Jurgen Habermas Encyclopedia of Politi

Habermas, Jürgen (1929–)

David W. McIvor Jürgen Habermas has a strong claim to be

considered the most important and influential social theorist of the past century. He is the inheritor of a German intellectual tradition reaching back to Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), yet Habermas’s work ranges far beyond Continental philosophy, reaching into other traditions such as analytic philosophy and American pragmatism. There are multiple areas of academic inquiry to which Habermas has made a significant contribution, and the current debates within the disciplines of phi- losophy, linguistics, developmental psychology, philosophy of science, sociology, cultural studies, and political theory are all influenced by his work. In addition to his scholarly contri- butions, Habermas has been one of the more prominent public intellectuals over the past several decades. He has contributed to political debates surrounding immigration, German unification, the expansion of the European Union, the role of religion within liberal democracies, and the memory of the Holocaust within German public life. Few individuals have made a greater contribution to both intel- lectual understanding and public life.

Habermas’s work is notorious for its complexity. He writes in the style of a “grand theorist,” interweaving a variety of intellectual traditions into an intricate and complete whole. This style makes Habermas difficult to

comprehend for the novice, yet those who persist will discover one of the most generative

intellects of recent memory. This entry will focus on six aspects of Habermas’s work: his theory of the public sphere, his defense of rationality, his theories of language use and communicative action, his defense of morality and ethics in a post-metaphysical world, his procedural theories of law and democracy, and his contributions as a public intellectual.

The Public Sphere: Ideal and Ideology

Habermas is arguably best known as a theorist of communication. His theory of language use and communicative action, developed between 1965 and 1984, has supported his research on social evolution, ethics and morality, develop- mental psychology, and democratic politics. The key terms associated with Habermas, such as deliberative democracy and constitutional patriotism, all have their common source in his theory of communication. Yet even before he had developed this theory (discussed in detail below), Habermas had an interest in critical

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dialogue taking place within the public sphere. His first major publication – The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962; English translation 1989) – traced the emergence of a critical, debating public in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in western Europe. The emergence of the public sphere was intertwined with the development of industrial capitalism. Capitalist economic relations dis- placed feudal ties and gave rise to a variety of associations through which individuals could participate within debates and discussions about political and economic matters. Cut free from feudal relationships and statuses, individuals engaged each other through what Kant referred to as their “public use of reason” (Kant 1784/1991: 54). The public use of reason was, in theory, an open and inclusive form of commu- nication in which anyone could participate. Kant described the public use of reason as an essential element of the Enlightenment, which

he defined as “man’s emergence from his self- incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another” (1784/1991: 54). Kant believed that the emergence of public reason signaled a radical break in human history after which individuals would not have to rely

uncritically on external authorities for moral and practical guidance. There were three crucial features of the bourgeois public sphere, according to Habermas. First, it was typified by a kind of social intercourse that disregarded or “brack- eted” status differences between individuals. It “rejected the celebration of rank with a tact befitting equals” (1962/1989: 36). While differ- ences and inequalities were not eradicated in the public sphere, these differences were, in theory, irrelevant to the activities of critical, public debate and discussion. Second, within the public sphere discussions were arbitrated only through rational argumentation via the public use of reason. No one individual could settle debate arbitrarily; instead the public use of reason required (ideally) the formation of a consensus whereby participants came to mutual agreement. Third, the public sphere

was in principle inclusive; it was open to anyone who had a claim on the matter of discussion. While in practice the activities and spaces of the public sphere were restricted to male members of the wealthy classes, at least formally they were open to all.

Habermas was not blind to the variety of exclusions that marked the bourgeois public sphere. Women were not accepted into the cate- gory of “reasonable beings,” nor, in practice, were members of the working classes. Nevertheless, according to Habermas, the bourgeois public sphere embodied ideals of critical discussion and debate and provided a “training ground for what were to become a future society’s norms of political equality” (1992: 423). The bourgeois public sphere was ideological insofar as its formal claims of inclusiveness and equality obscured actual exclusions and inequalities. It was also, however, the origin of democratic ideals of an inclusive and egalitarian form of public life. Despite its imperfections, the bourgeois public sphere was based on claims about inclusion, equality, publicity, and reason that could be pro- gressively redeemed through collective action.

