Jurgen Habermas - Encyclopedia of Political Thought

H Habermas, Jürgen (1929–) David W. McIvor Jürgen Habermas has a strong claim to be considered the most important and influential social theorist of the past century. He is the inheritor of a German intellectual tradition reaching back to Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), yet Habermas’s work ranges far beyond Continental philosophy, reaching into other traditions such as analytic philosophy and American pragmatism. There are multiple areas of academic inquiry to which Habermas has made a significant contribution, and the current debates within the disciplines of philosophy, linguistics, developmental psychology, philosophy of science, sociology, cultural studies, and political theory are all influenced by his work. In addition to his scholarly contributions, Habermas has been one of the more prominent public intellectuals over the past several decades. He has contributed to political debates surrounding immigration, German unification, the expansion of the European Union, the role of religion within liberal democracies, and the memory of the Holocaust within German public life. Few individuals have made a greater contribution to both intellectual understanding and public life.

Habermas’s work is notorious for its complexity. He writes in the style of a “grand theorist,” interweaving a variety of intellectual traditions into an intricate and complete whole. This style makes Habermas difficult to comprehend for the novice, yet those who persist will discover one of the most generative intellects of recent memory. This entry will focus on six aspects of Habermas’s work: his theory of the public sphere, his defense of rationality, his theories of language use and communicative action, his defense of morality and ethics in a post-metaphysical world, his procedural theories of law and democracy, and his contributions as a public intellectual.

The Public Sphere: Ideal and Ideology Habermas is arguably best known as a theorist of communication. His theory of language use and communicative action, developed between 1965 and 1984, has supported his research on social evolution, ethics and morality, developmental psychology, and democratic politics. The key terms associated with Habermas, such as deliberative democracy and constitutional patriotism, all have their common source in his theory of communication. Yet even before he had developed this theory (discussed in detail below), Habermas had an interest in critical

The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, First Edition. Edited by Michael Gibbons. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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dialogue taking place within the public sphere. His first major publication – The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962; English translation 1989) – traced the emergence of a critical, debating public in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in western Europe. The emergence of the public sphere was intertwined with the development of industrial capitalism. Capitalist economic relations displaced feudal ties and gave rise to a variety of associations through which individuals could participate within debates and discussions about political and economic matters. Cut free from feudal relationships and statuses, individuals engaged each other through what Kant referred to as their “public use of reason” (Kant 1784/1991: 54). The public use of reason was, in theory, an open and inclusive form of communication in which anyone could participate. Kant described the public use of reason as an essential element of the Enlightenment, which he defined as “man’s emergence from his  selfincurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another” (1784/1991: 54). Kant believed that the emergence of public reason signaled a radical break in human history after which individuals would not have to rely uncritically on external authorities for moral and practical guidance. There were three crucial features of the  bourgeois public sphere, according to Habermas. First, it was typified by a kind of social intercourse that disregarded or “bracketed” status differences between individuals. It “rejected the celebration of rank with a tact befitting equals” (1962/1989: 36). While differences and inequalities were not eradicated in the public sphere, these differences were, in theory, irrelevant to the activities of critical, public debate and discussion. Second, within the public sphere discussions were arbitrated only through rational argumentation via the public use of reason. No one individual could settle debate arbitrarily; instead the public use of reason required (ideally) the formation of a consensus whereby participants came to mutual agreement. Third, the public sphere

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was in principle inclusive; it was open to anyone who had a claim on the matter of discussion. While in practice the activities and spaces of the public sphere were restricted to male members of the wealthy classes, at least formally they were open to all. Habermas was not blind to the variety of exclusions that marked the bourgeois public sphere. Women were not accepted into the category of “reasonable beings,” nor, in practice, were members of the working classes. Nevertheless, according to Habermas, the bourgeois public sphere embodied ideals of critical discussion and debate and provided a “training ground for what were to become a future society’s norms of political equality” (1992: 423). The bourgeois public sphere was ideological insofar as its formal claims of inclusiveness and equality obscured actual exclusions and inequalities. It was also, however, the origin of democratic ideals of an inclusive and egalitarian form of public life. Despite its imperfections, the bourgeois public sphere was based on claims about inclusion, equality, publicity, and reason that could be progressively redeemed through collective action. While the bourgeois public sphere offered promising ideals, Habermas argued that it had undergone a fundamental transformation and decline between the late nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth centuries. A passive public whose opinions could be managed by political elites gradually supplanted the critical public of the bourgeois public sphere. Politics and culture increasingly became spectator sports that required only passive consumption rather than shared, critical participation. Participation in public affairs and the ideal of publicity itself lost their appeal through the rise of a mass society focused on consumption and “apolitical sociability” (1962/1989: 22). In the place of public reasoning and critical debate, the public sphere came to be characterized by political spectacles and propaganda designed to manipulate – rather than cultivate – public opinion. Despite his pessimistic analysis, Habermas suggested that the critical ideals that emerged in the bourgeois public sphere could be reclaimed.

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habermas, jürgen The institutions of contemporary democracy, because they rested on the same ideals of equality and inclusion, could be progressively democratized. As Habermas saw it, bureaucracies and other formal institutions could be “internally democratized and subjected to critical publicity,” or, in other words, “the trend for these organizations to become less open to rational critical discourse can be reversed” (1962/1989: 233). The ideals of the bourgeois public sphere could motivate institutional reforms that would reverse the decline of public dialogue and critical debate. As Habermas’s first major publication, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere set the tone for his later work both thematically and methodologically. Habermas’s concern with the democratic ideals of inclusion, equality, and the public use of reason continued to exert a powerful influence on his research. The ideal of the public sphere provided a model for how social and political life could be conducted through critical deliberation, a topic  that Habermas returned to consistently over the following decades. Methodologically, Structural Transformation was impressively interdisciplinary in its approach, drawing resources from philosophy, sociology, economics, political science, and media studies. Habermas’s penchant for wide-ranging and synthesizing scholarship has also continued throughout his long career.

