Author | Jürgen Habermas |
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Original title | Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns |
Translator | Thomas McCarthy |
Country | Germany |
Language | German |
Subject | Communicative action |
Published | 1981 |
Media type | |
Pages | 465 (English edition, vol. 1) 457 (English edition, vol. 2) |
ISBN | 0-8070-1507-5 (English edition, vol. 1) 0-8070-1401-x (English edition, vol. 2) |
Part of a series on the |
Frankfurt School |
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The Theory of Communicative Action (German : Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns) is a two-volume 1981 book by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, in which the author continues his project of finding a way to ground "the social sciences in a theory of language", [1] which had been set out in On the Logic of the Social Sciences (1967). [1] [2] The two volumes are Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Handlungsrationalität und gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung), [3] in which Habermas establishes a concept of communicative rationality, [4] and Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason (Zur Kritik der funktionalistischen Vernunft), [5] in which Habermas creates the two level concept of society and lays out the critical theory for modernity. [4]
After writing The Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas expanded upon the theory of communicative action by using it as the basis of his theory of morality, democracy, and law. [6] The work has inspired many responses by social theorists and philosophers, and in 1998 was listed by the International Sociological Association as the eighth most important sociological book of the 20th century. [7]
The theory of communicative action is a critical project which reconstructs a concept of reason which is not grounded in instrumental or objectivistic terms, but rather in an emancipatory communicative act. [8] This reconstruction proposes "human action and understanding can be fruitfully analysed as having a linguistic structure", [9] and each utterance relies upon the anticipation of freedom from unnecessary domination. [10] These linguistic structures of communication can be used to establish a normative understanding of society. [11] [12] [13] This conception of society is used "to make possible a conceptualization of the social-life context that is tailored to the paradoxes of modernity." [14]
This project started after the critical reception of Habermas's book Knowledge and Human Interests (1968), [15] [16] after which Habermas chose to move away from contextual and historical analysis of social knowledge toward what would become the theory of communicative action. [17] [18] The theory of communicative action understands language as the foundational component of society and is an attempt to update Marxism by "drawing on Systems theory (Luhmann), developmental psychology (Piaget, Kohlberg), and social theory (Weber, Durkheim, Parsons, Mead, etc.)". [9]
Based on lectures initially developed in On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction Habermas was able to expand his theory to a large understanding of society.
Thomas A. McCarthy states that
The Theory of Communicative Action has three interrelated concerns: (1) to develop a concept of rationality that is no longer tied to, and limited by, the subjectivistic and individualistic premises of modern philosophy and social theory; (2) to construct a two-level concept of society that integrates the lifeworld and systems paradigms; and, finally, (3) to sketch out, against this background, a critical theory of modernity which analyzes and accounts for its pathologies in a way that suggests a redirection rather than an abandonment of the project of enlightenment. [4]
The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1 sets out "to develop a concept of rationality that is no longer tied to, and limited by, the subjectivistic and individualistic premises of modern philosophy and social theory." [4] With this failure of the search for ultimate foundations by "first philosophy" or "the philosophy of consciousness", an empirically tested theory of rationality must be a pragmatic theory based on science and social science. This implies that any universalist claims can only be validated by testing against counterexamples in historical (and geographical) contexts – not by using transcendental ontological assumptions. This leads him to look for the basis of a new theory of communicative action in the tradition of sociology. He starts by rereading Max Weber's description of rationality and arguing it has a limited view of human action. Habermas argues that Weber's basic theoretical assumptions with regard to social action prejudiced his analysis in the direction of purposive rationality, which purportedly arises from the conditions of commodity production.[ citation needed ] Taking the definition of action as human behaviour with intention, or with subjective meaning attached, then Weber's theory of action is based on a solitary acting subject and does not encompass the coordinating actions that are inherent to a social body. [19]
According to Weber, rationalisation (to use this word in the sense it has in sociological theory) creates three spheres of value: the differentiated zones of science, art and law. [20] For him, this fundamental disunity of reason constitutes the danger of modernity. This danger arises not simply from the creation of separate institutional entities but through the specialisation of cognitive, normative, and aesthetic knowledge that in turn permeates and fragments everyday consciousness. This disunity of reason implies that culture moves from a traditional base in a consensual collective endeavour to forms which are rationalised by commodification and led by individuals with interests which are separated from the purposes of the population as a whole.
This 'purposive rational action' is steered by the "media" of the state, which substitute for oral language as the medium of the coordination of social action. An antagonism arises between these two principles of societal integration—language, which is oriented to understanding and collective well being, and "media", which are systems of success-oriented action.
Following Weber, Habermas sees specialisation as the key historical development, which leads to the alienating effects of modernity, which 'permeate and fragment everyday consciousness'.
