The Variability of Communicative Understanding (original) (raw)
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Weakening Habermas: the Undoing of Communicative Rationality
Politikon, 2006
Habermas's elaboration of a procedural, discursive deliberative democracy extends from his faith in communicative action, in symmetrical communicative interactions played out in an arena of communicative rationality. Yet Habermas expects too much of his agents. His theory of communicative action, built upon the necessary possession of communicative rationality, requires individuals to have clear, unfettered access to their own reasoning, possessing clear preference rankings and defendable rationales for their goals and values. Without such understandings, agents would have no reasons to extend or defend their positions in a discursive interchange; no validity claims are redeemable between communicative participants if the agent cannot access, substantiate or understand their own rationality. The psychological and discursive preconditions that agents must manifest to meet Habermas's conditions as participants in communicative rationality are exceptionally demanding. This paper brings empirical research from psychology and political science, and conceptual critiques from political philosophy, to bear on Habermas's agent.
Habermas 's Communicative Rationality and Cultural Dialogue: The Case of Babel
Revue Sciences,Langage et Communication, 2017
The argument of this paper focuses on the vital role of cultural theory in understanding and exploring the complexity of the elements that cultural dialogue underlies. Through the theoretical insights of the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, this paper aims to exploit a lifelong intellectual work in dissecting some aspects and formulating some of the controlling principles that can potentially give rise to cultural dialogue. Proceeding from theoretical preliminaries on cultural dialogue and Habermas's communicative rationality as a salient philosophical contribution to cultural theory, the following paper studies Babel as a cinematic case to put to test Habermas's conception of dialogue. By the conclusion, ample room is left to critically reflect on the strengths and limitations of communicative rationality and to assess its scope of enhancing cultural dialogue
2002
Communication can mean many different things. As far as Communicative Action is concerned, here we distinguish between Communication Attempts, Successful Communicative Action (successful Communication Attempts) and Understood but Unsuccessful Communicative Action, as well as whether the respective actions already have a regular (conventional or even linguistic) meaning. What are the respective rationality presuppositions? This is resolved for all the above concepts of Communicative Action. As is the case for all actions, Communicative Actions also require us to differentiate between various rationality types: action rationality, the reasons behind an action, and situation-relative personal rationality.
Meaning in Habermasian Communicative Rationality
2019
Over several decades, meaning has been crafted in many ways such as logicality and scientificity, but meaning as sense seems to be rifer than any other sense of meaning. In contemporary times, a new formulation of meaning has been presented by Jurgen Habermas, who rejects the other systems of meaning (logic and empirical science) as defective and artificial. Communicative rationality or reason (a theory or set of theories that appreciates human reason as an indispensable product of successful human communication), as his substitute system, claims to break away from the weakness of the past systems except its adoption of meaning as sense in ordinary language such as in a sentence. This paper demonstrates that communicative reason in which meaning functions as natural or ordinary language fails to avoid the pitfalls of the artificial systems. It makes clear that Habermas' rationality, though apparently detached from the symbolism and artificial constructs of logic and empirical sc...
This research is an exposition and analysis of Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action (TCA) which dwells on the aspects of communication that could help to solve common problems encountered in intercultural dialogue. Most and foremost, the researcher aims to clarify Habermas’ TCA as the possible solution and as an instrument to bring people together by reaching mutual understanding amongst participants, specifically in members of a community wherein people of different corners of the world come and gather together. Because of the differences and uniqueness of individuals’ cultures which block people coming together as one community. Everyone expects that his culture is best and dominant above others’. Sometimes, one even attempts to assert his own conviction to other members of community, simply because he is the superior who has higher authority in community. Worse than ever, he discriminates and prejudges others due to their race, color and so on. Therefore, the researcher desires to bring Habermas’ TCA as a guiding light that would lead community members towards consensus and shared knowledge so that individuals would live in love and harmony with one another as brothers and sisters.
Journal Of Applied Cultural Studies , 2016
The aim of the study is to demonstrate the paradoxicality determining human life. The natural aspiration of the subject is to strive to achieve order, enabling a reasonably satisfying and passably predictable life, guaranteeing the essential sense of security both on an individual and on a social dimension. The ancient writers and thinkers saw the origins of differentiation, and thereby of the impossibility of achieving coherence and order, in the external reality. Views of thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries show not only a demand for diversity to be taken into consideration, but also reveal their picture of culture as something highly heterogeneous that cannot be reduced to just a single, preferred vision. Multitude of models and values creates the potential for dialogue, which is irregular and spontaneous.
Respecting Differences by Idealised Language
Netherlands journal of legal philosophy, 2006
All contributions to the conference connect the issue of interculturality with fundamental epistemological assumptions. What is however exactly the connection between epistemology and interculturality or how does the problem of incommensurability lead to practical problems? After treating these questions I want to answer the question if a new epistemological approach emerges from the contributions.
Learning and Communicative Rationality
Department of Learning and Philosophy Working Paper, 2007
In this paper I try to map and discuss Habermas’ contributions to a theory of learning. Assumptions about learning are part of the theoretical foundation for educational principles, but a theory of learning covers a much wider and more complex field. It tries to conceptualise forces, patterns and consequences of learning processes at all levels of society. In such a view learning is found both in contexts designed for educational purposes and in contexts dominated by other agendas; and it takes place both in individuals, groups and larger social entities.
Habermas on Understanding: Virtual Participation, Dialogue and the Universality of Truth
Although the success of Habermas's theory of communicative action depends on his dialogical model of understanding in which a theorist is supposed to participate in the debate with the actors as a 'virtual participant' and seek context-transcendent truth through the exchange of speech acts, current literature on the theory of communicative action rarely touches on the difficulties it entails. In the first part of this paper, I will examine Habermas's argument that understanding other cultural practices requires the interpreter to virtually participate in the ''dia-logue'' with the actors as to the rationality of their cultural practice and discuss why, according to Habermas,such dialogue leads to the ''context-transcendent truth''. In the second part, by using a concrete historical example, I will reconstruct a ''virtual dialogue'' between Habermas and Michael Polanyi as to the rationality of scientific practice and indicate why Habermas's dialogical model of understanding based on the methodology of virtual participation cannot achieve what it professes to do.