Communicative praxis beside postmodernism. Foucault and Habermas: Communicative action as trans-cultural politics

Seonghwa Lee, Purdue University

Abstract

Coupled with its deconstruction of the epistemological paradigm of modern philosophy, postmodernism is a recognition of the social sources of rationality. These social sources of rationality are measured against a universal validity claim. It follows that legitimation, both epistemic and political, can no longer reside in philosophical metanarratives. Legitimacy becomes plural, local, and immanent. Instead of deriving legitimacy from an overarching institution, the politics of postmodernism depends on the stylized multiple cultures which are sedimented and destined institutionally in multiple ways of life. From this standpoint, the politics of postmodernism focuses on operative multiple institutions such as cultures, values, and personalities. As a result, the beauty of politics does not have any rationalized content on the whole; rather, its beauty becomes poetized as a coded element. While avoiding the universal beauty of dominant institutions, worldviews, and validity claims, the poetized beauty of postmodern politics is trapped in aesthetic-textual-reductionism. That is, a silent system of beauty excludes the other possible forms of beauty by passively privileging its own beauty, like a flower. More precisely, the coded system of silence is not a universalized privilege, but a passive privilege which results in a mute violence of expert opinions, police, schools, hospitals, and psychiatrists. Under the banner of "further thinking" and "further enlightenment," Habermas, in contrast to the postmodernists, broadens the notion of reason, legitimacy, and institution, translating rigorously constructed theories into the context of the "pretheoretical" lifeworld of speech. Relying on the insights of social phenomenology, Habermas portrays the lifeworld as an "intersubjectively shared" or "colletive" life-context comprising the totality of interpretations which are presupposed as background knowledge by members of society. From this perspective, Habermas's notion of communicative action aims at unconditional truth claims that are built into the conditions of the processes of consensus formation. Together with the idea of unlimited communication, Habermas, at this point, trascends all limitations of space and time, all the provincial limitations of the given context. Habermas's notion of communicative action, however, is tied to an ideal speech situation, an "idealized" form of life. In particular, Habermas's theory of society restricts the space of agreement and consensus to the domain of argumentative competence and performance. As argumentation is made to stand in the service of understanding and deliberative action, so the lifeworld takes on a privilege and a primacy.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Weinstein, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Political science|Philosophy|Sociology

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