The Dialectic of Enlightenment and Habermas’s Defense of Rationality As an engaged intellectual with an interdisciplinary approach, Habermas reflects the tradition of research associated with critical theory. Critical theory is a school of social theory and criticism that drew its influences from, among others, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Sigmund Freud. Under the direction of Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in Germany became the intellectual home for critical theorists both before and after World War II. Habermas studied at Frankfurt between 1956 and 1959, and he

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returned as Director of the Institute in 1964 until 1971. According to Horkheimer, critical theory differentiated itself from traditional theory by its orientation toward transformative critique – rather than mere description – of social reality (Horkheimer 1937/1986). In this respect, critical theorists shared Karl Marx’s complaint that “philosophers … have merely described the world; the point is to change it” (1845/1978: 145). Critical theory proceeded through immanent critique. Immanent critique aims to show how certain ideals within existing social practices, such as publicity or equality, are threatened. For instance Marx found value in capitalist society’s claims for freedom and happiness, yet he thought that these values were impossible in a society predicated on class domination. Marx’s critique of capitalism was an immanent critique because he argued that the values of capitalist society were promises that could only be redeemed under communism. In similar fashion, Habermas’s critique of the bourgeois public sphere was based on the idea that the imperfect realization of the ideals of inclusiveness, equality, and publicity during the nineteenth century could be corrected in a future age. Habermas’s critique was immanent because it argued that social agents needed only to live up to their own ideals. Horkheimer, along with his Frankfurt school colleague Theodor Adorno (1903–1969), also practiced a form of immanent critique. Yet unlike Habermas’s ambivalent appreciation of the public sphere, Horkheimer and Adorno’s immanent critique of capitalist society found few reasons for optimism. They famously argued that modern societies were trapped within a “dialectic of enlightenment” (1974/2002). Unlike Kant, who believed that the Enlightenment heralded the emergence of rationality and the liberation of human capacities for autonomy and freedom, Horkheimer and Adorno thought that rationality itself was implicated in forms of oppression. They argued that the rational drive to understand nature grew naturally into an obsession with domination and control, which coincided with aggressive self-preservation and capitalist exploitation. As a result, the very

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process of enlightenment that was supposed to liberate humanity instead served to imprison it within a calculating and instrumental mindset. Social life becomes bureaucratized and monetarized, locking humans into what sociologist Max Weber called an “iron cage” of rational calculation and control (Weber 1905/2002). According to Habermas, Horkheimer and Adorno’s radical critique of rationality came at a high price. Their thesis of an inescapable dialectic of enlightenment collapsed differences within rationality itself. As a result, critique could “no longer discern contrasts, shadings, and ambivalent tones” within a world characterized (but not dominated) by capitalist relations and administrative power (1989: 338). Habermas did not deny that instrumental rationality had pathological consequences, but his examination of the bourgeois public sphere demonstrated how the free, public use of reason could cultivate a critical public consciousness that was irreducible to the narrow mindset of  instrumental rationality. By identifying rationality solely with instrumental reason and  domination, Horkheimer and Adorno obscured this possibility. Habermas also argued that Horkheimer and Adorno’s work suffered from a powerful contradiction. Namely, their radical critique of reason seemed, paradoxically, to depend upon reason itself. If their analysis precluded the possibility of reaching understanding through communication, then on what grounds, Habermas asked, were they offering a critique? For Habermas, the very idea of doing critique implied the possibility of distinguishing between instrumental and communicative reason. The practice of critique presupposed the possibility of a public where mutual understanding could be reached through communicative (i.e., noninstrumental) means. In this respect the practice of critique mirrored the ideal public sphere, where debates were settled in a nondominating fashion through the free use of public reason. If reason was as instrumentally dominating as Horkheimer and Adorno had claimed, then their analysis could not perform its own critical function.

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In light of his critique of his Frankfurt school forebears, and subsequent to his examination of the public sphere, Habermas’s research agenda took on a two-pronged approach. In addition to defending a theory of democratic politics that could redeem the immanent but unrealized ideals of the bourgeois public sphere, Habermas also sought to defend reason itself. Habermas argued that Horkheimer and Adorno were left without resources for articulating the possibilities for nondominating reason, responsible citizenship, and a just social order that was not  based solely on the control and coercion of  others. For Habermas, the defense of both reason and democracy required a differentiation between instrumental action aimed at domination and communicative action aimed at mutual understanding. In order to make this differentiation, Habermas turned to the study of language. Just as the public sphere embodied the ideals of publicity and equality (albeit imperfectly), for Habermas the human use of language embodied the ideals of accountability, autonomy, and mutual understanding. Habermas thought that this conceptual innovation would allow critical theorists to escape the dialectic of enlightenment and defend a nondominating form of reason.

