Part Two
4
The first alternative approach we will consider, which also problematizes modernity in terms of freedom and meaning, is offered by Jürgen Habermas. Heavily influenced by Max Weber, Habermas also argues that the Enlightenment project of rationalization led to decreased freedom and increased meaninglessness. In Habermas’s understanding, economic and administrative systems not only were increased through rationalization but also came to impinge upon, or ‘colonize’, the public and private spheres of the lifeworld. However, unlike Weber, who believed that modern individuals had been subject to mechanized petrification, which was induced by bureaucratic procedures, Habermas holds a more optimistic perspective of modernity. Although the Enlightenment failed to deliver upon its promise of emancipation, Habermas believes that it is nevertheless possible to complete the Enlightenment project. Moreover, he believes that completing the project would resolve the problems of cultural impoverishment and reverse what he has termed the ‘colonization of the lifeworld’. In order to achieve this, Habermas’s response is to unconceal the form of rationality which underpins communicative practices. What this entails is that the increase in communicative rationality, with the aim of developing free intersubjective interaction, would lead to a properly balanced rationalization of the lifeworld, which would in turn reverse the ‘colonization’ caused by the systems sphere. In this chapter, however, we will argue that Habermas’s approach is unsatisfactory for the reason that it relies upon an unrealistic dichotomy of system and lifeworld, and that he relegates ethics to morality, which leads to a performative contradiction at the heart of his work.
To demonstrate that Habermas does not provide a satisfactory resolution to the loss of meaning and the restriction of freedom, we will begin by outlining his perspective of modernity (Section 4.1). Here it will be illustrated that his understanding of modernity problematizes freedom and meaning in contemporary societies in terms of ‘cultural impoverishment’ and ‘colonization’ of the lifeworld. The positive aspect which we will take from our analysis of Habermas is that resistance to the colonization thesis provides the continued possibility of living an authentic existence. In the following section we will address Habermas’s resolution to the perceived problem (Section 4.2). Here it will be demonstrated that, believing modernity possesses unfulfilled potential, Habermas suggests we can resolve the problems of freedom and meaning through the realization of communicative action. However, it will be argued that his approach appears to downplay particularity, which is important for the concept of authenticity, insofar as it enables us to live a meaningful existence. Furthermore, his dualism of lifeworld and system will be criticized on the grounds that it proposes an unrealistic restriction of power to systems. We will then turn to the ethical–moral implications of his theory of communicative action (Section 4.3). Here we will argue that his account is subject to a performative contradiction. More specifically, although he prioritizes morality (justice) over ethics (good), his account of morality in fact depends upon a prior conception of the good.
4.1 The project of modernity
In his acceptance speech for the Theodor W. Adorno Award, Jürgen Habermas outlines his philosophical trajectory, and in doing so provides a concise account of the way in which he understands the concept of modernity. Although this term has been employed throughout European history to designate a ‘renewed relationship to classical antiquity’, Habermas notes that it took on an entirely different meaning in the eighteenth century. As he explains, ‘Romanticism produced a radicalised consciousness of modernity that detached itself from all previous historical connection and understood itself solely in abstract opposition to tradition and history as a whole’ (1996: 39). The ‘project of modernity’ which the Enlightenment initiated was one which sought the development of rational science and through which its advocates hoped to provide a foundation for morality, law and art. Furthermore, the common belief which spurred their advancements was not simply to control nature, but to arrive at a deep understanding of the individual and their place within society. However, the Enlightenment project failed to achieve its end, dispelling any optimistic hopes of progress which its advocates may have possessed. According to Habermas, this negative outcome then leaves us with two options. As he rhetorically questions, ‘should we continue to hold fast to the intentions of the Enlightenment, however fractured they may be, or should we rather relinquish the entire project of modernity?’ (1996: 45–6). Habermas’s response to this crisis is to endorse the former, and although he ultimately argues for the continuation of the Enlightenment project, he also recognizes that certain aspects are fundamentally flawed. In order to complete the project, Habermas claims that there are two features which it is essential to address: (i) the process of social modernization needs to be turned in directions which do not place an emphasis on technological and economic gain alone, and (ii) the lifeworld must be allowed to develop its own institutions, uninhibited by economic and administrative systems.
In order to explicate what is meant by this, it will be useful to compare Habermas’s analysis with Weber’s cultural diagnosis, to which he is largely indebted.1 Although Habermas agrees with Weber that modern European culture is the culmination of a world-historic rationalization process, his explanation departs significantly. In Weber’s account, disenchantment was the logical consequence of the process of rationalization. For Weber, rationalization entails the development of social organizations through economic and bureaucratic systems. More specifically, he understood this development to take the form of an increase in the complexity of productivity and efficiency in economic and organizational (administrative) systems, the development in the level of self-reflection and the ability to assume an increasing number of interactive roles within the family and society. However, contrary to Weber, Habermas claims that these strands were subject to an imbalanced development, which has led to the ‘ambiguity’ of modernity (1987a).
In Habermas’s account, modern societies are comprised of two central components: lifeworld and system.2 Lifeworld refers to the public and private spheres of social life, which include civil society, politics, education, mass media, culture and family. As Habermas tells us, ‘the cultural tradition shared by a community is constitutive of the lifeworld which the individual members find already interpreted’ (1984: 82). In this way, the lifeworld is akin to Taylor’s horizon of intelligibility, insofar as it is the repository of shared meaning. However, for Habermas the lifeworld reproduces society by preserving culture through ‘taken-for-granted background assumptions and naïvely mastered skills’ (1984: 335). Through these shared assumptions it also enables agents to reach a consensus and act. For this reason, Habermas claims communicative reason is that upon which the lifeworld functions. Systems, on the other hand, are composed of spheres which are governed by money and power and manifested in the economic sphere and bureaucratic administration. Money and power are what Habermas terms the ‘steering media’ of the capitalist economy and state administration (1984: 335). Within systems, agents are conditioned to act in an instrumental way which pursues and achieves material ends, as opposed to acting towards their own ends in a community with others. In much the same way as the primary role of the lifeworld was social reproduction, the purpose of systems is the material reproduction of society. That is, the economy creates and distributes goods, whilst state administration provides services which ensure the day-to-day functioning of society.
Where Habermas’s and Weber’s accounts diverge is in their understanding of rationalization. Although Weber argues that modern European society has come to be determined by instrumentalization, Habermas claims that Weber’s account is significantly one-sided. As he himself states, ‘there is a rationalisation of everyday practice that is accessible only from the perspective of action orientated to reaching understanding – a rationalisation of the lifeworld that Weber neglected as compared with the rationalisation of action systems like the economy and the state’ (1984: 340). Habermas’s argument is that instrumentality, the theory of rationality which Weber focuses on, is that which is proper to systems. However, according to Habermas, Weber fails to acknowledge the potential to develop communicative rationality within the lifeworld. Habermas is not opposed to rationalization per se; however, his explanation for the failure of the Enlightenment project is that these two strands were subject to an imbalanced development. There were two consequences of this one-sided rationalization: cultural impoverishment, which is connected to the loss of meaning, and colonization of the lifeworld, which addresses the loss of freedom.3
The first problem, which addresses the loss of meaning, is cultural impoverishment. Noting that there has been a distinct decline in communal traditions within modern culture, Habermas traces this back to the loss of universal validity on account of a differentiation of life spheres. Without a unifying form of validity, the value spheres of science, morality/law and art have become fragmented. As he himself puts it, ‘the dying out of vital traditions, goes back to a differentiation of science, morality, and art, which means not only an increasing autonomy of sectors dealt with by experts, but also a splitting off from tradition’ (1987a: 327). These independent spheres then began to be monopolized by experts who determine the validity claims of each of these spheres. The rise of professionalism is problematic for Habermas because, in determining their own values, professionals alienate these spheres from the communicative structure of everyday life. As Habermas makes explicit, ‘one of the features of Western rationalisation is the creation in Europe of expert cultures that deal with cultural traditions reflectively and in so doing isolate the cognitive, aesthetic-expressive, and moral-practical components from one another’ (1990: 107). This deprives ordinary people of a unified cultural tradition, as it can no longer be preserved and reproduced through everyday culture. The consequence is that ‘ordinary subjects experience fragmented consciousness, with the inability to interrelate the various roles and aspects of their lives’, and subsequently a loss of meaning (1987a: 352). Although Weber also makes this claim, referring to experts as ‘specialists without spirit’, he understood cultural impoverishment to be a consequence of the ‘independent development of cultural value-spheres’ (2005: 124). Habermas, on the other hand, claims that the cause of cultural impoverishment was the ‘elitist splitting-off of expert cultures from contexts of communicative action’ (1987a: 330).