While the bourgeois public sphere offered promising ideals, Habermas argued that it had undergone a fundamental transformation and decline between the late nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth centuries. A passive public whose opinions could be managed by political elites gradually supplanted the critical public of the bourgeois public sphere. Politics and culture increasingly became spectator sports that required only passive consumption rather than shared, critical participation. Parti- cipation in public affairs and the ideal of pub- licity itself lost their appeal through the rise of

a mass society focused on consumption and “apolitical sociability” (1962/1989: 22). In the place of public reasoning and critical debate, the public sphere came to be characterized by political spectacles and propaganda designed to manipulate – rather than cultivate – public opinion.

Despite his pessimistic analysis, Habermas suggested that the critical ideals that emerged in the bourgeois public sphere could be reclaimed.

habermas , jürgen (1929–) 3 The institutions of contemporary democracy,

because they rested on the same ideals of equality and inclusion, could be progressively democratized. As Habermas saw it, bureau- cracies and other formal institutions could be “internally democratized and subjected to criti- cal publicity,” or, in other words, “the trend for these organizations to become less open to rational critical discourse can be reversed” (1962/1989: 233). The ideals of the bourgeois public sphere could motivate institutional reforms that would reverse the decline of public dialogue and critical debate.

As Habermas’s first major publication, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere set the tone for his later work both thematically and methodologically. Habermas’s concern with the democratic ideals of inclusion, equality, and the public use of reason continued to exert a powerful influence on his research. The ideal of the public sphere provided a model for how social and political life could be

conducted through critical deliberation, a topic that Habermas returned to consistently over the following decades. Methodologically, Structural Transformation was impressively interdisciplinary in its approach, drawing resources from philosophy, sociology, eco- nomics, political science, and media studies. Habermas’s penchant for wide-ranging and synthesizing scholarship has also continued throughout his long career.

The Dialectic of Enlightenment and Habermas’s Defense of Rationality

As an engaged intellectual with an interdisci- plinary approach, Habermas reflects the tradi- tion of research associated with critical theory. Critical theory is a school of social theory and criticism that drew its influences from, among others, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Sigmund Freud. Under the direction of Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in Germany became the intellectual home for critical theorists both before and after World War II. Habermas studied at Frankfurt between 1956 and 1959, and he

returned as Director of the Institute in 1964 until 1971. According to Horkheimer, critical theory differentiated itself from traditional theory by its orientation toward transformative critique – rather than mere description – of social reality (Horkheimer 1937/1986). In this respect, critical theorists shared Karl Marx’s complaint that “ philosophers … have merely described the world; the point is to change it” (1845/1978: 145).

Critical theory proceeded through immanent critique. Immanent critique aims to show how certain ideals within existing social practices, such as publicity or equality, are threatened. For instance Marx found value in capitalist society’s claims for freedom and happiness, yet he thought that these values were impossible in a society predicated on class domination. Marx’s critique of capitalism was an immanent cri- tique because he argued that the values of capitalist society were promises that could only

be redeemed under communism. In similar fashion, Habermas’s critique of the bourgeois public sphere was based on the idea that the imperfect realization of the ideals of inclusive- ness, equality, and publicity during the nineteenth century could be corrected in a future age. Habermas’s critique was immanent because it argued that social agents needed only to live up to their own ideals.

Horkheimer, along with his Frankfurt school colleague Theodor Adorno (1903–1969), also practiced a form of immanent critique. Yet unlike Habermas’s ambivalent appreciation of the public sphere, Horkheimer and Adorno’s immanent critique of capitalist society found few reasons for optimism. They famously argued that modern societies were trapped within a “dialectic of enlightenment” (1974/2002). Unlike Kant, who believed that the Enlightenment her- alded the emergence of rationality and the liberation of human capacities for autonomy and freedom, Horkheimer and Adorno thought that rationality itself was implicated in forms of oppression. They argued that the rational drive to understand nature grew naturally into an obsession with domination and control, which coincided with aggressive self-preservation and capitalist exploitation. As a result, the very

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process of enlightenment that was supposed to In light of his critique of his Frankfurt school liberate humanity instead served to imprison it

forebears, and subsequent to his examination of within a calculating and instrumental mindset.

the public sphere, Habermas’s research agenda Social life becomes bureaucratized and monetar-

took on a two-pronged approach. In addition to ized, locking humans into what sociologist Max

defending a theory of democratic politics that Weber called an “iron cage” of rational calcula-

could redeem the immanent but unrealized tion and control (Weber 1905/2002).