The Linguistic Turn and the Theory of Communicative Action Habermas’s turn to theories of language is also explained by his conviction that critical theory remained trapped by the so-called “philosophy of consciousness.” The philosophy of consciousness places individual consciousness at the center of the search for valid knowledge and rational social action. Beginning from the presuppositions of Descartes’ famous maxim cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), the philosophy of consciousness saw the individual mind as the source for sense and certainty about the world. According to Habermas and the earlier generation of critical theorists, the philosophy of  consciousness necessarily led to a narrow, instrumental view of rationality and an individualistic conception of politics. It did so by

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habermas, jürgen obscuring the importance of communicative rationality, which becomes the basis for Habermas’s revision of the modern project and his defense of reason, human rights, and deliberative democracy. Within communicative rationality, the individual, conscious subject is no longer the foundation of knowledge or action. Habermas’s starting point for his theories of knowledge and society is not the isolated individual subject but the various forms of interaction through which meaning is constructed and shared. This shift gives primacy to the intersubjective dimension of social reality. In making this shift Habermas sought resources within the so-called “linguistic turn” within philosophy. The linguistic turn represented a turn away from the philosophy of consciousness insofar as its basic approach was to treat questions of knowledge as questions of meaning. In other words, human knowledge about the world takes form through the use of language, so in order to understand action we need to investigate how it becomes meaningful to us. For Habermas, a focus on language was valuable insofar as it challenged the philosophy of consciousness, but, more importantly, the study of language could contribute to the larger projects of defending reason and democracy. As Habermas put it: The human interest in autonomy and responsibility is not mere fancy, for it can be apprehended a priori. What raises us out of nature is the only thing whose nature we can know: language. Through its structure, autonomy and responsibility are posited for us. Our first sentence expresses unequivocally the intention of universal and unconstrained consensus. (1981/1987: 314)

By “a priori” Habermas means that the ideals of autonomy and responsibility are presupposed by the human use of language. Although language is also descriptive (insofar as it aims to describe objective features of the  world) and expressive (insofar as it can express subjective preferences or experiences), Habermas focuses on the pragmatic use of speech. Pragmatic speech necessarily aims at establishing intersubjective consensus between

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interlocutors. Pragmatically speaking, then, our very first sentence presupposes the possibility of reaching mutual understanding with others. To deny this is to commit what Habermas calls a “performative contradiction,” akin to Horkheimer and Adorno’s paradoxical critique of reason. The inherent aim of speech is to bring interlocutors to a shared understanding of the world. To claim the contrary is to contradict oneself, since the claim – “the use of language does not imply agreement” – would perform the very thing that it denies is possible. The theory that Habermas builds upon this insight into language use is referred to as universal or formal pragmatics. Formal pragmatics is concerned with the universal rules that make possible spoken language. Habermas refers to these rules in terms of the implicit know-how or “competences” of language users. Formal pragmatics aims to show how these competences can be reformulated as rules guiding social action. Within the use of language Habermas locates a source for the claim of reason that Kant had defended and Horkheimer and Adorno had denied. Yet unlike Kant, whose theory of reason was located within the philosophy of consciousness, Habermas’s account focuses on the intersubjective conditions for rationality. Moreover, whereas Kant thought that reason has a transcendental basis – that is, that the faculty of reason can be established independently of experience – for Habermas rationality is not  transcendentally guaranteed but arises contingently through the human acquisition of  language. The pragmatic use of language presupposes rationality, but these rules of language are not innate but only acquired through socialization into modern forms of life. Modern forms of life require communicative action due to what Weber called the “disenchantment” of the world. After the loss of all-encompassing mythic narratives, humans are compelled to collaboratively recreate meaning for their actions through the exchange and redemption of speech  acts aimed at mutual understanding and consensus (Habermas 1981/1987: 45–74).

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Habermas develops these claims with his theory of communicative action. The theory of communicative action focuses on the different kinds of “validity claims” that are implicit within speech acts. Speakers raise three validity claims with their utterances. First, that the statement is true. Second, that the statement is right with respect to the existing normative context of action. And third, that the speaker is being sincere. For instance, take the sentence, “that jerk just cut ahead of you in the line for movie tickets.” The speaker is making a claim about an objective truth (the person really did move in front of you). But they are also raising a normative claim about the impropriety of this person’s action (“that jerk” implies a normative judgment). They are also raising a claim of sincerity insofar as they really intend to express the new state of affairs. For Habermas, the background assumptions that make possible unproblematic communications like this one comprise the “lifeworld.” The lifeworld is the source of social norms (cutting in line is improper behavior) and the variety of meanings that give rise to certain perceptions (moving ahead of someone without permission equals “cutting”). For the most part our interactions with others take place within this background of tacit meaning. Within everyday communication the implicit claims for truth, rightness, and sincerity are typically accepted as unproblematic. However, all validity claims are potentially subject to what Habermas calls “problematization” (1981/1987: 131). Our hypothetical listener, for instance, could challenge any of the implicit validity claims of this utterance. They could challenge the truth of the claim by potentially introducing new information (“that person was there before but left to talk to a friend”) or they could challenge the implicit norm guiding social behavior (“it’s a harsh world, and everyone has to try and get ahead where they can”). Lastly, they could challenge the sincerity of the claim (“you cannot think cutting ahead in line is improper, since we cut ahead of those people in order to be here”).

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When these challenges are made, the interlocutors enter into a special speech situation called “discourse.” Discourse is a reflective form of speech in which interlocutors exchange reasons for why something is or should be the case. The unavoidable aim of discourse is the restoration of the consensus that existed before a claim was challenged. In our case, our first speaker could point to evidence that would restore the truth of their initial claim or persuade the listener of the rightness of the norm. Discourse is not an esoteric activity of philosophers and social critics. Discourse occurs normally in everyday contexts of interaction. The important thing to note is that discourse, like communicative action itself, presupposes the possibility (although never the inevitability) of rational consensus. Communicative action is therefore unlike strategic action, in which the goal is to  manipulate others in order to achieve a predetermined end, and which does not rely upon consensus. Even if discourse breaks off for one reason or another, the initial entrance into discourse presupposes that the question could be settled and consensus restored. As Habermas puts it, “universal discourse points to an idealized lifeworld reproduced through processes of  mutual understanding” (1981/1987: 145). Initially described as an “ideal speech situation,” Habermas, following his colleague Karl-Otto Apel, came to refer to this idealized possibility as the “ideal communication community” (Cooke 2000: 365). The unavoidable orientation toward consensus does not mean that there are not conflicts within social life. Instead, as Habermas puts it, “a lifeworld rationalized in this sense would by no means reproduce itself in conflict-free forms. But the conflicts would appear in their own names” (1981/1987: 145). In other words, participants within discourse are able to communicate effectively to each other the causes and consequences of social conflicts, rather than breaking off communication before mutual understanding over the conflict is reached. Having established the unavoidable presuppositions of communicative action, Habermas