The second problem, which refers to the loss of freedom, and which sustains Habermas’s interest, is the ‘colonisation of the lifeworld’ (1987a: 330). In his dualist understanding of society, the development of system spheres is informed by and depends upon developments within the lifeworld. A concrete example of this would be the theoretical advances in universities which lead to increased scientific and economic knowledge, which, when applied to systems spheres, leads to organizational and business models defined by increased efficiency. However, despite the fact that systems are dependent upon the lifeworld, in Habermas’s account there has been a role reversal with systems dictating and limiting the functions of the lifeworld. As he metaphorically explains, ‘when stripped of their ideological veils, the imperative of autonomous subsystems [. . .] make their way into the lifeworld from the outside – like colonial masters coming into a tribal society – and force a process of assimilation upon it’ (1987a: 355).
To continue with the example of academic institutions, rather than determining the conduct of systems, universities are being subjected to and governed by economic goals and administrative procedures which impinge upon academic integrity and freedom.4 This is made explicit by Timo Jütten, who claims that ‘universities are forced to compete in markets for students and research funding, because the imperatives of the economic subsystem leave them no other choice but to assimilate their behaviour to market imperatives’ (2013: 598). This point is also articulated by Noam Chomsky, who, concerned with tuition hikes and the increase of administrators in relation to academics, discusses how the imposition of a business model which measures success output in extremely narrow, commercial terms has decreased the quality of academia. In his own words, ‘increasing class-size or employing cheap temporary labor, say graduate students instead of full-time faculty, may look good on a university budget, but there are significant costs. They’re transferred and not measured. They’re transferred to students and to the society generally as the quality of education, the quality of instruction is lowered’ (2011). In a later articulation of the same issue, Chomsky claims the consequence is that ‘the university imposes costs on students and on faculty who are not only untenured but are maintained on a path that guarantees that they will have no security. All of this is perfectly natural within corporate business models. It’s harmful to education, but education is not their goal’ (2014).
Although Habermas claims that communicative reason enables the functioning of lifeworld, the consequence of colonization is the replacement of this by instrumental reason. This encroachment of systems imperatives thus results in a loss of freedom, as administrative and economic restrictions limit the individual’s ability to act towards their own end. As Habermas makes explicit, ‘as the private sphere is undermined and eroded by the economic system, so is the public sphere by the administration system’ (1987a: 480). In this way, the colonization thesis can be seen to resemble Weber’s ‘iron cage’, insofar as it also makes the claim that economic pursuit has become a defining feature of modern existence.5
Therefore, in Habermas’s analysis, the account which Weber proposes, whilst extremely beneficial, does not sufficiently explain the modern condition. Upon determining that the communicative infrastructure of modernity is undermined by ‘systematically induced reification and cultural impoverishment’, Habermas follows in the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory, attempting to work Weber’s diagnosis into his interpretive framework (1987a: 480).6 The purpose of incorporating Weber’s insights, and the end which Habermas seeks to achieve, is to explain why technical progress, capitalist growth and rational administration are served by science, whilst the individual’s understanding of oneself and the world has been neglected. Specifically, Habermas wishes to explain two negative features of the modern world: (i) why public and private spheres are not protected by institutions against the reifying effects of administrative and economic systems, and (ii) why modern culture has been impoverished by the effects of cultural differentiation and the rise of cultural experts.
In order to answer these questions, Habermas appropriates Weber’s diagnosis from a Marxist perspective.7 His reason for doing so is because whilst Weber offers an analysis of the loss of meaning, this does not address the problem of social inequality. Marxism, on the other hand, offers the means to address social issues, but the mutation of capitalism has rendered Marxism’s original solution obsolete.8 A consequence of cultural impoverishment is that the Marxist critique of ideology is no longer valid. The reason is because the criticism of ideology suggests that we have been subjected to a false consciousness. However, in Habermas’s account this cannot provide a convincing critique because our culture has become fragmented. As Habermas himself explains, ‘in place of a false consciousness there appears today a fragmented consciousness’ (1987a: 355). That is, with the increase of expertise, certain dimensions are no longer accessible to the majority of individuals. As Stephen K. White elucidates, ‘what Habermas appears to be arguing here is that, as the insulation of expert cultures grows, so does the incapacity of the average individual to make effective use of the cognitive arsenal of cultural modernity’ (1988: 117). Habermas thus claims that within communicatively structured domains the effects of a new type of reification arises in a way which is no longer related to social class. Traditional Marxist theories are therefore unable to make any criticism or contribution to this debate. Thus, in order to address social inequality, which is no longer connected to social class, Habermas offers a modified account of Marxism.
Following from György Lukács, who argued that a consequence of rationalization was ‘reification’, Habermas offers a ‘second attempt to appropriate Weber in the spirit of Western Marxism’ (1988: 302). Reification refers to the objectification of individuals, with the consequence that people understand their powers and abilities, and those of others, as commodities to be bought and sold. Habermas, however, whilst accepting Lukács’s diagnosis, disagrees with his formulation of reification,9 instead reinterpreting it as the ‘pathological de-formation of the communicative infrastructure of the lifeworld’ (1987a: 375). It is this particular problem, that the communicative capacities of the lifeworld have been deformed, which Habermas focuses his attention on. In this way, Habermas understands reification as a consequence of the colonization of the lifeworld, that is, of instrumental reason replacing communicative reason. Thus, rather than treating people with mutual respect, and as individuals with their own ends, they are treated as means to an end.
Although Habermas agreed with Weber’s cultural diagnosis regarding the contradictory development of rationality, as already discussed, he criticized Weber’s account of rationality as ‘one-sided’ (1987a: 340). According to Habermas, the process of rationalization inherent within the Enlightenment project, rather, ought to be understood as a dual process. First, as the increase in the complexity of productivity and efficiency of economic and administrative systems. Secondly, as the development in the level of self-reflection and the ability to assume an increasing number of interactive roles within the lifeworld spheres of family and civil society. Weber’s account, however, focused exclusively on the economic and administrative development at the expense of communicative rationality of the lifeworld. According to Habermas, this is not an accurate analysis and the development of these two aspects was imbalanced. Namely, whilst systems have become increasingly more complex, the potential of the lifeworld has been left unfulfilled. Moreover, systems outstripped and began to colonize the lifeworld, by which he means the ‘penetration of forms of economic and administrative rationality into areas of action that resist being converted over to the media of money and power because they are specialised in cultural transmission, social integration, and child-rearing, and remain dependent on mutual understanding as a mechanism of coordinating action’ (1987a: 375). Thus, for Habermas, the loss of freedom is to be restored through the rationalization of the lifeworld and resistance to systemic colonization of the lifeworld, which he believed could be resolved through appropriating Marx through Weber.
