Something About Habermas

1. The Early Development Of Habermas's Interest In The Public Sphere And Reason
Born outside Düsseldorf in 1929, Habermas came of age in postwar
Germany. The Nuremberg Trials were a key formative moment that brought
home to him the depth of Germany's moral and political failure under
National Socialism. This experience was later reinforced when, as a
graduate student interested in Heidegger's existentialism, he read the
latter's reissued Introduction to Metaphysics, in which Heidegger had
retained (or more accurately, reintroduced) an allusion to the “inner
truth and greatness” of National Socialism (Heidegger 1959, 199). When
Habermas (1953) publicly called for an explanation from Heidegger, the
latter's silence confirmed Habermas's conviction that the German
philosophical tradition had failed in its moment of reckoning,
providing intellectuals with the resources neither to understand nor
to criticize National Socialism. This negative experience of the
relation between philosophy and politics subsequently motivated his
search for conceptual resources from Anglo-American thought,
particularly its pragmatic and democratic traditions. In moving
outside the German tradition, Habermas joined a number of young
postwar intellectuals such as Karl-Otto Apel (for Habermas's
autobiographical sketch, see 2005b, chap. 1).

Habermas completed his dissertation in 1954 at the University of Bonn,
writing on the conflict between the absolute and history in
Schelling's thought. He first gained serious public attention, at
least in Germany, with the 1962 publication of his habilitation,
Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (Structural Transformation of the
Public Sphere; English ed., 1989), a detailed social history of the
development of the bourgeois public sphere from its origins in the
18th century salons up to its transformation through the influence of
capital-driven mass media. In his description of the salons we clearly
see his interest in a communicative ideal that later would provide the
core normative standard for his moral-political theory: the idea of
inclusive critical discussion, free of social and economic pressures,
in which interlocutors treat each other as equals in a cooperative
attempt to reach an understanding on matters of common concern. As an
ideal at the center of bourgeois culture, this kind of interchange was
probably never fully realized; nonetheless, it “was not mere ideology”
(1989, 160, also 36). As these small discussion societies grew into
mass publics in the 19th century, however, ideas became commodities,
assimilated to the economics of mass media consumption. Rather than
give up on the idea of public reason, Habermas called for a
socioinstitutionally feasible concept of public opinion-formation
“that is historically meaningful, that normatively meets the
requirements of the social-welfare state, and that is theoretically
clear and empirically identifiable.” Such a concept “can be grounded
only in the structural transformation of the public sphere itself and
in the dimension of its development” (ibid., 244). His concluding
sketch of such a concept (ibid., 244–48) already contains in outline
the two-level model of democratic deliberation he later elaborates in
his mature work on law and democracy, Between Facts and Norms (1996b;
German ed., 1992b).

Habermas's interest in the political subsequently led him to a series
of philosophical studies and critical-social analyses that eventually
appeared in English in his Toward a Rational Society (1970) and Theory
and Practice (1973b). Whereas the latter consists primarily of
reflections on the history of philosophy, the former represents an
attempt to apply his emerging theory of rationality to the critical
analysis of contemporary society, in particular the student protest
movement and its institutional target, the authoritarian and
technocratic structures that held sway in higher education and
politics.

Habermas's critical reflection takes a nuanced approach to both sides
of the social unrest that characterized the late sixties. Although
sympathetic with students' demand for more democratic participation
and hopeful that their activism harbored a potential for positive
social transformation, he also did not hesitate to criticize its
militant aspects, which he labeled self-delusory and “pernicious”
(1970, 48). In his critique of technocracy—governance by scientific
experts and bureaucracy—he relied on a philosophical framework that
anticipates categories in his later thought, minus the philosophy of
language he would work out in the 1970s. Specifically, Habermas
(ibid., chap. 6) sharply distinguished between two modes of action,
“work” and “interaction,” which correspond to enduring interests of
the human species. The former includes modes of action based on the
rational choice of efficient means, that is, forms of instrumental and
strategic action, whereas the latter refers to forms of “communicative
action” in which actors coordinate their behaviors on the basis of
“consensual norms” (ibid., 91–92). Habermas's distinction in effect
appropriates the classical Aristotelian contrast between techne and
praxis for critical social theory (1973b, chap. 1). The result is a
distinctively Habermasian critique of science and technology as
ideology: by reducing practical questions about the good life to
technical problems for experts, contemporary elites eliminate the need
for public, democratic discussion of values, thereby depoliticizing
the population (1970, chap. 6). The legitimate human interest in
technical control of nature thus functions as an ideology—a screen
that masks the value-laden character of government decisionmaking in
the service of the capitalist status quo. Unlike Herbert Marcuse, who
regarded that interest as specific to capitalist society, Habermas
affirmed the technical control of nature as a genuinely universal
species-interest; unlike Horkheimer and Adorno in their Dialectic of
Enlightenment, the technical interest did not necessitate social
domination.

Habermas defended this philosophical anthropology most fully in his
Knowledge and Human Interests (1971b; German ed., 1968b), the work
that represents his first attempt to provide a systematic framework
for critical social theory. In it, Habermas develops a theory of
“knowledge-constitutive interests” that are tied both to “the natural
history of the human species” and to “the imperatives of the
socio-cultural form of life,” but are not reducible to them (ibid.,
168). There are three knowledge-constitutive interests, each tied to a
particular conception of science and social science. The first is the
“technical interest,” the “anthropologically deep-seated interest” we
have in the prediction and control of the natural environment.
Positivism sees knowledge in these terms, and naturalistic accounts of
human possibilities often regard human history only from this point of
view. Second, there is the equally deep-seated “practical interest” in
securing and expanding possibilities of mutual and self-understanding
in the conduct of life. Finally, there is the “emancipatory interest”
in overcoming dogmatism, compulsion, and domination.

If each interest is constitutive of a form of knowledge, then we
should expect to find for each a corresponding form of
cultural-institutional realization, that is, organized modes of
inquiry and knowledge-production. This seems to be plausible for the
interests in control of nature and social understanding: the
empirical-analytic sciences are oriented toward instrumental action
and technical control under specified conditions, and the
cultural-hermeneutic sciences presuppose and articulate modes of
action-orienting (inter)personal understanding that operate within
socio-cultural forms of life and the grammar of ordinary language. In
retrospect, Habermas's analysis of these two interests is limited by
the concerns of the day. His distinction between the sciences that
take nature as their object, and interpretive modes of inquiry that
depend on communicative access to domains of human life, still has
some plausibility. But his view of the natural sciences still had not
fully absorbed the lessons of post-positivist science studies. Nor is
it clear that prediction and control exhaust the interests that drive
the natural sciences (e.g., the interest in the geologic past seems to
involve more than technical control).

The status of the emancipatory interest, however, was problematic from
the start. Habermas broadly identified it as the interest of reason as
such, which underlies critical-reflective knowledge. However, Habermas
soon realized he had conflated two forms of critical reflection: the
critique that aims to unmask self-deception and ideology and the
reflective articulation of the formal structures of knowledge
(1973cd). Moreover, the interest in emancipation does not clearly
correspond to a specific science or form of institutionalized inquiry.
Although Freudian psychology and Marxist social theory have such an
interest, much if not most psychological and sociological inquiry does
not have explicitly emancipatory aims, but rather is driven by
interests in prediction and social understanding. Nor was it clear
that psychoanalysis provided an apt model of liberatory reflection in
any case, as critics pointed out how the asymmetries between patient
and analyst could not represent the proper intersubjective form for
emancipation. These deficits posed a challenge for Habermas that would
guide a decades-long search for the normative and empirical basis of
critique. Whatever the best path to the epistemic and normative basis
for critique might be, it would have to pass a democratic test: that
“in Enlightenment there are only participants” (1973b, 44). Habermas
will not resolve this methodological issue until a series of
transitional studies in the 1970s culminates in his mature systematic
work, The Theory of Communicative Action (1984a/1987; German ed.,
1981; hereafter cited as TCA).

That said, we can discern enduring features in Habermas's early
attempt at a comprehensive model of social criticism. As a theory of
rationality and knowledge, his theory of knowledge-constitutive
interests is both pragmatic and pluralistic: pragmatic, inasmuch as
human interests constitute knowledge; pluralistic, in that different
forms of inquiry and knowledge emerge from different core interests.
In Knowledge and Human Interests we can thus see the beginnings of a
methodologically pluralistic approach to critical social theory, more
on which below. Besides the problems described above, however, the
analysis was hampered by a framework that still relied on motifs from
a “philosophy of consciousness” fixated on the constitution of objects
of possible experience—an approach that cannot do justice to the
discursive dimensions of inquiry (1973cd; 2000; also Müller-Doohm
2000). In the 1970s Habermas set about a fundamental overhaul of his
framework for critical theory (see McCarthy 1978).
2. Important Transitional Works

In the period between Knowledge and Human Interests and The Theory of
Communicative Action, Habermas began to develop a distinctive method
for elaborating the relationship between a theoretical social science
of modern societies, on the one hand, and the normative and
philosophical basis for critique, on the other. Following Horkheimer's
definition of Critical theory, Habermas pursued three aims in his
attempt to combine social science and philosophical analysis: it must
be explanatory, practical, and normative, all at the same time. This
meant that philosophy could not, as it did for Kant, become the sole
basis for normative reflection. Rather, Habermas argued, adequate
critique requires a thoroughgoing cooperation between philosophy and
social science. This sort of analysis is characteristic of
Legitimation Crisis (1975; German ed., 1973e), in which Habermas
analyzes the modern state as subject to endemic crises, which arise
from the fact that the state cannot simultaneously meet the demands
for rational problem solving, democracy, and cultural identity. Here
the social science to which Habermas appeals is more sociological and
functional. Similarly, in this work and in Communication and the
Evolution of Society (1979), Habermas begins to develop a distinctive
conception of rational reconstruction, which models societal
development as a learning process. In these works, Habermas begins to
incorporate the results of developmental psychology, which aligns
stages of development with changes in the kinds of reasons that the
maturing individual considers acceptable. Analogously, societies
develop through similar changes in the rational basis of legitimacy on
the collective level. At this point in his theorizing, Habermas's
appropriation of the social sciences has become methodologically and
theoretically pluralistic: on his view, a critical social theory is
not distinctive in light of endorsing some particular theory or method
but as uniting normative and empirical inquiry.