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habermas, jürgen turned to show how the theories of formal pragmatics and discourse could explain social evolution and address the problems left unresolved by his critical theory forebears, including the instrumental rationalization of the social world. Yet Habermas’s analysis encountered an immediate obstacle. Namely, since Weber the presumption was that the medium of political and social life was not pragmatic, consensusoriented communication but power. For Weber in particular the rationalization of the world gave rise to a bureaucratically administered political life characterized by domination through instrumental forms of rationality. Habermas does not seek to deny Weber’s thesis about the increasing instrumental rationalization of the world. For Habermas, bureaucratic and economic “systems” are an inescapable element of contemporary societies. These systems do not operate through communicative rationality but through strategic actions guided by the “steering media” of power and money (1981/1987: 185–6). As societies grow more complex, social order requires actions that can only be performed by these systems, which operate according to their own (instrumental) logic. For instance, economic relationships are coordinated through the medium of money, which represents a shortcut from the arduous process of reaching agreement. Money is a medium of exchange that “unburdens” agents from communicative action and allows them to act according to their instrumental interests. Similarly, bureaucratic agencies operate through the instrumental medium of power, which allows for the more efficient resolution of collective action problems. For instance, the administration of a complicated program such as socially provided health insurance requires the coordination of thousands of actors. Without instrumental rationality organized through processes of command and control, such programs would be impossible to maintain. The unleashing of systems organized through instrumental rationality, however, creates a problem for the lifeworld. Namely, instrumental forms of action can reach back into and “colonize” the lifeworld itself (1981/1987: 305).

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In an analysis functionally similar to Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of the dialectic of enlightenment, Habermas argues that strategic, means-end rationality can come to dominate social interactions that had previously relied upon communicative actions geared toward consensus. Interactions within the lifeworld are then increasingly subject to both monetarization and what Habermas calls “juridification,” in which formal laws and administrative regulations come to replace discourses aimed at reaching mutual understanding about truth, rightness, and sincerity (1981/1987: 361). One example that Habermas uses is the rise of welfare-state provisions. On the one hand, these provisions are rational insofar as they address uneven resource distribution within capitalist economies. Yet on the other hand they “spread a net of client relationships over private spheres of life,” which turns citizens into wards of the state rather than critical participants in public life (1981/1987: 364). The colonization of the lifeworld not only weakens social norms but also threatens the possibility of a critical public sphere. In response to this threat, Habermas argued that communication communities need to be protected from system colonization. He referred to this as a “siege” model where the goal was to “erect a democratic dam against the colonizing encroachment of system imperatives on areas of the lifeworld” (1992: 444). The idea of a protected space for democratic discourse reaches back to Habermas’s analysis of the bourgeois public sphere, and it anticipates his later theory of deliberative democracy.

Discourse Ethics: Morality in a Post-Metaphysical World For Habermas, formal pragmatics and communicative action have implications far beyond a theory of social evolution. They also relate to the possibility of ethical and moral truth in a  so-called “post-metaphysical” world. For Habermas, a post-metaphysical world is one in which the “sacred canopy” of religious authority has been diminished through

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increasing social pluralism and secularization (1990a: vii). Yet without a transcendent source for the moral order, morality seems to collapse into subjective preferences, practical maxims relating to common forms of life, or a brazen moral nihilism. As Ivan Karamazov, the central character in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, contended, if there is no God, then everything is permitted. According to Habermas, however, the “cognitivism,” or truth-status, of ethical and moral claims can still be defended. Ethical questions can be adjudicated non-subjectively, and – despite the dissolution of transcendent guarantees for morality – moral norms can still admit of truth. For Habermas, the key resides in discourse. His theory of “discourse ethics” reconstructs the moral point of view through a  discursive account of moral reasoning. According to discourse ethics, the promise of rational consensus on questions of morality and ethics is implied by the very use of the terms “ought” and “right” within communicative action. While this promise of rational consensus is an ideal that is rarely reached in practice, the ideal is both unavoidable and “actually efficacious” insofar as it supports valid expectations that public discourse could yield rational answers to ethical and moral questions (2001: 35). To better understand Habermas’s account of moral reasoning, it is worthwhile to contrast it to Kant’s. Like Kant, Habermas believes that moral autonomy and freedom require that we can only be responsible to those moral laws that are subject to our will. Moreover, these laws must be “universal” insofar as they apply to all similar (autonomous and free) beings. Kant’s test of universalizability was called the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative states that a moral norm is valid only if it can be willed as a universal law for humanity. For instance, a norm of cutting ahead of someone in line could not be elevated into a universal law without contradicting the very practice of lining up. For Habermas, discourse ethics provides a better model of moral reasoning than Kant’s

