Habermas's View Research Articles

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Jürgen Habermas and the Public Intellectual in Modern Democratic Life

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Jürgen Habermas and the Public Intellectual in Modern Democratic Life

Peaceful Fiqh; Jürgen Habermas’s Hermeneutical Studies in the Verses of Jihad

The most crucial problem in analyzing problematic violence in Islam is when relating it with text religion. Problematic violence will appear more paradoxical and crucial when trying to legitimize al-Qur'an. When violence and terrorism get legitimacy from al-Qur'an, it will lead to a very risky conclusion; namely, Islam supports violence and terrorism. This is where the hermeneutics of Jurgen Habermas tries to review the problem of interpretation of these verses, especially concerning the theory of communication actions which will be used as an analytical knife in this study. The problem formulation is; how to read verse jihad without using instrumental interpretation and more developed paradigm communicative hermeneutics. The result of this research is that Jurgen Habermas's view will presuppose the formation of an intersubjective relationship in social society. The act of communication aims to reach an understanding between individuals. In relation to religious tolerance, the expected communication is a dialogue in reaching agreement on claims of accuracy in the underlying values ​​of each religion on how to build agreement on each religion and that peace is beautiful and violence is terrible. This claim necessitates an interactive dialogue that explores holistic religious values but avoids discussing truth claims considered non-negotiable religious doctrines. When it is applied in the interpretation of the jihad verse, the conclusion that we hope for is the jihad verse cannot abolish the universal value contained in the peace verse.

The English Of Santri At Pasuruan Pesantren Jurgen Habermas' Perspective

—This study aims to answer the following questions: First, how important is English for students at Pesantren Pasuruan? Second, what is Jurgen Habermas's view of the rational actions of pasuruan students in speaking English. This study uses a sociological approach and uses qualitative research methods. As an analytical tool, the researcher uses Jurgen Habermas' theory of communication rationality. The results show that first, the pesantren in Pasuruan in terms of character is very varied, there are economic boarding schools, integrated pesantren, multicultural pesantren, health pesantren, salafiah pesantren, da'wah pesantren, and social pathology pesantren. There are several Islamic boarding schools in Pasuruan, including the first, the Ahlussunnah wal Jamaah Islamic Boarding School which consists of several Islamic boarding schools affiliated with NU, Muhammadiyah Islamic Boarding Schools, and Salafi (Wahabi) Islamic Boarding Schools. Santri from Shia, NU, Muhammadiyah and Salafi pesantren all say that English is very important. They learn it in school with special subjects in English. Among the pesantren, there is only one boarding school that learns English not only at school but they are serious about studying English intensively in a foreign language development institution (LPBA) Al-Yasini. Second, according to Habermaas santri are subjects who have religious knowledge and English language skills must be able to produce communication (da'wah) that express Islamic symbols that uphold truth, honesty, accuracy in implementing norms. Da'wah for students to the community does not happen by chance but is an instructive rational action in the fact that students as actors orient themselves towards achieving a broader understanding of da'wah and all aspects by using English so that there are people everywhere who have an agreement, a good understanding of Islam. . This means that the target of rational communication is to understand people that Islam is grace, flexible, beautiful and not harsh, and anarchic. The implication of Habermas' rational theory of communication is that before reaching the goal or consensus is to have a process of training in communication that is repeated in Islamic boarding schools and takes a long time to gain knowledge of language and Islamic knowledge to understand the community.