In this transitional phase from Knowledge and Human Interests to The
Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas's basic philosophical
endeavor was to develop a more modest, fallibilist, empirical account
of the philosophical claim to universality and rationality. This more
modest approach rids Critical Theory of its vestiges of transcendental
philosophy, pushing it in a naturalistic, “postmetaphysical” direction
(1988b). Such a naturalism identifies more specific forms of
social-scientific knowledge that help in developing an analysis of the
general conditions of rationality manifested in various human
capacities and powers.

Habermas's encounter with speech act theory proved to be particularly
decisive for this project. In speech act theory, he finds the basis
for a conception of communicative competence (on the model of
Chomsky's linguistic competence). Given this emphasis on language,
Habermas is often said to have taken a kind of “linguistic turn” in
this period. He framed his first essays on formal pragmatics (1976ab)
as an alternative to Niklas Luhmann's systems theory. Habermas
understands formal pragmatics as one of the “reconstructive sciences,”
which aim to render theoretically explicit the intuitive,
pretheoretical know-how underlying such basic human competences as
speaking and understanding, judging and acting. Unlike Kant's
transcendental analysis of the conditions of rationality,
reconstructive sciences yield knowledge that is not necessary but
hypothetical, not a priori but empirical, not certain but fallible.
They are nevertheless directed to invariant structures and conditions
and raise universal, but defeasible claims to an account of practical
reason.

With the turn to language and reconstructive science, Habermas
undermines both of the traditional Kantian roles for philosophy:
philosophy as the sole judge in normative matters and as the
methodological authority that assigns the various domains of inquiry
to their proper questions. In Habermas's view, philosophy must engage
in a fully cooperative relationship with the social sciences and the
empirical disciplines in general. This step is completed in The Theory
of Communicative Action, to which we now turn.
3. Mature Positions

To understand Habermas's mature positions, we must start with his
Theory of Communicative Action (TCA), a two-volume critical study of
the theories of rationality that informed the classical sociologies of
Weber, Durkheim, Parsons, and neo-Marxist critical theory (esp.
Lukács, Horkheimer, Adorno). More importantly, in TCA we find
Habermas's conception of the task of philosophy and its relation to
the social sciences—a conception that still guides much of his work.
While TCA defends the emphasis on normativity and the universalist
ambitions found in the philosophical tradition, it does so within a
framework that includes particular sorts of empirical social research,
with which philosophy must interact. Philosophers, that is, must
cooperate with social scientists if they are to understand normative
claims within the current historical context, the context of a
complex, modern society that is characterized by social and systemic
modes of integration. The problem with pessimistic social theories of
modernity is that they miss the cultural dimension of modernization
due to a one-sided, primarily instrumental conception of rationality.
3.1 The Theory of Communicative Action

Starting with Marx's historical materialism, large-scale
macrosociological and historical theories have long been held to be
the most appropriate explanatory basis for critical social science.
However, such theories have two drawbacks for the critical project.
First, comprehensiveness does not ensure explanatory power. Indeed,
there are many such large-scale theories, each with their own
distinctive and exemplary social phenomena that guide their attempt at
unification. Second, a close examination of standard critical
explanations, such as the theory of ideology, shows that such
explanations typically appeal to a variety of different social
theories (Bohman 1999). Habermas's actual employment of critical
explanations bears this out. His criticism of modern societies turns
on the explanation of the relationship between two very different
theoretical terms: a micro-theory of rationality based on
communicative coordination and a macro-theory of the systemic
integration of modern societies through such mechanisms as the market
(TCA, vol. 2). In concrete terms, this means that Habermas develops a
two-level social theory that includes an analysis of communicative
rationality, the rational potential built into everyday speech, on the
one hand; and a theory of modern society and modernization, on the
other (White 1989). On the basis of this theory, Habermas hopes to be
able to assess the gains and losses of modernization and to overcome
its one-sided version of rationalization.

Comprehensive critical theories make two problematic assumptions: that
there is one preferred mode of critical explanation, and that there is
one preferred goal of social criticism, namely a socialist society
that fulfills the norm of human emancipation. Only with such a goal in
the background does the two-step process of employing historical
materialism to establish an epistemically and normatively independent
stance make sense. The correctness or incorrectness of such a critical
model depends not on its acceptance or rejection by its addressees,
but on the adequacy of the theory to objective historical necessities
or mechanisms (into which the critical theorist alleges to have
superior insight). A pluralistic mode of critical inquiry suggests a
different norm of correctness: that criticism must be verified by
those participating in the practice and that this demand for practical
verification is part of the process of inquiry itself.

Although Habermas's attitude toward these different modes of critical
theory is somewhat ambivalent, he has given good reasons to accept the
practical, pluralist approach. Just as in the analysis of modes of
inquiry tied to distinct knowledge-constitutive interests, Habermas
accepts that various theories and methods each have “a relative
legitimacy.” Indeed, like Dewey he goes so far as to argue that the
logic of social explanation is pluralistic and eludes the “apparatus
of general theories.” In the absence of any such general theories, the
most fruitful approach to social-scientific knowledge is to bring all
the various methods and theories into relation to each other: “Whereas
the natural and the cultural or hermeneutic sciences are capable of
living in mutually indifferent, albeit more hostile than peaceful
coexistence, the social sciences must bear the tension of divergent
approaches under one roof” (1988a, 3). In TCA, Habermas casts critical
social theory in a similarly pluralistic, yet unifying way. In
discussing various accounts of societal modernization, for example, he
argues that the main existing theories have their own “particular
legitimacy” as developed lines of empirical research, and that
Critical Theory takes on the task of critically unifying the various
theories and their heterogeneous methods and presuppositions.
“Critical social theory does not relate to established lines of
research as a competitor; starting from its concept of the rise of
modern societies, it attempts to explain the specific limitations and
the relative rights of those approaches” (TCA, 2: 375).

To achieve these theoretical and methodological ends, Habermas begins
this task with a discussion of theories of rationality and offers his
own distinctive definition of rationality, one that is epistemic,
practical, and intersubjective. For Habermas, rationality consists not
so much in the possession of particular knowledge, but rather in “how
speaking and acting subjects acquire and use knowledge” (TCA, 1: 11).
Any such account is “pragmatic” because it shares a number of
distinctive features with other views that see interpreters as
competent and knowledgeable agents. Most importantly, a pragmatic
approach develops an account of practical knowledge in the
“performative attitude,” that is, from the point of view of a
competent speaker. A theory of rationality thus attempts to
reconstruct the practical knowledge necessary for being a
knowledgeable social actor among other knowledgeable social actors. As
already mentioned, Habermas's reconstruction attempts to articulate
invariant structures of communication, and so qualifies as a “formal
pragmatics.”

What is the “performative attitude” that is to be reconstructed in
such a theory? From a social-scientific point of view, language is a
medium for coordinating action, although not the only such medium. The
fundamental form of coordination through language, according to
Habermas, requires speakers to adopt a practical stance oriented
toward “reaching understanding,” which he regards as the “inherent
telos” of speech. When actors address one another with this sort of
practical attitude, they engage in what Habermas calls “communicative
action,” which he distinguishes from strategic forms of social action.
Because this distinction plays a fundamental role in TCA, it deserves
some attention.

In strategic action, actors are not so much interested in mutual
understanding as in achieving the individual goals they each bring to
the situation. Actor A, for example, will thus appeal to B's desires
and fears so as to motivate the behavior on B's part that is required
for A's success. As reasons motivating B's cooperation, B's desires
and fears are only contingently related to A's goals. B cooperates
with A, in other words, not because B finds A's project inherently
interesting or worthy, but because of what B gets out of the bargain:
avoiding some threat that A can make or obtaining something A has
promised (which may be of inherent interest to B but for A is only a
means of motivating B).

In communicative action, or what Habermas later came to call “strong
communicative action” in “Some Further Clarifications of the Concept
of Communicative Rationality” (1998b, chap. 7; German ed., 1999b),
speakers coordinate their action and pursuit of individual (or joint)
goals on the basis of a shared understanding that the goals are
inherently reasonable or merit-worthy. Whereas strategic action
succeeds insofar as the actors achieve their individual goals,
communicative action succeeds insofar as the actors freely agree that
their goal (or goals) is reasonable, that it merits cooperative
behavior. Communicative action is thus an inherently consensual form
of social coordination in which actors “mobilize the potential for
rationality” given with ordinary language and its telos of rationally
motivated agreement.