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categorical imperative. The reason is that Kant’s procedure is “monological,” that is, it is applied by the individual in isolation from communicative interaction. This leads potentially to a moral self-centeredness that can only be corrected through actual discourses of moral reasoning. Habermas accepts Kant’s principle of universalizability (U), but he gives it a new formulation: “a norm is valid when the foreseeable consequences and side effects of its general observance for the interests and value orientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion” (1990a: 65). Yet Habermas supplements the universalizability principle with the “discourse principle (D),” which states that, “only norms are valid that meet with the approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse” (1990a: 93). The principles of (D) and (U) supplement each other in important ways. Without the discourse principle, (U) can slide back into the moral selfcenteredness of Kant’s categorical imperative. Yet without the universalization principle, (D) is missing a crucial test that distinguishes between pseudo- and rational consensus. Once again, the principles of (U) and (D) act as ideals for practical and moral discourse, but these ideals are immanent to the everyday practices of communicative action. The idealizations inherent to moral discourse are “not … absurd,” because they are the “simultaneously unavoidable and trivial accomplishments that sustain communicative action and argumentation” (1990a: 54). However, like the pragmatic use of language itself, these accomplishments are not innate. Instead they result from the contingent development of modern rationality whereby individuals take themselves to  be accountable to themselves and others. Discourse ethics, then, is not transcendental but relies instead upon an account of individual and social development. Habermas’s reconstruction of modern social evolution provides the basis for his discourse theory of ethics. The disenchantment of the world gave rise to secular procedures for adducing moral and ethical norms. Social

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habermas, jürgen evolution in turn both requires and proceeds through developments in individual moral psychology. The concept of an autonomous ego, for Habermas, has an inescapably ideal and universal claim. This claim, however, cannot be dogmatically asserted; instead it can only be reconstructed “nonontologically” through a developmental account. This developmental account conceptualizes autonomy as an endless project of progressive communicative appropriation of internal and external conflicts. Habermas support his developmental account of moral psychology through the work of the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927– 1987). Kohlberg described a series of successive stages of moral competency through which individuals progressively resolve moral dilemmas. For Kohlberg the progression from lower to higher stages of moral competency marked the ability of the individual to sort out the universal obligations of morality from other obligations within practical life (Kohlberg 1981). Habermas felt that the theory of formal pragmatics could supplement Kohlberg’s account with an overlaying schema of communicative interaction. As a result he re-described Kohlberg’s progressive stages of moral competency in terms of increasing “interactive competence” (1979: 82–3). At the highest stages, subjects make explicit and affirm the implicit norms of reciprocity and mutual recognition that are presupposed, but never guaranteed, by the pragmatic use of language. However, the process of ego development is, as is communicative action more generally, dependent on structures of socialization that embed norms of mutual recognition through repeated experiences of reciprocal interaction and undistorted communication. In other words, the higher stages of moral interaction are contingent upon conditions within the lifeworld. In turn the lifeworld is regenerated by the solidarity generated through free, rational discourses. Habermas admits that rational discourses, because of their idealizing content, have an “improbable character, existing like islands in the sea of everyday practice” (1993: 56). Yet because modern life is unthinkable without

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communicative interaction, these islands can still guide normative debate and social action.

The Procedural Theory of Law, the Deliberative Model of Democracy, and the Challenge of Cultural Pluralism Having established the relevance of the theories of communicative action and formal pragmatics to modern ethics and morality, Habermas returned to the political domain with Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (1992; English translation 1996). In this book Habermas sought to show how politics and law could be reconceived in communicative terms. In the process he returned to his early emphasis on the critical, free debates of citizens within a vibrant public sphere. The result was a procedural account of modern law and a “deliberative” model of democracy. Both of these ideas have proven highly influential, both within academic political theory and political discourse more broadly conceived. In devising a theory of politics Habermas simultaneously confronted two seemingly irresolvable problems. The first problem is the tension within modern law between legality and legitimacy, or, as the title of Habermas’s book puts it, between “facts” and “norms.” The “facticity” of law refers to the claim that modern law is “positive,” that is, that it is based on the ungrounded decision of a given community. Legal positivists such as Weber argued that, given the disenchantment of modern life, law had lost its original reference to a natural order supported by divine authority, which provided the laws not just with coercive force but also with legitimacy. For Weber, legitimacy was reducible to the contingent belief in a law’s validity, absent any transcendent basis for that belief. In other words, law does not have a rational basis; it merely reflects the will of a given political community as represented by its formal authorities. Opposed to legal positivism is the theory of natural law. Natural law theorists argue that there are immutable natural rights that pre-exist

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any given political community. For theorists such as John Locke (1632–1704), the voice of reason dictates these rights, and they exist regardless of whether or not they are codified in positive law. These rights create obligations that must be respected by formal authorities; in fact these authorities are only legitimate insofar as they secure and protect natural rights. For contemporary natural law theorists, Weber’s legal positivism is dangerous because it turns the demand for rights into one among many other political claims. Natural law, however, argues that these rights are prior to any political claim as such. Habermas sees problems with both legal positivism and natural law. Natural law theorists remain stuck within a pre-modern mindset, which denies the fact of social evolution. For Habermas rights are not immutable and unchanging, but evolve through social learning processes. To claim that rights pre-exist political communities is to reject the post-metaphysical nature of modern societies. It also compromises the very idea of popular sovereignty, because rights only exist if political communities give them to themselves. For Habermas rights are a product of discourse and public will-formation; they do not exist prior to these processes. On the other hand, Habermas is not a legal positivist in the vein of Weber or Niklas Luhman (1927–1998). Legal positivists make the opposite error as natural law theorists. Instead of resting on a theory of pre-political legitimacy, legal positivists reject the very idea of a rational basis for law. As a result, citizens can only relate to law in instrumental or strategic ways; obedience to the law results not from consent but out of fear or habit. Yet for Habermas this idea ignores the ways in which citizens voluntarily consent to the law because they recognize its legitimacy. This is not to say, however, that citizens recognize legitimacy in the way described by natural law theory. Instead what citizens recognize when they voluntarily obey the law is the law’s rationality. In other words citizens recognize the validity of laws because they can envision – and participate within – discourses aimed at testing these

