Habermas's Discourse Ethics Research Articles

Reflections on Habermas’s discourse ethics

In this article Habermas’s discourse ethics is critically interpreted. The article starts with a brief intellectual biography of Habermas (section 1), showing that his life and work has always had a strong ethical and political dimension – leading to the concept of discourse ethics. Next, it is indicated how Habermas’s work in the 1970s culminated via four steps in his major philosophical work – the Theory of Communicative Action (section 2) published in 1981. In the next two sections Habermas Theory of Communicative Action is applied to ethics and morality in the form of his discourse ethics – the heart of this contribution (section 3). In this process the following four aspects of Habermas’s discourse ethics are discussed: Its qualified Kantian deontological dimension, as well as its universalist, cognitivist, and formalist dimensions. In the following section (4) the discussion of discourse ethics is shifted to Habermas’s theory of law, deliberative politics, and democracy which is a further application of ideas developed in his Theory of Communicative Action. The contribution then ends with some critical remarks on Habermas discourse ethics and sketch of law and politics (section 5) Three arguments are presented in this regard. First, Habermas argument is judged to be too closely related to abstract rationality. Secondly the distinction that Habermas makes between morality and ethics is critically investigated. Finally, the Habermasian use of justification in his argument is critically compared with the concept of application. These points of criticism, though, indicate that the debate on Habermas’s discourse ethics is ongoing.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article deals with the concept of discourse ethics (in the Kantian tradition of ethics) as developed firstly by Karel Otto Apel and later refined by Jurgen Habermas for his own purposes. The line of argumentation developed here has significant relevance for philosophy, moral theory, law, and theology. Discourse ethics can be considered as a contemporary version of Kantian deontological ethics after the linguistic turn.

Discourse Ethics: A Pedagogical Policy for Promoting Democratic Virtues

AbstractThe guidelines followed by many educational boards recommend behavioristic practices for dealing with student discipline; however, Lawrence Kohlberg's idea of organizing schools as “just communities” suggests a more promising approach. It translates to the school context the core principle of Habermas's discourse ethics: those norms to which all concerned agree are valid. In such democratically organized schools, students engage in less violence and take greater responsibility for safeguarding each other's welfare. Public debates about rules and handling transgressions generate knowledge regarding shared norms, promote role‐taking abilities, and foster ego‐syntonic commitment to democratic values. Such participatory experiences may contribute to constituting ego identity. Whereas identity politics relies on particularistic affiliations and emphasizes demarcations between social groups, ego identity is based on a commitment to universal moral values. This commitment allows individuals to develop and sustain a sense of coherence, continuity, and uniqueness, and it fosters democratic cooperation and social cohesion. In this article, Gertrud Nunner‐Winkler provides empirical support for these claims.

Ethics principles for social and behavior change communication

The field of social and behavior change communication (SBCC) has a history reaching back to the period of decolonization following World War II. Since that period, much has been learned about theories and methods pertinent to this communication subfield. One topic that has received too little attention is the ethical dimension of SBCC. This paper considers the need for an SBCC code of ethics and justification for such a code. Amartya Sen's capabilities approach and Habermas's discourse ethics are reviewed as substantial contributions to such a justification. Habermas's U and D principles are selected as especially useful when the criteria for communicative action are considered, including criteria related to validity claims and general symmetry conditions. The paper argues that discourse ethics is the most suitable general ethical approach for SBCC, offering both a theoretical foundation for SBCC ethics and guidelines for practice in the field.

Security Exception Negotiation from the Perspective of Habermas’ Discourse Ethics

Security exception negotiation is conducive to improving the WTO security exception clause and promoting the correct and reasonable use of the clause, so as to balance the conflicts and contradictions between safeguarding national security and realizing free trade in multilateral trade. Habermas's discourse ethics advocates that in an ideal discourse environment, communication subjects with communication qualifications seek understanding and reach consensus through dialogue and negotiation in accordance with rational requirements and preset norms and procedures, in order to solve the multivariate conflict problems of modern society. Based on this theory, the dilemma of security exception negotiation lies in the inability of equal dialogue, the lack of semantic identity and the lack of pragmatic effectiveness. Therefore, we should respect the dominant position of each country, create an ideal discourse environment and realize equal dialogue among countries. Paying attention to the interpretation of WTO security exception clauses will be a desirable way to solve the dilemma of security exception negotiation.