Within this enquiry we have taken the two themes of freedom and meaning to be our central concern and those to which our concept of authenticity is a response. Within his diagnosis of modernity, Habermas has also been shown to be concerned with these two issues. Through his engagement with Weberian disenchantment, Habermas raises the concern that modern life has become fundamentally meaningless. His incorporation and preoccupation with the Marxist inspired phenomenon of reification brings him into confrontation with the problem of freedom. As J. M. Bernstein accurately notes, ‘from traditional Marxism critical theory inherits its concern for the problem of freedom, while from Weber’s appropriation of Nietzsche critical theory inherits its concern for the problem of nihilism and the question of meaning’ (1995: 28). The concept of freedom which he develops, however, varies from that which authenticity emerged in response to. Habermas focuses upon the effects of reification upon the subject, whereas authenticity was a response to ontological freedom. The consequence of his Marxist understanding of freedom is that he simultaneously addresses the socio-economic concern of resisting systemic incursion in the lifeworld. Habermas’s colonization thesis, that the lifeworld has become oppressed by systemic logics and imperatives, provides an important avenue of enquiry, and one which has not been addressed by our socio-existential concept of authenticity.
Habermas raises a real problem, as made explicit by Jütten’s aforementioned claim regarding the pathological encroachment of systems imperatives upon academic institutions, and this is something which needs to be addressed. Namely, if our lives are governed by external demands for efficiency and capital, then we do not possess freedom to pursue our own ends. In this way, Habermas’s colonization thesis has practical implications for living a meaningful life, for if our freedom is restricted by system imperatives, then one cannot achieve self-realization, or live a life that has been determined to be individually meaningful. Thus, resistance to colonization provides the grounds for the continued possibility of living authentically. In light of this, we ought to expand the scope of our concern to engage with the implications of this upon our concept of authenticity. Although it has been noted that it is this aspect of Habermas’s work which is most important to our enquiry, this conceptual expansion will be more fully developed within Chapter 7, where we can allocate adequate space to this undertaking without detracting from the enquiry at hand.
Although we can learn from Habermas’s perspective of modernity, by extending our area of enquiry to engage with the colonization thesis, the space which his understanding of modernity presents is much too confined. Although he also acknowledges the failure of the Enlightenment as the cause of the problems of freedom and meaning, Habermas’s vision is restricted to two possible outcomes. The first is to abandon the project, which would require one to ethically return to some form of Aristotelianism or accept a position of ethical relativity, and the second is to attempt to continue the Enlightenment, which he sees inherent with Kantian project. This dichotomy, however, is too restrictive, suggesting that these are the only possibilities. Offering a middle ground between these two choices, the theory of authenticity neither deludes one into believing that a new teleological conception of the good can be derived nor is overly optimistic in believing in the Kantian project. That is, unlike Kant, who believed the rational end of human civilization necessarily entails increased autonomy, authenticity does not elucidate any such higher end. Rather, as discussed in Section 2.2, theories of authenticity are premised on the recognition that the Kantian project is an unrealistic goal. However, instead of descending into solipsism, authenticity suggests natural teleology need not be necessary, but that values can be determined by individuals and shared by a community. Our approach to authenticity thus offers a more realistic approach than Habermas insofar as it accepts our existential condition and attempts to engage with it, rather than overcome it by attempting to establish an ideal concept of human civilization in either traditional Aristotelian terms or modern Kantian terms.
Having explained the way in which Habermas problematizes freedom and meaning with regard to modernity, and how this differs from how we orientate our trajectory, we will now turn our attention to his proposed resolution. In the following section, we will discuss Habermas’s suggestion that the Enlightenment project can be completed through an increase of communicative rationality. In order to demonstrate this, we will construct Habermas’s resolution in three parts: his account of the subject, his social theory and his account of democracy. In order to advance our argument, that Habermas’s response to modernity is itself insufficient, we will criticize him on two grounds. First, it will be claimed that his theory of autonomy offers an unrealistic account of human beings and offers a much too rigid perspective which neglects those aspects which make us human. Secondly, we will argue that his dualism of system and lifeworld offers a restricted view of the possibilities of emancipatory thinking. That is, it will be illustrated that Habermas believes power can be restricted to systems, though it will be argued that this is not a realistic account, and that power in fact permeates all aspects of human society.
4.2 Completing the project
In The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Habermas claims that by abandoning the Enlightenment project of modernity the potential for emancipation not only remains unfulfilled but that this very possibility has been relinquished as well. Furthermore, he argues that the project itself contained an immanent critique of modernity, and that this was the only means to critically engage with the Enlightenment. Thus, as a consequence, those who reject the claim that human civilization has a rational end are unable to offer a rational critique, since they have abandoned the means to do so. Habermas’s reason for attempting to revise the Enlightenment with the tools of the Enlightenment then is because he sees those attempting to form counter-discourses as mistaken (1987b). Furthermore, he stresses that ‘the philosophical discourse of modernity, as initiated by Kant, already drew up a counter reckoning for subjectivity as the principle of modernity’ (1987b: 295). What Habermas means here is that the means to avoid descending into a dead-end subjectivist standpoint remains latent within Kantian philosophy. In order to illustrate this, Habermas re-examines the philosophical paths taken by those attempting to reconstruct European culture in light of the intellectual fallout of the Enlightenment.
In his analysis of the philosophical trajectories of Hegel, Marx, Heidegger and Derrida, Habermas notes they each had alternative paths which they did not choose to travel. The purpose of his analysis is to recall the counter-discourse inherent in modernity itself. However, he notes that although Hegel, Marx, Heidegger and Derrida’s counter-discourse provides the potential for communicative reason, they each adopted a subject-centred understanding of reason. It is for precisely this reason their attempts at critique have failed, that is, because it is impossible to critique reason from a subjective standpoint. Thus, in Habermas’s account, although the means to surpass the monological philosophy of the subject was present in various responses to the Enlightenment, this was never actually realized. For Habermas, then, ‘the paradigm of the knowledge of objects has to be replaced by the paradigm of mutual understanding between subjects capable of speech and action’ (1987b: 295–6). Insofar as Habermas perceives postmodernism to be the logical end of subject-centred reason, he claims that it forces us to retrace the path of the philosophical discourse back to its starting point. Thus, in re-examining the directions taken by those who have determined the course of Western philosophy, Habermas locates the theory of communicative reason as a path not travelled and which is capable of resolving the predicaments which modernity has given rise to.
Therefore, rather than the Cartesian self-knowing subject, which has led to our current predicament, Habermas proposes communicative rationality. As he himself claims, ‘we need a theoretically constituted perspective to be able to treat communicative action as the medium through which the lifeworld as a whole is reproduced’ (1987b: 299). It is this very perspective of communication which he proposes as the means of reproducing (and reasserting) the lifeworld. Thus, whilst the logical conclusion of postmodernism is to reject that which the Enlightenment strived for, Habermas notes that ‘instead of overturning modernity, [mutual understanding] takes up again the counter discourse inherent within modernity and leads it away from the battle lines between Hegel and Nietzsche’ (1987b: 310). His aim, then, is to demonstrate the increase of communicative rationality in the lifeworld, which Weber failed to account for due to his subjectivist understanding of reason and action and his one-sided understanding of rationalization. For Habermas, it is precisely the concept of linguistically generated intersubjectivity which is capable of overcoming the problems of subjectivism. The ideal of communicative action is based on individual self-determination, by which Habermas means the autonomous collective agreement on general rules of co-existence, and which he equates with ‘morality’. This is contrasted with self-realization, which is defined as the self’s capacity to determine conceptions of the good and to combine these into a coherent narrative, or ‘ethic’. Since communicative rationality is dependent on self-determination, Habermas prioritizes this over self-realization. What this ultimately results in is the belief that moral norms are self-determined, rather than derived from a natural or essential ethical good, though this will be addressed in the succeeding section.