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sanctions. In this respect Habermas connects his theory of law to a theory of democratic discourse, or what Habermas refers to as “deliberative democracy.” Just as Habermas places his theory of law between legal positivism and natural law theory, he places his democratic theory between two dominant traditions of modern political thought: liberalism and civic republicanism. Liberalism, connected to Locke’s theories of natural law, emphasizes the importance of individual, private autonomy as the basis for political consent. The emphasis on private autonomy grows naturally out of the concern for pre-political, natural rights. If these rights belong to all individuals, then legitimate government must be based on the consent of all, and it must proceed in a way that respects the equality and freedom of every individual. In most variants of liberalism, popular consent provides the basis for representative government, but the power of governing authorities is limited by the basic rights enjoyed by all. As a result liberals often emphasize the importance of constitutional guarantees for basic liberties that serve as a “check” on the power of legally constituted authorities. On the liberal view political life does not have intrinsic value; its value is contingent on its ability to protect and advance the liberty of individuals. Civic republicanism, on the other hand, does not begin from individual autonomy but from public autonomy. Civic republicans emphasize the idea of the “common good,” and as such they stress the importance of popular sovereignty and the intrinsic value of political participation as a means of discovering and protecting the common good. According to civic republicanism, individual rights do not exist prior to political community. Therefore political authorities must ultimately be subordinate to popular will. Moreover, constitutionally established rights cannot be seen to compromise the autonomy of the political community. Formal, codified rights or constitutions that restrict political participation would violate the autonomy of the community to collectively decide its own fate.

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habermas, jürgen Habermas argues that liberalism and civic republicanism each suffer from fatal flaws in  their conceptions of democratic politics. Related to his critique of natural law theory, Habermas cannot accept liberalism’s emphasis on pre-political rights. The liberal emphasis on the protection of individuals has merit in Habermas’s eyes, but this system only results from contingent social learning processes. Moreover, echoing his early work on the bourgeois public sphere, Habermas emphasizes the intrinsic value of participation within public discourse and political life. In these respects, Habermas seems to side with the civic republican account of democracy against the liberal approach. Yet Habermas also criticizes civic republicanism for its assumption that individual rights are necessarily subordinate to the principle of popular sovereignty. Habermas sides with liberals, then, in arguing for the importance of respecting individual autonomy through the codification of human rights. While these rights do not have a transcendental basis, they are unavoidable presuppositions of modern democracy. Ultimately, Habermas situates his theory between popular sovereignty and individual autonomy by arguing that there is an internal connection between private autonomy and collective self-rule. As he puts it, the … internal relation between popular sovereignty and human rights consists in the fact that the system of rights states precisely the condition under which the forms of communication necessary for the genesis of legitimate law can be legally institutionalized. (1992/1996: 104)

In other words, the protection of private autonomy through the codification of rights is implied by the exercise of popular sovereignty, and vice versa. Constitutionalism and democracy are co-original: “the private autonomy of citizens must neither be set above, nor made subordinate to, their political autonomy” (1992/1996: 104). Liberalism and civic republicanism both fail to recognize the complementary relationship of rights and popular

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sovereignty, and hence they both provide only a partial theory of democracy. Habermas is often described as a political liberal, and his arguments about constitutional democracy are often paired with the work of the most prominent twentieth-century liberal philosopher, John Rawls (1921–2004). Yet this classification can obscure the key differences between Rawls’s and Habermas’s approaches to liberalism. In a published debate with Rawls, Habermas argues that Rawls’s approach is insufficiently democratic insofar as it does not follow a strict proceduralism in its account of public reason (1998/2001: 95). Rawls, like many figures within the liberal tradition, sees the exercise of public autonomy as a means for achieving private autonomy. As Habermas puts it, Rawls’s theory “generates a priority of liberal rights that demotes the democratic process to an inferior status,” whereas Habermas’s proceduralist defense of democracy “entrusts more to the process of rational opinion- and willformation” (1998/2001: 69, 72). Habermas’s defense of the exercise of public autonomy through procedures of democratic opinion-formation in the public sphere is also related to his understanding of political and ethical issues arising from increased multiculturalism. The coexistence of different ethnic, cultural, and religious groups within a shared political space leads to thorny issues surrounding political integration and minority rights. Habermas argues that cultural pluralism requires a shift in both the paradigmatic understanding of rights and theories of social integration. His overriding concern with a proceduralist defense of democracy guides both of these reforms. In the first instance, he argues that only a proceduralist conception of rights can combine both the liberal interest in minority protection with the republican insight into public autonomy and democratic will-formation. For Habermas, the struggle for recognition among cultural or  ethnic groups within the polity is part of a  broader political process of democratic self-governance. As he puts it, “safeguarding the private autonomy of citizens with equal rights

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must go hand in hand with activating their autonomy as citizens of the nation” (1998/2001: 210). Cultural or ethnic groups can only realize social and legal recognition through the active, public articulation and defense of their rights as a group. Importantly, for Habermas, these groups are not themselves immune to pressures of justification and problematization. As Habermas sees it, “cultures survive only if they draw the strength to transform themselves from criticism and secession” (1998/2001: 223). This distinguishes Habermas’s approach to the politics of recognition from communitarians such as Michael Walzer and Charles Taylor, who argue that the liberal state should guarantee the status of identifiable subgroups and promote the survival of endangered cultural forms of life (1998/2001: 207). Habermas’s concern with cultural pluralism is also connected with his theory of “constitutional patriotism” (1998/2001: 118). For Habermas, in order for different cultural, ethnic, and religious forms of life to coexist and cooperatively interact with each other, these forms of life must be joined through a shared political culture surrounding a democratic constitution. The principles of popular sovereignty and human rights provide a basis for this constitutional patriotism because they point to the procedures by which a society can interpret and govern itself despite ethical or religious differences. These principles are the foundation for a “political” integration of citizens that can supersede the forms of social integration unique to subgroups or cultures. As Habermas puts it, citizens who are politically integrated in this way share the rationally based conviction that unrestrained freedom of communication in the political public sphere, a democratic process for settling conflicts, and the constitutional channeling of political power together provide a basis for checking illegitimate power and ensuring that administrative power is used in the equal interest of all. (1998/2001: 225–6)

