Habermas, Jurgen. MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND COMMUNICATIVE ACTION. Trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Introduction by Thomas McCarthy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995.

BIOGRAPHIC AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC
Habermas was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt when the book appeared. He also wrote The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction by Thomas McCarthy, vii

Philosophy as Stand-In and Interpreter, 1

Reconstruction and Interpretation in the Social Sciences, 21

Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification, 43

Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 116

Morality and Ethical Life: Does Hegel's Critique of Kant Apply to Discourse Ethics? 195

Index, 217

SELECTED SUMMARY NOTES ON THE TEXT

INTRODUCTION, by Thomas McCarthy (pp.vii-xiii)

Habermas's prose, for us, represents something like the old medicine, paregoric: it tasted terrible and therefore was good for you. (Paregoric was opium-based and therefore, also, was potentially a danger to you.) Because of the hard and forbidding quality of most of his paragraphs (now and then a blessed lucidity shines through, especially when he summarizes Kohlberg's empirical psychology), Habermas benefits mightily from the aid provided in the Introduction by McCarthy. (At least we benefit.) We summarize McCarthy's few pages with some detail because they seem so clear, in contrast to the Habermasian hardness that follows.

McCarthy, first of all, portrays Habermas as someone thinking about how to live in a MODERN world that has lost "value-imbued cosmologies" and that has seen the "disintegration of sacred canopies" [great phrase].(vii) McCarthy puts it this way for Habermas:

"To suppose that all of the questions of the good life dealt with under the rubric of classical ethics--questions of happiness and virtue, character and ethos, community and tradition--could be answered once and for all, and by philosophers, is no longer plausible." (vii)

Habermas accepts that modernity involves the inescapable pluralism of "particular lifeworlds." (viii) He also accepts that the pursuit of philosophy can never lead to a general answer to the question, "How should I (we) live?" (viii). Philosophers thus enjoy no superior perspective with a vantage point on the whole.

At that point, we observe that postmodernists stop and abandon any further effort to find a universal or even universal-seeming concept of the right or the just. But McCarthy shows how Habermas goes forward in the face of the limitation of modernism. We recall the idea, derived from Dupre', that modernity happened, is real, and is irreversible. Habermas seems to accept that view of the situation. Within that situation, he presses onward, searching for something that will approach the universal. As McCarthy describes it, we envision a kind of last-gasp effort to avoid the worst pitfalls of modernist pluralism and its postmodern consequences.

While Habermas agrees that philosophers can no longer pretend to single out a privileged way of life, he insists that it is possible to find "a general theory of a much narrower sort, namely a theory of justice." (viii)

McCarthy says that H's aim is "to reconstruct the moral point of view as the perspective from which competing normative claims can be fairly and impartially adjudicated." (viii) This type of reconstruction, in H's view, is UNIVERSAL in import. McCarthy says that it is "geared to what everyone could rationally will to be a norm binding on everyone alike." (viii) And--this is essential--it comes not through a Kantian categorical imperative but through "reasoned argument among those subject to the norm in question." (viii) That is H's "communicative action."

The process of reasoned argument goes beyond finding contractual agreement. It features "moral agents trying to put themselves in each other's shoes." (viii) This is a fundamental Habermasian requirement:

"Habermas's discourse model, by requiring that perspective-taking be general and reciprocal, builds the moment of empathy into the procedure of coming to a reasoned agreement: each must put him-/ or herself into the place of everyone else in discussing whether a proposed norm is fair at all." (viii/ix)

McCarthy declares that "Habermas is not trying to renew transcendental philosophy." (ix) He has been misinterpreted to that effect, says McCarthy. McCarthy then applauds the way H relates conceptual issues of moral judgment (discourse ethics) to empirical research in social psychology, with special reference to Lawrence Kohlberg's findings on moral and interpersonal development. (ix)

McCarthy takes us to the heart of H's theory of discourse ethics and communicative action by saying that H "hopes to ground a conception of justice" in something more universal than the "'settled convictions' of our political cultures." (ix) That is, he hopes to get beyond the boundaries set by typical postmodern political theory, explicated by Honi Ferm Haber. McCarthy's interpretation here takes H into territory forbidden by typical postmodern theory: "the links he forges to action theory are crucial [because] they are meant to show that our basic moral intuitions spring/ from something deeper and more universal than contingent features of our tradition." (ix-x)

