Proceduralism and Justification in Habermas’s Discourse Ethics

Abstract

Defenders argue that Jurgen Habermas's discourse ethics is most plausible contemporary version of a Kantian conception of moral obligation.1 Habermas is committed to moral universalism, cognitivism, impartiality, and equality. These are essential features of Kantian ideal that we owe all persons an unconditional moral respect. Moreover, like Kant, Habermas is a universalist who believes that valid moral norms are not simply an expression of a community's beliefs or form of life. In contrast to Kant, however, Habermas defends a public and proceduralist model of justification. Whereas Kant believed that an agent could justify a moral norm by taking up moral point of view and testing its validity against categorical imperative, Habermas argues that justification for a moral norm requires that norm be assented to by participants in a moral discourse. Habermas's proceduralism is evidenced by his dogged commitment to claim that validity of moral norms is contingent upon outcome of a real moral discourse, or at least a counter-factual appeal to a discourse that could occur under right conditions. A cluster of related claims that are definitive of much of Habermas's work motivates this commitment to proceduralism. These include: claim that moral theory in modern world must eschew aim of providing an a priori justification for norms, fallibilism, need for a post-metaphysical approach to normative theory, and claim that a norm is valid only if those to whom it applies can agree to its acceptance as a general rule. I believe that Habermas's proceduralism is ambiguous. This ambiguity arises from two central features of his normative theory, features that do not, upon close inspection, naturally fit together. The first is his discourse principle (D): Just those ... norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree as participants in a rational discourse.2 (D) is defended as an impartial rule of argumentation that requires all rational agents to justify norms in an impartial manner. The second feature is Habermas's claim that moral insight required to validate a norm cannot be achieved independently of a real discourse. In words of one commentator, Habermas is committed to the presumption ... that no vantage point other than discourse itself can provide objectivity once grounded in religious authority and metaphysical worldviews. The traditional idea of objectivity should, in Habermas's view, be replaced by a commitment to finding objectivity in dialogue and consensus. A valid moral norm is said to be objective only in sense that it can be endorsed by each of its addressees in a discourse. Habermas denies possibility of achieving moral objectivity through rational self-reflection on grounds that justification requires mutual consent of all affected. Moreover, test for mutual consent is moral discourse rather than an imagined moral point of view. The discourse principle (D) suggests something like a counterfactual-test, a test that seems to imply that whether a norm is valid is not contingent upon whether any agent or moral community endorses norm as valid. This feature of discourse ethics suggests that a norm is valid if it could. in principle, be supported by a rational agreement and thus that, in some cases, norms qualify as valid even if no real moral argument has been conducted. The second central feature of Habermas's theory, however, suggests that there is a necessary relation between validity of a norm and actual conferring of validity by at least two agents. Moral insight, for Habermas, is not achieved by an act of self-reflection that draws upon practical reason's ability to test norms from a moral point of view. Rather, conferring validity to a norm is warranted only after a moral argument has been conducted. This is one important respect in which Habermas differs from Kant. On other hand, Habermas is not committed to a consensus theory of moral justification. …