Cheers, Ken Hanly
I. Discourse Ethics: Habermas
Habermas establishes his moral theory by externalizing the Kantian dialogue interieur. The externalization takes place in three steps. The first step is to transfer the mental deliberation of the Kantian individual into an interactive public deliberation of all those concerned with the moral topic in question. The second step is to conflate rationality with reason. Rationality no longer is a deduction from Reason, but instead it is an underpinning of reasonableness. In discourse ethic rationality means giving good reasons for choices of reasonableness. The third step is to view justice, not according to the categorical imperative, but by concentrating on the following of procedures. Claims concerning the content of moral deliberation must be avoided. What results is an elaborated, interactive Kantianism, concentrating on procedures but still claiming universalism.
Continuing the line of critical theory, Habermas avoids the classical standards of Nature, God and Reason and instead presents the ideal speech situation: an attempt to interpret rational consensus procedurally, with no regard for the content. The ideal speech situation serves to summarize the rules to be followed in moral argumentation: symmetry and reciprocity. Symmetry refers to speech acts: each participant must have an equal chance to initiate and to continue communication, and to make assertions, give explanations, and challenge justifications. Reciprocity refers to action contexts: participants must have an equal chance to express their wishes, feelings and intentions, and speakers must act as if each of them has the same capacity to order, to promise and to be accountable. In the ideal speech situation the participants operate without power differences; the only power allowed is the power of argumentation. The ideal speech situation, Habermas later admits (1985, 229), is a somewhat too concrete expression for the presuppositions moral agents always (must) make when they want to participate seriously in a discussion. Serious participation means assuming that the final aim of communication is the reaching of shared understanding: Verständigung. The agent who denies this is contradicting himself. Habermas calls this a performative contradiction.
The ideal speech situation is the basic orientation for discourse ethic. Such a discourse is a gathering of people with the intention of reaching rationally motivated consensus on moral norms that will be universally valid. In the process agents learn from each other to see what their common interests are, while all interests are judged impartially; only those norms can claim validity that are able to meet the agreement of all concerned (1983, 103). Discourse ethic demands the willingness and ability of individuals, and their cultures in general, to adopt a universal moral view. The central moral problems in the discourse are therefore likely to be questions of justice in the form of a norm or a principle tested on universability. When the discourse leads to consensus about a universable norm, the consensus guarantees the justification of that norm.
In his discourse ethic Habermas forges ahead with the Kantian distinction between autonomy and agency. Autonomy is the condition of the will that makes agency possible. Together with Reason it forms the metaphysical foundation of Kantian ethics and for Habermas autonomy and Reason are the basis of justice to be discussed as a question of Moralität. Agency is the means to express autonomy and as such it is bound to culture and history. Practical agents have needs, beliefs and relationships related to and restricted by local manners and customs. Considering actions within the framework of manners and customs for Habermas is Sittlichkeit.
II. Discourse Ethics: Criticism
The ethic of discourse offers important gains because contrary to Kant Habermas uses a dialogical and historical perspective on moral questions. However, discourse ethics has been criticized from different sides, not in the least by sympathizers. The critics are unanimous on two points. First, the ethic of discourse is presented as a purely procedural moral theory, but it is not free from all content. Everyone who agrees with its norms is already motivated by something: will, choice or tradition. Within an existing society a moral sensitivity or moral preference has come into being that enables moral discussion to be successful. This is the willingness to reach consensus and the capacity to do so. As such agency precedes autonomy. Habermas' procedural ethic is actually based on typically Western assumptions about moral agents. The reasonableness and equality of individuals are postulated as self-evident highest Good. Not all African and Asian cultures share this assumption (Solomon and Higgins, 1993). The second point concentrates on the conditions Habermas uses for the participants in the discussion. Not only must these 'subjects' be capable of using language and acting reasonably, they must also have a level of reflection that enables them to think about questions of justice, to argue about these questions and to reach consensus about them with others. This level of reflection can only be reached by a small, well-educated and trained group of agents: an intellectual elite. The matter of course that in discourse ethic everybody speaks for himself is undermined by the conditions imposed.
Two other topics of criticism are not shared by everybody but have considerable impact on the empirical status of the Diskursethik. Probably Axel Honneth is right when he identifies Habermas' moral intuitions as the intuitions and ideals of the left, postwar generation in Germany (1985, 78). Habermas also is a child of his time, both as a person and a philosopher. This may explain the basic ideas of conciliation and optimism in Habermas' theory, but these ideas remain the weak spots in a universal theory of moral debate. In such a debate we are concerned with the actual moral notions in everyday life worldwide, not with idiosyncratic notions or wishful thinking. The impotence of Western discourses of reasonableness, for instance in the United Nations, against the ongoing conflicts of our time in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South-America is a showcase of all too naive ideas of conciliation and optimism.
The second topic also concerns the lack of sobriety. In his first study in discourse ethic Habermas states: the testing of moral norms requires the impartial judgment of the interests of all concerned (1983, 87). This implies discourse ethic has impartiality already built into its basic structure. The performative contradiction links impartiality to the presuppositions that make communication possible. In a philosophical debate Albrecht Wellmer remarked: "it still is not clear what these presuppositions are" (1986, 103). This is not surprising because the suppositions are not the result of interdisciplinary research in human communication, but are part and parcel of the ontological assumption of communicative action: "Shared understanding exists in human language as a telos" (1981, II: 387). Habermas is at pains to make this assumption plausible, but it never becomes clear why the structure of language should refer to consensus without powerdifferences. With the same intensity the belief can be defended that language is a verbal weapon for strategic action, and shared understanding is an exception to that rule. Habermas' telos of human language is an optimistic assumption based on speculation, not on empirical premises. Richard Gebauer is right when he claims that critical theory cannot constrain itself to the mere explication of communicative presuppositions, but has the task "to prove the impossibility to go beyond the model of communicative action with empirical arguments" (1993, 85). In his attempt to develop a pragmatic moral theory Habermas has not gone far enough. First, there is procedural conceitedness and bias in the form of Western assumptions of agents and methods, and the silent presumption of an intellectual elite. Second, there is lack of sobriety expressed in rational post-war optimism and in the pacifism of the basic ontological claim. Both characteristics distort the hermeneutic and explanatory power of what could be and should be a fully-fledged theory of moral debate.