The Foundations of Jürgen Habermas’s Discourse Ethics

Jurgen Habermass overall theory of communicative action relies on two separate but connected claims: that instrumentalism is parasitic on a more comprehensive notion of rationality and that explaining the necessary conditions for mutual linguistic understanding demonstrates and articulates the rudimentary elements of this more comprehensive notion. These two claims are considered as the cornerstones of his theory of communicative rationality. Without the first, his account for cultural tradition, social integration, and socialization would be not only dubious but also unnecessary, because the same explanatory power could be achieved by relying on instrumental accounts of such phenomena. Without the second, his protestations against instrumentalism would be merely negative, unable to produce a viable alternative to the criticized paradigm. Thus, without some plausible defense of these assertions, the entire undertaking fails to get off the ground. Even though these two claims are fundamental to Habermass undertaking, it is obvious that there are other matters at issue. After all, Habermas is not only concerned to demonstrate the superiority of his social theory with respect to its explanatory power vis-a-vis instrumentalism; his main objective, not unlike that of Kant, is to demonstrate the possibility of rational redemption of both moral and political values. This means that he needs to justify a universal moral principle of some sort that avoids the value subjectivism inherent in purely instrumental conceptions of reason. If such a justification were successful, Habermas would then also be in a position to assess some existing moral and political values through the newly discovered criterion. It is thus at this juncture that we encounter a transition from Habermas as a descriptive social theorist to Habermas as a critical social theorist. Here, we will consider the purported relations between understanding, reasons, and argumentation and offer an explanation of such relations. We will also take up the derivation of the moral principle or, principle of universalization, as it is called by Habermas, both in terms of its structure as well as the attempted justification of discourse rules and argue that because the derivation relies on the justification of the discourse rules, and the discourse rules are, in turn, dependent upon the parasitic nature of the instrumental stance vis-a-vis the communicative stance, Habermass ethical theory, while not identical to