The Essentials of Habermas 3030797937, 9783030797935

Citation preview

Xunwu Chen

The Essentials of Habermas

The Essentials of Habermas

Xunwu Chen

The Essentials of Habermas

Xunwu Chen Department of Philosophy and Classics The University of Texas at San Antonio San Antonio, TX, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-79793-5    ISBN 978-3-030-79794-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79794-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   18 2 Modernity ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   19 1 The Public Sphere and Space������������������������������������������������������������   22 2 Discourse and Rational Communication������������������������������������������   33 3 Communicative Rationality��������������������������������������������������������������   44 4 Modernity, Enlightenment, and Habermas’s Rescue������������������������   56 5 Conclusion����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   61 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   62 3 Discourse Ethics ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   65 1 The Nature and Feature of Discourse Ethics������������������������������������   67 2 Obligation and Values ����������������������������������������������������������������������   76 3 The Discourse Principle��������������������������������������������������������������������   80 4 The Strength of Discourse Ethics ����������������������������������������������������   89 5 Kant, Scanlon and Habermas������������������������������������������������������������   92 6 Conclusion����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   97 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   98 4 Truth and Justice ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   99 1 Normative Rightness and Truth��������������������������������������������������������  101 2 A Reasonable Political Concept of Justice ��������������������������������������  111 3 The Best Mechanism to Establish a Reasonable Political Concept of Justice��������������������������������������������������������������  119 4 The Role of the Overlapping Consensus������������������������������������������  124 5 Conclusion����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  127 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  127 5 Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy��������������������������  129 1 Public Laws and Morality����������������������������������������������������������������  131 2 The Institution of Pubic Laws����������������������������������������������������������  137 2.1 The Concepts of Facticity and Validity��������������������������������  138 v

vi

Contents

2.2 Legal Validity������������������������������������������������������������������������  140 2.3 Private and Public Autonomy ����������������������������������������������  142 3 Constitutional Democracy����������������������������������������������������������������  146 4 Conclusion����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  155 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  157 6 Cosmopolitanism��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  159 1 The Ideal of Cosmopolitanism����������������������������������������������������������  161 1.1 The Kantian Turning Point���������������������������������������������������  162 1.2 Conceptual and Institutional Revolutions After World War II������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  169 1.3 Habermas’ Reconstruction����������������������������������������������������  172 2 Human Rights and Cosmopolitanism ����������������������������������������������  174 2.1 What Is a Right?�������������������������������������������������������������������  174 2.2 Human Rights as Constitutional Rights��������������������������������  176 3 Three Categories of Public Laws and Three Categories of Civil Rights����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  180 4 A Possible World Constitution����������������������������������������������������������  185 4.1 A Discursive Concept of World Constitution ����������������������  185 4.2 The Three-Tiered Cosmopolitan Order��������������������������������  188 4.3 The Concept of Dual Citizenship������������������������������������������  189 4.4 A World Society: Habermas and Rawls��������������������������������  192 5 Conclusion����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  194 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  194 7 Tolerance and Inclusion��������������������������������������������������������������������������  197 1 The Concept of Tolerance ����������������������������������������������������������������  199 1.1 The Historical Origin of the Word “tolerance” ��������������������  199 1.2 The Meaning of the Concept of Tolerance����������������������������  201 2 The Object of Tolerance��������������������������������������������������������������������  205 3 Tolerance as the Pace-maker of Modern Society������������������������������  208 3.1 Tolerance as a Norm of Obligation ��������������������������������������  208 3.2 Tolerance as a Value��������������������������������������������������������������  211 3.3 Toleration as a Virtue������������������������������������������������������������  214 4 Conclusion����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  217 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  218 8 Conclusion: Climbing the Mountain of Modernity������������������������������  219 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  231 Index ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  233

About the Author

Xunwu  Chen  is a professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy & Classics at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Dr. Chen received his Ph.D in philosophy from Fordham University in 1994, after which he spent two years in the Department of Eastern Asian Language and Civilization of Harvard University as a postdoctoral researcher. He then spent a year at the Eastern Asian Institute of Columbia University and half year in the Philosophy Department of New York University as a visiting scholar. He joined the UTSA faculty in January 1998. Dr. Chen is the author of four books (monographs) in English, Being and Authenticity (2004), Justice, Humanity, and Social Toleration (2008), Another Phenomenology of Humanity (2015), and Global Justice and Our Epochal Mind (2019), and three books in Chinese language, On Habermas (2008), Habermas: The Leader of Contemporary Thought (2015), and A Theory of Modernity and the Spirit of Our Time (2019). In addition, Dr. Chen has also authored more than 40 research journal articles in English and more than 10 research journal articles in Chinese language. Dr. Chen was the president of the Association of Chinese Philosophers in (North) America from December 2001 to December 2003. From July 2004 to July 2007, he served as a member of the Committee on the Status of Asian Philosophies and Asian Philosophers of the American Philosophical Association. He is currently the Vice President of the International Association of East-West Studies.

vii

Chapter 1

Introduction

THIS IS a small book about one of the greatest, profoundest, and most systematic, influential, and sensational philosophies in our epoch, Jürgen Habermas’s philosophy—crème de la crème in our time. It purports to provide a conceptual map of this rich, brilliant, and systematic philosophy, while it also deals with some normative issues of this philosophy. It spends considerable time exploring the basic meanings of those cornerstone concepts of this monumental philosophy, examining the conceptual and logical associations of ideas, views and reasoning of this philosophy, and reviewing the exciting philosophical dialogues between this philosophy and other leading Western philosophies in our time that converge in some remarkable insights into and conclusions of some of the most daunting philosophical issues in our time. Its purpose is to present with conceptual clarity those Habermas’s philosophical thoughts that illuminate some core philosophical problems troubling humankind in our epoch. Habermas is a philosopher of our epoch and for our epoch. In an age of globalization, humankind in whole irreversibly becomes a community of common fate and bond wherein nation-peoples, as well as individual persons of diverse cultures, are brought together and constellated into a community. The age of globalization increases the role of critical philosophy such as Habermas’s philosophy, not diminishing it. Thus, for decades, Habermas is one of the world’s most influential, most inspiring philosophers in our epoch, and has produced various epoch-making philosophical classics such as The Theory of Communicative Action, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, and Between Facts and Norms. In an age of globalization, there arise various global issues and challenges which all humankind on the earth must face together. The questions for all humankind on the earth today are vastly simple but profound: Ought all humankind on the earth to work concertedly to solve those global issues facing all humankind? Ought all humankind on the earth to live together as a community of common fate through communication, dialogue, and mutual understanding or through conflict, war, and oppression of the stronger over the weaker? © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 X. Chen, The Essentials of Habermas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79794-2_1

1

2

1 Introduction

In an age of globalization wherein different systems of thought are in conflict, different ways of life are in conflict, and different systems of values, norms and standards are in conflict, should all peoples on the earth resolve their conflicts and differences through dialogues, communication, negotiation, and mutual understanding, or through wars, including economic wars, and through oppression and repression? If our answer is that all humankind on the earth ought to live as a community of fate and common laws and should bridge their differences through dialogue, communication, mutual understanding, and all peoples on the earth ought to resolve their differences and conflicts through inter-cultural dialogue, we should visit Habermas’s philosophy. Habermas’s philosophy is about rational dialogue, communication, mutual understanding, mutual recognition, inclusion, and toleration. If our basic view is that the future world society ought to be a cosmopolitan one wherein different peoples coexist, co-extend their lives together under the rule of laws, human rights are protected and world peace is possible and endurable amid irreducible cultural diversity among them, we ought to visit Habermas’s philosophy. In an age of globalization, should there be global principles, norms and standards of human activities and practices? If our answer is positive, we should visit Habermas’s philosophy. Habermas’s philosophy is not only about what can be counted as valid, legitimate and rational principles, norms, and standards of human activities and practices, but also about how are they possible and why they are reasonable and acceptable. Its insights into modernity, the public sphere, discourse, communicative rationality, truth, justice, obligation, ethics, morality, public law, human rights, nation, state, people, cosmopolitanism, constitutional democracy, validity, legitimacy, tolerance, world peace, and so on are illuminating to us today. Habermas’s doctrine that the global human community ought to be a community of common laws and norms is of great importance and illumination in our time. Habermas’s philosophy is deeply embedded in our epoch. It comes from critical reflections of those crucial issues—national, international, and global issues—of our epoch. It comes from critical reflections of those cognitive, ethical-moral, social-political, legal, and religious problems of our time. It profoundly reflects the spirit of our epoch. Its horizon, vision and vista fuse with the horizon, vision, and vista of our epoch. Its philosophical concepts are consistent with the conceptual framework of our epochal spirit. It is a philosophy of our epoch, for our epoch, and by our epoch. On this point, while Heidegger claimed that time is the horizon of understanding, the horizon of Habermas’s philosophy is our epoch. While Habermas himself emphasizes the intersubjective life world is the horizon of our understanding, the intersubjective world which is the horizon of Habermas’s philosophy is our epochal life world. The motto of Habermas’s philosophy is, and always, as follows: living up to the spirit of our time or living up to the spirit of modernity of our time. Habermas is generally understood and credited as the banner holder of critical theories today. As William Outwaite indicates, the term “critical theory” can be understood in “two main ways: first, to refer to a tradition beginning with Simmel (Geor) and Lukács (György); second, more narrowly, to refer to the work of some of the writers associated with the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research.”(Outwaite, 2009, p.5) For the purpose of the present inquiry, we can understand the term

1 Introduction

3

“critical theory” to refer to the philosophical movement of social theory and theory of knowledge beginning with Simmel and Lukács, through Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcus, to David Held, Seyla Benhabib and other scholars today. Iris Marion Young indicates that “critical theory is a normative reflection that is historically and socially contextualized.”(Young, 1990, p.5) Meanwhile, Outwaite asserts that “Habermas might be summarily characterized as a Marxist Weber.”(Ibid, p.3) A Marxist Weber, this is a suggestive concept. Whether this reading is a proper one for Habermas or not, it does justice to the fact that Habermas successfully grounds some of his philosophical approaches in achievements of sociology, in particular his doctrine of modernity draws importantly from achievements of sociology. Moreover, some other scholars read Habermas as a neo-Kantian philosopher in global theory. Meanwhile, Habermas’s present concept of truth is Kantian-pragmatic. His doctrine of cosmopolitanism also reconstructs Kant’s cosmopolitanism and is a Kantian-Habermasian doctrine. His doctrine of tolerance is also egalitarian and cosmopolitan. In turn, the diverse reading of Habermas today, in particular the possibility of diverse reading, reveals the richness of his philosophy. In my opinion, Habermas’s philosophy draws from various schools of Western philosophy. Outwaite rightly indicates that to account adequately Habermas’s philosophy, one should do justice to “respective influences of Kant and Hegel, Marx and Weber, Parsons (Talcott) and Piaget (Jean), pragmatism and so on.”(Ibid, p.5) It is also evident that Habermas is also influenced by philosophies which he critically engages including the philosophies of Gadamer, Foucault, Horkheimer and Adorno. One is made by one’s opponent as much as one is made by one’s teacher. So is a philosophy. Thus, his philosophy should not be identified with any one tradition exclusively. Instead, it should be understood to start a new school of philosophy: The discourse school of philosophy. Discourse philosophy synthesizes insights of critical theories, Kantian philosophy, Hegelian philosophy, Marxism, pragmatism, philosophy of language, and liberalism. It also grows in dialogue with philosophies such as Nietzsche’s, Fichte’s, Schelling’s, Heidegger’s, Gadamer’s, C.S.Peirce’s, Dewey’s, Humboldt’s, Putnam’s, K-O-Apel’s, Rorty’s, Kuhn’s, Lyotard’s, Derrida’s, Foucault’s, Bataille’s, Luhmann’s, Brandon’s and Rawls’s philosophy. It imbibes insights from theories of Parsons, Mead and Piaget. True, from time to time, some Habermas’s philosophical concepts are not discursive concepts, e.g., he replaces his early discursive concept of truth with a Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth. Still, his philosophy in whole is a discourse philosophy. His discourse philosophy is epoch-making and has contributed great thoughts which are philosophically ground-­breaking and revolutionary. In essence and substance, discourse philosophy is about democratically philosophizing, rational communication, communicative rationality, critical argumentation, building the public sphere, building ideal speech situation, the universal pragmatics of discourse, universal norms and rules of human activities, normativity, the public use of reason, and critical reflection of basic social institutions, validity, legitimacy, rationality, knowledge and human interests, the rule of law, constitutional democracy, human rights, justice, equality, and global human community. It

4

1 Introduction

exhibits Habermas’s post-metaphysical mode of thinking that focuses on norms and procedures of discourse geared to arrive at mutual understanding, not on whether participants are unified in essence and substance in discourse. It emphasizes equal, free, autonomous and critical participation, rational, noncoercive and informed argumentation, democratic negotiation, and valid reasoning. It emphasizes building shared understanding and intersubjective consensus amid diversity, difference, ­conflict, and incompatibility. It emphasizes reason, truth, justice, discourse, and the rule of law. For example, discourse cosmopolitanism advocates a global human community of common laws, not a global human community of common fate or of a metaphysical bond. The doctrine is about a pluralistic world society of common laws that purports to protect human rights and promote permanent world peace under the rule of law on the entire earth, not about building a homogeneous people on the earth under the sun. To spell it out in a metaphorical language, discourse cosmopolitanism is about building a future world society akin to a city where the living and being together of the strange, the different, the diverse, and the incompatible requires traffic lights, road lanes, and norms of driving to regulate traffics and transportations of peoples, and norms, laws and rules to regulate the traffics and define the limits of human activities, not about building a homogeneous community. Discourse cosmopolitanism is thus devoted to grounding global public discourses in human reason and to transforming them to be geared to produce mutual understanding among all humankind. It insists that open, inclusive, and democratic global public discourses are necessary and instrumental to humankind in whole as a community of common laws today to live and be together. The same can be said of discourse ethics. Discourse ethics is not only about the ethical life in accordance with a set of valid, universal norms and principles, but also about that those valid, universal norms are established through practical discourses wherein participants are free, equal, autonomous to participate in the public use of reason. Its starting point and standing point is not that peoples are the same and have the same human nature. Instead, its starting points and standing point is that peoples are different and have different conceptions of values and happiness, desires, and interests, while sharing common human vulnerability. Its starting and standing point is not that all peoples need to live a life of a homogeneous human nature. Instead, its starting point and standing point is that the being and living together of the different, the diverse, the strange, the incompatible, and the incommensurable need common laws, norms, and rules to define the limits and to regulate the traffics of human activities in common communal lives, just as driving together in a city requires that the city has traffic lights, delineating road lanes, and established norms and rules of driving such as speed limits. The hallmark of discourse philosophy is the idea of the rule of reason and the public use of reason in the public sphere and in practical discourses. It is the emphasis on the public use of reason in opinion-and will-formation, in rule- and norm-­ establishment, and in development of public policies—national, international, and global policies. Kant’s philosophy emphasizes individuals’ autonomous uses of human reason and teaches persons to be autonomous human beings.

1 Introduction

5

Hegel’s philosophy advocates the social, collective use of reason and teaches persons to be conscious embodiments of the Absolute Spirit. Discourse philosophy teaches the public use of reason and teaches us to be critical, responsible and competent citizens. Kant finds human reason to be embodied in individual consciousness. Hegel finds the Absolute Spirit to be immanent in history. Marx finds the conscience of our epoch to be embodied in the social class called “the proletarian class”. Habermas finds human reason to be embodied in the normative validity claims of human communicative action. The concept of the public use of reason in discourses brings into prominence the concept of communicative rationality, the crown jewel of discourse philosophy. To use reason publically means to listen to the voice of communicative reason. It is to listen to the voice of the validity claims of comprehensibility, propositional truth, subjective truthfulness, and normative rightness in argumentation and communication. Correspondingly, Habermas is interested more in creating a rational procedure and a good public sphere with undistorted communicative conditions for peoples to democratically articulate, develop and communicate their views of truths, knowledge, understanding, ideas of good, happiness, and freedom, concepts of justice and solidarity, and concepts of value and obligation, not interested in defining the essences of truth, justice, good, happiness, freedom, value, obligation, autonomy and so on. He is interested in creating a rational procedure and public sphere with undistorted communicative conditions for peoples to publically, democratically converse and discuss about rights, liberty, duty, obligation, autonomy, citizenship, virtue and responsibility. Discourse philosophy deals with a wide range of philosophical subject-matters of epistemological, moral, ethical, social-political, legal, linguistic, and religious nature. It is the most comprehensive, systematic philosophy since Kant and Hegel. It goes beyond the tradition of critical theories and philosophies of Simmel, Lukác, Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcus and various critical theorists in scope, method, content, focus, and concern. It supersedes Kantian philosophy, Hegelian philosophy and Marxist philosophy. First, the method of critique in discourse philosophy is immanent critique, not transcendent critique. By definition, immanent critique refers to critique from within. In immanent critique, human reason that guides rational criticism of society and culture or that guides critical inquiry and refection lives in the world, not outside the world. Immanent critique differs from traditional method of transcendent critique. Talking about Habermas’s methodology, Thomas McCarthy indicates that Habermas “readily agrees with Foucault that reason is a ‘thing in this world’.” McCarthy, 1987, p.x) Meanwhile, “the undeniable immanence of the standards” which are used to draw the distinctions between truth and falsity, right and wrong and so on—“their embeddedness in concrete languages, cultures and practices— should not blind us to the equally undeniable ‘transcendence’ of the claims they represent.”(Ibid.) Noteworthy, when Habermas first employed the method of immanent critique, he received a strong criticism from Horkheimer who still subscribed to the Platonic method of transcendent critique. That is to say, Habermas and Horkheimer

6

1 Introduction

disagreed on the method of rational social critique. In Habermas, social criticism is criticism of society, basic institution, and our knowledge and understanding from human reason immanent in the world and immanent in human practices, not criticism from the point of view of nowhere. Second, discourse philosophy is characteristically cosmopolitan. It emphasizes both the universal and particular, the moral and the ethical, the cognitive and the volitional, the emancipatory, the practical and the technical, the unified and the diverse, as well as the transcendent and the contextual. To put it differently, discourse philosophy has a dialectical perspective of the relationships between the universal and particular, the moral and the ethical, the cognitive and the volitional, the emancipatory, the practical and the technical, the unified and the diverse, as well as the transcendent and the contextual. In discourse philosophy, philosophical inquiry serves two kinds of human knowledge-­interests which Habermas outlines: the ethical-practical interests and the emancipatory interests. That being said, in discourse philosophy, the universality of valid norms and principles of human activity is established in practical discourses and the universality of truth or value is affirmed in practices in the lifeworld. Third, in content, discourse philosophy is more comprehensive than traditional critical theory is. It encompasses epistemology, ethics, moral philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of law, philosophy of religion, social theory and so on. Its scope is far larger than that of social theory or theory of knowledge. It is post-metaphysical, but not a-metaphysical. Its subject-matters and its conceptual framework are far beyond the scope of traditional critical theories of Simmel, Lukác, Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse, and other present critical theories such as that of David Held, Iris M. Young, or Sylla Benhabib. It differs fundamentally from Marxist dialectical materialism, historical materialism, and political economics, though “Habermas describes his theory of social evolution as a ‘reconstruction of historical materialism’.” (McCarthy, 1991, p.233) Fourth, in focus, discourse philosophy emphasizes the public use of reason, not the individual use of reason—a tradition since Plato. The emphasis is also not on the kind of construction of collective reason as it is in Marxist philosophy, and Hegelian philosophy. The focus falls on grounding human reason in communicative rationality embodied in the four validity claims: comprehensibility, truthfulness, truth, and normative rightness. Correspondingly, discourse philosophy also emphasizes the public sphere as an important institutional space and the ideal speech situation as an important condition for truly critical thinking. As a philosopher, Habermas does not merely do philosophy. He lives on philosophy. There is not a philosopher in our time or in any other times who has traveled to more places and engaged in more philosophical debates with other philosophers and scholars than Habermas has From Europe to America, from Middle East to Asia, there are firm marks of Habermas’s philosophical footsteps everywhere. Plato has defined a philosopher as a lover of wisdom who lives an examined life, and Habermas is a true philosopher in the Platonic sense. Socrates exemplifies what is a philosopher. So does Habermas.

1 Introduction

7

Notwithstanding, Habermas’s philosophy should also be understood together with his concept of philosophy. For Habermas, philosophy is a pubic conversation, and an institution of pubic conversations and discourses. Philosophy is an institution that serves the human cognitive interests of understanding, the human ethical, practical interests of community-building, and the human emancipatory interests. For him, philosophy is more an enterprise to develop a rational, normative basis for human activities in the public sphere and through public discourses, and an instrument to establish an ideal speech situation for human endeavors to search for truth, mutual understanding, and normativity of human activities. Noteworthy, Habermas replaces Plato’s metaphor of philosophy as the mid-wife by the metaphor of philosophy as the stand-in. A mid-wife assists the mother (of truth) to give birth to a child (the truth). A stand-in instructor (a stand-in voice of human reason) is a temporary substitution for the real instructor (human reason). Philosophy is the stand-in institution—a temporary substituting voice of human reason—in human search for truth, knowledge, and wisdom of the self, the community, the world and history, as well as norms, principles and rules of human activities. It is the instrument of humanity’s critical reflection of humankind herself, the world, human cultures, human histories, human practices, human institutions, and human beliefs. A stand-in is also one that is in trial. Philosophy as the stand-in voice of human reason is one that is in trial and thus must be self-reflective too. Plato characterized philosophy as the mid-wife for truth, not the mother of truth. Habermas also sees philosophy to be the mediation, which he dubs as “the stand­in”, in the process of seeking truths and understanding truth, instead of the source or mother of truth. Philosophy is more an enterprise that serves us to construct the public sphere with an ideal speech situation, and to reach mutual understanding in discourses and practices than an enterprise wherein we act as subjects to know the world outside us as objects. Philosophy is a bridge between or among peoples. It is an enterprise of critical inquiry, no question of that. But to be a critical project, philosophy must first be a public one. Thus, in Habermas, philosophy is always an enterprise of public discourses wherein human reason is publically exercised. Plato claimed that an unexamined life is not worth living. Habermas shares this Platonic sentiment. Plato claimed that the hope of humankind lie in the integration of philosophical wisdom and political power, and the rule of reason. Habermas shares this sentiment. However, for Plato, philosophy aims at producing enlightened Aristocratic political power. For Habermas, philosophy aims at producing an enlightened power of democracy, and popular sovereignty. Plato looked for the marriage between philosophy and political power in aristocracy. Habermas looks for the marriage between philosophy and popular sovereignty in democracy. Platonic philosophy is to produce enlightened rulers or guardians. Habermas’s is to produce enlightened citizens. Plato placed the hope of humankind in the prospect that philosophers become kings and kings, philosophers. Habermas places the hope of humankind in the prospect that all citizens become reflective, responsible, and competent in the public use of reason, autonomy, exercising rights and freedom, and carrying out duty and fulfilling obligation.

8

1 Introduction

In Habermas’s vision, the object of philosophy is first communicative situation and condition of public discourse and practice, instead of an object of scientific knowledge of the world out there; the aim of philosophizing is more to develop the ideal speech situation of public discourse than to develop a system of knowledge of the objective world out there. In Knowledge and Human Interests, Habermas divides human knowledge-interests into three categories: technical controlling, ethical-­ practical, and emancipatory interests. Philosophy serves our emancipatory and our ethical-practical interests, instead of our technical-controlling interests. For Plato, philosophical education aims at turning the “eyes of the soul” around and upward (toward the world of truth and reality), liberating the soul from cultural prisons. For Aristotle, philosophy serves as the foundation for us to seek truths of the world and ourselves. For Descartes, Locke, and Kant, philosophy embodies the light of nature. For Hegel, philosophy is one of the three forms through which the Absolute Spirit actualizes and externalizes itself in the world and returns to itself. For Habermas, philosophy aims at liberating our mind from the tyranny of those irrational forces and distorted communicative environments in human existence and practice. In Habermas’s vision, to philosophize is to liberate us from those conditions of distorted communication wherein rational discourses and practices are not possible. Philosophizing is the activity and endeavor that purports to arrive at mutual understanding among participants in practical discourses and to purge the public sphere of distorted communicative conditions. Unlike Plato, Habermas does not conceive himself to distinctively perceive the height of the absolute, the Truth and the Sun above in his philosophical horizon of contemplation. Unlike Plato, Habermas does not endeavor to cast rays of the universe upon the dark cave of culture either. Nor does Habermas conceive philosophy to be transcending above the world. Instead, for him, “philosophy belongs to the world on which it reflects and must return to it.”(Ibid.) Philosophy is to produce and create conditions for rational communications geared to arrive at mutual understanding among peoples, and to produce and create better conditions for reproductions of better human communities. Plato calls a philosopher “the lover of wisdom”. Habermas, sees a philosopher to be a rational participant in discourses. Hegel conceived philosophizing as thinking things over. Habermas also conceives philosophizing as such. In light of what is said above, this book sets out to provide a conceptual map of Habermas’s philosophy. It explores the basic conceptual framework and those core concepts of this philosophy including the concepts of the public sphere, practical discourse, communicative rationality, the public use of reason, modernity, democracy, human rights, constitutional patriotism, legitimacy, validity, post-nation state, post-nation democracy, public laws including cosmopolitan laws, ethics, morality, truth, justice, toleration, and cosmopolitanism. It branches into seven chapters. Chapter 1 is the introduction. Chapter 2 studies Habermas’s doctrine of modernity, the cornerstone of his philosophy system. Habermas is a staunch defender and creative reconstructor of the project of modernity. The project of modernity is to have a universal basis of normative justification for public discourses, human activities, and institutions. It is the project to have the rule of reason, the rule of truth, the rule of justice and the rule of

1 Introduction

9

law on the earth. While the ideal of Renaissance is the resurrection of humanity, the ideal of modernity is the rule of reason, the rule of truth, the rule of justice and the rule of law. Without the rule of reason, the rule of truth, the rule of justice, and the rule of law, there can be no individual autonomy and human emancipation. Habermas has creatively answered those timely questions of modernity in our time. These questions include but are not limited to the following: How can universally rational, legitimate and valid norms, rules, and limits of human activity that do justice to diversity, difference, and particularity possible? How can common laws, norms, and standards for a community consisting of the different, the incompatible, and the incommensurable without oppression, marginalization, and elimination of difference, incompatibility, and incommensurability, but inclusion and preservation of them, possible? How can common laws, rules, norms and standards for a heterogeneous public or a substantially and culturally heterogeneous community possible? How can actors of heterogeneity think, choose, and act jointly, but not as a homogeneous collectivity? Habermas is a creative rebuilder of the modernity project dented by the totalitarianism of the Enlightenment. For him, modernity is a condition that constellates the core qualities of our time. It is the condition and quality of the rules of reason, truth, justice and public law. To rebuild modernity is to develop a set of qualities and properties of our epoch in accordance with the spirit of our epoch. For him, the concept of modernity is both a temporal concept and a qualitative concept. The horizon of modernity is both a temporal horizon and a qualitative horizon. The project of modernity is still incomplete, but its direction and aspiration for the universal is the right one. Its promise of human emancipation and liberation can be kept, and must be kept. In Habermas’s vision, the condition or quality called “modernity” consists of various elements including the following: the rule of reason, the rule of law, the rule of justice, the rule of truth, universal human rights, constitutional democracy, separation of state and civil society, separation of state and church, separation of demos and ethnos, distinction among state, nation, and people, cultural tolerance and inclusion, distinction between law and morality, and cosmopolitanization of society. At the core of modernity is the rule of reason. Habermas’s reconstruction of the modernity project is based on his reconstruction of the concept of human reason, and his inauguration of the concept of communicative rationality. His renovation of the modernity project is based on his transformation of human reason from a subject-­ centered power and consciousness into an intersubjective power and consciousness, redeeming the liberating power, the “unforced force” and “the unforced elevating power” of human reason. Habermas recognizes the totalitarianism of the enlightenment and its modernity project and diagnoses the source of the totalitarianism of modern Enlightenment to be its subject-centered concept of human reason. Thus, he sets out to reconstruct the modernity project with his de-centering democratization of human reason and with a paradigm shift in conceiving human reason. The key to his de-centering and democratic reconstruction of the modernity project is his development of the conceptual triad of the public sphere, discourse, and human reason (as well as the public use of reason), the conceptual trinity which Habermas claims, “has dominated my work as

10

1 Introduction

a scholar and my public life.”(Habermas, 2009, p.13) And crucial to this conceptual trinity is Habermas’s paradigm shift in conceptualization of human reason: the shift from the concept of human reason as a subject-centered reason to the conception of human reason as intersubjective reason modeled on and grounded in communicative rationality embodied in its four validity claims: comprehensibility, subjective truthfulness, propositional truth, and normative rightness. The paradigm shift enables Habermas to posit human reason as the “unforced force” and the light to enlighten the human path to democratically develop universal standards and norms of modernity and to build a modern global society of humankind. It enables Habermas to conceptualize human reason as the intersubjective, not a subject-centered, consciousness and power and as the communicating, constructing, elevating, and liberating power, as well as the critical, unforced force. It enables Habermas to see that human reason is both immanent and transcendent. The immanence of human reason is that the standards which human reason uses to distinguish between truth and falsity, right and wrong, acceptable and non-acceptable, justice and injustice, valid and invalid, legitimate and illegitimate, and the like are embedded in concrete languages, cultures, and practices. The transcendence of human reason is that its claims are universally valid, legitimate, rational, true and acceptable. Chapter 3 studies Habermas’s doctrine of discourse ethics as a form of modernist ethics. It is part of the ideal of modernity that the ethical-moral life is constitutive of human living and that the ideas of good, happiness, autonomy, obligation, duty, norm, value, and standard should be constitutive of the ethical-moral life. It is also part of modernity to aspire for valid, legitimate, and rational norms, standards, and rules that serve as the basis of regulation of the ethical-moral life of humankind. Discourse ethics is built on Habermas’s direct application of his theory of communicative rationality in ethics and morality and his distinctive concept of the public use of human reason. It synthesizes insights of Kantian ethics and Hegelian ethics. Like Kant, Habermas conceptualizes ethics as moral philosophy and for him, discourse ethics is to provide the normative basis of justification for moral norms. Discourse ethics conceives the ethical life in terms of justice and solidarity in an ethical-moral community, and explains and justifies moral validity, ethical values, norms, and principles on the normative basis provided by communicative rationality. It reformulates the fundamental insights of Kantian deontological, cognitivist, formalistic and universalist ethics and the Hegelian concept of the ethical life. It conceives the moral validity or rightness of norms on analogy with the truth of an assertoric statement. In it, normative rightness is understood as the claim to validity analogous to a truth claim; moral judgment has a cognitive dimension. It emphasizes that justified moral norms of action must have universal validity. It develops a new modernist conception of the ethical-moral trinity of the rule of reason, good, and obligation in the ethical-moral life. The depositing question here is how universally valid moral norms that do justice both to moral, normative justification and ethical self-clarification and understanding possible. It is how universally valid moral norms amid ethical diversity and difference possible. Discourse ethics has a unique answer to the question. The answer is the public use of reason among the ethically different, diverse, and