To support his conception of communication action, Habermas must
specify the mechanism that makes rationally motivated agreement
possible. Toward that end, he argues for a particular account of
utterance meaning as based on “acceptability conditions,” by analogy
to the truth-conditional account of the meaning of sentences. But
rather than linking meaning with representational semantics, Habermas
takes a pragmatic approach, analyzing the conditions for the
illocutionary success of the speech act. According to the core
principle of his pragmatic theory of meaning, “we understand a speech
act when we know the kinds of reasons that a speaker could provide in
order to convince a hearer that he is entitled in the given
circumstances to claim validity for his utterance—in short, when we
know what makes it acceptable” (1998b, 232). With this principle,
Habermas ties the meaning of speech acts to the practice of reason
giving: speech acts inherently involve claims that are in need of
reasons—claims that are open to both criticism and justification. In
our everyday speech (and in much of our action), speakers tacitly
commit themselves to explaining and justifying themselves, if
necessary. To understand what one is doing in making a speech act,
therefore, one must have some sense of the appropriate response that
would justify one's speech act, were one challenged to do so. A speech
act succeeds in reaching understanding when the hearer takes up “an
affirmative position” toward the claim made by the speaker (TCA 1:
95–97; 282; 297). In doing so, the hearer presumes that the claims in
the speech act could be supported by good reasons (even if she has not
asked for them). When the offer made by the speaker fails to receive
uptake, speaker and hearer may shift reflexive levels, from ordinary
speech to “discourse”—processes of argumentation and dialogue in which
the claims implicit in the speech act are tested for their rational
justifiability as true, correct or authentic. Thus the rationality of
communicative action is tied to the rationality of discourse, more on
which in section 3.2.

What are these claims that are open to criticism and justification? In
opposition to the positivist fixation on fact-stating modes of
discourse, Habermas does not limit intersubjectively valid, or
justifiable, claims to the category of empirical truth, but instead
recognizes a spectrum of “validity claims” that also includes, at the
least, claims to moral rightness, ethical goodness or authenticity,
personal sincerity, and aesthetic value (TCA 1: 8–23; 1993, chap. 1).
Although Habermas does not consider such claims to represent a
mind-independent world in the manner of empirical truth claims, they
can be both publicly criticized as unjustifiable and defended by
publicly convincing arguments. To this extent, validity involves a
notion of correctness analogous to the idea of truth. In this context,
the phrase “validity claim,” as a translation of the German term
Geltungsanspruch, does not have the narrow logical sense
(truth-preserving argument forms), but rather connotes a richer social
idea—that a claim (statement) merits the addressee's acceptance
because it is justified or true in some sense, which can vary
according to the sphere of validity and dialogical context.

By linking meaning with the acceptability of speech acts, Habermas
moves the analysis beyond a narrow focus on the truth-conditional
semantics of representation to the social intelligibility of
interaction. The complexity of social interaction then allows him to
find three basic validity claims potentially at stake in any speech
act used for cooperative purposes (i.e., in strong communicative
action). His argument relies on three “world relations” that are
potentially involved in strongly communicative acts in which a speaker
intends to say something to someone about something (TCA 1: 275ff).
For example, a constative (fact-stating) speech act (a) expresses an
inner world (an intention to communicate a belief); (b) establishes a
communicative relation with a hearer (and thus relates to a social
world, specifically one in which both persons share a piece of
information, and know they do); and (c) attempts to represent the
external world. This triadic structure suggests that many speech acts,
including non-constatives, involve a set of tacit validity claims: the
claim that the speech act is sincere (non-deceptive), is socially
appropriate or right, and is factually true (or more broadly:
representationally adequate). Conversely, speech acts can be
criticized for failing on one or more of these scores. Thus fully
successful speech acts, insofar as they involve these three world
relations, must satisfy the demands connected with these three basic
validity claims (sincerity, rightness, and truth) in order to be
acceptable.

We can think of strong communicative action in the above sense as
defining the end of a spectrum of communicative possibilities. At that
end, social cooperation is both deeply consensual and reasonable:
actors sincerely agree that their modes of cooperation can be
justified as good, right, and free of empirical error. Given the
difficulties of maintaining such deep consensus, however, it makes
sense, particularly in complex, pluralistic societies, to relax these
communicative demands for specified types of situations, allowing for
weaker forms of communicative action (in which not all three types of
validity claims are at stake) or strategic action (in which actors
understand that everyone is oriented toward individual success).

Habermas distinguishes the “system” as those predefined situations, or
modes of coordination, in which the demands of communicative action
are relaxed in this way, within legally specified limits. The prime
examples of systemic coordination are markets and bureaucracies. In
these systemically structured contexts, nonlinguistic media take up
the slack in coordinating actions, which proceeds on the basis of
money and institutional power—these media do the talking, as it were,
thus relieving actors of the demands of strongly communicative action.
The term “lifeworld,” by contrast, refers to domains of action in
which consensual modes of action coordination predominate. In fact,
the distinction between lifeworld and system is better understood as
an analytic one that identifies different aspects of social
interaction and cooperation (1991b). “Lifeworld” then refers to the
background resources, contexts, and dimensions of social action that
enable actors to cooperate on the basis of mutual understanding:
shared cultural systems of meaning, institutional orders that
stabilize patterns of action, and personality structures acquired in
family, church, neighborhood, and school (TCA 1: chap. 6; 1998b, chap.
4).

As a theory of meaning, TCA has encountered rather heavy weather. In
the analytic philosophy of language, one of the standard requirements
is to account for the compositionality of language, the fact that a
finite set of words can be used to form an indefinite number of
sentences. From that perspective, Habermas's theory falls short (Heath
2001, chap. 3). But perhaps we would do better to assess Habermas's
theory of meaning from a different perspective. The compositionality
requirement is important if one wants to explain grammatical
competence. But early on Habermas (1976b) expressed a greater interest
in explaining communicative, rather than grammatical, competence: the
ability of speakers to use grammatically well-formed sentences in
social contexts. Although Habermas often presents his pragmatics as a
further development in analytic theories of meaning, his analysis
focuses primarily on the context-sensitive acceptability of speech
acts: acceptability conditions as a function of formal features that
distinguish different speech situations. This suggests his theory of
meaning involves a quite different sort of project: to articulate the
“validity basis” of social order.

The significance of this conception of reaching understanding and of
rationally motivated agreement can also be seen by contrasting this
account with other conceptions of understanding and interpretation,
such as Gadamer's hermeneutics. Given Habermas's conception of speech
acts and their relation to validity claims, it is not surprising that
he argues that “communicative actions always require interpretations
that are rational in approach” (TCA 1: 106), that is, ones that are
made in the performative attitude by an interpreter. In general,
Habermas agrees with hermeneutics that the whole domain of the social
sciences is accessible only through interpretation, precisely because
processes of reaching understanding already at work in the social
sciences have antecedently constituted them (ibid., 107). But he draws
a distinctive conclusion. Although social scientists are not actors,
they must employ their own pretheoretical knowledge to gain
interpretive access through communicative experience. As a “virtual
participant,” the social scientist must take a position on the claims
made by those he observes: he has access through communicative
experience only “under the presupposition that he judges the agreement
and disagreement, the validity claims and potential reasons with which
he is confronted” (ibid., 116). There is then no disjunction between
the attitude of the critic and the interpreter as reflective
participants. Social scientists may withhold judgments, but only at
the cost of impoverishing their interpretation and putting out of play
their pretheoretical, practical knowledge that they have in common
with others who are able to reach understanding. Thus, various forms
of rationality become essential to the social sciences, because of the
nature of the social domain.

Objecting to Habermas's line of argument, McCarthy and others have
argued that it is not a necessary condition that interpreters take a
position in order to understand reasons, even if we have to rely on
our own competence to judge the validity and soundness of reasons and
to identify them as reasons at all. Nonetheless, Habermas uses this
conception in his social theory of modernity to show the ways in which
modern culture has unleashed communicative rationality from its
previous cultural and ideological constraints. In modern societies,
social norms are no longer presumed to be valid but rather are
subjected to critical reflection, as for example when the ethical life
of a specific culture is criticized from the standpoint of justice. In
a sense consistent with the Enlightenment imperative to use one's own
reason, the everyday “lifeworld” of social experience has been
rationalized, especially in the form of discourses that
institutionalize reflective communicative action, as in scientific and
democratic institutions.

The rationalization of the lifeworld in Western modernity went
hand-in-hand with the growth of systemic mechanisms of coordination
already mentioned above, in which the demands on fully communicative
consensus are relaxed. If large and complex modern societies can no
longer be integrated solely on the basis of shared cultural values and
norms, new nonintentional mechanisms of coordination must emerge,
which take the form of nonlinguistic media of money and power. For
example, markets coordinate the collective production and distribution
of goods nonintentionally, even if they are grounded in cultural and
political institutions such as firms and states. Modernization can
become pathological, as when money and power “colonize the lifeworld”
and displace communicative forms of solidarity and inhibit the
reproduction of the lifeworld, as when, for example, universities
become governed by market strategies. “Juridification” is another such
pathological form, when law comes to invade more and more areas of
social life, turning citizens into clients of bureaucracies with what
Foucault might call “normalizing” effects. This aspect of TCA has less
of an impact on Habermas's current work, which returns to the theme of
improving democratic practice as a means of counteracting
juridification and colonization. Democratic institutions, if properly
designed and robustly executed, are supposed to ensure that the law
does not take this pathological form but is subject to the
deliberation of citizens, who thus author the laws to which they are
subject (see sec. 3.4).