The specifics of constitutional patriotism in different contexts will depend upon the

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unique features of different political cultures. Yet at its root constitutional patriotism is a “procedural consensus” that social issues and differences can only be legitimately addressed through democratic means (1998/2001: 226). Constitutional patriotism is distinguishable from a blind allegiance to a written document because, again, Habermas understands the constitution as an ongoing project that is shaped through history by the public use of reason (1998/2001: 70). Habermas’s theory of democracy within a modern, multicultural context links his early emphasis on the public use of reason to a theory of law and democracy where the legitimacy of  democratic decisions and administration depends upon public deliberation within an intact public sphere. As Habermas puts it, “the central element of the democratic process resides in the procedure of deliberative politics” (1992/1996: 296). Habermas derives what he calls the “principle of democracy” (PD) from his discourse principle (D). PD states that “only those statutes may claim legitimacy that can meet with the assent of all citizens in a discourse process of legislation” (1992/1996: 110). Public discourse is essential because, for Habermas, the “public” only exists through discourse. Having articulated a deliberative theory of democracy, however, Habermas encounters an additional problem – namely, the tenability of procedural sovereignty within complex, contemporary democracies. Habermas’s procedural concept seems belied by the empirical conditions confronting democratic politics, including a weakened public sphere, unresponsive bureaucracies, and inward-focused formal political institutions (1992/1996: 287). Habermas accepts the necessity of the administrative power of formal government systems, but in order for these systems to claim legitimacy they must be linked up with the communicative power that is formed through deliberative processes within the public sphere. Habermas draws a distinction between two different political spheres: the “center” includes formal, legally constituted political bodies such as parliaments, bureaucracies, and courts.

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habermas, jürgen Deliberation occurs within this level, but it is formalized and often subject to distorting forces relating to the peculiar steering media of “systems” – money and power. Outside the formal political sphere is the surrounding informal “periphery” of the public sphere. The informal public sphere, unlike the formal political sphere, has the advantage of being a “medium of unrestricted communication” (1992/1996: 308). The public sphere is a network for communicating information and points of view; it is a space where new public problems can be identified and where discourses aimed at achieving mutual understanding can be conducted “more widely and expressively” than within formal institutions (1992/1996: 308). Because it is more loosely structured than the formal political sphere, the public sphere can act as a “sounding board” and “warning system” for new problems that can then be processed by the political system (1992/1996: 359). In his mature theory of democracy, then, Habermas envisions a crucial and active role for informal deliberative processes of problem identification and democratic will-formation within the public sphere. However, unlike his earlier emphasis on a “siege” model in which informal lifeworld processes must be protected from the colonizing encroachments of systems, Habermas now advocates for a “sluice” model. In the sluice model, communicative power emerges from the public sphere and is filtered through “the sluices of democratic and constitutional procedures situated at the entrance to the parliamentary complex or the courts” (1992/1996: 356). The spontaneous and emergent associations, organizations, and movements within the public sphere communicate social and political interests to formal political and juridical institutions. These institutions in the center operate in a more constrained way than the loose associations on the periphery, but the legitimacy of their actions depends on their sensitivities to deliberation and communication passing through the “sluice.” In this way Habermas feels that the unavoidable normative presuppositions of

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deliberative democracy, which require that citizens collectively authorize legitimate laws and institutions, can be squared with the empirical conditions of existing democracies, in which citizen voices are often separated from formal decisions and rulings. Finally, Habermas’s concept of deliberative democracy must be considered within the context of his belief that social evolution proceeds through collective learning that happens within discourses aimed at mutual understanding. The idealizing presuppositions of deliberative democracy seem to overburden citizens, but Habermas argues that this burden is somewhat relieved when we see deliberation as an endless “learning process” through which citizens engage in the perpetual task of selfgovernment (1992/1996: 321). As long as the space for this learning process – the informal public sphere – exists, then the hope for democracy cannot be extinguished. In fact, this hope cannot be avoided.

The Philosopher within the Public Sphere Habermas’s interconnected theories of social evolution, ethics, law, and democracy are impressive in both their breadth of analysis and the depth of their insight. His writings have inspired countless intellectual debates and have had a seismic impact on academic discourse. Yet Habermas is much more than an ivorytower intellectual. He is also a public intellectual of the first caliber, contributing to a variety of debates in the public sphere over the course of his career. From his study of student politics in the 1960s (1971) to his debates about religion with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) in 2005, Habermas has exemplified the engaged, critical citizen called for in his own theory of democracy (2005). He has been a prominent contributor to debates in his native Germany surrounding the politics of reunification (1990b), immigration (1996/1998), and the expansion of the European Union (1998/2001). He argued strongly that Germany could not disavow the unique violence of its recent history,