Beyond the socialization process, McCarthy says, H sees an "abstract core" of moral intuitions. This core "is more than culture-specific." (x) [This is surely a problem for critics of H such as Barbara Herrnstein Smith]

McCarthy next differentiates H from neo-Aristotelians and shows how his discourse ethics modifies the Kantian approach of the categorical imperative. Discourse ethics "confines itself to the limited task of reconstructing the moral point of view, leaving all concrete moral and ethical judgments to participants themselves." (xi) However, H locates "the common core of morality in the normative presuppositions of communicative interaction." This develops a "thoroughly intersubjectivist interpretation of the moral point of view: practical discourse as a reflective continuation of communicative interaction preserves that common core." The key to this notion, as McCarthy reports it, is to see the egocentric subject as derived from rather than preceding social integration. (xi)

McCarthy ends by saying that H's reconceptualization of reasoned agreement attempts "to capture at least the structural aspects of the common good." (xi)

This structure depends, finally, in H's view, on a notion of SOLIDARITY that goes beyond traditional notions of solidarity. In traditional notions, the solidarity of a collectivity delimits it ethnocentrically and isolates it from other groups with different dimensions of solidarity. H sees SOLIDARITY as the other side of justice, far more extensive than the traditional sort. Says Habermas, in the last words of the introduction: "Justice conceived in postconventional terms [a Kohlbergian reference] can converge with solidarity, as its other side, only when solidarity has been transformed in the light of the idea of a general, discursive formation of will." [our emphasis]

McCarthy joins the issue between Habermas and his postmodernist critics. He does this in a footnote to what he says in the following passage of his introduction:

"Concern for the common good is reflected in the requirement of general and reciprocal perspective taking: in seeking mutual agreement, each attempts to get beyond an egocentric viewpoint by taking into account the interests of others and giving them equal weight to his or her own."

McCarthy's slam at the postmodernist critics comes in his footnote, which reads in full: "Postmodernist critiques of moral universalism too often simply ignore the fact that it is precisely notions of fairness, impartiality, respect for the integrity and dignity of the individual, and the like that undergird respectful tolerance of difference by placing limits on egocentrism. Typically, such notions are simply taken for granted in anti-universalist invocations of otherness and difference--which are, it evidently goes without saying, to be respected, not obliterated."

Barbara Herrnstein Smith's title, Belief & Resistance, reflects her anti-universalist position. She emphasizes throughout, in her argument against Habermas, that argumentation is dependent upon emotion-laden processes named in her title. At the same time, she does pretty much what McCarthy says people like her will do: she takes for granted the notions of fairness, impartiality and the like. We have the sense that she might argue less with H and seek more diligently for the common ground that they share. Her beef with him is that he kind of wants it both ways. Yes, he agrees the modernism has destroyed value-imbued cosmologies and sacred canopies. Fine, says BHS; but then H goes on to pump up certain notions with universal air that simply does not come from a reliable source. There are moments in our reading of their conflict that remind us of the medieval Scholastics in THEIR arguments over universals. Perhaps, as Dupre' reminds us, they are, indeed, engaged still in the same or a very similar battle after all these centuries. The problems of modernity reach far deeper than we sometimes think.

DISCOURSE ETHICS: NOTES ON A PROGRAM OF PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION (pp.43-115)

II The Principle of Universalization as a Rule of Argumentation (pp.57-76)

3 Assertoric and normative claims to validity in communicative action (pp.57-62)

Here Habermas compares and contrasts two kinds of statements about the world. First he creates an equation to show the similar relationships found in (a) "assertoric" statements about the facts of the natural world and (b) normative statements about the ordering of human relationships. The equation is as follows:

[assertoric statements used in constative speech acts] are to [facts]
AS
[normative statements used in regulative speech acts] are to [legitimately ordered interpersonal relations]

This leads to a second comparison that shows the difference between statements of fact about nature (assertoric statements) and normative statements. It is as follows:

(a) The truth of propositions signifies (b) states of affairs in nature
WHEREAS
(a) Rightness of actions signifies (b) observance of norms

The second formulation leads us to think about what validates a normative statement as opposed to a factual statement.

Habermas is trying to find the basis for moral behavior. This leads him to the above exercise. WHAT IS? On the other hand, WHAT OUGHT TO BE? He finds resemblances in the responses to these questions. That is, statements of fact suggest real states of affairs in the world, just as normative statements suggest a rightly ordered human society. However, he also finds critical differences.