Gestão democrática da educação: democracia liberal e/ou deliberativa

O presente artigo busca apreender a relação entre gestão democrática da educação e democracia. Tem como intuito discernir como Habermas e Bobbio explica a concepção de democracia, bem como relacionar essas concepções com a de gestão democrática presente na literatura educacional recente. Para tanto, realizamos estudos bibliográficos que permitiram apreender, na literatura educacional recente, o modelo de gestão democrática da educação e, com auxílio de trabalhos do campo das ciências políticas, as concepções de democracia liberal e deliberativa, que estão associadas a distintos sentidos dados à gestão democrática da educação. O artigo inicia trazendo considerações sobre a concepção procedimental de democracia liberal de Bobbio. Num segundo momento, trata da concepção procedimental deliberativa de democracia na visão de Habermas. Em seguida apresenta a concepção de gestão democrática na literatura educacional recente, concluindo que a gestão democrática apresentada na literatura educacional acolhe orientações liberais e deliberativas. Ajuda a entender que explicar com propriedade o que se nomeia por “gestão democrática” requer a apreensão da concepção de democracia que a sustenta. Há a possibilidade de se falar em gestão democrática de uma perspectiva liberal, ou deliberativa, ou outras mais aqui não tratadas. Também pode a gestão democrática ser sustentada por um mix de distintas concepções, de forma híbrida.

Deliberative Democracy and the New Social Movement: A Case from the Bojonegoro Media

The post-reform social movement is an interesting topic study. The nature of the movement which was not merely ideological vis a vis with the repressive style of the new order, this movement continued to look for unique formulations related to the negation of subject-objects. In that context the role of the media becomes an interesting element to examine. The existence and position of the media becomes a necessity in a social movement. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have used the media in such a way as to achieve its’ goals. Apart from a fluctuating level of success, the process of integrating the movement of substances with the medium that mediates the achievement of goals becomes an interesting object of study. This article intends to elaborate on how far the meaning and dynamics of new media, focusing on two websites of social movements in Bojonegoro in achieving NGO objectives. Using narrative text analysis, this paper attempts to parse in simple terms the two pages of the website according to the information system settings and models created by the government of Bojonegoro Regency, East Java. In his analysis, this study uses Habermas's view of the deliberatif discourse of the dam model as a theoretical framework.

What Is Habermas's “Better Argument” Good for?

As defined by Aristotle, rhetoric is faculty of observing in any given case the available means of (Rhetoric I:2 rev. Oxford trans., 1355b:27-28). The inquiry on the means of persuasion is the very purpose of rhetoric since this discipline emerged from the needs of the citizens to win their cases in the new democratic institutions of ancient Greece (Kennedy, 1998, pp. 191-214). The problem, as Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca (1958) put it, is that the of an is not only uneasy to define (is it a normative or a descriptive concept?) but it also would be difficult to study since it depends both on the aim of the discussion and on the nature of the audience (pp. 610-617). In the introduction of his Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas (1984) uses several times the concept of the of the better argument (e.g., pp. 24, 25, 28, 36, 42). One might therefore expect Habermas's reflection on argumentation to be of great help for rhetoricians. However, as conceived by Habermas (1984), the of the better argument refers not only to a rhetoric-free but also to a that can only exist in the absence of rhetoric. The aim of this paper is to reflect on this incompatibility between rhetoric and argumentation in the Habermasian approach. A CONSTRAINT-FREE FORCE Although Habermas does not clearly define the of the better argument, it is the only he seems to tolerate in his ideal speech situation: Participants in argumentation have to presuppose in general that the structure of their communication, by virtue of features that can be described in purely formal terms, excludes all force-whether it arises from within the process of reaching understanding itself or influences it from the outside-except the of the better (and thus that it also excludes, on their part, all motives except that of a cooperative search for the truth). (Habermas, 1984, p. 25) It seems that the idea of of the better argument relies on a dissociation between a that is acceptable and a that is not. Behind this dissociation lies the long lasting opposition between convincing and persuading, that is, following Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958, p. 36), between a that would convince any rational being and a that would only persuade a given audience in a given context. But for the of conviction to exist, the communication should, in Habermas's view, be free from any other kind of forces: The of the better is a constraint-free force (Habermas, 1984, p. 28). This constraint-free force is opposed to another kind of that has to do with rhetorical technic. This appears, in my view, in Habermas's (1970) article Toward a Theory of Communicative Competence. In this article, he stresses the importance of insuring symmetry between the arguers for an ideal speech situation to be optimal: Pure intersubjectivity exists only when there is complete symmetry in the distribution of assertion and dispute, revelation and concealment, prescription and conformity, among the partners of communication. As long as these symmetries exist, communication will not be hindered by constraints arising from its own structure. (Habermas, 1970, p. 371) It seems that some of the unacceptable has to do with the influence an arguer might exercise through his or her authority, that is, his or her ethos, one of the technical proofs of rhetoric. One might therefore define the of the better argument as a that might exist if communication was rhetoric-free (i.e., without of conviction originating from the technic of speech itself). Now that we have an idea of the nature of the acceptable side of the force, I would like to ask what is this of the better argument good for. Indeed, it has sometimes been argued that Habermas's view on argumentation might be counterfactual with the way people actually use argumentation in the public sphere. …