According to Habermas, rationality is a capacity inherent within language, especially argumentation. In his theory of communicative action, Habermas claims that a distinctly human existence is formed through the attempt to reach understanding through speech as opposed to subjective consciousness or introspection. This is Habermas’s theory of communicative action, which is governed by mutual understanding. For these reasons, Habermas believed that the defining moment of modernity was ‘the bourgeois public sphere . . . of private people coming together as a public’ (1989: 27). That is, the public use of peoples’ own communicative reason, which was used to challenge the power of the sovereign. This was important because social intercourse was now devoid of social status – guided by the principle that enlightenment would be achieved through the public use, and practice, of reason. As Keith Breen concisely puts it, ‘the bourgeois public sphere revealed that it is the ability to communicate with other human beings and to subject one’s opinion to their judgement that defines mature personhood’ (2012: 33).
Within The Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas turns towards language to offer an alternative to the subject-centred philosophies of consciousness. As language is shared and something which individuals mutually understand, Habermas sees communication as the basis of an intersubjective perspective. However, rather than providing an epistemological theory of how language relates to objects in the world, Habermas offers a pragmatic theory. What this means is that he attempts to articulate the function of language, as opposed to the content which language expresses. The pragmatic function, which Habermas determines to be intrinsic to language, is the ability of language to achieve mutual understanding through the attainment of intersubjective consensus. By taking a pragmatic approach Habermas is effectively prioritizing the function of language over its descriptive use. Thus, the primary function of speech is not to simply express the existence of phenomenon, but to coordinate action between individual agents. As Gordon Finlayson explains, ‘the pragmatic meaning of an utterance depends on its validity. The meaning of actions, utterances, and propositions are essentially public or shared, and that this is because meaning depends on reasons and reasons are essentially public or shared’ (2005: 35).
In Habermas’s theory, in order to make ourselves understood and engage in meaningful speech it is necessary that we are truthful, and that our verbal utterances are both right and true. In order to reach understanding we must therefore satisfy these three validity claims. These are (i) the statement made is true (ii) the speech act is right, in respect to the normative context and (iii) one is truthful or sincere in one’s intention. These three forms of validity respectfully relate to the objective, intersubjective (social) and subjective worlds. The first validity claim, truth, appeals to objective criteria insofar as it is grounded in universal reason. When one appeals to truth, one does so with awareness that there are good reasons for one’s claim to be believed and which one’s interlocutor is capable of recognizing. The second validity claim, rightness, is upheld by moral–practical principles, which can be justified by an underlying norm. For example, to claim that it is wrong to murder is supported by social norms which all members of one’s society ought to recognize. The third validity claim, truthfulness, appeals to a subjective standpoint. This refers to individual experience and relies upon one being honest in one’s intentions. As Finlayson concisely puts it, ‘validity claims function as a warranty that the speaker could adduce supporting reasons to convince their interlocutor. When someone understands and complies with a verbal request they move from communication to action. Thus actions are coordinated by validity claims’ (2005: 40–1). Habermas’s theory of communication thus helps to reorder the validity spheres of the lifeworld.10 Through his analysis of language, Habermas locates the rational basis of the coordination of action in speech. In order to validate and justify his approach of communicative action, he considers three alternative forms of action.
The first alternative form of action is teleological, which refers to the end, or purpose, towards which one’s actions are directed. Within this form, Habermas tells us ‘the central concept is that of a decision among alternative courses of action, with the view to realisation of an end, guided by maxims, and based on an interpretation of the situation’ (1984: 135). Insofar as it is goal driven, Habermas claims that teleological action is an attempt to arrive at truth, and as such, it derives validity from the objective world. The second form, normatively regulated action, is performed by members within a society who orientate their actions to common values. Thus, unlike teleological action, normatively regulated action ‘does not have the cognitive sense of expecting a predicted event, but the normative sense that members are entitled to expect certain behaviour’ (1984: 135). In this way it appeals to both truth and rightness, deriving validity from the objective and intersubjective realms. The third account, dramaturgical action, refers to one who discloses their subjectivity in order to present a particular impression of themselves to others. As Habermas himself puts it, ‘a performance enables the actor to present himself to his audience in a certain way’ (1984: 139). Here, Habermas can be seen to have the existentialists in mind and philosophical approaches which advocate self-creation. In making explicit their subjective world to an intersubjective audience, Habermas claims that dramaturgical action appeals to the validly claims of truth and truthfulness. This critique may be extended to the likes of Sartre, who, in his early work, does not recognize what Habermas refers to as intersubjectivity or rightness. However, it is not applicable to our socio-existential approach to authenticity, for the reason that our approach incorporates Taylor’s horizon of significance, which includes social norms.
However, in communicative action the actor themselves seek consensus, measuring it against truth, rightness and truthfulness, and as such appeal to the objective, intersubjective and subjective worlds. As Habermas explains, ‘the actors seek to reach an understanding about the action situation and their plans of action in order to coordinate their actions by way of agreement’ (1984: 136). The linguistic medium enables the actor to understand their relation to the world. As Habermas claims, ‘the concept of communicative action presupposes language as the medium for a kind of reaching understanding, in the course of which participants, through relating to a world, reciprocally raise validity-claims that can be accepted or contested’ (1984: 147). Communicative action thus relates to the objective world, insofar as one can arrive at a universal truth through reason. It engages with the intersubjective realm in that one’s interlocutor can challenge or reject one’s claim based on the normative context of one’s society based on dialogue. Finally, it satisfies subjective standards insofar as one is truthful in one’s intention in attempting to arrive at mutual understanding.
To further elucidate and demarcate the limits of communicative action, Habermas compares it with instrumental and strategic action. He notes that although instrumental and strategic action are both orientated towards success, the latter is social, whilst the former is not. Although communicative action is also social, like strategic action, it is orientated towards reaching understanding. As Habermas himself puts it, ‘in communicative action participants are not primarily orientated to their own individual success; they pursue their individual goals under the condition that they can harmonise their plans of action on the basis of common situation definitions’ (1984: 161). By reaching understanding, Habermas means ‘a process of reaching agreement among speaking and acting subjects’. Moreover, he believes that ‘reaching understanding is the inherent telos of human speech’ (1984: 162). In order to arrive at understanding, the speaker’s proposition is tested against the validity claims to determine whether that which the speaker states is true, if it is sincerely inferred and if it is normatively appropriate.
Whenever we enter into serious dialogue, we do so with the intention of reaching agreement, as autonomous and equal partne rs. Communicative action is thus orientated to the attainment and reproduction of mutual understanding through the means of conversation, political debate and decision-making processes. Unlike commands, or coercive measures, communication is open to challenge. Habermas offers the example of a professor asking a student for a glass of water (1984: 306). The three forms of validity in this request are the truth of availability, the professor’s sincerity in asking for it and the normative appropriateness of his request. The student can reject the professor’s request on normative grounds, because it is not a duty which one is expected to fulfil in one’s role as a student. Thus, it is through communicative action and arriving at mutual understanding, via the three forms of validity that Habermas thinks an increase in the rationality of the lifeworld comes about.
