HABERMAS' IDEAL SPEECH SITUATION

[kenneth.mackendrick@utoronto.ca]

On Sun, 22 Oct 2000 21:55:48 Ralph Dumain <rdumain@igc.org> wrote:

> Is a particular type of use of language required or proscribed in the ideal 
speech situation?  Do the norms of communication--which I assume (wrongly?) to 
relate to postulates of individual autonomy, the right of free inquiry and the 
untrammeled pursuit of truth, norms of rationality, and the goal of transparent 
communication and human relations--demand a certain type of language?  What 
does Habermas have to say about irony?  Metaphorical and symbolic language?  Or 
flame wars?

Ken's notes version (to be taken with salt and tequilla).

Habermas places language use qua action theory into two categories: 
instrumental and communicative (he divides this up more but it isn't 
important for the generic idea). According to Habermas, *all* instrumental uses 
of language are parasitic on communicative action. In other words: *essential* 
to any linguistic utterance is a fundamental attempt to understand something 
with someone. [He does this by "trumping" hermeneutics with procedural 
reinterpretations of ideology critique (Marx) and psychoanalysis (Freud) - and 
then later through Rawls, Mead, Apel and Kohlberg].

The "ideal speech situation" is nothing more than the *logic* of communication. 
It isn't a place, it isn't a bus stop, it doesn't exist and nor could it ever 
exist. It is simply the "always already" *presupposition* of *all* forms of 
intersubjectivity. In short: the logic of communication entails two idealizing 
claims (what Habermas calls "transcendence within") --> reciprocity and 
respect. These two ideas form the moral core of Habermas's discourse ethics. As 
such, it serves as a counterfactual model which can be used, in Habermas's 
thought, as a critical measure of existing forms of (distorted) communication. 
Habermas argues that the these elements, reciprocity and respect, have been 
(despite massive and glaring flaws and limitations) been institutionized in a 
constitutional democracy: universal human rights and reciprocity via due 
process (argumentation) which form the moral centre of modernity.

For Habermas, procedures of argumentation "approximate" the idealizing 
conditions of communication. In brief, for Habermas, *every* act of 
communication is, in some way, an act of solidarity.

Habermas argues in Theory of Communicative Action that stuff like irony and
metaphor simply get in the way of more communicative forms of action. Which 
isn't to say they don't matter, they do, but the deliberate refusal to 
'translate' ironic utterances into "truth claims" is pathological and 
irrational.

In all of this, Habermas links solidarity, autonomy, justice, democracy, 
application, science, ethics and aesthetic within one over-arching theoretical 
framework - which emphasizes the way in which human beings coordinate their 
activity.


Those sympathetic to Habermas tend to modify many of his claims. Seyla Benhabib 
aruges that Habermas needs to ditch his rigid distinction between justice and 
the good life (as does Agnes Heller and Paul Gilroy). Albrecht Wellmer is 
concerned that Habermas is too Kantian... others lean toward hermeneutics or 
pragmatism and others toward post-structuralism and deconstruction.... 
(self-snipped for relevance).

Maeve Cooke has one of the most insightful arguments regarding Habermas's 
theory of language: that he is only able to grant *conceptual* priority of
communicative action over instrumental action - ie. he can't fully vindicate 
the claim that all instrumental forms of language use are fundamentally 
parasitic on communicative utterances...but already I've gone on too much.

Sorry, I should answer your question.

No. There is not proscribed language that Habermas recommends. His only 
'recommendation' (which he argues is inherent) is a procedure for the 
adjudication of validity claims. In his thinking, this isn't merely a 
recommendation - it is the normative idealizing core immanent to all forms of 
communication.

I should also mention Jay Bernstein, who I think has an excellent critique of 
Habermas's deployment of the idea of the ideal speech situation (a term which 
Habermas hasn't used for at least a decade because it has lead to so much 
confusion) in Recovering Ethical Life (basically, a Hegelian rejoinder to 
Habermas Kantianisms).

ken