1 Introduction

11

autonomous in developing common norms, maxims, principles, scope and limits of human activities, just as the public use of reason in a city to set up traffic lights and road lanes in a city to regulate traffics and transportation in a city. Discourse ethics replaces the Kantian categorical imperative by a procedure of moral argumentation. In it, valid ethical-moral norms can be derived only from the public reason, will and consent of those whose decisions and activities are supposed to be bound by them. It justifies the validity and acceptability of moral norms on the basis of democratic consents of all concerned participants in practical discourses. At the core of discourse ethics are the acceptability principle, the discourse principle, the principle of universalization, the distinction between moral obligation and value, the distinction between and association of moral solidarity and justice, and the cognitive dimension of morality. Discourse ethics is universalist, but leaves spacious rooms for plays of the ethical particulars. Indeed, Habermas sees that it is the unique strength of discourse ethics that it integrates the moral question of universal justification and the ethical question of self-understanding and self-clarification into one. A key here is that in practical discourses wherein moral norms and principles are established, participants do not wear the veil of ignorance, to borrow a phrase from John Rawls, but join the discussions, debates, argumentations, and negotiations with distinctive knowledge of self-identity, interests, and particular concerns. In other words, participants in practical discourses are not abstract persons, but concrete, and reasonable citizens of particular identity who think, choose, and act rationally, that is to say, following the guidance of communicative rationality in discourses. Accordingly, the process of universalization in discourse ethics is not a process of mere abstraction, but a process of negotiation and consensus building and constellation. By this token, the principle of universalization in discourse ethics can do justice to the ethical concerns of participants of particular identity in discourses. The working procedure is that the response to a concern from one particular perspective is addressed together and negotiated with the responses to concerns from other perspectives. The starting point and standing point of the process of universalization, as well as the universalization principle, in discourse ethics is not that all human beings share a same rational nature and if all of them exercise their human reason as embodied in their individual consciousness fully, they inevitably will arrive at the same conclusion and thus at common consensus. Instead, its starting point and standing point is that persons are different, even incompatible; to live together and to be together, they need to exercise publically and together to negotiate their way out and to negotiate and establish common norms and principles, and they can have reasonable negotiation if and only if they negotiate under the guidance of communicative rationality. In discourse ethics, the ethical life shares one common point with the city life: it has a heterogeneous public, not a homogeneous public. Chapter 4 studies Habermas’s doctrines of truth, justice, and the relationship among truth, justice, and reason. The idea of the rule of reason is at the core of the ideal of modernity in modern time and in our time. So are the rule of truth and the rule of justice among the core qualities of modernity. Modernity purports to let

12

1 Introduction

universal truth enlighten and universal justice shine among humankind on the earth. It is the condition under which truth, justice, and reason lead all humankind to liberation, freedom, and autonomy. Indeed, the aspiration for universal truth, universal justice, and universal reason epitomizes the ideal of modernity and summarizes the heart of modernity. If modernity in our epoch consists also of the rule of universal truth, universal justice, and universal reason, then what is truth? What is justice? What is the relationship among truth, justice, and reason? Does a reasonable concept of justice necessarily make a claim to have truth? These are both conceptual and normative questions which Habermas addresses and to which his philosophy provides unique answers. This chapter first discusses Habermas’s concept of truth and his distinction between truth and normative rightness since the later part of 1990s. It examines the conceptual evolution of Habermas’s view from an early discursive concept of truth wherein the truth of a statement is understood as the warranted assertability of the statement to a Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth wherein truth is the cognitive, objective validity of a statement distinguished from the warranted assertability, as well as from normative rightness of the statement. Notwithstanding, in Habermas’s early discursive concept of truth, truth is what is justified to claim, and what is justified to claim has truth. When truth enlightens, reason enlightens. When reason triumphs, truth triumphs. In his Kantian-pragmatic concept, truth is a justification-transcendent property or condition of a proposition, belief or thought. Truth is a property of a proposition indicating that the proposition is factually true or in the proposition, a state of affairs is factually given or attains. Truth has fact, and fact has truth. Truth is beyond what is justified to claim. Truth is objective. Meanwhile, in the Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth, one sees also the shadow of Husserl as one sees the shadow of Kant, Peirce, Putnam and Rorty. As cognitive validity, truth is a kind of objective validity, not subjective validity or intersubjective validity, which is verified and affirmed in practice. Habermas’s Kant-pragmatic concept of truth is at home with Aristotle’s realist concept of truth wherein “to say of what is that is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that is not, is true.”(Aristotle, 2001, 1011b26–28) Indeed, Habermas characterizes his own concept of truth as one of “pragmatic epistemological realism.” (Habermas, 2003, p.7) But Habermas does not subscribe to the traditional correspondence theory. His concept of truth is Kantian in the sense that it in effect conceives truth to be a kind of formal condition or transcendental condition. It is pragmatic in the sense that in it, whether a proposition has truth must be verified and affirmed in practices in the lifeworld. Having studied Habermas’s concept of truth, Chap. 4 then examines his concept of justice and its relation to truth. It takes as its paradigm of illustration the debate between Habermas and Rawls about whether a reasonable political concept of justice necessarily claims to have truth in the middle of 1990s. It takes as its depositing question whether a concept that claims to be reasonable necessarily claims to have truth at the same time. It demonstrates that Habermas’s view on the relationship of

1 Introduction

13

justice, truth and reason reveals the unique deontological nature of discourse thinking: it conceives the rightness of norms of justice to express moral truth. Habermas shares with Rawls the view that the diversity in conceptions of good and value is an enduring reality of the world we live today; plurality of world outlooks and conceptions of happiness is an enduring reality of our time. That being said, Habermas’s response to cultural, ethical, and political pluralism differs from Rawls’s. This is exhibited in his answers to these two questions in his debate with Rawls: (1) Is a reasonable, political concept of justice free-standing—that is, without any metaphysical presumptions and without claiming to have truth or to be true? (2) What is the best mechanism to establish a reasonable, political concept of justice? Habermas agrees with Rawls on the idea that justice gives due to basic rights and liberty and justice means fairness. Their dispute is about what can be counted as a reasonable, political concept of justice and how best to have a reasonable, political concept of justice and whether a political concept can claim to be reasonable without claiming to have truth at the same time. In essence, it is about whether a necessary connection exists between justice and truth. Habermas insists that a necessary connection exist between justice and truth. Meanwhile, he holds that not only there are universal principles of justice, but also there is the universal basis of normative justification for a reasonable political concept of justice. Noteworthy, in his association of truth and a reasonable concept of justice, Habermas operates with his early discursive concept of truth wherein truth is a kind of warranted assertability. Therefore, in his debate with Rawls, when he talks about “being reasonable” as meaning being true, by being true he means having warranted assertability. In his early discursive concept of truth, for Habermas, being true means being justifiably, warrantedly assertable. Thus, the difference between Habermas and Rawls about whether a political concept of justice must make claims to truth in order to be reasonable comes also from the fact that each philosopher operates with a different concept of truth: Habermas operates with the discursive concept; Rawls, the correspondence concept. What matters most here is that in the debate, Habermas defends the strongest claim of the internal association of truth, justice, and reason and staunchly holds to the modernity ideal here. Chapter 5 examines Habermas’s discourse doctrine of public law and constitutional democracy. Essential to the ideal of modernity is the ideas of the rule of law and constitutional democracy, including the idea of a democratic world society under the rule of law. Also, it is characteristic of the condition called “modernity” that there are separation of state and civil society, state and church, demos and ethnos, and a distinction among state, nation, and people. Thus, Habermas’s discourse doctrines of law and constitutional democracy, as well as his theory of state, nation, and people, are integral parts of his modernity project. The discourse doctrine of public law bridges the Anglo-American and the continental legal traditions and offers an alternative to both legal realism and legal positivism. It epitomizes Habermas’s insistence on the modernity ideal of the inseparability of justice and reason. An important quality of modernity is that the legal forms of state authority are not only effective, but also legitimate; public laws

14

1 Introduction

have not only facticity, but also validity. Equally crucial, it is essential to modernity that the source of legitimacy of legal forms of state authority and public laws is no longer a Divine Power or nature, but democracy—both formal and informal. The discourse doctrine of law contains such renovating concepts as facticity and validity of law, human rights as constitutional rights, private and public autonomy, the parallel but mutually complementary relationship between law and morality, and law as a system of both knowledge and action. In discourse doctrine, a modern legal perspective consists of the moral, the ethical, and the pragmatic perspectives, and therefore, civic laws do not merely express communal concepts of good and values, but also purport to be valid norms. The justification of modern law involves a theoretical, normative justification of norms, not particular justification of social policies. And normative justification of norms involves reasoning and argumentation for the rational, internal structure of communication, and reasonableness of norms, while substantial, particular justification of social policies involves mainly values and telos of culture and society. In the nutshell, according to discourse doctrine, public law establishes norms of social conduct or practice, and does not function as a good policy of social interaction expressing specific social value, though public law also reflects social value in its own way. As Habermas claims that anyone wanting to equate the constitution with a concrete order of values mistakes its specific legal character; as legal norms, basic rights are modeled after obligatory norms of action—and not after attractive good. Thus, public law has not only facticity, but also validity. Public law is a social institution since the ancient time. From modern time to our time, the validity of public law is emphasized, which in turn underscores the emphasis on the rule of reason. An emphasis on the validity of public law is a core aspect of modern public law. Meanwhile, the discourse doctrine of democracy consists also of some very renovating concepts such as post-nation democracy, constitutional patriotism, the public sphere, three normative modes of democracy, and discourse, and a distinction among state, nation, and people. Habermas’s promotion of the proceduralist of democracy as (more or less) an alternative to both the liberal mode of democracy and the republican mode of democracy epitomizes his modernity sentiment that puts democracy under the rule of reason and under the rule of law. It also summarizes his indirect response to traditional and modern criticism and misgiving about democracy that democracy is not ruled by reason and truth, but by the desires of the majority. Meanwhile Habermas’s concept of a three-tiered global democracy contributes greatly to philosophy of democracy and modernity, underscoring also his modernity sentiment to put democracy under the rule of law. It rekindles the ancient Aristotelian idea of a political commonwealth as a constitutional polity. Chapter 6 studies Habermas’s theory of cosmopolitanism. Essential to the ideal of modernity in our epoch is also to build a cosmopolitan world society wherein human rights are protected, and world peace is promoted under the rule of law, wherein different peoples on the earth open to, interact, and tolerate one another under the rule of law amid their differences, and wherein different peoples on the earth can co-exist, co-develop, cooperate, and co-prosper under the rule of law. A great renovation that Habermas has brought to the modernity ideal in our time is his

1 Introduction

15

integration of the modernity ideal and the cosmopolitan ideal, as well as the concept of modernization and the concept of cosmopolitanization of the world in which we live. Habermas’s doctrine of cosmopolitanism is an application of his discourse doctrines of modernity, discourse ethics and law in global politics. It thus can be understood as “discourse cosmopolitanism” Discourse cosmopolitanism is an important milestone in the history of cosmopolitanism. It envisions a constitutionalized, culturally pluralist world society of global justice that purports to promote permanent world peace, and protect human rights under the rule of law. Unlike other cosmopolitan philosophers such as David Held or cosmopolitan sociologists such as Ulrich Beck, Habermas does not advocate the concept of the human community of common fate. Instead, he advocates the concept of a culturally pluralistic world society of common laws. The difference is revealing and important. First, Habermas’s cosmopolitan thinking is post-­ metaphysical, emphasizing more a future world society organized by common rules and public laws, no on a metaphysical ground such as fate, destiny or causality. Second, for Habermas, the bona fide and central tasks of a future world society are two: (1) to develop and secure permanent world peace under the rule of law and (2) to globally protect human rights under the rule of law. While for Habermas, a future world society is, and ought to be, cosmopolitan, he conceptualizes the term “cosmopolitan” to connote the condition of (1) cultural plurality, (2) protection of human rights and (3) world peace the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws. In discourse cosmopolitanism, a future world society ought to be culturally pluralistic, inclusive, and tolerant under the rule of law. It ought to be one wherein there is permanent world peace, and human rights are globally protected, and wherein democratically established constitutional norms and public laws structure, set limit to, and govern human activities, as well as relationships among individuals, and between governments and individuals. Correspondingly, in discourse cosmopolitanism, the term “cosmopolitan” is not just a spatial term, but also a qualitative term. It connotes a quality or condition wherein world peace is promoted, and human rights are protected under the rule of law. Discourse cosmopolitanism is indebted to Kantian cosmopolitanism in serval areas: the concept of cosmopolitan laws including a cosmopolitan constitution as the third category of public law; the concept of a world community that purports to protect human rights and promote permanent world peace under the rule of law. Meanwhile, in discourse cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitan laws, including a cosmopolitan constitution, are, and can only be, established through global democracy including democratic, public discourses and should be grounded in the concept of global justice as giving due to basic human rights and world peace. While discourse cosmopolitanism advocates that a cosmopolitan world society purporting to protect human rights and to promote world peace, Habermas rejects what he dubs as “human rights fundamentalism”. For Habermas, human rights fundamentalism is not the doctrine that advocates strict adherence to the basic principles of human rights. Instead, it is the doctrine that international intervention and politics under the name of protection of human rights is grounded in a moral basis

16

1 Introduction

and can be legitimate without a solid legal ground in accordance with international laws. It is the doctrine that dissociates human rights politics and the rule of law. The idea that world human rights politics should be grounded in global and international laws is essential to discourse cosmopolitanism wherein human rights are not moral rights, but constitutional rights. In discourse doctrine, human rights politics of all world organizations must be grounded solidly in cosmopolitan and international laws and relationships among nations must be under the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws. Meanwhile, advocating a culturally pluralist, constitutionalized world society of justice geared to protect human rights and promote world peace under the rule of law, Habermas advocates cultural openness, inclusion, and toleration as essential to such a global society of justice. Discourse cosmopolitanism develops Kantian cosmopolitanism in a few areas that include: the concept of a cosmopolitan condition as a three-tiered condition of the rule of law—the rule of municipal, international and cosmopolitan laws, the concept of a world constitution for a culturally pluralist world society, the concept of a cosmopolitan world geared to protect human rights and promote world peace under the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws, the norm of human rights as the operating norm of global justice, rejection of the idea of a world state and the concept of cosmopolitan sovereignty as a networked realm of pubic authority. Thus, Habermas irons out some inconsistencies in Kant’s thinking, breaks away from the traditional concept of a global order geared to safeguard the security of nation-state, and re-conceptualizes a global order of justice that purports to give due to human rights, the rule of law, and world peace. He redefines human rights as constitutional rights. He inherits and develops Kant’s concept of three categories of public laws: municipal, international, and cosmopolitan laws. He grounds international politics of human rights firmly in the rule of law, rejecting what he dubs as human rights fundamentalism. According to discourse cosmopolitanism, the emphasis on protection of human rights in the globe is a distinctive quality and benchmark of modernity in our epoch. So is the rule of law. Discourse cosmopolitanism thus aspires to establish a culturally pluralist world society wherein human rights are protected globally and world peace is promoted in the globe under the rule of law. It integrates the concept of human rights and the concept of the rule of law in global human affairs and politics. Meanwhile, discourse cosmopolitanism brings to the project of modernity the idea of the third category of public law, cosmopolitan law, and the idea of the third category of public rights, cosmopolitan rights, too. It brings into light that human rights are juridical by nature in modernity. Discourse cosmopolitanism is thus a global philosophy for modernity in our epoch. Chapter 7 studies Habermas’s doctrine of tolerance. Essential to the ideal of modernity are the ideas of rights, freedom, equality, autonomy, justice, and the rule of reason. We cannot talk about rights, freedom, equality, autonomy, justice and the rule of reason in our epoch without emphasizing tolerance as a norm of our epoch. Ours is an epoch of cultural diversity and rights among people on the earth. In Habermas’s vision, diversity and rights make tolerance necessary. Tolerance makes possible sustaining healthy diversity and redeems the claims of legitimate rights.

1 Introduction

17

Diversity and rights call for tolerance. Tolerance is the just response to diversity and rights. A part of Habermas’s renovation of the modernity project is his doctrine of tolerance as a condition of modernity in our epoch and constitutive of the spirit of our epoch. According to Habermas, in our epoch, tolerance is a norm of obligation, a value, and a virtue, and thus a core condition of modernity in our time. In discourse doctrine, by tolerance is understood as the act and practice of critical inclusion and reflectively bearing the incompatible difference. In it, the idea of tolerance is a logical outcome of the conceptual triad of the public sphere, discourse, and human reason as well as the concepts of rights, equality, autonomy, justice, solidarity and the public use of reason. It is a logical application of communicative rationality, discourse ethics, and the concept of constitutional democracy. It is the outcome of a cosmopolitan approach to cultural diversity as the permanent reality of the world we live and the peoples with whom we live. No wonder, Habermas conceives tolerance as a norm, as a value, and as a virtue of our epoch. Meanwhile, Habermas’s concept of tolerance provides an important subject-matter of dialogue with doctrines of toleration by Locke, Rawls, Walzer, and Scanlon. According to Habermas, the norm of tolerance is a norm of justice in our epoch. For him, the norm of tolerance is grounded in the concepts of communicative rationality, justice, and solidarity. It is a rise of rational discourse as inclusive discourse. Also, tolerance is a value in our epoch. It is an instrument to prevent a pluralist society, whether it is local, regional or global, from falling apart because of internal conflicts. Moreover, for Habermas, tolerance is also a virtue in our epoch. It is a virtue of citizenship in our epoch. Therefore, the idea of tolerance is constitutive of the spirit of our epoch. Tolerance as a norm, a value, and a virtue is also constitutive of modernity of our epoch. Chapter 8 is the conclusion of the book. It summarizes what the book has discovered about the basic conceptual framework of Habermas’s philosophy. It summarizes the basic logic and reasoning of Habermas’s philosophy. It summarizes Habermas’s philosophy as one about the rule of reason, the rule of truth, the rule of justice, and the rule of law. It summarizes Habermas’s philosophy as one of rights, liberty, equality, autonomy, responsibility, competence, citizenship, enlightenment, and emancipation. It summarizes Habermas’s philosophy as one of an examined life, a good, worthy and happy life, and a critical, dutiful and responsible life. It summarizes Habermas’s philosophy as one of intersubjectivity or intersubjective consciousness—the unforced force, the elevating power, the liberating energy, the communicating and bridging capacity, and the constructing ability of human reason. In summary, Habermas’s philosophy is rich, complex, broad, profound and important. The conceptual map which this book purports to draw is intended merely as a guide. It is intended as an introduction to a vast, deep philosophical palace. “No one can foresee the quantity of light that will be evolved by placing the people in communication of the heart of the people with the heart of men of genius,” said Victor Hugo (Hugo, 1906, p.307). In the class of men of genius, Hugo certainly would include great philosophers and thinkers in our epoch such as Habermas. Reading great philosophies of great philosophers such as Habermas is to embrace the lights of truth, justice, reason, freedom, equality, humanity, enlightenment and emancipation.

18

1 Introduction

References Aristotle. (2001). In: R.  McKeon (ed.) Metaphysics, in the basic works of Aristotle. and C.D.C. Reeve (Trans.) Intro. New York: The Modern Library. Habermas, J. (2003). Truth and justification. Barbara Fultner. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (2009). Between naturalism and religion. Cambridge: The Polity Press. Hugo, V. (1906). William Shakespeare, trans. Meiville B. Anderson. Chicago, A.C.McClurg and Company. McCarthy, T. (1987). “Introduction to Jürgen Habermas”, The philosophical discourse of ­modernity. Cambridge: The MIT Press. McCarthy, T. (1991). The critical theory of Jürgen Habermas. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Outwaite, W. (2009). Habermas: A critical introduction. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Chapter 2

Modernity

Abstract  This chapter studies Habermas’s doctrine of modernity and the related matters. First, it explores Habermas’s concepts of the public sphere and ideal speech situation. Second, it explores Habermas’s concepts of discourse and rational communication, presupposition, communicative pragmatics, performance competence, the distinction between communicative acts and strategic acts, and distinctions among locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act. Third, it examines the crown jewel of Habermas’s discourse philosophy and doctrine of modernity, the concept of communicative rationality, as well as Habermas’s concepts of validity claim, and legitimacy. It examines Habermas’s paradigm shift from a concept of human reason as a subject-centered reason to a concept of human reason as an intersubjective reason, and his philosophical engagements and dialogues with Gadamer, Nietzsche, Horkheimer, Adorno, Lyotard, Foucault, and Derrida concerning the subject-matter of modernity. Keywords  Modernity · The public sphere · Communicative rationality · Discourse · Ideal speech situation · The communicative pragmatics · Paradigm-shift

ONE OF the most enduring, passionately debating subject-matters of philosophy since the eighteenth century is the subject-matter of modernity. The debate on modernity is about the substance, essence, character, quality, norm and standard of a given time period that is called “modern”. It consumes the philosophical sentiment of our epoch, and epitomizes the philosophical concerns of our time. The concept of modernity is not merely a concept of time, but also a concept of quality. It connotes the quality, condition and property of a given time period that is called “modern”. From modern philosophers’ advocacy of enlightenment, an age of reason and the rule of knowledge and science to present philosophers’ debates on the possibility, condition and value of universal reason, universal justice and universal truth, the rule of law, human rights, constitutional democracy, global justice and cosmopolitanism, the discourses of pre-modernity, modernity, and post-modernity consume more passions and energies of philosophers since the eighteenth century to our © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 X. Chen, The Essentials of Habermas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79794-2_2

19

20

2 Modernity

time than passions and energies of philosophers which are spent in any other philosophical discussions of other subject-matters. The conflict between modernism and postmodernism is the pivotal, most sensational philosophical conflict in our time. Modernism is the philosophical doctrine that grounds public discourses and human practices in a universal basis of normative justification, e.g., universal reason, truth, and justice. It advocates the condition and quality called “modernity” that emphasizes universally unified standards, norms, and qualities of human living, thinking, and activities, and that emphasizes the rule of reason, as well as a set of norms including truth, justice, liberty, freedom, equality, rights, autonomy, and the rule of law. In comparison, postmodernism is the philosophical doctrine that urges us to live in the intellectual, ethical, moral, and political diversity, alterity, disunity, and tension, and to let different voices in the global intellectual, social, moral, and political discourses to play themselves out. It advocates incredulity to the so-called grand-narrative or metanarrative. It champions the condition and quality called postmodernity. In modernism, there are timely, and global standards and norms of modernization of a community and culture, for example, in a modern political system and association, there are the rule of law, constitutional democracy, popular sovereignty, cultural toleration, and separations of church (religion) and state, civil society and state, as well as political party and state. In post-modernism, there are no timely, and global standards and norms of modernization of a community and culture. The philosophical discourse of modernity in our time is not about what is philosophy. Instead, it is about a philosophical question of all humankind in our time: Is there, and can there be, any universal ground of normative justification for public discourses, human thinking, and human practices of all humankind on the earth we live? This question is philosophical but also of timely and practical significance. The question itself is intertwined with another philosophical, as well as practical, question of humankind: Can all humankind on the earth think, choose, and live as a community? By this token, the concept of modernity is not just a concept of a historical period of time. Instead, it is a concept of the quality, standards and norms of our time. It is a concept of the intellectual, ethical-moral, social-political, aesthetical, legal and institutional qualities, standards and norms of our time. Thus, for example, modernist philosophers such as Habermas adhere to ideas that are constitutive of the condition called “modernity”, e.g., the rule of reason, the rule of law, universal truth, universal justice, tolerance, inclusion, human rights, human values, equality, liberty, freedom, autonomy, duty, obligation, constitutional democracy, separation of state and church, as well as separation of state and civil society. They insist that those modern ideas mentioned above are constitutive of the spirit of our epoch. The journey of the idea of modernity has gone through some very sensational moments in modern and our time: the moment of Descartes’s declaration that we must not believe the truth of anything unless it is evident to our human reason; the moment of Kant’s three critiques and the moment when the songs of reason, freedom, and autonomy fill the sky and the earth; the Hegelian moment in which the enlightenment is claimed to arrive at intellectual bankruptcy, and must be rescued by the absolute Spirit; the Horkheimer-Adorno moment wherein the enlightenment radiates a disastrous triumph on the earth; the Heideggeran-­Gadamarian moment

2 Modernity

21

wherein modernity makes a cultural turn; the Lyotard-Derrida moment of postmodernism and the Habermas moment of reconstruction of modernity—the modernitypost-modernity struggle. Habermas renovates and elevates the idea of modernity to a new height reconstructing the project of modernity on a new normative basis and ground. Habermas’s renovation starts with a decisive replacement of the subject-centered human reason of modern enlightenment by the intersubjective human reason embodied in communicative reason and rationality. According to Habermas, the critiques of modernity from Hegel, through young Hegelians, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Horhkheimer, Adorno, Derrida, Lyotard, Bataille, Foucault and various others, to postmodernism today “are guided by normative intuitions that go beyond what they can accommodate in terms of the indirectly affirmed ‘other reason’.”(Habermas, 1993, p.337) Some critiques pay a high price by “taking leave of modernity.”(Ibid, p.336) Others cannot escape the prison of modern Enlightenment. Taking leave of modernity, those critiques of modernity cannot even account for their own accounts. There is no escape from modernity! There can be no dismantling of modernity either! When Habermas received the honorable degree, Doctor of Laws, from Harvard University in 2001, the Harvard Gazette reported him as “a formidable exponent of the Enlightenment ideals of rationality and universality.” (https://news.harvard.edu/ gazette/story/2001/06) The report also reads: “Habermas has criticized modern industrial societies for excessive emphasis on instrumental action, i.e., on doing whatever is necessary to attain given ends. This emphasis, he argues, has prevented them from appreciating the importance of communicative action—understanding and coming to agreement with others.”(Ibid.) The Harvard comment is right. Habermas’s philosophical masterpiece, the theory of Communicative Theory, marks an important milestone as Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason does in philosophy. It leads to an intellectual revolution and philosophical paradigm shift in conceptualizing human reason, as well as conceptualizing modernity. Meanwhile, Habermas’s The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity purports to officially inaugurate his discursive doctrine of modernity. Habermas renovates the modernity project in accordance with the spirit of our epoch. In particular, he has developed a set of new concepts as analytical tools and a new basis of normative justification for the modernity project. Those new concepts include but are not limited to the following: 1 . The concept of the public sphere; 2. The concept of practical discourse; 3. The concept of communicative rationality; The distinction between knowledge-­ oriented rationality and mutual-understanding-oriented rationality; 4. The concept of an ideal speech situation; and the concept of the universal pragmatics; 5. The concept of intersubjective human reason; the distinction between subject-­ centered reason and intersubjective reason; the proposal of a paradigm shift; 6. The introduction of some new requirements of modernity in our epoch; such new requirements include the norms of tolerance, inclusion;

22

2 Modernity

7. The introduction of some new contents to the ideal of modernity in our epoch, e.g., the ideal of a cosmopolitan world based on a world constitution. Notwithstanding, Habermas has also continued and renovated those core ideas of modernity in line with the spirit of our epoch. Those core ideas of modernity include the rule of reason, the rule of law, truth, justice, equality, autonomy, basic rights, liberty, popular sovereignty, and constitutional democracy. As a result, Habermas purges the Enlightenment modernity project of its totalitarian contents, and democratizes it so that it can live up to its promise that it will bring about humankind’s emancipation on the earth. In the discursive doctrine of modernity as the quality and condition of the modern time, modernity is fundamentally featured by the rule of human reason, and human reason is understood not as the subject-centered human reason, but as the intersubjective, de-centered human reason. In Habermas’s vision, modernity is a condition, quality and property of our epoch that indicates human reason operating on communicative rationality as the intellectual foundation for human practices and institutions. While democracy and the rule of law feature the political thinking in our time, true democracy and the legitimate rule of legitimate law are possible only in places where communicative rationality triumphs and reigns—that is to say, where human reason rules with communicative rationality—and where citizens actively use their human reason publically in political participation and engagement. By the same token, while the emphases on human rights, human dignity, and freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, equality, and inclusion mark our time, what are emphasized should bring about individual autonomy—both individual private autonomy and public autonomy, and true individual public autonomy is possible only in places where communicative rationality triumphs and reigns. While truth, justice, equality, and rights are mottos and watching words of our time, true justice, equality, rights and liberty are possible only in places where communicative rationality triumphs and reigns. Thus, while modernity is a condition, quality and property featured by the rule of human reason, by human reason, and on human reason, the rule of human reason is the rule of communicative rationality, by communicative rationality, and on communicative rationality. The rule of human reason on communicative rationality brings into prominence the public sphere, practical discourse, the universal pragmatics, and the public use of reason. Notwithstanding, human reason, the public sphere, and practical discourse constitute a conceptual trinity in Habermas’s philosophy of modernity. What a conceptual trinity!