Is Habermas’s approach, however, a realistic one, or is it excessively rationalist? That is, can individuals reason as effectively as his theory demands? Given the conditions required for communicative action, this seems problematic, as Steven Lukes makes explicit, ‘ideally rational people in an ideal speech situation cannot but reach a rational consensus’ (1989: 140). We thus ought to question whether we are as rational as Habermas requires.11 As Agnes Heller stresses, ‘the lack of the sensuous experiences of hope and despair, of venture and humiliation, is discernible in the structure of his theory: the creature-like aspects of human beings are missing’ (1982: 21). Heller’s claim is that the agents of Habermas’s account do not offer accurate representations of human beings, but cold calculative rational machines.12 This criticism is reminiscent of that made by Ferrara in his distinction between authenticity and autonomy (Section 2.2). To reiterate, according to Ferrara, ethics of autonomy are far too rigid, and as such, unable to account for our emotional side which is a defining feature of who we are. More specifically, autonomy misses out on particularity and we need an ethic of authenticity to make up for that lack. For Ferrara, an ethic of authenticity is needed to account for this, and, as such, from the perspective of authenticity, Habermas’s communicative action does not provide a sufficient account of rational agents.
Moreover, we might question the legitimacy of Habermas’s dual-structured social sphere. The claim that there can be a realm that is primarily defined by communicative action and mutual understanding, and a realm that is primarily defined by instrumental/strategic action and power/money, is something which we will reject.13 This argument is made by Nancy Fraser, who argues that it is unrealistic to ‘analytically separate strategic action from the context of shared norms and meanings’ (1989: 118–20). Fraser’s reason is because the division of lifeworld from system and the neat reduction of communication to lifeworld and power to systems are untenable. Thomas McCarthy also makes a similar criticism, claiming that the dualism of system and lifeworld is questionable. The problem for McCarthy is that the ‘role of social groups in concrete struggles against the pathologies of system integration is relegated to a sphere supposedly free of power relations’ (1985: 27–53). This line of argument is further advanced by Axel Honneth, who argues that Habermas’s distinct division of the lifeworld and system spheres conveniently separate communication from power, and in doing so produces the ‘complementary fiction’ of a ‘norm-free’ domain of power and a ‘power-free’ domain of communication. In Honneth’s own words, Habermas’s division leads to ‘(1) the existence of norm-free organisations of action and (2) the existence of power-free spheres of communication’ (1991: 298). Honneth opposes the notion of ‘norm-free’ strategic action by arguing that ‘the organisational structures of management and administration can be generally clarified only as institutional embodiments of both purposive-rational and political-practical principles’ (1991: 298). Thus, rather than conceiving of two distinct spheres, with instrumental power and economic exchange restricted to systems, we ought to instead consider these to also be part of the lifeworld.
Siding with Fraser, McCarthy and Honneth, it is agreed that Habermas’s division of system and lifeworld is unrealistic. Our own explanation for rejecting this division, however, is because it offers a rather restricted view of the possibilities for emancipatory thinking. That is, Habermas’s dualism suggests that power resides in systems and the lifeworld is free from this. A further reason for rejecting Habermas’s division between system and lifeworld, however, is a matter of the relationship between power and inauthenticity. In the following chapter, we will present the exercise of power over subjects as an expression of inauthenticity and one which seeps into all aspects of society, not simply administrative and economic spheres. In this respect, we will side with Foucault’s concept of power, which dominates and produces subjects, as opposed to Habermas’s concept which only operates within the system sphere. This claim, however, will be more fully elucidated in Chapter 5.
Habermas continues his project of critical social theory in Between Facts and Norms where he develops an account of deliberative democracy. Here it is claimed ‘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’ (1996: 192). He begins with a ‘two-track’ structure of politics which contains formal and informal elements. The formal political sphere is constituted of institutional arenas of communication and discourse which are designed to make decisions. These include parliaments, cabinets, elected assemblies and political parties. Here the designated representatives make decisions, pass laws and formulate and implement policies. The informal political sphere, on the other hand, is not institutionalized or designed to make decisions, but rather is ‘chaotic’ and ‘anarchic’. Furthermore, members of voluntary organizations, political associations and the media participate in discourse in order to reach understanding and form opinions on matters of shared concern. According to Habermas, when decision-making institutions of the formal political sphere are receptive to the input from the informal political sphere this leads to a healthy democratic institution. That is, when civil society and public opinion have an active input and influence the formation of polices and laws, then laws tend to be rational and contribute to an equitable society.
Turning his attention to the role of public discourse, Habermas argues that democratic control over systems can help contain instrumental reason. Civil society generates communicative power through decision-making bodies. Administrative power exists in the state and government bureaucracy. A healthy democratic society is capable of translating communicative power into administrative power. Communicative power thus only becomes manifest through administrative bodies which employ strategic and instrumental reasoning. Habermas’s claim is that modern democracy thus requires administrative power to make democratic deliberation possible, even though it is structurally incompatible with communicative power. How then does he resolve this logical tension? He explains that this problem is surmountable through laws, which transform communicative power into administrative power. As he explains, ‘laws can regulate the transformation of communicative into administrative power inasmuch as they come about according to a democratic procedure, ground a comprehensive legal protection guaranteed by impartial courts, and shield from the implementing administration the sorts of reasons that support legislative and judicial decision making’ (1996: 192). In this way, communicative power steers administrative power, and in doing so, it contains instrumental reason within the systems sphere. Thus, it can be seen how Habermas proposes to resolve the problem of system encroachment upon and the subsequent colonization of the lifeworld. As William Scheuerman argues, he offers ‘a defensive model of deliberative democracy in which democratic institutions exercise at least an attenuated check on market and administrative processes’ (1999: 156).
These considerations then lead Habermas to an intermediary standpoint between liberal democracy and republican democracy. The former emphasizes individual freedom that is protected by human rights. Freedom here is conceived of in terms of negative liberty, in that one is considered free when one is able to accept or decline. Liberal democracy is thus neutral with regard to that which constitutes the good, leaving this entirely to the discretion of the individual. Republicanism, on the other hand, privileges collective, public autonomy at the expense of the individual. Thus, rather than the ability to accept or decline an opportunity, autonomy is conceived in terms of collective actualization. Habermas’s ‘two track’ theory then leads to the amalgamation of these two concepts. The aspects which he derives from liberal democracy are human rights and cultural tolerance.14 However, in accordance with republicanism, he claims that rights are only acquired through socialization. As he makes explicit, political freedom is ‘the freedom that springs simultaneously from the subjectivity of the individual and the sovereignty of the people’ (1996: 468).
In his extension of communicative rationality to the political realm, Habermas continues to bracket instrumental reason, attempting to restrict it to the systems sphere. Here, his claim is that instrumental reasoning can be contained by democratic control. Moreover, since communicative power steers administrative power, this restricts instrumental reason to systems. However, Habermas’s position is untenable because instrumental reasoning cannot simply be restricted to systems. The reason is because means–end thinking is necessary in social life, and we engage in such thinking in everyday decision-making. This is exemplified when we make simple decisions, such as whether to order our usual cappuccino, or try something new in a café, to more important decisions, such as whether to pursue postgraduate studies, or to join the labour market. Habermas’s theory requires that the spheres of system and lifeworld are separated because communicative rationality must act towards the telos of reaching mutual understanding through communication, regardless of the sphere. As Darrow Schecter emphasizes, ‘communication would inevitably turn into oppressive steering if the life-world were entrusted with organizing the mediation of humanity and external nature’ (2010: 212). Furthermore, communication is, by its very nature, unable to fully address the problem of instrumentality because if it were to do so then it would mutate into a form of power. As Schecter continues to elucidate, ‘communication may break, inflect upon and rechannel power, but it may not become power. It follows that if communication becomes power, it is by definition lost, and political control of the economy would indeed bring about this structural transformation in his estimation’ (2010: 212).