ideals of the bourgeois public sphere, Habermas According to Habermas, Horkheimer and

also sought to defend reason itself. Habermas Adorno’s radical critique of rationality came at

argued that Horkheimer and Adorno were left

a high price. Their thesis of an inescapable without resources for articulating the possibil- dialectic of enlightenment collapsed differ-

ities for nondominating reason, responsible ences within rationality itself. As a result, cri-

citizenship, and a just social order that was tique could “no longer discern contrasts,

not based solely on the control and coercion shadings, and ambivalent tones” within a world

of others. For Habermas, the defense of both characterized (but not dominated) by capitalist

reason and democracy required a differentiation relations and administrative power (1989:

between instrumental action aimed at domi- 338). Habermas did not deny that instrumental

nation and communicative action aimed at rationality had pathological consequences, but

mutual understanding. In order to make this his examination of the bourgeois public sphere

dif ferentiation, Habermas turned to the study of demonstrated how the free, public use of reason

language. Just as the public sphere embodied the could cultivate a critical public consciousness

ideals of publicity and equality (albeit imper- that was irreducible to the narrow mindset

fectly), for Habermas the human use of language of instrumental rationality. By identifying

embodied the ideals of accountability, autonomy, rationality solely with instrumental reason

and mutual understanding. Habermas thought and domination, Horkheimer and Adorno

that this conceptual innovation would allow obscured this possibility.

critical theorists to escape the dialectic of Habermas also argued that Horkheimer and

enlightenment and defend a nondominating Adorno’s work suffered from a powerful

form of reason.

contradiction. Namely, their radical critique of reason seemed, paradoxically, to depend upon

The Linguistic Turn and the Theory

reason itself. If their analysis precluded the

of Communicative Action

possibility of reaching understanding through communication, then on what grounds,

Habermas’s turn to theories of language is also Habermas asked, were they offering a critique?

explained by his conviction that critical theory For Habermas, the very idea of doing critique

remained trapped by the so-called “philosophy implied the possibility of distinguishing between

of consciousness.” The philosophy of con- instrumental and communicative reason. The

sciousness places individual consciousness at practice of critique presupposed the possibility

the center of the search for valid knowledge and of a public where mutual understanding could

rational social action. Beginning from the pre-

be reached through communicative (i.e., suppositions of Descartes’ famous maxim cogito noninstrumental) means. In this respect the

ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), the philos- practice of critique mirrored the ideal public

ophy of consciousness saw the individual mind sphere, where debates were settled in a non-

as the source for sense and certainty about the dominating fashion through the free use of

world. According to Habermas and the earlier public reason. If reason was as instrumentally

generation of critical theorists, the philosophy dominating as Horkheimer and Adorno had

of consciousness necessarily led to a narrow, claimed, then their analysis could not perform

instrumental view of rationality and an individ- its own critical function.

ualistic conception of politics. It did so by ualistic conception of politics. It did so by

interlocutors. Pragmatically speaking, then, rationality, which becomes the basis for

our very first sentence presupposes the possi- Habermas’s revision of the modern project and

bility of reaching mutual understanding with his defense of reason, human rights, and delib-

others. To deny this is to commit what erative democracy. Within communicative

Habermas calls a “ performative contradiction,” rationality, the individual, conscious subject is

akin to Horkheimer and Adorno’s paradoxical no longer the foundation of knowledge or

critique of reason. The inherent aim of speech action. Habermas’s starting point for his the-

is to bring interlocutors to a shared under- ories of knowledge and society is not the isolated

standing of the world. To claim the contrary is individual subject but the various forms of

to contradict oneself, since the claim – “the use interaction through which meaning is con-

of language does not imply agreement” – would structed and shared. This shift gives primacy to

perform the very thing that it denies is the intersubjective dimension of social reality.

possible.

In making this shift Habermas sought resources The theory that Habermas builds upon this within the so-called “linguistic turn” within

insight into language use is referred to as philosophy. The linguistic turn represented a turn

universal or formal pragmatics. Formal prag- away from the philosophy of consciousness

matics is concerned with the universal rules insofar as its basic approach was to treat questions

that make possible spoken language. Habermas of knowledge as questions of meaning. In other

refers to these rules in terms of the implicit words, human knowledge about the world takes

know-how or “competences” of language users. form through the use of language, so in order to

Formal pragmatics aims to show how these understand action we need to investigate how it

competences can be reformulated as rules becomes meaningful to us. For Habermas, a focus

guiding social action. Within the use of on language was valuable insofar as it challenged

language Habermas locates a source for the the philosophy of consciousness, but, more

claim of reason that Kant had defended and importantly, the study of language could con-