Revising Foucault: The history and critique of modernity

I offer a major reassessment of Foucault’s philosophico-historical account of the basic problems of modernity. I revise our understanding of Foucault by countering the influential misinterpretations proffered by his European interlocutors such as Habermas and Derrida. Central to Foucault’s account of modernity was his work on two crucial concept pairs: freedom/power and reason/madness. I argue against the view of Habermas and Derrida that Foucault understood modern power and reason as straightforwardly opposed to modern freedom and madness. I show that Foucault held a much more complex view of these pairs, a view encapsulated in his term ‘reciprocal incompatibility’. By revising our interpretation of Foucault’s work on modernity in this way, we open the way to much more effective deployments of his critical apparatus.

Dissertation Introduction: The Structure of Political Theories: Why Normative Theories of Politics and Economics Depend on Ethics

The dissertation has two aims. First, to explain why normative theories of politics, economics, and group decisions depend on ethics. Second, to refute the view that they need not. This latter view has recently been defended by Rawls, Hampshire, Williams, and Habermas. The view that all such theories necessarily depend on some normative ethical theory I call the Dependence Thesis. The dissertation defends the Thesis by an argument I call the Argument from Claims about Interest-Affecting Normative Requirement. Chapters 1-3 defend the Argument's three premises. Chapter 1 offers a conception of normative ethical theories. Chapter 2 offers a conception of normative theories of politics, economics, and group decision. Chapter 3 shows why theories of the second type depend on theories of the first. Chapter 4 defends the Dependence Thesis against objections from the anti-theory position in ethics; from a view of the aim of politics, defended by Hampshire and Williams; from Rawls's criterion of public justification; and from Habermas's view that genuinely democratic lawmaking cannot be controlled by moral principles. Chapter 5 applies the Thesis and tests it against hard cases. It uses the Thesis to resolve the monism-dualism debate in political philosophy. That debate concerns whether there is a fundamental principle for regulating political institutions that does not apply to personal conduct. The Chapter shows that there can be such principles, but that all such principles are shaped by normative ethical theories. The Chapter then shows that the Thesis accurately describes three hard cases: Rawls's political conception of justice, Debreu's theory of the optimality of general equilibrium, and Buchanan and Tullock's normative theory of decision rules.

Dissertation Conclusion: Political Principles: Why Normative Political Theories Depend on Ethics

The dissertation has two aims. First, to explain why normative theories of politics, economics, and group decisions depend on ethics. Second, to refute the view that they need not. This latter view has recently been defended by Rawls, Hampshire, Williams, and Habermas. The view that all such theories necessarily depend on some normative ethical theory I call the Dependence Thesis. The dissertation defends the Thesis by an argument I call the Argument from Claims about Interest-Affecting Normative Requirement. Chapters 1-3 defend the Argument's three premises. Chapter 1 offers a conception of normative ethical theories. Chapter 2 offers a conception of normative theories of politics, economics, and group decision. Chapter 3 shows why theories of the second kind must depend on theories of the first kind. Chapter 4 defends the Dependence Thesis against objections from the anti-theory position in ethics; from a view of the aim of politics, defended by Hampshire and Williams; from Rawls's criterion of public justification; and from Habermas's view that genuinely democratic lawmaking cannot be controlled by moral principles. Chapter 5 applies the Thesis and tests it against hard cases. It uses the Thesis to resolve the monism-dualism debate in political philosophy. That debate concerns whether there is a fundamental principle for regulating political institutions that does not apply to personal conduct. The Chapter shows that there can be such principles, but that all such principles are shaped by normative ethical theories. The Chapter then shows that the Thesis accurately describes three hard cases: Rawls's political conception of justice, Debreu's theory of the optimality of general equilibrium, and Buchanan and Tullock's normative theory of decision rules.