In the first section of this chapter we demonstrated that Habermas concerned himself with the problems of freedom and meaning and that a fundamental aim of his project was to address the one-sided development of rationality. Here it was argued that Habermas’s resolution, of communicative action, relies upon an unrealistic account of rational agents, missing out on particularity, which is contained within an ethic of authenticity. Moreover, although Habermas attempts to preserve freedom by resisting the colonization of the lifeworld, his dualism of system and lifeworld offers a rather restricted view of the possibilities of emancipatory thinking. In the following section, we will discuss Habermas’s resolution of discourse ethics as an alternative to authenticity. Here it will be argued that although Habermas is concerned with the problem of meaning, that he makes a philosophical mistake by relegating ethics to morality. One consequence of his priority of morality over ethics, for our theory, is that authenticity is placed within a secondary position, and this undermines its importance. However, it will be argued that by relegating ethics, Habermas relegates the most central concern.
4.3 Ethics or morality?
The concept of authenticity which has been advocated within this book is an ethical ideal. That is, the attainment of authenticity is upheld as a goal to be actively pursued. In this way, authenticity offers a vision of the good; that is, it makes a normative claim about what it means to live a good life. Habermas, on the other hand, responds to the loss of freedom and meaning, induced by the colonization thesis, by developing a theory of moral discourse. Although he does offer an ethical ideal, of self-realization, our criticism will be premised on his relegation of ethics to morality. In order to defend our concept of authenticity, we will now turn our attention to analysing the development of Habermas’s moral discourse theory. Here it will be argued that Habermas’s prioritization of morality, of right over the good, results in a performative contradiction. Namely, that moral norms rely upon a prior conception of the good, and as such, Habermas’s theory cannot be sustained. Although we have thus far argued that Habermas’s response to disenchantment is insufficient, he does offer a limited account of how the individual derives personal meaning and it is to elucidating the moral and ethical implications of his thought to which our enquiry now turns.
In Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, Habermas draws out the moral and ethical implications of his theory of communicative action. Unlike many modern moral theories which are developed in abstract, Habermas’s account is developed in order to address the aforementioned social issues of meaning and freedom. In this way, Habermas begins by assuming that a moral standpoint exists. In order to justify this assumption, he attempts to demonstrate that a principle exists which is capable of distinguishing between moral and non-moral actions. Derived from and contained within his theory of communication, as outlined in the preceding section, he offers a criterion for generalizing maxims of action which he terms the ‘discourse principle’ (D). According to this principle, ‘only those norms may claim to be valid that could meet with the consent of all affected in their role as participants in a practical discourse’ (1990: 197). The discourse principle is an intuitive claim, which suggests that in order for a norm to be valid it necessarily requires consensus. However, this principle cannot determine which norms are valid by itself; rather, it functions in a negative manner, determining which norms are not valid. In order to test whether a norm is valid, one must consider whether it could be accepted through discourse with those whom a particular action will affect. In this way, the principle of discourse is not a particularly strong claim but enables one to reveal whether a proposed action can be considered moral.
In order to develop a more substantial moral theory, Habermas supplements his discourse principle with the additional principle of universalization (U). This entails that for any norm under consideration ‘all affected can accept the consequences and the side effects its general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone’s interests’ (1990: 65). This bridging principle contains an ethic of discourse, insofar as it presupposes that we can justify our choice of norms. The principle of universalization is a much stronger claim than discourse principle (D) in that it functions both negatively and positively. In expanding to include all affected, it is able to not only determine which norms are invalid, but also, if a norm can be said to be accepted by all affected then it ought to be constituted as valid. In his account then, in order for a norm to be considered valid it has to fulfil the Kantian condition of universalization. Namely, ‘the moral principle is so conceived to exclude as invalid any norm that could not meet with the qualified assent of all who are or might be affected by it’ (1990: 65). As it stands, Habermas has simply assumed that a moral standpoint exists, and as such, he is required to justify his concept of discourse ethics. He attempts to achieve this in terms of the discourse principle (D), which communicative action presupposes. However, he must show that the moral principle of universalization (U) can be grounded upon the presuppositions of argumentation through a transcendental-pragmatic argument. In order to achieve this, he turns to grounding it in the norms which emerge through moral discourse. As he himself claims, ‘the universal principle functions like a knife that makes razor-sharp cuts between evaluative statements and strictly normative ones, between the good and the just’ (1990: 104). What this entails is that the principle of universality differentiates moral norms from ethical evaluations, and it is the former which is more important to Habermas.
In order to further elucidate what is meant by discourse ethics, it will be helpful to compare it with Kantian morality, to which it bears a resemblance. Both approaches are deontological in that they propose rules which enable one to determine one’s moral course of action. Kant’s categorical imperative commands one to ‘act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law’ (1993: 30). Habermas’s principle of discourse proposes something very similar, namely, to act only in a way which can be considered universal by all persons affected. One major difference is that Kant’s deontological principle is only concerned with the principle upon which one acts. That is, for Kant, as long as one adheres to one’s self-imposed principle, regardless of the outcome, one can be said to have acted justly. Habermas, on the other hand, introduces the condition of consequence. This is implied in the principle of universalization (U) through its imperative to think through the ‘consequences and side effects’ (1990: 63). Thus, even if one acts according to the agreed upon principle, unless the end of one’s action is in line with this, then one cannot be said to have acted justly. A further significant difference is the process by which one arrives at the principle. Kant’s principle can be said to be monological in the sense that the individual themselves determine what is just ‘in the loneliness of his soul’ (1990: 203). By thinking through the maxim of whether one’s action can become a universal law, one determines for oneself that which constitutes a moral principle. Habermas, on the other hand, replaces the Kantian categorical imperative with an intersubjective account, insofar as it is determined through discourse with others. Rather than a solitary individual determining moral implications through a thought experiment, for Habermas, this principle must be derived through intersubjective communication with others. By his own admission, he states that the structure of his theory is to ‘reformulate Kantian ethics by grounding moral norms in communication’ (1990: 203).
In Justification and Application, Habermas makes the distinction between ethics (Sittlichkeit) and morality (Moralität). Up until this point, Habermas used ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ interchangeably in his theory of discourse ethics. However, he later comes to distinguish between these two terms, employing ‘ethics’ to demarcate conceptions of the good, which he discusses in terms of self-realization, or consciously led life, and ‘morality’ to discuss questions of right and justice, in terms of self-determination or autonomy. This is made explicit in his short essay ‘Individuation through Socialization’, where he notes that there are two components to his account of the development of the individual subject: ‘autonomy’ and ‘a consciously led life’. As Habermas himself clearly states, ‘from the point of view of the individuals affected by it, the process of societal individualization has two distinct aspects: both autonomy and a consciously-led life are progressively required of them culturally and institutionally’ (1992a: 183). In order to explicate autonomy, he applies the term ‘self-determination’ and refers to a consciously led life as ‘self-realization’. This latter notion, of self-realization, is conceptually akin to authenticity, insofar as it emphasizes the subject’s own individual mode of existence. As Maeve Cooke makes explicit, ‘[by self-realization] he means the progressive differentiation of individuals from other individuals by virtue of their uniqueness and originality’ (1992: 272). These two notions are further differentiated in terms of freedom, where self-determination is understood as moral, whilst self-realization is classed as ethical. One consequence of this late demarcation is that the concept of ‘discourse ethics’ is misleading as it is in fact a form of morality, insofar as it engages with questions of justice, rather than ethics, or questions of the good as he distinguishes them. Thus, although Habermas does not make the linguistic distinction in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, he understands theories of justice, which he later connects to morality, and questions of good, which he attributes to ethics, to be two separate concerns.