1  The Public Sphere and Space In 1962, Habermas published his The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, and pronounced one of his important philosophical discoveries: the discovery of the public sphere, a discovery

1  The Public Sphere and Space

23

with which he is life-long passionately occupied. Later on, in Between Naturalism and Religion (2009), he divides the public sphere and space into two kinds: (1) the public sphere that serves those who have gained celebrity as a stage on which to present themselves and (2) the public sphere that serves as public space and mediation for public debates and discussions of public policies, issues, problems, and solutions. He indicates that the public sphere in the second sense is that in which he is interested. Meanwhile, he devotes the entire Chapter 8 of his Between Facts and Norms (1998) to exploring the concepts of civil society and the political public sphere. Habermas claims that “the public sphere as a space of reasoned communicative exchange is the issue that has concerned me all my life. The conceptual triad of ‘public space’, ‘discourse’ and ‘reason’ in fact, has dominated my work as a scholar and my political life.”(Habermas, 2009, p.12) The public sphere is a social space for reasoned communication. “Reasoned” communications are communicative exchanges that are rational and thoughtful. Thus, the concept of the public sphere in Habermas presupposes the rule of human reason operating with communicative rationality, and the rule of human reason sustains the public sphere. Notwithstanding, Habermas’s discovery of the public sphere forecasts a philosophical revolution to come. The public sphere, or Öffentlichkeit in German, is a spatial institution. It is not a fixed organization. Instead, it is an structured public, social space of public communication, discussion and discourse wherein citizens come together to communicate with each other, discussing and debating freely and autonomously public policies, issues, problems, and solutions of common interests and engage with one another in thoughts. The qualification “freely and autonomously” in communicative exchanges in the public sphere is intended to underscore the fact that in the public sphere, the public that engages in communicative exchanges is “a heterogeneous public”, which Iris Marion Young and others so rightly advocate, not “a homogeneous public” “a homogeneous public” (Young, 1990, p.10, p.7). The public sphere emphasizes procedural unity—that is, all participants observe a same set of rules and norms, and is open to everyone, regardless of his/her identity, group or individual, allowing everyone to be as s/he is while following common rules of communication and interaction. The public sphere is not a spatially organized organization such a community with physically fixed territory. Instead, the public sphere is a structured space, which may be physical, virtual or partially physical and partially virtual. It is “a space of reasoned communicative exchanges.” Back to the eighteenth century, it was the sphere where private citizens came out freely together to form a public, communicative, and dialogical society. In our time, it is a social space embodied in medias, multimedia and various other spaces of public discussions and discourses. Since the eighteenth century, the public sphere in the West has been created by such democratic forums as newspapers, magazines, public meetings, forums, associations, even cafeterias and so on in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The qualifier “democratic” is deliberately used here to underscore what is emphasized about the public sphere in Habermas. Today, the public sphere is also created by cable television, internets, multi-medias, as well as other mediums of public

24

2 Modernity

discourses facilitated by new technologies. All the same, the public sphere is a space of reasoned communicative exchanges. It is the public, social space wherein public communication, discourse, and discussion of public laws, morality, policies, issues, and problems by citizens occur and where public laws, morality, policies, issues, and problems of public interests are subject-matters of discourse and discussion while citizens are participants of public discourse. By this token, “The public sphere can be best described as a network for communicating information and points of view.” (Habermas, 1998, p.360) By definition, the public sphere is the public, social space for public communication, discussion and discourse of public issues, problems, policies, and solutions. It is the public space for formation of public opinion, will, and consent. Thus, “the public sphere can be seen as a theater in modern societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk and a realm of social life in which public opinion can be formed.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publicsphere) Activities in such a theater are exclusively activitiess of public discussions, communications, and discourses, not any other kinds of social activitiess. The public sphere as a theater is a medium of will-, and opinion-formation, not a medium for any other kinds of social activities. Conceptually, the public is the opposite of the private. As Habermas indicates, “The usage of the words ‘public’ and ‘public sphere’ betrays a multiplicity of concurrent meanings. Their origins go back to various historical phases and, when applied synchronically to the conditions of a bourgeois society that is industrially advanced.”(Habermas, 1989, p.1) The concept of the public sphere connotes a space that is public, not private. Meanwhile, the public sphere is distinguished from both the public realm of authority or the state and the general civil society. The emergence of the public sphere in the eighteenth century produced a space “through the vehicle of public opinion it put the state in touch with the needs of society.”(Ibid, p.31) The public sphere is the social space where citizens engage with the public realm of authority of the state, but is not subject to the latter. Thus, for example, “The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.”(Ibid, p.27) The bourgeois public sphere is an early form of the public sphere. The public sphere is distinguished from civil society on the one hand and from the realm of public authority on the other hand. It is the bridge that connects these two. Their relationships go as follows: Civil societies ←→ the public sphere ←→ the pubic ream of authority (Ibid, p.30) Of civil society, Habermas says: Civil society is composed of those more or less spontaneously emergent associations, organizations, and movements that, attuned to how societal problems resonate in the private life spheres, distill and transmit such reactions in the amplified form to the public sphere. The core of civil society comprises a network of associations that institutionalizes problem-­ solving discourses on questions of general interest inside the framework of organized public spheres (Habermas 1996, p.144).

1  The Public Sphere and Space

25

Meanwhile, civil societies are entities that have their private realms or private spheres. Thus, for example, in the eighteenth century Europe as it is in our time, “The private sphere comprised civil society in the narrower sense, that is to say, the realm of commodity exchange and of social labor.”(Habermas, 1989, p.30) Habermas also quotes S.N.Eisenstadt’s description of civil society as follows: “Civil society embraces a multiplicity of ostensibly ‘private’ yet potentially autonomous public arenas distinct from the state.”(Habermas, 1998, p.367) In comparison, the realm of the public authority constitutes the state. Thus, Habermas says, “the line between state and society, fundamental in our context, divided the public sphere from the private realm.”(Ibid.) The public sphere is a social space for public activities of a civil society, but not a civil society itself. A civil society is an entity consisting of non-government organizations, e.g., churches, unions, professional associations, and the like. And the public sphere is the social space wherein issues and policies of public interests are discussed and public opinions and public wills are formed. The public sphere is a spatial institution. A civil society is a substantial entity or collectivity. Thus, for example, a professional union or association in a city is a civil society itself and part of the civil society of the city. But the social space created by a newspaper in a city is a public space and part of the public sphere of the city. A civil society provides an organization for peoples to think, choose, and act as a collectivity and to organize themselves into a kind of collectivity. A public sphere provides peoples with an institutional space or a spatial institution as the medium of communication to talk, discuss, debate and therefore to form public opinions and wills. Activities in the public sphere are exclusively public discussions and discourses of public issues, as well as public formations of public opinions, and public wills. Activities of civil society can be any kinds of civil activities, e.g., religious worships, or other cultural, professional and practical activities. Notwithstanding, the public sphere bears some salient features. These features reflect the essence and substance of the public sphere on the one hand and reveal its functions on the other hand. They thus demarcate the public sphere from other kinds of social spaces, from the private sphere, and from civil society. These features include the following. First, the public sphere is an institutionalized space. It is a structured social space embodied in such institutions as newspapers, arts, literatures, internets, televisions, radios, multi-medias, town halls, etc. In particular, “the public sphere distinguishes itself through a communication structure that is related to a third feature of communicative action: it refers neither to the functions nor to the contents of everyday communication but to the social space generated in communicative action.”(Ibid, p.360) When public places such as public parks or public squares become regular, structural places where citizens engage each other in public discussions and debates of public issues, such public places become also public spheres. The public sphere is a social space wherein a public discussion can be repeated, continued and sustained through a period of time, and also becomes structured. It is an institution in the sense that it has a definite structure that endures for a period certain time. It is a

26

2 Modernity

spatial institution in the sense that it is structured as a space, a place for public discourses and discussions. The qualification of “institutionalized” is deliberately used here to indicate the following: (1) the public sphere is a structured sphere, and self-regulated by certain written and unwritten rules; this is true even of a virtual public sphere; (2) it is regularly occupied by same kinds of activities; and (3) it has some fixed functions. The qualification “institutionalized” is not intended to say that the public sphere is a virtual space, not a physical space, or vice versa. A public sphere can be a physical one or a virtual one today. The public sphere may be embodied in a physical space such as a public square, a town hall, a public park, a newspaper or internet. The public sphere has a structure. It is not just a social space, but a social space with its unique structure. It has also regular functions—that is, it is the medium of public communications. And there are regularly public activities of discourse and communication in the public sphere. Second, the public sphere is a public space, not a private space. The public sphere, by definition, is the opposite of the private sphere. A public sphere is an open sphere while a private sphere is a closed sphere. “The public sphere itself appears as a specific domain—the public domain versus the private.” (Habermas, 1989, p.2) In its linguistic origin, “in German, the noun őffentlichkeit was formed from the older adjective öffentlich during the eighteenth century.”(Ibid.) “This space stands open” to dialogue participants (Habermas, 1998, p.361). Young also indicates, “a public space is a place accessible to anyone, where anyone can participate and witness, in entering the public one always risks encounter with those who are different, those whose identify with different groups and have different opinions or different forms of life.”(Young, 1990, p.240) The public sphere is a social space opened to the general public and all who want to participate in public discourses and discussions of public matters of public interests. Being open to the general public means (1) being open to all citizens interested in participating in public politics, discussions and discourses, (2) being open to discuss and talk about all kinds of public issues, matters, and problems that concern the general public and are interests of the general public, and (3) views of all of the general public should be considered in the formation of the public opinions and wills. As Habermas sees it, “We call events and occasions ‘public’ when they are open to all, in contrast to closed or exclusive affairs.”(Habermas, 1989, p.1) By this token, the public sphere is public in the sense that it is open to everyone and the general public. It is open to all citizens in the community regardless of their identities and views. Thus, for example, a newspaper can be read by any citizens and is open to all citizens. The same can be said of television, or broadcast. Correspondingly, the level of openness defines the level of publicness of a sphere. The scope of the general pubic it includes or is open to, the scope of public issues which it covers, and the scope of the general public from which opinions and wills are formed define the level of the public-ness of a sphere. A global newspaper is more globally public than a local newspaper, say, the New York Daily. A national television debate on the issue of immigration is more “public” than a townhall meeting about the same issue of immigration. A public sphere that is open to all peoples

1  The Public Sphere and Space

27

in the globe is more public than a public sphere that is open to peoples of a city, or a state (province). Young and other worry that Habermas may “construe the public as a realm of unity and mutual understanding” and therefore set out to produce “a homogeneous public” (Young, 1990, p.240) This worry can be addressed by recognizing the three moments of openness of the public sphere in Habermas as described above. On the contrary, the public sphere is a space for the kind of “city life” which Young advocates as the mode of normative ideal: “a being together of strangers, diverse and overlapping neighbors.”(Ibid) The public sphere can house what Young advocates: “the civic public” (Ibid, p.10). I would make a stronger claim: only the kind of public sphere with the features of openness as described above can house and sustain the kind of civic public in Young’s vision, and “a being together of strangers, diverse and overlapping neighbors”; only Habermasian public sphere can house full inclusion and reject totally oppression of the different, the diverse and the particular. A key here is to see the public as a realm of mutual understanding and unity in a specific and restricted sense, e.g., in the public there is a mutual understanding that when one enters the public, one need to follow certain public rules for the public life just as when one drives on the street, one need to follow traffic lights and publically published speed limits. Third, the public sphere is not just any kind of social space or any space of socialization, but a social space for public discussions, exchanges of ideas, and discourses. That is to say, the main function and value of the public sphere is its being a social space for public discussions, exchanges of ideas, and discourses, not just a social space to socialize. It is its being a social space wherein “a vibrant and, where possible, discursive type of public opinion-formation” occurs (Habermas, 2009, p.21). Thus, Habermas claims, “The public sphere can best be described as a network for communicating information and points of view.”(Habermas, 1998, p.360) The public sphere is where a “society engaged in critical public debate.”(Habermas, 1989, p.52) Thus, a public football field is not a public sphere which Habermas refers to here. But a newspaper is. A beer bar is not a public sphere, but a town hall meeting is. In the fully developed Greek city-state, “the public sphere was constituted in discussion (lexis), which could also assume the forms of consultation and of sitting in the court of law, as well as in common action (praxis).”(Ibid, p.3) Admittedly, in the eighteenth century as well as in in our time, “The public sphere… becomes a field for the competition of interests, competitions which assume the form of violent conflict.”(Ibid.) But competition of interests in the public sphere takes the form of competition of information, opinions, ideas, and arguments. Thus, as Max Pensky notes, the public sphere “constitutes the arena where subjects, as citizens, exercise their rational agency by participating in informal discourses on matters of shared interests.”(Pensky, 2011, p.23) Fourth, subject-matters that are discussed and debated in the public sphere are of public interests and belong to public issues. In Greek, “Only in the light of the public sphere did that which existed become revealed, did everything become visible to all. In the discussion among citizens issues were made topical and took on shape.”(Habermas, 1989, p.5) The public sphere is not a “society engaged in critical

28

2 Modernity

public debate” on anything, but also a space where critical, public debates on critical, public issues occur. For example, the public sphere is not a spatial institution where discussions of hairstyle and fashion will occur. Instead, it is a space where debates on such matters as terrorism, abortion, woman’ rights, immigration, government, public laws, morality, public policies, thoughts, opinions and so on will occur. As a social space, a public sphere is importantly constituted, defined and institutionalized by public issues that are discussed and debate in it. In other words, the discussed and debated public issues constitute an important institutional dimension of the public sphere. The border of the public sphere is importantly defined by the scope of the public issues that are discussed and debated in it. “The public sphere is the space for participatory modern politics that opens up between the everyday lived world of shared particular experiences and attitudes, on the one side and the hierarchical, bureaucratic institutions of modern governance, on the other.”(Pensky, 2011, p.23) “In the public sphere, utterances are sorted according to issue and contribution, whereas the contributions are weighted by the affirmative versus negative responses they receive.”(Habermas, 1998, p.362) Fifth, citizens participating in public discussions and discourses in the public sphere are free, equal, autonomous citizens. The public sphere is the space where there can be free public conferences about matters of general interest. It is free to all citizens. It is a space in which all citizens as participants in public discussions are free, equal and autonomous. In the public sphere, no one is forced to participate in the public discussions and debates or to accept any opinions, wills and views, while everyone is free, equal, and autonomous to participate in discussions on herself/ himself, by herself/himself and for herself/himself. The public sphere is “a realm of freedom and permanence.” (Habermas, 1989, p.4) It is in the public sphere where people publically use their individual reasons. The public sphere is distinguished and separated from the public realm of authority or the institutional space created by government. The public sphere is the public space that government and public authority in a democratic society are informed by public opinions, wills and views. It is not, and should not be, be governed and controlled by the government and the public authority. Thus, free presses are public spheres, while government-run newspapers or televisions do not belong to the public sphere, but belong to the institutional space created by and serving the government. “In the fully developed Greek city-state the sphere of the polis, which was common (koine) to the free citizens, was strictly separated from the sphere of the oikos.”(Ibid, p.3). In the eighteenth century Europe, as Habermas indicates, the bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publically relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor. The medium of this political confrontation was peculiar and without historical precedent: people’s public use of their reason (öffentliches Rȁsonnement) (Ibid, p.22).

1  The Public Sphere and Space

29

Here, two aspects of the public sphere are emphasized. One is that the public sphere is where the general public engages the public realm of authority. Thus, the public sphere is not identical to and reducible to the public realm of authority. Another is that the public sphere is where individual persons as autonomous citizens publically use their human reason. From time to time, citizens may feel that it is not only part of their rights and interests to participate in public discussions of and debate on given public issues, but also their duty and obligation to participate in discussions and debates. When citizens feel obliged by their concepts of duty and obligation to participate in a public discussion and debate, they are not forced or coerced by external or institutional force to participate in public discussions or debates, but are motivated internally by their concepts of duty and obligation. Sixth, the public sphere is a social space for the public use of reason. A salient feature of the public sphere since the eighteenth century is the public use of reason in discussions, debates, and communication of public issues that are of public interests. By “the public use of reason” is understood in a two-fold sense. On the one hand, the exchanges of reasons that support views, opinions and beliefs are public. And reasons that are accepted in the end of debates to be grounds for views, opinioned, and beliefs are shared, rationally accepted to all participants in the communications, discussions, debates, and discourses. On the other hand, the reasoning process or procedure wherein (1) human reason is exercised publically—for example, its argumentation is open to participants’ deliberation, debate, (2) its deliberation involves and is open to all participants, and (3) its norm is that the better argument wins; a view wins by its truth and supporting reason(s). Here, a distinction exists between the public use of reason and the collective use of reason. In the public use of reason, individual citizens think, choose and act individually as autonomous individual persons in public debates, discussions and discourses while they join each other in reasoning together. In the collective use of reason, individuals think, choose, and act as members of a collectivity—for example, a political party or religion, not as autonomous individual persons. The public sphere is for the public use of reason, not for the collective use of reason. Possibility is that as a result of public formation of opinions, wills, and decisions and overlapping consensus, collective reasoning and thinking arises also in public discourses in the public sphere. Seventh, the task to build an ideal public sphere includes eliminating those distorted communicative conditions. In particular, it is to build communicative conditions for rational communication of thoughts, opinions, and ideas, and rectify conditions that hinder rational communication of thoughts, ideas, and opinions. For example, freedom of thought and conscience and freedom of speech are indispensable for a public sphere to be a proper public sphere. This amounts to saying that there is a distinction between a good public sphere and a poor public sphere, as well as between an ideal public sphere and a distorted public sphere. It is always a challenge and heavy task to build a good, ideal public sphere. In summary, the public sphere is an institutionalized social space with a communicative structure and for the public use of reason; it is a social space for public

30

2 Modernity

discussions and debates of public issues by autonomous citizens; it is a social space for exchanges and communications of opinions, ideas, thoughts, and wills. It is distinguished from the private sphere on the one hand and from other kinds of social spaces on the other hand. It is distinguished from the civil society on the one hand, and the realm of public authority on the other hand. Noteworthy, the public sphere in Habermas’s vision as described above exists only in democratic societies in the world today, e.g., only in democratic societies free presses exist. In turn, whether there are truly public spheres in a society is an important benchmark of whether such a society is democratic. Thus, according to Habermas, the public sphere since the eighteenth century is indispensable for modern democracy. True democracy is about popular sovereignty. True public sovereignty is deliberating, rational, enlightened popular sovereignty and involves citizens’ autonomous, public use of reason. True democracy needs rational, informed, and well-reasoned communication, exchanges of ideas, and autonomic, public formations of opinions, wills and thoughts. In true democracy, the public sphere is also the social space where public debates and discussions constitute a source of legitimacy, validity, and rationality of public laws, policies, norms, and values. Notwithstanding, the public sphere as described above is a social space for communications and interactions of differences, not a space of integration or elimination of differences. Therefore, Habermas says: What had always interested me about the general phenomenon of a “public space” that already arises with simple interactions was the mysterious power of intersubjectivity to unite disparate elements without eliminating the differences between them. The forms of social integration can be read off from the structures of public spaces. The constitution of public spaces reveals most clearly the anomic traits of social disintegration or the raptures caused by repressive social relations (Habermas, 2009, p.21).

What Habermas says here can address Iris M.Young’s concern about the danger of creating a homogeneous public. The public sphere as described above writes off such dangers. As Habermas indicates, the public sphere has the power or unforced force of intersubjectivity to form common opinions and common wills of diverse groups of peoples without oppressing and eliminating their individualities and differences. The public sphere is open and thus serves to include peoples in democratic discourses and democratic forms of life. Notwithstanding, conceptually, we should approach the relationship of the public sphere, intersubjectivity, and overlapping consensus with some cares. The public sphere is a spatial institution. Intersubjectivity is a creating, and constructing power which lives in such a spatial institution. Overlapping consensus is the kind of intersubjective agreement which the power of intersubjectivity can produce in the public sphere. Overlapping consensus can be produced only in the public sphere by the power of intersubjectivity. Intersubjectivity can be the truest, most effective power only by the public sphere and in the public sphere. The public sphere can be a truly, effectively public, social space when in it the power of intersubjectivity reigns. The public sphere without the power of intersubjectivity is empty. Intersubjecitity without the public sphere is homeless ghost.

1  The Public Sphere and Space

31

Therefore, as Habermas sees it, the public use of reason in the public sphere is important for a democratic, well-ordered society ruled by human reason, truth, and justice, and importantly constitutive of the quality called “modernity”. The public use of reason generates intersubjectivity as a creating, and constructing power in the public sphere. Intersubjectivity as a creating and constructing power in the public sphere serves to produce democratic, rational, and reasonable public opinions, wills, and thoughts. Again, the public use of reason is not that participants wear veil of ignorance and exercise their human reason as abstract agents or counterfactual, idealized rational agents. Instead, it is that joining the public debates and discussions as concrete, particular persons of particular identity—individual and group identity, participants publically use their human reason together with each other under common rules of public communication. Thus, the public use of reason is not intended to create a homogeneous public—that is, different individual persons are made into a homogeneous community. Instead, the public use of reason is intended to generate the intersubjective power that guides peoples of difference—that is, a heterogeneous public—to communicate and exchange ideas, views, and opinions with one another. The history of the public sphere may be traced back to the political life in ancient Greek-cities. From Plato and Aristotle, as well as other Grecian writers, we learn that there were at least two forms of public realms in Greek society. One is the public, social space where Greek citizens practiced democracy. Another is the kind of the pubic, social space where people practiced philosophy and other critical activities. In the former, the public realm was a realm of public authority where citizens pursued a kind of deliberative politics, and lived what Plato and Aristotle called a “political life.” Of the public space in this sense, Habermas indicates, The public sphere is a realm of freedom and permanence. Only in the light of the public sphere did that which existed become revealed, did everything become visible to all. In the discussion among citizens issues were made topical and took on shape. In the competition among equals the best excelled and gained their essence—the immortality of fame (Habermas, 1989, p.24).

This form of public space was a realm of public authority. Because Grecian democracy was direct democracy, this realm of public democracy, which was a realm of authority, served also as a democratic constraint and guidance to government. In another form, the public sphere was where citizens came together to pursue a kind of intellectual life. In this form, the public sphere was a public space where citizens searched for enlightenment and philosophical wisdom, and also often a pubic space where free, autonomous citizens discussed and debated on pubic issues of common interests, public policies that concerned all citizens, government and public laws. Therefore, it was also a kind of public sphere that served as a democratic constraint to the public realm of authority. The public space in this sense is the public sphere in the proper sense in this book and the object of concern and interests in Habermas.

32

2 Modernity

Noteworthy, in Greek societies, though Plato put forth the concept of the rule of reason, and the ideal of a rational society guided by philosophical wisdom and the idea that only a rational society was just, Plato’s rational society was not achieved through democracy. Instead, in Plato, democracy was an unjust form of government and way of life second only to tyranny. A democratic form of government and a democratic society were unjust because they were irrational, and ruled by desires. Thus, in Plato, democracy and the idea of a rational society were not compatible. Correspondingly, in Plato, the public sphere in an ideal city was not the kind of democratic, social space. Plato championed a philosophically critical space standing opposite to culture, no question of that. But the kind of public space of discourses which Plato had in mind was not democratic. Still, Plato’s philosophically critical space was a social space for citizens to reflect and reject culture, which Plato metaphorically described as the prisoner’s cave. Equally crucial, in Plato, philosophical discourse purpoted to discard public opinions and to replace it by knowledge and philosophical wisdom. Thus, in Plato, the public sphere in a just or ideal city was not a social space for the formation of common opinions and the public will of citizens, but to liberate citizens from common opinions. Aristotle did not fare much better. In Aristotle, democracy was also a bad form of government and a bad way of life second only to tyranny. In Aristotle, democracy and the idea of a rational society were also not compatible. Like Plato, Aristotle valued intellectual life and considered intellectual edification to the highest form of pleasure, not question of that. Still, like Plato, for Aristotle, the role of a public sphere in a just city was undermined by democracy because democracy was considered to be a bad form of politics and a bad way of life. The fate of the public sphere changes in modern time and today. In the modern time, the public sphere is of the greatest importance to modernity because it is indispensable to democracy, and the rule of reason, and both democracy and the rule of reason are distinctive properties of modernity. The same is true of the public sphere today. Thus, speaking of the role of leading medias in our time, Habermas says: We live in pluralist societies. The democratic decision-making process can overcome deep differences in outlooks as long as it gives rise to a legitimate bonding force which is convincing to all citizens and satisfies a combination of two requirements: it must combine inclusion, that is, the equal participation of all citizens, with a more or less discursive conducted conflict of opinions (Habermas, 2008, p.135).

Thus, for example, the leading medias are constitutive of the public sphere today. Their indispensability to the democratic decision-making process also indicates the indispensability of the public sphere. In summary, Habermas’s discovery of the transformation of the public sphere is the discovery of the birth of a new source of legitimacy, validity, and rationality of public laws, policies, norms, and values in modern democracy and in modernity itself. It is a discovery of a new form of thinking of legitimacy, validity, and rationality of human institutions, practices, and activities. It is thus of great importance to modern democracy and modernity. Present democracy grounds itself not merely in

2  Discourse and Rational Communication

33

individual reasons, but also in the public use of reason. And the public use of reason is not only necessary for modern democracy, but also constitutive of modernity. Correspondingly, the public sphere as conceptualized by Habermas is of great importance to democracy amid difference. It is the social space for a heterogeneous public or for being together of the different, the diverse, and the compatible and incompatible. Noteworthy here, the public sphere is the social space where norms, standards, and policies of action and practice will be debated and discussed, not the realm of public authority wherein those norms, standards, and policies of action and practice are established, published and enacted, its publicness does not suggest or indicates that “all moral situations should be treated according to the same rules.”(Young, 1990, p.10) Instead, in the public sphere, what rules should be applied to what situation is, and should be, the very issue which should be debated and discussed.

2  Discourse and Rational Communication Not surprisingly, for Habermas, one main task of philosophy is to serve instrumentally to build, refine, and renovate the public sphere. Distinctions exist between a rational public sphere and an irrational one, as well as between an ideal public sphere and a distorted one. A rational, ideal public sphere is one with an ideal communicative conditions and guided by communicative rationality, where rational argumentation features activities, and where discussion and debates purport to reach mutual understanding. A rational, ideal public sphere has what Habermas dubs as “an ideal speech situation.” An ideal speech situation is, by definition, an ideal situation of public communication or an ideal communicative situation. It is a communicative situation wherein conditions that are necessary for rational communication exist, and hindrance to rational communication is eliminated. In comparison, a distorted, irrational public sphere is one guided by instrumental reason, power-and practical interest-dominating and manipulating public sphere. A distorted public sphere has a distorted situation of public communication or a distorted communicative situation. For Habermas, communication is the foundation of a community and a society. Accordingly, rational communication is the foundation of a rational society. A well-­ ordered society presupposes rational communication among citizens and memberships. And citizens can and should engage each other in rational communication. Commenting on Habermas’s philosophy, Mitchell Stephens says the following: As Seyla Benhabib, a professor of political theory at Harvard, explains: "Habermas believes human social life rests on our capacity to have more or less clear communication with each other." We communicate—to paraphrase Descartes—therefore our society exists. A rather antiquated, idealistic message to be spreading, some might think, in a world of abusive talk-show hosts, misogynistic rap groups and earphone-encased teen-agers. Habermas is, to be sure, as concerned about pop culture as the next philosopher. But he

34

2 Modernity continues to believe that somewhere behind the better of our attempts to communicate with each other, there have to be some shared values, shared respect and acknowledged equality. He sees the participants in conversations, in other words, as playing on the same teams. And as they talk together, Habermas insists, they make an effort to employ reason. “This may not seem like a big deal,” Benhabib acknowledges. “But it has fundamentally changed our way of thinking about society in the last 25 years or so.” Habermas’ theory, she explains, calls into question a belief that is widely held by cynical and fashionable thinkers on the right and the left: the belief that human behavior should be seen as a battlefield upon which each of us is merely out for our own strategic interests. In our “communicative actions,” the right sees selfish individuals struggling to get a leg up on each other; the postmodern left sees the powerful exploiting the powerless; but Habermas sees, of all things, a kind of cooperation. Indeed, he shares with Socrates an almost utopian belief in the wholesomeness of debate and discussion (https://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Habermas)

The public sphere is for public communications and discourses of ideas, opinions, and thoughts of issues of public interests. In it, discourses and communications purport to reach mutual understanding, instead of aiming at transforming a heterogeneous public into a homogeneous one. The public sphere offers a ground for a heterogeneous public to communicate with each other to extend their lives together with cooperation under common rules and laws. As Benhabib points out, in Habermas’s vision, communication that purports to reach mutual understanding is not that selfish individuals struggle to get a leg up on each other or the powerful exploits the powerless. It is not that some groups of people bully other groups of people. Instead, it is that peoples of a heterogamous public discuss, debate, and exchange information, ideas, opinions, views, points of views and so on in the public sphere. Rational communication is the most possible way, if not the only possible way, for a heterogamous public to reduce, or better yet eliminate, conflicts and mutual harm between different groups of people. To Young (1990)‘s concern about oppression of difference, mutual understanding among different peoples does not oppress different peoples and their difference, but recognizes them and their differences. The French philosopher Michel Foucault puts forth the concept of political economy of truth, which may not inspire political imagination but captures the political reality of public communication that should be reformed. Foucault’s concept of political economy of truth consists of several points. First, truth is centered on the form of scientific discourse and the institutions, which produce it. Second, truth is subject to constant economic production. Third, truth is the object, under diverse forms, of immense diffusion and consumption. Fourth, truth is produced and transmitted under the control, dominant if nor exclusive, of a great political and economic apparatus (university, army, writing, and media. And fifth, truth is the issue of whole political debate. Foucault summarizes his doctrine of political economy in the concept of so-called truth-power, knowledge-power complex.

2  Discourse and Rational Communication

35

Mutual understanding here is not a shared understanding of truth or justice. But it involves mutual understanding of the conditions or situations in which truths are searched. In this context, Foucault’s concept of political economy of truth has important insights. Some of them are as follows: Truth isn't outside power, or lacking in power: contrary to a myth whose history and functions would repay further study, truth isn't the reward of free spirit, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple form of constraint. And it introduces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanism and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true (Foucault, 1984, p.73).