Grounding a Critical Psychoanalysis in Frameworks of Power

This article outlines two frameworks of power to explore the relationship between consulting room practices of psychoanalysis and societal networks of power. First, focus falls on Habermas's view of Freudian psychoanalysis as an emancipatory practice. Despite Habermas's problematic rationalistic interpretation of classical analysis, he may have been correct in noting that it attempts to stand in external relation to the systems of power that it seeks to address. This is a problematic grounding for critique, which may lead to idealism and authoritarianism. The second framework is an internalist Foucauldian one, which proposes that the analyst cannot avoid participation in societal power dynamics even in the consulting room. This framework is preferred, but must take account of Habermas's charge that Foucault's position succumbs to relativism. Following some reworking, the internalist approach is used to generate three principles for critical activity in relation to which classical and other psychoanalytic practices are examined.

The ontic interconnectedness and interdependence of language and communicative actions

An analysis of the interconnectedness of different functional domains within reality opens up the possibility to account for the multivocality of terms and for an analysis of the multifaceted meaning of language and communicative actions – their intertwinement with the integral meaning-coherence of reality. Therefore, the focus of this follow-up article is directed at the interdependent nature of communicative (i.e., socially disclosed) language use. Reflection on the problem of unity and diversity guides the discernment of the dualism present in Habermas's view and the assessment of the definition of communication in terms of the idea of a transition and/or sharing of meaning. Crucial ideas of Saussure, Derrida and Habermas are related to the mutability and immutability of the sign before the significance of the distinction between entity and function is applied to the conditions for and inter-functional connections of language and communicative actions. A discussion of the multifaceted coherence in which communicative actions are embedded subsequently receives attention. Finally, in view of the distinction between principles and their application (form-giving, positivisation) conventions, construction and the idea of autonomy are briefly assessed.

RELEVANSI TEORI KOMUNIKASI HABERMAS DALAM PENDIDIKAN

Habermas's view of communication theorv can he an alternative solution to the current critical situation particularly in Indonesia, which is facing conflicts in a variety of dimensions. Hahermas's wise view that can be referred to is that there is no absolute truth. There is no single absolute way to solve a variety of crises resulting from conflicts. To create a more humane world, the suggested way is communication, a dialectical positive model. We should make an attempt together to create a liberating path on the basis of the high humanistic values that we search together. Education is also a communication process Therejore, essentially, the communication conditions should he applied in the field qj education. This is expected to create a liberating path to empower adult learners.