The Enfranchised Jury

This is a Book Review of Sonali Chakravarti, Radical Enfranchisement in the Jury Room and in Public Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019). The author is a political theorist whose understanding of the American jury depends on a critical reception of Jurgen Habermas's discourse ethics and Tocqueville's traditionalist (and in her view, flawed) appreciation of the jury. She articulates a vision which places the jury outside of our usual understanding of the rule of law as a law of rules. She ends with a number of specific suggested reforms, including the end of the Allen charge, an explicit instruction on nullification, and informing the jury of the sentencing consequences of a guilty verdict.

Social Justice and Education as Discursive Initiation

AbstractIn this essay Krassimir Stojanov attempts first to reconstruct the “heart” of Jürgen Habermas's discourse ethics, namely the so‐called “principle of universalization” of ethical norms. This principle grounds Habermas's proceduralist account of social justice via equal access of all concerned to the practices of deliberative validation of norms. Stojanov claims with regard to this account that it could only be implemented if the social actors are involved in a process of education as discursive initiation. After using R. S. Peters's educational theory to distinguish discursive initiation from a traditionalist understanding of educative initiation, he discusses some central social prerequisites for the development of discursive skills in growing individuals; to identify these prerequisites, he draws on Axel Honneth's conception of the intersubjective origins of individuals' development of rational autonomy. In the final part of the essay, Stojanov briefly explores some implications of his elaborated account of discursive initiation and its social preconditions for schooling and pedagogy.

Idealization of Habermas's Discourse Ethics

Idealization of Habermas's Discourse Ethics

Idealization of Habermas's Discourse Ethics

Idealization of Habermas's Discourse Ethics

Discourse ethics for computer ethics: a heuristic for engaged dialogical reflection

Attempts to employ discourse ethics for assessing communication and information technologies have tended to focus on managerial and policy-oriented contexts. These initiatives presuppose institutional resources for organizing sophisticated consultation processes that elicit stakeholder input. Drawing on Jurgen Habermas's discourse ethics, this paper supplements those initiatives by developing a more widely usable framework for moral inquiry and reflection on problematic cyberpractices. Given the highly idealized character of discourse ethics, a usable framework must answer two questions: (1) How should those who lack organizational power (e.g., concerned citizens, students) conduct their moral inquiry under non-ideal conditions of discourse? (2) How ought they to understand the moral force of the judgments they reach under such conditions? In response, I develop the heuristic implications of Habermas's principle of universalization. To render that principle usable for non-ideal discourse, I propose a modification that yields a scalar measure of "dialogically robust" judgments that are responsive to the actual state of discussion. To illustrate the use of these principles, I sketch two case studies, which examine the moral acceptability of violent video gaming and government cyber-surveillance.

Management control system support of initiatives for disruptive students

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to investigate the management control system (MCS) support of school initiatives to develop the school climate and to re‐engage disruptive students.Design/methodology/approachThe paper adopts an approach of critical action research interviews with management and document reviews informed by Habermasian concepts to investigate practical concerns of schools with a complex problem and which add to the body of knowledge.FindingsUsing Habermas's discourse ethics distinction between the pragmatic, ethical and moral it was observed that both schools had gone beyond pragmatically informed strategic initiatives to include more rational problem solving responses: one school is more ethical the other more moral. Both schools' MCS are better explained by Otley's categorisation based on three concerns of MCS, the transactional, the strategic and stakeholder aspirations. Both schools' MCS displayed a stakeholder concern.Research limitations/implicationsAs only two schools where investigated the generalised conclusions need to be considered cautiously.Practical implicationsSchools should be supported to take initiatives to develop a supportive school climate and improve the rationality and justice of their practices. In schools, MCS cannot just be developed from strategic considerations.Originality/valueThe paper uses Habermasian social philosophy to illuminate MCS support in schools of their response to a complex problem.