Foucault’s concept of political economy of truth invites Platonic discourse and critical, social space for us to reflect critically our beliefs, values, and norms. It reminds us more of the distorted communicative situation in daily life and thus calls for a reconstruction of the public sphere in order to have rational communication which Habermas advocates. Foucault’s knowledge-power complex or truth-power complex produces the power-distorted, interest-distorted communications. A mutual understanding of this act or reality butters our search for truth in the lifeworld we live. Foucault’s political economy of truth and Iris M. Young’s critical theory of justice point to the same issues pertaining to the need of rational communication. Following Foucault’s insight, we can detect insights of the critical theory of Young (1990) as follows. First, social justice is centered on the form of discourse and the institutions which produce it. Second, justice and injustice are constantly institutionally produced and reproduced. Third, in diverse forms, justice and injustice are the objects of immense diffusion and consumption. Fourth, justice and injustice are produced and transmitted under the control of existing political and institutional apparatus. And fifth, justice is the issue of whole political debate. Like Foucault’s political economy, Young’s critical theory of justice calls for Habermas’s rational communication in society and community. For example, Young points out that injustice of oppression, repression, exclusion, and marginalization of certain groups of people must be eliminated through institutional reforms, including reforms of the processes and systems that produce them. Habermas would say that concerted institutional reforms presuppose concerted, cooperative acts of citizens of a heterogeneous public, which presupposes rational communication among the heterogeneous public. For Habermas, philosophy should strive to reform what Foucault dubs as “the truth-power complex” or the kind of justice-institution complex which Young indicates in order to provide better communicative conditions for public discourses. Foucaultian power-knowledge complex or Young’s justice-institution complex has a distorted communicative condition and situation as follows. First, because of the manipulation of powers and interests, some members of a dialogical community

36

2 Modernity

with the competence to speak and act are disallowed and excluded to take part in public discourses of truth and justice. Second, correspondingly, some members of the general public and community are disallowed to question some assertions that are questionable for them. Third, some members of the general public and community are disallowed to introduce assertions which they want to introduce into public discourses. Fourth, some members of the general public community are disallowed to express their attitudes, desires, needs, opinions, and wills. Fifth, some speakers are prevented, by internal or external coercion, from exercising their rights and freedom of speech. Sixth, it is power and interests that have the final say, not that the better argument wins. In the social-political front, Foucault’s power-knowledge complex and Young’s justice-institution complex produce, reproduce and sustain injustice which Young (1990) complains about: oppression, repression, exclusion, exploitation and marginalization. Thus, we should appreciate Habermas’s argument for the public sphere and practical discourses as such: the centrality of building an ideal speech situation and developing rational discourses. According to Habermas, the task is first of all to develop a rational, ideal communicative situation or what Habermas dubs as “ideal speech situation”. An ideal speech situation is a situation in which participants of discourses in the public sphere adhere to what Habermas dubs as “universal pragmatics” consisting of four pragmatic presuppositions. The pragmatic presuppositions are four as follows: (a) Publicity and inclusiveness: no one who could make relevant contribution concerning a controversial validity claim must be excluded; (b) equal rights to engage in communication: everyone must have the same opportunity to speak to the matter at hand; (c) exclusion of deception and illusion: participants must mean what they say; and (d) absence of coercion: communication must be free from restrictions that prevent better argument from being raised and determination (Habermas, 2009, p.50).

The universal pragmatics is the necessary grammar for building an ideal speech situation and rational communication. An ideal speech situation is a communicative situation in which all members of a dialogical community with the competence to speak are allowed to take part in discourses in the public sphere; all participants enjoy the same rights to question views and arguments and to present their own views and arguments in discourses; all express their attitudes, desires and needs and communicate their views and thoughts sincerely and without deceptions; and all do so free of internal or external coercion and the better argument wins, the better view wins. Thus, an ideal speech situation necessarily has the (a), (b), (c), and (d) pragmatic presuppositions as its necessary conditions. In Habermas’s vision, the pragmatic presuppositions (a), (b), (c), and (d) as mentioned above are the necessary, indispensable conditions for an ideal speech situation. This can be seen as the following. Presuppositions (a), (b), and (d) subject one’s behavior in argumentation to the rules of an egalitarian universalism. With regard to moral-practical issues, it follows from these rules that the interests and value orientations of every affected person are given equal consideration. And since the participants in practical discourses are simultaneously the ones who are

2  Discourse and Rational Communication

37

affected, presupposition (c)…takes on the additional significance that one must remain critically alert to self-deception and hermeneutically open and responsive to how other understand themselves and the world (Ibid.).

Meanwhile, these presuppositions, “no matter how counterfactual they may be, are by no means mere constructs. Rather they are actually efficacious in the behavior of the participants themselves. Someone who seriously takes part in argument proceeds de facto from such presuppositions.” (Ibid, p.51) These presuppositions are in effect acted on in real communication. “Real communication” here is understood in a twofold sense. On the one hand, it refers to the actual communication, not counterfactual communication. On the other hand, it refers to that people really talk and listen to each other, neither people just shout to each other nor a stronger party just dictates things to a weaker party. Habermas claims that these presuppositions of the universal pragmatics are “the most important” and “unavoidable pragmatic presuppositions”. He re-phrases them elsewhere as follows: (a) Inclusivity: no one who could make a relevant contribution may be prevented from participating; (b) Equal distribution of communicative freedoms: everyone has an equal opportunity to make contributions; (c) Truthfulness: the participants must mean what they say; and (d) Absence of contingent external constraints or constraints inherent to the structure of communication: the yes/no positions of participants on criticizable validity claims should be motivated only by the power of cogent reasons to convince (Ibid, p.82). Thus, an ideal speech situation is a communicative environment that is structured by and conditioned with these pragmatic presuppositions. These presuppositions are pragmatics in the sense that they are presuppositions in actions, of actions and actionable presuppositions. The four pragmatic presuppositions constitute what Habermas dubs as “the universal pragmatics” or “the formal pragmatics.” The universal pragmatics is thus the system of pragmatic presuppositions in discourses that are necessary conditions for real communication and for reaching mutual understanding among participants in discourses. It is a kind of formal grammar of rational communication. That all participants should follow the universal pragmatics of rational communication or the formal grammar of rational communication is a necessary condition for an ideal situation of communication or an ideal speech situation just as that everyone should follow the English grammar if good communication in English is possible. Noteworthy, the four pragmatic presuppositions as described above govern the communicative process wherein norms and rules of actions are discussed, negotiated, and established, not universal principles from which norms and rules of action are deduced and inferred. They are not akin to the laws of nature from which moral laws and ethical rules are deduced and inferred.

38

2 Modernity

While the public sphere is the spatial institution for discourses, an ideal speech situation is the necessary situation for rational discourses and thus an ideal condition of the public sphere. In other words, a public sphere will be ideal if it possesses an ideal speech situation. An ideal speech situation is the first virtue of the public sphere just as truth is the first virtue of thought. An ideal speech situation is not just a condition, but a condition of virtue in communication. It is the virtuous situation for discourses geared to arrive at mutual understanding and a necessary condition for discourses geared to arrive at mutual understanding among participants of discourses. An ideal speech situation is an ideal communicative condition to produce rational discourses that are sources of the legitimacy, validity and rationality of truthclaims, value-claims, norms, standards, and principles. It is a situation wherein the rational potentials of reason and argumentations are activated. It is instrumental to justify and verify the justifiability and acceptability of a belief, statement, claim or argumentation. As Habermas sees it, the claim of a belief or statement is legitimate, valid and rational if and only if it not only is accepted, but also has acceptability and can be justified rationally to have acceptability. Correspondingly, a norm, or principle is legitimate, valid, and rational if and only if it has acceptability to all participants in practical discourses in which such a norm or principle is formed. Whether a norm or principle has true acceptability to all participants in discourses can be found out only in and through rational discourses and communications. If a norm or principle is imposed or accepted through distorted discourses, it is accepted, but may not have acceptability. The rational acceptability of a norm or principle rises in rational discourses and communications. And rational communication or discourse is possible only in the public sphere that has an ideal speech situation. What is said above is logically associated with the discourse principle of discourse ethics, and also applicable to Habermas’s epistemology, social-political philosophy and legal philosophy. The core idea of the discourse principle is the maxim that all valid norms of morality must be acceptable to all participants in practical discourses. As Habermas indicates, The validity of such norms “consists” in the universal recognition that they merit. Because moral claims to validity lack the ontological connotations that are characteristic of claims to truth, reference to the objective world is replaced by an orientation toward an expansion of the social world, that is, toward progressive conclusion of strangers and their claims. The validity of moral statement has the epistemic significance that it would be accepted under ideal condition of justification. However, if the meaning of “moral rightness,” unlike that of “truth”, is exhausted by rational acceptability, then our moral conviction must ultimately rely on the critical potential of self-transcendence and decentering that is built into the practice of argumentation—and self-understanding of its participants—with the “disruptiveness” of idealizing anticipations (Ibid, p.52).

In the above, Habermas distinguishes between truth and moral rightness. He makes no bone his view that the validity of moral norms lies in the universal recognition which they merit. The universal recognition which they merit depends on their universal acceptability. Their universal acceptability comes from their

2  Discourse and Rational Communication

39

epistemic property that can be accepted under the ideal condition of justification. An ideal condition of justification presupposes an ideal speech situation. In short, the general concept is to have discourses and communications that are inclusive, critical, reflective, liberating, connecting, engaging, and appealing to the unforced force of reason. It is to develop communications among a heterogeneous public, not to oppress the heterogeneity of the public. It is to build bridge and roads, not to build walls and separation zones. Now, appreciate Habermas’s doctrine of discourse, communicative action, and ideal speech situation, we should review a few Habermas’s tenets and concepts of the universal pragmatics. In particular, a review of the following four tenets is in order. 1. The distinction between orientation toward success and orientation toward reaching understanding. An action can be oriented toward what an actor considers to be a success or toward reaching mutual understanding between/among actors. Activities in discourse are oriented toward reaching understanding. Of distinctions between actions oriented toward success and actions oriented toward reaching mutual understanding, Habermas says: Social interactions vary in terms of how cooperative and stable or, conversely, how conflicting and unstable they are. The question in social theory of what makes social order possible has a counterpart in action theory: How can (at least two) participants in interaction coordinate their plans in such a way that alter is in a position to link his action to ego’s without a conflicting arising, or at least without the risk that the interaction will be broken off? If the actors are interested solely in the success, i.e., the consequences or outcomes of their action, they will try to reach their objectives by influencing their opponent’s definition of the situation and thus his decision or motive, through external means by using weapons or goods, threats or enticements. … By contrast, I speak of communicative action when actors are prepared to harmonize their plans of action through internal means, committing themselves to pursuing their goals only on the condition of an agreement—one that already exists or one to be negotiated—about definitions of the situation and prospective outcomes. … They differ in that for the model of strategic action, a structural description of action directly oriented toward success is sufficient, whereas the model of action oriented toward reaching understanding must specify the preconditions of an agreement, to be reached communicatively (Habermas, 1990, pp.133-134).

In actions oriented to success, actors treat one another strategically and therefore they are strategic and concern only with conditions and means to success. In comparison, actions oriented to reaching understanding must concern with preconditions of an agreement that must be reached communicatively and therefore must be concerned with conditions making possible true, rational, effective communication. The distinction between strategic act and action oriented to arrive at mutual understanding here is crucial. Action oriented to arrive at mutual understanding is not a strategic act and therefore not oppression-oriented and repression-oriented. It is what Kant would characterize as purposeless purposive—that is, not having any strategic, practical purpose, and its only objective is to arrive at mutual understanding of peoples. It is thus essentially inclusive, not exclusive; tolerant, not tyrannical

40

2 Modernity

and totalitarian; connecting, not repressive. It overcomes Young’s resistance to the concept of community as the normative ideal. Young believes, “the ideal of community expresses a long for harmony among persons, for consensus and mutual understanding.” (Young, 1990, p.229) She thus proposes “city life” as the normative ideal. Young’s concern is that the aspiration for harmony and mutual consensus and mutual understanding inevitably calls for oppression. But action oriented to arrive at mutual understanding is not strategic and does not oppress. Instead, constrained by the four assumptions of the universal pragmatics described above, actions oriented to mutual understanding cannot be exclusive, marginalizing, exploitative, and culturally imperialistic. It cannot be an act oriented to immobilize or diminish a social group. Young indicates, “oppression refers to structural phenomena that immobilize or diminish a social group.”(Ibid, p.42) And oppression has the faces of exploitation, marginalization, cultural imperialism, and violence (Ibid, pp.49–63). It has also the faces of degrading, and making one or more social groups the inferior and the unequal. Action oriented to arrive at mutual understanding is a kind of act to dismantle oppression, not a kind of act to produce oppression. Just as actions divide between actions oriented toward success and actions oriented toward reaching mutual understanding, One of the central elements of Habermas’s theory is the distinction between genuinely communicative use of language to attain common goals, which Habermas takes to be the primary case of language-use and “the inherent telos of human speech”, and strategic or success-oriented speech, parasitic on the former, which stimulates a communicative orientation in order to achieve an ulterior purpose (Outhwaite, 2009, pp.44-45).

Genuinely communicative actions, which involves genuine use of language, are locutionary acts that produce a perlocutionary effect of arriving at mutual understanding between participants of a communicative action, while strategic or success-­ oriented speech are illocutionary acts that produce a perlocutionary effect of achieving a practical goal. The concepts of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary speech acts are from J.L.Austin. “A locutionary act involves saying something, an illocutionary act does something in the act of saying something, a perlocutionary act produces a certain effect via doing-something-by-saying-something.”(Ibid.) A communicative action says something for the sake of mutual understanding. Actions oriented toward success produce an effect of practical success by saying something or doing something. 2. The tenet of agreement and coordinating actions. Practical discourse, in particular ethical-moral discourse or political discourse, is intended not only for the exchange of ideas and views, but also for reaching agreement. Reaching agreement is also fundamental to human rationality. There can be no rationality without intersubjective agreement. Here, agreement cannot be forced upon one party by another through external pressure—for example, military and economic pressure—if communication is rational. Otherwise, when agreement is coerced and imposed, that which is agreed on cannot be rational. That being said, if X is not agreeable, it is not

2  Discourse and Rational Communication

41

rationally acceptable. If it is agreed upon based on other grounds than its normative rightness, it is not rationally or truly agreed on. It is agreed and accepted strategically on bad reasons. The so-called agreement is not the outcome of communicative action oriented to arrive at mutual understanding, but the outcome of a strategic act of reaching compromise for expediency. Meanwhile, without agreement, there can be no coordinated actions between or among actors. Thus, through rational communication to develop unforced, rational agreement is the key to rational coordination between or among actors. 3. The tenet of the Life world. Practical discourses and communications always occur with the lifeworld as the background of intelligibility, value, and meaning. By definition, the lifeworld is the totality of one’s living environment as the system of cultural, historical, social-practical, and spatial setting. Culture, which connotes a constellation of shared knowledge, language, interpretations of meaning, and values, social institutions, custom, conventions, as well as a tradition of understanding, is a main part of the lifeworld. Space and time are constitutive of the lifeworld. So are existing social practices. A society can be conceived to be a collective lifeworld of a group of people. For discourses and communications, the lifeworld is always the background of intelligibility, meaning, and value. The lifeworld is one kind of world and thus distinguished from the world in general. The lifeworld is the totality of contexts of understanding, resources for interpretations, and conditions for communicative action. In comparison, the world can be the objective world, the social world or the subjective world. The lifeworld constitutes the background condition of public discourses. “The lifeworld forms the horizon for a practice of reaching mutual understanding where subjects acting communicatively try to deal with their everyday problems together.” (Habermas, 2003, p.285). With regard to the horizon of understanding, Plato’s horizon of understanding is the intelligible world or the world above, Aristotle’s is the natural world in which we live, Hegel’s is the Absolute Spirit, Heidegger’s is time. Gadamer’s is the historical and the fused horizon. In Habermas, two things differ. First, it is not about the horizon of understanding a cognitive object. It is about the horizon of mutual understanding among participants in discourses and communications. Second, correspondingly, “the lifeworld forms the horizon for a practice of reaching mutual understanding”. The ramification is crucial. Young and others worry that the emphasis on the universal, the normative and the valid in Habermas may result in being insensitive to the particular, the different and the diverse. However, with the lifeworld as the horizon for communicative practice geared to reaching mutual understanding, Habermas’s critical theory of discourse and communicative action is actually sensitive to the particular and the different. Habermas wants us to footing ourselves in the real lifeworld in which we live, not in any abstract, counterfactual world. The kind of lifeworld we live today is the lifeworld of a heterogeneous public, the particular, the different and the diverse. Meanwhile, the concept of the lifeworld highlights that “there is no distinct ‘social’ (I) and ‘cultural’ (L) system, but only a shared ‘socio-cultural

42

2 Modernity

system’.”(Smith, 2011, p.77) The concept of the lifeworld and the concept of a shared social-cultural system connote the same world and are interchangeable. “Indeed, Habermas uses the term ‘lifeworld’ and ‘socio-cultural system’ interchangeably.”(Ibid.) That being said, Habermas indicates: Modern life worlds are differentiated into the domain of culture, society, and personality. Culture is articulated into the sphere of science and technology, law and morality, and art and art criticism in accordance with the validity aspects of questions of truth, justice, and taste. The basic institutions of society (such as family, church, and the law) have given rise to functional systems (such as the modern economy and state administration) that have taken somewhat of a life of their own by means of their own media of communication (money and administrative power). Finally, personality structures emerge from socialization processes that provide new generations with the ability to find their own directions in such a complex world (Habermas, 2003, pp.285-286).

Of course, one of the core parts of culture is language. Heidegger claims that language is the home of thinking. We can say here that language is the road to understanding, and a crucial constitutive aspect of the lifeworld. All the same, the horizon of mutual understanding is the lifeworld, not nature, Platonic intelligible world above, Heideggeran time or Hegelian Absolute Spirit. Habermas’s critical theory thus “is a mode of discourse which projects normative possibility unrealized but felt in a particular given reality.”(Young, 1990, p.6) In Habermas’s vision, “norms and ideals arise from the yearning that is an expression of freedom: it does not have to be in this way, it could be otherwise.” (Ibid) 4. The tenet of claims to validity. A key to reach agreement between or among participants in practical discourse is that speakers are open to validity claims that are made in discourses. As Habermas says, “A measure of whether or not participants in communication reach agreement is yes or no position taken by the hearer whereby he accepts or rejects the claim to validity that has been raised by the speaker.”(Habermas, 1990, p.136) The validity of a statement and the truth of a belief or statement are importantly associated but not the same. Validity is the epistemic quality of being logically sound and reasonable justifiability, while truth is the cognitive quality connoting that a belief or statement is factually true. In his early discursive concept of truth, Habermas conceptualizes truth more or less as a kind of validity in general. Still, in his present Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth, Habermas limits truth to be only one kind of validity: objective validity. Habermas points out: In the attitude oriented toward reaching agreement, the speaker raises with every intelligible utterance the claim that the utterance in question is true (or that the existential presuppositions of the propositional content hold true), that the speech act is right in terms of a given normative context (or that the normative context that it satisfies is itself legitimate), and that the speaker’s manifest intention are meant in the way they are expressed. When someone rejects what is offered in an intelligible speech act, he denies the validity of an utterance in at least one of the three aspects: truth, rightness, or truthfulness. His “no” signals that the utterance has failed to fulfill at least one of its three functions (the representation of states of affairs, the maintenance of an interpersonal relationship, or the manifestation of lived experience) because the utterance is not in accordance with either the world of

2  Discourse and Rational Communication

43

existing states of affairs, our world of legitimately oriented interpersonal relations, or each participant’s own world of subjective lived experience (Ibid, p.137).

In discourses and communicative actions, claims to validity are the sources of normative justification of norms and standards of activities, as well as the source of the legitimacy of activities, practices or institutions. In short, essential to Habermas’s philosophy are the concepts of public discourses and rational communications. Here, to appreciate Habermas’s thought better, we should recall that as Habermas himself says, four personal experiences have profoundly shaped his life-long passions in the ideas of the public sphere, discourse, and human reason. First, it was the traumatic experience of a series of surgeries in childhood that led him to be aware of human vulnerability and the social nature of human beings. As he says, “the intervention may well have awakened the feeling of dependence and vulnerability and the sense of the relevance of our interactions with others.”(Habermas, 2009, p.13) From the experience, Habermas recognizes that “man is a political animal, that is, an animal that exists in a public space” and the intersubjective constitution of the human mind (Ibid). Thus, he acknowledges, “at any rate, the social nature of human beings later became the starting point of my philosophical reflection.”(Ibid) The social nature of human beings makes communication essential to coordinate human activities and practices. Second, it was the experience of difficulty in communication and of humiliation connected with his being handicapped in his early school years (Ibid). From the experience, Habermas recognizes “the power of language to forge a community” and the importance of communication to a community, as well as the importance of non-­distorted communicative environment for rational communication (Ibid, p.15). Third, it was the experience in 1945, in particular, his witness to the Nuremberg trial. It was an experience of self-awakening and intellectual awakening. The experience led Habermas to wonder: How can a country that has produced Kant, Hegel, and Beethoven also has produced Hitler? It led Habermas to think over the legitimacy of the Nuremburg trial, and the legitimacy of international laws. It led him to wonder if there were higher laws. As he says, “Overnight, as it were, the society in which we had led we had led what had seemed to be half way normal everyday life and the regime governing it were exposed as pathological and criminal.”(Ibid, p.17) It also gave him a life-long theme of reflection—that is, the life-long reflection of the German legacy through this experience. How can rational criticism of culture possible? Fourth, finally, it was the experience of post-war Germany. That was an experience of further intellectual awakening. It was an experience of awakening to critical self-reflection, democracy and democratic discourses. In late 1940s and early 1950s, Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger, and Arnold Gehlen all shared a contempt of the mass. They “elevated silence above conversation, and command and obedience above equality and self-determination.”(Ibid, p.21) At that time, Habermas started to think his own views over. Noteworthy, it was also during this period that he was associated with the Frankfurt Institute and encountering Max

44

2 Modernity

Horheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse. One can see in his concept of the unforced force of human reason the influence of Marcuse’s concept of the unforced force of elevation of culture. The fact that Habermas’s personal experiences have shaped his view should not be a surprise to us at all. In knowing, we often draw insights from our personal experiences. Our personal experiences often serve as those occasions in which we are awakened to a particular understanding and to truth. Habermas’s four personal experiences mentioned above have served in this function. They have awaken him to a certain understanding—an understanding that has led him to place great values on the ideas of the public sphere, discourse, and human reason—and also have provided some empirical orientations and insights into a discursive sensitivity to human nature, society, and culture.

3  Communicative Rationality Fundamental to Habermas’s doctrine of modernity is his rehabilitation and reconstruction of the concepts of human reason and human rationality. For the purpose of understanding, human reason is understood as the rational capacity of human mind to think, choose, and act on sound reasons. Human rationality is the structure and grammar of human thinking, choice and action. The term “rehabilitation” is deliberately used to underscore the fact that human reason has suffered great disgrace in philosophy in the twentieth century. It is to underscore the fact that at the center of the debate between modernity and postmodernity, or between modernism and postmodernism, is the question of whether there can be universal human reason as a universal human capacity and universal human rationality that provides the universal structure, grammar, and basis of normative justification for understanding, truth, justice, equality, rights, and human activities. As a staunch defender of modernity, Habermas’s answer to the question above is not only positive, but also creative and renovating. Habermas starts with the idea that rational social practices and human activities, as well as rational social order, depend on rational communication; rational communication depends on the existence of public spheres that have ideal communicative conditions and requires the performative competence of participants of communication in social practices and public discourses, which in turn presupposes the capacity of participants of communication and discourses to recognize intersubjectively the validity claims and presuppositions on which social cooperations depend. Rationality is the proper structure, or formal grammar, of human thinking and interaction based on interpersonal communication geared to mutual understanding, not on distortion, deception, force, coercion, oppression or institutional power. An examination of Habermas’s concept of communicative rationality is in order. By definition, communicative rationality is the rational structure of rational communication. It is the formal grammar of rational communication. It is the formal

3  Communicative Rationality

45

grammar by which communication can arrive at mutual understanding. As a capacity, communicative reason is the intersubjective power governing all rational communication. It is the intersubjectivity that produces mutual understanding. As a structure, quality and property, communicative rationality is the structure, quality and property that embodies the power of intersubjectivity. Correspondingly, the concept of communicative rationality defends two ideas of modernity: (1) there is universally rational human capacity of thinking, choosing, and acting; and (2) there is a universal basis of normative justification of human thinking, choice, and action as well as interaction. Communicative rationality is contrasted to what Habermas dubs as “strategic reason” or “strategic rationality.” A strategic reason or rationality is an instrumental reason or rationality of means-end calculation of an acting subject who is oriented to practical success. An instrumental rationality is the rationality that guides an actor to choose the best, most effective means in order to be successful in achieving his/her intended practical end—that is, to use the best means to achieve an intended objective. In comparison, communicative reason is the normative reason governing participants in discourses wherein norms, standards, scopes and limits of human activities and practices are discussed, negotiated and developed and orienting them to arrive at mutual understanding. Communicative rationality that normalizes procedures and activities of participants in practical discourses wherein norms, standards, scopes and limits of human activities and practices are discussed, negotiated and developed. Like Kant, Habermas recognizes that as a capacity, human reason has two functions: “The norm-setting function that makes critique possible and the obfuscating function that calls for self-criticism.”(Ibid, p.24) That is to say, human reason functions to construct and establish norms on the one hand and to critically reflect and self-reflect on the other hand. Norms-setting and critically reflecting and self-­ reflecting are among those most important functions of human reason and are the most important source of human reason to rationalize human thinking, choice, and action, as well as to rationalize society and community. Noteworthy, there are in effect two levels of norms setting here. One is to set up norms which regulate the procedure of discourse, e.g., the four norms of communicative rationality. Another is to set up particular norms for particular kinds of human activities and practices in accordance with the procedure of discourse that is rationally normalized and regulated. Accordingly, to rationalize by human reason is first of all to rationalize through rational norm-setting and critical reflection and self-reflection. To set norms rationally and to reflect critically, one thus should recognize those rational presuppositions of human reason in human activities. Logically, to pay attention to those rational presuppositions of human activities is to search for the necessary conditions of such activities and therefore to build norms and standards of activities with validity and necessity. Thus, for example, to search for the rational presuppositions of any rational communication is to search for the necessary conditions for any true, real, and effective communication geared to mutual understanding. We shall come back to this point below. Suffice it here that according to Habermas, the power or

46

2 Modernity

unforced force of human reason is thus embodied in recognition of those valid, rational presuppositions of human activities; since all rational human activities presuppose rational communication, the power that guides rationally human activities is first of all embodied in the power that makes rational communication possible. According to Habermas, rational human activities presuppose rational human communication geared to arrive at mutual understanding among actors. Rational communication presupposes communicative rationality. Something is rational if and only if it meets the conditions necessary to forge an understanding with at least one other person. That is to say, if something is rational, it can be rationally communicated at least between two persons. What is rational must be at the same time communicationally rational. And whatever is communicatively rational is rational in terms of communicative rationality. Communicative rationality, what a concept! The crown jewel of Habermas’s doctrine of modernity. To communicate rationally, one recognizes four presuppositions of communication purported to arrive at mutual understanding among actors. A presupposition is the supposition of a necessary condition for something to exist or to occur. What is presupposed is a necessary condition for activity. And its claim is valid. Communicative rationality is embodied in four presuppositions of rational communication; to communicate rationally, one must recognize and observe the four valid norms that make possible communication purported to arrive at mutual understanding. The four valid norms of communication purported to arrive at mutual understanding among actors are as follows: comprehensibility, truth, truthfulness, and normative rightness. (a) The validity claim and norm of comprehensibility. The claim is that in a rational communicative action geared to arrive at mutual understanding, whatever one says is, and must be, comprehensible or intelligible to other participants in the communicative action if true, real, and effective communication is to occur between one and others; if what one says is not intelligible or understandable, one must modify the way one says it to make it comprehensible to other participants so that they can understand what one means and therefore there can be communication between oneself and other participants in communicative actions geared to mutual understanding. Needless to say, there can be no real communication between or among participants if they do not understand what each other says. For example, there can be no real, effective communication between John who speaks English and Victor who speaks Russian if John does not understand Russian, when Victor speaks to him in Russian and Victor does not understand English when John speaks to him in English. It is logically self-­ evident that if two persons do not comprehend what each other says, no communication geared to mutual understanding exists between them. Thus, comprehensibility is a presupposition of and necessary condition for any true, real, good, and effective communications. (b) The validity claim of truth. In rational communicative action geared to mutual understanding, the communicated proposition or statement must be true in propositional content, at least to the best of communicators’ knowledge. What

3  Communicative Rationality

47

is communicated in rational communication geared to mutual understanding must be true, not false in content. In communication geared to mutual understanding, what a participant says must be propositionally true, or what s/he says does not communicate anything and should be rejected. What is false cannot be an object of communication. Thus, for example, if one says to another person’ “The British play writer William Shakespeare had invented the internet and the German philosopher Kant had invented the Apple cell phone,” one does not communicate anything, or attempt to arrive at a mutual understanding with another person. There would be no any real communication between the two persons geared to mutual understanding. The conversation can be a strategic action of deliberate deception, but not a truly communicative action, least not a rationally communicative action. Here, a distinction exists between communication and propaganda. Communicative action purports to arrive at understanding and mutual understanding. Propaganda purports to achieve the speaker’s intended practical effect and purpose, e.g., misleading, deception, manipulation, etc. Communication does justice to what language is about. Propaganda uses language in an illegitimate manner inconsistent with the purpose and function of language. Thus, what should be communicated must be true, and Propaganda does not communicate. (c) The validity claim of subjective truthfulness or sincerity of all participants in a communicative action. Whatever a participant in a communicative action says, s/he says it sincerely; or otherwise there will be no true communication. It should strike us as self-evident that if a speaker deliberately deceives others in a communicative action, no communication geared to mutual understanding occurs. Instead, there is only deception. Thus, there can be no true communication without participants’ sincerity in communication. This amounts to saying that subjective truthfulness or sincerity is a presupposition of rational communication. ( d) The validity claim of normative rightness. Normative rightness refers to being justified on good grounds or sound reasons and justifiability. It refers to the warranted assertability of a statement or argument. In a communicative action, normative rightness is the norm that the better argument wins and what is accepted in a communicative action is justified, justifiable and acceptable. Whatever a speaker claims, s/he must be able to justify it. If his/her claim is not justified, justifiable and acceptable, then his/her claim will be, and should be, rejected. Equally crucial, a speaker justifies his/her claim on good reasons, not by coercion or manipulation. S/he wins an argument by having a better argument, not by deception or coercion. S/he must pursue others to accept her/his proposition with good reasons and argumentations. Thus, the claim of normative rightness is a presupposition of true, real, good, and effective communication geared to arrive at mutual understanding. In summary, in communicative action geared to arrive at mutual understanding, when a speaker endeavors to communicate something to other participants, s/he implicitly observes the four communicative norms: (1) what s/he says is intelligible;