After TCA, then, Habermas begins to see law not as part of the
problem, but as part of the solution, once he offers a more complete
discourse-theoretical account of law and democracy. Nonetheless the
theory of modernity still remains in his continued use of systems
theory and its understanding of nonintentional integration. By
insisting upon popular sovereignty as the outcome of the generation of
“communicative power” in the public sphere, Habermas tries to save the
substance of radical democracy. The unresolved difficulty is that in a
complex society, as Habermas asserts, “public opinion does not rule”
but rather points administrative power in particular directions; or,
as he puts it, it does not “steer” but “countersteers” institutional
complexity (1996b, chapter 8). That is, citizens do not control social
processes; they exercise influence through particular
institutionalized mechanisms and channels of communication. However
successful democracy is in creating legitimacy, it cannot gain full
control over large-scale complex societies, nor even of the necessary
conditions for its own realization. In this sense, Habermas's emphasis
on the limiting effect of complexity on democracy and his rejection of
a fully democratic form of sociation continue the basic argument of
the necessity of systems integration, even with its costs. Radical
democracy may no longer be the only means to social transformation,
though it is clear that it remains “the unfinished project of
modernity”: realizing and transforming democracy is still a genuine
goal even for complex and globalizing societies.
3.2 Habermas's Discourse Theory

Habermas's theory of communicative action rests on the idea that
social order ultimately depends on the capacity of actors to recognize
the intersubjective validity of the different claims on which social
cooperation depends. In conceiving cooperation in relation to validity
claims, Habermas highlights its rational and cognitive character: to
recognize the validity of such claims is to presume that good reasons
could be given to justify them in the face of criticism. TCA thus
points to and depends on an account of such justification—that is, on
a theory of argumentation or discourse, which Habermas calls the
“reflective form” of communicative action.

As mentioned above, Habermas proposes a multi-dimensional conception
of reason that expresses itself in different forms of cognitive
validity: not only in truth claims about the empirical world, but also
in rightness claims about the kind of treatment we owe each other as
persons, authenticity claims about the good life, technical-pragmatic
claims about the means suitable to different goals, and so on. As he
acknowledges, the surface grammar of speech acts does not suffice to
establish this range of validity types. Rather, to ground the
multi-dimensional system of validity claims, one must supplement
semantic analysis with a pragmatic analysis of the different sorts of
argumentative discourse—the different “logics of
argumentation”—through which each type can be intersubjectively
justified (TCA 1: 8–42). Thus, a type of validity claim counts as
distinct from other types only if one can establish that its
discursive justification involves features that distinguish it from
other types of justification. Whether or not his pragmatic theory of
meaning succeeds, the discursive analysis of validity illuminates
important differences in the argumentative demands that come with
different types of justifiable claims. To see how Habermas identifies
these different features, it is first necessary to understand the
general structures of argumentation.

The pragmatic analysis of argumentation in general. Habermas's
discourse theory assumes that the specific type of validity claim one
aims to justify—the cognitive goal or topic of
argumentation—determines the specific argumentative practices
appropriate for such justification. Discourse theory thus calls for a
pragmatic analysis of argumentation as a social practice. Such
analysis aims to reconstruct the normative presuppositions that
structure the discourse of competent arguers. To get at these
presuppositions, one cannot simply describe argumentation as it
empirically occurs; as we already saw in TCA, one must adopt the
performative attitude of a participant and articulate the shared,
though often tacit, ideals and rules that provide the basis for
regarding some arguments as better than others. Following contemporary
argumentation theorists, Habermas assumes one cannot fully articulate
these normative presuppositions solely in terms of the logical
properties of arguments. Rather, he distinguishes three aspects of
argument-making practices: argument as product, as procedure, and as
process, which he loosely aligns with the traditional perspectives on
argument evaluation of logic, dialectic, and rhetoric. Pragmatically,
each of these perspectives functions as a “level of presupposition”
involved in the assessment of the cogency—the goodness or strength—of
arguments. Habermas seems to regard these perspectives, taken
together, as constituting the pragmatic idea of cogency: “at no single
one of these analytic levels can the very idea intrinsic to
argumentative speech be adequately developed” (TCA 1: 26).

At the logical level, participants are concerned with arguments as
products, that is, sets of reasons that support conclusions. From this
perspective, arguers aim to construct “cogent arguments that are
convincing in virtue of their intrinsic properties and with which
validity claims can be redeemed or rejected” (ibid., 25). Following
work by Stephen Toulmin and other informal logicians, Habermas regards
most if not all argumentation as ultimately resting on ampliative
arguments whose conclusions do not follow with deductive certainty but
only as more or less plausible or probable. The logical strength of
such arguments depends on how well one has taken into account all the
relevant information and possible objections. Thus the term “logical”
has a broad sense that includes not only formal but also informal
logics, in which strength depends on the interrelated meanings of
terms and background information that resists complete formalization:
induction, analogy, narrative, and so on.

Given the ampliative character of most arguments, logical assessment
presupposes the dialectical adequacy of argumentative procedures. That
is, we may regard the products of our argument-making practices as
logically strong only if we presume, at the dialectical level, that we
have submitted arguments and counterarguments to sufficiently severe
procedures of critical discussion—as Habermas (TCA 1: 26) puts it, a
“ritualized competition for the better arguments.” Dialectical
treatments of argumentation typically spell out the “dialectical
obligations” of discussants: that one should address the issue at
hand, should respond to relevant challenges, meet the specified burden
of proof, and so on.

However, robust critical testing of competing arguments depends in
turn on the rhetorical quality of the persuasive process. Habermas
conceives the rhetorical level in terms of highly idealized properties
of communication, which he initially presented as the conditions of an
“ideal speech situation” (1973a; also 1971/2001). That way of speaking
now strikes him as overly reified, suggesting an ideal condition that
real discourses must measure up to, or at least approximately
satisfy—motifs that Habermas himself employed until rather recently
(cf. 1993, 54–55; 1996b, 322–23). He now understands the idea of
rhetorically adequate process as a set of unavoidable yet
counterfactual “pragmatic presuppositions” that participants must make
if they are to regard the actual execution of dialectical procedures
as a sufficiently severe critical test. Habermas (2005b, 89)
identifies four such presuppositions as the most important: (i) no one
capable of making a relevant contribution has been excluded, (ii)
participants have equal voice, (iii) they are internally free to speak
their honest opinion without deception or self-deception, and (iv)
there are no sources of coercion built into the process and procedures
of discourse. Such conditions, in effect, articulate what it would
mean to assess all the relevant information and arguments (for a given
level of knowledge and inquiry) as reasonably as possible, weighing
arguments purely on the merits in a disinterested pursuit of truth.
These conditions are counterfactual in the sense that actual
discourses can rarely realize—and can never empirically certify—full
inclusion, non-coercion, and equality. At the same time, these
idealizing presuppositions have an operative effect on actual
discourse: we may regard outcomes (both consensual and non-consensual)
as reasonable only if our scrutiny of the process does not uncover
obvious exclusions, suppression of arguments, manipulation,
self-deception, and the like (2003a, 108). In this sense, these
pragmatic idealizations function as “standards for a self-correcting
learning process” (2005b, 91).

As an understanding of the rhetorical perspective, Habermas's highly
idealized and formal model hardly does justice to the substantive
richness of the rhetorical tradition. One can, however, supplement his
model with a more substantive rhetoric that draws on Aristotle's
account of ethos and pathos (Rehg 1997). In that case, the rhetorical
perspective is concerned with designing arguments for their ability to
place the particular audience in the proper social-psychological space
for making a responsible collective judgment. But the “space of
responsible judgment” still remains an idealization that may not be
reduced to any observable actual behavior, but can at most be
defeasibly presumed. The same probably holds for dialectical
procedures. Although the dialectical perspective draws on the
tradition of public debate, dialectical norms, when understood as
pragmatic presuppositions, are not identical with institutionalized
rules of debate (1990a, 91). A neutral observer can judge whether
interlocutors have externally complied with institutional procedures,
whereas engaged participants must judge how well they have satisfied
the dialectical presupposition of severe critical testing.

The differentiation of argumentative discourses. If the different
validity claims require different types of argumentation, then the
relevant differences must emerge through a closer analysis of the ways
the above aspects of argumentative practice adjust to different sorts
of content, that is, the different validity claims at issue (cf.
2005b, chap. 3). To be sure, Habermas does not regard every validity
claim as open to discourse proper. Sincerity claims (or “truthfulness
claims,” as it is sometimes translated) are the prime example. These
are claims an actor makes about his or her interior subjectivity:
feelings, moods, desires, beliefs, and the like. Such claims are open
to rational assessment, not in discourse but by comparison with the
actor's behavior: for example, if a son claims to care deeply about
his parents but never pays them any attention, we would have grounds
for doubting the sincerity of his claim. Note that such insincerity
might involve self-deception rather than deliberative lying.

Truth and rightness claims, by contrast, are susceptible to
argumentative justification in the proper sense, through what Habermas
calls “strict discourses.” As he first analyzed the discourses
connected with these two types of validity (1973a), they had much in
common. Although the types of reasons differed—moral discourse rested
primarily on need interpretations, empirical-theoretical discourse on
empirical inductions—in both cases, the relevant reasons should, in
principle, be acceptable to any reasonable agent. In the case of
empirical truth claims, this process-level presupposition of consensus
rests on the idea that the objective world is the same for all; in the
case of moral rightness, it rests on the idea that valid moral rules
and principles hold for all persons. In both cases, the appropriate
audience for the testing of claims is universal, and in making a truth
or rightness claim one counterfactually presupposes that a universal
consensus would result, were the participants able to pursue a
sufficiently inclusive and reasonable discourse for a sufficient
length of time. Although his early statements are somewhat unclear, on
one reading Habermas defined not only moral rightness but also
empirical truth in terms of such ideal consensus (similar to C. S.
Peirce). He now further distinguishes truth from moral rightness by
defining the latter, but not the former, in terms of idealized
consensus. More on that below.

