Jürgen Habermas

New Social Movements

In the last ten to twenty years, conflicts have developed in advanced Western societies that, in many respects, deviate from the welfare-state pattern of institutionalized conflict over distribution. These new conflicts no longer arise in areas of material reproduction; they are no longer channeled through parties and organizations; and they can no longer be alleviated by compensations that conform to the system. Rather, the new conflicts arise in areas of cultural reproduction, social integration, and socialization. They are manifested in sub-institutional, extraparliamentary forms of protest. The underlying deficits reflect a reification of communicative spheres of action; the media of money and power are not sufficient to circumvent this reification.

Towards a theory of communicative competence

In this, the second of two articles outlining a theory of communicative competence, the author questions the ability of Chomskys account of linguistic competence to fulfil the requirements of such a theory. ‘Linguistic competence’ for Chomsky means the mastery of an abstract system of rules, based on an innate language apparatus. The model by which communication is understood on this account contains three implicit assumptions, here called ‘monologism’, ‘a priorism’, and ‘elementarism’. The author offers an outline of a theory of communicative competence that is based on the negations of these assumptions. In opposing the first two assumptions he introduces distinctions, respectively, between semantic universals which process experiences and those that make such processing possible, and between semantic universals which precede all socialization and those that are linked to the conditions of potential socialization. Against elementarism, he argues that the semantic content of all possible natural languag...

Toward a rational society : student protest, science, and politics

Universities must transmit technically exploitable knowledge. That is, they must meet an industrial societys need for qualified new generations and at the same time be concerned with the expanded reproduction of education itself. In addition, universities must not only transmit technically exploitable knowledge, but also produce it. This includes both information flowing from research into the channels of industrial utilization, armament, and social welfare, and advisory knowledge that enters into strategies of administration, government, and other decision-making powers, such as private enterprises. Thus, through instruction and research the university is immediately connected with functions of the economic process.

Three normative models of democracy

Os modelos de democracia propostos pelo liberalismo e pelo republicanismo comunitarista sao criticados a partir da perspectiva da politica deliberativa tal como concebida pela teoria do discurso. Associando ao processo democratico conotacoes normativas mais fortes do que o modelo liberal, porem mais fracas do que o modelo republicano, a teoria do discurso articula elementos de ambas numa forma nova.

On systematically distorted communication

In this, the first of two articles outlining a theory of communicative competence, the author shows how the requirements of such a theory are to be found in an analysis not of the linguistic competence of a native speaker, but of systematic distortion of communication of the kind postulated by psychoanalytic theory. The psychoanalysts hermeneutic understanding of initially incomprehensible acts and utterances depends on the explanatory power of this understanding, and therefore rests on theoretical assumptions. After a preliminary delineation of the range of incomprehensible acts and utterances dealt with in psychoanalysis, the author presents an account of psychoanalysis as linguistic analysis. He then explicates the key theoretical assumptions underlying the analytical procedure, in particular those relating to the notion of ‘scenic understanding’, and concludes by indicating the place of explanatory understanding in a theory of communicative competence.

February 15, or What Binds Europeans Together: A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in the Core of Europe

It is the wish of Jacques Derrida and Jurgen Habermas to be co-signatories of what is both an analysis and an appeal. They regard it as necessary and urgent that French and German philosophers lift their voices together, whatever disagreements may have separated them in the past. The following text was composed by Jurgen Habermas, as will be readily apparent. Though he would have liked to very much, due to personal circumstances Jacques Derrida was unable to compose his own text. Nevertheless, he suggested to Jurgen Habermas that he be the co-signatory of this appeal, and shares its definitive premises and perspectives: the determination of new European political responsibilities beyond any Eurocentrism; the call for a renewed confirmation and effective transformation of international law and its institutions, in particular the UN; a new conception and a new praxis for the distribution of state authority, etc., according to the spirit, if not the precise sense, that refers back to the Kantian tradition.

Knowledge and interest∗ 1

Husserl saw as a reason for the crisis of a positivistic science its dissociation from practical interests. His remedy was to institute a purely contemplative attitude which should not only release the sciences from the grip of the illusion that the world is a ready‐made universe of facts to be grasped in purely descriptive terms, but also, by its own therapeutic powers, lead to ‘a new kind of practice’. In adhering to this traditional concept of the relation of knowledge to interest Husserl misconceived the scientific crisis. Even though phenomenological description would effectively dispel the illusion of objectivism, objectivism in no way prevents science from influencing practice; what was needed was not to restore the practical significance of the sciences by making them finally break with interest, but rather to reveal the true relationship of knowledge and interest which the objectivistic attitude conceals. After outlining the fundamental interests guiding the respective scientific enterprises, the...

The Concept of Human Dignity and the Realistic Utopia of Human Rights

Human rights developed in response to specific violations of human dignity, and can therefore be conceived as specifications of human dignity, their moral source. This internal relationship explains the moral content and moreover the distinguishing feature of human rights: they are designed for an effective implementation of the core moral values of an egalitarian universalism in terms of coercive law. This essay is an attempt to explain this moral-legal Janus face of human rights through the mediating role of the concept of human dignity. This concept is due to a remarkable generalization of the particularistic meanings of those “dignities” that once were attached to specific honorific functions and memberships. In spite of its abstract meaning, “human dignity” still retains from its particularistic precursor concepts the connotation of depending on the social recognition of a status – in this case, the status of democratic citizenship. Only membership in a constitutional political community can protect, by granting equal rights, the equal human dignity of everybody.

Toward a Cosmopolitan Europe

Abstract:The globalization of the world’s economy and society has strained the limits of the nation-states capacity—both for democratic political life and for the redistributive policies upon which basic social justice depends. Moreover, individual states can no longer adequately protect their citizens from such increasingly globalized challenges as environmental degradation, epidemics, or the security risks created by advanced technologies. The European Union represents an opportunity not only to fashion a postnational welfare state capable of responding to a postnational economy, but to lay a groundwork that will ultimately make possible a global domestic policy.

Moral Development and Ego Identity

I would like to deal with certain fragments of a thematic which has interested my colleagues and me in connection with an empirical investigation of the conflict and apathy potential of youths. We suspect that among the various models of socialization, among the typical patterns of adolescence, and the corresponding solutions of adolescent crisis and the forms of identity constructed by young people, there is a nexus which can explain deeper lying, politically relevant attitudes. Stating the problem in this way prompts us to consider moral development and ego identity. This theme transcends the above mentioned consideration and leads us to a fundamental question of critical social theory, namely to the question of the normative implications of the fundamental concepts of that theory.