Jürgen Habermas and Islamic fundamentalism: on the limits of discourse ethics

Using the example of contemporary Islamic fundamentalism, and especially the writings of Sayyid Qutb, this article raises questions about discourse ethics as a mode of conflict resolution. It appears that discourse ethics is only relevant when all parties have already agreed to settle disputes deliberatively and already share the notions of rational deliberation and individual autonomy. This raises questions not only about the capability of discourse ethics to incorporate a deep plurality of worldviews, but also about its capability to successfully solve disputes. When confronting situations where the willingness to deliberate is absent, discourse ethics is left standing empty handed. This, I argue, is due to both the conceptual distinction between communicative action and strategic action, as well as the abstracted nature of Habermas's discourse ethics.

Realist Critique Without Ethical Naturalism and Moral Realism

The grounds for critique offered by Roy Bhaskar have developed over the course of his work, but two claims have remained central: ethical naturalism and moral realism. I argue that neither of these is compatible with a scientific realist understanding of values: a scientific realist approach commits one to treating values as socially produced and historically contingent. This does not, however, prevent us from reasoning about values, nor from developing critiques by combining ethical reasoning with a theoretical understanding of the social world and its possibilities. In particular, we can draw on a variety of Habermas's discourse ethics to offer provisional justifications for value-claims that support a critical stance. Thus we can develop grounds for critique that are both ontologically credible and anti-foundational, but also judgementally rational.

Discourse Ethics and Critical Realist Ethics

Until recently, businesses and corporations could argue that their only real commitments were to maximise the return to their shareholders whilst staying within the law. However, the world has changed significantly during the last ten years and now most major corporations recognise that they have significant responsibility to local and global societies beyond simply making profit. This means that there is now an increasing concern with the question of how corporations, and their employees, ought to behave, and this leads us to consider ethics as the appropriate theoretical and philosophical domain.I will bring into the debate two relatively recent approaches to ethics: Jürgen Habermas's discourse ethics (stemming from his critical theory); and the critical realist approach of Roy Bhaskar. These are interesting for several reasons: they both draw on traditional ethical theories, although different ones; they bring in innovations of practical relevance; and they both share an over-arching critical perspective. After a critical introduction to both ethical theories, their similarities and differences are explored. The article ends by considering the extent to which they may be practically useful within business.

Toward Ethical Information Systems: The Contribution of Discourse Ethics

Ethics is important in the Information Systems field as illustrated by the direct effect of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on the work of IS professionals. There is a substantial literature on ethical issues surrounding computing and information technology in the contemporary world, but much of this work is not published nor widely cited in the mainstream IS literature. The purpose of this paper is to offer one contribution to an increased emphasis on ethics in the IS field. The distinctive contribution is a focus on Habermas's discourse ethics. After outlining some traditional theories of ethics and morality, the literature on IS and ethics is reviewed, and then the paper details the development of discourse ethics. Discourse ethics is different from other approaches to ethics as it is grounded in actual debates between those affected by decisions and proposals. Recognizing that the theory could be considered rather abstract, the paper discusses the need to pragmatize discourse ethics for the IS field through, for example, the use of existing techniques such as soft systems methodology. In addition, the practical potential of the theory is illustrated through a discussion of its application to specific IS topic areas including Web 2.0, open source software, the digital divide, and the UK biometric identity card scheme. The final section summarizes ways in which the paper could be used in IS research, teaching, and practice.

Dialogue among Friends: Toward a Discourse Ethic of Interpersonal Relationships

Despite clear parallels between Jürgen Habermas's discourse ethics and recent scholarship in feminist ethics, feminists are often suspicious of discourse ethics and have kept themselves mostly separate from the field. By developing a sustained application of Habermas's discourse ethics to friendship, Keller demonstrates that feminist misgivings of discourse ethics are largely misplaced and that Habermas's theory can be used to develop a compelling moral phenomenology of interpersonal relations.