Foucault Contra Habermas

In a critique of Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment, Habermas (1982) comments that enlightened thinking has been understood as an opposing force to myth, and yet Horkheimer and Adorno proclaim that myth is already enlightenment; and enlightenment reverts to mythology. In Habermas's view, the critique of enlightenment provided by Horkheimer and Adorno is one-sided and totalizing. What it sees about enlightenment is a domination of an objectified external nature and a repressed inner nature; what it sees is: enlightenment is domination. Habermas criticizes this view of enlightenment as one-sided since it fails to affirm the achievements of the Enlightenment which manifest elements of reason. Moreover, he contends that their critique is totalizing since it turns against reason and deprives itself of the ground of critique. In Habermas's view, Foucault's critique has made the same mistake.1 He comments that Foucault's totalizing critique turns against and deprives itself of the ground of critique. For him, Foucault's last essays on Enlightenment demonstrate that he has come to recognize the mistake he made and seeks to have a notion of reason to ground his critique. Habermas says, Foucault contrasts his critique of power with the analysis of truth in such a fashion that the former becomes deprived of the normative yardsticks that it would have to borrow from the latter. Perhaps the force of this contradiction caught up with Foucault in this last of his texts, drawing him again into the circle of the philosophical discourse of modernity which he thought he could explode. (Habermas, 1986:108) For Habermas, Foucault's later writings, which identify the connection of his project with the Enlightenment, represent a pro-Enlightenment stance which contradicts his anti-Enlightenment position in the earlier work. Some critics, arguing in line with Habermas, view Foucault's later essays as an indication of Foucault's moving away from his earlier position, and toward a convergence with Habermas's position. For example, Norris (1995) contends that Foucault was moving to embrace a Kantian position and to reject the ultra-relativist orthodoxy of his Nietzschean skepticism displayed in the earlier work. Ingram (1995) and McCarthy (1990) suggest that, after taking Foucault's later works into account, Foucault's studies should be understood as a continuation and enrichment of the critical-theoretical tradition of Habermas rather than a break from or an antithesis of it. No one can deny that Foucault has, indeed, come to identify Enlightenment as a certain attitude, a certain philosophizing ethos, which has affinities with his project. But does it mean that Foucault is now identifying with the Enlightenment and seeking to remain within its tradition? Does it mean that Foucault is now, as Habermas does, affirming the achievements of the Enlightenment and treating them as elements of reason that have to be preserved? Has Foucault adopted, as Habermas and some critics see it, contradictory positions in his earlier and later discussions of Enlightenment? This essay will answer the above questions by examining Foucault's works on Enlightenment. In discussing Foucault's views of Enlightenment, I do not only intend to clarify the differences between Foucault and Habermas on the subject of Enlightenment, power and critique, but also to elaborate Foucault's insights for Habermas's theory. I understand this article as an attempt to recast the Habermas/ Foucault debate.2 For insofar as the debate did take place, the amount of discussion by each philosopher about the other was unintentionally lopsided in Habermas's favor. Habermas (1987a) devoted two chapters of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity to criticizing Foucault, but as the book was published after Foucault's death, it received no reply. This article can be seen as providing a certain reply to Habermas's criticism. More importantly, the debate has often been construed in Habermas's terms and hence results in a failure to appreciate the extent and nature of Foucault's insights. …

Proceduralism and Justification in Habermas’s Discourse Ethics

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. …

Critical Facilitation: Learning through Intervention in Group Processes

What managers do in terms of managing groups of people in the workplace, or interacting with different stakeholder groups, requires similar skills to those of the process facilitator in management consultancy. There are different views of the role of the facilitator in the management literature that have been advanced as ways of aiding group processes. This article offers an account of how the role of facilitators might be extended towards a process of `critical facilitation'. The view that we present is elucidated through our using an exemplar of our application of this approach. This mode of facilitation was used by us as part of a research initiative aimed at exploring standard setting in the National Health Service in a region of the UK. It involved facilitating peer-group and multi-agency workshops involving six cross-organizational groups. By using this exemplar we show how facilitators might intervene in group discussions and become involved in various ways in the challenging of statements made, as part of the process of discourse. Our view of how statements can be scrutinized is based on a pragmatized version of Habermas's concentration on different types of validity claims that may be invoked in speech situations. We suggest that critical facilitation does not consist of assuming an uninvolved (more or less detached) attitude, but rather of developing an orientation of openness to discourse. We rely to some extent on Habermas's view of what discourse might involve, although we do not concur with his requirement that the search for consensus must inform the process.

Habermas, History and Social Evolution: Moral Learning and the Trial of Louis XVI

In recent times, under the influence of postmodernist thought sociology has largely rejected the idea of social evolution. An exception to this trend is to be found in the work of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas's account of social evolution has received some critical attention, but in sociology wider detail of the picture is not well known. Habermas wishes to hold to the possibility that evolutionary progress can be discerned not only in the sphere of technical control, but also in the sphere of social and moral development. The paper presents Habermas's views on social evoluton within the wider context of his development of critical theory as a `reconstructive science'. It suggests that his account has been able to resist many of the standard criticisms of evolutionary theory and that a renewal of interest in this area could provide a rich vein of new sociological knowledge.

