, then, are the characteristics that distinguish Habermas’s concept of
deliberation? For one, Habermas is not concerned with the content of delibera-
tion or its results; he focuses solely on its procedural properties. It is only these
Deliberation 531
References
Cohen, Joshua. 1989. “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy.” In The Good Polity: Nor-
mative Analysis of the State, ed. Alan Hamlin and Philip Pettit, 17–34. Oxford: Black-
well.
Gerhards, Jürgen. 1994. “Politische Öffentlichkeit: Ein system- und akteurstheoretischer
Bestimmungsversuch.” Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 46, Son-
derheft 34: 77–105.
Habermas, Jürgen. 2007. “Kommunikative Rationalität und grenzüberschreitende Politik:
eine Replik.” In Anarchie der kommunikativen Freiheit: Jürgen Habermas und die Theo-
rie der internationalen Politik, ed. Peter Niesen and Benjamin Herborth, 406–459.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Peters, Bernhard. 2001. “Deliberative Öffentlichkeit.” In Die Vernunft der Öffentlichkeit
und die Öffentlichkeit der Vernunft, ed. Lutz Wingert and Klaus Günther, 655–677.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
52
DISCOURSE
KL AUS GÜNTHER
H
abermas’s notion of discourse—one of the key concepts in The
Theory of Communicative Action—is subject to many misunder-
standings; consequently, it is frequently debated and contested. This
holds especially for the matter of “domination-free discourse” (herrschaftsfreier
Diskurs). The standard misreading equates discourse with chatter—endless
debates in academic seminars or committees under the “dictatorship of idle
flesh” (Sitzfleisch) or, alternatively, harmonious handholding between parties
kindly disposed to one another, wishing only well, readily seeking agreement
at any cost, and fearful of any possible conflict. According to this interpretation,
one should be oriented toward understanding and therefore ready for compro-
mise, peaceable, and not quarrelsome. A further error holds that discourses
do not lead to concrete action because of their endless duration: they seek to
avoid action and defer decisions time and again; before arriving at any conclu-
sion, one must engage in discourse—which, then, yields nothing definite, after
all. Finally, it has been objected that Habermas does not conceive of discourse
as a truly inclusive event: all who are not open to discussion or who do not
wish to seek agreement are excluded—indeed, everyone, whether he or she
wishes to do so, must exercise general suspicion about anything and every-
thing and, at the same time, is exposed to an unyielding demand for justifica-
tion. Because of his overly idealistic view that all parties affected must be able
to agree with the results on the basis of rational motivation, discourses either
cannot be realized under historical-existential conditions as they are given or
can be realized only in part.
In fact, discourse represents a special form of communication whereby par-
ticipants react and respond to specific disturbances in their exchanges—a
reflexive form of communicative action or a reflexive medium (Communica-
tive Action, 1:24; McCarthy 1981, 291ff.; Schnädelbach 1977, 135ff.). In almost
every communicative interaction there arise misunderstandings, irritations,
errors, distortions, misinterpretations, and latent or manifest points of dis-
sent; indeed, it may even be that incomprehension represents a condition of
understanding itself (Wilhelm von Humboldt). At the same time, such distur-
bances have no crippling (gravierend) consequences and can be quickly
resolved in most instances.
534 Concepts
References
Alexy, Robert. 1978. “Eine Theorie des praktischen Diskurses.” In Normenbegründung und
Normendurchsetzung, ed. Willi Oelmüller, 22–58. Paderborn: Schöningh.
——. 1989. A Theory of Legal Argumentation: The Theory of Rational Discourse as Theory of
Legal Justification. Trans. Ruth Adler and Neil MacCormick. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Forst, Rainer. 2012. Right to Justification: Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice.
Trans. Jeffrey Flynn. New York: Columbia University Press.
Günther, Klaus. 1993. The Sense of Appropriateness: Application Discourses in Morality and
Law. Trans. John Farrell. Albany: SUNY Press.
——. 1998. “Die Sprache der Verstummten: Gewalt und performative Entmachtung.” In
Aufgeklärte Kriminalpolitik oder Kampf gegen das Böse?, ed. Klaus Lüderssen, 2:120–
146. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1971. “Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie? Eine Ausein-
andersetzung mit Niklas Luhmann.” In Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann, Theo-
rie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie?, 142–290. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Honneth, Axel. 2001. “Recognition: Invisibility: On the Epistemology of ‘Recognition.’ ”
Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 75, no. 1: 111–126.
Lieber, Tobias. 2007. Diskursive Vernunft und formelle Gleichheit. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
McCarthy, Thomas. 1981. The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press.
Rehg, William.1994. Insight and Solidarity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Schnädelbach, Herbert. 1977. Reflexion und Diskurs. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Wingert, Lutz. 2002. “Jürgen Habermas Faktizität und Geltung – Der Prozeß des Rechts in
den Satzungen der Macht.” In Klassische Werke der Philosophie, ed. Reinhard Brandt
and Thomas Sturm, 345–378. Leipzig: Reclam.
53
DISCOURSE ETHICS
RAINER FORST
T
he term “discourse ethics” refers to a conception of morality in
the Kantian tradition, which Jürgen Habermas developed in
conjunction with Karl-Otto Apel (1980, 1988). Its most important
feature is its replacement of the reflective evaluation of moral maxims—in
accordance with the prescriptions of the Categorical Imperative—with the
argumentative redemption of the validity claims of moral norms in practical
discourse. The transcendental self-reflection of practical reason à la Kant
yields to the pragmatic reconstruction of the normative implications of com-
municative rationality (Naturalism, 24–76). This theory of morality offers
numerous points of contact with Habermas’s philosophy of language (or,
alternatively, with the theory of the different kinds of validity claims), with his
theory of “postconventional” moral consciousness (in following with the work
of Lawrence Kohlberg), with his theory of epistemology (concerning the
capacity for truth of practical questions), and with his philosophy of law and
democracy (in which practical discourses play a central role). The key works in
which he develops his program are “Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of
Philosophical Justification” (Moral Consciousness, 43–115) and Justification
and Application.
In his characterization of discourse ethics, Habermas stresses its deontologi-
cal, cognitivistic, formalist, and universalistic qualities (Justification, 49). That
the theory is deontological means it endorses a narrow concept of morality, one
limited to the norms of correct (or, as the case may be, just) action and not
addressing questions of “the good life.” To this end, he makes a terminological
distinction between “morality” and “ethics”—or, more precisely, between
moral norms and ethical values (cf. Forst 2012, chap. 3). Habermas seeks to
explain the strict and categorical validity of moral norms, which are recipro-
cally and generally binding and claimable; ethical values raise a different
claim to validity, one that is to be redeemed in closer relation to particular
forms of life and individual biographies.
The principle of universalization (U), which substitutes for the Categorical
Imperative, represents a rule of argumentation for justifying claims of moral
validity. It specifies, as the condition for valid norms, that “the consequences
Discourse Ethics 539
and the side effects that its general observance can be expected to have for the
satisfaction of each person affected must be such that all affected can accept
them freely” (Moral Consciousness, 120). This principle, states Habermas,
makes “razor-sharp cuts between . . . the good and the just” (104), whereby
justice is to be understood in the sense of moral rightness.
According to the cognitivistic aspect of the approach, moral norms articu-
late a “truth-analogous claim to validity” (Justification, 49). This is the basis
upon which they may be discussed in practical discourses on the (ideal) pre-
supposition that a “correct” justification exists. Thereby, the essential criterion
is their capacity for generalizability—or, as the case may be, their “ideal war-
ranted acceptability” (Truth, 248). The constructivist character of moral
norms is highlighted inasmuch as this acceptability is first produced through
discourses, including processes of interpreting needs and interests and the
reflection of the claims of other parties; accordingly, practical discourse
means “generating a world of norms” that “deserves recognition” (Truth, 224).
Discourse ethics is a formalist or proceduralist ethics in the sense that it
restricts itself to specifying a procedure of moral argumentation based solely
on principle, which holds that “only moral rules that could win the assent of all
affected as participants in a practical discourse can claim validity” (Justifica-
tion, 50). In contrast to Kant’s conception of moral law (Sittengesetz)—and
also to Apel’s approach of “transcendental pragmatics”—Habermas grants the
principle itself no moral or “ultimately justified” power of validity; rather, it
possesses only the force of the “ ‘must’ in the sense of weak transcendental
necessitation,” which does not correspond to the “prescriptive ‘must’ of a rule
of action” (Justification, 81; cf. Wellmer 1991). The procedure of discourse eth-
ics consists of generating norms, while the motivation for observing both pro-
cedure and compliance with those norms requires a basis in forms of life that
“meet it halfway” (Truth, 100), i.e., in which postconventional conceptions of
morality have evolved (so that insight into what is morally commanded finds
support in the way “the good” is conceived) (275).
Habermas’s discourse ethics maintains that moral norms present univer-
salizing validity claims and that these claims must be redeemed accordingly.
Thus the discourse principle claims to transcend culture and to articulate a
correspondingly general structure of morality. In turn, the norms that are to
be justified in practical discourse may substantially only ever anticipate
general acceptability; in fact, they are subject to discursive evaluation at any
time. Therefore, as much as discourse ethics stresses the necessity of the
implementation of real practical discourse(s), it still incorporates an element
of ideality into the process, which presumes a corresponding measure of moral
sensitivity and imagination on the part of morally reflecting parties.
540 Concepts
References
Apel, Karl-Otto. 1980. “The A Priori of the Communication Community and the Founda-
tions of Ethics: The Problem of a Rational Justification of Ethics in the Scientific Age.” In
Towards a Transformation of Philosophy, trans. David Frisby, 225–300. London: Rout-
ledge.
——. 1988. Diskurs und Verantwortung. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Forst, Rainer. 2012. The Right to Justification: Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice.
Trans. Jeffrey Flynn. New York: Columbia University Press.
Wellmer, Albrecht: 1991. “Ethics and Dialogue: Elements of Moral Judgment in Kant and
Discourse Ethics.” In The Persistence of Modernity: Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics, and
Postmodernism, trans. David Midgley, 113–231. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
54
EQUALIT Y
KENNETH BAYNES
A
lthough Habermas has rarely explicitly addressed the topic of
equality, it is clearly an ideal that informs much of his thought.
This is, of course, not surprising, since the idea of an association
in which “the free development of each is a condition for the free development
of all” is an ideal that informs the tradition of Western Marxism, of which
Habermas is a central figure. It is, however, important to see the ways in which
Habermas has learned from the deficiencies in Marxist thought and other
treatments of equality. His own conception of “radical democracy,” for which
the idea of the equal public and private autonomy of citizens is central, may
not settle the debate concerning the proper “metric” of equality (welfare,
resources, capabilities, etc.), but it does provide a rich and suggestive frame-
work in which that debate might be pursued (see Baynes 2008).
The ideal of equality operates at three distinct, though interconnected, lev-
els in Habermas’s work. First, within the context of his theory of communica-
tive action, and at its most basic level, a conception of equality lies at the core
of his conception of communicative reason. With their utterances, speakers
raise various claims about the validity of those utterances—to truth, right-
ness, and sincerity or authenticity—claims that a hearer is free to accept or
reject with reasons. At least in the case of “institutionally unbound speech
acts” (that is, speech acts whose illocutionary force or meaning does not
depend upon specific institutional contexts, such as a judicial court), hearers
are equally free to challenge the validity claims raised in them. This ideal of
the basic equality of speaker and hearer with respect to the exchange of rea-
sons concerning their action interpretations lies at the core of his model of
communicative action—that is, his notion of the coordination of action
through a process of communication (Verständigung). The fragile and fallible
consensus that is established through the exchange of reasons—through the
acceptance and/or contestation of the validity claims raised in speech—makes
possible a rational coordination of action that is in turn dependent on this
fundamental equality of speaker and hearer. One might call this first concep-
tion of equality “rational equality,” since it is an equality demanded by, and
constitutive for, reason itself.
542 Concepts
liberty and equality of each citizen (Naturalism, 271–311). As with the concep-
tion of moral equality, this conception of political equality also retains a
distant but still significant connection with the “rational equality” of actors to
take a yes/no position with respect to speech-act offers. A “rational” political
order will be one that achieves a proper balance with respect to the public and
private autonomy of citizens—and this is itself a political ideal that must be
tested in connection with the ideals of the moral equality of individuals and
the rational equality of social actors.
References
Baynes, Kenneth. 2008. “Democratic Equality and Respect.” Theoria 55, no. 117: 1–25.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1986. “Moralität und Sittlichkeit: Treffen Hegels Einwände gegen Kant
auch auf die Diskursethik zu?” In Moralität und Sittlichkeit: Das Problem Hegels und
die Diskursethik, ed. Wolfgang Kuhlmann, 16–37. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
55
EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP
CHRISTIAN JOERGES
T
he concept of citizenship spans many disciplines—without, for all
that, necessarily connecting them. The following discusses the
divergent understandings of the term in positive European law,
on the one hand, and in the works of Jürgen Habermas, on the other. Two
matters will be made clear: the conceptual anchoring of legal discourses in
neoliberal visions and the sociocritical dimension of Habermas’s advocacy of
the European project.
Institutionalized Europe, both as it defines itself and in common academic
parlance, is not a “state”; instead, it is simply a “union.” What does this mean
for its citizens? European law supplies no shortage of answers. With the
umbrella term of “Union,” the Treaty of Maastricht (1992) introduced “Union
citizenship” among its provisions. Since then, its core component, freedom of
movement (Freizügigkeit), has assumed dimensions that extend beyond the
“market citizenship” originally envisioned—above all, when the European
Court of Justice banned discrimination and affirmed fundamental European
rights. How is this? The law continues to evolve in a thoroughly concrete
manner—especially where the legal issues addressed by the European Court
of Justice are concerned. Recently, it achieved particular notice when Austrian
medical schools began to open their doors to German students who had not
been admitted at home—and also when Great Britain was obligated to bear
the costs of medical treatment abroad when—and because—patients sought to
shorten the waiting times decreed by the National Health Service.
Cases like these are legion, but they do not make it clear how, exactly, EU
citizenship is developing. When it was first taken up, two far-reaching ideas
were at play. On the one hand, states sought to promote the identity of Europe;
on the other, they sought to transform—and enhance—the simple “market
citizenship” already in place. It was assumed that both these matters were to
be undertaken so that the economic community would also succeed as a pol-
ity. For all that, however, the relationship between ambition and achievement
has remained fraught (Everson 1995). Signatories were unwilling to surrender
the authority necessary to make social rights a reality; the array of provisions
that, according to a discourse theory of law, are supposed to support the legiti-
mate concretization of such objectives have not improved by much. Because
European Citizenship 545
rights of free movement impair demands for solidarity, the European system
of rights has remained indebted to the neoliberal program. (The same holds
for antidemocratic demands—provided they aim only for equal treatment
[Somek 2009].)
Anyone wishing not just to expose such dependencies but also to overcome
them must seek alternative frames of reference for EU citizenship. Efforts of
this kind certainly have been made in European constitutionalism (e.g., Wei-
ler 1999, Schönberger 2005). At least in terms of method, they meet up with
Habermas’s “constitutional patriotism” and with his defense of the constitu-
tional achievements of the nation-state.
Habermas contributed both these categories to the debate on Europe in his
1991 essay, in which he reconstructed the history of the concepts and their
points of interdependency; one year later, against this backdrop, he discussed
the challenges that the European constellation posed for his theories of
democracy and law. The interdependency of both categories constitutes a key
feature of his views on Europe; both in general and in a specifically European
context, they have achieved independence as figures of discourse.
Particular attention was paid to the idea of “constitutional patriotism.”
When it was applied to Europe as a whole, it became a key term in debates on
identity and EU citizenship (for a systematic discussion, see Müller 2007).
Habermas made the concept—originally developed by Dolf Sternberger (1982,
1999)—an integral component of his theory of the constitutional state; he then
introduced it into the discourse on European constitutionalism. The topos of
constitutional patriotism, which refers to the specific historical context of
the early Federal Republic, concerns Germany’s past and the country’s re-
civilization—the transformation of its political culture after the Second World
War. Time and again—especially in his works on the situation in Europe—
Habermas has stressed interconnections between historical and theoretical
concepts (e.g., Postnational, 74ff.; Inclusion, 118ff.; Time, 138ff.; see chapter 49
in this volume).
If one considers these connections, one must reject the objection that con-
stitutional patriotism is too “thin,” in sociological terms, to identify the pre-
conditions necessary for the integrity (Zusammenhalt) of modern societies—
as well as the claim that it drily abstracts from the fact that citizens’ lives are
embedded in real social, political, and cultural conditions. For Habermas, the
nation-state—and especially Germany—represents an ambivalent achieve-
ment, and its past is problematic. If, ultimately, republicanism has prevailed—
that is, the “nation of the state” (Staatsnation) has succeeded the “nation of the
people” (Volksnation)—this has only occurred after “a painful process of
abstraction through which local and dynastic loyalties were ultimately trans-
formed into the self-consciousness of democratic citizens as belonging to one
and the same nation” (Time, 101). The solidarity that has been established
546 Concepts
living, the opportunities for education and leisure, and the social space for
personal self-realization which are necessary to ensure the fair value of indi-
vidual liberty, and thereby make democratic participation possible.