The difference lies in the differing relationship that Habermas finds between statements about (a) nature and (b) human society. Statements about nature (that is, statements about factual truth) have no intrinsic (necessary) link to the natural world. Nature exists independent of our statements about it. On the other hand, the human social world and our normative statements are intrinsically (necessarily) linked. (p. 61)

Habermas says that normative statements depend for validity on their being continually ACTED upon in interpersonal relationships. "Normative claims to validity, then, mediate a mutual dependence of language and the social world that does not exist for the relation of language to the objective world." (p. 61)

[This of course assumes that the "social world" and the "objective world" are distinct and separate. That is an ontological issue and we return to it below.]

Habermas proceeds by saying that normative validity is AMBIGUOUS. In this it differs from the validity of truth statements about the objective world. That is because normative validity depends upon human social recognition and approval, whereas truth statements about the objective world do not. (p. 61) Such dependence is not essential between truth propositions and the existing state of affairs in nature. He says that social force (sanctions) as well as rational insight are involved in validating norms. [We could add habit, custom, conformity.] (p.62)

[[The distinction he makes in this section helps us to think about the severe criticism that postmodernists do not "believe in" an objectively real world. Alan Sokal is the chief voice of this criticism in the PROGRAMME. Do (at least some) postmodernists reject an objective nature as real outside of human formulations of it? Sokal says they do. Habermas's distinction above might offer postmodernists a way of defending against such a charge. He says the following about the truth of statements about the objective world: "There is no inner connection between the existence of states of affairs and the expectation, held by a certain group of people, that such statements can be justified." (p.62) The feelings of people are not essential to this connection between nature and factual statements about it. On the other hand, they ARE essential in normative statements. They require human action in order to be validated. If defensive postmodernists would accept Habermas's distinction, they would be absolved of the Sokal charge.]]

[[We add, however, that Habermas's distinction requires that human social actions be qualitatively different from states of nature. It removes human behavior from the rest of nature. This makes it an "ideal" or "transcendental" condition. This creates a new problem. The distinction seems to say that human language connects to two different worlds in fundamentally different ways. It forces us to ask whether such a division of linguistic labor is possible, coming as it does from the same human organism.]]

MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND COMMUNICATIVE ACTION (pp.116-194)

We find the very heart of Habermas's theory of communicative action when he states "the moral principle grounded in discourse ethics." The KEY is in the symbol he uses to display the principle: (U). (U) looks like "universal." It is that that sets H at odds with postmodernists. Here is his formulation of (U): "(U) For a norm to be valid, the consequences and side effects that its general observance can be expected to have for the satisfaction of the particular interests of each person affected must be such that all affected can accept them freely." (p.120)

H interestingly shows how the moral principle in discourse ethics (U) takes into account three basic assumptions (which perpetuate the tradition of Kant, he says):

(U) thus established H's universalization principle. But he has to present a second principle in order to make it go. That second principle is expressed as (D). YOU GOTTA TALK if you are going to get to (U)! (D), that is, he postulates as follows: "Every valid norm would meet with the approval of all concerned if they could take part in a practical discourse." (p.121)

With (U) and (D) firmly declared, then, Habermas plants his theory "beyond the perspective of a particular culture." (p. 116) And he feels that he bases it "on a transcendental-pragmatic [sic] demonstration of universal and necessary presuppositions of argumentation." (p. 116)

It is those presuppositions that occupy much of his attention in this essay. H locates (U) in "the communicative presuppositions of argumentation." (p.130) What are those presuppositions? "Argumentation is a reflective form of communicative action and the structures of action oriented toward reaching understanding ALWAYS ALREADY [our emphasis] presuppose those very relationships of reciprocity and mutual recognition around which all moral ideas revolve in everyday life no less than in philosophical ethics." (p. 130)

H investigates the interdependence of (his) moral philosophy with a developmental psychology of moral consciousness. He chooses the theory of the development of moral consciousness advanced by Lawrence Kohlberg as his example. (His reference is L. Kohlberg, Essays on Moral Development (San Francisco, 1981.) He supplements this with an investigation of R. Selman's empirical research into perspective taking by participants and observers. The three sections in which he does this are as follows:

I. The Fundamental Philosophical Assumptions of Kohlberg's Theory (119-133)
II. The Perspective Structure of Action Oriented toward Reaching Understanding (133-141)
III. The Integration of Participant and Observer Perspectives and the Restructuring of Preconventional Types of Action (141-156)