48

2 Modernity

(2) what s/he says is propositionally true in content; (3) what s/he says is justified and s/he is justified in saying it; and (4) that s/he speaks sincerely, without any intents to deceive or without any deceptions. Correspondingly, when others accept what a speaker says, they implicitly agree that what s/he says is intelligible; what s/ he says is propositionally true; that s/he is justified in saying it; and that s/he speaks sincerely, without any intents to deceive. The unforced force of human reason is exhibited upmost in the binding force of the four communicative norms in rational communication. Here, the force of reason is not coercive, but persuasive. It is intellectually compulsory, not physically threatening or intimidating. Here, as Barbara Fultner notes, for Habermas, “communication is not merely a matter of transmitting information, but of establishing or maintaining) a relationship with another person.”(Fultner, 2011, p.58) All the same, being communicatively rational is to recognize four validity claims or presuppositions of rational communication and to take as norms the four validity claims or presuppositions of rational communication. The claims of these norms are valid and their forces and authority must be fully respected or otherwise there is, and can be, no rational communication geared to mutual understanding. Thus, Habermas says, “Communicative reason makes itself felt in the binding force of intersubjective understanding and reciprocal recognition.”(Habermas 1993, p.324) Communicative rationality establishes the formal grammar of rational communication and stipulates the requirements of performance competence for all participants in a rational communication. It dictates that any participants who want to be competent in communication action must observe the four norms of communicative rationality. Noteworthy, the requirement of truthfulness is also a requirement of an ideal speech situation too. Thus, in Habermas’s vision, human reason is an intersubjective, not a subject-­ centered, consciousness and power. Human rationality is the intersubjective structure necessarily presupposed in and of rational human thinking, choice and actions and grounded in communicative rationality. In Habermas’s vision, human reason becomes the communicating, constructing, discovering, elevating, and liberating power, the critical, unforced force, and the reasoning, negotiating, bridging, building, and developing capacity. Human reason is, and can be, universal in the sense that the communicating, constructing, discovering, elevating, and liberating power, the critical, unforced force, and the reasoning, negotiating, bridging, building, and developing capacity can be in and of all humankind. Human rationality can be universal in the sense that the intersubjective structure and grammar of rational human thinking, choice and actions is binding of all humankind. This returns us to the concept of presupposition. A key to Habermas’s doctrine of communicative rationality is the concept of presupposition. The four norms of communicative rationality are four presuppositions of any rational communications. By definition, a presupposition is a presumption of something to be necessary beforehand at the beginning of an argumentation or a course of action. What is presupposed is a necessary condition or precondition for a kind of argumentation or a course of action to be possible. A condition is necessary if it meets the following

3  Communicative Rationality

49

requirement of logic: “If X, then Y; no Y, no X”. Here, Y is X’s necessary condition. A presupposition indicates a necessary condition. Communicative rationality appeals to what can be, should be and must be, necessarily presupposed if rational communication between two parties or among parties is possible. In communicative rationality, the four validity claims are four necessary presuppositions of rational communication. Thus, they can be expressed in logical form as follows: 1. If rational communication, then comprehensibility; no comprehensibility, no rational communication; 2. If rational communication, then subjective truthfulness; no subjective truthfulness; no rational communication; 3. If rational communication, then propositional truth; no propositional truth, no rational communication; 4. If rational communication, then normative rightness; no normative rightness, no rational communication. Fair to say, a necessary condition is not a sufficient condition. A necessary condition is not necessarily a sufficient condition. A sufficient condition is also not necessarily a necessary condition. A sufficient condition is that which alone is the cause for another event or it alone is sufficient to cause another event. Thus, it can be expressed as follow: “If A, then B; B, no necessarily A”. Here, A is a sufficient condition for B, but not a necessary one. A necessary condition may not be a sufficient condition. And a sufficient condition may not be a necessary one. Needless to say, there can be a condition that is both necessary and sufficient. Such a condition can be expressed in the following logical form: “If A, then B; if B then A; No B, no A; No A, no B.” Here, A is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for B. So is B a both necessary and a sufficient condition for A.  None of the four presuppositions of communicative rationality alone is a sufficient condition to make a communication rational. Instead, each is necessary and they collectively make rational communication possible. Here, the necessary conditions for a rational communication and the necessary conditions for an ideal situation for rational communication are interrelated. The necessary conditions for rational communication are the four validity claims of communicative rationality or the four presuppositions of communicative rationality: comprehensibility, truthfulness, truth, and normative rightness. The necessary conditions for an ideal speech situation or an ideal communication situation are the four requirements: (1) full scale of inclusion, (2) equal rights to talk, (3) truthfulness, and (4) absence of contingent, external and internal coercion. The necessary conditions for rational communication make communication rational. The necessary conditions for an ideal speech situation make a communicative environment ideal. A presupposition is a necessary, not a contingent, presumption. It is not just a hypothesis or ordinary, provisional supposition which a contingent supposition is. A presupposition is inevitable, not provisional. Thus, for example, the presupposition that if two parties are to communicate rationally with one another, both parties must

50

2 Modernity

abide by the norm of comprehensibility is a necessary one. In comparison, the supposition of other party’s willingness to be rational when one attempts a communication with the other party is provisional and contingent. A presupposition is a rationally, logically given. For example, the presupposition of comprehensibility is rationally, logically inherent to rational communication. If the two parties in communicative action do not understand what each other says, they do not communicate at all and thus it is impossible for them to have any rational communication. A presupposition is not an idealization either. A presupposition X of Y is about X as a necessary condition for Y. An idealization X of Y is about that X is an ideal situation of Y. “Idealization consists of a provisional abstraction from deviation, individual differences, and limiting contexts.” (Habermas, 2009, p.43) An ideal situation is an idealization, but its four necessary requirements are presuppositions. A presupposition is not a result of abstraction. Idealization is the outcome of abstraction. A presupposition is a logical construction. Idealization is a result of imagination. A presupposition is a result of analysis and deduction. Thus, a presupposition of an ideal speech situation is a necessary condition for the possibility of a speech act to occur in an ideal enviornment. For example, the presupposition of the existence of a certain grammar in any possible speech is a necessary presupposition. In comparison, the aspiration for an ideal speech situation free of communicative distortion is an idealization. Habermas’s doctrine of communicative rationality is ground-breaking. It swims against the wave of postmodernism in our time. It is one stone for two birds. It provides a new ground of normative justification for the modernity project. It offers a new defense for the concept of universal human reason and the rule of reason in our epoch. Meanwhile, it solves the problem of totalitarianism of the modernity project of the Enlightenment, and defends the modernity project while saving it from betraying its promise of freedom, autonomy, and universal justice among humankind. The doctrine of communicative rationality introduces a paradigm shift in conceptualizing human reason. The doctrine shifts from conceptualizing human reason as a subject-centered reason to conceptualizing human reason as an intersubjective, de-centered reason. A subject-centered reason is reason that is embodied in and centered on an individual consciousness as the subject or a divine mind as the subject of reason. In a subject-centered reason, reason has an individual subjectivity or divine subjectivity as its subject-entity, its embodiment, and its center. The claims of reason are the claims of individual consciousness or divine consciousness as the subject. Meanwhile, the focus and purpose of reason falls on the activities and intentionality of the subject, for example, in inquiry, the subject’s intentionality to know an object and to have truths of an object. A subject-centered reason is reason of a subject, by a subject, and for a subject. In comparison, an intersubjective, de-centered reason is reason that is embodied in intersubjective communicative practices, argumentation, and association. In an intersubjective, de-centered reason, reason has the intersubjective power governing participants in discourses, communications, and practices and governing rational communication and human activities. It is an intersubjectivity that lives in the public sphere. Thus, for example, communicative reason is not embodied in the

3  Communicative Rationality

51

subjectivity of a person, a social class, or a divine being. Instead it is embodied in the four validity claims of rational communication. It governs all participants of discourses, communications, and practices. Meanwhile, the focus and purpose of intersubjective reason does not fall on the activities and intentionality of a subject, but falls on norms and presuppositions indispensable to the intersubjective activities and intentionality of all participants of discourse geared to arrive at mutual understanding. An intersubjective, de-centered reason is an intersubjectivity. Intersubjective reason here is distinguished from what is understood as collective reason, e.g., cultural reason. A collective reason is still a subject-centered reason, amid the subject is not an individual person, but a collectivity. For example, a cultural reason is a culture-centered reason and culture or the people of a culture is a collective subject. Thus, a cultural reason is a subject-centered collective reason. The same can be said of Marxist so-called “class consciousness”. The alleged consciousness of a social class—say, the consciousness of the proletarian class—is a collective consciousness and reason, not intersubjective consciousness and reason. While Hegel’s mistake was his concept that the substance of human reason was the Absolute Spirit, or the objective, absolute subjectivity, Marx’s mistake was that he found human reason to be embodied in the collective consciousness of the proletarian class. Intersubjective reason is also distinguished from overlapping consensus. Intersubjective reason is a power, or an intersubjectivity that governs activities of individual actors in public interactions. It constructs norms and produces structure that is the necessary condition to structure activities of different actors. In comparison, overlapping consensus refers to the intersected parts of understanding. For example, two persons who both do not believe in universal human rights share an overlapping consensus on the matter of human rights. But such an overlapping consensus is just an overlapping consensus, not an intersubjectivity of these two persons. Meanwhile, two persons—one lives in culture A, and another lives in culture B—both respect a same cultural taboo. This shared respect is grounded in an intersubjectivity of obligation of cultural toleration and respect for cultural rights, and cultural diversity. The intersubjectivty of toleration of diversity and respect for rights produces the two persons’ overlapping consensus to respect a same, specific cultural taboo. As for the distinction between the subject-centered reason and intersubjective reason, it may be helpful to mention Kant as a comparison to Habermas. Kant’s concept of human reason is a paradigm of the subject-centered reason. Kant conceived human reason to consist of three parts—pure reason (understanding), practical reason (autonomous, free, good will), and aesthetic reason (taste)—the individual consciousness. In Kant, human reason was of individual subject, by individual subject, and for individual subject. The ideal, criteria, focus, and scope of reason is the ideal, criteria focus, and scope of the rational nature of an individual subject. Thus, for Kant, in understanding, knowledge was possible if and only if experiences confirmed to the formal structure of the mind or the formal structure of the mind of the subject. In morality, it was that one should act only on a maxim which one can simultaneously will to be a universal law. In aesthetical experience, it was

52

2 Modernity

the experience that must confirm to one’s taste. Here, whether it was the cognitive experience, ethical-moral experience or aesthetical experience, an experience was made possible and rational by the experiencing subject and constructed in terms of the experiencing subject. Equally crucial, the basis for and the way to the universality of a claim was in the subjectivity too. In understanding, it was the formal structure of the mind consisting of those formal categories of the mind. In ethics and morality, it was the autonomous, free, good will in the fullest sense. In aesthetic experience, it was the universal taste. In short, in Kant, human reason was embodied in the subjectivity of an individual person (consciousness), and the subjectivity of an individual person was the center of human reason. In comparison, in communicative action, human reason as an intersubjectivity is embodied in the four norms that govern rational communication and that make practical discourses rational. Human reason is not embodied in the subjective activities and faculties of an individual consciousness, but in intersubjective activities of a dialogical community. Human reason is not a subjective power, but an intersubjective force or power. Human reason is public, and exhibits its unforced force in the public use of individual reasons. Meanwhile, the doctrine of communicative rationality introduces the paradigm shift from conceiving human rationality as functioning to provide a normative basis of justification for objective inquiry of objective truths of the world to conceiving human rationality as functioning to provide the normative basis of justification to facilitate mutual understanding of participants in discourses, communications, and practices. Thus, Habermas says: ‘Rationality' refers in the first instance to disposition of speaking and acting subjects to acquire and use fallible knowledge. As long as the basic concepts of the philosophy of consciousness lead us to understand knowledge exclusively as knowledge of something in the objective world, rationality is assessed by how the isolated subject orients himself to representational and propositional contents. Subject-centered reason finds its criteria in standards of truth and success that govern the relationships of the knowing and purposively acting subjects to the world of possible objects or states of affairs. By contrast, as long as we conceive knowledge as communicative mediated, rationality is assessed in terms of the capacity of responsible participants in interaction to orient themselves in relation to validity claims geared to intersubjective recognition. Communicative reason finds its criteria in the argumentative procedures for directly or indirectly redeeming claims to propositional truth, normative rightness, subjective truthfulness and aesthetic harmony (Habermas 1993, p.314).

Subject centered reason and the communicative reason differ in orientation: the subject-centered reason purports to arrive at a subject’s knowledge of its cognitive object. In comparison, communicative reason purports to arrive at mutual understanding between or among participants in discourses. Thus, in communicative reason, “rationality has less to do with the possession of knowledge than with how a speaking and acting subject acquires and uses knowledge.”(Habermas, 1984, p.8) Moreover, the doctrine of communicative rationality introduces the paradigm shift in conceiving the criteria of human rationality. In the subject-centered reason, the criteria are the cognitive subject’s clarity and certainty in knowledge searching, and effectiveness and utility for the subject in strategic actions. For example, in

3  Communicative Rationality

53

Descartes, the criteria of reason were the clarity and distinctiveness of a cognitive subject’s view. In Kant, the criteria were the subject’s clarity and certainty. In comparison, in communicative reason, the criteria are comprehensibility, truthfulness, truth, and normative rightness. Furthermore, the doctrine of communicative rationality introduces the paradigm shift from conceiving human reason as an excluding, oppressing, and repressing power to conceiving human reason as an inclusive, democratically negotiating power. Thus, Habermas says: Only a reason to which we ascribe a 'power of the key' could either include or exclude. Hence, inside and outside are linked with domination and subjugation; and the overcoming of reason-as-powerholders is linked with breaking open the prison gates and vouchsafing release into an indeterminate freedom. Thus, the other of reason remains the mirror image of reason in power … Those who would like to leave all paradigms behind along with the paradigm of the philosophy of consciousness, and go forth into the clearing of postmodernity, will just not be able to free themselves from the concept of subject-centered reason and its impressively illustrated topography (Habermas 1993, p.309).

The subject-centered reason is the reason with walls, boundaries between inside and outside, and subjugation. In comparison, communicative reason is a power to include, to associate, and to bring together differences. It is the power to build bridge, not the power to build walls. It is the power to build road, not the power to mark the end and limit. Finally, the doctrine of communicative rationality introduces the paradigm shift in conceiving normative justification for universal claim. In the subject-centered reason, normative justification for the universality of a claim appeals to the rational nature of all human beings and the way to achieve the universality of a claim is to fully enact the rational nature of every human being. In comparison, in communicative reason, the universality of a claim lies in its universal acceptability justifiable through rational communication and thus the way to universal claim is to redeem the validity claims of rational communication and to use reason publically. Thus, for example, with regard to justification of an ethical or moral norm, Kant’s mechanism was the categorical imperative. Habermas’s is discourse. In the doctrine of communicative rationality, the validity claims of human reason have the Janus face. The claims of human reason have universal validity, but also arise in contexts. Thus, Habermas says: As claims, they transcend any local context; at the same time, they have to be raised here and now and be de facto recognized if they are going to bear the agreement of interaction participants that is needed for effective cooperation….The validity claimed for propositions and norms transcends spaces and times; but the claim is always raised here and now, in specific contexts, and is either accepted or rejected with factual consequences for action (Ibid, pp.322-323).

Transcendence here refers to being beyond contexts and being universal. The validity of claims of human reason is universal, transcending beyond the contexts in which they arise. For example, the validity of the claim of justice as fairness by human reason is universal. Context-dependence means depending on space and time. The rise of a claim of reason is always in a given space and time, e.g., it is

54

2 Modernity

discovered in a given space and time. For example, when the United Nations proclaimed certain rights to be basic, universal human rights in 1948  in the UN Declaration of Universal Human rights, the claim on human rights by human reason was made by the UN in 1948 while its validity is universal, beyond the time of 1948, and the historical space of 1948. A distinction exists between the transcendent and the transcendental here. The transcendent refers to what is beyond contexts and what is context-independent. The transcendental refers to what is formal and a priori or preceding experience. The transcendent is to be contrasted to the context-dependent. It is to be contrasted to the immanent—that is, that which exists or operates within or is inherent in contexts or experiences. In relation to experiences, the transcendent refers to that which is beyond experiences, while the transcendental refers to that which precedes experiences and constitutes a condition for the possibility of experiences. The transcendental is to be contrasted to the empirical. The validity of the claim of universal justice is transcendent. The validity of the claim that if X is Y’s necessary condition, then it is the case that if Y, then X; no X, no Y is transcendental. With regard to the Janus face of claims of human reason, Thomas McCarthy points out: In reconstructing the philosophical discourse of modernity, Habermas … readily agrees with Foucault that reason is a "thing of this world." But for him, this does not obviate the distinctions between truth and falsity, right and wrong; nor does it make them simply equivalent to what is de facto acceptable at a given time and place. The undeniable 'immanence' of the standards we use do draw these distinctions-their embeddedness in concrete languages, cultures, practices--should not blind us to the equally undeniable 'transcendent' of the claims they represent—their openness to critique and revision and their internal relation to intersubjective recognition brought about by the force of reason. This challenges one to rethink of the idea of reason in line with our essential finitude—that is, with historical, social, embodied, practical, desirous, assertive nature of the knowing and acting subject— and to recast accordingly our received humanistic ideals (McCarthy, 1993, p.x).

For Habermas, the validity of claims of human reason is universal, amid the origins of the claims themselves are context-dependent. The universal validity of claims of human reason does not cancel the fact that the origins of claims are contextual. The contextual character of the origins of claims of reason does not change the truth that the validity of the claim is universal. Habermas points out, “modernity can and will no longer borrow the criteria by which it takes its orientation from the models of supplied by another epoch; it has to create its normativity out of itself.”(Habermas, 1993, p.7) Modernity is a quality and condition established by universal norms, standards, and the basis of normative justification for human practices, institutions and public discourses. Modernity in our epoch is importantly defined by our epochal spirit or consciousness. Meanwhile, in our epoch, as Habermas sees it, modernity cannot ground its normativity in the criteria of a subject-centered reason. Nor should it ground its normativity in the criteria of some transcendent Reason such as Hegel’s Absolute Spirit coming from nowhere. Instead, modernity can, and should, create its own criteria of normativity

3  Communicative Rationality

55

out of itself in rational, democratic, public discourses through the public use of reason. Rational, democratic, public discourses wherein reason is publically used are ones following communicative rationality. Notwithstanding, Habermas’s defense of modernity is both creative and comprehensive. It goes something as follows: 1. Modernity must create its own basis of normativity and its own source of legitimacy; 2. This means that modernity in our time must create its own norms and srandards. 3. Modernity can, and should, create its own norms and standards in democratic, public discourses wherein human reason is publically used, and wherein modernity will not fall into totalitarianism; 4. Democratic, public discourses wherein human reason is publically used presuppose rational communication; 5. Rational communication presupposes following communicative rationality; 6. Following communicative rationality presupposes the existence of communicative rationality and the recognition of the four validity claims of communicative rationality; 7. Therefore, modernity finds a new basis of normative justification in communicative rationality and a new source of legitimacy in rational, democratic discourses, and a new way of will-and opinion-formation guided by communicative rationality. Therefore, modernity can be, and should be, defended and is defended above. Postmodernity is not the right remedy for the mistake of the Enlightenment modernity. The right remedy is to replace the modernity project that finds its normative basis of justification in a subject-centered reason by a modernity project that finds its normative basis of justification in an intersubjective reason, that is, communicative rationality. It is worth mentioning that according to Habermas, Hegel first raised “the problem of modernity’s self-assurance. Hegel ‘is not the first philosopher to belong to the modern age, but he is the first for whom modernity became a problem. In his theory the constellation among modernity, time-consciousness, and rationality becomes visible for the first time’.”(Ibid, p.43) That being said, Hegel made a mistake. Hegel exploded the constellation of modernity, time-consciousness, and rationality. However, in Hegel, “rationality puffed up into the Absolute Spirit neutralizes the conditions under which modernity attained a consciousness of itself. Thus, Hegel did not settle the problem of modernity’s self-reassurance.”(Ibid.) At the end of the day, only the concept of rationality as embodied in communicative rationality provides the proper, solid normative basis of justification for modernity’s self-reassurance and self-stability. Only the concept of communicative reason provides a proper concept of human reason as a negotiating, bridging, constructing, and elevating power, or at least the basis for a proper concept of human reason as a negotiating, bridging, constructing, and elevating power.

56

2 Modernity

4  Modernity, Enlightenment, and Habermas’s Rescue Habermas’s doctrine of modernity is importantly associated with the enlightenment—its achievement, discontent, and its critics. In terms of timeline, Habermas first develops a new doctrine of the public sphere and then the doctrine of communicative rationality, and finally his response to various views on modernity. Habermas’s doctrine of communicative rationality is intended as one stone for two birds. It is to provide a new normative basis of justification for modernity on the one hand and to respond to criticisms of the enlightenment and modernity on the other hand. The modernity project is to search for the rule of human reason, universal truth, universal justice, universal rights, liberty, equality, autonomy, popular sovereignty, constitutional democracy, and the rule of law as the norms of our epoch and a universal basis of justification for human thinking, choice, and activities. Its core is the enlightenment’s search for the rule of reason on the earth. While the ideal of Renaissance is the resurrection of humanity, the ideal of modernity is the rule of reason and human emancipation. Thus, as Max Weber points out, there is “the intrinsic, that is, not merely contingent, relationship between modernity and what he calls ‘Occidental rationalism.”(Ibid, p.1) Meanwhile, skepticism to the project of modernity and challenges from postmodernism start from their misgivings about the possibility of universal reason based on their appropriation of modern enlightenment. At the core of criticism of enlightenment is the criticism that the enlightenment is totalitarian. According to Horkeheimer and Adorno, the Enlightenment that aims at liberating humankind from fears and establishing their sovereignty has ended up bringing out only a disaster triumphant on the earth and the Enlightenment that harbors the ideal of human liberation is characteristically totalitarian and becomes an embodiment of domination. No wonder, at the core of various skepticisms to the enlightenment is what Richard Bernstein (1992) dubs as the “rage against reason.” The rage is that today, the concept of reason evokes the images of domination, oppression, repression, and patriarchy, instead of the images of autonomy, freedom, justice, equality, happiness, and peace. The enlightenment has produced an ambivalent sentiment about reason: on the one hand, it is the feeling that the rule of reason can bring about freedom, liberation, equality, and justice; on the other hand, it is the feeling that as modern enlightenment triumphs on the earth, the rule of reason brings about, and symbolizes, new domination, oppression and totalitarianism. Sigmund Freud claimed that human reason operate through the mechanism of repression and domination; human reason is totalitarian, oppressive and repressive. The enlightenment seems to vouch for Freud’s insight and gives human reason the worst possible press. In the name of reason, the enlightenment has ruthlessly oppressed and repressed what is the other to it. It eliminates differences in order to favor the same. At the end of the day, “ruthlessly, in spite of itself, enlightenment has extinguished any trace of its own consciousness.” (Horkheimer & Adonor, 1997, p.4) While its consciousness is of freedom, equality, justice, and autonomy, the

4  Modernity, Enlightenment, and Habermas’s Rescue

57

enlightenment has eliminated any trace of its own self-consciousness. By nature, “[modern] enlightenment is totalitarian.”(Ibid, p.6) Though they do not recognize that the source of the totalitarianism of modern Enlightenment is its concept of human reason as a subject-centered reason, Horkheimer and Adorno single out some serious problems of modern Enlightenment. They include the following. First, the problem of abstraction. The canon of modern enlightenment is abstraction, so is its Achilles’ heel. The problem of abstraction is its one-sided emphasis on unity, sameness, totality, and system and its indifference to and exclusion of the individual, the concrete, and the particular. As Horkheimer and Adorno indicate, “The unity of the manipulated collective consists in the negation of each individual: for individuality makes a mockery of the kind of society.”(Ibid, p.13) In order to arrive at the level of abstraction which the enlightenment requires, totalitarian oppression and elimination of the substantive, the concrete, and the particular inevitably occurs. Horkheimer and Adorno’ criticism differs from Gadamer’s. Theirs is not that by attempting to out of culture, the enlightenment made true understanding impossible. Their criticism is that using abstraction as the instrument, modern enlightenment has introduced a new form of totalitarian, oppressive thinking that betrays the enlightenment’s promise of human liberation; such a totalitarian, oppressive rationality does not lead to liberation, but to new imprisonment. Second, the problem of the patriarchal relationship between humankind and nature, as well as among human beings. “The concordance between the mind of man and the nature of things that he had in mind is patriarchal: the human mind, which overcomes superstition, is to hold sway over disenchanted nature.”(ibid, p.4) In turn, just as human beings develop a patriarchal relation with nature, some human beings develop a patriarchal relation with other human beings. Moreover, such a patriarchal relation further evolves into a means-end relation. Some human beings are treated as merely means to other human beings’ ends. Modern enlightenment has promised rights, equality, liberty, autonomy, and justice of all human beings. Yet, its conception of rationality does not lead to equality, but to a new kind of inequality; not to liberty, but to a kind of domination. Third, the problem of the purpose of knowledge. “What men want to learn from nature is how to use it in order wholly to dominate it and other men.”(Ibid, p.4) Knowledge is power, and power is intended to be used to dominate. Human beings acquire knowledge in order to dominate nature, and then dominate other human beings. In modern enlightenment, knowledge that creates community and mutual understanding among human beings, as well as knowledge that facilitates human liberation, is largely ignored. Knowledge is supposed to liberate humankind, but it becomes a new source of domination. Fourth, the problem of the absolute. In the enlightenment, what is universal and what is absolute go hand in hand. When universality is claimed, so is absoluteness. When one claims both universality and absoluteness, one also claims oneself beyond and above criticism, claiming that any different voices are patently wrong and should be oppressed. It is said that power corrupts, and absolute power, corrupts

58

2 Modernity

absolutely. One can also say that authority corrupts, and absolute authority corrupts absolutely. Fifth, the problem of loss of thought. “On the road to modern science, men renounce any claim to meaning. They substitute formula for concept, rule and probability for cause and motive. Cause was the only last philosophic concept which served as a yardstick for scientific criticism.” (Ibid, p.5) The enlightenment is supposed to create a great era of thought. And in many ways the enlightenment has produced new thoughts. Yet, the enlightenment has also created a social system that oppresses thought. Meanwhile, in the enlightenment, “Myth turns into enlightenment, and nature into mere objectivity. Men pay for increase of their power with alienation from that over which they exercise their power. Enlightenment behaviors toward things as dictator toward men.”(Ibid, p.9) The greater enlightenment is, the greater alienation is. According to Horkheimer and Adorno, in modern enlightenment, “The principle of immanence, the explanation of very repetition that the Enlightenment upholds against mythic imagination is the principle of myth itself.”(Ibid, p.12) Beings are reduced to meaningless things. The disenchanted world is stripped of all ethical meaning; it is objectified as the material and setting for purposive-rational pursuit of interests. This is true even of mankind itself. Humans become “mere objects of the administrated life.”(Ibid, p.38) “The enlightenment is more than enlightenment— the distinct representation of nature in its alienation.”(Ibid, p.39) Thus, Horkheimer and Adorno point out that enlightenment becomes totalitarian and betrays the promises of freedom, equality, justice, and autonomy, the enlightenment ideal harbors. “The over-maturity of society lives by the immaturity of the dominated. The more complicated and precise the social, economic, and scientific apparatus with whose service the production system has long harmonized the body, the more impoverished the experiences which it can offer.”(Ibid, p.36) Noteworthy, while Horkheimer and Adorno’ judgment of the enlightenment is brutal, Hegel has claimed that the enlightenment in the 18th century have reached intellectual bankruptcy. Habermas shares Horkheimer and Adorno’ criticism of the totalitarian nature of the enlightenment. Still, as Habermas sees it, “Horkhermer and Adorno perceive cultural modernity from a similar experimental horizon” that makes one “insensible to the traces and the existing forms of communicative rationality”, failing to recognize that the source of the totalitarianism of modern Enlightenment is its subjectcentered reason (Habermas 1993, p.129). A subject-centered reason inevitably turns abstraction and knowledge into weapons of domination and alienates the relations between humankind and nature, as well as among humankind. Its totalized critique inevitably creates a speech situation that oppresses, represses, and excludes the difference. The enlightenment’s aspiration for modernity itself is not wrong. But its concept of the normative basis of modernity must be reconstructed. The doctrine of communicative rationality is the remedy. It is the recipe of reconstruction! Meanwhile, Habermas recognizes Darrida’s endeavor of deconstruction to dismantle the Book of Reason and the philosophy of subject. He recognizes Derrida’s concept that “modernity is in search of the traces of a writing that no longer holds