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but must instead collectively face up to the experience of the Holocaust (1988). Habermas’s engagements within the public sphere reflect not only his concern for the vibrant debates and discussions of deliberative democracy. They also reflect his unique understanding of the role of the philosopher within democratic society. In a post-metaphysical world, the philosopher qua philosopher cannot claim privileged authority on the basis of their discernment of divine or transcendent truth. Philosophers can only “reconstruct” the procedures by which rationality might manifest itself within social life. Similarly, the critical theorist can no longer offer a substantive picture of emancipated society; he or she can only elucidate the emancipatory norms implicit within democratic societies. Philosophers, according to Habermas, should describe the conditions under which ethical, moral, and political questions might be productively addressed, and then join in the conversation. SEE ALSO: Adorno, Theodor W. (1903–69); Austin, J. L. (1790–1859); Critical Theory; Deliberative Democracy; Frankfurt School; Honneth, Axel (1949–); Horkheimer, Max (1895–1973); Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804); Liberalism; Modernization; Public Sphere; Reason; Rights; Weber, Max (1864–1920) References Cooke, M. (Ed.) (2000) On the Pragmatics of Communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Habermas, J. (1962/1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. T. Burger. Cambridge: Polity. Habermas, J. (1971) Toward a Rational Society, trans. J. J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1979) Communication and the Evolution of Society. Toronto: Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1981/1984) The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, Volume I, trans. T. McCarthy. Cambridge: Polity. Habermas, J. (1981/1987) The Theory of Communicative Action: The Critique of Functionalist Reason, Volume II, trans. T. McCarthy. Cambridge: Polity.

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Habermas, J. (1988) “Concerning the Public Use of History,” New German Critique, 44 (1), 40–50. Habermas, J. (1989) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. F. G. Lawrence. Cambridge: Polity. Habermas, J. (1990a) Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. C. Lenhardt and S. Weber Nicholson. Cambridge: Polity. Habermas, J. (1990b) “Der DM Nationalismus,” Die Zeit (March 30). Habermas, J. (1992) “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere,” trans. T. Burger, in C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 421–61. Habermas, J. (1992/1996) Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. W. Rehg. Cambridge: Polity. Habermas, J. (1993) Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics, trans. C. Cronin. Cambridge: Polity. Habermas, J. (1996/1998) The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, trans. C. Cronin. Cambridge: Polity. Habermas, J. (1998/2001) The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays, trans. M. Pensky. Cambridge: Polity. Habermas, J. (2001) “From Kant’s ‘Ideas’ of Pure Reason to the ‘Idealizing’ Presuppositions of Communicative Action,” trans. B. Fultner, in W. Rehg and J. Bohman (Eds.), Pluralism and the Pragmatic Turn: The Transformation of Critical Theory. Essays in Honor of Thomas McCarthy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp.11–39. Habermas, J. and Ratzinger, J. (2005) The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion, trans. B. McNeil. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. Horkheimer, M. (1937/1986) “Traditional and Critical Theory,” in Critical Theory: Selected Essays, trans. M. J. O’Connell. New York: Continuum, pp. 188–243. Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T. (1974/2002) Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. E. Jephcott. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kant, I. (1784/1991) “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” In Political Writings, trans. H. B. Nisbet, ed. H. Reiss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 54–60. Kelly, M. (Ed.) (1994) Critique and Power. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kohlberg, L. (1981) Essays on Moral Development. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

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habermas, jürgen Marx, K. (1845/1978) “Theses on Feuerbach.” In R. C. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: W. W. Norton, pp. 143–45. Weber, M. (1905/2002) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Penguin Books.

Further Reading Benhabib, S. (1986) Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. Benhabib, S. and Passerin d’Entreves, M. (Eds.) (1997) Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bernstein, R. (Ed.) (1985) Habermas and Modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bohman, J. (2000) Public Deliberation: Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Calhoun, C. (Ed.) (1992) Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chambers, S. (1996) Reasonable Democracy: Jurgen Habermas and the Politics of Discourse. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Dews, P. (1992) Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews with Jürgen Habermas. London: Routledge. Dryzek, J. (2000) Deliberative Democracy and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fraser, N. (1992) “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 109–42. Habermas, J. (1968) Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. J. J. Shapiro. Cambridge: Polity.

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Honig, B. (2006) “Dead Rights, Live Futures: On Habermas’s Attempt to Reconcile Constitutional Democracy,” in L. Thomassen (Ed.), The Derrida–Habermas Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 161–75. Honneth, A. and Joas, H. (Eds.) (1991) Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ingram, D. (2010) Habermas: Introduction and Analysis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. McCarthy, T. (1978) The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas. London: Hutchinson. Scheuerman, W. E. (1999) “Between Radicalism and Resignation: Democratic Theory in Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms.” In P. Dews (Ed.), Habermas: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 153–77. Specter, M. G. (2010) Habermas: An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomassen, L. (Ed.) (2006) The Derrida–Habermas Reader. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Thomassen, L. (2010) Habermas: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Continuum. Thompson, J. and Held, D. (Eds.) (1982) Habermas: Critical Debates. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. White, S. K. (1989) The Recent Work of Jürgen Habermas: Reason, Justice and Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. White, S. K. (Ed.) (1995) The Cambridge Companion to Habermas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Young, I. M. (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Abstract Jürgen Habermas has a strong claim to be considered the most important and influential social theorist of the twentieth century. He is the inheritor of a German intellectual tradition reaching back to Immanuel Kant, yet Habermas’s work ranges far beyond Continental philosophy, reaching into other traditions such as analytic philosophy and American pragmatism. There are multiple areas of academic inquiry to which Habermas has made a significant contribution, and the current debates within the disciplines of philosophy, linguistics, developmental psychology, philosophy of science, sociology, cultural studies, and political theory are all influenced by his work. In addition to his scholarly contributions, Habermas has been one of the more prominent public intellectuals over the past several decades. He has contributed to political debates surrounding immigration, German unification, the expansion of the European Union, the role of religion within liberal democracies, and the memory of the Holocaust within German public life. Few individuals have made a greater contribution to both intellectual understanding and public life. Keywords: critical theory, democratic theory, public sphere

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