Authenticity claims, unlike truth and rightness claims, do not come
with such a strong consensual expectation. Habermas associates this
type of claim with “ethical” discourse. Unlike moral discourse, in
which participants strive to justify norms and courses of action that
accord due concern and respect for persons in general, ethical
discourses focus on questions of the good life, either for a given
individual (“ethical-existential” discourse) or for a particular group
or polity (“ethical-political” discourse). Consequently, the kind of
reasons that constitute cogent arguments in ethical discourse depend
on the life histories, traditions, and particular values of those
whose good is at issue. This reference to individual- and
group-related particularities means that one should not expect those
reasons to win universal consensus (1993, 1–18; 1996b, 162–68).
However, Habermas (2003b) seems to recognize one class of ethical
questions that do admit of universal consensus. Choices of
technologies that bear on the future of human nature, such as genetic
enhancement engineering, pose species-wide ethical issues. Such issues
concern not merely our self-understanding as members of this or that
particular culture or tradition, but how we should understand our
basic human dignity. The core of human dignity, and thus the basis for
a human-species ethics, on his view, lies in the capacity of human
beings for autonomous self-determination.

In sum, Habermas's discourse theory aligns different types of validity
claim with different types of justificatory discourse. At the logical
level, cogent arguments must employ somewhat different sorts of
reasons to justify different types of claims. Although some sorts of
reasons might enter into each type of discourse (e.g., empirical
claims), the set of relevant considerations that are individually
necessary and jointly sufficient for making logically strong arguments
will differ. Thus, claims about what human beings need are relevant
reasons in moral arguments about welfare obligations, but not for
supporting the truth claim that quarks exist. At the dialectical
level, one must meet different burdens of proof by answering different
types of challenges. For example, in defending the ethical
authenticity of Tom's pursuit of a career in medicine, one need not
show that medicine is a career everyone must follow, but only that
such a career makes sense, given Tom's personal background, talents,
and desires. One can also examine Tom's career choice from a moral
perspective, but in that case one need only show that anyone in his
circumstances is morally permitted to pursue medicine. At the
rhetorical level, finally, the scope and depth of agreement differs
according to the type of claim. Moral rightness claims and empirical
truth claims are justified by reasons that should be acceptable to a
universal audience, whereas ethical claims are addressed to those who
share a particular history and tradition of values.

Having differentiated types of discourse, Habermas must say something
about how they interrelate. Clearly, some discourses depend on other
types: most obviously, moral and ethical discourses partly depend on
empirical claims, and thus depend on the outcome of empirical
discourses about the circumstances and consequences of behavioral
rules and the collective pursuit of the good life. The question of
interrelationship becomes especially urgent in the political sphere,
where different discourses intertwine and lead to competing
conclusions, or when issues arise in which discourse types cannot be
cleanly separated, so that the standards of cogency become obscure or
deeply contested (McCarthy 1991, chap. 7; 1998). Because Habermas
(1996c, 1534f) rejects the idea of a metadiscourse that sorts out
these boundary issues, he must answer this challenge in his democratic
theory. Before taking up that topic, Habermas's theory of truth
deserves a closer look.
3.3 Habermas's Theory of Truth and Knowledge

In his various essays on empirical truth, Habermas usually regards
propositions as the truth-bearer: in making an assertion, “I am
claiming that the proposition [Aussage] that I am asserting is true”
(1971/2001, 86; cf. 2003a, 249ff). In his early treatment, however, he
immediately equated empirical truth with ideal justifiability—the
consensus theory of truth mentioned above. According to that theory,
the “truth condition of propositions is the potential assent of all
others”; thus “the universal-pragmatic meaning of truth…is determined
by the demand of reaching a rational consensus” (1971/2001, 89; cf.
86). Such formulations suggest that Habermas equated the meaning of
truth with the outcome of a universal, rational consensus, which he
understood in reference to the ideal speech situation (ibid., 97–98).
However, he soon saw the difficulties with consensus theory, and he
never allowed “Wahrheitstheorien” (1973a), his main essay on the
consensus theory of truth, to appear in English. Like the “epistemic”
theories of truth that link truth with ideal warranted assertibility
(e.g., Hilary Putnam, Crispin Wright), consensus theory downplays the
justification-transcendent character of truth (2003a, 250–52).

Habermas now proposes instead a “pragmatic epistemological realism”
(2003a, 7; 1998b, chap. 8). His theory of truth is realist in holding
that the objective world, rather than ideal consensus, is the
truth-maker. If a proposition (or sentence, statement) for which we
claim truth is indeed true, it is so because it accurately refers to
existing objects, or accurately represents actual states of
affairs—albeit objects and states of affairs about which we can state
facts only under descriptions that depend on our linguistic resources.
The inescapability of language dictates the pragmatic epistemological
character of his realism. Specifically, Habermas eschews the attempt
to explicate the relationship between proposition and world
metaphysically (e.g., as in correspondence theories). Rather, he
explicates the meaning of accurate representation pragmatically, in
terms of its implications for everyday practice and discourse. Insofar
as we take propositional contents as unproblematically true in our
daily practical engagement with reality, we act confidently on the
basis of well-corroborated beliefs about objects in the world. What
Habermas (1971/2001, 94; TCA 1: 23) calls “theoretico-empirical” or
“theoretical” discourse becomes necessary when beliefs lose their
unproblematic status as the result of practical difficulties, or when
novel circumstances pose questions about the natural world. Such cases
call for an empirical inquiry in which truth claims about the world
are submitted to critical testing. Although Habermas tends to sharply
separate action and discourse, it seems more plausible to regard such
critical testing as combining discourse with experimental actions—as
we see in scientific inquiry, which combines empirical arguments with
practical actions, that is, field observations and laboratory
experimentation.

To date Habermas has not drawn out the implications of his discourse
theory for a detailed account of truth-oriented discourses, which we
find most highly developed in the sciences. As an argumentation
theory, such an account would probably have to take the following
broad lines: at the logical level, the discursive justification of
problematic truth claims heavily relies on empirical reasons:
observation reports, results of experimental tests, and the like.
Similarly for the dialectical level: the chief challenges arise from
theories and observations that seemingly conflict with the claim at
issue or with its supporting reasons. At the rhetorical level, one
seeks the agreement of a potentially universal audience, given that
truth claims are about an objective world that is the same for all
human beings. This sketch, however, leaves out precisely the details
that would make a discourse theory of science interesting. For
example, how do epistemic and aesthetic values (scope, accuracy,
simplicity, etc.) affect the logical construction of scientific
arguments? Must not the presupposition of a universal audience be
attenuated, given that scientists investigate aspects of the world
(e.g., subatomic particles) that are inaccessible to all but a small
group of trained experts? How does the cogency of scientific arguments
depend on or involve various institutional structures and mechanisms,
such as peer review, assignment of credit, distribution of grant
money, and so on?
3.4 Habermas's Discourse Theory of Morality, Politics, and Law

Habermas's two enduring interests in political theory and rationality
come together in his discourse theory of deliberative democracy. There
we see him struggling to show how his highly idealized,
multi-dimensional discourse theory has real institutional purchase in
complex, modern societies. In that context, argumentation appears in
the form of public discussion and debate over practical questions that
confront political bodies. The challenge, then, is to show how an
idealized model of practical discourse connects with real
institutional contexts of decision-making.

Habermas summarizes his idealized conception of practical discourse in
the “discourse principle” (D), which we might state as follows: A rule
of action or choice is justified, and thus valid, only if all those
affected by the rule or choice could accept it in a reasonable
discourse. Although he first understood (D) as a principle of moral
discourse, he now positions it as an overarching principle of
impartial justification that holds for all types of practical
discourse (cf. 1990a, 66, 93; 1996b, 107). As such, it simply
summarizes his argumentation theory for any question involving the
various “employments of practical reason” (1993, chap. 1). (D) thus
applies not only to moral rightness and ethical authenticity, but also
to the justification of technical-pragmatic claims about the choice of
effective means for achieving a given end. Each type of practical
discourse then involves a further specification of (D) for the content
at issue. In developing his democratic theory, Habermas has been
especially concerned with two such specifications: moral discourse and
legal-political discourse. In distinguishing these two types of
discourse, Habermas tackles the traditional problem of the
relationship between law and morality. He also shows how to bring
high-level discursive idealizations down to institutional earth. We
start with his account of moral discourse.