(Time, 90)
References
Everson, Michelle. 1995. “The Legacy of the Market Citizen.” In New Legal Dynamics of
European Union, ed. Jo Shaw and Gillian More, 73–89. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Müller, Jan-Werner. 2007. Constitutional Patriotism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press.
Schönberger, Christoph. 2005. Unionsbürger: Europas föderales Bürgerrecht in verglei-
chender Sicht. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Somek, Alexander. 2009. “Idealisation, De-politicization and Economic Due Process: Sys-
tem Transition in the European Union.” In The Law/Politics Distinction in Contempo-
rary Public Law Adjudication, ed. Bogdan Iancu, 137–167. Utrecht: Eleven.
Sternberger, Dolf. 1999. “Verfassungspatriotismus: Rede bei der 25-Jahr-Feier der Akade-
mie für Politische Bildung in Tutzing am 29.6.1982.” In Politische Reden 1945–1990, ed.
Marie-Luise Recker, 702–719. Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag.
Weiler, Joseph H. H. 1999. “To Be a European Citizen: Eros and Civilisation.” In The Con-
stitution of Europe: “Do the New Clothes Have an Emperor?” and Other Essays on Euro-
pean Integration, 324–355. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
56
EVOLUTION
MARCELO NEVES
L
ike Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann, Habermas holds that
social evolution entails heightened system complexity (Communi-
cative Action, 2:155ff.). Unlike his colleagues, however, he affirms
that increases in social complexity are mediated by a “developmental logic”
whose structure corresponds to the way moral consciousness evolves in stages
(esp. Communicative Action, 2:174ff.; Evolution, 69–94, 95–129; Rekonstruktion,
129–143; Moral Consciousness). Contra Luhmann’s (1975, 2003) systems theory,
Habermas argues that mounting complexity and the social differentiation that
accompanies it depend on “learning mechanisms.” In this sense, his position is
that differentiation can represent either “evolutionary processes” or stagna-
tion (Rekonstruktion, 133–134, 230; Communicative Action, 2:175ff.). By the
same token, he argues—contra Marxism—that what determines evolution
does not lie in the “developmental dynamics” of forces of production but in
the “developmental logic” of intersubjective and normatively oriented rela-
tions (Evolution, 118, 130–177; Rekonstruktion, 139–140). Progress in the
technology of production and mounting systems complexity represent the
conditions for social evolution, and the evolution of normative structures
provides its basis.
In elaborating the framework for his theory of communicative action and
discourse ethics, Habermas reconstructs the model—formulated by Jean
Piaget (1966) and developed by Lawrence Kohlberg (1976, 1981)—of ontogenetic
(individual) development, which he transfers to the realm of phylogenetic
(social) evolution (Moral Consciousness; Evolution, 69–94, 99ff.; Rekonstruk-
tion, 133ff., 232–233; Communicative Action, 2:174ff.; Justification, 113–132).
According to this model, there are three stages of moral development for indi-
viduals, and these stages each correspond to a different societal formation: pre-
conventional, conventional, and postconventional.
As Habermas sees things, the process of cognitive and moral maturation
relates closely to the “decentering of the young person’s understanding of the
world” in three differentiated modes of relation to objective, social, and subjective
phenomena (Moral Consciousness, 132ff., 168); equally, it relates to corresponding
modes of action—strategic and communicative—and to the distinction between
discourse and communicative action.
550 Concepts
rituals and myths. The melting together of different dimensions, which is evi-
dent in ritual praxis, is regulated and secured by the worldviews presented in
myths. Mythical interpretations of the world confuse “internal meaning with
external conditions” (Sachzusammenhänge); in this way, they are able to
“protect ritual practice against rips in the fabric woven from communicative
and purposive activity indistinguishably” (Communicative Action, 2:193). This
implies that, on a profane level—even if a certain differentiation between goal-
and understanding-oriented attitudes already exists—claims to truth, truth-
fulness, and rightness still form a unit (2:194).
This merging of the objective, social, and subjective world that is anchored
in mythical worldviews confuses individual and collective actions; conse-
quently, the individual affirms his or her identity only as a member of a group
structured by kinship (family, clan, and/or tribe). The equation that occurs
between individual life and group life—which finds practical expression in
ritual and reflective expression in myth—connects with the model of precon-
ventional morality. In addition, the fact that events and things are perceived as
matters of immediate and binding self-evidence blocks the distinction
between (individual) action and established conventions. In this context, it is
impossible to conceive of deviant behavior as something that belongs to com-
munal life; instead, deviations represent “attacks” on the group (which, ulti-
mately, are attributed to external forces of nature).
In “high cultures”—even in the realm of sacred action—the difference
between objective, social, and subjective worlds is already operative. Internal
relations of meaning and external, factual conditions are distinguished.
Actions are no longer evaluated solely in terms of effects. At the same time,
however—and even though a difference obtains between goal-oriented and
understanding-oriented attitudes—the realm of the sacred is constituted by
religious and metaphysical worldviews that, inasmuch as they are predicated
on a holistic conception of validity, prove “resistant to every attempt to sepa-
rate off the aspects of the true, the good, and the perfect” (2:194). Within this
sphere, then, the unity of claims to truth, rightness, and truthfulness is
assured. All the same, religious worldviews “are more or less dichotomous in
structure; they set up a ‘world beyond’ and leave a demythologized ‘this world’
or a desocialized ‘world of appearances’ to a disenchanted everyday practice”
(2:194).
Consequently, the holistic conception of validity dissolves within the
profane sphere of activity (2:194). In matters of communicative action, partici-
pants distinguish “between individual pragmatic basic attitudes”—that is,
between outlooks that objectivate, conform to norms, and belong to the realm
of expression. Thereby, differences between claims to truth, rightness, and truth-
fulness emerge. Society, which is now organized as a state with conventional
legal institutions, demands that individuals observe and obey the legitimate
552 Concepts
order, and it is important that this (social) attitude be distinct from the (objec-
tivating and expressive) attitudes displayed toward outer and inner nature
(2:194).
In this context, individual identity is not equated with that of the group. It
has been differentiated from the collective and no longer depends on kinship
relations but on a territorially bound organization whose unity is embodied by
a leader figure (Rekonstruktion, 26). Only in this way does obedience—and, as
a corollary, deviant behavior—become a clear conception operative in everyday
life. “At this stage, communicative action can free itself from particularistic
contexts, but it stays in the space marked out by solid traditional norms”
(Communicative Action, 2:194). As a consequence of interpreting (argumentativer
Umgang mit) (holy) texts, the differences between communicative action and
discourse are now evident. However, contrasting validity claims are operative
only in terms of action (auf der Handlungsebene)—in other words, “there are not
yet forms of argumentation tailored to specific aspects of validity” (2:195). Stand-
ing institutions therefore remain incontestable, and discourses of truth and
rightness still overlap.
In early modernity, a specific validity claim—truth—emerges in science. At
the same time, morality, law, and art—even though they constitute distinct
value spheres—have not separated off from the realm of the sacred enough to
offer unambiguously specific validity claims (2:195). That is: a thoroughgoing
differentiation between discourses and their validity claims still has not
occurred. However, inasmuch as the forms assumed by modern religiosity
break with the dogma that places, in dichotomous and hierarchical fashion, a
profane “this world” in opposition to the realm of transcendence—the world
of phenomena to the world of absolute Being—“in domains of profane action,
structures can take shape that are defined by an unrestricted differentiation of
validity claims on the levels of action and argumentation” (2:195).
Finally, not just science but art, morality, and law also split off from the
realm of the sacred. The “secularization of bourgeois culture” entails sharp
divisions between spheres of value, which henceforth develop autonomously—
i.e., “according to the inner logics specific to the different validity claims”
(2:196).
Such desacralization makes it possible for critical discourses to emerge
even in opposition to standing institutions insofar as “the hypothetical dis-
cussion of normative validity claims is [itself] institutionalized” (2:195). While
institutionalized normativity splits off from metaphysical and religious world-
views, goal-oriented instrumentality (Zwecktätigkeit) now operates indepen-
dently of normative contexts and comes into closer alignment with the system
of science, from which it derives objective information for developing tech-
nologies, techniques, and strategies of action. Now, instrumental reason
expresses itself, inasmuch as it has been freed from understanding-oriented
Evolution 553
References
Eder, Klaus. 1980. Die Entstehung staatlich organisierter Gesellschaften: Ein Beitrag zu einer
Theorie sozialer Evolution. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Kohlberg, Lawrence. 1976. “Moral Stages and Moralization: The Cognitive-Developmental
Approach.” In Moral Development and Behavior: Theory, Research, and Social Issues,
ed. Thomas Lickona, 31–53. New York: Holt McDougal.
——. 1981. “Appendix. The Six Stages of Moral Judgment.” In The Philosophy of Moral
Development: Moral Stages and the Idea of Justice, Essays on Moral Development 1,
409–412. New York: Harper & Row.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1975. “Evolution und Geschichte.” In Soziologische Aufklärung 2: Aufsä-
tze zur Theorie der Gesellschaft, 150–169. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1975.
——. 2003. Theory of Society. Vol. 1. Trans. Rhodes Barrett. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Uni-
versity Press.
Piaget, Jean. 1966. The Moral Judgment of the Child. New York: Free Press.
57
HISTORICAL MATERIALISM
MARTIN HARTMANN
T
he theory of historical materialism developed by Marx and Engels
understands social conditions as the result of a teleological his-
torical process. The analysis of operative categories—forces of
production, relations of production, and superstructure—permit the further
course of history to be explained and even predicted. As outlined in Marx’s
Grundrisse (Marx 1993), the model of historical materialism is as follows:
Forces of production (i.e., the labor of persons who are active in production,
the specialized knowledge that manages/directs their efforts, the tools
employed, and instruments/instances of certification and coordination) give
rise to institutions and mechanisms that determine who has access to the
means of production and in what way (for example, who owns them) as well as
how the wealth that has been produced socially is distributed (the relations of
production). In turn, phenomena such as law and morality serve to justify
particular relations of production; to the extent that the latter are deemed
necessary, they possess an ideological character and become part of the
superstructure. The model accounts for the dynamics of history by positing
that the forces of production develop without the relations of production that
correspond to them changing in kind; to the extent that this occurs, the rela-
tions of production “fetter” the forces of production, which can result in
social revolutions that overturn relations of production as they have stood
until this point.
Especially in the 1970s, Habermas integrated the materialist model of his-
torical evolution into his own writings; in so doing, he modified it. The essen-
tial feature of Habermas’s transformative theoretical reconstruction is the
claim that “moral-practical consciousness” develops following the course of
its “own logic” (Society and Politics, 127)—a process that is independent of the
way forces of production evolve. Thereby, superstructure phenomena such as
morality and law are freed of their dependency on material, economic pro-
cesses and come, ultimately, to shed their ideological qualities (which legiti-
mate only the relations of production as they stand). Having abandoned a key
element of Marxist doctrine, Habermas now, in a further step, goes so far as to
call “normative structures” the “pacemaker” of social evolution (Society and
Politics, 190).
Historical Materialism 555
spheres (which can be empirically verified without great effort), the increased
delegalization of how wars are conducted, and so on make the notion that
progress must necessarily occur in human social evolution seem less and less
persuasive. Indeed, Habermas can hardly say as much without drawing
gloomy conclusions about contemporary society.
The tension between normative consciousness as the “vanguard” of social
evolution and the colonization of the lifeworld that prevails in actual fact is
palpable. The further such colonization proceeds, the less it is clear how eco-
nomically induced system crises may be absorbed by implementing (suppos-
edly autonomous) processes of moral and legal learning (autonom erzielter
Lernfortschritte der Moral und des Rechts) (Allen 2008). If the communicative
potential of reason—which is easy enough to posit in the abstract—has no
empirical site of application, Habermas’s theory threatens to deteriorate into
reconstructive nostalgia.
References
Allen, Amy. 2008. “Empowering the Lifeworld?” In The Politics of Our Selves: Power,
Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, 96–122. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Godelier, Maurice. 1977. Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology. Trans. Robert Brain. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Habermas, Jürgen, and Niklas Luhmann. 1971. Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnol-
ogie: Was leistet die Systemforschung? Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Marx, Karl. 1993. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. Trans. Mar-
tin Nicolaus. New York: Penguin.
Piaget, Jean. 1977. The Moral Judgment of the Child. Trans. Marjorie Gabain. New York:
Free Press.
Tomberg, Friedrich. 2003. Habermas und der Marxismus. Zur Aktualität einer Rekon-
struktion des historischen Materialismus. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
58
HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMAN
RIGHTS
REGINA KREIDE
T
he relationship between human rights and democracy is most
often described in terms of tension (e.g., Gosepath 1998, 209ff.;
Michelman 1999, 52–66; Wellmer 2000). Human rights impose
on popular sovereignty moral prescriptions that restrict the freedom of choice
and decision. Conversely, the results of democratic processes may run counter
to the standing conceptions of human rights—and, as a result, undermine
their observance.
Jürgen Habermas’s deliberative conception of human rights—which holds
equally distant from liberal and republican positions—integrates important
aspects of both theories to justify human rights and democracy. On the one
hand, this approach is directed against advocates of the liberal tradition,
which as a rule focuses on “classic” human rights—that is, the precedence of
subjective freedoms over rights of political participation. On the other hand,
Habermas criticizes the tradition of republicanism going back to Arendt (and,
ultimately, Aristotle), which grants rights of political participation—as an
important component of “the good life”—precedence over individual
freedoms.
For both the liberal and the republican traditions, human rights and popu-
lar sovereignty compete with each other (Facts, 122). In contrast, Habermas’s
deliberative theory seeks to show that the relationship is, in fact, complemen-
tary. In this context, one particular distinction is of central importance. Inas-
much as they are moral, human rights are justified norms of action, and they
express demands that hold for all human beings. As basic rights (Grundrechte)
or juridical rights they are enforceable constitutional rights; although they
retain their universal validity claim, they can, de facto, only be demanded
within a determinate legal community (Rechtsgemeinschaft) (Facts).
The “interreferentiality” (Verweisungszusammenhang) between human
rights and democracy is evident, for one, in the fact that juridical human rights
represent—in the form of subjective rights—a necessary condition for the
democratic process. That is, agreement between citizens about fair procedures
of political participation presupposes that citizens recognize one another as
Human Rights and Human Rights 559
free and equal. Rights to freedom such as the inviolability of persons and of
the private sphere must be institutionally secured to make it possible for citi-
zens to exercise their political rights in the first place (Günther 1994, Kreide
2016).
At the same time, human rights are not just the precondition for democ-
racy; they also depend on a fair democratic process in a normative sense. Only
through democratic procedure is it possible for moral human rights to be
thematized by citizens, interpreted, and endowed with the authority of
enforcement—i.e., institutionalized. On this point, Habermas takes distance
from the traditional distinction between natural law and positive law, which
he does not consider convincing: if one adopted a conception of human rights
in terms of natural law, the task of the legislator would be limited to “pouring”
moral norms into the “mold” of positive law—which would occur without
rights (and their “contents”) being granted publicly and reciprocally (Inclu-
sion, 190). The internal connection between human rights and popular sover-
eignty—i.e., the counterfactual assumption that human rights and democracy
presuppose and result from each other—lies, as Habermas puts it, “in the nor-
mative content of the very mode of exercising political autonomy” (Facts, 103).
That said, Habermas considers that human rights are, in terms of their
structure, not moral norms but rather “juridical by their very nature” (Inclu-
sion, 190). Although they can be justified in the political process only by way
of moral argument, this cannot occur independent of a democratic procedure.
They rely on political procedures that are already established to achieve the
status of human rights in the first place.
For some, the assumption that human rights are juridical in nature and
based on a fusion of legal form and the principle of discourse does not attach
due significance to their moral dimensions (Michelman 1999). Human rights,
the argument goes, are not rights that citizens of a state grant one another.
Their defining feature is that they point beyond membership in one particular
nation-state and, instead, are conceived in universalistic terms (Forst 1999).
Conversely, others contend that human rights—because they are juridical
by nature—connect with legislative instances and reach the “administered
ears of professional politicians” (Brunkhorst 2005, 199). Precisely because of
their ambivalent moral-legal nature, human rights are “stand-ins” for demo-
cratic legitimation that represents an “emergent public sphere” (199).
The culture of human rights forms the common “normative denominator”
upon which different legal cultures can reach agreement, even short of legisla-
tive elaboration and juristic concretion (Möllers 2001, 49). Moreover, for civil
society—which already involves the “politics of appeal” (49) as a matter of
necessity—the moral aspect of human rights is a trump for uncovering abuses
and making them known. When addressed in legal terms, however, human
rights are not just actionable constitutional rights—they also provide the
560 Concepts
building blocks for the new forms of transnational legality that were estab-
lished, after 1945, within the framework of the United Nations.