H undertakes this investigation because he believes that an empirical, reconstructive, nonfoundationalist science can help the moral philosopher. It can reconstruct for him the "necessary presuppositions under which subjects capable of speech and action reach understanding about something in the world." (119) And by becoming the cooperative partner, developmental psychology gives moral philosophy "a certain naivete and a new self-confidence in its cooperative relationship with the reconstructive sciences." (119) At the same time, the partnership reveals that developmental psychology, however empirical and nonfoundational, "is built on philosophical assumptions." (119)

After this lengthy investigation from developmental psychology, H explains what he gets from it to support his (non-empirical) theory of communicative action. The essential insight from Kohlberg and Selman is the following: Human beings develop morally in stages as they mature, and the step from stage 1 to stage 6 is learning. Persons at a more advanced stage reject the failed cognitive structures of the previous stage and reorganize their cognitive structure creatively in a new way. Stage 1 is that of punishment and obedience, fitting for the child. The developing human being moves through to stage 5 and 6, where moral decisions "are generated from rights, values or principles that are (or could be) agreeable to all individuals composing or creating a sociey designed to have fair and beneficial practices." (124) The final stage 6 prizes "universal ethical principles" as the guide to right and wrong. (124)

Drawing on his social science partners, H supports his theory of communicative action. Their research assures him that humans develop into participants in argumentation. They move away from argument over the specific "lifeworld" of their particular custom and culture. They develop into arguers over abstract principles. This is ESSENTIAL for H because he posits argumentation as the central component in his theory of communicative action: unlike Kant, he locates his universal within the human act of arguing over principles that the participants can apprehend and defend or support. Here is his central idea, as he grounds it in the compatible theory of learning found in Kohlberg and Selman:

"What happens in argumentation is that the success-orientation of competitors is assimilated into a form of communication in which action oriented toward reaching understanding is continued by other means. In argumentation, proponents and opponents engage in a competition with arguments in order to convince one another....This dialectical role structure makes forms of disputation available for a cooperative search for truth....In discourse what is called the force of the better argument is wholly unforced. Here convictions change internally via a process of ratiionally motivated attitude change." (p.160)

For H, his theory is absolutely dependent on the power of communicative action among individual humans. He believes it has that power because, as empirical research shows him, communicative action from the start of the learning process is in the inescapably social nature of human language. Morality, at various stages of abstraction, is "built into" social beings as such. Argumentation in discourse is the end of an evolutionary development of an understanding of justice; it starts in the particular "lifeworld" (conventional, habitual, concrete, self-evident, certain) and moves to a hypothetical attitude that has the power of reflection, self-regard, and abstraction. This is the world of general principles, about which people argue (reason) and win or lose on the basis of the "force" of argument rather than the force of influence or superior might. So, for H, it is not necessary to show that the human world is universally "moral." Because life is originally social, it has within it from the start the question of the concrete good life, that is, transformed, the issues of justice in general. H puts it this way, summing up: "And only at the postconventional stage is the truth about the world of preconventional conceptions revealed, namely that the idea of justice can be gleaned only from the idealized form of reciprocity that underlies discourse." (p.165)

Finally, in a section titled IV Anomalies and Problems: A Contribution to Theory Construction, H tries to help solve several problems surrounding Kohlberg's approach. We will not record them here. (pp. 171-188)

MORALITY AND ETHICAL LIFE: DOES HEGEL'S CRITIQUE OF KANT APPLY TO DISCOURSE ETHICS? (pp. 195-211)

This last essay in the book is the most readable, the least weighed down with H's ponderous style. Here H seeks to support his theory. He shows that, in the light of Hegel's criticism of Kant's ethics, H's theory, while Kantian-based, emerges as more defensible than Kant's. This sounds like "philosophy for philosophers." Yet, H says a number of things that reinforce what we have learned from his previous presentation. We note some here:

H ends on a modest note about the limited power of his universalist moral theory. He thinks it does clarify "the universal core" of moral intuition and thinks it refutes skepticism. And it provides, he thinks, a workable procedure for decision-making. Beyond that, we all are on our own to find the right answers to the big questions of our time.

QUOTABLE QUOTES
See quotes in the above notes.
SIGNIFICANCE, EVALUATION, AND RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER WORK<

29 November 1998; updated 9 January 1999
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