Habermas points out that the "sociopsychological costs" of this limited version of rationality are ultimately borne by individuals, which is what György Lukács had in mind when he developed Marx's concept of reification in his History and Class Consciousness (1923). They surface as widespread neurotic illnesses, addictions, psychosomatic disorders, and behavioural and emotional difficulties; or they find more conscious expression in criminal actions, protest groups and religious cults. [21] Lukács thought that reification, although it runs deep, is constrained by the potential of rational argument to be self-reflexive and transcend its occupational use by oppressive agencies.[ citation needed ] Habermas agrees with this optimistic analysis, in contrast to Adorno and Horkheimer, and thinks that freedom and ideals of reconciliation are ingrained in the mechanisms of the linguistically mediated sociation of humanity.
Habermas finds in the work of George Herbert Mead and Émile Durkheim concepts which can be used to free Weber's theory of rationalisation from the aporias of the philosophy of consciousness. Mead's most productive concept[ citation needed ] is his theoretical base of communication and Durkheim's[ citation needed ] is his idea of social integration. Mead also stressed the social character of perception: our first encounters are social. [22]
From these bases, Habermas develops his concept of communicative action: communicative action serves to transmit and renew cultural knowledge, in a process of achieving mutual understandings. It then coordinates action towards social integration and solidarity. Finally, communicative action is the process through which people form their identities. [23]
Following Weber again, an increasing complexity arises from the structural and institutional differentiation of the lifeworld, which follows the closed logic of the systemic rationalisation of our communications. There is a transfer of action co-ordination from 'language' over to 'steering media', such as money and power, which bypass consensus-oriented communication with a 'symbolic generalisation of rewards and punishments'. After this process the lifeworld "is no longer needed for the coordination of action". This results in humans ('lifeworld actors') losing a sense of responsibility with a chain of negative social consequences. Lifeworld communications lose their purpose becoming irrelevant for the coordination of central life processes. This has the effect of ripping the heart out of social discourse, allowing complex differentiation to occur but at the cost of social pathologies. [24]
"In the end, systemic mechanisms suppress forms of social integration even in those areas where a consensus dependent co-ordination of action cannot be replaced, that is, where the symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld is at stake. In these areas, the mediatization of the lifeworld assumes the form of colonisation". [25] Habermas argues that Horkheimer and Adorno, like Weber before them, confused system rationality with action rationality. This prevented them from dissecting the effects of the intrusion of steering media into a differentiated lifeworld, and the rationalisation of action orientations that follows. They could then only identify spontaneous communicative actions within areas of apparently 'non-rational' action, art and love on the one hand or the charisma of the leader on the other, as having any value.
According to Habermas, lifeworlds become colonised by steering media when four things happen: [26]
These processes are institutionalised by developing global systems of jurisprudence. He here indicates the limits of an entirely juridified concept of legitimation and practically calls for more anarchistic 'will formation' by autonomous networks and groups.
"Counterinstitutions are intended to dedifferentiate some parts of the formally organised domains of action, remove them from the clutches of the steering media, and return these 'liberated areas' to the action co-ordinating medium of reaching understanding". [27]
After dispensing with Weber's overly negative use of rationalisation, it is possible to look at the Enlightenment ideal of reason in a fresh light. Rationality is redefined as thinking that is ready to submit to criticism and systematic examination as an ongoing process. A broader definition is that rationality is a disposition expressed in behaviour for which good reasons can be given.
Habermas is now ready to make a preliminary definition of the process of communicative rationality: this is communication that is "oriented to achieving, sustaining and reviewing consensus – and indeed a consensus that rests on the intersubjective recognition of criticisable validity claims". [28] With this key definition he shifts the emphasis in our concept of rationality from the individual to the social. This shift is fundamental to The Theory of Communicative Action. It is based on an assumption that language is implicitly social and inherently rational.
Argument of some kind is central to the process of achieving a rational result. Contested validity claims are thematised and attempts are then made to vindicate or criticise them in a systematic and rigorous way. This may seem to favour verbal language, but allowance is also given for 'practical discourses' in which claims to normative rightness are made thematic and pragmatically tested. Non-verbal forms of cultural expression could often fall into this category.
Habermas proposes three integrated conditions from which argumentative speech can produce valid results: "The structure of the ideal speech situation (which means that the discourse is) immunised against repression and inequality in a special way ... The structures of a ritualised competition for the better arguments… The structures that determine the construction of individual arguments and their interrelations". [29]
Granting such principles of rational argumentation, communicative rationality is: [30]
Habermas then discusses three further types of discourse that can be used to achieve valid results in addition to verbal argument: these are the aesthetic, the therapeutic and the explicative. Because these are not followed through in The Theory of Communicative Action the impression is given that these are secondary forms of discourse.