The procedural notion of human rights may also be a reason why Habermas
does not justify social human rights in terms of their “inherent value” (eigener
Wert) but only in relation to rights to freedom and political rights. Habermas’s
rejection of a legal principle that would grant social rights constitutional status
as human rights is based on the fact that the principle of discourse does not
entail a principle of social law (soziales Rechtsprinzip) that would necessarily
have to be a part of the procedure for justifying legality. “The system should
contain precisely the rights citizens must confer on one another if they want to
legitimately regulate their interactions . . . by means of positive law” (Facts,
122). Hereby, Habermas means, above all, rights that represent preconditions
for legitimate legislation—i.e., for procedures that occur in terms of demo-
cratic principle (125–126). Such a proceduralist perspective on the justification
of human rights considers social rights only as the precondition for citizens’
use of other rights. As a legal component of the procedure itself, they hold no
significance (for a critical assessment, see Frankenberg 1996; for Habermas’s
response, see Habermas 1996, 1542ff.; cf. Lohmann 1999).
Although Between Facts and Norms connects the “equiprimordial” justifi-
cation of human rights and democracy to the democratically constituted
nation-state, Habermas in no way excludes the democratic legitimation that
would be provided by a transnational constitution. The abstractness of the
notion of constitutionality—to which the state and other social institutions
are subjected—permits one to speak of a “social constitution” instead of a
“state constitution” (Brunkhorst 2006, 112); such a constitution would provide
the normative measure for all international legislation (Rechtsgebilde) in the
political order of world society (Naturalism, 322ff.). For all that, Habermas
does not advocate a world republic but rather a “world domestic policy with-
out a world government” (Postnational, 110), carried by citizens, as well as the
progressive constitutionalization of international law (see chapter 17 in this
volume) on the basis of fundamental human rights. Here, the frame of norma-
tive reference is constituted by a deliberative theory of democracy that offers
to transnational institutionalization the functional equivalents for decision-
making processes that are democratically organized.
Habermas has responded to numerous objections that have been raised
in the context of international discourses on human rights (Postnational,
113–129). For many critics, human rights are a “Western” achievement and rest
on a purely “occidental” conception of reason that is by no means shared
everywhere in the world. Habermas responds to such skeptics by observing
that even if the idea of (universalistic) reason first originated in “Western”
societies, the practice of justification based on reason forms an integral com-
ponent of communicative action, which in turn rests on the idea of reciprocal
Human Rights and Human Rights 561
References
Brunkhorst, Hauke. 2005. Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community.
Trans. Jeffrey Flynn. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
——. 2006. Habermas. Leipzig: Reclam.
Forst, Rainer. 1999. “The Basic Right to Justification: Toward a Constructivist Conception
of Human Rights.” Constellations 6, no. 1: 35–60.
Frankenberg, Günter. 1996. “Why Care? The Trouble with Social Rights.” Cardozo Law
Review (Special Issue: Habermas on Law and Democracy: Critical Exchanges, Part I
and II), 17, no. 4–5: 1365–1390.
Gosepath, Stefan. 1998. “Das Verhältnis von Demokratie und Menschenrecht.” In
Demokratischer Experimentalismus, ed. Hauke Brunkhorst, 201–241. Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp.
Günther, Klaus. 1994. “Diskurstheorie des Rechts oder liberales Naturrecht in diskursthe-
oretischem Gewande?” Kritische Justiz 27, no. 4: 470–487.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1996. “Reply to Symposium Participants, Benjamin N. Cardozo School
of Law.” Cardozo Law Review (Special Issue: Habermas on Law and Democracy: Criti-
cal Exchanges, Part I and II) 17, no. 4–5: 1477–1559.
Kreide, Regina. 2016. “Between Morality and Law: In Defense of a Political Conception of
Human Rights.” Journal of International Political Theory 12, no. 1: 10–25.
Lohmann, Georg. 1999. “Soziale Rechte und die Grenzen des Sozialstaates.” In Politische
Philosophie des Sozialstaates, ed. Wolfgang Kersting, 351–372. Weilerswist: Velbrueck.
Michelman, Frank. 1999. “Bedürfen Menschenrechte demokratischer Legitimation?” In
Recht auf Menschenrechte. Menschenrechte, Demokratie und internationale Politik, ed.
Hauke Brunkhorst et al., 52–66. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Möllers, Christoph. 2001. “Globalisierte Jurisprudenz.” Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphi-
losophie Beiheft 79: 41–60.
Wellmer, Albrecht. 2000. “Der Streit um Wahrheit. Pragmatismus ohne regulative Ideen.”
Die Renaissance des Pragmatismus. Aktuelle Verflechtungen zwischen analytischer und
kontinentaler Philosophie, ed. Mike Sandbothe, 253–270. Weilerswist: Velbrueck.
59
IDEOLOGY
MARTIN SA AR
I
n Habermas’s works, the concept of ideology displays multiple—and
polyvalent—aspects. It features prominently as one of the central cat-
egories in his account of Marxism—above all, in his early discussions
of the project of critical theory as it was first conceived. The matter continues
to be of central importance in Habermas’s discussions of “late capitalism,”
where he seeks to offer a political-sociological diagnosis of the times. How-
ever, in the course of the author’s turn to the theory of communication, which
crucially revises his approach to critical social analysis, ideology offers a point
of reference less and less; in late writings, the concept is invoked only rarely
(cf. Habermas 2001, 2008).
Habermas’s early essays on Marxism, political theory, and social philoso-
phy (e.g., Theory and Practice) discuss the Marxist doctrine of ideology in
terms of the history of bourgeois society. In his Habilitation, however, Haber-
mas takes issue with the vulgar-Marxist reduction of bourgeois ideals to inter-
ests based purely on class (as Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse had done in
the foundational texts of critical theory, written during the 1930s). He observes
that the principle of the public sphere—which was only partially realized in
bourgeois societies of the Enlightenment—harbored “ideology and simultane-
ously more than mere ideology” (Structural Transformation, 88). In “Technology
and Science as ‘Ideology’ ” (1968), the quotation marks in the title are decisive:
because of the successful rationalization and changed form of late-capitalist
societies, the traditional conception of ideology can “no longer be employed as
[it] stand[s]” (Society and Politics, 107).
For Habermas, then, “ideology” is less a matter of “false consciousness”
that a political class employs for strategic reasons (as Marcuse still held) than
it is a matter of social life becoming depoliticized when the “reified models”
(Society and Politics, 91) of scientific-technological knowledge gain the upper
hand. “The legitimation system” (Legitimation, 36) of late capitalism experi-
ences a severe crisis not least because “the residue of tradition” and “core com-
ponents of the bourgeois ideology” (48) can no longer operate in a justificatory
(apologetisch) way. Even the capitalist “ideology of achievement and success”
(Leistungsideologie) (81), a cornerstone of capitalism’s legitimation, too openly
contradicts the actual conditions of work and life in liberal societies.
Ideology 563
points of irreconcilable difference within the social now reappear in the politi-
cal realm. Thus, it might be that democracy offers no way of escaping the ever-
recurring distortions and disruptions of political dynamics—and that, for this
reason, democratic engagement itself is always “ideological” to a certain
degree.
The question remains, then, whether Habermas’s view that the “project of
modernity” may yet succeed avoids addressing fundamental doubts about the
freedom to be achieved through reasonable communication—indeed, whether
Habermas is afraid that he cannot do so within the narrow confines of his
theory. The growing marginalization, in critical discourse, of the very idea of
ideology could itself be a symptom of a certain theoretical attitude that denies
the very possibility of ideology—which might be “ideological” itself.
Moreover, Habermas’s harsh rejection of totalizing conceptions of ideologi-
cal critique—above all, those that follow from early critical theory and struc-
turalist Marxism—has prevented him from engaging with newer theoretical
articulations of subjectivity and ideology. In particular, such projects have
been outlined by Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Çiäek (1994), who take up the
works of Gramsci and Althusser, and by Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau
(2005), and Judith Butler—with clear implications for the theory of “radical
democracy.” One can assess the consequences of this missed opportunity in
different ways. It is certain, however, that the failure to engage with these
authors (and the distance from their positions that this implies) has obscured
a key point of agreement: despite his departure from ideology critique in the
classical sense, Habermas shares with these thinkers a fundamental frame of
reference that remains indebted to Marx.
References
O
n the basis of certain normative convictions, the intellectual has
a sense both for what is and for what could be different. In other
words, he unites what Robert Musil (1996) called a “sense of real-
ity” and a “sense of possibility.” However, not all intellectuals manage to strike
a balance between the two: self-declared realists possess an unrestrained sense
of reality, and unworldly idealists possess an excessive sense of possibility.
Jürgen Habermas belongs among the very few philosophers and sociolo-
gists who, both in what they write about intellectuals and in their intellectual
interventions, seek a point of equilibrium between the sense of reality and the
sense of possibility—and, what is more, achieve it, for the most part. In Haber-
mas’s (1987) view, intellectuals address the public and stage interventions
“with rhetorically pointed arguments on behalf of injured rights and repressed
truths, overdue innovations and delayed progress” (29). On the basis of uni-
versalistic values—especially democratic principles and human rights—the
intellectual judges what can and must be changed in reality as it stands.
In most cases, intellectuals as citizens put “their expertise to public use
beyond the limits of their profession” (Faltering, 51) without being asked to do
so. Of course, citizens who have no professional knowledge at the ready may
raise a critical voice in the public sphere. However, because current debates
tend to concern complex issues as well as normative questions that pose at
least as many difficulties, it happens only rarely that laypeople succeed in tak-
ing positions that receive considerable media attention. Although they hold
views on pressing normative issues (e.g., stem-cell research and assisted sui-
cide), their voices are rarely heard in public debates, which are dominated by
experts and politicians. For this reason, a serious tension exists between
expertocracy and democracy.
In Habermas’s view, a scientist possessing professional knowledge who
articulates a position in a matter of public controversy performs a different
role than a scientist who only intervenes in specialized debates among col-
leagues. Habermas makes an explicit distinction between the roles of intellec-
tuals and scientists. Whereas the latter communicate with others in the field
about how a certain aspect of reality is to be interpreted or explained, the for-
mer seek—and not just on the basis of their knowledge but also on the basis of
566 Concepts
certain rules of the game: “They must contribute to the mobilization of impor-
tant issues, concrete facts, and convincing arguments, which are in turn
exposed to critical examination” (Faltering, 171).
In the course of globalization a transnational public sphere emerged—even
if its existence is very precarious as yet—which enables intellectuals to direct
their critical attention beyond national borders and onto problems that affect
many citizens worldwide (for example, global warming and the growing gap
between the rich and the poor). Although not all intellectuals view themselves
as cosmopolitans, a cosmopolitanization of intellectuals has occurred all the
same, for they are inevitably tied both to the local or regional society and to
world society. Engagement for the “world domestic politics” that Habermas
envisages requires that intellectuals deal with at least two tasks: first, overcoming
extreme economic disparities that exist in a stratified world society, reversing
ecological imbalances, and averting collective endangerments; second, pro-
moting intercultural understanding (Verständigung) with the aim of securing
equality in exchanges between world civilizations (Naturalism, 338).
At first glance, it seems that no conception of the intellectual stands as
opposed to the one presented here as that of Michel Foucault. Indeed, it has
often been suggested (Tully 1998, 116; Maes 2002, 223; Bühl 2003) that Haber-
mas’s ideal type of intellectual corresponds to the “universal intellectual” that
Foucault declared obsolete—i.e., a party in possession of the truth who, in
the name of universal values, advocates for the rights of underprivileged and
marginalized persons/groups. According to Foucault, this kind of intellectual
was replaced after the Second World War when the “specific” intellectual
emerged—that is, an expert who employs his or her knowledge in power
struggles that occur within his or her own field (1984, 69). In a society pene-
trated by relations of power, the task of intellectuals is to establish a counter-
power. In contrast to Sartre’s intellectual, “someone who meddles in what does
not concern him,” specific intellectuals do not presume to offer judgments in
the name of truth and justice. Foucault holds that the unreflective nature of
universal intellectuals is evident in the mistaken belief that their own ideas of
truth and justice have somehow remained uncontaminated by power strug-
gles. Specific intellectuals, on the other hand, self-reflectively assume that
their public interventions also represent a way of exercising power.
In fact, Habermas’s concept of the intellectual in no way corresponds to
Foucault’s universal intellectual. In the first place, Habermas’s discourse the-
ory of truth declares it impossible for an intellectual to “possess” the truth;
claims to truth do not prove valid on the basis of personal status but on the
basis of discursive redeemability. Second, Habermas’s radically democratic
views exclude that an intellectual may be an advocate (Fürsprecher) for others.
Were she or he to assume this position, it would amount to endorsing the out-
dated notion of the philosopher equipped with a privileged insight who assumes
Intellectuals 569
References
Bering, Dietz. 1978. Die Intellektuellen. Geschichte eines Schimpfwortes. Stuttgart: Klett-
Cotta.
Brunkhorst, Hauke.1987. Der Intellektuelle im Land der Mandarine. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1990. “Ohne Mandat—Sartres Theorie des Intellektuellen.” In Der entzauberte Intelle-
ktuelle, 99–125. Hamburg: Junius.
Bühl, Achim. 2003. “Die Habermas-Foucault-Debatte neu gelesen.” Prokla 130:256–287.
Eribon, Didier. 1992. Michel Foucault. Trans. Betsy Wing. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1984. “Truth and Power.” In The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow,
51–75. New York: Pantheon.
——. 2011. The Government of Self and Others. Trans. Graham Burchell. London: Palgrave.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. Eine Art Schadensabwicklung: Kleine Politische Schriften VI.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 1999. Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung: Philosophische Aufsätze. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Maes, Michael. 2002. Diskurs, Macht und Geschichte. Foucaults Analysetechniken und die
historische Forschung. Frankfurt: Campus.
Musil, Robert. 1996. The Man Without Qualities. Trans. Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike.
New York: Vintage.
Tully, James. 1998. “To Think and Act Differently. Foucault’s Four Reciprocal Objections to
Habermas’ Theory.” In Foucault Contra Habermas: Recasting the Dialogue Between
Genealogy and Critical Theory, ed. Samantha Ashenden and David Owen, 90–142.
London: Sage.
61
LATE CAPITALISM
FRANK NULLMEIER
H
abermas’s Legitimation Crisis (Legitimationsprobleme im Spät-
kapitalismus [1973]) assigns the concept of “late capitalism” a
position of central importance, which it has retained in his
works as a whole. However, in presenting this sketch of a comprehensive the-
ory of society, Habermas employs the term “late capitalism” only with
restraint. More often, he refers to “state-regulated” or “organized capitalism.”
And even when the chapter heading promises “A Descriptive Model of
Advanced Capitalism,” what follows speaks primarily of “organized capital-
ism” (Legitimation, 33).
Habermas’s references to “late capitalism” should be understood in light of
the Sixteenth Conference of German Sociologists (Soziologentag) in Frankfurt
(1968). To acknowledge Karl Marx’s 150th birthday and at the instigation of
Theodor W. Adorno, the theme of the event was “Late Capitalism or Indus-
trial Society?” In his opening remarks, Adorno called for Marxist categories to
be preserved. Given the dominance (Vorherrschaft) of capitalist relations of
production over forces of production, he argued, “industrial society” cannot
prove central to analysis, for it refers only to technical aspects of social devel-
opment. For all that, Adorno’s lecture did little to clarify the concept of “late
capitalism,” in particular. Adorno presented points of contrast with “liberal
capitalism” and advanced the thesis that state intervention should not be
deemed an element foreign to its system. Instead, he argued, intervention is
constitutive of capitalism: its telos (or, alternatively, the inevitability of its col-
lapse) involves the transition to “rule [Herrschaft] independent of market
mechanisms” (Adorno 1979, 368).
Afterward, Habermas began to use the term “late capitalism” with greater
frequency. Thus, in his discussion of Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional
Man (1964)—which refers mainly to “advanced industrial societies”—he spoke
of the “system of advanced capitalism [Spätkapitalismus]” (Rational Society,
133; cf. Habermas 1968, 12), and he entitled a 1968 lecture “Conditions for
Revolutionizing Late-Capitalist Societies” (Kultur und Kritik, 70–86). In the
foreword to a new edition of Theory and Practice that appeared around the
same time, Habermas used the term as a matter of course and without any
further explication.
572 Concepts
The phrase “late capitalism” was coined by Werner Sombart in Der moderne
Kapitalismus. In the entirely revised second edition (1916–1927; the original
work is dated 1902), Sombart divided capitalism into “early,” “high,” and “late”
phases—whereby the last phase connotes decline. “Early capitalism” (a term
that Habermas uses—as well as “high capitalism”—in The Structural Transfor-
mation of the Public Sphere) refers to the development of commercial enterprises
and market orders from the fourteenth century until the Industrial Revolution
(c. 1760). High capitalism is defined as the unfolding and ultimate consolida-
tion of capitalist production in the nineteenth century. “Late capitalism,”
finally, refers to the rise of social politics and public enterprises, as well as to
mounting state intervention in market cycles after 1914 (Pribram 1983, 226–227,
376–380). Except in isolation—e.g., a book by the Polish economist Natalie Mosz-
kowska (1943)—the term found little use even among economists who foresaw
a decline, or even the end, of capitalism (for example, Joseph A. Schumpeter).