His concept of ethics is restricted to questions of the good, that is ‘what is good for the individual/community?’ and for this reason, ethical values are only applicable to specific social groups or particular individuals. Ethical values are therefore fostered within cultural frameworks, and as such, Habermas claims that ethics/questions of the good only possess relative validity. Values determine goods, collective identities and self-understanding. Morality, on the other hand, determines what is right/wrong, what is just and how one ought to act. Whilst ethics determines what is good for a particular individual or community, morality is supposed to determine what is right for everyone, regardless of tradition. Thus, whilst he classifies ethics as relative, he claims that morality is universal, insofar as it is not limited to a particular cultural framework. A further difference is that whilst ethical questions of ‘the good’ are based on values, Habermas claims that morality establishes norms. These are ‘behavioural rules, anchored in the communicative structure of the lifeworld, based on very general and universally shared interests’ (Finlayson 2005: 97). The purpose of morality, according to Habermas, is to establish valid norms, which he suggests discourse ethics – or, more accurately put, discourse morality – is capable of achieving.
Thus, rather than opposing theories of duty, centred on the principle of justice, with theories of the good, which emphasize the common weal, Habermas follows Hegel, to the extent that he criticizes such one-sidedness (1990: 201). Although Habermas distinguishes between ethics and morality, he does not pose them as two competing theories, but rather as two components of self-understanding. However, he does prioritize morality, or questions of justice, over ethics, or questions of the good. His reasons for relegating ethics to morality are threefold. First, within post-conventional society, identities are not rooted in any particular tradition, as with traditional ethical theories, but that we regard ourselves as equal persons with equal rights that are universal, and as such, moral theories are best suited to our current cultural context. Secondly, as a consequence, moral norms are not derived from ethical theory, but reside within the communicative structure of the lifeworld. Thirdly, as such, agents cannot resolve fundamental conflicts within the lifeworld through theories of the good or ethical discourse, but instead must engage in moral discourse. The consequence is that unlike conventional ethics, which determined what was moral, Habermas reverses this relationship, instead suggesting that morality informs ethics. In his own words, ‘the means to the solution of this problem is the very same perspective structure of a fully decentred understanding of the world that created the problem in the first place’ (1990: 161). Thus, in Habermas’s account, norms are more important than the good, and determine values, insofar as they operate within the bounds of moral permissibility.
Habermas concurs with Taylor in noting that the positing of ‘right’ over ‘the good’ is a fundamental dispute between communitarians and liberals.15 However, he attempts to bridge these two approaches, offering an intermediary standpoint through his discourse ethics. Like Kantian-inspired liberalism, discourse ethics advocates a deontological understanding of freedom, morality and law. It simultaneously draws upon the intersubjective understanding of individuation from socialization, which is indicative of Hegelian derived theories of communitarianism. The stance which Habermas himself takes on this dispute is one of ‘right’ over ‘the good’. One consequence of this position, which Habermas notes, is that discourse ethics is vulnerable to objections of contextuality and tradition. In his own words, ethical discussions, in contrast to moral arguments, are always already embedded in the traditional context of a hitherto accepted, identity-constituting form of life (1992a: 105). Furthermore, his priority of morality over ethics reduces self-realization, which focuses on meaning, to a secondary position, below self-determination, which emphasizes the pursuit of autonomy. This, however, challenges the priority of our concept of authenticity, which, as an ethical ideal, is to be conceived of as a form of the good. Although Habermas is not opposed to authenticity per se, and advocates something similar through his concept of self-realization, his concept of a consciously led life is secondary to autonomy. Thus, not only does it provide an alternative to our concept of authenticity, as advanced in Chapter 4, but it also challenges its importance by relegating authenticity to a secondary position.
Although we criticized Habermas on account o f his theory of communicative action failing to account for particularity, he does address this concern by including an ethical dimension. Moral norms can be converted into laws, and as such, have a social function. Ethics, on the other hand, is a predominantly private matter, insofar as the choice of ethical life is left to the discretion of the subject.16 By offering a subjective account of meaning, as something which the individual is required to cultivate once they have achieved autonomy, he focuses on the development of freedom, and as such, the problem of freedom. By leaving the question of good up to the individual, Habermas’s account can be seen to present an account of authenticity similar to that of the existentialists. However, whilst the question of meaning is primordial to the existentialists, this is a secondary consideration for Habermas, as will be demonstrated later. That is, he gives the individual free rein to determine their lives for themselves. In order to avoid the same problems as the existentialists, of lacking a moral framework within which to achieve self-realization, Habermas’s theory of communicative reason would have to be successful. However, we have questioned the validity of his approach by claiming that his division of lifeworld and system is unsustainable. Furthermore, in order to maintain the priority of ethics, and thus authenticity, it will be demonstrated that Habermas’s concept of morality (questions of right) depends upon ethics (questions of the good), and as such, his discourse ethics is subject to a performative contraction, and ultimately collapses upon itself.
This sharp dichotomy between ethics and morality can be challenged on the grounds that morality, which Habermas grants priority to, is ultimately dependent upon ethics. Such an argument is developed by Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self, where he claims that morality depends upon a certain conception of the good. Here Taylor presents an analysis of morality, where he notes that in attempting to define morality in terms of justice, moral theories give ‘hyper-goods’ priority. By hyper-goods he means ‘goods which not only are incomparably more important than others but provide the standpoint from which these must be weighed, judged, decided about’ (1989: 53). He then continues to question whether morality not only emphasizes certain hyper-goods but also depends upon a constitutive good which demarcates hyper-goods as such. This is evident in modern moral theories such as Kantian deontology and utilitarianism: Kant conceives of a rational formula for moral action, and utilitarianism rationally calculates the greatest good for the greatest number. However, neither approach can explain why particular goods constitute the greatest good. That is, they are unable to articulate the substantive qualitative distinctions about what constitutes a moral good and how differing goods can be of differing value.
Taylor’s argument is, thus, that it is only by articulating this good that one is able to provide an explanation as to why one ought to act morally in the first place. Theories which place questions of justice beyond questions of the good, as Taylor explains, ‘leave us with nothing to say to someone who asks why he should be moral or strive to the “maturity” of a “post-conventional” ethic’ (1989b: 87). This point is further expounded by William Rehg who makes explicit that ‘only by articulating this good can one answer the question, Why be moral? And it is precisely because modern moral theory is inarticulate about its moral sources that it cannot answer this question – with the result that moral action appears as just one choice or good among others’ (1997: 118). Taylor’s position is therefore that moral norms and hyper-goods exist within an evaluative framework which determines the priority of such norms and hyper-goods, as opposed to the reverse. To put this in Habermasian terms, Taylor prioritizes the ethical over the moral – that norms are given validity by a constitutive good.
Although Taylor does not directly address Habermas’s discourse ethics, we can nevertheless extend his argument to Habermas’s account by rephrasing the question, ‘Why be moral?’ to ‘Why should we rationally accept the discourse principle?’17 As Rehg explains,
if accepting a discourse-ethical procedure depends on the prior acceptance of some hyper-good or constitutive conception of the good of human life, then it would seem that discourse ethics depends on prematurely settling a competition among conceptions of the good. In that case, discourse ethics either presupposes as settled precisely the kind of issue it claims one cannot settle in universally binding terms, or it presupposes as indisputable precisely the kind of thin conception of the common good which it claims should be the result of moral discourse. (1997: 118)
Thus, if Habermas’s discourse ethics does tacitly select one hyper-good among various competing hyper-goods, then it is incapable of providing a rational foundation for rational consensus when debates between hyper-goods do arise. Illustrating this will demonstrate that ethics cannot be relegated to morality, as Habermas supposed, but rather ethics is foundational, and moral norms derive from ethics. More importantly for our enquiry, this will reassert the importance of authenticity as an ethical ideal, over moral theory.
