Communication and the Evolution of Society E-Book

Jürgen Habermas

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 444

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

In this important volume Habermas outlines the views which form the basis of his critical theory of modern societies. The volume comprises five interlocking essays, which together define the contours of his theory of communication and of his substantive account of social change. 'What is Universal Pragmatics?' is the best available statement of Habermas's programme for a theoryof communication based on the analysis of speech acts. In the following two essays Habermas draws on the work of Kohlberg and others to develop a distinctive account of moral consciousness and normative structures. 'Toward a Reconstruction of historical Materialsim' takes these issues further, offering a wide-ranging reconstruction of Marx's historical materialsim understood as a theory of social evolution. The final essay focuses on the question of legitimacy and on the legitimation problems faced by modern states. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the key questions of social and political theory today.

Leseprobe

Contents

Acknowledgements

Translator’s Introduction

I

II

1 What Is Universal Pragmatics?

I

II

2 Moral Development and Ego Identity

I

II

III

IV

3 Historical Materialism and the Development of Normative Structures

I

II

III

IV

V

4 Toward a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

5 Legitimation Problems in the Modern State

I

II

III

IV

V

Notes

Index

German text © 1976 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main Introduction and English translation © 1984 Polity Press

The first essay was originally published in Sprachpragmatik und Philosophie edited by Karl-Otto Apel (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1976). The other four essays were originally published in Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus by Jürgen Habermas (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1976).

This English translation first published in 1979 by Heinemann Educational Books. This edition first published in 1991 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Reprinted 1995

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Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 0 7456 0846 9

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Acknowledgements

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following :

American Psychological Association and Jane Loevinger for permission to print the schema ‘Stages of Ego Development’ from the article ‘The Meaning and Measurement of Ego Development’ by Jane Loevinger, American Psychologist, vol. 21, no. 3, March 1966.

The Society for Research in Child Development, Inc., for permission to print the schema ‘Stages of Moral Consciousness’ from the article ‘Conflict and Transition in Adolescent Moral Development’ by Elliot Turiel, Child Development, 45 (1974).

Academic Press and Lawrence Kohlberg for permission to print the schema ‘Definition of Moral Stages’ from the essay ‘From Is to Ought’ by Lawrence Kohlberg, Cognitive Development and Epistemology, Theodore Mischel (ed.), New York, 1971.

Translator’s Introduction

Some twenty years ago Jürgen Habermas introduced his idea of a critical social theory that would be empirical and scientific without being reducible to empirical-analytic science, philosophical in the sense of critique but not of presuppositionless “first philosophy,” historical without being historicist, and practical in the sense of being oriented to an emancipatory political practice but not to technological-administrative control.1 Although these general features are still recognizable in his mature views on critical theory, the original conception has undergone considerable development. The essays translated in this volume provide an overview of the theoretical program that has emerged. Before sketching its main lines it might be well, by way of introduction, to review briefly Habermas’ earlier discussions of social theory; for in these a number of important ideas that have since receded into the background or altogether disappeared from view are still clearly visible.

I

A recurring theme of Habermas’ writings in the late fifties and early sixties was that critique must somehow be located “between philosophy and science.” 2 In his account of the transition from the classical doctrine of politics to modern political science, Habermas noted a decisive shift in the conceptions of theory and practice and their interrelation.3 For Aristotle politics was continuous with ethics, the doctrine of the good and just life. As such it referred to the sphere of human action, praxis, and was directed to achieving and maintaining an order of virtuous conduct among the citizens of the polis. The practical intention of politics, as well as the nature of its subject matter, determined its cognitive status: Politics could not assume the form of a rigorous science, of episteme but had to rest content with establishing rules of a more-or-less and in-most-cases character. The capacity thereby cultivated, and the keystone of the virtuous character, was phronesis, a prudent understanding of variable situations with a view to what was to be done.

With the rise of modern science the classical conception of politics was drastically altered. Theory came to mean the logically integrated systems of quantitatively expressed, lawlike statements characteristic of the most advanced sciences. Given a description of the relevant initial conditions, such theories could be used (within certain limits) to predict future states of a system; providing the relevant factors were manipulable, they could also be used to produce desired states of affairs. Adopting this ideal of knowledge for politics, Hobbes early outlined a program that took human behavior as the material for a science of man, society, and the state. On the basis of a correct understanding of the laws of human nature it would be possible to establish once and for all the conditions for a proper ordering of human life. The classical instruction in leading a good and just life, the formation of virtuous character, and the cultivation of practical prudence would be replaced by the application of a scientifically grounded social theory, by the production of the conditions that would lead to the desired behavior according to the laws of nature. In this way the sphere of the practical was absorbed into the sphere of the technical; the practical problem of the virtuous life of the citizens of the polis was transformed into the technical-administrative problem of regulating social intercourse so as to ensure the order and well-being of the citizens of the state.

In Habermas’ view the principal loss incurred in this transition was the replacement of a direct access to practice with a purely technological understanding of the theory-practice relationship; the principal gain was the introduction of scientific rigor into the study of society. Accordingly, the outstanding task for a post-positivist methodology of social inquiry was somehow to combine philosophical and practical moments with the methodological rigor, which was “the irreversible achievement of modern science.” Of course, the type of practical philosophy Habermas himself had in mind was not the classical Greek but. that which developed in the movement of German thought from Kant through Marx; and the type of combination he envisaged was summed up in the phrase: “empirical philosophy of history with a practical (political) intent.’’