In contrast, terminology developed by Rudolf Hilferding (1910) achieved
prominence. Hilferding analyzed processes of economic concentration and
the domination of finance capital in terms of the replacement of “competitive
capitalism” (Konkurrenzkapitalismus) by “monopoly capitalism” (Hilferding
1981).
After the 1968 Soziologentag had renewed the idea of late capitalism in
political and theoretical debates, Claus Offe’s effort to develop the concept
fueled further discussion (“Spätkapitalismus—Versuch einer Begriffsbestim-
mung” [Late capitalism—an attempt at definition]; Offe 1972, 7–25). In Offe’s
estimation, capitalism’s potential for adaption is “categorically exhausted”
because no forms of state regulation exist in which “new mechanisms for the
self-perpetuation of the capitalist system” may be combined with the system
as it stands (24). All the same, should strategies of adaptation in fact be avail-
able, one might “employ the term ‘late capitalism’ in a sense that is not overly
loose” (24). Thereby, Offe indicated that the term refers to a state of crisis: the
modifier “late” stands for the possible end of capitalism—one that will not
occur when class struggles escalate to revolution but rather when further
potential for development runs dry.
Habermas adopted this “crisis-theoretical” view—albeit with a different
orientation—in Legitimation Crisis (1973). That said, the central opposition
between “liberal capitalism” and “late capitalism” had already occurred in his
1968 discussion of Marcuse (Habermas 1968, 74). The two-phase theory of cap-
italism dates back even earlier and informs The Structural Transformation of
the Public Sphere (original ed. 1962), which analyzes the transition from the
public sphere of liberal societies to a public sphere under conditions where
public and private realms are fused. Here—and in contrast to Legitimation
Crisis—“late capitalism” refers to the point when liberal capitalism met its
end, following the Great Depression of the 1870s (Structural Transformation,
Late Capitalism 573
nod toward new social movements of the late 1970s). It does not follow that a
legitimation crisis occurs for the capitalist system as a whole, however. A func-
tional equivalent for bourgeois ideology emerges: fragmented everyday
consciousness, which undermines the demands of cultural modernity, i.e.,
universalism and discursivity (2:330).
Capitalism’s potential for adaptation has by no means been exhausted.
“Late capitalism”—as Claus Offe (2006) put it recently—amounts to “a termi-
nological mistake [Missgriff]” (194). Since the middle of the 1980s, Habermas
has not used the term. Both in his central writings on political theory—
Between Facts and Norms and The Inclusion of the Other—as well as in shorter
essays, he has avoided the modifier “late” in discussing the economic realities
of modern capitalism, which admit no alternative (even though they “require
regulation”) (Habermas 2007, 428). Since there is no chance of “opting out,”
the best one can do in the “new stage” of “politically unleashed” capitalism
is to “tame,” “cushion,” or “politically shape” it (Time). Recent debates about
appropriate interpretations of, and names for, capitalism as it now exists—
“post-Fordism” and the “Schumpeterian competition state” in the terminology
of the Regulation School (Jessop 2002), “capitalism of the financial market”
(Windolf 2005), or “project-based capitalism” (Boltanski and Chiapello 2003)—
have not, to date, led Habermas to revise the architecture of his theory, devote
renewed attention to capitalism, or change his analytical vocabulary.
References
U
nlike genetically determined changes that occur in the process of
maturation, changes through learning result from experience.
By definition, learning processes—because they occur over a
longer period of time—are distinct from punctual instances of learning
(“imprinting”). As Habermas defines them, they do not refer to the acquisition
of motor skills (for example, swimming), simple cultural aptitudes (Kultur-
techniken), or narrowly delimited systems of knowledge (for example, reading
and writing or mathematical abilities). Instead, learning processes concern
the formation of the (cognitive or moral) capacity of judgment.
Unlike the learning mechanisms that behaviorism and psychoanalysis
investigate—which involve classical and operant conditioning and the intro-
jection or cultural transformation of biological need structures—what inter-
ests Habermas is not the passive adoption of given patterns of behavior or
value orientations but subjects’ self-directed and consciously accessible mental
constructions. At the same time, the focus does not fall on positive contents
but on structures of judgment. For Habermas, “learning process” refers to a
normative concept: on rational grounds, both actors and observers identify
the new views as more adequate than those that preceded them. The approach
derives from Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg’s developmental theory but
was also transferred from an individual plane to a collective one. Two ques-
tions follow: What are the criteria for evaluating learning processes? And what
is it that motivates them?
involved in a given situation but also the functional demands of life in society.
Finally, the “prior-to-society-perspective” at the highest level of development
permits social arrangements as they actually occur to be questioned from the
(hypothetical) perspective of all reasonable beings.
It is incontestable that awareness of the way one’s own perceptions are
bound to a particular standpoint makes it possible to achieve a view of the
world that is more adequate to reality. What proves decisive for Habermas,
however, is that this learning process plays a constitutive role in the develop-
ment of a secular understanding of morality. Instead of being derived from
what is simply given (the word of God, sacrosanct tradition, ideas of natural
law, and so on), norms are now considered valid because all parties who are
(potentially) affected could freely accept them because they lie in the rational
interest of everyone. By this standard, solutions to moral dilemmas are appro-
priate to the extent that participants are capable of taking the roles of others—
that is, validity increases the more inclusive the circle of parties whose interests
actors can understand and take into consideration.
Children develop their cognitive and sociocognitive abilities by engaging
with the physical and social worlds. The process moves forward when resis-
tance is experienced in the physical environment and contradiction occurs
in social interactions (especially among others of the same age—including
friends), as well as through discussion of dilemmas. The highest levels of
development—i.e., formal-operational thinking and critical reflection on pre-
vailing norms in terms of universalizability—are only achieved in complex
societies and through a formal system of education. Here, learners systemati-
cally consider situations that are not, in fact, given; the experience of conflict-
ing norms (in subsystems and subcultures within the larger society) compels
subjects to seek universally justifiable solutions on a metalevel. In this sense,
Habermas (1987) speaks of, e.g., “university learning processes” (universitäre
Lernprozesse) that go beyond academic training and liberate subjects from
“one-sidedness” (83) by familiarizing them with the “productive force of
discursive conflict” (96); in addition—and here the matter passes over to the
collective—such processes concern “cultural communication [Selbstverständi-
gung] and public opinion-formation” (80).
For Habermas, social evolution does not simply result from the variables of
blind chance; it also always involves historical learning processes. Accord-
ingly, he has reconstructed the transformation of the institutionalized form of
conflict regulation (i.e., law) in a way that corresponds to how development
occurs on an individual level (i.e., in terms of morality). The primitive
Learning Processes 579
References
Brunkhorst, Hauke. 2000. Einführung in die Geschichte politischer Ideen. Munich: Fink.
Buckel, Sonja. 2008. “Feministische Erfolge im transnationalen Recht.” Leviathan 36, no. 1:
54–75.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. Eine Art Schadensabwicklung: Kleine Politische Schriften VI.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Kluge, Alexander. 1996. Learning Processes with a Deadly Outcome. Trans. Christopher
Pavsek. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Moore, Barrington. 1978. Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt. New York:
Random House.
63
LEGAL WARS VERSUS
LEGITIMATE WARS
ANNA GEIS
A
s a public intellectual, Jürgen Habermas has, from the beginning
of his career, taken stands on current events. His political obser-
vations have not avoided an especially touchy matter in liberal
and democratic public spaces: the justification of military intervention. Since
the end of the Cold War, Habermas has—in essays, newspaper pieces, and
interviews—articulated positions on three wars involving Western states: the
first Gulf War (1991), Kosovo (1999), and Iraq (2003). He has said little, in con-
trast, about ongoing activities in Afghanistan (Habermas 1991, 1999; Haber-
mas and Derrida 2003; Divided West).
Habermas prompted the strongest—and most critical—response in jour-
nalistic and academic circles when, in an article for Die Zeit, he defended mili-
tary intervention in Kosovo, which occurred without a UN mandate, as an
anticipation (Vorgriff ) of future cosmopolitanism; to this day, “Bestiality and
Humanity” (Habermas 1999) remains an often-quoted point of reference. Even
though the piece stresses that NATO’s self-empowerment (Selbstermächtigung)
should not become the norm and includes numerous reservations, Habermas
expresses an understanding for the “inevitability of a transitory paternalism.” In
a time of transition, he declares, the dilemma of human-rights politics is that
one is required “to act as though there were already a fully institutionalized
global civil society, the very promotion of which is the intention of the action”
(Habermas 1999, 270).
Adopting a normative perspective on global politics, Habermas advocates
the Kantian project of constitutionalizing international law—that is, the task
of transforming, over the long term, the rights and legal systems of individual
states into a cosmopolitan constitution (Divided West, 123, 149, 159; see chapter
17 in this volume). Even if Habermas rejects Kant’s advocacy of a world repub-
lic, the latter’s thoroughgoing juridification of international relations has pro-
vided the normative standard for Habermas’s political reflections on wars
since 1990. At the same time, one may also discern a certain sobriety that has
surfaced in his reflections on steps made toward constitutionalization—a view
582 Concepts
that has been expressed in his increasingly pointed critiques of the policies of
the United States.
Already during the first Gulf War, Habermas (1991) criticized the tendency
of the sole Western superpower to make a justified “police action” into an
“entirely normal war” for securing its own interests in the Near East. During
the Kosovo War, Habermas articulated the differences between the ways
Americans and (continental) Europeans view human-rights politics even
more clearly. The latter, he observed, are inclined to promote the further
juridification of international relations, whereas the former consider it their
national mission as the world power to pursue human rights (Habermas 1999,
269). In the 2003 Iraq War, this normative disagreement culminated in the
“divided West”—a development for which Habermas holds the United States
largely responsible.
Habermas considered the Gulf War and the Kosovo War—which proved
central for the West in the 1990s—to be justified “police actions.” Despite
his criticism of the way military operations were conducted and their unin-
tended consequences, he declared that they promoted cosmopolitanism, at
least in principle (Habermas 1991, 1999). In contrast, Habermas has con-
demned the so-called War on Terror decreed by the United States after 2001—
including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—as “calamitous setbacks” for the
project of constitutionalizing international relations (Divided West, 148; Ter-
ror): “Instead of the kind of international police operation we had hoped for
during the war in Kosovo, we have, once again, old-fashioned wars, albeit con-
ducted with state-of-the-art technology” (Divided West, 11).
Habermas has not discussed his precise conception of what “war” means.
However, his criticism of the “War on Terror” proclaimed by George W. Bush
makes it clear that he links the concept of war to the use of force between
states (Divided West, 97). Habermas considers it a “grave mistake”—both nor-
matively and pragmatically—to speak of a “war” on terror, since this designa-
tion lends terrorists the status of war criminals, and, moreover, it is impossible
to wage a war against a hardly graspable network (Divided West, 32, 98).
Accordingly, in his philosophical writings on constitutionalization, Habermas
has abandoned the concept of “war” and instead chosen to speak of “police
actions.” In the long-term perspective of a global legal order, military confron-
tations are destined to assume “the character of police actions and operations
of criminal justice” (Divided West, 123).
This interpretation of military intervention as the use of “police force” is
problematic insofar as international relations find themselves in a state of
transition from classical international law to cosmopolitan conditions—the
ambivalent nature of which is becoming clearer and clearer. The basic prob-
lem involves the enormous differences in power between the legitimating but
relatively weak authority of the United Nations, on the one hand, and, on the
Legal Wars Versus Legitimate Wars 583
other, the power of nation-states that are capable of military action—and pur-
sue their own interests in “partisan” fashion (Habermas 1999, 270). In reality,
the supranational capacities of the world organization—which, in Habermas’s
conception, should not restrict its activities to securing peace and human
rights—are underinstitutionalized and lack resources. This both harms the
credibility of the United Nations and makes it possible for states that are ready
to act to issue their own warrants—with the result that a “would-be police
action . . . becomes indistinguishable from a run-of-the-mill war” (Divided
West, 20).
Habermas has sharply condemned the Iraq War in 2003 as illegal. He holds
that it represented an “obvious” and unprecedented violation of international
law and that it occurred without justification (Divided West, 85). Moreover,
the developments leading to the conflict amount to an about-face in interna-
tional law inasmuch as the actions of the United States raise the question
whether the juridification of international politics is to be replaced by an ethi-
cization of world politics that intends to erect a global order on the basis of
hegemonic liberalism (Divided West, 116). The Iraq War has prompted Haber-
mas to emphasize that military actions must be strictly bound by international
law; after all, provisions in the charter of the United Nations establishing pro-
cedures for identifying and punishing violations have represented a decisive
step toward the constitutionalization of world politics: “Since then, we no lon-
ger have just and unjust wars, only legal or illegal ones, depending on whether
they are justified or unjustified under international law” (Divided West, 102).
In pronouncing this judgment, Habermas takes distance both from John
Rawls and from Michael Walzer, who hold fast to the notion of the “just war.”
Whereas Rawls (by Habermas’s account) wishes to leave decisions about
enforcing international justice to a liberal elite of states, Walzer considers the
matter to fall to the governments concerned—whether they are democratic or
not (Divided West, 101). Walzer’s conception of a “just war” is problematic for
Habermas above all because judgments are not tied to inclusive and impartial
procedures for producing and applying norms—and it is only by this means
that reciprocal exchanges of position and due consideration of mutual inter-
ests can occur (see chapters 51 and 53 in this volume). Because the criteria for
determining “just wars” are essentially ethical and political in nature, their
use demands prudence and a sense of justice on the part of nation-states
(Divided West, 104).
Here, Habermas’s positions on the wars in Iraq and Kosovo conflict on a
few points. The engagement in Kosovo proved controversial especially in Ger-
many because the United Nations had issued no explicit mandate and because
the Bundeswehr was deployed in a combat mission (in the narrow sense) for
the first time (e.g., Lutz 2000). Some advocates conceded that it was illegal—
because there was no mandate—yet defended its moral legitimacy because it
584 Concepts
References
Habermas, Jürgen. 1991. “Wider die Logik des Krieges.” Die Zeit (February 15, 1991).
——. 1999. “Bestiality and Humanity: A War on the Border Between Legality and Moral-
ity.” Constellations 6, no. 3: 263–272.
Habermas, Jürgen, and Jacques Derrida. 2003. Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues
with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. Interview by Giovanna Borradori. Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press.
Lutz, Dieter S., ed. 2000. Der Kosovo-Krieg: Rechtliche und rechtsethische Aspekte. Baden-
Baden: Nomos.
Mayer, Peter. 1999. “War der Krieg der NATO gegen Jugoslawien moralisch gerechtfer-
tigt?” Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 6, no. 2: 287–321.
Shaw, Martin. 2005. The New Western Way of War. London: Polity.
Walzer, Michael. 2004. “The Politics of Rescue.” In Arguing About War, 67–84. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press.
64
LEGALIT Y, LEGITIMACY, AND
LEGITIMATION
RAINER NICKEL
H
abermas first developed a positive conception of legitimacy at
the beginning of the 1970s, when he took up Max Weber’s sociol-
ogy of government (Herrschaftssoziologie) and the Marxist cri-
tique of capitalism (Legitimation; Rekonstruktion). Legitimacy, as he has
defined it, means the “worthiness of recognition [Anerkennungswürdigkeit] of
a political order” (Rekonstruktion, 271). Legitimation Crisis, which dates from
this period, focuses on the production of meaning (and crises of meaning)
within the capitalist system—when the administration can shoulder economic
problems but can no longer account for its operations (Legitimation, 98).
Weber’s (1978) analysis of the legitimacy of rational rule offers no way out of
such a dilemma. In this perspective, legitimacy is an empirical phenomenon.
As Habermas observes, Weber requires that only two conditions be fulfilled:
“(a) the normative order must be established positively; and (b) those legally
associated must believe in its legality, that is, in the formally correct procedure
for the creation and application of laws” (Legitimation, 98). Habermas coun-
ters this conception with a notion that starts from the “truth-dependency of
belief in legitimacy.” This means that the procedure of creating and applying
laws “does not suffice” to generate legitimacy and that “grounds for the legiti-
mating force of . . . formal procedure must be given” (98).
Modern parliamentarianism and forms of political thinking oriented on
popular sovereignty consider a positive conception of legitimacy backward
(rückwärtsgewandt) because it permits legitimacy to oppose—and, indeed,
even to trump—parliamentary legality in the name of a “higher” authority.
Carl Schmitt—with his unrivalled eye for the obsolete—made this very point
in Constitutional Theory (1928) by pitting legality (that is, the positivity of law)
against legitimacy: legality, he argued, is only legitimate because it expresses a
“political existence” that itself admits no justification. Political unity, as a
given fact, “requires no justification via an ethical or juristic norm. Instead, it
makes sense in terms of political existence. A norm would not at all be in a
position to justify anything here” (Schmitt 2008, 136).
Legality, Legitimacy, and Legitimation 587
as it is with the overly empiricist denial of any legitimacy that reaches beyond
the contingencies of legislative decisions.
(Habermas 1994, 664)
References
Brunkhorst, Hauke. 2005. Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community.
Trans. Jeffrey Flynn. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Dyzenhaus, David. 1997. Legality and Legitimacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1988. “Law and Morality.” In The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, ed.