Habermas's discourse ethics. Habermas's discourse theory of morality
generally goes by the name “discourse ethics,” a somewhat misleading
label given that “ethics” has a distinct non-moral sense for him, as
noted above. The idea of a discourse ethics was anticipated by G. H.
Mead (1962, 379–89) and has been pursued by a number of philosophers
(e.g., Karl-Otto Apel, Seyla Benhabib). Habermas's version is heavily
indebted to the Kantian tradition. Like Kant, he considers morality a
matter of unconditional moral obligations: the prohibitions, positive
obligations, and permissions that regulate interaction among persons.
The task of moral theory is to reconstruct the unconditional force of
such obligations as impartial dictates of practical reason that hold
for any similarly situated agent. Also like Kant, Habermas links
morality with respect for autonomous agency: in following the dictates
of impartial reason, one follows one's own conscience and shows
respect for other such agents. Unlike Kant, however, Habermas takes a
dialogical approach to practical reason, as his discourse theory
requires. Kant assumed that in principle each mature, reflective
individual, guided by the Categorical Imperative, could reach the same
conclusions about what duty requires. This assumption has long been
recognized as problematic, but in pluralistic and multicultural
settings it becomes entirely untenable: one may plausibly claim to
take an impartial moral point of view only by engaging in real
discourse with all those affected by the issue in question.

Habermas's (D)-Principle articulates this dialogical requirement. If
one assumes this requirement, then one can arrive at Habermas's
specific conception of reasonable moral discourse by working out the
implications of his argumentation theory for the discursive testing of
unconditional moral obligations. What one gets, according to Habermas,
is a dialogical principle of universalization (U): “A [moral norm] is
valid just in case the foreseeable consequences and side-effects of
its general observance for the interests and value-orientations of
each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without
coercion” (i.e., in a sufficiently reasonable discourse) (1998a, 42;
trans. amended). The (U)-Principle assumes that valid moral rules or
norms allow for an egalitarian community of autonomous agents—as Kant
(1785, Ak. 433; also 431) put it, a “systematic union of different
rational beings” governed by “common laws.” From the standpoint of
argumentation theory, (U) seems to state the burden of proof that
structures an adequate process and procedure of justification.

The (U)-Principle has been a site of controversy among discourse
theorists, and not everyone considers it necessary for a discourse
ethics (Benhabib and Dallmayr 1990; Wellmer 1991; Gottschalk-Mazouz
2000). Habermas has argued that (U) can be deduced from statements
articulating the pragmatic implications of argumentative discourse
over moral norms (1990a, 86–93; 1998a, 39–45). More precisely, a
successful deduction probably depends on three assumptions: (D), a
statement of the semantics of unconditional norms, and an articulation
of the pragmatics of discourse. If we accept (D) and if we accept
Habermas's explication of the rhetorical presuppositions of the
discursive justification required by (D), then (U) would have to
follow as an implication of what is required for discursively
justifying norms with the specific content of moral norms, namely
obligations that bind persons in general and whose acceptance thus
affects each person's pursuit of interests and the good life.

Whether or not the argument for (U) goes through, Habermas's discourse
ethics depends on some very strong assumptions about the capacity of
persons for moral dialogue. Given that his discourse theory in
general, and thus (U) in particular, rests on counterfactual
idealizations, one might be tempted to regard (U) as a hypothetical
thought experiment, analogous to what we find in other neo-Kantian or
contractualist theories like those of John Rawls and T. M. Scanlon. To
some extent this is correct: to regard a moral norm as valid, one must
presume it would hold up in a fully inclusive and reasonable
discourse. But Habermas takes a further step, insisting that (U) is a
principle of real discourse: an individual's moral judgment counts as
fully reasonable only if it issues from participation in actual
discourse with all those affected. Moreover, (U) requires not simply
that one seek the input of others in forming one's conscience, but
that one gain their reasonable agreement.

To bring such strong idealizations down to earth, one must connect
them with conscientious judgment in everyday moral practice. One way
to do this is through an account of the appropriate application of
moral rules in concrete circumstances. Following Günther 1993,
Habermas (1993, 35–39) acknowledges the need for such an account. In
moral discourses of application, one must test alternative normative
interpretations of the particular situation for their acceptability
before the limited audience of those immediately involved, on the
assumption that one is applying valid general norms. But even at the
level of application, discourse cannot always include all the affected
parties (e.g., when the issue concerns the fate of a comatose
patient). Habermas's discourse ethics thus implies that for many, if
not most, of our moral rules and choices, the best we can achieve are
partial justifications: arguments that are not conclusively convincing
for all, but also are not conclusively defeated, in limited discourses
with interlocutors we regard as reasonable (cf. Rehg 2003, 2004).

Habermas (1990a, 116–94) has also attempted to give discourse ethics
some empirical foothold by looking to moral psychology and social
anthropology. The psychological line of argument draws on the theory
of communicative action to reconstruct theories of moral development
such as Lawrence Kohlberg's. According to Habermas, moral maturation
involves the growing ability to integrate the interpersonal
perspectives given with the system of personal pronouns; the endpoint
of that process coincides with the capacity to engage in the mutual
perspective-taking required by (U). The anthropological line of
argument focuses on identity formation, drawing on the social
psychology of G. H. Mead. In broad agreement with Hegelian models of
mutual recognition, Mead understands the individual's development of a
stable personal identity as inextricably bound up with processes of
socialization that depend on participation in relationships of mutual
recognition. Habermas (ibid., 195–215; 1990b) extends this analysis to
respond to feminist and communitarian criticisms of impartialist,
justice-based moralities. According to the standard critiques, such
moralities assume an implausibly atomistic view of the self and thus
fail to appreciate the moral import of particularity and cultural
substance: particular relationships between unique individuals, on the
one hand, and membership in particular cultural communities or
traditions, on the other. Mead's analysis shows that the critics are
on to an important point: if individuation depends on socialization,
then any anthropologically viable system of morality must protect not
only the integrity of individuals but also the web of relationships
and cultural forms of life on which individuals depend for their moral
development. Discourse ethics, Habermas claims, meets this two-fold
demand in virtue of the kind of mutual perspective-taking it requires.
If we examine (U), we see that it requires participants to attend to
the values and interests of each person as a unique individual;
conversely, each individual conditions her judgment about the moral
import of her values and interests on what all participants can freely
accept. Consequently, moral discourse is structured in a way that
links moral validity with solidaristic concern for both the concrete
individual and the morally formative communities on which her identity
depends.

These arguments are certainly ambitious, and they raise as many
questions as they answer. It is hardly surprising, then, that many
commentators have not been persuaded by discourse ethics as a
normative ethics. Rather, they regard it as plausible only in the
context of democratic politics, or as a model for the critical
evaluation of formal dialogues (e.g., environmental conflict
resolution, medical ethics committees, and the like). Other critics
have targeted discourse ethics at a metaethical level. In fact,
Habermas first unveiled his moral theory in answer to moral
non-cognitivism and skepticism (1990a, 43–115). In this context, (U)
explicates a moral epistemology: what it means for moral statements to
count as justified. If moral statements are justifiable, then they
have a cognitive character in the sense that they are correct or not
depending on how they fare in reasonable discourse. However, Habermas
proposes (U) not merely as articulating a consensus model of moral
justification, but as an explication of the meaning of rightness
itself. Unlike truth, the rightness of a moral norm does not consist
in reference to an independently existing realm of objects, but rather
in the worthiness of the norm for intersubjective recognition. Thus
rightness, unlike truth, means ideal warranted assertibility (2005b,
93; 2003a, chap. 6). However, discourse theorists remain divided over
the proper understanding of idealized consensus and its relation to
rightness.

Habermas's discourse theory of law and politics. The central task of
Habermas's democratic theory is to provide a normative account of
legitimate law. His deliberative democratic model rests on what is
perhaps the most complex argument in his philosophical corpus, found
in his Between Facts and Norms (1996b; German ed., 1992b; for
commentary, see Baynes 1995; Rosenfeld and Arato 1998; vom Schomberg
and Baynes 2004). Boiled down to its essentials, however, the argument
links his discourse theory with an analysis of the demands inherent on
modern legal systems, which Habermas understands in light of the
history of Western modernization. The analysis thus begins with a
functional explanation of the need for positive law in modern
societies. This analysis picks up on points he made in TCA (see sec.
3.1 above).

Societies are stable over the long run only if their members generally
perceive them as legitimate: as organized in accordance with what is
true, right, and good. In premodern Europe, legitimacy was grounded in
a shared religious worldview that penetrated all spheres of life. As
modernization engendered religious pluralism and functional
differentiation (autonomous market economies, bureaucratic
administrations, unconstrained scientific research), the potentials
for misunderstanding and conflict about the good and the right
increased—just as the shared background resources for the consensual
resolution of such conflicts decreased. When we consider this dynamic
simply from the standpoint of the (D)-principle, the prospects for
legitimacy in modern societies appear quite dim.

Sociologically, then, one can understand modern law as a functional
solution to the conflict potentials inherent in modernization. By
opening up legally defined spheres of individual freedom, modern law
reduces the burden of questions that require general (society-wide)
discursive consensus. Within these legal boundaries, individuals are
free to pursue their interests and happiness as they see fit, normally
through various modes of association, whether that pursuit is
primarily governed by modes of strategic action (as in economic
markets), by recognized authority or consensual discourse (e.g.,
within religious communities, in the sciences), or by bureaucratic
rationality (as in hierarchically organized voluntary enterprises).
Consequently, modern law is fundamentally concerned with the
definition, protection, and resolution of conflicts among, individual
freedoms in their various institutional and organizational contexts.