Horkheimer and Adorno had denied. Yet tribute to the larger projects of defending reason

unlike Kant, whose theory of reason was and democracy. As Habermas put it:

located within the philosophy of conscious- ness, Habermas’s account focuses on the inter-

The human interest in autonomy and respon- subjective conditions for rationality. sibility is not mere fancy, for it can be appre-

Moreover, whereas Kant thought that reason hended a priori. What raises us out of nature

has a transcendental basis – that is, that the fac- is the only thing whose nature we can know:

language. Through its structure, autonomy ulty of reason can be established independently

and responsibility are posited for us. Our of experience – for Habermas rationality is first sentence expresses unequivocally the

not transcendentally guaranteed but arises intention of universal and unconstrained

contingently through the human acquisition consensus. (1981/1987: 314)

of language. The pragmatic use of language presupposes rationality, but these rules of lan- By “a priori” Habermas means that the

guage are not innate but only acquired through ideals of autonomy and responsibility are pre-

socialization into modern forms of life. Modern supposed by the human use of language.

forms of life require communicative action due Although language is also descriptive (insofar

to what Weber called the “disenchantment” of as it aims to describe objective features of

the world. After the loss of all-encompassing the world) and expressive (insofar as it can

mythic narratives, humans are compelled to express subjective preferences or experiences),

collaboratively recreate meaning for their Habermas focuses on the pragmatic use of

actions through the exchange and redemption speech. Pragmatic speech necessarily aims at

of speech acts aimed at mutual understanding establishing intersubjective consensus between

and consensus (Habermas 1981/1987: 45–74).

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Habermas develops these claims with his theory of communicative action. The theory of communicative action focuses on the different kinds of “validity claims” that are implicit within speech acts. Speakers raise three validity claims with their utterances. First, that the statement is true. Second, that the statement is right with respect to the existing normative context of action. And third, that the speaker is being sincere. For instance, take the sentence, “that jerk just cut ahead of you in the line for movie tickets.” The speaker is making a claim about an objective truth (the person really did move in front of you). But they are also raising

a normative claim about the impropriety of this person’s action (“that jerk” implies a normative judgment). They are also raising a claim of sincerity insofar as they really intend to express the new state of affairs.

For Habermas, the background assump- tions that make possible unproblematic com- munications like this one comprise the “lifeworld.” The lifeworld is the source of social norms (cutting in line is improper behavior) and the variety of meanings that give rise to certain perceptions (moving ahead of someone without permission equals “cutting”). For the most part our interactions with others take place within this background of tacit meaning. Within everyday commu- nication the implicit claims for truth, right- ness, and sincerity are typically accepted as unproblematic. However, all validity claims are potentially subject to what Habermas calls “problematization” (1981/1987: 131). Our hypothetical listener, for instance, could challenge any of the implicit validity claims of this utterance. They could challenge the truth of the claim by potentially introducing new information (“that person was there before but left to talk to a friend”) or they could challenge the implicit norm guiding social behavior (“it’s a harsh world, and everyone has to try and get ahead where they can”). Lastly, they could challenge the sincerity of the claim (“you cannot think cutting ahead in line is improper, since we cut ahead of those people in order to be here”).

When these challenges are made, the interlocutors enter into a special speech situation called “discourse.” Discourse is a reflective form of speech in which interlocutors exchange reasons for why something is or should be the case. The unavoidable aim of discourse is the restoration of the consensus that existed before a claim was challenged. In our case, our first speaker could point to

evidence that would restore the truth of their initial claim or persuade the listener of the rightness of the norm. Discourse is not an eso- teric activity of philosophers and social critics. Discourse occurs normally in everyday con- texts of interaction. The important thing to note is that discourse, like communicative action itself, presupposes the possibility (although never the inevitability) of rational consensus. Communicative action is therefore unlike strategic action, in which the goal is to manipulate others in order to achieve a

predetermined end, and which does not rely upon consensus. Even if discourse breaks off for one reason or another, the initial entrance into discourse presupposes that the question could

be settled and consensus restored. As Habermas puts it, “universal discourse points to an ideal- ized lifeworld reproduced through processes of mutual understanding” (1981/1987: 145). Initially described as an “ideal speech situation,” Habermas, following his colleague Karl-Otto Apel, came to refer to this idealized possibility as the “ideal communication community” (Cooke 2000: 365). The unavoidable orienta- tion toward consensus does not mean that there are not conflicts within social life. Instead, as Habermas puts it, “a lifeworld rationalized in this sense would by no means reproduce itself in conflict-free forms. But the conflicts would appear in their own names” (1981/1987: 145). In other words, participants within discourse are able to communicate effectively to each other the causes and consequences of social conflicts, rather than breaking off communica- tion before mutual understanding over the conflict is reached.