Sterling McMurrin, 8:217–250. Salt Lake City: Utah University Press.
——. 1994. Faktizität und Geltung: Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des
demokratischen Rechtsstaats. 4th ed. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Lübbe-Wolff, Gertrude. 2009. “Die Internationalisierung der Politik und die Machtver-
luste der Parlamente.” In Soziale Welt. Sonderheft: Demokratie in der Weltgesellschaft,
ed. Hauke Brunkhorst, 127–142. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1975. Legitimation durch Verfahren. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Nickel, Rainer. 2009. “Verwaltungsrecht und Rechtsverwaltung in der Weltgesellschaft.”
In Soziale Welt. Sonderheft: Demokratie in der Weltgesellschaft, ed. Hauke Brunkhorst,
143–158. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Schmitt, Carl. 2008. Constitutional Theory. Trans. Jeffrey Seitzer. Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press.
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther
Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: University of California Press.
65
MASS CULTURE AND CULTURAL
CRITICISM
GERTRUD KOCH
H
abermas’s understanding of “mass culture” is indebted to
Adorno. Accordingly, it does not refer to culture produced by the
masses but rather to culture that is produced on a massive scale.
Liberal, bourgeois culture is made by and for the bourgeoisie, yet this does not
mean that consumers and producers are identical—rather, producers and con-
sumers build a public sphere in a shared social stratum. Such a transformation
of internal topology does not occur under the conditions of mass democracy,
however. Mass culture addresses the masses only as consumers—and in the
atomized form of private property, at that—without affording any liberal grat-
ifications. Its anonymous mode of production makes mass culture into a
medium that largely serves private property. In mass democracy, interests are
administered by the welfare state, and they are no longer negotiated in the
public sphere by parties possessed of equal property rights.
Therefore, Habermas argues, the idealized and ideologically restricted
model provided by bourgeois culture loses its foundation in mass democracy
and the modern welfare state. A “structural transformation of the public
sphere” occurs, which amounts to a kind of “refeudalization.” Organizations
pursue their interests behind closed doors and, at the same time, “must assure
themselves at least of plebiscitary assent in the population by developing dis-
plays of public relations [demonstrative Publizität]” (“Öffentlichkeit. Ein
Lexikonartikel,” 1964, reprinted in Kultur und Kritik, 68; this volume col-
lects essays situated between Structural Transformation and Communicative
Action).
The masses, then, neither transform into an active class—as Marx thought
should occur—nor are they sovereign. They dissolve, so to speak, into an array
of groups administered from outside (e.g., employees and taxpayers), whose
consensus on individual administrative actions is sought only by plebiscite.
Mass culture attests, in a certain measure, to the empty space that gapes
between the participatory public spheres of earlier times and the public
spheres not yet organized by mass democracy in the welfare state. This is the
same gap into which the concept of “the masses” has itself disappeared.
Mass Culture and Cultural Criticism 591
However, the dissolution of the masses into classes—or, as the case may be,
into forms of organization provided by the welfare state—cannot lessen the
impression that the term “mass” vanishes in a mounting tautology (tautologisch
zum Verschwinden gebracht wird). The blank space is immediately surpassed
inasmuch as the masses—in this (obsolete) model—can only be conceived as a
kind of formless matter that requires shaping either into a class or along institu-
tional lines. In both cases, the masses dissolve into the new forms. At the same
time, the semantic surplus of the concept remains evident in composite notions
such as “mass media,” “mass democracy,” “mass communication,” and so on.
Habermas’s concept of the political public sphere addresses this problem.
He follows, in a first step, the model of the aesthetically appreciative public
(kunsträsonierendes Publikum)—that is, the matter is conceived in terms of
internal participation. When discussing the development of modern society—
in which social spheres close themselves off to the others—Habermas invokes
Adorno once more: art achieves autonomy at the cost of growing more and
more hermetic and detached (Ein- und Abkapselung); this makes critical
distance from society possible in the first place. Mass culture, on the other
hand, succumbs to economic and stabilizing modes of affirmation that secure
domination. In The Theory of Communicative Action (which adopts a histori-
cal perspective), Habermas emphasizes the importance of a “differentiated
assessment of the complex and contradictory character both of forms of inte-
gration in postliberal societies and of family socialization and mass culture”
(2:381), in light of Walter Benjamin’s theoretical observations—and, moreover,
with reference to views of mass communication derived from systems theory
and sociology.
In keeping with the division between “system” and “lifeworld,” Habermas
also distinguishes different functions performed by the mass media. He does
not classify the latter as “steering media” but views them, instead, as “general-
ized forms of communication” (Communicative Action, 2:390). In the shift
from “mass culture” to “mass media,” a far-reaching semantic transformation
takes place. The notion of “culture industry” that Adorno and Horkheimer
introduced in Dialectic of Enlightenment—which seems to have formed the
basis of Habermas’s initial understanding of “mass culture”—is rearranged, by
way of a kind of theoretical “castling” (which represents a general paradigm
shift) from the realm of system to that of communication. In this new frame-
work, the sender/receiver model centered on domination (Herrschaft) gives
way to a flexible and dynamically open net structure; conceived along these
lines, the specific contexts of the lifeworld (e.g., regional particularities) prove
irreducible, yet—at the same time—their horizon constitutes a kind of public
sphere that expands perspectives in both spatial and temporal terms.
A rigid, predetermined order no longer holds, then. Although the direction
of “streams of communication” can be hierarchical and controlling, they offer
592 Concepts
On occasion, he has discussed works of art, but he has not devoted significant
attention to phenomena of mass culture. Early on—if in isolation—Habermas
mentioned films in journalistic pieces. His more recent articles, in contrast,
focus mainly on the political consequences that arise from the progressive
commodification and monopolization of both the public media and indepen-
dent newspapers.
66
POSTMETAPHYSICAL THINKING
GEORG LOHMANN
F
or Habermas, “postmetaphysical thinking” (nachmetaphysisches
Denken) refers to the only ways of pursuing philosophy still pos-
sible in today’s world. He employs the term in two senses: first, in a
critical/negative capacity that is meant to counter the “return to metaphysics”
he diagnoses; and second, as a positive designation for the philosophical
thinking that can only occur after—and according to (nach)—metaphysics,
i.e., thinking that does not abandon the claim to comprehensive rationality. In
historical terms, postmetaphysical thinking belongs to the tradition of the
Young Hegelians (Discourse, 53ff.; Postmetaphysical, 124). As a critical coun-
terconcept opposed to metaphysics (which extends, in Habermas’s eyes, from
Plato to Hegel), it turns against three aspects of the metaphysical tradition:
“the theme of unity within the philosophy of origins,” “the equation of being
with thought,” and “the redemptive significance of the contemplative life”; in
brief, it opposes “identity thinking, the doctrine of ideas, and the strong con-
cept of theory” (Postmetaphysical, 29). Habermas uses the term to describe
numerous philosophical currents after Hegel. As the name for his own
approach and style, postmetaphysical thinking defends—as a “stand-in”—the
universal conception of rationality given in the communicative structures of
the lifeworld (Postmetaphysical, 14).
Habermas employed the term for the first time in his debate with Dieter
Henrich (Habermas 1985; 1988, 267ff.). The latter, after taking a position in
Munich (1981), sought “to renew the claim of metaphysics.” Sketching “reha-
bilitation attempts” of metaphysics and currents in twentieth-century phi-
losophy that oppose them, Habermas describes Henrich’s interpretations
of the “purposeful life” (bewusstes Leben) as the effort, founded in the the-
ory of consciousness, to lend philosophy the power of metaphysics once
more by “combining” self-description of the ideal life and a “conclusive”
(abschließende) perspective that counters the naturalism of the sciences
(Henrich 1982, 1987).
The critical encounter with Henrich’s modern project of metaphysics
prompted Habermas to articulate the “themes of postmetaphysical thinking”
(Postmetaphysical, 28–56). Postmetaphysical thinking, he argues, responds to
Postmetaphysical Thinking 595
the convulsions that have been shaking metaphysics since the seventeenth
century—upheavals that, “in the final analysis,” are “socially conditioned”
(33). This occurs along new lines: through “procedural rationality,” “situating
reason,” the “linguistic turn,” and the “deflation . . . of extraordinary events”
(33). Needless to say, these general features of postmetaphysical thinking are
not unproblematic; accordingly, Habermas seeks to defend his understanding
of postmetaphysical thinking—which he elaborates from the perspective of
communicative action—against competing projects.
In contrast to metaphysics—which affirms the unity of thinking and the
world—natural science and formalist approaches to morality and law focus on
the “rationality . . . of [the] procedures” through which knowledge is gained,
the distinction (Ausdifferenzierung) between examining nature and the mind
(Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften), and the fallibilism of scientific theories
(36ff.). For all that, Habermas argues, philosophy should neither assimilate
itself to individual sciences nor stand in opposition to them. Habermas con-
siders that reference to the communicative practice of everyday life makes
postmetaphysical thinking (as he conceives it) possible. Through procedures of
rationally reconstructing the intuitive knowledge of “competently speaking,
acting, and judging subjects,” philosophy can retain its universalistic line of
questioning (Fragestellung)—which concerns “the Whole”—while, at the same
time, not laying claim “to a method, an object realm, or even just a style of
intuition” (38). Conceived this way, postmetaphysical thinking—by perform-
ing the roles of stand-in and interpreter—remains critical both of the “com-
mon sense” of everyday practice and of immoderate (ausgreifend) claims
advanced by individual sciences.
The postmetaphysical ambition to situate reason motivated the Young
Hegelians’ critique of idealism (Discourse, 53ff.). According to Habermas,
however, the matter was pursued to better effect by the projects of histori-
cism, Lebensphilosophie, and phenomenology, which detranscendentalized
the basic concepts of Kantian transcendental philosophy (Postmetaphysical,
10ff.). It is only through the paradigm shift from the philosophy of con-
sciousness to the philosophy of language (Habermas 2001), he maintains,
that reason may now properly be situated in the communicative praxis of a
shared lifeworld.
At the same time, Habermas contends, the linguistic turn—which has
enabled the philosophy of language to critique the philosophy of conscious-
ness in any number of ways—requires modification along the lines of formal
pragmatism. Only by doing so can one address the problem of individuality,
which otherwise defies the philosophy of language. The “analysis of the uni-
versal presuppositions that must be fulfilled if participants in communication
are to be able to come to an understanding with each other about something
596 Concepts
in the world” (Postmetaphysical, 46; cf. Truth) makes it clear that “all under-
standing is . . . always simultaneously non-understanding” (Wilhelm von
Humboldt). The formal-pragmatic conditions for linguistic understanding
that he reconstructs are supposed to account for both “individuation” and
“socialization” (Postmetaphysical, 149ff.).
The fourth element of postmetaphysical thinking may be understood as a
consequence of the preceding: a deflation of the everyday occurs when one
refuses the “classical precedence of theory” over practice (Truth, 280ff.) and, in
so doing, situates philosophy next to—and not above—the sciences. “Post-
metaphysical thinking” that has an index in lifeworld praxis is meant to avert
two dangers. First, it protects the critique of Western logocentrism from suc-
cumbing to defeatist skepticism about the power of reason. In addition, it
guards against the danger of presuming to assign value to a given form of liv-
ing. Because postmetaphysical philosophy “surrenders its extraordinary sta-
tus” (Postmetaphysical, 51), it is able to provide critical mediation between the
lifeworld and the sciences. At the same time, however, “it continues to coexist
with religious practice” (51). In this respect, philosophy’s relationship with
religion entails the obligation of performing “redemptive criticism” (Benja-
min). As Habermas puts it, this is to occur by “translating” religious contents
“into justifying discourses” (51).
Postmetaphysical thinking has come to play an especially prominent
role in the exchanges with religion that Habermas has pursued of late (Nat-
uralism; Reder and Schmidt 2008; cf. Forum für Philosophie 1999). Because
postmetaphysical philosophy no longer attaches transcendental meaning to
nature and history, it attempts to compensate for the motivational deficits
in practical solidarity that arise. This is to occur, as mentioned, through the
redemptive “translation” of religious notions (Reder and Schmidt 2008,
30–31). For all that, Habermas has also affirmed that philosophy possesses
sufficient resources of its own: against the dangers of postmodern defeat-
ism and naturalism, which place too much stock in science, he puts his trust
in calm (unaufgeregt) postmetaphysical reason (Discourse; Naturalism).
These features of “postmetaphysical thinking” have received a fair amount
of criticism—first, from Henrich himself (Henrich 1987) but also from others
who, like him, doubt that the “non-descriptor” (Nicht-Titel) (Henrich) of
“metaphysics” need be understood as Habermas proposes. Moreover, it has
been argued, Habermas must make his own the very metaphysical assump-
tions he claims to do without (Langthaler 1997, Henrich 2007). However this
may be, the self-critical effort to focus philosophy on the reconstruction of the
reasonable potentials within a preexisting lifeworld, on the one hand, and to
retain the universalistic claims of reason, on the other, represents a leitmotif of
Habermas’s thinking in general—an undertaking that “proves effective by
Postmetaphysical Thinking 597
seeking the middle ground between bare existence and what is merely an
ideal” (Theunissen 1981, 52).
References
Forum für Philosophie Bad Homburg, ed. 1999. Nachmetaphysisches Denken und Religion.
Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1985. “Rückkehr zur Metaphysik – Eine Tendenz in der deutschen Phi-
losophie?” Merkur 39, no. 439–440: 898–905.
——. 1988. Nachmetaphysisches Denken: Philosophische Aufsätze. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 2001. Kommunikatives Handeln und detranszendentalisierte Vernunft. Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp.
Henrich, Daniel C. 2007. “Jürgen Habermas: Philosoph ohne metaphysische Rückende-
ckung?” Zeitschrift für Philosophie 55, no. 3: 389–402.
Henrich, Dieter. 1982. Fluchtlinien. Frankfurt.
——. 1987. “Was ist Metaphysik—was Moderne?” In Konzepte: Essays zur Philosophie der
Zeit, 11–43. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Langthaler, Rudolf. 1997. Nachmetaphysisches Denken? Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Reder, Michael, and Josef Schmidt, eds. 2008. “Ein Bewusstsein von dem, was fehlt”: Eine
Diskussion mit Jürgen Habermas. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Theunissen, Michael. 1981. Kritische Theorie der Gesellschaft: Zwei Studien. Berlin: de
Gruyter.
67
POWER
MAT TIAS ISER
T
he concept of power is of central importance for a critical theory
of society. In academic discussions, however, “power” refers to
different things. A distinction is often made between theories
that focus on “power over” persons or groups and those that speak of “power
to” do or achieve something. Habermas’s theory of society seeks both to clarify
the connections between the most important—and traditionally competing—
conceptions of power and to clarify their normative hierarchy. To this end,
he distinguishes between communicative, administrative, and social power.
With regard to the legitimacy of political processes, the task involves, above
all, determining how the different forms of power influence one another.
Habermas’s main concern is to counter the “illegitimate” “independence of
social and administrative power vis-à-vis democratically generated communi-
cative power” (Facts, 358). Given this effort of synthesis, one must ask, how-
ever, whether Habermas has presented a unified theory of power at all or if he
has not, instead, subsumed entirely different phenomena under a single term.
How, then, do his three conceptions of power relate to one another?
Along the lines articulated by Hannah Arendt, albeit with significant modifi-
cations, Habermas understands “communicative power” as the motivating force
of forceless consensus formation (Profiles, 171ff.; Facts, 147). Arendt stresses col-
lective action in the sense of an increased “power to”; at the same time, she
understands public speech to be an act that reveals one’s self to other subjects.
Habermas, in contrast, emphasizes the cognitive aspect of communicative power
(see also Canovan 1983). Communicative power does not merely concern the fac-
tual ability to act of a cooperating group (whose legitimacy is already guaranteed
by having originated in a free association). Rather, Habermas observes the
(weakly motivating) “power” afforded by discursive insight (Facts, 113).
In keeping with the basic thought that underlies his theory of discourse as
a whole, Habermas considers communicative power to represent the source of
all legitimacy: all voices (and therefore all arguments) should be able to be
heard. For this reason, Habermas—unlike Arendt—is not confident that com-
municative power will always occur spontaneously. Accordingly, he demands
a twofold institutional guarantee. First, the public sphere based in civil society
requires that certain basic rights obtain (and, moreover, that a vital political
culture exist, to function as a sensorium for problem situations in everyday
Power 599
able to assert itself wherever the law—in the course of its (supposed) imple-
mentation or interpretation—is taken up and thereby “made.”
Third, Habermas holds that “social” power involves the capacity to assert
one’s own interests successfully, even against the will of other parties—
whether it is persons or groups that do so (Facts, 357). This corresponds to the
way Max Weber defines power. From the latter, however, Habermas also
inherits a certain conceptual vagueness. The paradigmatic case of (illegiti-
mate) “social power” concerns threats or promises made by a superior actor
who seeks to realize empirical objectives. The matter is not as clear when
influence derives from the reputation or prestige of a person. Is this a matter
of social power at all? On the one hand, orientation on the behavior of the sta-
tus bearer promises empirical advantages—for example, displays of favor. On
the other hand, in the “advance” of trust with which the utterances of the
influential party are met, linguistic communication occurs, as well. Conse-
quently, the matter involves a special form of “communicative power” insofar
as status bearers are held to possess superior understanding (Communicative
Action, 2:177). When (social) prestige and influence are at issue, both goal-
oriented action and action oriented toward understanding are largely fused—
a fact that is evident, paradigmatically, in the premodern institutions of
chiefdom and priesthood (Facts, 138ff.).