4  Modernity, Enlightenment, and Habermas’s Rescue

59

out the prospect of a meaningful whole as the book of nature or the Holy Scripture had done.”(Ibid, p.165) The metaphor “the book of nature” is a colorful one for the form of Western thinking that is generally labeled as “logocentrim”. Logocentrism is the doctrine in which words and language are regarded as a fundamental expression of the objective reality or objects in the world. Habermas is sympathetic to Derrida’s criticism of logocentrism in the form of phonocentrism. He also does not see that the world is one which is given in nature consisting of Platonic forms, divine laws and scheme, or Hegelian logic of the world; and language and words are merely representative symbols picturing the logic-centered reality or objects in the world. However, according to Habermas, Derrida also focuses on “the performances of the subject that are constitutive of the world.”(Ibid, p.172) “Derrida returns to the historical local where mysticism once turned into enlightenment.”(Ibid, p.184) As a result, Derrida remains in the path of “Heidegger’s inverted foundationalism” (Ibid, p.167). Fundamentalism is the doctrine that emphasizes an unwavering adherence to a set of basic principles and categories. By Heidegger’s inverted fundamentalism is meant Heidegger’s fundamental ontology wherein all beings including Dasein bow “to the authority of an unmanipulable meaning of Being” and the first principle of Ursprungsphilosophie is temporalized.” (Ibid, p.153) Darrida has recourse to the historical local as the foundation and thus remains in the path of Heidegger’s inverted fundamentalism. Derrida could have recognized that to reject the concept of the Book of a subject-­ centered Reason is one thing; to throw away the book of human reason is quite another; human reason need not be subject-centered, but can be intersubjective. He could have recognized that to deconstruct the philosophy of subject and the totality is one thing, and to reject the universal is quite another. He could have recognized that it may be an illusion for modernity to attempts to hold out the prospect of a meaningful whole as the book of nature or the Holy Scripture is an illusion; still, modernity can have a different but solid normative basis; thus, the remedy for the enlightenment modernity is not post-modernity, but modernity on a new normative basis. Equally crucial, there should be, and there can be, the rule of reason, truth, justice, equality, rights, and autonomy among all humankind. Habermas recognizes Nietzsche as a turning point from modernity to postmodernity, as well as Heidegger’s undermining of Western rationalism, Baraille’s dance between eroticism and general economics, and Foucault’s critique. He sees that “Nietzsche owes his concept of modernity, developed in terms of his theory of power, to an unmasking critique of reason that sets itself outside the horizon of reason.”(Ibid, p.96) That being said, “Nietzsche’s critique of modernity” follows two paths—the path to “to unmask the perversion of the will to power” and the path of “the emergence of a subject-centered reason by using an anthropological, psychological, and historical method.”(Ibid, p.97) Nietzsche “fails to provide a way out of the embarrassment of a critique that attacks the presuppositions of its own validity. At best, it paves the way of breaking out of the horizon of modernity.” (Ibid, p.127) Notwithstanding, Nietzsche’s unmask of the philosophy of subject or the subject-centered reason bequeaths us with such colorful metaphors of the

60

2 Modernity

subject-­ centered reason as the will to power, the Apollonian energy, and the Dionysian energy. While Nietzsche leads us to see the dark side of human reason as conceived in the enlightenment, the human reason which Nietzsche has unmasked is the subject-centered reason. Meanwhile, according to Habermas, Foucault develops his “radical critique of reason in the form of a historiography of the human sciences.”(Ibid, p.247) He unmasks some core ideas of modernity including subject, truth, and freedom. He “develops his basic idea that modernity is characterized by the self-contradictory and anthropocentric form of knowledge proper to a structurally overloaded subject.”(Ibid, p.261) Still, Foucault’s treatment of modernity suffers three fatal problems. First, his historiography that is grounded in the theory of power cannot eliminate the hermeneutic problematic. Second, his historiography cannot evade relativism. Third, his historiography cannot evade cryptonormativism. Foucault’s cryptonormativism is the tendency to tacitly rely on norms which he publically rejects and then smuggles in a normative agenda under the mask of positivism. For Habermas, Foucault’s treatment of modernity “cannot adequately deal with the persistent problems that come up in connection with interpretative approach to the objective domain, a self-referential denial of universal validity claims, and a normative justification for critique.” (Ibid, p.286) Foucault’s “attempt to step out of modernity in genealogical historiography grounded on the theory of power ends up as precisely the presentistic, relativist, crypto-normative illusory science that it does not want to be.”(Outhwaite, 2009, p.125) With regard to modernity and human reason, Habermas “readily agrees with Foucault that reason is a ‘thing of this world.’” (McCarthy, 1993, x) However, Habermas points out, “Foucault cannot escape the ‘performative contradiction’ involved in using the tools of reason to criticize reason … The idea of meaning, validity, and value that were to be eliminated by genealogical critique come back to haunt it in the spectral forms of ‘presentism’, ‘relativism’, and ‘cryptonormativism’.”(Ibid, xv) Therefore, Habermas sees that “the defects of the Enlightenment can only be made good by further enlightenment. The totalized critique of reason undercuts the capacity of reason to be critical.”(Ibid, xvii) He then sets out to rescue the modernity project by grounding it in a concept of human reason as an intersubjective power exhibited in communicative rationality. In the reconstruction, he rejects postmodernism and postmodernity as advocated by Jean-François Lyotard. Lyotard defines postmodernity in two different, but interrelated senses. In one sense, postmodernity is defined as an incredulity to the grand narrative or metanarrative. By this token, postmodernism is the philosophical movement to reject the universal, and to refuse to ground human thinking, beliefs, and practices in some universal narratives of humankind. Postmodernity is the condition wherein human thinking, beliefs, and practices appeal to local narratives, instead of some universal narratives, for their justification. In another sense, Lyotard defines postmodernity as the condition in which people wage a war on totality and unified standards and norms, and stand as witness to the other voices. In his reconstruction of the modernity project, Habermas introduces both communicative reason as the power to communicate, negotiate, and construct norms,

5 Conclusion

61

standards, and engage in reflection and self-reflection and communicative rationality as the new basis of normative justification of claims arising in practical discourses in the public sphere. He introduces the public use of reason in the public sphere as the new mechanism to establish universal norms, and standards. In Habermas’s vision, modernity can be democratic, not totalitarian; it can do justice to the other voices and the particular as well as contexts while maintaining the universal ground for public discourses and human practices. Replacing the subject-­ centered reason by an intersubjective reason, modernity’s ground of self-assurance and self-understanding is renovated: subjectivity is superseded by intersubjectivity. Modernity still aspires for the universal, and aspires so in a democratic, inclusive, and self-reflective way, upholding to the promise of human emancipation. In summary, the enlightenment has brought about disastrous triumphs on the earth we live, and thus to the modernity project. To a great extent, modern enlightenment has betrayed its own promise of human emancipation and brought about some new kinds of domination, repression, and oppression and thus invited a rage against human reason in our time, a d thus run into intellectual bankruptcy. Against such a backdrop, Habermas has the theoretical valor to swim against the wave to defend the modernity project. He defends the modernity project by providing a new normative basis of justification for modernity. While he defends the idea of the rule of reason and the ideas of universal foundation, norms, and standards, the rule of law, as well as universal truth, rights, equality, liberty, and justice in the project of modernity, he introduces a new ground of normative justification for universal norms, rights, standards, truth, and justice.

5  Conclusion In conclusion, the philosophical debate on modernity in our time is whether there should be universal conditions, qualities, norms, standards, and values as well as universal basis of normative justification of human activities and institutions in our time. Modernity is intended to be the qualitative condition of our epoch by modernist philosophers including Habermas. While defending modernity as a quality and condition of our epoch and claiming that the project of modernity is still an incomplete project in our time, Habermas develops a discourse doctrine of modernity. Essential to the discourse doctrine of modernity are the ideas of the public sphere, discourses, communicative rationality, and the public use of reason, and the universal pragmatics, which in turn provides a new basis of normative justification, validity, and legitimacy and which are crucial to Habermas’s reconceptualization of the rule of reason, the rule truth, the rule of justice and the rule of law on the earth as the core of modernity in our epoch. The discourse doctrine of modernity provides a new basis of normative justification for the ideas of universal truth, rights, liberty, freedom, autonomy, and justice. The discourse doctrine of modernity is universalist, but also democratic and post-metaphysical. It is universalist in the sense that according to the doctrine,

62

2 Modernity

modernity is committed to ground itself in universal truth, universal reason, universal truth, universal rights, and universal justice; its norms have universal validity, legitimacy, and rationality. It teaches universal standards, norms, and principles of human activities. It defends the universal while recognizing and respecting the particular. It harbors the enlightenment promise of human emancipation. It inherits from Kant’s philosophy of modernity, but also supersedes Kant’s philosophy. The same can be said that it supersedes the philosophies of Hegel, Marx, and Horkheimer and Adorno about modernity. Meanwhile, the discourse doctrine of modernity is a democratic form of modernism. At its core is the doctrine of communicative rationality as the grammar and communicative reason as the power. At its core is the conceptual triad of the public sphere, discourse, and reason. At the core of its concept of the rule of reason is the idea of the public use of reason. And according to this doctrine, modernity must establish its own criteria through discourses, and democracy is the sole source of the legitimacy and validity of criteria, standards and norms of modernity. Moreover, essential to this doctrine is the decisive paradigm shift from the conception of the subject-centered human reason to the conception of the intersubjective, de-centered human reason. The paradigm shift grounds modernity in a new normative basis of justification, eliminating oppression, repression, exclusion, and totalitarianism in the modernity project on the other hand. The discourse doctrine of modernity is post-metaphysical in the sense that it does not ground itself in or stabilize itself on another grand-narrative or meta-narrative. It does not conceive another substantial entity to be the embodiment of human reason—nature, God, a so-called advanced social class or any individual persons. In discourse doctrine, there is not a substantial entity as the embodiment of human reason. Universal human reason as a power is not embodied in any entities. Instead, human reason exhibits its unforced force in rational human practices and human rationality is embodied in the presuppositions of rational human practice.

References Bernstein, R. (1992). The new constellation: The ethical-political horizon of modernity (pp. 56). Cambridge: The MIT Press. Foucault, M. (1984). In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The foucault reader. New York: Pantheon Books. Fultner, B. (2011). Communicative action and formal pragmatics. In B.  Fultner (Ed.), Jürgen Habermas: Key concepts (pp. 54–73). Acumen: Durham. Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative theory (Vol. 1., Intro. Thomas McCarthy). Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1987a). The theory of communicative theory (Vol. 2., Intro. Thomas McCarthy). Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1987b). The philosophical discourse of modernity. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of Bourgeois society. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (1990). Moral consciousness and communicative action. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (1998). Between facts and norms. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

References

63

Habermas, J. (2003). Truth and justification. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (2008). Europe: The faltering project. Cambridge: The Polity Press. Habermas, J. (2009). Between naturalism and religion. Cambridge: The Polity Press. Horkheimer, M., & Adonor, T. (1997). Dialectic of enlightenment. New  York: The Continuum Publishing Company. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_sphere. Entered 2-­14-­2017. Retrieved from https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2001/06/harvard-­gazette-­honorary­degrees-­awarded-­to-­eleven/ McCarthy, T. (1993). Introduction. In: Habermas’s philosophical discourse of modernity. Outhwaite, W. (2009). Habermas: A critical introduction. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Pensky, M. (2011). Historical and intellectual contexts. In B. Fultner (Ed.), Jürgen Habermas: Key concepts (pp. 13–34). Acumen: Durham. Smith, J. (2011). System and lifeworld. In B.  Fultner (Ed.), Jürgen Habermas: Key concepts. Acumen: Durham. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Chapter 3

Discourse Ethics

Abstract  This chapter studies Habermas’s doctrine of discourse ethics as a form of modernist ethics that synthesizes insights from both Kantian ethics and Hegelian ethics and that integrates the concepts of a good, worthy and happy life, a dutiful life, and an examined life. First, it examines the discourse concepts of obligation, value, justice, solidarity, and the validity, legitimacy, and rationality of moral norms. Second, it examines the three core principles of discourse ethics: the discourse principle; the acceptability principle; and the principle of universalization. Third, it makes a comparative studies of the discourse principle, the Kantian categorical imperative, and Scanlon’s principle of contractualism. Keywords  Obligation · Value · Justice · Solidarity · The discourse principle · The acceptability principle · The universality principle IN 1983, two years after the publication of The Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas had Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action published. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action inaugurated a new moral philosophy: Discourse Ethics. Later on in 1990s, in Between Facts and Norms, The Inclusion of the Other, and Between Naturalism and Religion, Habermas defends and elaborates further what is discourse ethics, claiming that discourse ethics integrate the ethical question of self-understanding and the moral question of normative justification into one. Discourse ethics is a direct application of Habermas’s doctrine of communicative rationality and modernity in ethics and morality. It explains ethical-moral values, norms, and principles on the normative basis of justification provided by communicative rationality. It is deontological, universalist, and cognitivist. It replaces the Kantian categorical imperative as the mechanism to construct moral maxims of action by practical discourse as the mechanism to develop universal norms of moral actions. It replaces the Kantian emphasis on individual exercise of one’s human reason to the full extent by the emphasis on the public use of reason by all participants in practical discourses in the ethical-moral life. Discourse ethics defines what

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 X. Chen, The Essentials of Habermas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79794-2_3

65

66

3  Discourse Ethics

is right in terms of what is universally acceptable, valid, and legitimate, and conceptualizes what is acceptable in terms of what can be universally agreeable and agreed on in practical discourses. Discourse ethics purports to develop a modern form of ethics by advocating those modern concepts of ethics and morality including duty, obligation, justice, solidarity, good and happiness. It also renovates present ethical discourses with various conceptual contributions. Among those conceptual contributions are as follows: 1. The discourse principle; 2. The universalization principle; 3. The acceptability principle; 4. The concept of practical discourse; the concept of the public use of reason; 5. The conceptual distinction between obligation and value; 6. The conceptual distinction between justice and solidarity; 7. The cognitive dimension of morality; 8. The conceptual association of ethical self-understanding and morally normative justification. Habermas carries forward various insights from Kantian ethics, Hegelian ethics, and contemporary contractualism. According to Habermas, Kantian ethics and Hegelian ethics represent modern ethics at its height. Discourse ethics develops the insights of Kantian ethics on the basis of the doctrine of the public sphere, discourse and communicative rationality. Like Kantian ethics, discourse ethics emphasizes the universality of principles, norms, and maxims of human activities. That being said, while the mechanism to establish universal moral principles and norms in Kantian ethics is individual persons’ autonomous exercise of their practical reason, the mechanism to build universal moral principles, norms, and standards in discourse ethics is a procedure of argumentation and the public use of reason by all participants in discourses. Thus, Kant’s categorical imperative reads: act only on the maxim which one can will to be a universal law. In comparison, Habermas’s discourse principle reads: Only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse. Habermas say, “Discourse ethics replaces the Kantian categorical imperative by a procedure of moral argumentation.”(Habermas, 1990, p.197) In comparison to Kantian ethics, discourse ethics conceptualizes ethics to be about both justice and solidarity, obligation and good/value, duty and liberty, rulegoverned and autonomy, as well as normative justification and self-understanding. In discourse ethics, the basis of normative justification of ethical-moral norms is the public use of reason and the intersubjectivity of all participants in discourses in the ethical-moral life, while in Kantian ethics, it is the subject-centered practical reason of an individual person. Discourse ethics shares common points with both modern consent theory of morality and contractualist ethics, though not indebted to both. Discourse ethics emphasizes public consensus consented by participants in practical discourses as

1  The Nature and Feature of Discourse Ethics

67

the source of obligation, and holds that one consents, therefore one is obliged. However, discourse ethics differs importantly from consent theory. In discourse ethics, the basis for public consensus and consent has a cognitive dimension and is epistemic. In it, public consensus and consent come from ethical deliberations including deliberation on ethical-moral truth, duty, obligation, and what is right, not merely a choice of will on what is good, beneficial, and desirable. Moral norms, principles, and standards must not only be accepted, but also be universally acceptable. That is to say, the source of the obligatory force of ethical-moral norms comes not only from the act of public consent, but also from the consentability or acceptability of what is consented. Discourse ethics conceives that valid moral norms are democratically, contractually established; one is contracted, therefore one is obliged. That being said, discourse ethics differs from contractualist e.g, Thomas Scanlon’s contractualist, crucial points. In discourse ethics, the basis for ethical-moral contract has a cognitive dimension and is more deliberative. Equally crucial, the mechanism of establishing contractually moral principle in discourse ethics is the public use of reason in moral discourse in the public sphere. In contractualism, it is individual person’s full, individual exercise of his/her practical reason. In short, discourse ethics applies the discourse doctrine of modernity—in particular, the ideas of the public sphere, the public use of reason, and discourse—to ethics and morality. It purports to defend universal norms, principles, and standards in the ethical-moral life and to provide a new basis of normative justification for universal norms, principles, and standards in the ethical-moral life. It purports to develop a modern form of ethics in line with the spirit of our epoch by integrating the ethical question of self-understanding and the moral question of normative justification, integrating the ideas of liberty and duty, rights and obligation, and autonomy and rule-governing, as well as integrating the ethical concerns of both justice and solidarity within a community.

1  The Nature and Feature of Discourse Ethics A defining feature of discourse ethics is its emphasis on the epistemic nature of moral norms, principles, and standards and thus the cognitive dimension of ethics and morality. Replacing the Kantian categorical imperative by a procedure of moral argumentation as the mechanism to develop valid moral norms, discourse ethics also emphasizes not only moral deliberation, but also the roles of ethical self-understanding, normative justification, and moral truth in moral deliberation. It defends the idea of the rule of reason by emphasizing the public use of reason and the intersubjective reason in ethics and morality, replacing the Kantian emphasis on individual exercise of individual reason, and the Kantian emphasis on the subject-centered practical reason. It replaces the Kantian conception of the subject-centered human reason by a conception of human reason as an intersubjective power.

68

3  Discourse Ethics

Ethics or morality is about good, happiness, duty, and obligations. After all, to talk about ethics or morality is to talk about “ought to…” and “ought not to…” The question is whether our claims to good, happiness, duty or obligation should be grounded in our claim to moral truth and knowledge. Plato claimed that knowledge is virtue and ignorance is vice. In comparison, Kant grounded ethics and morality in the good will or practical reason, not in understanding. Ethics involves the choice of the will. Aristotle distinguished between voluntary action and involuntary action in determining whether an agent should be responsible for his/her action. Aristotelian ethics has a cognitive dimension. Various schools of Modern ethics such as Kantian ethics emphasize that the ethical life should be governed by those universal norms and natural laws. If the ethical life should be governed by universal norms, do those norms claim to have truth when they claim to be universally rational, valid, and legitimate? Similar questions can be asked of those ethical ideas of good, and happiness. When X is claimed to be a good or to make a person happy, does the claim express ethical truths or merely some sentiments? Thus, when we claim that we ought to do something, what do we claim? Does the claim “ought to”, whether it expresses the commandment of a duty or obligation or the advice of a value, have cognitive contents or is it merely a claim of our will, and the claim expresses only our free, volitional choice? Does our claim of duty or value express any judgment of truth or does it express merely a kind of ethical or moral sentiment? When we claim that an action is morally wrong, does our judgment express some moral truth or does it merely express some moral sentiments? When we claim that doing X is an obligation, does our judgment express some moral truth or does it merely express some sentiment? Defending the idea of modernity that there are universal norms of human practices, Habermas points out that there are, and there can be, a normative basis of justification for those universal moral norms of human activities. In moral argumentation, one’s argument pertaining to ethical self-understanding and moral reasons of normativity also make claims to truth and ethical-moral knowledge. When we claim that moral norm X is universally valid, our claim includes a claim of its universal acceptability which is both cognitive and moral, and thus a claim that it has truth. The ethical-moral life should be rule-governed and thus be ruled by reason. To be under the rule of reason is to be under the rule of truth too. There is no rule of reason without the rule of truth. By the same token, the ethical-moral life should be governed by the ideas of duty, obligation, good, happiness, liberty, and autonomy, which in turn presupposes the rule of truth. There can be no the rule of duty, obligation, good, happiness, liberty, and autonomy without the rule of truth. Discourse ethics purports to be a form of modern ethics in line with the spirit of our epoch. It is indebted to Kantian ethics that epitomizes the core ethical ideal of modernity—the rule of reason and universal norms and laws in the ethical-moral life—and is a deontological, universalist, cognitivist, and formalist ethics. So is discourse ethics deontological, cognitivist, formalist, and universalist. So does discourse ethics emphasize the rule of reason in the ethical-moral life and the universal norms in the ethical-moral life.

1  The Nature and Feature of Discourse Ethics

69

According to Habermas, in Kantian ethics, “moral judgments serve to explain how conflicts of action can be settled on the basis of rationally motivated agreement. Broadly, they serve to justify actions in terms of valid norms and to justify the validity of norms in terms of principles worthy of recognition.”(Habermas, 1990, p.4) In discourse ethics, moral judgments also serve to justify actions in terms of valid norms of morality and to justify the validity of moral norms in terms of universal reasons immanent in the ethical-moral life and in practical discourses and in terms of principles worthy of universal recognition. Thus, both Kantian ethics and discourse ethics are deontological. For Habermas, “a deontological ethics conceives the rightness of norms and commands on analogy with the truth of an assertoric statement.”(Ibid.) This is true of Kantian ethics. It is also true of discourse ethics. For conceptual clarity here, we can understand here that the division between teleological ethics and deontological ethics comes from their different approaches to the relationship between what is right and what is good. Teleological ethics defines what is right in terms of what is good, while deontological ethics defines what is good in terms of what is right. In teleological ethics, what is good determines what is right, while in deontological ethics, what is right determines what is good. In both Kantian ethics and discourse ethics, the moral worthiness of an action is defined in terms of, and determined by, its moral righteousness. Both Kantian ethics and discourse ethics are cognitivist ethics. To say that a form of ethics is cognitivist is to say that this form of ethics recognizes moral claims of duty and obligations to be valid, and it grounds moral claims of duty and obligation in moral claims on truth; this form of ethics emphasizes the epistemic nature of moral norms and principles that regulate human activities. According to Habermas, A cognitivist ethics must answer the question of how to justify normative statement. Although Kant opts for the grammatical form of an imperative (‘Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law’), his categorical imperative in fact plays the part of a principle of justification that discriminates between valid and invalid norms in terms of their universalizability: what every rational being must be able to will is justified in moral sense (Ibid, p.197).

In discourse ethics, the acceptability principle and the discourse principle prescribe the cognitivist requirements for the contents of moral norms while the universalizability principle prescribes a cognitivist requirement for the procedure of justifying moral norms. For Habermas, “moral rules operate in a reflective manner.”(Ibid, p.4) To start with, “if morality did not possess a credible cognitive content for members of the community, it would have no advantage over other, more costly forms of action coordination (such as the use of direct force, or the exercise of influence through threat of sanctions or the promise of rewards).”(Ibid) In addition, “The key concept of obligation refers not only to the content of moral injunctions, but in addition to the peculiar character of moral validity (Sollgeltung).”(Ibid) Moral norms of obligation are justified to be universally valid, which means that they have moral truth and are morally true. Discourse ethics emphasizes the acceptability of moral norms. Moreover, discourse ethics appeals to the public use of reason and discourses in the

70

3  Discourse Ethics

public sphere in the process of development of ethical-moral norms of obligation and ethical-moral idea of value, and conceives the ideal speech situation as the mechanism to establish rules of justice and other ethical-moral norms of obligation. Correspondingly, discourse ethics emphasizes three ideas of the ethical-moral life: (1) the idea that only those valid moral norms of duty and obligation should be the norms which one should accept and observe; (2) the idea that for a moral norm of duty or obligation to be valid, it must have warranted assertability and therefore must have moral truth; to claim the validity of a norm is to claim its epistemic nature; and (3) the idea that the epistemic nature of a norm implies its cognitive dimension and content. Habermas thus asserts that discourse ethics stands and falls with two assumptions, that (a) normative validity claims have a cognitive meaning and can be treated like truth claims, and that (b) the grounding of norms and prescriptions demands the carry-through of an actual dialogue and in the last instance is not possible monologically, in the form of an argumentation process hypothetically run through in the mind (Habermas, 1990, p.68; Outwaite, 2009, p.52).

On the one hand, the validity of a norm is understood to imply truth-claim, and thus has cognitive contents. On the other hand, the validity of a norm must be publically justified, and the public justification of those valid norms is achieved in practical discourses, understood as moral argumentations in the public sphere. What can be publically justified in practical discourses has cognitive contents. Nothing that is non-cognitive can be publically justified in practical discourses. Admittedly, to claim a norm to be epistemic in nature is one thing, and to claim it to have a cognitive content is another. To claim a norm to be epistemic is to claim that it is justification-dependent. And to claim a norm to have a cognitive content is to claim that it makes claims on truth and knowledge. Thus, in communicative rationality, the validity claim of truth and the validity claim of normative rightness are two distinctive claims. That being said, justification based on communicative rationality recognizes four validity claims of communication of a norm: comprehensibility, truthfulness, truth, and normative rightness, not normative rightness only. According to communicative rationality, the justification of the validity of a norm involves recognition of its truth-claim and normative rightness claims. Discourse ethics rejects utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a noncognitivist ethics. Moral noncognitivism holds that ethical or moral sentences express a proposition which cannot be true or false; the presumed cognitive content of moral language is an illusion; a moral judgment expresses only kind of feelings, attitudes, and decisions. For example, moral emotionalism or sentimentalism is such a form of moral non-cognitivism. So is metaethical skepticism, the doctrine that no one can have any moral knowledge. The strong version of metaethical skepticism even claims that moral knowledge is impossible. Utilitarianism is a weak form of non-cognitivism. It holds that the moral worth of an action is solely determined by its contribution to the overall utility, that is, its contribution to the total sum of happiness among all persons. Utilitarianism grounds morality exclusively in interests and desires, conceiving utility as the solely normative basis of justification of human activities. Utilitarianism

1  The Nature and Feature of Discourse Ethics

71

“traces the ‘binding force’ of evaluative orientations and obligations back to preference.”(Habermas, 1998b, p.5) It thus “arrives at revisionist description similar to those of noncognitvist view such as emotivism (e.g., that of Stevenson) and decisionism (e.g., that of Popper or the early Hare).”(Ibid, pp.5–6) Rejecting utilitarianism, Habermas on the cognitive dimension of morality and the public use of reason in the ethical-moral life. He insists on a moral agent’s autonomy—a concept that can be traced back to Kant. Moreover, both Kantian ethics and discourse ethics are formalist. Both Kantian ethics and discourse ethics are not about which particular norms or principles should be the norms of action—that is to say, the norms which one should act on. Instead, they are about that if a norm is a valid norm of action and a norms one should act on, what formal conditions the norm must meet, or what formal form the norm must have. Thus, Kantian categorical imperative does not mandate which particular norms or maxims one should act on. Instead, it dictates that if a norm or maxim is a valid one to act on, it must meet the condition that (1) it is a universal law; and (b) it treats humanity not merely as a means to other end, but an end in itself. By the same token, the three core principles of discourse ethics—the acceptability principle, the discourse principle, and the universality principle—do not prescribe which particular norms one can and should act on. Instead, they stipulate that if a norm should be act on, it must meet three conditions: (1) having acceptability; (2) having validity; and (3) having universality, and in addition, it must be established through the public use of reason in discourse. To spell it out differently, Kantian ethics and discourses ethics are not about the content of a norm, but about the form of a norm. Discourse ethics is a formalist ethics, but differs from Kantian ethics. Discourse ethics “replaces the Kantian categorical imperative by a procedural of moral argumentation” (Habermas, 1990, p.197). In discourse ethics, to will autonomously as the procedure of moral argumentation in Kant is replaced by autonomous ethicalmoral argumentation and the public use of reason in practical discourses—that is, in ethical-moral argumentation —by autonomous participants guided by the communicative rationality. “As McCarthy puts it, ‘the emphasis shifts from what each can will without contradiction to be a universal law to what all can will in agreement to be a universal norm’.”(Outwaite, 2009, p.52; McCarthy, 1978, p.326) With this change, participants in discourses—that is, ethical-moral argumentations—do not wear a veil of ignorance, to borrow a phrase from John Rawls, but participate in discourses as who they are and what they are to join the discussion, debate, negotiation, and construction of norms. They must follow common rules, e.g., the universal pragmatics and the four norms of communicative rationality, but they participate discourses for themselves and for others. That is to say, while Kantian formalism suppress the concrete, the different, and the particular of a person, discursive formalism tolerates—that is, recognizes, respects, includes, and accommondates—the concrete, the different, and the particular of persons. Finally, both Kantian ethics and discourse ethics are universalist. Both ethics adhere to the ideal of modernity about the rule of universal reason, universal laws, and universal norms in the ethical-moral life. “An ethics is termed universalist when it alleges that this (or a similar) moral principle, far from reflecting the institution of

72

3  Discourse Ethics

a particular culture or epoch, is valid universally.”(Habermas, 1990, p.202) As Simon Caney puts it, “moral universalism … maintains that there are some moral values that are valid across the world.”(Caney, 2005, p.26) Moral universalism maintains that there are universal moral norms, standards, and principles; there is universal basis of justification of moral norms in moral discourses. In this context, for the purpose of present study, we should take moral universalism and ethical universalism to signify the same doctrine. Discourse ethics is universalist. It emphasizes acts only on those norms that are universally recognized to be valid, and thus valid moral norms must have universal acceptability. That being said, unlike Kantian ethics, discourse ethics does not entertain abstract universalism. By definition, abstract universalism is the doctrine that sees only the universal, not the particular, seeing not that the universal and the particular entail one another. As discussed later on, discourse ethics draws from Hegelian ethics and sees the universal and the particular be inseparable, seeing that the universal and the particular entail one another. In ethical terms, the concepts of duty and obligations are not separable from the concepts of happiness, good life, communal bond and solidarity. With regard to ethical orientation, abstract universalism starts with the concept of individual invincibility, while discourse ethics starts with the moral intuition into the vulnerability of the individual. In discourse ethics, a moral agent is necessarily situated in a concrete, particular communicative contexts and his/her moral and performative competence necessarily presupposes his/her ability to think, communicate, and choose as concrete, not abstract, agent. As McCarthy indicates, “With Hegel and against Kant, Habermas regards moral action as essentially communicative, a relation between subjects who are ‘involved in a complex of interactions as their formative process.’…The moral subject, the subject of praxis, is inconceivable in abstraction from communicative relations with others.”(McCarthy, 1978, p.35) In discourse ethics, a moral agent has ethical self-understanding. Thus, Habermas claims that a strength of discourse ethics is that in its ethical deliberation, an agent constellates the ethical question of selfunderstanding and the moral question of normative justification into one question. Discourse ethics avoids Kantian abstract universalism. Kantian abstract universalism sees moral duty and obligation to be deprived of particular, concrete contents of good and values, and that sees duty and obligation of justice not to be associated with communal solidarity and the particular, concrete ethical concept of good life of particular form of life. Outwaite points out: Habermas makes two related claims of his discourse ethics. First, he maintains that it expresses our moral intuition, at least as these bear on the process of discursive justification of norms. Secondly, this focus on normative consensus as opposed to abstract universalizability means that a discourse ethic, unlike Kant’s, can go beyond a pure concept of justice to include ‘those structural aspects of the “good life” which can be separated from the concrete totality of particular forms of life in terms of universal principles (Gesichtspunkte) of all communicative socialization (Outwaite, 2009, p.203).

