McCarthy begins here by noting Habermas's roots in - and crucial differences from - Kant:
Habermas shifts the focus of the critique of reason from forms of transcendental subjectivity to forms of communication. Kant, moving within the horizon of individual consciousness, understood objective validity in terms of structures of Bewusstsein ueberhaupt, consciousness as such or in general. For Habermas, validity is tied to reasoned agreement concerning defeasible claims. (45)
McCarthy notes here that Habermas's use of the term "validity" as "a general term covering both the truth of assertions and the rightness of norms," is "similar in this respect to Rawls's broad use of 'truth' to include 'moral truth.'" As this Kantian root would suggest, Habermas's position, however much it reconstructs Enlightenment rationality in terms of more contemporary communication and action theory, remains recognizably rationalist.
McCarthy characterizes Habermas's reconstruction this way:
The key to commmunicative rationality is the appeal to reasons or grounds - the unforced force of the better argument - to gain intersubjective recognition for such claims. Correspondingly, Habermas's idea of a "discourse ethics" can be viewed as a reconstruction of Kant's idea of practical reason in terms of communicative reason. [ftn. 5: Juergen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. C. Lenhardt and S. Nicholsen (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990). For an excellent account of discourse ethics in the context of contemporary moral theory, see William Rehg, Insight and Solidarity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).] Roughly speaking, it involves a procedural reformulation of the Categorical Imperative: rather than ascribing to others as valid those maxims I can will to be universal laws, I must submit them to others for purposes of discursively testing their claim to universal validity. The emphasis shifts from what each can will without contradiction to what all can agree to in rational discourse. Validity construed as rational acceptability is not something that can be certi/fied privately; it is tied to communication processes in which claims are tested argumentatively by weighing reasons pro and con. (45-6)
McCarthy offers an additional point of contrast between Habermas and Kant. Contemporary pluralism, with its stress on the irreducible differences between particular life histories and cultures, no longer accepts the possibility of a traditional foundational and comprehensive philosophical account, including Kant's project of providing an overarching, philosophical account of the good life (refering here, though he does not quite say it, to Kant's famous three questions: what can I know? ... how should I live?) valid for all persons at all times. Such pluralism, however, "...does not, in Habermas's view, preclude a general theory of a narrower sort, namely, a theory of justice." (46) Continuing,
Accordingly, the aim of his discourse ethics is solely to reconstruct the moral point of view from which questions of right can be fairly and impartially adjudicated. [ftn. 7: Thus it would have been better named "discourse morality" or "discourse justice."] As noted above, it is geared like Kant's ethics to what everyone could rationally will to be binding on everyone alike; but it shifts the frame of reference from Kant's solitary, reflecting, moral consciousness to the community of moral subjects in dialogue: and it replaces his Categorical Imperative with a procedure of practical argumentation aimed at reaching reasoned agreement among those subject to the norms in question. Moreover, by requireing that perspective taking be genral and rciprocal, discourse ethics build a moment of empathy or "ideal role-taking" into the representation of the ideal procedure for arriving at reasoned agreement.
McCarthy notes here that this leads to an initial contrast between Habermas and Rawls:
[ftn. 8: This is, of course, a difference from Rawls's favored "device of representation," the original position, which features rational egoists prudently contracting behind a veil of ignorance. Rawls represents only the "rational" directly and the "reasonable" indirectly, through the conditions of deliberation; whereas Habermas, because of the role that discourse plays in his theory, wants directly to represent the rational and reasonable deliberation of agents who have themselves adopted the moral point of view. Consequently, Habermas does not lean as heavily as Rawls does on the distinction between the rational and the reasonable, most often using them interchangeably to connote a capacity for and sensitivity to the weighing of reasons in speaking and acting. See Juergen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, 2 vols., trans. T. McCarthy (Boston: Beacon, 1984, 1987), vol. 1, pp. 1-141.] 46-7
Of course, even the comparatively more modest program of attempting to build "simply" a theory of justice which claims validity beyond the bounds of a particular culture still faces various relativist attacks. Habermas seeks more universal grounds by way of action theory: his connecting his theory of justice to action theory
is meant to show that our basic moral intuitions are rooted in something deeper and more universal than particularities of our tradition. The task of moral theory, in his view, is reflectively to articulate, refine, and elaborate - that is, to "reconstruct" - the intuitive grasp of the normative presuppositions of social interaction that belongs to the repertoire of competent social actors in any society. (47)
As McCarthy points out, Habermas's effort to ground moral and political theory in some form of shared intuition echoes Aristotle's understanding of morality as a "natural" component of human nature: but the focus on morality as intertwined with a socialized intuition further brings into play the (equally Aristotelian) recognition that self-identity, as shaped by the society in which one finds oneself, "...is from the start interwoven with relations of mutual recognition." (47) This interdependence, moreover, "...brings with it a reciprocal vulnerability that calls for guarantees of mutual consideration to preserve both the integrity of individual persons and the web of interpersonal relations in which their identities are formed and maintained." (47)
On this view, the self is not a moral isolate, in the manner of a modern, especially Hobbesian individual. Rather, the relationship between self and other presupposed here echoes other moral theorists, from Martin Buber through Karl Jaspers to Carol Gilligan, who understand that that the self emerges from a social web of relationships. Indeed, this more relational - one might say communitarian - side of modern theory simply reflects premodern traditions, including Aristotle. As McCarthy notes, "Both of these concerns - with the inviolability of the person and the solidarity of the community - have been at the heart of traditional moralities." (47)
McCarthy seems to see this interrelationship between self and community in Kant as expressed in the crucial notions of "freedom," as Kant's notion of freedom as a rational autonomy further entails the objectivity and universality of moral law - expressed here in terms of the law's impartiality: "In the Kantian tradition, respect for the individual is tied to the freedom of each to act on norms she can herself accept as right and concern for the general interest to the impartiality of laws that all can agree to on that basis." (47) This Kantian expression of the interrelationship between self and community further shows up in Habermas's discourse ethics as a procedure for determining norms through consensus, a consensus which requires:
McCarthy suggests here that these requirements - especially as solidarity translates into a concern for the common good which seems implicit in Kant's notions of respect for persons and "the community of ends" as the ideal moral community - thus echo specifically Kantian and more generally traditional theories which stress the interdependence between self and commmunity:
In Habermas's discourse ethics, which basis the justification of norms on the reasoned agreement of those subject to them, equal respect for individuals is reflected in the freedom of each participant to respond with a yes or a no to reasons offered by way of justification and concern for the common good in the requirement that each participant take into account the needs, interests, and feelings of all others and give them equal weight to her own. Hence the actual practice of moral and political discourse depends on forms of socialization and social reproduction that can be counted upon to foster the requisite capacities and motivations. (47-48)
[back to comparison between Habermas and Rawls]
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