Having established the unavoidable presup- positions of communicative action, Habermas Having established the unavoidable presup- positions of communicative action, Habermas

pragmatics and discourse could explain social evolution and address the problems left unre- solved by his critical theory forebears, including the instrumental rationalization of the social world. Yet Habermas’s analysis encountered an immediate obstacle. Namely, since Weber the presumption was that the medium of political and social life was not pragmatic, consensus- oriented communication but power. For Weber in particular the rationalization of the world gave rise to a bureaucratically administered political life characterized by domination through instrumental forms of rationality.

Habermas does not seek to deny Weber’s thesis about the increasing instrumental ratio- nalization of the world. For Habermas, bureau- cratic and economic “systems” are an inescapable element of contemporary societies. These sys- tems do not operate through communicative rationality but through strategic actions guided by the “steering media” of power and money (1981/1987: 185–6). As societies grow more complex, social order requires actions that can only be performed by these systems, which operate according to their own (instrumental) logic. For instance, economic relationships are coordinated through the medium of money, which represents a shortcut from the arduous process of reaching agreement. Money is a medium of exchange that “unburdens” agents from communicative action and allows them to act according to their instrumental interests. Similarly, bureaucratic agencies operate through the instrumental medium of power, which allows for the more efficient resolution of collective action problems. For instance, the administra- tion of a complicated program such as socially provided health insurance requires the coordination of thousands of actors. Without instrumental rationality organized through processes of command and control, such pro- grams would be impossible to maintain.

The unleashing of systems organized through instrumental rationality, however, creates a problem for the lifeworld. Namely, instru- mental forms of action can reach back into and “colonize” the lifeworld itself (1981/1987: 305).

In an analysis functionally similar to Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of the dia- lectic of enlightenment, Habermas argues that strategic, means-end rationality can come to dominate social interactions that had previ- ously relied upon communicative actions geared toward consensus. Interactions within the lifeworld are then increasingly subject to both monetarization and what Habermas calls “juridification,” in which formal laws and administrative regulations come to replace dis- courses aimed at reaching mutual under- standing about truth, rightness, and sincerity (1981/1987: 361). One example that Habermas uses is the rise of welfare-state provisions. On the one hand, these provisions are rational insofar as they address uneven resource distri- bution within capitalist economies. Yet on the other hand they “spread a net of client relation- ships over private spheres of life,” which turns citizens into wards of the state rather than criti- cal participants in public life (1981/1987: 364). The colonization of the lifeworld not only weakens social norms but also threatens the possibility of a critical public sphere. In response to this threat, Habermas argued that commu- nication communities need to be protected from system colonization. He referred to this as a “siege” model where the goal was to “erect

a democratic dam against the colonizing encroachment of system imperatives on areas of the lifeworld” (1992: 444). The idea of a pro- tected space for democratic discourse reaches back to Habermas’s analysis of the bourgeois public sphere, and it anticipates his later theory of deliberative democracy.

Discourse Ethics: Morality in a Post-Metaphysical World

For Habermas, formal pragmatics and commu- nicative action have implications far beyond a theory of social evolution. They also relate to the possibility of ethical and moral truth in

a so-called “post-metaphysical” world. For Habermas, a post-metaphysical world is one in which the “sacred canopy” of religious authority has been diminished through

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increasing social pluralism and secularization (1990a: vii). Yet without a transcendent source for the moral order, morality seems to collapse into subjective preferences, practical maxims relating to common forms of life, or a brazen moral nihilism. As Ivan Karamazov, the central character in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, contended, if there is no God, then everything is permitted.