The argument that Habermas’s discourse ethics presupposes some form of the good is further supported by Keith Breen who argues that ‘Habermas’ Kantian division between ethical “values” and moral “norms” does not hold, since the basis of his discourse theory of morality is in the last instance an understanding of identity formation, that is, a substantive ethical vision’ (2012: 58). Breen’s claim is that the social and intersubjective identity to the self which Habermas relies upon is ultimately informed by an underlying good. Moreover, autonomy relies upon a concept of the individual as a social being. Cultural impoverishment refers to damaged subjectivity and intersubjectivity wh ich emanates from affirmative ethical intimations of the good life. As Breen further argues, ‘as this positive image of lifeworld reproduction has as much to do with ethical self-realisation as with self-determination, we are entitled to doubt the prime role accorded to morality and, thus, to question Habermas’ separation of moral norms from ethical values as a feasible response to Weberian subjectivism’ (2012: 71). Thus, since Habermas’s theory of communicative action presupposes a form of the good, his notion of morality is dependent upon ethics, and as such, his approach is subject to a performative contradiction. That is, his own theory is in tension with itself.
Having thus established that Habermas’s account is ultimately informed by an ethical vision, his approach cannot be said to provide a satisfactory response to the problem of freedom and meaning. Moreover, his relegation of ethics to morality undermined the importance of authenticity, but this concern cannot be sustained because moral norms are themselves dependent upon ethics. The concept of a good, as developed by Taylor, emphasizes that there are in-built qualitative distinctions, that there are modes of life which are higher than others. Certain goods are independent of our desires, inclinations and choices, and that these goods provide standards by which choices, and desires, are judged. That is, morality cannot precede ethics, for Taylor, because foundational public questions, such as ‘who we are’ are ethical questions. Habermas, however, fails to acknowledge that his theory of morality is dependent upon an ethical basis. The consequence is that his theory not only lacks a sound foundation but also cannot provide a more satisfactory response to the problems of freedom and meaning than our concept of authenticity.
4.4 Summary
Within this chapter, we began by addressing Habermas’s approach to modernity, which he problematizes in terms of freedom and meaning. Having determined that its failure was a consequence of the imbalanced development of the lifeworld, which he understood to thrive on communicative reason, Habermas then proposed the theory of communicative action to remedy this. However, despite his admirable aim to address the one-sided rationalization of society, we criticized Habermas’s claim by stating that there are two separate spheres: of lifeworld, which contain communicative rationality; and systems, which contain instrumental rationality. The positive outcome of our consideration, however, was the realization that resistance to systems imperatives within the lifeworld provides us with the continued possibility to live an authentic existence. We then continued to explore the extension of his theory to questions of ethics/morality, where he addresses questions of the good. However, although Habermas advocates a concept of self-realization, or authenticity, in his account he gives priority to self-determination, or autonomy. This prioritization not only relegated questions of the good to a secondary position but also undermined our concept of authenticity, as it is an ethical ideal. We then argued that Habermas’s prioritization of morality over ethics was shown to rest upon a prior conception of ethics, and as a consequence his account was subject to a performative contradiction and, as such, could not be deemed a sufficient response to the problems of freedom and meaning. Having explicated Habermas’s account of modernity, and the way in which he can be said to address the problems of freedom and meaning, we will now turn to considering an alternative response to the problem of modernity, that advocated by Michel Foucault.
Notes
1 For an excellent analysis of Weber’s influence on Habermas, and to which I am greatly indebted in this chapter, see Breen’s Under Weber’s Shadow: Modernity, Subjectivity and Politics in the Work of Habermas, Arendt and MacIntyre (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012).
2 Habermas borrows the term ‘lifeworld’ from the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl which is first set forth in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.
3 Although Habermas claims that cultural impoverishment and the colonization of the lifeworld are two mutual developments (2:327) this is challenged by Maeve Cooke, who claims that ‘Habermas regards the loss of meaning both as a pathological development that runs prior to the lifeworld and as a social pathology that is caused by the colonisation of the lifeworld’. Language and Pragmatics: Study of Habermas’, Pragmatics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997): 191 n59.
4 This is made explicit by academics who have become marginalized with in their own profession by the external pressures and measures applied by middle-management. Joshua Knobe, for example, claims that ‘the very people who seem clearly to be controlling the direction of their fields have been made to feel peripheral to those fields’, ‘Interview on Experimental Philosophy’ with Joshua Knobe in Warwick Review Journal 4, no. 1 (2016): 14–28.
5 As Weber claims, ‘In Baxter’s view the care for everyday goods should only lie on the shoulders of the “saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment”. But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.’ The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (2005).
6 In doing so, he follows the Frankfurt tradition, which has engaged with Weber since Dialectic of Enlightenment.
7 For an analysis of Habermas’ relationship to Marx, see Agnes Heller’s ‘Habermas and Marxism’, in Habermas: Critical Debates, eds. Thomas B. Thomas and David Held (London: Macmillan, 1982).
8 Moreover, in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity Habermas argues that Marxism fails to ground its critique in an intersubjective conception of subject and reason.
9 Although György Lukács advocated a phenomenologically based concept of reification, Habermas rejected this, claiming that ‘phenomena of reification lose the dubious stat e of facts that can be inferred from economic statements about value relations [and] instead make up an object domain for empirical enquiry. They become the object of a research program.’
10 That said, Habermas has been criticized on account of his theory of values in several respects. First, whether there are actually three distinct value spheres, and secondly, in virtue of understanding one another does this entail that members of a society will adhere to the same social and moral rules?
11 Byron Rienstra and Derek Hook appeal to recent studies in social-psychology to argue that the existence of psychological biases impact upon rational decision-making. ‘Weakening Habermas: The Undoing of Communicative Rationality’, Politikon 33, no. 3 (2006): 313–39.
12 A similar criticism is made by Kierkegaard of Hegel that the construction of his philosophical system was unrealistic because it was unable to account for individual idiosyncrasies. As Karl Jaspers summarizes, ‘[Hegel is], as a man, like someone who builds a castle, but lives next door in a shanty. Such a fantastical being does not himself live within what he thinks.’ Reason and Existenz, trans. William Earle (London: 1956), 26.
13 A further line of criticism concerns the distinction between communicative and strategic action. For this argument, see James Johnson, ‘Arguing for Deliberation: Some Skeptical Considerations’, in Deliberative Democracy, ed. Jon Elster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
14 Here he can be seen to reverse his position in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere where he attempted to dissolve plurality, for which he received heavy criticism.
15 See Charles Taylor’s ‘The Liberal-Communitarian Debate’, in Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. N. Rosenblum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
16 Habermas also claims that there is such a thing as ‘ethical discourse’, which presumes dialogue between people as regards values and goods.
17 Maeve Cooke offers an alternative approach to supplement Habermas’s account of discourse ethics with Taylor’s concept of the good. As she explains, by ‘drawing on his account of moral validity, we could say that, under conditions of Western modernity, only those conceptions of the good that satisfy the minimal conditions of universalizability as formulated in D are deemed acceptable reference points for individual autonomy. This would eliminate, for instance, conceptions of the good that are inherently supremacist, racist, patriarchal and so on, while permitting ones that are aestheticist, utilitarian, religious, liberal, and many more.’ ‘Habermas, Feminism and the Question of Autonomy’, in Habermas: A Critical Reader, ed. Peter Dews (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 200.