Thus, discourse ethics is a universalist ethics, but not one of abstract universalism. It emphasizes the universal, but also insists that the universal and the particular are associated. It distinguishes between justice and solidarity, but also recognizes

1  The Nature and Feature of Discourse Ethics

73

that ethics or morality concerns with both, not merely one of the two alone. It draws insights from “Hegel’s critique of the abstraction of Kant’s moral theory.”(Ibid, p.53) It also develops Hegel’s insights by correlating the idea of justice and the idea of solidarity, what is right and what is good, as well as normative justification and ethical self-clarification/understanding. A possible objection to discourse ethics and discursive universalism, as it is to Kantian ethics, is the concern that discourse ethics entertains the ideal of impartiality that is totalitarian. Iris Young argues, “the ideal is impartiality suggests that all moral situations should be treated according to the same rules. By claiming to provide a standpoint which all subjects can adopt, it denies the difference between subjects.”(Young, 1990, p.10) Discourse ethics in general, discursive universalism in particular, entertains the ideal of impartiality. But the ideal of impartiality which discourse ethics and discursive universalism entertains does justice to the different, the concrete, and the particular. The universal pragmatics in discourses where norms of action will be established ensures the sensibility to and inclusion of the different, the concrete, and the particular. That discursive universalism does not suppress differences and is not totalitarian can be understood as follows. First, it does not suppress the concrete, particular voices of participants or the concrete, particular identities of participants in discourses. Participants in discourse do not wear the veil of ignorance. In Kantian universalism, an agent is expected to think, choose, and act as an abstract, universal person. But in discursive universalism ethics, an agent is to think, choose, and act as concrete, particular person. Second, universalism in discourse ethics emphasizes that all participants in practical discourse, regardless of their identities, are equal, free, and autonomous; they have rights and freedom to say what they want to say and ask what they want to ask, and want what they want; common rules govern the procedure of discussion, debate, negotiation and joint construction of norms, but do not dictate or constitute the basis for a participant’s view, interest, desire, and demand, just as a traffic light on the street controls how traffic in this section will flow, not determine who and what a driver is, and where s/he should go or is going. Third, discursive universalism emphasizes that when we apply norms and principles in specific contexts, we must do justice to the contexts in which norms and principles are acted on. That is to say, the application of norm must do justice to concrete contexts and situations. Thus, the ideal of discursive impartiality is not that “all moral situations should be treated in according to the same rules”. Instead, it is that (a) all same moral situations, and all other relevant conditions equal, should be treated in according to the same rules; (b) under different conditions, and in different moral situations, a same rule should have different applications, and it may fit in some contexts and not fit in different contexts. In addition to what is said above, discourse ethics is a form of doing-centered ethics, not a form of being-centered ethics. By doing-centered ethics, I refer to the form of ethical doctrine that focuses exclusively on the concern of what kind of acts can be counted as ethical and moral and what kind of act we ought to perform or ought to abstain from performance; it focuses on rules that regulate activities, not on what qualities or identifies that a person should have. In doing-centered ethics, the

74

3  Discourse Ethics

question of what kind of person we ought to be is not asked or relevant to the question of what kind of act we ought to perform, and does not have any bearing on the ethical-moral deliberation of acceptability, and rightness of an act. In comparison, being-centered ethics is the form of ethics that focuses on the concern of what kind of being can be counted as ethical, moral, worthy having; that conceives the normative basis for justification of performance or abstaining from performance of a given act on the ground of what kind of ethical-moral being an agent ought to be. By this token, discourse ethics is a form of doing-centered ethics. This returns us back to the concept of practical discourse—a central concept in discourse ethics. According to Habermas, a discourse is a form of argumentation in speech act. Meanwhile, he uses the terms “practical discourse” and “moral argumentation” interchangeably. That is to say, the concept of practical discourse is actually used in a very restricted sense and it refers to moral discourse or moral argumentation. It refers to one particular kind of discourse, not just any form of discourse. As Outwaite notes, “discourses are themselves of various types: hermeneutic discourses concern questions of interpretation; theoretical-empirical discourses concern ‘the validity of empirical claims and explanations’, and practical discourses concern the application of methodological or other standards.”(Outwaite, 2009, p.41) Also, in terms of discipline division, there are religious, literary, linguistic, philosophical, social-political, legal, and sociological discourses. In discourse ethics, practical discourse is the kind of ethical-moral argumentation wherein moral norms and principles are rationally explored, discussed, debated, negotiated, and developed. Practical discourse is featured by the public use of human reason in the public sphere. The emphasis on practical discourse is an emphasis on the rule of reason (through the public use of reason) and the universality and validity of norms, principles, and standards of the ethical-moral life. Thus, practical discourse represents a reflective form of communication. Its participants are free, equal, concrete, particular, autonomous persons who are culturally embedded. In practical discourse, a participant not only should think, choose, and act not only as a human being, but also as a particular, e.g., a particular nation’s citizen (e.g., an American, a Chinese, a German, a British, or an Russian, etc.), a non-religious person or a person of particular religion, a person of particular ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and political persuasion, and a particular individual. The starting point of practical discourse is not that all participants are the same kind of persons or the public in practical discourse is homogeneous. Instead, it is that they all follow common rules of practical discourse, e.g., the universal pragmatics, the four norms of communicative rationality, just as all persons in city life must follow traffic lights on the street and drive in the designated road lanes in the city. The objective of discourse is not to turn different participants into a homogeneous public. Instead, it is to establish rules and norms to regulate activities of a heterogeneous public. In discourse ethics, “practical discourse, or moral argumentation, serves as a warrant of insightful will formation, insuring that the interests of individuals are given their due without cutting the social bonds that intersubjective unite them.”(Habermas, 1990, p.202) While discourse ethics emphasizes normative

1  The Nature and Feature of Discourse Ethics

75

justification of norms from the moral point of view, it simultaneously allows ethical self-understanding and self-clarification to have a voice in moral argumentations. Correspondingly, in its principle of justification, discourse ethics recognizes the Janus Face of reason: the validity of the claim of reason is universal and contenttranscendent; the rise of the valid claim of reason is always in given context—that is to say, in given space and time—and the valid claim of reason is always first de facto recognized in given space and time (Habermas, 1993b, p.322). Finally, to appreciate what is said about discourse ethics above, we should recall Habermas’s concept of ethics itself. With regard to the traditional form of ethics as exemplified in Platonic or Aristotelian ethics, Habermas says: “Ethics” at one time meant the doctrine of “correct life”. … As long as philosophy still believed itself capable of comprehending nature and history as a whole, it could fall back on a supposedly stable framework to which life, both individual and communal, had to conform. The structure of the cosmos and of human nature, the stages of world history and of history of salvation supplied normatively imbued “fact” which seemed to offer insight into the correct conduct of life. “Correct” here had the exemplary meaning of a model of individual and communal political life worthy of emulation (Habermas, 2008, p.20).

For Habermas, ethics is still about the good, happy, and worthy life. That being said, since the philosophy of subject should be overcome and replaced by the philosophy of intersubjectivity, the idea that the concept and criteria of a good, worthy life can, and should, be found in a subject-centered reason and philosophy of subject should be replaced by an intersubjective concept of the good, happy and worthy life. The concept and criteria of a good, happy, and worthy life can be, and should be, developed only in practical discourses and through the public use of reason. For Habermas, in a plausible ethical doctrine, the matter of ethical self-understanding and the matter of normative justification are not separated. A serious problem and flaw of some ethical doctrines today is the separation of these two. Thus, Habermas says: Moral, legal, and political theories pay high price for their division of labor with an ‘ethics’ which henceforth focuses exclusively on the form of processes of existential self-understanding. They dissolve the connection that first lends moral judgments their capacity to motivate actors to act in the right way. Moral insights bind the will effectively only when they are embedded in an ethical self-understanding which harnesses the concern for one’s own welfare on behalf of the interest in justice. However well deontological theories may explain how moral norms should be justified and applied, they cannot answer the question as to why we should act in morally in the first place (Ibid, pp.21-22).

Thus, Habermas asserts that a distinctive strength of discourse ethics is that it correlates “discourses of self-understanding and discourses of normative justification.”(Habermas, 1998b, pp.34–35) A strength of discourse ethics is its successful correlation of the concept of duty and the concept of good, value, and happiness. In summary, discourse ethics purports to be a form of modern ethics in line with the spirit of our time and with the ideal of modernity. It purports to to ground the ethical-moral life in the rule of human reason. It applies the discourse doctrine of modernity to ethics and morality, providing a new basis of normative justification of

76

3  Discourse Ethics

moral norms which serve as the basis of general regulation of human conducts. It is a deontological, cognitivist, formalist, and universalist ethics. It correlates the question of ethical self-clarification and understanding with the question of normative justification. It synthesizes Kant’s and Hegel’s ethical insights and thus supersedes both of them.

2  Obligation and Values A distinctive strength of discourse ethics is its successful correlation of discourses of self-understanding and discourses of normative justification, discourses of justice and discourses of solidarity, discourses of a good, happy and worthy life and discourses of norms of duty and obligation. Thus, in discourse ethics, we cannot talk about a good, happy, and worthy life today without mentioning duty and obligation and we cannot talk about what is good without mentioning what is right, as well as what is right without mentioning duty and obligation. Value indicates what is good. Duty and obligation dictate what is right within a just society. Noteworthy, the ideas of duty and obligation, as well as the idea of universal human values, are constitutive of the spirit of our epoch. Correspondingly, the emphasis both on duty and obligation and universal human values in the ethical-moral life is constitutive of modernity in our epoch. Discourse ethics emphasizes both duty/obligation and universal human values. It also respects and accommondates particular concepts of values from ethical perspectives and of particular, concrete groups of people in practical discourse, that is, moral argumentation. It emphasizes inclusion of particular concepts of values from ethical perspectives of particular, concrete groups of people in practical discourse, that is, moral argumentation wherein valid norms of action are discussed, negotiated and developed. In discourse ethics, as it is in Kantian ethics, duty is the commandment to do the right thing for the sake of right thing itself. It is generally expressed in the form, “Do X, because X is right, not because of something else, and doing X is doing the right thing.” Thus, for example, the duty to serve justice is generally expressed as “Serving justice, no matter what one wants or even if the sky will fall.” Meanwhile, obligation is the commandment to give due to what we owe to others and ourselves, including that which we owe to others and ourselves to do the right things. Universal human values, by definition, are values that are universal to all human beings and values of all human beings, e.g., autonomy, freedom, human dignity and so on. Particular values, by definition, refers to values that are of particular, concrete groups of peoples. In discourse ethics, our judgment of duty and obligation expresses our intersubjective recognition of the moral truths, validity and legitimacy of those moral norms that bind us. Our sense of duty and obligation is grounded in our intersubjective reason. Norms of duty and obligations are established through the public use of reason in practical discourses in the public sphere. Where moral norms have binding

2  Obligation and Values

77

forces, there exists the intersubjective understanding of the truths, validity, and legitimacy of those norms. Thus, Habermas claims: “Obligation” presupposes the intersubjective recognition of moral norms or customary practices that lay down for a community in a convincing manner what actors are obliged to do and what they can expect from one another. ‘In a convincing manner’ means that the members of a moral community appeal to these norms whenever the coordination of action breaks down (Ibid, pp.3-4).

Here, “the key concept of obligation refers not only to the content of moral injunctions but in addition to the peculiar character of moral validity (sollgeltung), which is also reflected in the feeling of being obliged.”(Ibid, p.4) The feeling of ethical-moral obligation is grounded in our ethical-moral understanding of moral truth. Our intersubjective recognition of moral truth leads us to feel that we owe to others, ourselves, and the moral community to act or abstain from action. Notwithstanding, as Habermas sees it, the feeling of being obliged has three elements: 1. From a third-person perspective, transgression arouses the feelings of “abhorrence, indignation and contempt”; 2. From a second-person perspective—that is, the perspective of those affected, transgression brings the feelings of “violations and resentment toward second persons”; 3. From a first-person perspective, transgression arouses feelings of shame and guilt (Ibid). In discourse ethics, moral obligation is the commandment to give due to what we owe to others, to ourselves, as well as to the community in which we extend our lives together with others under the rule of law. It is the moral commandment to act or abstain from action based on the intersubjective recognition of the validity, acceptability, and truths of moral norms. Thus, a sense of moral obligation is accompanied by the understanding of giving due to what one owes from a first-person-, a second-person-, and a third-person-perspective. The first person perspective is from the self and self-understanding. It is the perspective of an agent as an equal, autonomous agent. Meanwhile, constitutive to this first-person perspective is the perspective of the agent as a member of the We, e.g., a group or a community, the self as the modified We. Habermas says: Ethical questions arise from the first person perspective. Seen from the first person plural point of view, they refer to a shared ethos: what is at issue is how we understand ourselves as members of our community, how we should orient our lives, or what is best for us in long run and all things considered. Similar questions arise from the first person perspective: who I am and who I would like to be, or how I should lead my life (Ibid, p.26).

The first person perspective is important and indispensable for the ethical life. That being said, for Habermas, the first-person perspective alone cannot account adequately for moral duties and obligation, amid it can account for values and motivation.

78

3  Discourse Ethics

The first perspective should be joined with the second- and the third-person perspective. Habermas says: “There is one kind of ethical consideration that directly connects important and deliberative priority, and this is obligation. “But as long as duties are view solely from the ethical point of view, an absolute priority of the right over the good, which alone would be commensurate with the categorical validity of moral duties, cannot be maintained: “These kinds of obligations very often command the highest deliberative priority (Ibid, p.28).

In moral obligation, the claim of what is right and the claim of rights have the priority over the claim of good. In the first-person perspective, the good has the priority to and defines what is right and has priority over the claim of what is right. Thus, to have an adequate account of obligation, the second, and the third-person perspective must be brought into play in ethical-moral deliberation. The normative justification of moral norms is not grounded in a subject-centered reason, but in the public, intersubjective use of human reason. It is grounded in an intersubjectivity, not a subjectivity, human or divine alike. The discursive perspective in ethics constellates the first-, the second-, and the third-person perspective. The discursive concept of obligation is obligation from the first-, the second- and the third-person joint perspective. The moral is that a universal perspective is an intersubjective perspective rising from the fusion of the first-, the second-, and the third-person perspective; it is sensitive to the particular, the different, and the concrete, amid it transcends beyond the particular, the different, and the concrete. Discourse ethics emphasizes both obligation (verpflichtungen) and value-orientation (Wertorientierungen). Notwithstanding, obligation and value are different. As Habermas says, “we judge value-orientations and the evaluative self-understanding of persons or groups from the ethical point of views, where we judge duties, norms and categorical imperatives from the moral point of view.”(Ibid, p.26) Habermas summarizes the differences between obligations and values as follows. First, the force of obligation is compulsory and mandatory, not advisory. In comparison, the force of value is attraction and advisory, not compulsory. This discursive conception of the distinction between obligation and value is at home with what Christine Korsgaard says: Obligation differs from excellence in an important way. When we seek excellence, the force that value exerts upon us is attractive; when we are obligated, it is compulsive. For obligation is the imposition of value on a reluctant, recalcitrant, resistant matter. Obligation is the compulsive power of form (Korsgaard, 1996, p.4).

Obligation mandates us to perform an act or to abstain from an action. Value advises and pursues us to act or abstain from action. Thus, it is my obligation to serve my country in the time of need. My obligation to serve my country in the time of need is compulsory. It mandates, not just advises. It is for my true happiness that I should try to have a true lover and to love truly. Thus, I am advised to have a true lover and to love truly. Second, the force of obligation is absolute, unconditional. Obligation is not negotiable. The force of value is relative, and conditional. Obligation commands unconditionally. An obligation mandates giving due to what is right and what we

2  Obligation and Values

79

owe to each other. It is not grounded merely in the choice of will. It is also grounded in an intersubjective recognition beyond even the enlightened, knowledgeable choice of the enlightened will. In discourse ethics, the concept of obligation rises through moral deliberation from the first-, the second-, and the third-perspective. Third, obligation mandates giving due to “the inviolability of the individual”, “equal respect for the dignity of each individual” and rights (Habermas, 1990, p.200). The concept of obligation brings into prominence the ideas of rights, dignity, equality, and respect. In comparison, values advise giving due to solidarity and “the web of intersubjective relation of mutual recognition by which these individuals survive as members of community.”(Ibid.) The concept of value is about solidarity, interpersonal relation and communal membership. Obligation mandates “equal respect and equal rights for the individual.”(Ibid.) Value advises “empathy and concern for the well-being of one’s neighbor. Obligation underscores the subjective freedom of inalienable individuality. Value underscores the well-being of associated members a community who intersubjectively share the same lifeworld.” (Ibid). That being said, in discourse ethics, both our concept of obligation and our concept of value are deeply rooted in our intersubjective understandings of humanity and ourselves. Both our concept of obligation and our concept of value, as well as our concepts of ethics and morality in general, are understanding-mediated. The intersubjective understanding that grounds our concept of obligation and our concept of value includes first of all our intersubjective understanding of the indispensability of both justice and solidarity within a human community. And our intersubjective understanding of the indispensability of justice and solidarity within a human community is rooted in the following shared cognitions. First, the shared understanding of the vulnerability of human beings orients us to the moral sensibility of justice and solidarity. Our concept of obligation of justice and our concept of value of solidarity originate from the cognition of the vulnerability of human beings who are individualized in socialization. Habermas claims: Morality is tailored to suit the fragility of human beings individuated in socialization. Second, our concept of obligation presupposes the intersubjective understanding that in a given circumstance, making the otherwise choice is not an alternative, at least not an acceptable alternative. Meanwhile, our concept of value presupposes the intersubjective understanding that in a given circumstance, making the otherwise choice is a bad alternative. Here, “moral consciousness depends on a particular self-understanding of moral persons who recognize that they belong to the moral community.”(Habermas, 1998b, p.29) Third, meanwhile, “ethical insights influence how we orient our lives through the interpretation of our self-understanding.”(Ibid, p.27) Also, in moral judgment, “when we know what it is morally right for us to do, we know that there are no good (epistemic) reasons to act otherwise.”(Ibid, p.35) Therefore, in discourse ethics, the concept of obligation and the concept of value butter one another in ethics and morality. Both concepts are emphasized as the basis of moral action, as well as both the concept of justice and the concept of solidarity as the basis of moral deliberation. Discourse ethics thus correlates the ethical question of self-understanding and the moral question of normative justification into

80

3  Discourse Ethics

one. It integrates the concept of a good, worthy and happy life with the concept of duty and obligation, and the concern of individual autonomy with the concern of communal bond. It emphasizes the intersubjective validity of our claims on obligation and our claims on value.

3  The Discourse Principle Discourse ethics draws importantly from Kantian ethics, but supersedes the latter by synthesizing insights from both Kantian ethics and Hegelian ethics. Most importantly, it “replaces the Kantian categorical imperative by a procedural of moral argumentation”. It also moves from Kant’s grounding morality in a subject-centered practical reason to discursively grounding morality in human reason as an intersubjective reason. At its core are its three central tenets as follows: 1. The principle of acceptability: An act is acceptable if it confirms to norms that can be claimed to be universally valid by all participants in a practical discourse; 2. The discourse principle: only those norms may claim to be valid that could meet with the consent of all affected in their roles as participants in a practical discourse; 3. Principle of universalization: A norm is valid when the foreseeable consequences and side effects of its general observance for the interests and valueorientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion. The three principles do not prescribe which concrete or particular norms are, and should be, norms of action. Instead, they prescribe how norms of action should be established and what formal conditions they must meet if they are to be norms of action. They dictate the forms of norms of action. They are importantly related to one another and together constitute the foundation of discourse ethics. Equally crucial, they together underscore the aspiration of discourse ethics for the rule of reason and universal norms in the ethical-moral life. The principle of acceptability is the starting point. The principle dictates that acceptability is one of the three moments of the formal form of a moral norm. It prescribes what a formal condition a norm of action must meet to be acceptable. It is one stone for two birds here. On the one hand, it introduces the distinction between an act that is rationally, ethically-morally acceptable and an act is merely accepted. The emphasis is that an act should be rationally, ethically-morally acceptable, not merely accepted, if it is morally praiseworthy. On the other hand, the principle indicates that the normative basis for the acceptability of an act is its universal validity to all participants in practical discourse. Again, a practical discourse is a form argumentation of speech act. Here, it refers mainly to the form of moral argumentation. The emphasis on the acceptability of a norm in terms of universal validity underscores the deliberate, cognitivist nature of discourse ethics. It also exemplifies the deontological nature of discourse ethics. It explains the obligatory nature of

3  The Discourse Principle

81

morality by grounding it in universal valid norms and their mandating forces. It explains the moral worthiness of an act in terms of its confirmation to those universally binding moral norms of duty and obligation and claims the binding force of those universal norms of morality in terms of their “categorical validity claim” (Ibid, p.28). It exhibits the emphasis of modernity on the rule of reason in the ethical-moral life. The discourse principle is of the source of the universal validity of those binding moral norms. It prescribes a formal condition which a norm of action must meet in order to be valid. “Just those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree as participants in rational discourses.” (Habermas, 1998a, p.107) The phrase “those affected” refers to those “whose interests are touched by the foreseeable consequences of a general practice regulated by the normative issue.” (Ibid) Here, for the sake of understanding, we can take William Rehg’s illuminating reading of the affected parties in (D) for moral discourse as follows: “One is affected by a moral norm Nm if (a) one’s social role falls under the requirements set by Nm, or (b)one’s pursuit of goods would be governed or affected by Nm.”(Rehg, 2011, p.124) Meanwhile, “‘Rational discourse’ should include any attempt to reach an understanding over problematic validity claims insofar as this takes place under conditions of communication that enable the free processing of topics and contributions, information and reasons in the public space constituted by illocutionary obligations.” (Habermas, 1998a, pp.107–108) The concept of rational discourse, the concept of practical discourse, and the concept of moral discourse are interchangeable here. They all refer to a form of critical, reflective argumentation of a speech act in public discussions, debates, and exchanges of ideas. Rational discourse is thus the mechanism through which universally valid moral norms are established. By this token, As Rehg puts it, the discourse principle can be rephrased as follows: “A moral norm Nm is justifiable on the basis of good reasons only if all those (a) whose social role falls under the requirement set by Nm, or (b) whose pursuit of goods would be governed or affected by Nm could accept Nm in a reasonable discourse about it.” (Ibid) And all those (a) whose social role falls under the requirement set by Nm, or (b) whose pursuit of goods would be governed or affected by Nm can accept Nm in a practical discourse about it only if Nm is rationally acceptable or has rational acceptability to them. By this token, according to the discourse principle, universally valid moral norms come from the informed, deliberative, voluntary, and intersubjective consents of all affected persons in their roles as participants in a practical discourse. That is to say, the legislators who establish moral norms are all affected persons in their roles as participants in practical discourses, not any divine authorities, nature itself, or only members of a particular cultural, political class of a community. And all affected persons in their roles as participants in practical discourses establish moral norms through moral deliberation in practical discourses wherein deliberation is the medium for the establishment of universally valid moral norms and principles. The consents of all affected persons in their roles as participants in a practical discourse are informed, deliberative, free of internal and external coercion, and

82

3  Discourse Ethics

intersubjective. “Only those affected can themselves clarify, from the perspective of participants in practical deliberation, what is equally good for all.”(Habermas, 1998b, p.30) “A law is valid in the moral sense when it could be accepted by everybody from the perspective of each individual.”(Ibid, p.31) Here, Kant’s subject-centered reason is replaced by human reason as intersubjective reason, and individual persons’ individual, full exercise of their human reason is replaced by the public use of reason by all participants in practical discourses. The replacement underscores Habermas’s emphasis on public deliberation “as the only possible resource for a standpoint of impartial justification of moral questions.”(Ibid, p.41) Here, “the ‘acceptance’ (Zustimmung) achieved under conditions of rational discourse signifies an agreement (Einverständis) motivated by epistemic reasons; it should not be understood as a contract (Vereinbarung) that is rationally motivated from the egocentric perspective of each participant.”(Ibid, p.42) By this token, the discourse principle “specifies the condition that valid norms would fulfill if they could be justified.” (Ibid) Here, a fine distinction exists between the discourse principle and the moral principle in discourse ethics. The discourse principle is a principle of justification of norms of action. It is about what a formal condition a norm of action must meet in order to be a valid norm. Or it is about the source of the validity of moral norms. The moral principle is the principle of how appropriately to apply specific moral norms and principles in particular cases and contexts. Habermas points out that “the discourse principle is only intended to explain the point of view from which norms of action can be impartially justified.”(Habermas, 1998a, pp.108–109) Meanwhile, “for the application of moral norms to particular case, the universalization principle is replaced by a principle of appropriateness.”(Ibid, p.109) The principle of appropriateness is the moral principle. In short, the discourse principle is about the condition under which moral norms are justified. The moral principle is about how to apply universal norms in particular cases and circumstances. The principle of universalization establishes the rule of argumentation or practical discourse specifying how moral norms can be justified. It prescribes both what is the formal condition which a norms of action must meet—that is, universality— and how such a formal condition should be met. It underscores the emphasis of modernity on the rule of reason and on the universal. Such a rule of argumentation is needed for the operation of the discourse principle. Three aspects of the universality principle are crucial here. First, “the phrase ‘interest and value-orientations’ points to the role played by the pragmatic and ethical reasons of the individual participants in practical discourse.”(Habermas, 1998b, p.42) The qualification which the phrase makes is intended to “prevent the marginalization of the self-understanding and worldviews of particular individuals or groups and, in general, to foster a hermeneutic sensitivity to a sufficiently broad spectrum of contributions.”(Ibid) The qualification indicates that in practical discourse, the role of an individual as a participant does not prevent the individual person from thinking, choosing, and acting as who and what s/he is. Occupying this role does not require one to wear a veil of ignorance to deprive oneself of one’s self-knowledge and self-understanding. It requires only

3  The Discourse Principle

83

that one follows the universal pragmatics and communicative rationality in practical discourse, just as a driver is required to follow traffic lights in a city life. The focus of the requirement is inclusion, that is, “access to discourse is unrestricted”, and equality (Ibid, p.44). Second, it is the “generalized reciprocal perspective-talking (‘of each,’ ‘jointly by all’).”(Ibid) The requirement here is “not just empathy for, but also interpretive intervention into, the self-understanding of participants who must be willing to revise their descriptions of themselves and others.”(Ibid, pp.42–43) According to the universalization principle, in an argumentation for moral norms, ethical perspectives of all participants are included and participants are required to be competent in reciprocal perspective-talking, and thus to orient themselves into intersubjective dialogue and negotiation. Third, “the goal of ‘uncoerced joint acceptance’ specifies the respect in which reasons presented in the discourse cast off their agent-relative meaning and take on an epistemic meaning from the standpoint of symmetrical consideration.”(Ibid, p.43) Here, “the practice of argumentation sets in motion a cooperative competition for the better argument, where the orientation to the goal of a communicatively agreement unites the participants from the outset.”(Ibid, p.44) With regard to the universalization principle, possible concern and objection may be that the process of universalization may screen out morally relevant particularies of concrete situations and persons. Thus, for example, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy reads: “Some feminist proponents of an ‘ethics of care’ have worried that Habermas’s neo-Kantian model of universalization screens out morally relevant particularities of concrete situations and persons (Young, 1990; Benhabib, 1992, chap. 5).” Such a concern and objection can be eased by and find comfort in the following. In Habermas’s vision, universalization is a process that is inclusive and accommodating of all participants of concrete, particular identities, interests, desires, concerns, ideas of values, and happiness, and aspirations, who do not wear what John Rawls calls “the veil of ignorance” but have full knowledge of who they are and what they want, and wherein all participants are equal, free, and autonomous to have their voices heard in the discussions, debates, and argumentations of norms and principles. The universalization process is intended to prevent the marginalization of the self-understanding and worldviews of particular individuals or groups. Correspondingly, as mentioned above, in the universalization process, ethical perspectives of all participants are included and participants are required to be competent in reciprocal perspective-talking, and thus to orient themselves into intersubjective dialogue and negotiation. Universality is not established by abstraction and elimination of the particular and the concrete, but by the fusion of the horizons of different particularies, and various concrete. That is to say, the universalization process is not a process of abstraction, but a process of constellation and bridging. It is not a process of oppression and exclusion, but a process of inclusion and of reaching mutual understanding. It is not a closed-door process, but an open door process. It is not a process in a private sphere, but a process in the public sphere. It is not a process wherein the stronger imperialistically impose their norms and principles on

84

3  Discourse Ethics

the weaker, but a process wherein the equal, free, and autonomous negotiate, articulate, and construct their common way. Moreover, the universalization process has also both acceptability principle and the discourse principle in operation. Both principles “prevent the marginalization of the self-understanding and worldviews of particular individuals or groups”. Both principles associate legitimacy of norms and maxims of action with their acceptability and validity, and their being reasonably and rationally consented to and accepted by all participants in practical discourses in the ethical life. Equally crucial, the universalization process wherein norms and maxims of action are established aim to serve both justice and solidarity. Furthermore, participants in practical discourses engaging in the universalization process listen to the voice of communicative reason and follow communicative rationality, not a subject-centered reason that is the power of key-holder and doorkeeper to exclude and deny entrance. The universalization process proceeds in accordance with communicative reason and communicative rationality. Differing from the subject-centered reason, communicative reason and communicative rationality is essentially sensitive to the particular, the concrete, and the different. Equally crucial, the universalization process is featured by its being structured by the four pragmatic presuppositions of the universal pragmatics. Thus, as Habermas indicates, “in virtue of (i) the public character and the inclusion of all concerned and (ii) the equal communicative rights of all participants, only reasons that give equal weight to the interests and evaluative orientations of everybody can influence the outcome of practical discourses.”(Habermas, 1998b, p.44) Finally, when norms are applied to practice in given contexts, their applications must do justice contexts. Habermas (1993b) indicates that a distinction exists between the process of justification of norms and the process of application of norms, amid the justification issue and application are importantly associated. The universalization process is mainly about the process of justification. The process of justification is to demonstrate the validity of norms from the intersubjective perspective of all participants in practical discourse and on the basis of intersubjectively acceptable and accepted reasons and shared understanding. The process of application is to apply valid norms to particular contexts and situations in practice. It is to match norms and contexts in practice. By this token, the universalization principle will not do injustice to the concrete, the different and the particular in application of norms. Thus, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy points out, To bring such strong idealizations down to earth, one must connect them with conscientious judgment in everyday moral practice. One way to do this is through an account of the appropriate application of moral rules in concrete circumstances. In response to ethics-of-care objections (and following Günther 1993), Habermas has acknowledged the need for such an account (Habermas, 1993a, 35–39). In moral discourses of application, one must test alternative normative interpretations of the particular situation for their acceptability before the limited audience of those immediately involved, on the assumption that one is applying valid general norms.