According to Habermas, however, the “cog- nitivism,” or truth-status, of ethical and moral claims can still be defended. Ethical questions can be adjudicated non-subjectively, and – despite the dissolution of transcendent guar- antees for morality – moral norms can still admit of truth. For Habermas, the key resides in discourse. His theory of “discourse ethics” reconstructs the moral point of view through

a discursive account of moral reasoning. According to discourse ethics, the promise of rational consensus on questions of morality and ethics is implied by the very use of the terms “ought” and “right” within communica- tive action. While this promise of rational con- sensus is an ideal that is rarely reached in practice, the ideal is both unavoidable and “actually efficacious” insofar as it supports valid expectations that public discourse could yield rational answers to ethical and moral questions (2001: 35).

To better understand Habermas’s account of moral reasoning, it is worthwhile to contrast it to Kant’s. Like Kant, Habermas believes that moral autonomy and freedom require that we can only be responsible to those moral laws that are subject to our will. Moreover, these laws must be “universal” insofar as they apply to all similar (autonomous and free) beings. Kant’s test of universalizability was called the categorical imperative. The categorical impera- tive states that a moral norm is valid only if it can be willed as a universal law for humanity. For instance, a norm of cutting ahead of someone in line could not be elevated into a universal law without contradicting the very practice of lining up.

For Habermas, discourse ethics provides a better model of moral reasoning than Kant’s

categorical imperative. The reason is that Kant’s procedure is “monological,” that is, it is applied by the individual in isolation from communicative interaction. This leads poten- tially to a moral self-centeredness that can only

be corrected through actual discourses of moral reasoning. Habermas accepts Kant’s principle of universalizability (U), but he gives it a new formulation: “a norm is valid when the foreseeable consequences and side effects of its general observance for the interests and value orientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion” (1990a: 65). Yet Habermas supplements the universalizability principle with the “discourse principle (D),” which states that, “only norms are valid that meet with the approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse” (1990a: 93). The principles of (D) and (U) supplement each other in important ways. Without the discourse prin- ciple, (U) can slide back into the moral self- centeredness of Kant’s categorical imperative. Yet without the universalization principle, (D) is missing a crucial test that distinguishes between pseudo- and rational consensus.

Once again, the principles of (U) and (D) act as ideals for practical and moral discourse, but these ideals are immanent to the everyday practices of communicative action. The ideali- zations inherent to moral discourse are “not … absurd,” because they are the “simultaneously unavoidable and trivial accomplishments that sustain communicative action and argumenta- tion” (1990a: 54). However, like the pragmatic use of language itself, these accomplishments are not innate. Instead they result from the contingent development of modern ratio- nality whereby individuals take themselves to be accountable to themselves and others. Discourse ethics, then, is not transcendental but relies instead upon an account of individual and social development.

Habermas’s reconstruction of modern social evolution provides the basis for his discourse theory of ethics. The disenchantment of the world gave rise to secular procedures for adducing moral and ethical norms. Social Habermas’s reconstruction of modern social evolution provides the basis for his discourse theory of ethics. The disenchantment of the world gave rise to secular procedures for adducing moral and ethical norms. Social

through developments in individual moral psy- chology. The concept of an autonomous ego, for Habermas, has an inescapably ideal and universal claim. This claim, however, cannot be dogmatically asserted; instead it can only be reconstructed “nonontologically” through a developmental account. This developmental account conceptualizes autonomy as an endless project of progressive communicative appropri- ation of internal and external conflicts.

Habermas support his developmental account of moral psychology through the work of the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927– 1987). Kohlberg described a series of succes- sive stages of moral competency through which individuals progressively resolve moral dilemmas. For Kohlberg the progression from lower to higher stages of moral competency marked the ability of the individual to sort out the universal obligations of morality from other obligations within practical life (Kohlberg 1981). Habermas felt that the theory of formal pragmatics could supplement Kohlberg’s account with an overlaying schema of commu- nicative interaction. As a result he re-described Kohlberg’s progressive stages of moral compe- tency in terms of increasing “interactive com- petence” (1979: 82–3). At the highest stages, subjects make explicit and affirm the implicit norms of reciprocity and mutual recognition that are presupposed, but never guaranteed, by the pragmatic use of language.

However, the process of ego development is, as is communicative action more generally, dependent on structures of socialization that embed norms of mutual recognition through repeated experiences of reciprocal interac- tion and undistorted communication. In other words, the higher stages of moral interaction are contingent upon conditions within the life- world. In turn the lifeworld is regenerated by the solidarity generated through free, rational discourses. Habermas admits that rational dis- courses, because of their idealizing content, have an “improbable character, existing like islands in the sea of everyday practice” (1993: 56). Yet because modern life is unthinkable without

communicative interaction, these islands can still guide normative debate and social action.

