Habermas on Strategic and Communicative Action

Abstract

In The Theory of Communicative Action, Jurgen Habermas articulates an expansive critical social theory.' He anchors his project in a comprehensive of communicative rationality intended to remedy what he takes to be limitations in the concept of cognitive-instrumental rationality informing much of traditional social and political thought.2 I wish to question whether Habermas's project is conceptually well-founded. My concerns are analytical.3 Although it is only one of the three interrelated themes that Habermas pursues in TCA, I focus exclusively on the typology of action that he constructs around the of communicative rationality. Habermas's discussion of rational action is the fulcrum for his broader empirical and normative concerns. If his conceptual analysis of rational action is faulty, his larger theoretical project, at least as it currently is formulated, is jeopardized. I adopt as my point of entry the place Habermas assigns to strategic action in his typology. This issue typically is neglected in treatments of Habermas's work.4 I then scrutinize more directly his of communicative action. My approach to Habermas proceeds from what I see as theoretical commitments and aspirations that he establishes for his work. He correctly claims that strategic is an ineliminable aspect of the social and political world.5 And he aspires to accommodate strategic and communicative action -as two equally fundamental elements of social interaction -