Aesthetic discourses work by mediators arguments bringing us to consider a work or performance which itself demonstrates a value. "A work validated through aesthetic experience can then in turn take the place of an argument and promote the acceptance of precisely those standards according to which it counts as an authentic work." [31]
Habermas considers the mediation of the critic, the curator or the promoter as essential to bring people to the revelatory aesthetic experience. This mediation is often locked into economic interests either directly or through state agency.
When Habermas considers the question of context he refers to culture. "Every process of understanding takes place against the background of a culturally ingrained preunderstanding... The interpretative task consists in incorporating the others interpretation of the situation into one's own... this does not mean that interpretation must lead in every case to a stable and unambiguously differentiated assignment." [32]
Speech acts are embedded in contexts that are also changed by them. The relationship is dynamic and occurs in both directions. To see context as a fixed background or preunderstanding is to push it out of the sphere of communicative action.
Therapeutic discourse is that which serves to clarify systematic self-deception. Such self-deceptions typically arise from developmental experiences, which have left certain rigidities of behaviour or biases of value judgement. These rigidities do not allow flexible responses to present time exigencies. Habermas sees this in terms of psychoanalysis.
A related aspect of this discourse is the adoption of a reflective attitude, which is a basic condition of rational communication. [31]
But the claim to be free from illusions implies a dimension of self-analysis if it is to engage with change. The most intractable illusions are surely embedded within our subconscious.
Explicative discourse focuses on the very means of reaching understanding – the means of (linguistic) expression. Rationality must include a willingness to question the grammar of any system of communication used to forward validity claims. The question of whether visual language can put forward an argument is not broached by Habermas. Although language is broadly defined as any communicative action upon which you can be reflective it is verbal discourse that is prioritised in Habermas' arguments. Verbal language certainly has the prominent place in his model of human action. Oral contexts of communication have been relatively little studied and the distinction between oral and literary forms is not made in The Theory of Communicative Action.
As the system colonises the lifeworld most enterprises are not driven by the motives of their members. "The bureaucratic disempowering and desiccation of spontaneous processes of opinion and will formation expands the scope for engineering mass loyalty and makes it easier to uncouple political decision making from concrete, identity forming contexts of life." [33]
The system does this by rewarding or coercing that which legitimates it from the cultural spheres. Such conditions of public patronage invisibly negate the freedom that is supposedly available in the cultural field.
The Theory of Communicative Action was the subject of a collection of critical essays published in 1986. [34] The philosopher Tom Rockmore, writing in 1989, commented that it was unclear whether The Theory of Communicative Action or Habermas's earlier work Knowledge and Human Interests (1968), was the most important of Habermas's works. [35] The Theory of Communicative Action has inspired many responses by social theorists and philosophers, and in 1998 was listed by the International Sociological Association as the eighth most important sociological book of the 20th century, behind Norbert Elias' The Civilizing Process (1939) but ahead of Talcott Parsons' The Structure of Social Action (1937). [7]
Jürgen Habermas is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.
Universal pragmatics (UP), more recently placed under the heading of formal pragmatics, is the philosophical study of the necessary conditions for reaching an understanding through communication. The philosopher Jürgen Habermas coined the term in his essay "What is Universal Pragmatics?" where he suggests that human competition, conflict, and strategic action are attempts to achieve understanding that have failed because of modal confusions. The implication is that coming to terms with how people understand or misunderstand one another could lead to a reduction of social conflict.
Rational reconstruction is a philosophical term with several distinct meanings. It is found in the work of Jürgen Habermas and Imre Lakatos.
Verstehen, in the context of German philosophy and social sciences in general, has been used since the late 19th century – in English as in German – with the particular sense of the "interpretive or participatory" examination of social phenomena. The term is closely associated with the work of the German sociologist Max Weber, whose antipositivism established an alternative to prior sociological positivism and economic determinism, rooted in the analysis of social action. In anthropology, Verstehen has come to mean a systematic interpretive process in which an outside observer of a culture attempts to relate to it and understand others.
In sociology, the term rationalization was coined by Max Weber, a German sociologist, jurist, and economist. Rationalization is the replacement of traditions, values, and emotions as motivators for behaviour in society with concepts based on rationality and reason. The term rational is seen in the context of people, their expressions, and or their actions. This term can be applied to people who can perform speech or in general any action, in addition to the views of rationality within people it can be seen in the perspective of something such as a worldview or perspective (idea). An example of rationalization can be seen in the implementation of bureaucracies in government is a kind of rationalization, as is the construction of high-efficiency living spaces in architecture and urban planning. A potential reason as to why rationalization of a culture may take place in the modern era is the process of globalization. Countries are becoming increasingly interlinked, and with the rise of technology, it is easier for countries to influence each other through social networking, the media and politics. An example of rationalization in place would be the case of witch doctors in certain parts of Africa. Whilst many locals view them as an important part of their culture and traditions, development initiatives and aid workers have tried to rationalize the practice in order to educate the local people in modern medicine and practice.
