Reader beware. I took a quick glance, and it seems to me that the summary assumes familiarity with the tradition that Habermas is working in... in a sense it is a bit undigested. However, other than being somewhat awkward at times, it does cover the basics of Habermas's discourse ethics, but, again, it is too quick and technical a summary to be a helpful introduction...
Some cut and paste:
1. 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.
** For Habermas, it *must* be free from content, in the sense of substance. It must be normatively full, yet substantively empty. If at any point he presupposes substance, then the entire project unravels from within.
2. Everyone who agrees with its norms is already motivated by something: will, choice or tradition.
**While this is in a sense true, it isn't a matter of choice. It is unavoidable. One cannot 'choose' between communicative and instrumental forms of action, instrumental action can only proceed *after* communicative socialization. In this sense, the idea of 'choice' is always abstract, we never really have a choice.
3. Habermas' procedural ethic is actually based on typically Western assumptions about moral agents.
I don't see how this follows. Habermas claims that understanding is primordial. It would be necessary to demonstrate that cognitive development is possible *without* understanding, and that this is how 'non-Western' cultures have developed.
4. 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).
No, this isn't the case. If anything is posited as a 'good' - it is the 'fact' that human beings learn and develop. But this isn't a good in any specific sense, it is a defining characteristic of consciousness.
5. 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.
Sigh. In the process of enlightenment, there are only participants.
6. 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).
Ie. We don't have to generate reasons for Habermas being wrong, we can just make the accusation and historicize his perspective.
7. 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.
This is terrible, just terrible. Habermas is a child of his time, therefore this remains a weak point in a universal theory of moral debate?
8. 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.
Structures don't have perspectives. It is hilarious that this is under the rubric, "lack of sobriety." You'd have to be drunk to think that a building can be impartial.
ken