Habermas’s self-correction

Abstract

Differences between some sentences in the German original of 1981 and their English translation of 1984 were found in Volume 1 of Habermas’s magnum opus. It turned out to be an accurate self-correction by Habermas, which created there a concise summary of the teleological aspects of his speech act theory. This increased the linguistic devotion of his argument, but weakened the practical, societal influence of his theory of communicative action. Some other topics within the voluminous secondary literature on Habermas are also touched: the meaning spectrum of the key term ‘ Verständigung ’ (‘Understanding’), problems around the validity claims, and the formal, procedural character of his theory, i.e. the lack of substantive, causal factors. The latter traits and behind them Habermas’s close connection with the dominant philosophical trend of the ‘linguistic turn’ (Rorty 1967) are supposed to have led to the fact that Habermas’s theory has failed to redeem possible hopes about social awakening effects in the late 20th century. Yet, Habermas’s life-work has epochal significance. Besides complementing the ‘paradigm of production’ with the one of communicative interaction, deepening the concept of modern democracy, highlighting the significance of interpersonal social connections through the elaboration of the ‘lifeworld’ concept, Habermas’s work in providing theoretical foundations to understand the age of modernity is of key importance. Through analyzing ‘the unfinished project of modernity, of the Enlightenment’, whose contemporary defects ‘can only be made good by further enlightenment’, Habermas sums up the very essence of our age of globalization, of capitalism. He provides a program for all social scientific workshops still following the paradigm of historical progress and working for a developed, humane and democratic society, but sometimes being on the defensive today. The extension and supplementation of Habermas’s theory of modernity, with a ‘social turn’ (Roderick 1986) and a ‘causal turn’ is being proposed.