With the rationalization of the lifeworld, Habermas argues, empirical
threat potentials and rationally recognizable reputations become more and
more distinct from each other (Communicative Action, 2:275). At the same
time, this analytical distinction comes to represent the border between ille-
gitimate and legitimate social power. According to Habermas’s theory of
democracy, the danger that social power will illegitimately influence the polit-
ical process manifests itself especially in pressure groups, which informally
influence the members of parliament and its committees, governmental bureau-
cracies, and/or the courts behind closed doors through promises or threats.
Hereby, they circumvent the “circulation of power” that is regulated by the
rule of law (Facts, 354ff.). For all that, however, not every form of social power
is illegitimate, because it may also draw on support through rationally moti-
vated acceptance—that is, validity claims implicitly raised by the “socially
powerful” may (sometimes) be redeemed in discourse.
All the same, relationships that are grounded in communication grow rigid
if power hierarchies render it difficult to question political regulations. There-
fore, already in Knowledge and Human Interests, Habermas observes that
“power of one class over another” (Knowledge, 48) represents social power. His
early notion of an epistemological interest in emancipation is directed toward
eliminating such unnecessary domination.
Because his commentators often pay insufficient attention to this internal
differentiation, Habermas has, time and again, been faulted for losing sight of
phenomena of power within the lifeworld—which, it is claimed, he conceives
Power 601
in terms that are excessively harmonistic (e.g., Honneth 1993, 288, 329).
According to this criticism, the colonization thesis considers power only inas-
much as it penetrates the lifeworld from the outside—Habermas, the argument
goes, views the lifeworld only in terms of communicative action and holds it to
be distinguished by an unqualified capacity and willingness for understand-
ing. That fails to consider, however, that administrative power represents only
one form of power. Although Habermas places it in the foreground of his
diagnosis of the present, his conception of power is, in fact, more comprehen-
sive. Otherwise, “all premodern societies would have to be described as power-
free” (Habermas 1991, 246).
All the same, it remains unclear, on the whole, what connects the three
forms of power over and above the set of relations discussed so far. For Haber-
mas’s view—much more than for Arendt’s—the question arises why, in the
case of communicative power, one should speak of “power” at all—and not,
instead, of “collective insight” or “political autonomy.” Here, perhaps, power
should be understood above all as “power to”—as an increase of the collective
capacity for action. What is more, it is not clear how one should conceive of
the relationship between social and communicative power in the modern—
and supposedly rationalized—lifeworld. Ultimately, communicative power is
supposed to enable actors to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate
forms of social and administrative power. In general, the latter prove legiti-
mate when they promote the sources and structures of communicative power,
as well as the objectives that it articulates, and they are illegitimate when they
restrict and distort them (as happens only too frequently in social reality
[Facts, 174ff.]). Habermas’s critique of power takes aim at precisely such cases.
Thus, if something is depicted as “power,” this does not necessarily amount to
a contestation of its legitimacy (see, also, Strecker 2009).
References
R
obert Brandom (2002) describes pragmatism “as a movement
centered on the primacy of the practical” (40). This primacy of
practice over theory is manifested in Habermas’s writings in two
ways. First, it emerges in his lifelong insistence on the primacy of “know how”
(what he often calls intuitive knowledge) over “know that.” This is a key Hei-
deggerian distinction, which Habermas uses in his theoretical analyses, in his
formal pragmatics, and in developing his social theory. Second, it is mani-
fested in Habermas’s rejection of what he calls the “spectator model” of knowl-
edge and his insistence that action has “cognitive” significance—in other
words, that our way of acting is also our way of knowing the world. This is also
derived from Heidegger’s notion of “being in the world.”
Habermas has always been a pragmatist in the senses mentioned above, but
after Knowledge and Human Interests he did not pay much attention to issues
in theoretical philosophy; he wanted to amend this situation with his Truth
and Justification. In Truth, Habermas went back to revive the “weak natural-
ism” he espoused in Knowledge, and in so doing he aimed to achieve two
things. First, he wished to relate his theoretical enterprise both to his formal
pragmatics and to his theory of communicative action. Second, he wanted to
overcome certain impasses and aporias that his theories of communicative
action and social evolution face. His renewed emphasis on pragmatic themes
is of crucial importance to both these endeavors.
In Knowledge, Habermas tried to marry Kantian transcendentalism with
naturalism (in the broad sense of the term) by maintaining a distinction
between “subjective/objective nature” and “nature in itself.” This, according to
Habermas and his critics, led to an aporia similar to the one that Kant faced
when making a distinction between “phenomenon” and “noumenon.” The
aporia is this: in order to maintain the distinction between “subjective/objec-
tive nature” and “nature in itself,” it appears necessary to have a “glimpse
behind the stage set by the human mind” (Truth, 22). But to do this would be
to violate the basic assumption of postmetaphysics, which is something that
Habermas wanted to avoid at any cost. In Truth, however, Habermas aims to
show that the aforementioned aporia is not so much a result of attempting to
marry a transcendental approach to naturalism but rather the result of a
Pragmatic Turn 603
apparatus has developed under the constraints of reality, which has been
shown to be a reality that resists us and is beyond the whims and caprice of
our individual or communal desires, then we must take the continued viability
of our conceptual repertoire as proof of their objectivity. This pulls the rug out
from under the feet of any contextualism. However, this doesn’t entail a return
to conceptual realism, as the constraint on our conceptual apparatus is an
indirect one, and there is a certain distance between the constraints of reality
and the workings of our language and our conceptual apparatus (Habermas
calls it “half transcendence”). In this way, in Habermas’s later theoretical phi-
losophy, pragmatism plays a crucial role in combining transcendentalism and
naturalism, on the one hand, and realism and transcendentalism, on the other.
Reference
T
he works of Jürgen Habermas have shaped the way the public
sphere (Öffentlichkeit) is understood in Germany and the Anglo-
American world. The Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere (1961) presented the key ideas that later were treated in systematic fash-
ion in Between Facts and Norms (1992), Habermas’s main work of legal and
democratic theory. The “public sphere” forms a space of reasoned communica-
tive interaction—the principal means of arriving at collective understanding
(Selbstverständigung). Under modern conditions, the public sphere of politics
in the democratic community (Gemeinwesen) plays a central role in social
integration. Public debates form the basis for legitimating political decisions.
According to Habermas, such space serves as the normative measure for the
critique of social reality and, at the same time, represents a medium of collec-
tive learning. The methodological correlate of the public sphere is philosophi-
cal analysis that keeps both social and cultural structures (and anomies) in
view simultaneously.
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere seeks to separate the ideal
form of the bourgeois public sphere from the historical context(s) in which
it developed, socially, in Germany, England, and France over the course of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Until this time, the public sphere
expanded in keeping with the politicization of social life—i.e., through the
rise of the press and publishing guilds that struggled against censorship for
freedom of opinion. The foundation for the bourgeois public sphere is the sep-
aration between state and society, i.e., the separation between public and pri-
vate realms. After the bourgeois public sphere achieved its highest state of
development in the late nineteenth century, however, these divisions came to
be neutralized (aufgehoben) pursuant to the transformations introduced by
the welfare state. Accordingly, the bourgeois public sphere began to dissolve.
With the ascent of the culture industry, the “literary public sphere” (Structural
Transformation, 245) declined. Now, the mass media could only produce a
606 Concepts
“virtual” public sphere (Scheinöffentlichkeit), for the public itself fell increas-
ingly mute; like democratic politics, the critical public sphere became impov-
erished (verkümmert), at least in formal terms.
Habermas published The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
during the Adenauer era—when the bourgeois public sphere, as a normative
vision, offered an emancipatory promise for the repoliticization of public life.
The new edition of the book that appeared in 1990, on the other hand, derived
its actuality from the “delayed revolution” (nachholende Revolution) in East-
ern Europe. Only then was the work translated into English; the debates it
occasioned in the social sciences in North America were particularly vigorous.
Habermas’s subsequent publications have taken up the intellectual motifs of
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere time and again in further
discussions of the theory of language and action, in the forms of rationality
associated with it (the “public use of reason”), and in theoretical reflections on
society, politics, and law.
Habermas’s studies of the discursive public sphere have given rise to much
debate on varying understandings of deliberative democracy—especially in
German- and English-speaking countries. Habermas presents his model as
the “third way” between liberal and radically deliberative models. In particu-
lar, the new edition of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere dis-
tances itself from the idea that a potential for social self-organization dwells
within the political public sphere—that is, Habermas rejects the notion that
society as a whole is to be steered via deliberation. What is more, he now
incorporates mass-mediated public space (which displays a great range of
internal complexities/differentiations) in his reflections; only in this way is it
possible to guarantee the adequate inclusion of all citizens. In his theory of
democracy—which is constructed along normative lines—the “political public
sphere” represents the “embodiment [Inbegriff ] of those conditions of com-
munication under which the discursive opinion- and will-formation of a pub-
lic formed by citizens of the state can be constituted” (Habermas 1990, 38).
Between Facts and Norms presents a conception of deliberative politics that
operates “on two tracks.” Here, Habermas distinguishes between the political
system (which is specialized in collectively binding decisions) and autono-
mous public space (which faces no pressures of decision). Thereby, he takes up
Bernhard Peters’s (1993) sociological sluice model, which views political pro-
cesses of communication and decision making in terms of an axis running
between “center” and “periphery.” While the core realm of the political system
Public Sphere 607
Habermas’s reflections on the public sphere and politics have influenced two
new fields of research in a decisive fashion: first, empirical investigations that
verify the specific expectations placed on public deliberation (see, e.g., studies
608 Concepts
by Gerhards, Neidhardt, and Rucht 1998; Daele and Neidhardt 1996); and sec-
ond, works of democratic theory that discuss transnational orders (e.g., the
European Union, global governance). The latter address the question whether
deliberative politics is also a suitable medium for the transferal of the legiti-
mation potential found in nation-states onto international decision-making
processes (see, e.g., the contributions in Niesen and Herborth 2007).
Empirical findings have often given reason for skepticism, but they also
suggest that a world public sphere is beginning to emerge—in the sense of
global civil society. For example, NGOs employ media structures that are
already in place. They make the politics of international bodies (e.g., the World
Trade Organization) more transparent and at the same time establish a feed-
back loop (Rückkoppelung) between government representatives and those
parts of civil society that are already mobilized in nation-states (Nanz and
Steffek 2007). What is missing, however, is a European (or, alternatively,
global) public sphere that would engage in continuous observation of, and
commentary on, decision-making processes; likewise, the inclusion of citizens
in such processes is still in its infancy (Kies and Nanz 2013).
From The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere up to Between
Facts and Norms, Habermas connected his understanding of the public sphere
to the sovereign power of the nation-state. Now, however, it is difficult to
imagine how public opinion can be an effective critical force in a “postna-
tional constellation,” where personal and political interest and “membership”
match up less and less (Fraser 2010, 95). The further course of events will
depend, ultimately, on whether—against the backdrop of world society (im
Horizont einer Weltgesellschaft)—the public spheres constituted by national
media will “open up” and take notice of “foreign” issues and positions in such
a way that transnational communication communities emerge. In the future,
it will not be a matter of building a supranational (European or global) public
sphere but rather of the “transnationalization of public spheres” (Faltering, 88)
that register one another’s contributions to European or global affairs and
translate political standpoints and controversies for domestic publics.
References
Daele, Wolfgang van den, and Friedhelm Neidhardt, eds. 1996. Kommunikation und Ents-
cheidung: Politische Funktionen öffentlicher Meinungsbildung und diskursiver Ver-
fahren. WZB-Jahrbuch. Berlin: Sigma.
Fraser, Nancy. 2010. “Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Effi-
cacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World.” In Scales of Justice: Reimagining
Political Space in a Globalizing World, 76–99. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gerhards, Jürgen. 1997. “Diskursive versus liberale Öffentlichkeit.” Kölner Zeitschrift für
Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 49:1–34.
Public Sphere 609
Gerhards, Jürgen, Friedhelm Neidhardt, and Dieter Rucht, eds. 1998. Zwischen Palaver und
Diskurs: Strukturen öffentlicher Meinungsbildung am Beispiel der deutschen Diskussion
zur Abtreibung. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1990. Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit: Untersuchungen zu einer Kat-
egorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Mit einem Vorwort zur Neuauflage. Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp.
Kies, Raphael, and Patrizia Nanz, eds. 2013. Is Europe Listening to Us? Successes and Fail-
ures of EU Citizen Consultations. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Nanz, Patrizia, and Jens Steffek. 2007. “Zivilgesellschaftliche Partizipation und die
Demokratisierung internationalen Regierens.” In Anarchie der kommunikativen Frei-
heit: Jürgen Habermas und die Theorie der internationalen Politik, ed. Peter Niesen and
Benjamin Herborth, 87–110. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Neidhardt, Friedhelm, ed. 1994. Öffentlichkeit, öffentliche Meinung und soziale Bewegun-
gen (Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Sonderheft 34). Opladen:
Westdeutscher Verlag.
Niesen, Peter, and Benjamin Herborth, eds. 2007. Anarchie der kommunikativen Freiheit:
Jürgen Habermas und die Theorie der internationalen Politik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Peters, Bernhard. 1993. Die Integration moderner Gesellschaften. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
70
RADICAL REFORMISM
HAUKE BRUNKHORST
J
ust as the label “the theory of communicative action” effectively
covers all of Habermas’s work to date, the phrase “radical reform-
ism” stands for the author’s view of political praxis—i.e., the
practical implications of his theoretical reflections. In a lengthy introduction—
written in the winter of 1969—to his first collection of essays, notes (Denk-
schriften), and contributions to debates on university reform and student
protest, Habermas addressed the objectives, theoretical justifications, achieve-
ments, reactions, and origins (which were the same across the globe) of the
first international movement of this kind. The piece ends with Lenin’s famous
question: “What is to be done?”
Ultimately, Habermas (1969) rejects the “categorical pairing of ‘reform’ and
‘revolution’ ” on the grounds that it fails to distinguish adequately between
“alternative strategies for change” (49). Likewise—and in equal measure—he
distances himself, polemically, from revolutionary actionism, on the one hand,
and from mere reformism, on the other. Habermas objects to actionism
because, in his estimation, it disregards the fact that—in countries like the Fed-
eral Republic of Germany, France, and the United States—it opposes a “system
of institutions” that already embodies “past processes of emancipation”
(however imperfectly it may do so). Institutions in place cannot—and must
not—simply be “skipped over” or given up (43). Employing a Marxian vocabu-
lary, Habermas condemns what he calls, by turns, “utopian socialism,” “left-wing
fascism” (146), the “show business of revolutionary actors [Revolutionsdarsteller]”
(50), and “revolution in appearance alone [Scheinrevolution]” (188).
Habermas’s critique of “mere reformism”—which is indebted to Benjamin,
Marcuse, and Adorno—is couched in similar terms. Such efforts, he main-
tains, are all too “sure of themselves as ends in themselves”; that is, “already
today, they promise to maintain the status quo for tomorrow, without even
knowing what it is.” This brand of reformism simply replaces blind and inde-
terminate negation with equally blind and indeterminate affirmation:
Such preemptive affirmation folds back on the beginning [schlägt auf das Begin-
nen zurück] and ruins the necessary radicalism of thorough investigation and
reasonable will. The charge of “social-democratism” [Sozialdemokratismus]—
a term with a storied tradition—aptly names this kind of forward-directed
Radical Reformism 611
References
Benjamin, Walter. 2003. Selected Writings, vol. 4: 1938–1940, ed. Michael W. Jennings and
Howard Eiland. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1969. Protestbewegung und Hochschulreform. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
——. 2007. “Kommunikative Rationalität und grenzüberschreitende Politik.” In Anarchie
der kommunikativen Freiheit: Jürgen Habermas und die Theorie der internationalen
Politik, ed. Peter Niesen and Benjamin Herborth. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Marks, Susan. 2000. The Riddle of All Constitutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Müller, Friedrich. 1997. Wer ist das Volk? Eine Grundfrage der Demokratie: Elemente einer
Verfassungstheorie VI. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
71
RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION
MAT TIAS ISER
T
he method of rational reconstruction, at which Habermas arrived
via two steps—ideology critique and philosophical anthropology—
sets itself three tasks. First—and above all—it seeks to ground the
normative standards for a critical theory of society (section 2). Second, it wants
to demonstrate that social development from premodernity to modernity
manifests an instance of progress—which it also intends to explain, at least in
part (section 3). Finally, it tries to identify current potentials for resistance
(section 4). Although Habermas has not realized this ambitious project in its
entirety, the method of rational reconstruction—because of its combination of
philosophy and the social sciences—continues to display a significant poten-
tial to stimulate discussion (section 5).
the basis of how validity claims are raised, Habermas arrives at the ideal of
freedom from domination as the normative foundation for a critical social
theory.
