Reconciling communicative action with recognition: Thickening the ‘inter’ of intersubjectivity

Philosophy & Social Criticism

Volumn 32, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 377-400

  Erman, Eva ^a  

^a STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

Author keywords

Axel Honneth; communicative action; communicative rationality; discourse ethics; J rgen Habermas; recognition; universal pragmatics

Indexed keywords

EID: 33750909689     PISSN: 01914537     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0191453706063214     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. Against traditional approaches to morality, Kant distinguishes between the function of the human will in general, which is to choose the course of action that fits one's aims, preferences, and character, and the function of the human will concerning moral matters. When concerned with moral matters, we do not start out from subjective aims or preferences but from what is necessary for us to do. For Kant, this necessity could only be generated from our rational considerations, which, in turn, must be formulated as a principle of obligation. Kant claims that it is only the categorical imperative that could fulfil these requirements: ‘act only on that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law’ (Immanuel Kant, section I, The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989[1785]).
2. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. II, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1987), p. 96, 95.
3. Jürgen Habermas, ‘What is Universal Pragmatics?’, in Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1979), pp. 1–68.
4. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. I, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1984), pp. 99–100.
5. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), p. 159, 160, 161.
6. Jürgen Habermas, ‘On Systematically Distorted Communication’, Inquiry 13 (1970): 210.
7. For example, for the justification of moral norms, Habermas formulates a universalization principle (U-principle): ‘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.’ See Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1995), p. 120.
8. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 323, 122–3.
9. Erik Eriksen and Jarle Weigård, Habermas politiska teori (Lund: Student-litteratur, 2000), p. 96.
10. Walter Reese-Schäfer, Habermas: en introduktion (Göteborg: Daidalos förlag, 1995), p. 62.
11. Karl-Otto Apel, Etik och kommunikation (Göteborg: Daidalos förlag, 1990), p. 54, 56, note 61.
12. Jürgen Habermas, ‘Philosopher as Stand-in and Interpreter’, in Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, pp. 1–3.
13. Jürgen Habermas, ‘Teorin om det kommunikativa handlandet: ett svar på kritik’, in Kommunikativt handlande (Göteborg: Daidalos förlag, 1995), pp. 332–3, 318 (my translation).
14. Fred Dallmayr, ‘Habermas and Rationality’, Political Theory 16(4) (1988): 556.
15. Habermas, ‘Philosopher as Stand-in and Interpreter’.
16. Dallmayr, ‘Habermas and Rationality’, p. 562.
17. Richard Bernstein, ‘Fred Dallmayr's Critique of Habermas’, Political Theory 16(4) (1988): 582, 584.
18. quote from Habermas, ‘Historical Materialism and the Development of Normative Structures’, in Communication and the Evolution of Society (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1979), pp. 119–20), 585.
19. Joachim Israel, Språk och kunskap (Göteborg: Daidalos förlag, 1992), 108, 150, 150–1, 158–9.
20. Martin Buber, Jag och Du (Ludvika: Dualis förlag, 2001[1923]).
21. Axel Honneth, ‘Recognition and Moral Obligation’, Social Research 64(1) (1997): 16–35.
22. George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, ed. C. W. Morris (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1934).
23. Robert Gibbs, ‘Asymmetry and Mutuality: Habermas and Levinas’, Philosophy & Social Criticism 23(6) (1997): 60, 61.
24. Arne J. Vetlesen, ‘Worlds Apart? Habermas and Levinas’, Philosophy & Social Criticism 23(1) (1997): 16.
25. For examples of how this widened notion of communicative rationality could be incorporated in the analysis of political institutions and institutional design, see Eva Erman, Human Rights and Democracy: Discourse Theory and Global Rights Institutions (Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), chs V and VI.
26. Asymmetry is rarely touched upon within traditional moral philosophy in general and most approaches to difference are made within the liberal-communitarian debate and not explicitly within discourse ethics. But, of course, there are exceptions; see, for example, Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).
27. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969), p. 88, 299–300, 85, 84).
28. In contrast to Husserl and Heidegger, the problem of the nature of the contact with the Other is not a problem of the alter ego, since everything is centred on the alterity of the alter ego. The pre-eminence of Being over beings and of ontology over metaphysics, in Heidegger's thinking, subscribes to the western tradition in which the same dominates the other and freedom precedes justice. The relationship with the other is thereby subordinated to ontology. For Levinas, however, ethics is about primordial access to the Other beyond all ontology (Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 89).
29. Emmanuel Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1987), p. 43.
30. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 76.
31. Mikael Carleheden, Det andra moderna (Göteborg: Daidalos förlag, 1996), pp. 193–6, 198.
32. Vetlesen, ‘Worlds Apart? Habermas and Levinas’, p. 9, 17.
33. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd revised edn (New York: Continuum, 1999[1989]), p. 97.
34. Carleheden, Det andra moderna, pp. 198–9.
35. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 109, 271.
36. Honneth, ‘Recognition and Moral Obligation’, p. 28, 29–30.
37. Axel Honneth, ‘The Other of Justice: Habermas and the Ethical Challenge of Postmodernism’, in S. White (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Habermas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 318.
38. Jacques Derrida, ‘The Politics of Friendship’, Journal of Philosophy 85 (1988): 632–44.
39. Honneth, ‘The Other of Justice’, pp. 318–19.
40. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. II, p. 174.
41. Honneth, ‘The Other of Justice’, p. 305.
42. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, pp. 139–41.
43. Honneth, ‘The Other of Justice’, pp. 303–4.
44. In Benhabib's version of discourse ethics, the participants of a moral practical discourse must eventually see each other as concrete others. Rather than emphasizing the universality of validity claims and of ideal consensus among ‘fictitiously defined selves’, Benhabib shows that universality is a concrete process of political and moral struggle where real subjects strive for autonomy (Benhabib, Situating the Self, pp. 152–3).
45. Also Israel argues that ideal role-taking ought to be seen as based on language in order to avoid a subject philosophical framework; see (Joachim Israel, Martin Buber: dialogfilosof och sionist (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 2000), p. 140.
46. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. I, p. 278.
47. Buber, Jag och Du, p. 18, 31–2.
48. Israel, Martin Buber: dialogfilosof och sionist, pp. 141–3.
49. Israel, Språk och kunskap, pp. 158–9.
50. Derrida, ‘The Politics of Friendship’, pp. 632–44.