The demands on the legitimation of law change with this functional
realignment: to be legitimate, modern law must secure the private
autonomy of those subject to it. The legal guarantee of private
autonomy in turn presupposes an established legal code and a legally
defined status of equal citizenship in terms of actionable basic
rights that secure a space for individual freedom. However, such
rights are expressions of freedom only if citizens can also understand
themselves as the authors of the laws that interpret their rights—that
is, only if the laws that protect private autonomy also issue from
citizens' exercise of public autonomy as lawmakers acting through
elected representatives. Thus, the rights that define individual
freedom must also include rights of political participation. As
Habermas understands the relation between private and public autonomy,
each is “co-original” or “equiprimordial,” conceptually presupposing
the other in the sense that each can be fully realized only if the
other is fully realized. The exercise of public autonomy in its full
sense presupposes participants who understand themselves as
individually free (privately autonomous), which in turn presupposes
that they can shape their individual freedoms through the exercise of
public autonomy. This equiprimordial relationship, Habermas (1998a,
chap. 9) believes, enables his discourse theory to combine the best
insights of the civic republican and classical liberal traditions of
democracy, which found expression in Rousseau and Locke, respectively.

Habermas (1996b, chap. 3) understands these rights of liberty and
political participation as an abstract system of basic rights
generated by reflection on the nature of discursive legitimation
(articulated in the D-Principle) in contexts shaped by the functional
demands on modern law (or the “form” of positive law). Because these
rights are abstract, each polity must further interpret and flesh them
out for its particular historical circumstances, perhaps supplementing
them with further welfare and environmental rights. In any case, the
system of rights constitutes a minimum set of normative institutional
conditions for any legitimate modern political order. The system of
rights, in other words, articulates the normative framework for
constitutional democracies, within which further institutional
mechanisms such as legislatures and other branches of government must
operate.

The idea of public autonomy means that the legitimacy of ordinary
legislation must ultimately be traceable to robust processes of public
discourse that influence formal decisionmaking in legislative bodies.
Habermas summarizes this requirement in his democratic principle of
legitimacy: “only those statutes may claim legitimacy that can meet
with the assent of all citizens in a discursive process of legislation
that in turn has been legally constituted” (1996b, 110). As he goes on
to explain, this principle articulates the core requirement for
“externally” institutionalizing the different types of practical
discourse that are relevant for the justification of particular laws.
Decisions about laws typically involve a combination of validity
claims: not only truth claims about the likely consequences of
different legal options, but also claims about their moral rightness
(or justice), claims about the authenticity of different options in
light of the polity's shared values and history, and pragmatic claims
about which option is feasible or more efficient. Legitimate laws must
pass the different types of discursive tests that come with each of
these validity claims. Habermas also recognizes that many issues
involve conflicts among particular interests that cannot be reconciled
by discursive agreement on validity but only through fair bargaining
processes.

This strong orientation toward cognitive validity qualifies Habermas's
version of deliberative democracy as an “epistemic” theory. This puts
his democratic principle in a rather puzzling position. On the one
hand, it represents a specification of the discourse principle for a
particular kind of discourse (legal-political discourse). This makes
it analogous to the moral principle (U), which specifies (D) for moral
discourse. As a specific principle of reasonable discourse, the
democratic principle seems to have the character of an idealizing
presupposition insofar as it presumes the possibility of consensual
decisionmaking in politics. For Habermas, reasonable political
discourse must at least begin with the supposition that legal
questions admit in principle of single right answers (1996c, 1491–95),
or at least a set of discursively valid answers on which a fair
compromise, acceptable to all parties, is possible. This highly
cognitive, consensualist presumption has drawn fire even from
sympathetic commentators (Bohman 1996; McCarthy 1998).

On the other hand, the democratic principle lies at a different level
from principles like (U), as Habermas himself emphasizes (1996b, 110).
The latter specify (D) for a single type of practical discourse, in
view of internal cognitive demands on justification, whereas the
former pulls together all the forms of practical discourse and sets
forth conditions on their external institutionalization. From this
perspective, the democratic principle acts as a bridge that links the
cognitive aspects of political discourse (as a combination of the
different types of idealized discourse) with the demands of
institutional realization in complex societies. As such, the
democratic principle should refer not to consensus, but rather to
something like a warranted presumption of reasonableness. In fact, in
a number of places Habermas describes democratic legitimacy in just
such terms, which we might paraphrase as follows: citizens may regard
their laws as legitimate insofar as the democratic process, as it is
institutionally organized and conducted, warrants the presumption that
outcomes are reasonable products of a sufficiently inclusive
deliberative process of opinion- and will-formation (2005b, 107-08).
The presumption of reasonable outcomes thus rests not so much on the
individual capacities of citizens to act like the participants of
ideal discourse, but rather on the aggregate reasonableness of a
“subjectless communication” that emerges as the collective result of
discursive structures—the formal and informal modes of organizing
discussion (1996b, 184–86, 301, 341). This means that democracy is
“decentered,” no longer fully under control of its own conditions and
no longer based on a congruent subject of self-legislating discourse.

In light of the above ambiguity in the status of (D), however, one
might want to take a more pragmatic approach to democratic
deliberation. Such an approach (e.g., Bohman 1996; McCarthy 1998)
understands deliberation as less a matter of settling disputes over
the cognitive validity of competing proposals than a matter of
developing legal frameworks within which citizens can continue to
cooperate despite disagreements about what is right or good.
3.5 Habermas's Cosmopolitanism

Habermas's discourse theory also has implications for international
modes of deliberation—hence for the debate about a potential
cosmopolitan political order. To understand his position in this
debate, it helps to sketch a typology of the main theories. The
current discussion moves along four main axes: political or social,
institutional or noninstitutional, democratic or nondemocratic, and
transnational or cosmopolitan. Theories are informed by background
assumptions about the scope of cosmopolitanism: whether it is moral to
the extent that it is concerned with individuals and their life
opportunities, social to the extent that it makes associations and
institutions central, or political to the extent that it focuses on
specifically legal and political institutions, including citizenship.
Habermas's position in this debate is moderate. It is not minimal in
the sense of Rawls's law of peoples, which denies the need for any
strong international legal or political order, much less a democratic
one. Nor is it a strongly democratic position, such as David Held's
version of cosmopolitan order. However, both Held and Habermas share a
common emphasis on the emergence of international public law as
central to a just global political order.

In his essay “Kant's Idea of Perpetual Peace: At Two Hundred Years'
Historical Remove” (1998a, chap. 7; German ed., 1996a, chap. 7),
Habermas was optimistic about the prospects for a global political
order as the continuation of the form of democracy based on human
rights typical of nation states. 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 themselves. The normative core of this conception of
democracy lies in the conception of freedom articulated in the third
condition: that the subject of legal constraints is free precisely in
being the author of the laws. Earlier we introduced Habermas's
argument for “decentering” democracy under the conditions of pluralism
and complexity. If this applies to the modern state, then it would
seem that cosmopolitan democracy would take this trend even further.
Yet, when discussing “postnational” legitimacy, Habermas clearly makes
self-determination by a singular demos the fundamental normative core
of the democratic ideal.

For Held (1995), cosmopolitan democracy is clearly continuous with
democracy, at least in form, as it is realized within states. Not only
does Held show how international society is already thickly
institutionalized well beyond the systems of negotiation that Habermas
makes central, he further recognizes that “individuals increasingly
have complex and multilayered identities, corresponding to the
globalization of economic forces and the reconfiguration of political
power.” Such potentially overlapping identities provide the basis for
participation in global civil society, in nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), and in other transnational civil associations,
movements, and agencies that create opportunities for political
participation at the global level. Held's approach thus has three
enormous advantages: an emphasis on a variety of institutions; a
multiplicity of levels and sites for common democratic activity; and a
focus on the need for organized political actors in international
civil society to play an important role in a system of global
democracy. For all these advantages, the self-legislating demos
reappears in Held's explicitly Lockean insistence that “the artificial
person at the center of the modern state must be reconceived in terms
of cosmopolitan public law.” In order to reconstitute the community as
sovereign, Held argues that the demoi must submit to the will of the
global demos: “cosmopolitan law demands the subordination of regional,
national and local sovereignties to an overarching legal framework.”

Contrary to his earlier essay on Kant's Perpetual Peace, Habermas has
now pulled back from Held's strong conception of cosmopolitanism. In
The Postnational Constellation (2001a; German ed., 1998c) and more
recent essays on the European Union, Habermas seeks to accommodate a
wider institutional pluralism. Still, he cannot have it both ways.
When considering various disaggregated and distributed forms of
transnational political order, he describes them in nondemocratic
terms, as a “negotiating system” governed by fair bargaining. This is
because he clearly, and indeed surprisingly, makes self-determination
through legislation the deciding criterion of democracy. Consequently,
at the transnational level, the fundamental form of political activity
is negotiation among democracies. This demos is at best a civic,
rather than political, transnational order. Nonetheless, Habermas
links the possibility of a “postnational democracy” to a shared and
therefore particular political identity, without which, he contends,
we are left with mere “moral” rather than “civic” solidarity.
According to Habermas, even if such a political community is based on
the universal principles of a democratic constitution, “it still forms
a collective identity, in the sense that it interprets and realizes
these principles in light of its own history and in the context of its
own particular form of life” (2001a, 117, 107). Without a common
ethical basis, institutions beyond the state must look to a “less
demanding basis of legitimacy in the organizational forms of an
international negotiation system,” the deliberative processes of which
will be accessible to various publics and to organizations in
international civil society (ibid., 109).