References
Habermas, Jürgen. 1993. “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere.” In Habermas and the
Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun, 421–461. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Iser, Mattias. 2008. Empörung und Fortschritt. Grundlagen einer kritischen Theorie der
Gesellschaft. Frankfurt: Campus.
McCarthy, Thomas. 1978. The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press.
72
RATIONALIT Y AND
RATIONALIZATION
HAUKE BRUNKHORST
I
n the introductory remarks to his early study Grundrechte als Institu-
tion (Basic rights as an institution), Niklas Luhmann (1965) observed
that the task at hand was to replace the old-European “reason of per-
ception” (Vernehmen) with the “reason of comparison” (Vergleich) (8). In so
doing, he quoted the title of a book by Ernst Cassirer (to which he has referred
on many other occasions, as well). The latter’s Substance and Function (2003
[1910]) addresses precisely this transition from substance, which may be
“heard” or “seen” (vernehmbare Substanz), to function, which admits com-
parison (or, alternatively, represents functional equivalence). Although—to
the best of my knowledge—Habermas has never directly referred to Luh-
mann’s observations here, his response to the project outlined in Grundrechte
als Institution could only be: Right, but the reason of perception must not
only be replaced by the observational reason of comparison; it must also—and
before all else—be replaced by the participatory reason of understanding
(Verständigung).
It would be a mistake to understand Luhmann’s thesis in purely techno-
cratic terms—i.e., as the opening (Erschließung) of the via moderna through a
shrewd combination of observation and steering from without (Außensteue-
rung). Likewise, it would be a mistake to view the reason of understanding
that Habermas endorses as a hermeneutic of dialogical cultures (Gesprächs-
kulturen) that shows no interest in truth. Luhmann and Habermas made the
communicative turn at the same time, even if they did so in very different
ways (Brunkhorst 2006). For Luhmann, social evolution is triggered by an
enormous concentration (Massierung) (Luhmann 1981, 48) of communicative
negations (Negationsleistungen)—i.e., “double contingency” (doppelte Kontin-
genz). These operations promptly condense into complex social systems that,
from this point on, can only be observed and described “through themselves”;
moreover, they encompass the standpoint of the sociological observer, who
occupies a position of the second order. With consequences that are, by defini-
tion, incalculable, social actors’ efforts at agreement (Einigungsversuche)
constitute a form of communicative autonomy that is unprecedented in
620 Concepts
evolutionary terms. This immunizes individual actors and their social life-
world against the unmediated effects (Durchgriff ) of system imperatives
because it makes it possible to transform negation into critique—which means,
in turn, that actors can “take credit for” (sich zurechnen) the consequences of
their communicative action(s), at least counterfactually.
The latter, “secondary” form of social evolution comes about through the
contingent emergence of an indisponible (unverfügbaren) reference to truth (i.e.,
reference to validity), which makes social communications dependent on dis-
cursive justifications (Begründungsleistungen). For Habermas, understanding
an utterance means knowing the reasons that assure its truth—or, in simpler
terms: knowing what makes it true (see chapter 30 in this volume). Reference
to the “giving and taking of reasons” (Brandom) in communicative dispute
(Streit) is essential for Habermas’s theory of communicative rationality. Here
lies the difference between Luhmann and Habermas, whose theories both fol-
low from the communicative turn in sociology. This also marks the point
where Habermas differs from Foucault, whose writings also follow from the
communicative (discursive) turn.
Only because every speech act occurs in reference to universal (and
unavoidable) truth claims is it possible for subjects not just to act “by choice”
(willkürlich) (Luhmann) and “powerfully” (machtvoll) (Foucault) but arbitrarily
and autonomously, as well. On this basis, they distinguish—in the further
course of action—between true and false, between unforced forces of argu-
mentation and the causal consequences of communicative operations, and
between discursive knowledge and discourse power. What is more, Habermas
contends, actors are capable of doing so in the midst of all-pervasive (social)
evolution—i.e., ongoing developments of causality, functions, and power.
Because Luhmann and Foucault contest this very possibility of communica-
tive autonomy (not, nota bene, of subjectivity), they must content themselves
with the reason of comparison. Alas, any reason that could make itself reason-
able is fated to vanish in the realm of old-European “illusion” (Freud).
All the same, Habermas’s project combines with theirs on a point Hegel
(1970) articulated in a famous aphorism: “Reason without Understanding is
nothing, yet Understanding is something without Reason. Understanding
cannot be dispensed with [geschenkt werden]” (551). One need only replace
solitary, reflexive “Reason” with “reason of communication” (Vernunft der
Verständigung) and “Understanding” with reflexive, systemic “reason of com-
parison” (Vernunft des Vergleichs). As it stands with comparison and commu-
nication, so too does it stand with system and lifeworld (see chapter 75 in this
volume): the system cannot be dispensed with (Nassehi 2006).
The title Habermas proposed for his joint publication with Luhmann—
Sozialtechnologie oder Theorie der Gesellschaft? (Habermas and Luhmann
1971)—can now be properly evaluated. Habermas needed to qualify his
Rationality and Rationalization 621
at the same time, however, he avoids endorsing cultural criticism along the
lines of the “Young,” “Old,” or “New” conservatism (see chapter 33 in this
volume).
References
T
he concept of pathology derives from ancient medicine, where it
refers to the doctrine of kinds and causes of illness. According to
Galen, the pathological is what deviates from “the normal course
of nature” (Seidler 1989, 13). Discourse about social pathologies, in turn, stems
from the metaphorical transferring of this medical concept onto societies—
which are treated as if they were organisms that can be sick or healthy. Haber-
mas’s reading of Freud, in Knowledge and Human Interests, is decisive for the
conception of pathology in his works as a whole. For Freud, pathology is based
on the linguistification or verbalization of unconscious processes (Whitebook
1995): (neurotic) symptoms the subject does not understand result when she or
he proves unable (most commonly, in early childhood) to communicate needs
and wishes directly (öffentlich) and, instead, introjects and “privatizes” the lin-
guistic elements that symbolize them. From this point on, repressed impulses
express themselves in the form of behavioral symptoms that remain incom-
prehensible to the subject and give rise to perceptions that she or he suffers
from a “communication disturbance” within her- or himself (Knowledge, 228).
At the same time, such inner communicative alienation does not prevent the
subject from communicating with others; consequently, the “appearance of
intersubjectivity” is unaffected (228). Because normal communication with
others still occurs, the subject deceives her- or himself into not noticing how
idiosyncratic the intentions are that find expression in her or his symptoms
(“slips of the tongue and of the pen, misreading, bungled actions,” etc. [Knowl-
edge, 219]). Only by working with a therapist is it possible to decode them.
Such are the operative elements of Habermas’s conception of pathology.
Pathologies represent internal communication disturbances that do not
impede external communication; for the most part, their significance remains
unavailable (undurchsichtig) to the subject, and they stem from the internal-
ization of external pressure(s). For pathologies to be identified and countered, it
is necessary that a therapist help the subject—on the basis of the symptoms in
evidence—to break through internal communicative blockades.
Überlegungen zur Kommunikationspathologie (Reflections on communica-
tive pathology, 1974) relates these considerations to the theory of communica-
tive validity claims that Habermas developed after Knowledge and Human
624 Concepts
References
Boltanski, Luc, and Ève Chiapello. 2003. Der neue Geist des Kapitalismus. Konstanz: UVK.
Hartmann, Martin, and Axel Honneth. 2006. “Paradoxes of Capitalism.” Constellations 13,
no. 1: 41–58.
Honneth, Axel. 1995. “Moral Consciousness and Class Domination: Some Problems in the
Analysis of Hidden Morality.” In The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social
and Political Philosophy, 205–219. Albany: SUNY Press.
——. 2007. “Pathologies of the Social: Past and Present of Social Philosophy.” In Disrespect:
The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory, 3–48. Cambridge: Polity.
Seidler, Eduard. 1989. “Pathologie.” In Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed.
Joachim Ritter et al., 7:182–185. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Whitebook, Joel. 1995. Perversion and Utopia: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Critical The-
ory. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
74
SOCIET Y
HARTMUT ROSA
S
ociological concepts admit analysis along three lines of question-
ing (Rosa, Strecker, and Kottmann 2007): What is a society? That
is, how and by what means does it constitute itself—what forms
its basis or fundamental unity? (Synthesis). Through what processes and in
what manner does society change? What factors serve as “motors” for transfor-
mation? Are there rules underlying its course of development? (Dynamis). Can
the evolution of societies be steered, controlled—or, at very least, influenced by
social actors? (Praxis).
The conception of society elaborated in Habermas’s philosophical and
sociological thinking—which finds its fullest articulation in The Theory of
Communicative Action—can also be examined in terms of these questions.
Synthesis
With the publication of this book, at the latest, Habermas introduced a funda-
mental change of theoretical orientation with respect to the way society is
conceived—a “paradigm shift” for critical theory and Marxian projects in
general. Marx and the so-called first generation of critical theorists (that is,
Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse) considered social relations of production
and/or relations of exchange to constitute the basis of society and to determine
its form. According to this perspective, the origin and form of society ulti-
mately derive from the collective transformation (Bearbeitung) of raw (stoff-
lich) nature. In keeping with the development of forces of production, the
shape of society changes, as well (Dynamis).
Habermas’s early works already critique, by implication, the one-sided
reduction of society to purely economic matters. The criticism becomes
explicit in The Theory of Communicative Action, where Habermas replaces
economic factors with relations of communication—or, as the case may be,
with relations of understanding (Verständigungsverhältnisse). In this concep-
tion, language, communication, and agreement provide the foundation for all
processes of social formation and reproduction; only on this basis is a sym-
bolically constituted lifeworld, divided into distinct spheres, in place—which
628 Concepts
also represents the precondition for the forms assumed by collective produc-
tion and economic exchange. According to Habermas, it is not production but
(linguistically or symbolically mediated) interaction that forms the basis for
society as a whole. This shift from relations of production to relations of inter-
action has inspired other important representatives of critical theory—e.g.,
Habermas’s student Axel Honneth (1996).
For Habermas, society consists first—and foremost—of the “fabric of every-
day communicative practice,” which constitutes and reproduces both shared
interpretations and a divided social reality: the lifeworld.
Dynamis
is, they can be openly questioned by anyone and are subject to communicative
justification). On this basis, Habermas discerns the unfolding of communica-
tive reason.
Modernization, then, does not just signify increasing instrumental or
means-end reason. It also means that communicative rationalization expands
in equal measure: the structures of the lifeworld may now be interrogated and
negotiated with respect to the normative, evaluative, and factual validity
claims they raise (even if, for the most part, such claims are implicit). According
to the large-scale project outlined in The Theory of Communicative Action, the
basis for this process of transformation ultimately lies within the immanent
logic of language itself. Language—or, more precisely, speech acts (i.e., the
communicative use of language)—automatically aims for communication
(Verständigung)—or, as the case may be, for clarifying the validity claims
operative in all utterances in order to achieve consensus.
Because the normative, epistemic, and expressive structures of the life-
world must always be reproduced in communication, they can, as a matter of
principle, always be questioned; the potential need for justification pushes for
change whenever acceptable reasons cannot be formulated. Thereby, Habermas
identifies the logic of language—or, alternatively, of communication (Verständi-
gung) itself—as a historically active, driving principle of transformation. At the
same time, however, he recognizes that this immanent, dynamic power does
not operate at all times and in all social formations: conditions of communica-
tion (Verständigungsverhältnisse) may be so distorted, “frozen,” or ideologi-
cally perverted that the communicative flow of validity claims becomes
impossible (Strecker 2009).
In no way, then, does Habermas postulate a necessary process of historical
evolution. The further course of modernization depends on how both forms
of rationalization—increases in technical-instrumental rationality, on the one
hand, and the elaboration of communicative reason, on the other—relate to
each other as they respectively evolve. If the tendencies of “one-sided,” system-
atically steered, instrumental (or means-end) rationalization become more
pronounced, then the “project of modernity”—which aims for the unfolding
of communicative reason—will be jeopardized (“Modernity”).
Praxis
Because Habermas locates the core dynamic of social evolution in the logic of
communication (Verständigung), he ultimately declares that the “project of
modernity” itself is a matter of society steering itself democratically: where
conditions of communication (Verständigungsverhältnisse) are not dis-
torted by one-sided power distribution and the structures of the lifeworld are
Society 631
References
T
he distinction between system and lifeworld stands at the center
of The Theory of Communicative Action. Society is viewed neither
in strictly systemic terms, nor is it understood exclusively in
terms of the lifeworld. Habermas conceives it “simultaneously as a system and
as a lifeworld” (Communicative Action, 2:120). Social evolution, in turn, is
defined in terms of the differentiation that occurs between these two dimen-
sions (2:152ff.).
Habermas’s model presents the lifeworld “as the horizon within which
communicative actions are ‘always already’ moving” (2:119). In other words, it
is conceived as the “background for communicative action” (Vorstudien, 593)
and represents a complementary concept to that of communicative action
(Communicative Action, 2:119; Vorstudien, 546; for a critique, see Apel 1989).
The lifeworld reproduces itself through communicative action, oriented on inter-
subjective understanding (Facts, 524n18). “Naturally,” this does not mean “that
strategic interactions [cannot] emerge in the lifeworld” (524n18). When this
occurs, however, the lifeworld “offers no shared consensus in advance, because
strategic actors encounter normative contexts, as well as other participants, only
as social facts”—that is, “its action-coordinating force” is “neutralized” (524n18).
Accordingly, the lifeworld can be understood as the symbolic frame of reference
for communicative action, even when its material substrate reproduces itself
along instrumental lines (Vorstudien, 546; Communicative Action, 2:138ff.).
Habermas does not share the culturalistic conception of lifeworld that
goes back to Edmund Husserl (Husserl 1970; Berger and Luckmann 1967;
Schütz and Luckmann 1974, 1989; Luckmann 1981; cf. also Luhmann 1975, 70–73),
which he considers one sided (Communicative Action, 2:139ff.). Moreover, he
considers the model Talcott Parsons (1966) inherits from Émile Durkheim
(1984)—according to which the lifeworld merely assures (normative) societal
integration—to be incomplete (Communicative Action, 2:139). Finally, Habermas
rejects the tradition that follows George Herbert Mead (1967) and views the
lifeworld in terms of the socialization of individuals (Communicative Action,
2:140). Instead, he argues that culture, society, and personality constitute the
structural components of the lifeworld:
System and Lifeworld 633
I use the term culture for the stock of knowledge from which participants in
communication supply themselves with interpretations as they come to an
understanding about something in the world. I use the term society for the
legitimate orders through which participants regulate their memberships in
social groups and thereby secure solidarity. By personality I understand the
competences that make a subject capable of speaking and acting, that put him
in a position to take part in processes of reaching understanding and thereby
to assert his own identity.
(2:138)
References
Apel, Karl-Otto. 1989. “Normative Begründung der ‘Kritischen Theorie’ durch Rekurs auf
lebensweltliche Sittlichkeit? Ein transzendentalpragmatisch orientierter Versuch, mit
Habermas gegen Habermas zu denken.” In Zwischenbetrachtungen im Prozeß der
Aufklärung – Jürgen Habermas zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Axel Honneth et al., 15–65.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. 1967. The Social Construction of Reality. New
York: Doubleday Anchor.
Brunkhorst, Hauke. 2006. Habermas. Leipzig: Reclam.
Durkheim, Émile. 1984. The Division of Labor in Society. Trans. Lewis A. Coser. New York:
Free Press.
Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenol-
ogy: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Trans. David Carr. Evanston, Ill.:
Northwestern University Press.
Luckmann, Thomas. 1981. Life-world and Social Realities. London: Heinemann Educa-
tional.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1975. Macht. Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius.
Mead, George Herbert. 1967. Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behav-
iorist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Parsons, Talcott. 1966. Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives. Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus 636
APPENDIX
CHRONOLOGY
1970/1971 Debate with Niklas Luhmann about systems and social theory
1971–1980 Director, Max Planck Institute for the Study of the Conditions of
Life in the Scientific-Technical World, Starnberg
1974 Hegel Prize of the city of Stuttgart
1975–1982 Honorary professor of philosophy, Goethe University Frankfurt;
the University of Munich had earlier denied Habermas an
honorary professorship
1976 Sigmund Freud Prize
1977–1979 Dispute about terrorism, the state of emergency, and neoconser-
vatism; Briefe zur Verteidigung der Republik (Letters in defense
of the republic), edited by Freimut Duve, Heinrich Böll, and
Klaus Staeck (1977)
1980 Adorno Award in Frankfurt; lecture on “Modernity: An Unfin-
ished Project.” Since then, multifaceted debates on postmod-
ernism, poststructuralism, and young conservatism
1980 Honorary doctorate, New School for Social Research, New York
1980–1981 Director, Max Planck Institute for Social Sciences, Starnberg
Since 1983 Professor of philosophy, Goethe University Frankfurt (emeritus
since 1994)
1985 Geschwister Scholl Prize
1985–1987 Historikerstreit
1987 Sonning Prize, Copenhagen
1989 Honorary doctorate, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Since 1989 Frequently at the New York University School of Law (as partici-
pant in the colloquium organized by Ronald Dworkin and
Thomas Nagel)
Since 1994 Permanent visiting professor, Northwestern University, Evan-
ston, Ill.
