2. He proposes a normative theory of society that sets out to investigate possibilities for human freedom and justice by way of rational reconstruction of the communicative competencies of participants in actual social practices. Many, but apparently not all, would agree that normative standards are necessary. I would maintain that without them critique is terrorism - blind attacks on individuals or society that have no justification other than their own self-referentiality.
3. A central aim of this theory is to explicate standards for critically assessing, and if necessary, transforming existing social institutions and structures in light of the normative concepts derived from these investigations. In other words, Habermas draws on practices *already instituted* that qualify as progressive. He points out that human beings have, in fact, achieved genuine moral progress throughout the ages - not in the sense of realizing them, but being able to account and justify a universal moral perspective, 'the moral point of view.'
4. The cornerstone of his critical social theory is a theory of communicative action, which is centers around a normative model of social interaction based on the rational potential implicit in everyday practices of language use. For instance, Horkheimer and Adorno identify instrumental reason with domination. This sets up domination as omnipresent and is thus impenetrable. The problem being, Horkheimer and Adorno, according to Habermas, cannot account for how their critical theory gained insight into this 'totalizing' domination without appealing to a 'reason before reason.' Although whether or not Adorno and Horkheimer do this is subject to debate, but if they do, then Habermas is correct, critique slides off into the groundless and is rendered independent from its object.
5. Habermas's reflections on language and communication constitute his theory of formal pragmatics, which aims to make this rational potential explicit. This is all his theory of formal pragmatics accomplishes. It outlines the rational potential inherent in everyday language use. He suffers a lot of flack for using terms like "ideal speech situation" and "unlimited communicative community" but these are terms that do not describe a place, nor are they utopian recommendations. He is simply trying to make explicit the potential of reason as it emerges in everyday communication.
6. Habermas tries to show that a potential for rationality in the form of an orientation towards the argumentative justification of validity claims, as being built into everyday practices of linguistic communication. Basically, linguistic understanding is inextricably connected with a normative idea of reaching understanding with another person. This isn't a grand claim either. When we speak, we take up an orientation to another person, one that is subject to a thematic analysis. The three orientations that Habermas derives, from everyday examples of speech - both complex and common - are threefold. We can refer to something that takes place in the objective world (a rock, a red ball, an empirical analysis of the effectiveness of a health care system). We can refer to norms or ethical values that have not equivalent objective counterpart, ie. they 'exist' on the level of sociality. One cannot 'touch' freedom, yet people ought to be free, and etc. One cannot touch or handle a moral norm and so on. Although Habermas does not use the term, we could draw on Bentham's idea of fictitious entities, things that 'exist' (for us) but only in a fictitious way. Habermas argues that these kind of claims are analogous to truth claims, which pertain to objective states of affairs and subject to the same 'rules' of clarification. We can also take up a first person perspective, and claim intimate knowledge that others do not have nor share. Such claims themselves are subject to discursive clarification: it may in fact be that others share what we considered to be identical only to ourselves.
Kell and I have been trying to clear much confusion up about this. I don't really see any fundamental flaws in the attempt to do this and, in fact, I see very few flaws in Habermas's analysis overall. Its 'superiority' over competing theories should be self-evident. It is not reductionist, scientistic, objectivistic, subjectivist, semanticist... it does not privilege tradition, voice, individuality or plurality, it doesn't operate from the top down nor solely from the bottom up.It links 'partiality' with the potential for impartiality in a non-exclusive way and retains, as essential, the category and possibility of human freedom. It has proven itself to be useful (in terms of explicating some rather practical concerns), effective (in diagnosing social crises and explainting social pathologies) and theoretically sound (in terms of relying on arguments that, in principle, can be translated into the local discourse of any 'modern' community - it also provides an analysis of how 'premodern' communities shift from 'closed' worldviews to open worldviews in the metonymy of sacred authority to reason giving and taking.
just thought I'd see if I could clear some problems up without responding post by post...
ken