Critical Stratagems in Adorno and Habermas: Theories of Ideology and the Ideology of Theory

AbstractIn one of his many metaphorical turns of phrase – a leitmotif in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity — Jürgen Habermas speaks of the path not taken by modern philosophers, a path that might have led them towards his own intersubjective notion of communicative reason. Habermas is especially critical of his predecessors, Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, because, he believes, they repudiated the rational potential in the culture of modernity. Whenever Adorno and Horkheimer heard the word ‘culture’, they apparently reached for their revolvers. By the 1940s, their confidence in modern culture had allegedly succumbed to bitter disillusionment. Indeed, on Habermas's view, the confidence of these early critical theorists had been shaken so badly by the emergence of Nazism and Stalinism that their scepticism finally embraced reason itself, ‘whose standards ideology critique had found already given in bourgeois ideals’. Consequently, Adorno and Horkheimer were forced to call into question their own immanent critique of modernity: ideology critique itself came ‘under suspicion of not producing (any more) truths’. These philosophers supposedly had little choice but to render their now suspect critique ‘independent even in relation to its own foundations’.

The Authority of the Holy Revisited: Habermas, Religion, and Emancipatory Possibilities

This article argues that Jürgen Habermas's view of religion as anathema to rational critical discourse reflects his misunderstanding that religion comprises a monolithic and immutable body of dogma that is closed to reason. Illustrative data from Catholic history and theology and empirical data gathered from contemporary American Catholics are used to show the weaknesses in Habermas's negation of the possibility of a self-critical religious discourse. Specifically, I highlight the doctrinal differentiation within Catholicism, its longstanding theological emphasis on the coupling of faith and reason, institutional reflexivity, and the doctrinally reflexive reasoning that contemporary Catholics use in negotiating what might appear as “contradictory” identities (e.g., being gay or lesbian and Catholic). Although the data presented take issue with Habermas's disavowal of religion, the article shows that the practical relevance of doctrinal reasoning at both the institutional and the individual level vindicate Habermas's faith in the emancipatory potential of reasoned argumentation to advance participative equality.

Existence and the communicatively competent self

Most readers of Habermas would not classify him as an existential thinker. The view of Habermas as a philosopher in German Idealist and Critical traditions from Kant to Hegel and Marx to the Frankfurt School prevails among Continental as much as among analytic philosophers. And the mainstream Anglo-American reception of his work and politics is shaped by the approaches of formal analysis rather than those of existential and social phenomenology or even current American pragmatism. One may argue that both these readings eclipse richer existential dimensions of a thinker who challenges the notorious methodological and political splits among analytic, Continental and pragmatist orientations. I argue that Habermas’ critical relation to Heidegger’s a historical history of Being and his misguided political career cannot explain a competing narrative of his own affirmative appropriation of existential-ethical dimensions of thought and activism. Second, if one sets in the foreground this competing narrative, there emerges a weak thesis, whether or not a plausible complementarity between the communications critical social theory and concrete existential categories can be established. Third, one may inquire further into a stronger thesis whether or not this link must be developed in order to render Habermas’ own theory of a communicatively competent self sufficiently concrete and critical.

Information in Communicative Planning

What planners do most is talk and interact; it is through communicative practice that they influence public action. This paper contends that communicative planning requires a new concept of information and how it influences action—namely, a concept of communicative rationality, supplementing instrumental rationality. Drawing on the author's research on the role of information in policy processes, and on Habermas's views of communicative action and rationality, the paper makes three main points. First, information in communicative practice influences by becoming embedded in understandings, practices and institutions, rather than by being used as evidence. Second, the process by which the information is produced and agreed on is crucial and must include substantial debate among key players and a social process to develop shared meaning for the information. Third, many types of information count, other than “objective” information. A concluding note urges planning researchers and educators to put more emphasis on this broader concept of information in practice, and warns practitioners that being technically right is never enough to influence action.