The Procedural Theory of Law, the Deliberative Model of Democracy, and the Challenge of Cultural Pluralism

Having established the relevance of the the- ories of communicative action and formal pragmatics to modern ethics and morality, Habermas returned to the political domain with Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (1992; English translation 1996). In this book Habermas sought to show how politics and law could be reconceived in communicative terms. In the process he returned to his early emphasis on the critical, free debates of citi- zens within a vibrant public sphere. The result was a procedural account of modern law and a “deliberative” model of democracy. Both of these ideas have proven highly influential, both within academic political theory and political discourse more broadly conceived.

In devising a theory of politics Habermas simultaneously confronted two seemingly irre- solvable problems. The first problem is the tension within modern law between legality and legitimacy, or, as the title of Habermas’s book puts it, between “facts” and “norms.” The “facticity” of law refers to the claim that modern law is “positive,” that is, that it is based on the ungrounded decision of a given community. Legal positivists such as Weber argued that, given the disenchantment of modern life, law had lost its original reference to a natural order supported by divine authority, which provided the laws not just with coercive force but also with legitimacy. For Weber, legit- imacy was reducible to the contingent belief in

a law’s validity, absent any transcendent basis for that belief. In other words, law does not have a rational basis; it merely reflects the will of a given political community as represented by its formal authorities.

Opposed to legal positivism is the theory of natural law. Natural law theorists argue that there are immutable natural rights that pre-exist

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any given political community. For theorists such as John Locke (1632–1704), the voice of reason dictates these rights, and they exist regardless of whether or not they are codified in positive law. These rights create obligations that must be respected by formal authorities; in fact these authorities are only legitimate insofar as they secure and protect natural rights. For contemporary natural law theorists, Weber’s legal positivism is dangerous because it turns the demand for rights into one among many other political claims. Natural law, however, argues that these rights are prior to any political claim as such.

Habermas sees problems with both legal pos- itivism and natural law. Natural law theorists remain stuck within a pre-modern mindset, which denies the fact of social evolution. For Habermas rights are not immutable and unchanging, but evolve through social learning processes. To claim that rights pre-exist political communities is to reject the post-metaphysical nature of modern societies. It also compromises the very idea of popular sovereignty, because rights only exist if political communities give them to themselves. For Habermas rights are a product of discourse and public will-formation; they do not exist prior to these processes.

On the other hand, Habermas is not a legal positivist in the vein of Weber or Niklas Luhman (1927–1998). Legal positivists make the opposite error as natural law theorists. Instead of resting on a theory of pre-political legitimacy, legal positivists reject the very idea of a rational basis for law. As a result, citizens can only relate to law in instrumental or stra- tegic ways; obedience to the law results not from consent but out of fear or habit. Yet for Habermas this idea ignores the ways in which citizens voluntarily consent to the law because they recognize its legitimacy. This is not to say, however, that citizens recognize legitimacy in the way described by natural law theory. Instead what citizens recognize when they vol- untarily obey the law is the law’s rationality. In other words citizens recognize the validity of laws because they can envision – and partici- pate within – discourses aimed at testing these

sanctions. In this respect Habermas connects his theory of law to a theory of democratic discourse, or what Habermas refers to as “delib- erative democracy.”

Just as Habermas places his theory of law between legal positivism and natural law theory, he places his democratic theory bet- ween two dominant traditions of modern political thought: liberalism and civic republi- canism. Liberalism, connected to Locke’s the- ories of natural law, emphasizes the importance of individual, private autonomy as the basis for political consent. The emphasis on private autonomy grows naturally out of the concern for pre-political, natural rights. If these rights belong to all individuals, then legitimate government must be based on the consent of all, and it must proceed in a way that respects the equality and freedom of every individual. In most variants of liberalism, popular con- sent provides the basis for representative government, but the power of governing authorities is limited by the basic rights enjoyed by all. As a result liberals often emphasize the importance of constitutional guarantees for basic liberties that serve as a “check” on the power of legally constituted authorities. On the liberal view political life does not have intrinsic value; its value is contingent on its ability to protect and advance the liberty of individuals.