1995 Karl Jaspers Prize of the city of Heidelberg
1995 Honorary doctorate, Tel Aviv University
1995/1996 Debates with Ronald Dworkin and John Rawls about law and
democracy
Since 1996 Multiple visits to China
1997 Honorary doctorate, Sorbonne University, Paris (St. Denis-
Vincennes)
Since 1998 Debates about cloning, autonomy, and genetic technology
1999 Theodor Heuss Prize
Since 2000 Professor of global law, New York University School of Law
2001 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
Since 2001 Debate about religion in the public sphere; beginning of the
ongoing debate about the divided West, “core Europe,” and
the United States
Chronology 639
Abbreviations
A Berlin Republic A Berlin Republic: Writings on Germany. Trans. Steven Rendall. Lin-
coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
Absolute Das Absolute und die Geschichte: Von der Zwiespältigkeit in Schellings
Denken. Unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of Bonn, 1954.
Communicative Action The Theory of Communicative Action. 2 vols. Trans. Thomas McCar-
thy. Boston: Beacon, 1984, 1987.
Discourse The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. Trans.
Frederick G. Lawrence. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987.
Divided West The Divided West. Trans. Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge: Polity, 2006.
Evolution Communication and the Evolution of Society. Trans. Thomas McCar-
thy. Boston: Beacon, 1979.
Facts Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of
Law and Democracy. Trans. William Rehg. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1996.
Faltering Europe: The Faltering Project. Trans. Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge:
Polity, 2009.
Future The Future of Human Nature: On the Way to Liberal Eugenics? Trans.
Hella Beister, Max Pensky, and William Rehg. Cambridge: Polity,
2003.
Inclusion The Inclusion of the Other. Trans. Ciaran P. Cronin and Pablo De
Greiff. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998.
Justification Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics. Trans.
Ciaran P. Cronin. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994.
Knowledge Knowledge and Human Interests. Trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston:
Beacon, 1971.
Kultur und Kritik Kultur und Kritik: Verstreute Aufsätze. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973.
642 Bibliography
Legitimation Crisis Legitimation Crisis. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon, 1975.
Logic On the Logic of the Social Sciences. Trans. Shierry Weber Nicholson
and Jerry A. Stark. Cambridge: Polity, 1988.
“Modernity” “Modernity—an Unfinished Project.” In Habermas and the Unfin-
ished Project of Modernity: Critical Essays on The Philosophical
Discourse of Modernity, edited by Maurizio Paserin d’Entrèves
and Seyla Benhabib, 38–58. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997.
Moral Consciousness Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Trans. Christian
Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1990.
Naturalism Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays. Trans. Ciaran
Cronin. Cambridge: Polity, 2008.
New Conservatism The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate.
Trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1991.
Past The Past as Future. Trans. Max Pensky. Cambridge: Polity, 1994.
Postmetaphysical Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays. Trans. William
Mark Hohengarten. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992.
Postnational The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays. Trans. Max Pensky.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001.
Pragmatics On the Pragmatics of Communication. Trans. Maeve Cooke. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988.
Profiles Philosophical-Political Profiles. Trans. Frederick G. Lawrence. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985.
Rational Society Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science, and Politics.
Trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon, 1971.
Rekonstruktion Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus. Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1976.
Society and Politics Jürgen Habermas on Society and Politics: A Reader. Trans. Steven
Seidman. Boston: Beacon, 1989.
Structural The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Trans. Thomas
Transformation Burger and Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1991.
Technik Technik und Wissenschaft als “Ideologie.” Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968.
Terror Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and
Jacques Derrida. Interviews by Giovanna Borradori. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Texte Texte und Kontexte. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991.
Theory and Practice Theory and Practice. Trans. John Viertel. Boston: Beacon, 1973.
Time Time of Transitions. Trans. Ciaran Cronin and Max Pensky.
Cambridge: Polity, 2006.
Truth Truth and Justification. Trans. Barbara Fultner. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 2003.
Unübersichtlichkeit Kleine Politische Schriften V: Die neue Unübersichtlichkeit. Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1985.
Vorstudien Vorstudien und Ergänzungen zur Theorie des kommunikativen
Handelns. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984.
Zeitdiagnosen Zeitdiagnosen: Zwölf Essays 1980–2001. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2003.
Bibliography 643
Primary Texts
Das Absolute und die Geschichte: Von der Zwiespältigkeit in Schellings Denken. Unpub-
lished Ph.D. diss., University of Bonn, 1954.
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois
Society. Trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
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einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1961. Reprinted
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Theory and Practice. Trans. John Viertel. Boston: Beacon, 1973. Parts of this work were orig-
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Philosophical-Political Profiles. Trans. Frederick G. Lawrence. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
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lished as Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973.
Kultur und Kritik. Verstreute Aufsätze. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973.
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Communication and the Evolution of Society. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon,
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struktion des Historischen Materialismus. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976.
Kleine Politische Schriften I–IV. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981.
“Philosophy as Stand-In and Interpreter.” Lecture at the Hegel Congress, 1981. Printed in
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MIT Press, 2001. Originally published as Die postnationale Konstellation: Politische
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Truth and Justification. Trans. Barbara Fultner. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. Orig-
inally published as Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung: Philosophische Aufsätze. Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1999; expanded edition, 2004. The translation is based on the 1999 edition
but omits chapters 2 and 5.
Time of Transitions. Trans. Ciaran Cronin and Max Pensky. Cambridge: Polity, 2006.
Originally published as Zeit der Übergänge: Kleine politische Schriften IX. Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 2001.
Glauben und Wissen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001.
Kommunikatives Handeln und detranszendentalisierte Vernunft. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2001.
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Zeitdiagnosen: Zwölf Essays 1980–2001. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2003.
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Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays. Trans. Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge:
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Europe: The Faltering Project. Trans. Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge: Polity, 2009. Originally
published as Ach, Europa: Kleine Politische Schriften XI. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2008.
Philosophische Texte: Studienausgabe in fünf Bänden. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2009.
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C ON T RIBU T ORS
Andrew Arato is the Dorothy Hart Hirshon Professor in Political and Social Theory at
the New School for Social Research, New York.
Amy Allen is the Liberal Arts Research Professor of Philosophy and Women’s, Gender,
and Sexuality Studies at the Pennsylvania State University.
Amy R. Baehr is associate professor of philosophy at Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y.
Kenneth Baynes is professor of philosophy and political science at Syracuse University,
N.Y.
Seyla Benhabib is the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at
Yale University.
Richard J. Bernstein is the Vera List Professor of Philosophy at the New School for
Social Research, New York.
James Bohman is the Danforth Professor of Philosophy and Professor of International
Studies at Saint Louis University.
Micha Brumlik was professor of education at Goethe University Frankfurt until 2013
and is since then senior advisor at the Berlin-Brandenburg Center for Jewish
Studies, Berlin.
Hauke Brunkhorst is senior professor of sociology at the University of Flensburg.
Jean L. Cohen is the Nell and Herbert Singer Professor of Political Theory and
Contemporary Civilization at Columbia University, New York.
Robin Celikates is associate professor of political and social philosophy at the
University of Amsterdam.
Felmon J. Davis is associate professor of philosophy at Union College, Schenectady, N.Y.
Nicole Deitelhoff is professor of international relations and theories of global orders at
Goethe University Frankfurt.
650 List of Contributors
Klaus Eder is senior professor of sociology and comparative structural analysis at the
Humboldt University of Berlin.
Rainer Forst is professor of political theory and philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt.
Nancy Fraser is the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics at
the New School for Social Research, New York.
Manfred Frank is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Tübingen.
René Gabriëls is a lecturer in philosophy at Maastricht University.
Anna Geis is professor of international security policy and conflict research at Helmut
Schmidt University/University of the German Federal Armed Forces.
Klaus Günther is professor of legal theory, criminal law, and criminal procedure at
Goethe University Frankfurt.
Martin Hartmann is professor of philosophy at the University of Lucerne.
Helge Høibraaten is professor emeritus of philosophy at the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology, Trondheim.
Axel Honneth is senior professor of social philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt
and the Jack C. Weinstein Professor for the Humanities at Columbia University,
New York.
Mattias Iser is associate professor of philosophy at the State University of New York,
Binghamton.
Rahel Jaeggi is professor of practical philosophy, philosophy of law, and social
philosophy at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Christian Joerges is a co-director of the Centre of European Law and Politics at the
University of Bremen and part-time professor of law and society at the Hertie
School of Governance, Berlin.
Dirk Jörke is professor of political science at the Technische Universität Darmstadt.
Matthias Kettner is professor of philosophy at Witten/Herdecke University.
Thomas Khurana is visiting professor of philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt.
Gertrud Koch is professor of film studies at the Freie Universität of Berlin.
Andreas Koller is a research fellow at the Social Science Research Council and at New
York University.
Regina Kreide is professor of political theory and the history of ideas at the University
of Giessen.
Cristina Lafont is professor of philosophy at Northwestern University, Evanston.
Georg Lohmann is emeritus professor of philosophy at the Otto-von-Guericke
University Magdeburg.
Ingeborg Maus is emeritus professor of political theory and the history of ideas at
Goethe University Frankfurt.
Thomas McCarthy is emeritus professor of philosophy at Northwestern University,
Evanston, and was the William H. Orrick Visiting Professor at Yale University.
Christoph Menke is professor of philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt.
Christoph Möllers is professor of public law and philosophy of law at the Humboldt
University of Berlin and permanent fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study,
Berlin.
List of Contributors 651
National Socialism, 4–5, 117; German 592, 598; colonization of the lifeworld
nationalism and, 514; Heidegger and, 494, 601; communicative, 250, 357,
and, 28 426, 598–599, 601; constitutionalization
Negt, Oskar, 246–248 of, 79, 483, 485; divine, 458–459; division
Neumann, Franz L., 38–40, 123 of powers, 78, 147, 350; Foucault’s
Nietzsche, Friedrich: Knowledge and conception of, 114–115, 178–179, 407–408;
Human Interests and, 280; The gender and, 183, 185; intellectuals and,
Philosophical Discourse of Modernity 566, 568–569; money and administrative
and, 398–400, 510; postmetaphysical power, 102, 373–375; Parson’s conception
thinking and, 71 of, 111–112, 592; public spheres and, 563,
567, 607; speech acts and, 404–405;
Offe, Claus, 12, 315, 572 social, 250, 372, 375, 598, 600; violence
and, 357
Parmenides, 450–451 pragmatic turn, 7, 362, 364, 602–604.
Parsons, Talcott: AGIL-scheme and, 308; See also linguistic-pragmatic turn
concept of power and, 111–112, 592; public sphere, 9–10, 245, 605–608;
social evolution and, 108, 621; theory of categorization of, 246–247; colonization
social systems and, 327 of the lifeworld and, 313, 370, 373,
Peirce, Charles Sanders: empirical sciences 375–376, 574, 588; communicative power
and, 276–278, 490; neopragmatism and, and, 426, 598–599; constitutional
188; regulative ideas and, 43, 521 patriotism and, 514; counterfactual
Peters, Bernhard: counterfactual presuppositions and, 523, 535;
presuppositions and, 522; sluice model deliberation and, 530–531; European
and, 606–607 constitutionalization and, 159;
Piaget, Jean: cognitive psychology and, 92, fragmentation of, 567; global, 22, 89,
231; moral development and, 93–95, 318; 149, 250, 476, 484, 516, 588; historians
ontogenetic development and, 549, 577, on, 249; human rights and, 559;
615. See also Kohlberg, Lawrence ideology and, 562; intellectuals and,
Plato: classical metaphysics and, 72; 565, 567; Kant and, 77; late capitalism
philosopher-king and, 569 and, 572; mass culture and, 590–592;
Plessner, Helmuth, 506 modernity and, 510; Negt and Kluge on,
Popper, Karl, 272–273, 490 247–248; radical reformism and,
postmetaphysical thinking, 594–597; 611–612; rationality and, 563; social
Adorno and, 8; Apel and, 43; evolution and, 136; transnational,
counterfactual presuppositions and, 250–252, 428, 516, 567–568, 588; weak vs.
524; fallibilism and, 210; “good life” strong publics, 518–519; women’s
and, 470–473; Kierkegaard and, 140; movement and, 184
lifeworld praxis and, 596; linguistic Putnam, Hilary: epistemological realism
turn and, 595; methodical atheism and, and, 191; ethical values and, 391;
211; neopragmatism and, 194; Kantian dualism and, 349; moral
philosophy of the subject and, 71–72; constructivism and, 192;
practical reason and, 137; procedural Neopragmatism and, 188–189
rationality and, 595; radical skepticism
and, 67; Ratzinger and, 212; religion Quine, Willard V. O., 349
and, 444, 458–459, 596; Schelling and,
219, 229; situating reason and, 596; radical reformism, 610–613
Young Hegelians and, 594 rationality, 619–622; communicative, 34,
power, 598–601; administrative, 250, 357, 66, 69, 288–294, 297–304, 362–364, 383,
598–599; Arendt’s conception of, 113–114, 385, 499, 538, 569–570, 620–621; critical,
Index 659
395; discursive, 102, 289, 303; economic, Sartre, Jean-Paul, 227, 568
160; functionalist, 494; instrumental, Saussure, Ferdinand de, 402
21, 66, 259, 265, 291–293, 321, 376, Scanlon, Thomas M., 138, 163–164
499–501, 570, 630; lifeworld and, 494, Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph:
636; Marcuse and, 262; moral The Ages of the World, 233–237; Jewish
judgments and, 136; practical, 321; philosophy and, 196–198; late
procedural, 73, 352, 467, 595; scientific, philosophy of, 223–229; Marx and,
69, 272; social, 257; system rationality, 237–242; philosophy of nature of,
99, 321, 635; Weber’s concept of, 33; 229–231; philosophy of identity of,
Western, 395, 403 231–232
rationalization, 619–622; communicative, Schelsky, Helmut, 263
630; communicative interaction and, Scheuerman, William E., 149, 250, 485
329; cultural, 395; deliberation and, 528; Schmitt, Carl: Bund concept and, 434;
Dialectic of Enlightenment and, 395; legality and, 39–42, 128, 586; Luhmann
differentiation and, 338–339, 341–343; and, 100–101; National Socialism and,
economic, 260; evolution and, 108; 3–4
ideology and, 562; Kohlberg and, 385; Scholem, Gershom, 198–199
law and, 370; lifeworld and, 262, 298, Searle, John R.: illocutionary speech acts
343, 373, 376, 509, 600, 633–634, 636; and, 58–59, 61–62; performative speech
modernity and, 396–397; one-sided, 28, acts and, 404–405
99–100, 360, 372; pathologies and, 494; Seel, Martin, 140
productive forces and, 329; scientific, Siep, Ludwig, 468–469
317; self-rationalization of reason, 354; Sikkink, Kathryn, 485
social, 260, 629; system and, 262; Singer, Peter, 167
technical, 260–261; Weber’s concept of, Slaughter, Anne-Marie, 483
258, 262–263, 394, 621 social pathology, 623–626; capitalist
rational reconstruction, 284, 524–526, modernization and, 177; colonization of
614–618, 627 the lifeworld and, 18, 256, 266, 322, 373,
Ratzinger, Joseph (Pope Benedict XVI), 375, 494, 574; counterintellectuals and,
212–213, 444 567; desiccation of meaning resources
Rawls, John: basic liberties and, 542; just and, 373; Freud and, 623; instrumental
war and, 583; law of peoples and, 477; reason and, 29, 35; deconstruction and,
moral justice and, 163; “original position” 173; reification and, 256, 258, 265, 269;
and, 387; “overlapping consensus” and, religion and, 210
139; political justice and, 166–167; society, 627–631; archaic, 450; art and, 346;
“reflective equilibrium” and, 138 bourgeois, 41, 246, 562, 614; capitalist,
Reagan, Ronald: neoconservatism and, 509 125, 258, 306, 331; contemporary, 31,
Ricœur, Paul: psychoanalysis and, 67–68 247, 322, 331, 408–409, 555, 557;
Ridder, Helmut: theory of democracy and, cosmopolitan civil, 518; critical theory
125–127 of, 193, 288, 323, 372, 396, 505, 526,
Risse, Thomas, 485 598, 614, 615; democratic, 417, 467,
Ritter, Joachim, 337, 421 523; democratization of, 39, 186;
Rogers, Joel, 131 emancipated, 395; functionally
Rorty, Richard, 349; deconstruction and, differentiated, 38; global civil, 518, 581,
173; neopragmatism and, 188–190; The 608; good, 53, 55, 56; human, 106, 197,
Philosophical Discourse of Modernity 310; individualized, 529; industrial, 261,
and, 401 571; international civil, 478; just, 395, 470;
Rosenzweig, Franz, 197–198 late-capitalist, 11, 313; Marxist theories of,
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 82, 146, 238 256, 309; members and, 377, 379, 380, 492;
660 Index