The Recent Work of Jürgen Habermas_ Reason, Justice and Modernity_ Stephen K.White

Stephen K. White-The Recent Work of Jürgen Habermas_ Reason, Justice and Modernity (1988)

Format PDF 5.56 MB

Pages  202

Acknowledgements ix

List of abbreviations xi

Introduction 1

1 Rationality, social theory and political philosophy 7

I Strategic rationality 10

II Contextual rationality 13

III Universalism, justice and rationality 22

2 Action, rationality and normative discourse 25

I The critique of positivism and the linguistic turn 25

II Communicative competence and communicative rationality 28

III Models of action and rationality 36

IV Communicative action and strategic action 44

3 Justice and the foundations of communicative ethics 48

I The principle of universalization 48

II The "speech-act-immanent obligation" 50

III The presuppositions of argumentation 55

IV Moral development and interactive competence 58

Appendix 66

4 Toward a minimal ethics and orientation for political theory 69

I The discursive interpretation of the demand for reciprocity 69

II A minimal ethics 73

III A different voice in the conversation 83

IV The communicative model and political theory: an initial link 85

5 Communicative reason, modernity and contemporary capitalism 90

I Modern structures of consciousness and a "rationalized lifeworld" 92

II Systems theory and rationalization 103

III The costs of modernization: "colonization of the lifeworld" 107

IV The costs of modernization: "cultural impoverishment" 116

V New social movements 123

6 The two tasks of critical theory 128

I  A non-foundationalist universalism 129

II Modernity and the domination of "outer" nature 136

III Modernity and the domination of "inner" nature 144

IV Concluding remarks 153

Notes 155

Bibliography 179

Index 187