Civic republicanism, on the other hand, does not begin from individual autonomy but from public autonomy. Civic republicans emphasize the idea of the “common good,” and as such they stress the importance of popular sovereignty and the intrinsic value of political participation as a means of discovering and protecting the common good. According to civic republicanism, individual rights do not exist prior to political community. Therefore political authorities must ultimately be subor- dinate to popular will. Moreover, constitu- tionally established rights cannot be seen to compromise the autonomy of the political community. Formal, codified rights or consti- tutions that restrict political participation would violate the autonomy of the community to collectively decide its own fate.

habermas , jürgen (1929–) 11 Habermas argues that liberalism and civic

sovereignty, and hence they both provide only republicanism each suffer from fatal flaws

a partial theory of democracy. in their conceptions of democratic politics.

Habermas is often described as a political Related to his critique of natural law theory,

liberal, and his arguments about constitutional Habermas cannot accept liberalism’s emphasis

democracy are often paired with the work of on pre-political rights. The liberal emphasis on

the most prominent twentieth-century liberal the protection of individuals has merit in

philosopher, John Rawls (1921–2004). Yet this Habermas’s eyes, but this system only results

classification can obscure the key differences from contingent social learning processes.

between Rawls’s and Habermas’s approaches to Moreover, echoing his early work on the

liberalism. In a published debate with Rawls, bourgeois public sphere, Habermas empha-

Habermas argues that Rawls’s approach is sizes the intrinsic value of participation within

insufficiently democratic insofar as it does not public discourse and political life. In these

follow a strict proceduralism in its account of respects, Habermas seems to side with the civic

public reason (1998/2001: 95). Rawls, like republican account of democracy against the

many figures within the liberal tradition, sees liberal approach.

the exercise of public autonomy as a means for Yet Habermas also criticizes civic republi-

achieving private autonomy. As Habermas puts canism for its assumption that individual rights

it, Rawls’s theory “generates a priority of liberal are necessarily subordinate to the principle of

rights that demotes the democratic process to popular sovereignty. Habermas sides with lib-

an inferior status,” whereas Habermas’s proce- erals, then, in arguing for the importance of

duralist defense of democracy “entrusts more respecting individual autonomy through the

to the process of rational opinion- and will- codification of human rights. While these

formation” (1998/2001: 69, 72). rights do not have a transcendental basis, they

Habermas’s defense of the exercise of public are unavoidable presuppositions of modern

autonomy through procedures of democratic democracy. Ultimately, Habermas situates his

opinion-formation in the public sphere is also theory between popular sovereignty and

related to his understanding of political and individual autonomy by arguing that there is

ethical issues arising from increased multicul- an internal connection between private

turalism. The coexistence of different ethnic, autonomy and collective self-rule. As he puts it,

cultural, and religious groups within a shared political space leads to thorny issues sur-

the … internal relation between popular sov- rounding political integration and minority ereignty and human rights consists in the fact

rights. Habermas argues that cultural pluralism that the system of rights states precisely the

condition under which the forms of commu- requires a shift in both the paradigmatic

nication necessary for the genesis of legiti- understanding of rights and theories of social mate law can be legally institutionalized.

integration. His overriding concern with a pro- (1992/1996: 104)

ceduralist defense of democracy guides both of these reforms.

In other words, the protection of private In the first instance, he argues that only a pro- autonomy through the codification of rights is

ceduralist conception of rights can combine implied by the exercise of popular sovereignty,

both the liberal interest in minority protection and vice versa. Constitutionalism and democ-

with the republican insight into public autonomy racy are co-original: “the private autonomy of

and democratic will-formation. For Habermas, citizens must neither be set above, nor made

the struggle for recognition among cultural subordinate to, their political autonomy”

or ethnic groups within the polity is part of (1992/1996: 104). Liberalism and civic repub-

a broader political process of democratic licanism both fail to recognize the comple-

self-governance. As he puts it, “safeguarding the mentary relationship of rights and popular

private autonomy of citizens with equal rights

12 habermas, jürgen (1929–)

must go hand in hand with activating their autonomy as citizens of the nation” (1998/2001: 210). Cultural or ethnic groups can only realize social and legal recognition through the active, public articulation and defense of their rights as

a group. Importantly, for Habermas, these groups are

not themselves immune to pressures of justifi- cation and problematization. As Habermas sees it, “cultures survive only if they draw the strength to transform themselves from criti- cism and secession” (1998/2001: 223). This dis- tinguishes Habermas’s approach to the politics of recognition from communitarians such as Michael Walzer and Charles Taylor, who argue that the liberal state should guarantee the status of identifiable subgroups and promote the survival of endangered cultural forms of life (1998/2001: 207).