Karl-Otto Apel was a German philosopher and Professor Emeritus at the University of Frankfurt am Main. He specialized on the philosophy of language and was thus considered a communication theorist. He developed a distinctive philosophical approach which he called "transcendental pragmatics."
Discourse ethics refers to a type of argument that attempts to establish normative or ethical truths by examining the presuppositions of discourse. The ethical theory originated with German philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel, and variations have been used by Frank Van Dun and Habermas' student Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
Communicative rationality or communicative reason is a theory or set of theories which describes human rationality as a necessary outcome of successful communication. This theory is in particular tied to the philosophy of German philosophers Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas, and their program of universal pragmatics, along with its related theories such as those on discourse ethics and rational reconstruction. This view of reason is concerned with clarifying the norms and procedures by which agreement can be reached, and is therefore a view of reason as a form of public justification.
Between Facts and Norms is a 1992 book on deliberative politics by the German political philosopher Jürgen Habermas. The culmination of the project that Habermas began with The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in 1962, it represents a lifetime of political thought on the nature of democracy and law.
Lifeworld may be conceived as a universe of what is self-evident or given, a world that subjects may experience together. The concept was popularized by Edmund Husserl, who emphasized its role as the ground of all knowledge in lived experience. It has its origin in biology and cultural Protestantism.
"Instrumental" and "value-rational action" are terms scholars use to identify two kinds of behavior that humans can engage in. Scholars call using means that "work" as tools, instrumental action, and pursuing ends that are "right" as legitimate ends, value-rational action.
In sociology, communicative action is cooperative action undertaken by individuals based upon mutual deliberation and argumentation. The term was developed by German philosopher-sociologist Jürgen Habermas in his work The Theory of Communicative Action.
An ideal speech situation was a term introduced in the early philosophy of Jürgen Habermas. It argues that an ideal speech situation is found when communication between individuals is governed by basic, implied rules. In an ideal speech situation, participants would be able to evaluate each other’s assertions solely on the basis of reason and evidence in an atmosphere completely free of any nonrational “coercive” influences, including both physical and psychological coercion. Furthermore, all participants would be motivated solely by the desire to obtain a rational consensus.
Egalitarian dialogue is a dialogue in which contributions are considered according to the validity of their reasoning, instead of according to the status or position of power of those who make them. Although previously used widely in the social sciences and in reference to the Bakhtinian philosophy of dialogue, it was first systematically applied to dialogical education by Ramón Flecha in his 2000 work Sharing Words. Theory and Practice of Dialogic Learning.
Dialogic learning is learning that takes place through dialogue. It is typically the result of egalitarian dialogue; in other words, the consequence of a dialogue in which different people provide arguments based on validity claims and not on power claims.
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures is a 1985 book by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, in which the author reconstructs and deals in depth with a number of philosophical approaches to the critique of modern reason and the Enlightenment "project" since Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche, including the work of 20th century philosophers Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Cornelius Castoriadis and Niklas Luhmann. The work is regarded as an important contribution to Frankfurt School critical theory. It has been characterized as a critical evaluation of the concept of world disclosure in modern philosophy.
Legitimation Crisis is a 1973 book by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas. It was published in English in 1975 by Beacon Press, translated and with an introduction by Thomas McCarthy. It was originally published by Suhrkamp. The title refers to a decline in the confidence of administrative functions, institutions, or leadership: a legitimation crisis. The direct translation of its German title is Legitimation Problems in Late Capitalism. In this book, published five years after Knowledge and Human Interests, Habermas explored the fundamental crisis tendencies in the state-managed capitalism. Before the state-managed capitalism, states are primarily concerned with maintaining the market economy, while in the state-managed capitalism, states have additional roles such as providing a social healthcare, pensions, education, and so on. The expanded scopes of state administrations and influence helped managing crisis tendency of capitalism in economic field, but it created another crisis tendency in political as well as social-cultural field, which is legitimation crisis and motivation crisis, respectively.
Research methodology based on intersubjective dialogue and an egalitarian relationship between the research team and those being researched .Current societies are characterized for using dialogue in different domains, seeing it as necessary for social progress and for avoiding different social conflicts. Critical communicative methodology is characterized for its dialogic orientation in different aspects of the research.
Knowledge and Human Interests is a 1968 book by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, in which the author discusses the development of the modern natural and human sciences. He criticizes Sigmund Freud, arguing that psychoanalysis is a branch of the humanities rather than a science, and provides a critique of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
A critical theory is any approach to humanities and social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to attempt to reveal, critique, and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from social structures and cultural assumptions rather than from individuals. Some hold it to be an ideology, others argue that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation. Critical theory finds applications in various fields of study, including psychoanalysis, film theory, literary theory, cultural studies, history, communication theory, philosophy, and feminist theory.