More recently, he argues that regulatory political institutions at the
global level could be effective only if they take on features of
governance without government, even if human rights as juridical
statuses must be constitutionalized in the international system (2004,
130–31). As in the case of Allen Buchanan's minimalism, this less
demanding standard of legitimacy does not include the capacity to
deliberate about the terms governing the political authority of the
negotiation system itself. This position is transnational, but
ultimately nondemocratic, primarily because it restricts its overly
robust deliberative democracy to the level of the nation state. The
stronger criteria for democracy are not applied outside the nation
state, where governance is only indirectly democratic and left to
negotiations and policy networks. Furthermore, the commitment to human
rights as legal statuses pushes Habermas in the direction of Held's
fundamentally legal form of political cosmopolitanism. At the moment,
Habermas's view of cosmopolitan politics is not yet fully stable. But
it is clear that he thinks that a cosmopolitan order must be political
(and not merely juridical); institutional (and not merely organized
informally or by policy networks); transnational (to the extent that
it would be like the European Union, an order of political and legal
orders); and in some sense democratic or at least subject to
democratic norms. However, in order for him to fully adopt this last
characteristic of the international system, he will have to rethink
his conception of democracy as self-legislation. If he does not do so,
it seems impossible to fit democracy onto a transnational rather than
fully Kantian cosmopolitan order.
4. The Dialogue between Naturalism and Religion

On the topic of religion, Habermas has taken a nuanced position that
continues to develop. In his Theory of Communicative Action, he
treated religion primarily from a sociological perspective, as an
archaic mode of social integration. Since then, however, he has
explored the role of religion in politics, on the one hand, and the
relationships between religious and philosophical modes of discourse,
on the other.

As a philosopher, Habermas has described his approach as a
“methodological atheism,” by which he means a kind of experiment in
radical demythologization whose outcome remains open. Taking this
stance does not make him hostile or dismissive of faith and
theological reflection; indeed, he grants that “indispensable
potentials for meaning are preserved in religious language”—potentials
that, at least so far, have not been fully reduced to philosophical
and secular reasons (2002, 77, 162). At the same time, Habermas
insists on the difference between theological and philosophical modes
of discourse: as a reflection on faith, theology must not renounce its
basis in religious experience and ritual. Consequently, he resists
apologetic attempts to generate religious belief from philosophical
premises. Rather, philosophers must satisfy themselves with the
“transcendence from within” given with the context-transcending force
of claims to truth and moral rightness.

Habermas has further developed his views on the relation between
philosophy and faith in his dialogue with Cardinal Ratzinger (who
would become Pope Benedict XVI)(2006b; German ed., 2005a). There he
notes how much Western philosophy owes to its Christian heritage,
which philosophers assimilated by developing ideas of “responsibility,
autonomy and justification; history and remembering; new beginning,
innovation, and return; alienation, internalization, and incarnation;
individuality and community” (2006b, 44; trans. amended). The
Christian idea of human beings as created in the image of God has been
especially important for Western moral-political theory, which
translated the religious idea into the secular view of persons as
equal in dignity and deserving unconditional respect (ibid., 45). This
assimilation of Christian ideas does not gut their substance, however.
In fact, religious communities still harbor potentials of meaning from
which philosophy can learn—potentials that have “been lost elsewhere
and that cannot be restored by the professional knowledge of experts
alone” (ibid., 43). As examples, he refers to the “differentiated
possibilities of expression” and “sensitivities” regarding “lives that
have gone astray, societal pathologies, the failure of individual life
projects, and the deformation of misbegotten human relationships”
(ibid., trans. amended). In acknowledging that religious modes of
expression can harbor an integral cognitive content that is not
exhausted by secular translations, Habermas seems to have located the
boundaries of his methodological experiment in demythologization. He
thus calls for a dialogue in which secular and religious forms of
thought mutually inform and learn from each other.

This broad point on the relation between religious and secular modes
of thought flows directly into the position Habermas takes in his
“Religion in the Public Sphere“ regarding the relation between
religion and public reasons (2006a; German ed., 2005b, chap. 5). At
the center of contention are the duties of believing citizens to
translate their religiously based claims into secular, publicly
accessible reasons. Habermas stakes out his position between John
Rawls and Robert Audi, on the one side, and Paul Weithmann and
Nicholas Wolterstorff, on the other.

Audi places the heaviest burden on believers, requiring them to
support only those laws for which they have sufficient public reasons;
each citizen thus has a duty to translate religiously based arguments
into secular ones. In his final statement on this issue, Rawls (1997)
presents a “wide view” of public reason, according to which citizens
may introduce reasons from reasonable comprehensive doctrines (which
can include religious views), without translation, at any time into
public discourse about constitutional essentials, provided that at
some point in the future these reasons are translated into generally
accessible public arguments. For Habermas, Audi and Rawls
underestimate the existential force of religious belief—how such
belief can, at least for some believers, provide the only sufficient
basis for their political views, even when public reasons might also
be taken as supporting the views in question. The demand that
believers translate their comprehensive religious views into secular
justifications imposes undue burdens on believers of this sort. The
demand for translation, rather, pertains only to politicians and
public officials with institutional power to make, apply, and execute
the law.

As Habermas reads them, Weithmann and Wolterstorff take the opposite
line from Rawls and Audi, opening up public discourse to untranslated
religious arguments. Weithmann requires believers to argue for their
positions as good for everyone, but he allows them to frame such
arguments within their religiously based conception of justice.
Wolterstorff removes even this mild constraint. Both thinkers do not
impose any institutional filter: not only in the public sphere but
also in the halls of power, religious reasons can suffice to justify
coercive legal and administrative decisions. This move, Habermas
maintains, undoes the neutrality principle that undergirds modern
constitutional democracy, with its separation of church and state: the
idea that “all enforceable political decisions must be formulated in a
language that is equally accessible to all citizens, and it must be
possible to justify them in this language as well” (2006a, 12).
Indeed, Wolterstorff seems to reject a key idea behind democratic
legitimation, namely the presumption that procedures and decisions
should operate within a background framework of principles acceptable
to all citizens. Consequently, it is unclear how a democracy should
maintain its legitimacy and avoid devolving into an endless strife of
factions simply vying for power.

In the background of these debates lay contention over the burdens of
citizenship. Believers might object that Habermas still places an
asymmetric burden on them. After all, they must eventually, at the
institutional level, shift over to secular modes of justification,
whereas non-believers need not carry out the same kind of move toward
religious justification. In response, Habermas has offered the
hypothesis that both believers and non-believers are involved in a
complementary learning process in which each side can learn from the
other. As a cooperative learning process, translation makes demands on
both sides: the believer must seek publicly accessible arguments,
whereas the non-believer must approach religion as a potential source
of meaning, as harboring truths about human existence that are
relevant for all.

In closing, we suggest three possible extensions to Habermas's reply
to believers. First, one might note that in the West at least,
Christians are not so burdened as one might think. After all, some of
the most important secular ideas that inform constitutional
democracy—ideas of inalienable individual rights, liberty, and the
like—partly originated in Christianity. Second, one might point out
that a reverse duty of translation on non-believers would involve a
far heavier burden than that on believers, particularly in light of
the first point. This is because some religious reasons, though they
might have a surface intelligibility as propositions to non-believers,
cannot be adequately appreciated or weighed apart from prolonged
experience of living the faith. Although it remains important for
non-believers to learn from believers, one should probably expect
believers to have an epistemic advantage in the translation process,
that is, the process of determining whether or not a given secular
content adequately renders a religiously based reason. So if believers
have the greater burden, then that makes sense: believers are actually
in a better position to make the translation.

One might object that the second point presupposes an asymmetry
between public secular reasons, to which both sides have access in
principle, and religious reasons, to which only believers have initial
and direct access. However, that objection supports Habermas's
position, and so leads into the third extension of his view. The
objection calls into question the assumption that everyone should in
principle have equal access to secular reason. Once we question that
assumption, it is unclear why secular reasons should have a privileged
place in political discourse. However, to reject the public position
of secular reasons, at least in a pluralistic polity, is to say there
is no public reason. Rather, each citizen's perspective, religious or
not, is comprehensive and somewhat opaque to others. In that case,
however, every citizen now faces burdens of translation that she can
shoulder only with the interlocutor's assistance. So the believer is
not relieved of translation. Instead, everyone is now burdened by
translation. To be sure, one might also remove the asymmetry between
access to secular and religious reason by making each sort of
discourse equally accessible to all in principle. But that view hardly
does justice to the existential import of religious experience, and so
should be rejected by believers.
Bibliography
Cited Works by Habermas

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von Vorlesungen aus dem Jahre 1935. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
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* 1954. Das Absolute und das Geschichte. Von der Zwiespältigkeit
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* 1962. Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Darmstadt: Luchterhand.
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* 1967. Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften. Philosophische
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* 1968b. Erkenntnis und Interesse. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
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* 1969. Protestbewegung und Hochschulreform. Frankfurt am Main:
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* 1970. Toward a Rational Society, J. J. Shapiro (trans.). Boston:
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* 1971a. Theorie und Praxis. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. [English, 1973b]
* 1971b. Knowledge and Human Interests. J. J. Shapiro (trans.).
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* 1971/2001. Reflections on the linguistic foundations of
sociology: The Christian Gauss Lectures (Princeton University,
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* 1973a. Wahrheitstheorien. In H. Fahrenbach (ed.), Wirklichkeit
und Reflexion. Pfüllingen: Neske. 211–265. Reprint: 1984b, chap. 2.
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* 1973c. Nachwort. Appended to subsequent editions of Habermas,
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* 1973d. A postscript to Knowledge and Human Interests. Philosophy
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* 1973e. Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus. Frankfurt am
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