Dialogue among Friends: Toward a Discourse Ethic of Interpersonal Relationships

Despite clear parallels between Jürgen Habermas's discourse ethics and recent scholarship in feminist ethics, feminists are often suspicious of discourse ethics and have kept themselves mostly separate from the field. By developing a sustained application of Habermas's discourse ethics to friendship, Keller demonstrates that feminist misgivings of discourse ethics are largely misplaced and that Habermas's theory can be used to develop a compelling moral phenomenology of interpersonal relations.

Communicative Reason and Intercultural Understanding

Although Habermas sees intercultural understanding as a political task, his model of communicative rationality cannot satisfactorily explain how this could happen. One reason is the definition of the aesthetic, form-giving, moment of imagination, which reflects deeper epistemological and linguistic assumptions of discourse ethics. Despite sporadic attempts to recognize the role of rhetoric and poetry as an indispensable part of the communicative praxis, at the end of the day, Habermas sees language as fundamentally geared toward transparency and clarity, and not as endowed with poetic power and polyphonic creativity. My article aims to further develop, with the help of Vico and Bakhtin, the incipient thread in Habermas's discourse ethics that recognizes the importance of linguistic creativity and of imagination in communicative practice. This would help one to argue that, even when rational consensus and agreement cannot be achieved, dialogue is still not abandoned. This is the case because, through a larger definition of the dialogical, which adds to the discursive aspect, an aesthetic, rhetorical, and metaphorical dimension, it is possible to say that, even when conflicting, different voices and languages are still creatively and imaginatively interilluminating and hybridizing each other. Thus, they still transform each other, creating, at the same time, a prediscursive commonality, that can function as a necessary prerequisite for intercultural understanding.

Horse and Carriage: Why Habermas's Discourse Ethics Gives Virtue a Praxis in Social Work

In this paper we suggest an alternative approach to ethics in social work: virtue ethics. We argue that Habermas's theory of communicative action and discourse ethics needs to be supplemented with virtue ethics to provide an account useful to social work. In these times, sensitivity to others is needed for social work to succeed as a profession interested in combating the complacency, self-interest and lack of compassion evident in cutbacks to social welfare programmes and the resultant concerns with outcomes and efficiencies that have all but obliterated care and compassion. We see in Habermas a furthering of Aristotelian and Thomist philosophy, most importantly with respect to his focus on emancipatory knowing—the critically reflective knower who knows self as the person doing the knowing. Habermas's distinction between values (objective), ethics (social) and morals (subjective) makes the province of emancipatory knowing (his epistemological theory) consistent with his moral theory—morality is personal.

Utilitarianism in Media Ethics and Its Discontents

Utilitarianism has dominated media ethics for a century. For Mill, individual autonomy and neutrality are the foundations of his On Liberty and System of Logic, as well as his Utilitarianism. These concepts fit naturally with media ethics theory and professional practice in a democratic society. However, the weaknesses in utilitarianism articulated by Ross and others direct us at this stage to a dialogic ethics of duty instead. Habermas's discourse ethics, feminist ethics, and communitarian ethics are examples of duty ethics rooted in the dialogic relation that enable us to start over intellectually.

Discourse Ethics and Social Accountability: The Ethics of SA 8000

ABSTRACT:Based on theoretical insights of discourse ethics as developed by Jürgen Habermas, we delineate a proposal to further develop the institutionalization of social accounting in multinational corporations (MNCs) by means of “Social Accountability 8000” (SA 8000). First, we discuss the cornerstones of Habermas's discourse ethics and elucidate how and why this concept can provide a theoretical justification of the moral point of view in MNCs. Second, the basic conception, main purpose, and implementation procedure of SA 8000 are presented. Third, we critically examine SA 8000 from a Habermasian perspective, and discuss advantages and drawbacks of the initiative. Fourth, to address the drawbacks, we introduce a “discourse-ethically” extended version of SA 8000. We show that this approach is theoretically well-founded and able to overcome some of the current deficits of the certification initiative. We demonstrate that the extended version of SA 8000 can be successfully applied on a cross-cultural basis, and that our findings have significant implications for other international ethics initiatives.