Jurgen Habermas and Communicative Action - Essay Example

Three decades ago, I, Jurgen Habermas hoped to design a systematic and overtly sociological foundation of my major concerns, ly rationality, social action and social reproduction, within my own framework of communication. In this paper I will take a number of short-cuts through a network of intricacies and attempt, as basically as possible, to summarize the early groundwork of my theory of communicative competence as well as of communicative action. This will not seem logical unless my primary objective is kept clearly in mind. I intend to develop a framework that will demonstrate how rationality as well as irrationality is evident in normal social interaction, specifically in everyday communication between speaking and acting subjects. The concerns that I have in my mind that I am attempting to answer are questions such as how is rationality instead made evident or suppressed in normal human communication? Where should we look for the more particular types of speech and action that could direct this otherwise unbelievably theoretical and worthless philosophical quest towards sociological certainties? In my book entitled Knowledge and Human Interest and in my early article I referred to as ‘systematically distorted communication’ which became tremendously influential in the intellectual community, I look at my philosophical references, to hermeneutics, to other assumptions on language and, and most relevantly in this context, to the works of the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud and to the psychoanalytic rapport between specialists and patient, for the essential component of my framework (Pusey 1993). I have discovered that the therapeutic relationship is apparently no normal human interaction. Undoubtedly, it is a focused form of communication; and thus far it is performed in and through typical language and carried on in a manner that specifies universal features and possibilities of normal communication among speaking and acting subjects. When it thrived, the psychoanalytic connection does generate for the patient a fresh self-determination. As thought and expression are brought to stand on thus far suppressed experience the patient attains a brand new independence, a kind of liberation, and an enriched measure of rational discipline over his or her behavior and interactions. The treatment of Freud is another model of my exceptionally discerning application of classical thinkers. I basically assume what I want and integrate it into my own context in manners that may occasionally entirely dominate the larger objectives of the original thinker. In this instance I have not the least enthusiasm in the theory of instincts by Freud, in the theory of sexuality or, definitely, in any feature of Freud’s exceptionally positivistic social biology. My motivation and inspiration originates completely from the development and mechanism of the therapeutic relationship (ibid, 88). In this relationship we stumble upon the origin of a number of the decisive components of my recent theory of communicative action. It is relevant to observe that there are actually two distinct claims in my theory of communicative action. To argue that a specific assumption is insufficient for an account of an observable fact is not yet to assert anything regarding which assumption might clarify the indicated phenomenon. A constructive explanation is as well necessary. I shall focus my labors on arguing that even a preliminary and an incomplete design of my communicative action assumption is adequate to illustrate the insufficiency of strategic reductionism. Obviously, I am not merely seeking uniformity between strategic and communicative action, I am as well claiming on the precedence of the latter. This claim is founded on my conviction that unless such precedence can be shown, strategic reductionism might become at any rate functionally similar with communicative action. Regardless, if the precedent assumption could be supported, my overall argument would be established even more persuading. Normally speaking, I should not be interpreted as someone who claims that individual actors should in every situation take on the communicative standpoint since taking the strategic one in some way always takes for granted the former. Rather, people should understand my premise for the theoretical predominance of communicative action as advancing my objective to present a social theory that does not, and by no mean, depend entirely on the concept of strategic action. In other words, I should be interpreted as someone who exerts great efforts to instigate a fresh theory of social action and society, and who initiates his effort through acknowledging the present dominance of instrumental assumptions. In this case, I am in a circumstance comparable to Rawls, who determined utilitarianism as a dominant aim. If I can show the imperfection of the notion of action applied in such assumptions, in addition to the necessity of bolstering it with communicative action, I am then in a status to revolutionize the face of social theory. I believe that if my theory of communicative action is to be impartially convincing, then the premises of communication would have to be demonstrated as generally convincing, in a particular logic. And even though I never actually acknowledge that such a condition is improbable to accomplish, I do not admit that it would be extremely difficult to perform for someone like me who is functioning devoid of metaphysical support and is as well no longer convinced that an accurate transcendental-realistic program, asserting to present decisive grounds, can be actually performed (Swindal 1999). Do I mean then that I cannot prove the general validity of the premises in a particular sense? Are they then generally valid in an unparticular sense? In spite how strange this statement sounds, it is I reflect, precisely what I mean. Ultimately, the core of my moral theory is a firmly grounded cognitive-centered claim. Moral accounts are open to rational assessment and are not just accounts of inclination or decisions in which there are no supplementary foundation. In my theory of communicative action, I begin my defense of cognitive-centeredness with an evaluation of daily speech and the meanings people relate to such statements as ‘Y is rational’ or ‘X, Y, Z are acting rationally’ (Chambers 1996, 108). I argue that what people imply when they mention something is rational is that it may be supported by reasons. When there seems to be no valid reason for a behavior or action or no valid reason to assume a proposition to be true people say that the individual is not acting sensibly or that the proposition is by no means rational. Moreover, individuals whose actions, values, beliefs and statements seem to be supported by valid reasons are the individuals whom people normally portray as being rational. References Chambers, Simone. Reasonable Democracy: Jurgen Habermas and the Politics of Discourse. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Pusey, Michael. Jurgen Habermas. London: Routledge , 1993. Swindal, James. Reflection Revisited: Jurgen Habermass Discursive Theory of Truth. New York: Fordham University Press, 1999. Read More