3  The Discourse Principle

85

The universalization principles not only allows that in the process of universazalition, voices of the particular and the concrete are heard, registered and counted, but also allows that different contexts and moral situations have important says on applications of moral norms and principles. Young and others are misgiving about the universalization principle, assuming that the principle emphasizes only impartiality, and “impartiality suggests that all moral situations should be treated according to the same rules.”(Young, 1990, p.10) But the universalization principle does not emphasize the kind of impartiality which Young resists. Instead, it mandates that different moral situations should be treated in accordance with different rules while a same moral situation, in same contexts and under same conditions, should be treated in accordance with the same rule. The universalization principle is about the process of how to establish a universally valid norm, not about to the process of application of moral norms in contexts. To Young and others’ concern about the impartiality trap, William Rehg observation is suggestive. Rehg points out, Like Kant, Habermas identifies the “moral point of view” with an impartial perspective. Unlike Kant, However, Habermas does not associate impartiality with a realm of freedom that lies beyond, or abstracts from, empirical differences among persons: their particular interests, inclinations and circumstances. Rather, (U) makes explicit provision for a process of perspective-taking in which participants take account of the consequences, interests, needs, particular values at stake for each affected party (person or subgroup). Justifying a norm thus requires a joint acceptance of the foreseeable impacts of the norm on each party’s pursuit of goods. Impartiality is achieved precisely by developing arguments that forge common ground among differences, transforming interests and values into reasons that make claim on all persons and thus deserve consideration (Rehg, 2011, p.121).

As Rehg argues above, the universalization principle is in effect sensitive to the particular, the concrete, and the different. In the principle, “Impartiality is achieved precisely by developing arguments that forge common ground among differences, transforming interests and values into reasons that make claim on all persons and thus deserve consideration.” Another possible concern and objection is this. As Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy reads: Whether or not the argument for (U) goes through, Habermas's discourse ethics depends on some very strong assumptions about the capacity of persons for moral dialogue. Given that his discourse theory in general, and thus (U) in particular, rests on counterfactual idealizations, one might be tempted to regard (U) as a hypothetical thought experiment, analogous to what we find in other neo-Kantian or contractualism theories like those of John Rawls and T. M. Scanlon. To some extent this is correct: to regard a moral norm as valid, one must presume it would hold up in a fully inclusive and reasonable discourse. But Habermas takes a further step, insisting that (U) is a principle of real discourse: an individual's moral judgment counts as fully reasonable only if it issues from participation in actual discourse with all those affected. Moreover, (U) requires not simply that one seek the input of others in forming one's conscience, but that one gain their reasonable agreement.

The concern and objection is more or less that Habermas may be too idealistic to have two seemly to be incompatible, antagonistic expectations in the universalization principle. To have universal agreement in practical discourse or real discourse,

86

3  Discourse Ethics

one must assume what Kant, Rawls, Scanlon and various others assume: when all persons fully exercise fully their human reason, they all will come to the same conclusion and thus they will all arrive at the same understanding and therefore have the universal consensus. However, possibility is that when all participants fully exercise their human reasons, they end up in disagreement, instead of agreement. Therefore, Habermas cannot have both that all participants exercise their human reason and all participants will consent to the same moral principle. To this concern and objection, three points of clarification are in order. First, the difference between Habermas and Kant, as well as Rawls, Scanlon and various others, is that in Habermas, it is the public use of reason in discourses in the public sphere, not just fully exercise one’s human reason individually. The public use of reason in discourses depends on “some very strong assumptions about the capacity of persons for moral dialogues”, and requires communicative and performative competence in discourses. The public use of reason can adjudicate, negotiate, bridge, and join differences and disagreements from individual exercise of individual reason. Thus, the universalization principle does not depend on a strong assumption that when all persons exercise their human reason individually to its full capacity, they will all agree on the same understanding. Instead, it depends on the assumption that when all persons publically use their human reason together with each other in practical discourses, they can negotiate, construct, and therefore establish norms that are acceptable to all of them amid their difference. Agreement among participants in practical discourses is not reached individually by each participant, but reached communicatively by all participants together in practical discourses. Second, like Kant, Rawls, Scanlon, Korsggaad (Korsgaard, 1996) and others, Habermas believes that the tendency to normativity, or what Nietzshe (1927) dubbed as the “artist cruelty”, is inherent in each person who aspires to live an ethical-moral life. The universalization process requires all participants to express, discuss, and justify what they assert and to be willing to listen to what others. The universalization principle is grounded in the assumption of persons’ willingness to speak to, debate, listen to, and engage others in order to justify what they assert. Habermas makes no bone that discourse ethics correlates the ethical question of self-understanding and the moral question of justification into one question in the ethical, moral life. Emphasizing practical discourse as the mechanism to develop moral norms, Habermas indeed subscribes to the traditional concept that the willingness to live a moral life implies the tendency to normativity. He says, “We may assume that the practice of deliberation and justification we call “argumentation” is to be found in all cultures and societies.”(Habermas, 1998b, p.43) Third, corresponding to the above, the universalization principle also depends on a strong assumption of the capacity, willingness, and altruistic attitude of persons to take views of the first-person, the second-person, and the third-person perspective all into consideration. It depends on a strong assumption of the capacity, willingness, and altruistic attitude of persons to take views of both the particular and the universal, as well as both the general and the concrete, into consideration. It thus requires liberation from the views of the merely first-person perspective, the

3  The Discourse Principle

87

perspective of the merely particular, and the perspective of the merely concrete or alternatively, from merely the second-person, and the third-person perspective, and the perspective of the merely universal. Here, a distinction exists between liberation and oppression. Liberation from X means going beyond X while not denying, marginalizing and doing violence to X. Oppression of X implies denying, marginalizing and doing violence to X. By this token, going beyond the merely first-person perspective, the perspective of the merely particular, and the perspective of the merely concrete, or alternatively going beyond the perspective of the merely the secondperson, and the perspective of the merely third-person perspective, and the perspective of the merely universal, is liberation, not oppression. Notwithstanding, the acceptability principle, the discourse principle, and the universalization principle prescribe three conditions of a legitimate moral norm: acceptability, validity, and universality. These three conditions are formal conditions of a valid moral norm. The prescription of them for a moral norm in discourse ethics epitomize the sentiment of modernity in ethics and morality. It does not oppress “normative possibilities realized but felt in a particular social reality” and ethical-moral situation (Young, 1990, p.6). It underscores the idea of the public use of reason and the emphasis on normativity in the ethical-moral life. It integrates the ideas of the rule of reason, the rule of truth, and autonomy in the ethical-moral life. It associates the concepts of validity, legitimacy, and rationality in the ethical-moral life. It constellates deliberations in terms of ethical self-understanding and deliberations in terms of moral justification. It simultaneously emphasizes autonomy and responsibility, freedom and competence, as well as choice and deliberation. Some words on the concept of argumentation or practical discourse are in order. As discussed in the previous chapter, Habermas uses the term “practical discourse” to mean a kind of argumentation of speech act. In discourse ethics, the word “argumentation” connotes the meaning of “practice of deliberation and justification” (Habermas, 1998b, p.43). It is a form of practice of deliberation and justification that purports to arrive at mutual understanding among participants in public discussions, debates, and exchanges of ideas of moral norms and ethical values. It is thus a form of critical deliberation and “a practice of justification conducted in this manner selects norms that are capable of commanding universal agreement.”(Ibid) The practice of critical deliberation secures universal consent based on epistemic reasons. The rule of argumentation prescribed by the principle of universality provides the normative basis for the operation of the discourse principle, and the acceptability principle. “Argumentation insures that all concerned in principle take part, freely and equally, in a cooperative search for truth, where nothing coerces anyone except the force of the better argument.”(Habermas, 1990, p.198) Meanwhile, “practical discourse is an enacting form of argumentative decision making.”(Ibid) It is reflective, and communicative, functioning to develop fair, impartial, and reasonable rules and principles of social cooperation, and serves as “a warrant of the rightness (or fairness) of any conceivable normative agreement.”(Ibid) Habermas points out, “Practical discourse can play this role because its idealized, partly counterfactual presuppositions are precisely those that participants in argumentation do in fact make.”(Ibid) “Discourse generalizes, abstracts, and stretches

88

3  Discourse Ethics

the presuppositions of context-bound communicative actions by extending their range to include competent subjects beyond the practical limits of their particular forms of life.”(Ibid, 202) “Practical discourse can also be viewed as a communicative process simultaneously exhorting all participants to ideal role taking. Thus, practical discourse transforms what Mead viewed as individual, privately enacted role taking into a public affair, practiced intersubjectively by all involved.”(Ibid, p.198) It constructs principles and norms, tests the validity of reasoning, and examines the truth and validity of a claim. It puts into trial the plausibility of our concepts of duty, obligation, good, happiness, autonomy, justice and solidarity. Practical discourse “represents a reflective form of communication … The normative content of the pragmatic presuppositions of argumentation is borrowed from that of communicative action, onto which discourses are superimposed.”(Ibid, p.201) The emphasis on practical discourse in discourse ethics is twofold: an emphasis on critical thinking and the public use of reason on the one hand and an emphasis on communication purported to arrive at mutual understanding on the other hand. “Practical discourse, or moral argumentation, serves as a warrant of insightful will formation, insuring that the interests of individuals are given their due without cutting the social bonds that intersubjective unite them.”(Ibid, p.202) Here, the procedural explanation which discourse ethics gives from the moral point of view “constitutes an adequate account of moral intuitions” in our ethical life (Ibid, p.199). What is a moral intuition? And why does it matter in our ethical life? “Moral intuitions are intuitions that instruct us on how best to behavior in situations where it is our power to counteract the extreme vulnerability of others by being thoughtful and considerate.”(Ibid) Moral intuitions are intuitions about the fundamental human reality. The procedural explanation which discourse ethics gives from the moral point of view accounts adequately our moral intuitions into the fundamental human reality. According to Habermas, the basic reality of humanity is as follows: human beings who “are individualized only through socialization are vulnerable and morally in need of considerateness”; human persons as competent agents and “competent subjects are constituted as individuals by growing into an intersubjectively shared lifeworld”; the more a human being “becomes individuated, the more he becomes entangled in a densely woven fabric of mutual recognition, that is, of reciprocal exposedness and vulnerability.” (Ibid) Discourse ethics conceptualizes this moral intuition about the vulnerability of all human beings who are individuated through socialization. It therefore calls for a guarantee of mutual consideration and brings into prominence that ethics and morality must carry out two tasks— building human justice and developing human solidarity—at once. This does not mean that morality is to turn autonomous individual persons into merely members of a collective community. Instead, it means that ethical-moral autonomy presupposes ethical-moral sensibility of justice and solidarity. Habermas points out:

4  The Strength of Discourse Ethics

89

Since moralities are tailored to suit the fragility of human beings individuated through socialization, they must always solve two tasks at once. They must emphasize the inviolability of the individual by postulating equal respect for the dignity of each individual. But they must also protect the web of intersubjective relation of mutual recognition by which these individuals survive as members of community. To these two complementary aspects correspond the principles of justice and solidarity respectively. The first postulates equal respect and equal rights for the individual, whereas the second postulates empathy and concern for the well-being of one’s neighbor (Ibid, p.200).

In discourse ethics, morality is concerned with both justice and solidarity. Morality “cannot protect the one without the other. It cannot protect the rights of the individual without also protecting the well-being of the community to which he belongs.”(Ibid) Thus, in discourse ethics, the moral question of normative justification is always correlated with the ethical question of self-understanding. Habermas recognizes the insight of Hegel’s criticism of Kant’s abstract universalism. Habermas says: Hegel was the first to argue that we misconceive the basic moral phenomenon if we isolate the two aspects, assigning opposite principles to each. His concept of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) is an implicit criticism of two kinds of one-sidedness, one his mirror image of the other. Hegel opposes the abstract universality of justice manifesting itself in the individualist approaches of the modern age, in rational natural right theory and in Kantian philosophy. No less vigorous in his opposition to the concrete particularism of the common good that pervades Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. The ethics of discourse picks up this basic Hegelian aspiration to redeem with Kantian means (Ibid, p.201).

Therefore, discourse ethics heels to Hegel’s aspiration that ethics and morality must be concerned both with justice and solidarity, as well as individual rights and common, communal goods. Meanwhile, it redeems the Hegelian insight by a renovation that grounds ethics and morality in the public use of each person’s practical reason. It renovates Hegelian insights into justice and communal good by providing them with a new basis of normative justification.

4  The Strength of Discourse Ethics Notwithstanding, according to Habermas, discourse ethics has its distinctive strengths. In particular, discourse ethics synthesizes insights of both Kantian ethics and Hegelian ethics. It is indebted to both, but supersedes both. Its distinctive strengths include at least as follows. Frist, “discourse ethics correlates ethical and moral questions with different forms of argumentation, namely, with discourse of self-clarification and discourse of normative justification (and application), respectively.” (Habermas, 1998b, pp.34–35) The ethical question of self-clarification is the question of how best to clarify the “ought” in terms of values, the concept of happiness, and reasons that one holds dearly or a community holds dearly and how best to clarify the “ought” from one’s ethical point of view and one’s community’s ethical point of view. The moral question of normative justification is the question of how best to justify moral claims

90

3  Discourse Ethics

and moral norms based on better arguments acceptable to all. It is about how best to justify the norms of duty and obligation from the moral points of view of acceptability, validity, and universality. While ethical questions are of the good, happy and worthy life, the vision of the good, happy and worthy life forms “the core of an individual or collective selfunderstanding.” Collective self-understanding includes what Yong refers to as group self-understanding. By this token, “Ethical questions are questions of selfidentity.”(Ibid, p.98) The question of one’s self-identity includes both the sub-division question of oneself as a distinctive individual and one’s group-membership as well as communal membership. Admittedly, ethical questions and discourses “do admit of rational criticism within certain limits.”(Ibid, pp.98–99) Still, “ethical discourses obey standards of hermeneutical reflection on what ‘is good’ for me or for us, all things considered. Ethical recommendations claim a kind of validity distinctive from both truth and moral rightness. They are measured by the authenticity of the self-understandings of individuals or collectively shared traditions.” (Ibid, p.99) In comparison, moral questions are of how best to justify certain acts to be morally right and certain moral norms and standards to be valid and legitimate. In the vision of discourse ethics, “we cannot expect ethical disputes over the value of competing lifestyles and forms of life to lead to anything other than reasonable disagreements. By contrast, we expect that moral questions of political justice admit in principle of universally valid answers.”(Ibid) Thus, discourse ethics takes into account of both justice and solidarity. The account of justice addresses those moral questions of justification, and the account of solidarity addresses those ethical questions of self-understanding. Thus, discourse ethics has the strength of giving due to both the moral and the ethical, rights and good, obligation and value, the universal and the particular, as well as the general and the concrete. That is to say, it is neither blind nor insensitive to the particular, the concrete, and the different nor blind and insensitive to the universal, general, and the common. “Discourse ethics defends a morality of equal respect and solidaristic responsibility for everybody.”(Ibid, p.39) Second, corresponding to the above, discourse ethics provides a more plausible answer to the important ethical-moral question in our epoch, “How can a common ethical-moral life among the diversity of peoples?” The answer is “communication, the public use of reason, and discourse.” Discourse ethics sets its footing on the assumption that “participants do not wish resolve their conflicts through violence, or even compromise, but through communication.”(Ibid, p.39) It teaches that development of valid norms of action that are acceptable to all through communication, moral argumentation and the public use of reason is the best viable path to have a common ethical-moral life, just as setting up traffic lights, road lanes, and driving speech limits to regulate traffics and transportation is a key to have a common city life. Third, discourse ethics locates “the moral point of view in rational discourse.”(Ibid, p.34) In it, “there is no direct route from discursively achieved consensus to action”, amid moral judgment is action intended, and moral action is judgment-mediated (Ibid). In discourse ethics, moral justification is not based merely on the

4  The Strength of Discourse Ethics

91

consequence of an action or focus only on an agent’s motivation. It takes into consideration both the consequence of an action and an agent’s intentionality and motivation. It focuses on both what is right and just and what is good. In this context, Moral judgment tells what we should do, and good reasons affect our will … But the problem of weakness of will also shows that moral insight is based on the weak force of epistemic reasons and, in contrast with pragmatic reasons, does not itself constitute a rational motive. When we know what it is morally right for us to do, we know that there are no good (epistemic) reasons to act otherwise. But that does not mean that other motives will not prevail (Ibid, p.35).

Therefore, discourse ethics gives due to both an agent’s motivation and the consequence of the agent’s action and emphasizes both the value of deliberation and the value of voluntary choice simultaneously. Fourth, a validity claim in discourse ethics bears the traces of both fallible reasons of the discovering mind and the creativity/freedom of the constructing mind (Ibid). According to Habermas, in discourse ethics, The differentiation between strict duties and less binding values, between what is morally right and what is ethically worth striving for, already sharpens moral validity into a normativity to which impartial judgment alone is adequate … “Validity” now signifies that moral norms could win agreement of all concerned, on the condition that they jointly examine in practical discourse whether a corresponding practice is in the equal interest of all … The mode of validity of moral norms now bears the traces both of the fallibility of the discovering mind and of the creativity of constructing mind (Ibid, pp.35-36).

Discourse ethics does justice both to “the constructivist meaning of moral judgment” and the “epistemic meaning of moral justification” (Ibid, p.39). It grounds the validity claims of obligation and duty, as well as on good and values, in human reason, not in the book of nature or any divine mind and power. Fifth, discourse ethics “draws a distinction between ‘justified in our context ‘and justified in every context’” (Ibid, p.37) Discourse ethics respects particular contexts on the one hand and defends the universal requirement of morality on the other hand. “The discourse-ethical model of justification consists in the derivation of the basic principle (U) from the implicit content of universal presuppositions of argumentation in conjunction with the conception of normative in general expressed in (D).”(Ibid, p.43) Therefore, discourse ethics gives due to both the contextual and the context-transcending, the particular and the universal, as well as the relative and the absolute. In summary, discourse ethics is a viable, plausible candidate to be an alternative to Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, modern consent theory, modern contractualism, and Hegelian ethics. It purports to apply the ideal of modernity in the ethical-moral life in a way that emphasizes deliberation, the public use of reason, and practical discourse. It purports to be an ethics of rights, liberty, pursuit of happiness, duty, and obligation. It purports to be critical, reflective, and in line with the spirit of our epoch. It purports to integrate the concepts of a good, worthy and happy, a dutiful life, and an examined life into one. It purports to provide a new basis of normative justification, validity, and legitimacy of ethical-moral norms of action.

92

3  Discourse Ethics

5  Kant, Scanlon and Habermas Comparisons of Kantian ethics, discourse ethics, and Thomas Scanlon’s contractualism are in order. Unlike utilitarianism, none of the three ethical doctrines is about which particular norm or principle that should be the norm of action in the ethicalmoral life. Instead, all three ethical doctrines are about what kind of norms of action can be norms of action in the ethical-moral life and what formal condition(s) which a norm of action must meet in order to be the legitimate norm of action in the ethical-moral life. Among the three ethical doctrines, Kantian ethics and contractualist ethics are doctrines of human reason as the subject-centered reason. And discourse ethics is an ethical doctrine of human reason as the intersubjective reason. Habermas acknowledges that discourse ethics is indebted to Kantian ethics, not mentioning the relationship between discourse ethics and contractualist ethics. A comparison between discourse ethics and Kantian ethics, as well as between discourse ethics and contractualism, is conceptually helpful to appreciate discourse ethics here. Discourse ethics, Kantian ethics and contractualism ethics are three outstanding ethical doctrines today. They are three modernist ethics. They all emphasize the rule of (practical) reason in the ethical-moral life, and all emphasize the universality of the basis of normative justification of moral norms and principles. They all emphasize that the ethical-moral life is rule-governed, and must live up to certain moral standards. In all three ethical doctrines, the rights, freedom, autonomy, duty and obligation of a moral agent and justice within a community are emphasized utmost. Meanwhile, the differences between Kantian ethics and discourse ethics, as well as between discourse ethics and contractualist ethics include at least two aspects: (1) difference in the foundational principle; (2) difference in the mechanism to establish the foundational principle; (3) the difference in assumptions of moral agents. To appreciate those differences between discourse ethics and Kantian ethics, as well as between discourse ethics and contractualist ethics, let us place the core principles of the three ethical doctrines in comparison as follows: 1. Kant’s categorical imperative: (a) the universality formulation: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law; (b) the humanity formulation: Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end; and (c) the autonomy formulation: the third practical principle follows [from the first two] as the ultimate condition of their harmony with practical reason: the idea of the will of every rational being as a universally legislating will. 2. Scanlon’s contractualist principle: An act is wrong if its performance under the circumstances would be disallowed by any set of principles for the general regulation of behavior that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced, general agreement (Scanlon, 1998, p.153). 3. Habermas’s principle of moral acceptability, discourse principle, and the universalization principle: (a) the principle of moral acceptability: An act is acceptable if it confirms to norms that can be claimed to be universally valid by all

5  Kant, Scanlon and Habermas

93

participants in a practical discourse; (b) the discourse principle: only those norms may claim to be valid that could meet with the consent of all affected in their roles as participants in a practical discourse; and (c) the universalization principle: A norm is valid when the foreseeable consequences and side effects of its general observance for the interests and value-orientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion. The principles of the three ethical doctrines share common points, but also differ importantly from one another. Here, we see a distinction between the principles of the discourse ethics and Kantian principle on the one hand, and a distinction between the principles of discourse ethics and the principle of contractualism on the other hand. The first thing can be said of Kantian principle and the principles of discourse ethics is that both are deontological and universalist. They all insist that one should act only on universally valid, legitimate, and rational norms. In Kant’s categorical imperative, one should act only on norms which one can will to be universal laws. One should act only on norms that mandate one to treat one’s humanity and others’ humanity to be an end in itself, not merely as a means to other ends. One should act only on norms which one’s practical reason or good will as an autonomous, free legislator gives to oneself and others, and to which by one’s practical reason or good will one autonomously and freely obeys. In Habermas’s principles, one should act only on norms that have universal validity and thus acceptability. Both Kant’s categorical imperative and Habermas’s three principles emphasize the freedom and autonomy of a moral agent in ethical-moral deliberation. In Kantian ethics, it is the freedom and autonomy of moral self-legislature. In Habermas, it is the freedom and autonomy of participation in practical discourses. In both ethics, it is emphasized that the morality of an action should be grounded in whether the action is right in accordance with universal norms, principles or laws. Moral responsibility of an agent should be about whether an agent thinks, chooses and acts in accordance with those universal principles, norms, or laws. Still, important distinctions exist between Habermas’s principles and Kant’s categorical imperative. The categorical imperative is grounded in a subject-centered human reason and the commandment of practical reason as embodied in individual consciousness. Habermas’s principles are grounded in the intersubjective reason and intersubjectivity and the commandment of practical reason as an intersubjectivity. In Kant’s categorical imperative, the universality of a maxim is determined by one’s will or practical reason. In Habermas’s universalization principle, the universality of a moral norm is determined by the public use of human reason in practical discourses. In the categorical imperative, the normative basis of justification for a maxim is the autonomous, free, and good will (practical reason). In Habermas’s universalization principle, the normative basis of justification for a moral norm is the public exercise of reason and the unforced force of human reason in moral argumentations. In Kant’s categorical imperative, the mechanism to establish the universal norms and maxims of morality is individual persons’ autonomous use of his/her practical

94

3  Discourse Ethics

reason. In Habermas’s universalization principle, the mechanism to establish universally valid moral norms is practical discourses wherein individuals publically, autonomously exercise their human reason. In the categorical imperative, one’s humanity identity is a key source of the normativity of moral deliberation. In Habermas’s universalization principle, a key source of the normativity of moral deliberation is one’s identity as a rational, reasonable participant in practical discourses in accordance with communicative rationality. In discourse ethics, one’s humanity identity plays little role in the normativity of moral deliberation. Thus, Kant’s categorical imperative depends on the assumption of persons as human beings who have a same universally rational nature. Habermas’s three principles depend on the assumption of persons as persons of communicative competence and of willingness to communicate and thus arrive at mutual understanding with each other through discussions, debates, and exchanges of ideas and wills in the public sphere. Meanwhile, the categorical imperative dictates that only if one is motivated exclusively by the concept of duty, not by any others principles, not even by the principle of happiness, one’s action can have moral worthiness. In comparison, the three principles of discourse ethics allow one to be motivated by concepts of values and happiness in addition to the concepts of duty and obligations. In the categorical imperative, the principle of happiness and the idea of value are supposed to be excluded in the dutiful motivation of a moral agent. In the three principles of discourse ethics, the principle of happiness and the idea of value are constitutive of the dutiful motivation of a moral agent. Noteworthy here, Habermas makes no bone the differences between discourse ethics and Kantian ethics. He makes no bone that the differences include a paradigm shift in thinking, world outlook, approach to morality, and the basis of normative justification of moral norms. He indicates that the differences between discourse ethics and Kantian ethics include at least the following. First, discourse ethics abolishes Kant’s dichotomy between the formal realm of duty and the empirical realm of inclination. “Discourse ethics gives up Kant’s dichotomy between an intelligible realm comprising of duty and free will and a phenomenal realm comprising inclinations, subjective motives, political and social institutions, etc.”(Habermas, 1990, p.203) In Kantian ethics, the realm of duty is separated from the realm of inclination. If one’s action has any moral worth, one’s motivation must be strictly out of the idea of duty. Thus, Kant even distinguished between action out of duty and action merely in line with duty, but not out of duty. While both kinds of action are in confirmation to duty, action merely in line with duty or action wherein one’s motivation originates from both the idea of duty and inclination has no moral worth. The division between the formal realm of duty and the empirical realm of inclination is abolished in discourse ethics. “The unbridgeable gap Kant saw between the intelligible and the empirical becomes, in discourse ethics, a mere tension manifesting itself in everyday communication as the factual force of counterfactual presuppositions.”(Ibid). Second, discourse ethic rejects Kant’s “monological approach” to the universality of moral norms wherein “individual tests his maxims of action foro interno or, as

5  Kant, Scanlon and Habermas

95

Husserl put it, in the loneliness of his soul.”(Ibid) “Kant’s transcendental consciousness simply takes for granted” its own “a priori understanding among plurality of empirical ego.”(Ibid) In comparison, “discourse ethics prefers to view shared understanding about generalizability of interests as the result of an intersubjectively mounted public discourse.”(Ibid) Discourse ethics replaces Kant’s subjective understanding of the universality of moral norms by an intersubjective understanding. It replaces the mechanism of individual good will by the mechanism of the public use of reason and moral argumentation in the procedure of establishing moral norms of action. This change of mechanism has important ramifications. It makes discourse ethics be sensitive to and inclusive of the particular, the concrete, and the different. Third, as for the normative justification of the validity claims of moral norms, discourse ethics replaces Kant’s subjective justification in individual willing by an intersubjective, public justification in practical discourses. “Discourse ethics improves Kant’s unsatisfactory handling of a specific problem of justification” in explaining “the effectiveness of the ‘ought’ is simply a matter of experience”; “discourse ethics solves this problem by deriving (U) from the universal presuppositions of argumentation.”(Ibid) Kantian ethics appeals to the transcendental deduction in justification. Discourse ethics appeals to the procedural argumentation in justification. Kantian ethics appeals to what transcendental deduction must presuppose, while discourse ethics appeals to what rational argumentation must presuppose. In summary, Kantian ethics teaches persons to be autonomous, dutiful human beings and to live a moral life in accordance with the idea of duty. Thus, the categorical imperative states the unconditional commandments of moral duty and provides the normative basis of justification of what is right in terms of maxims that state what is the dutiful commandment. In comparison, discourse ethics teaches persons to be critical, responsible, and competent citizens with good sensibility of justice and solidarity, rights and obligation, self and public good, liberty and responsibility, autonomy and communicatively performative competence, as well as aspiration and truth. The principles of discourse ethics provide the normative of justification of norms that are universally valid and acceptable. We shall now turn to the comparison between discourse ethics and Scanlon’s contractualism. The first thing which one can say here is that both ethical doctrines emphasize the universality of morality and the exercise of practical reason; both principles teach that universal norms and rules of human activities are democratically, contractually established; both principles emphasize the role of deliberation in the ethical-moral life and ground morality in rational deliberation. Noteworthy also, Scanlon puts forth his renovating version of contractualism in responding to and rejection of utilitarianism. Putting forth discourse ethics, Habermas also responds to and rejects utilitarianism as a flawed moral philosophy. The discourse principle and the principle of contractualism differ, but also share some common points. The insistence on the acceptability of ethical-moral norms in the discourse principles and the emphasis on the reasonable irrejectibility of moral rules in the principle of contractualism differ, but also share common points. Both are intended to distinguish between acceptance and acceptability of rules and norms, and thus the epistemic meaning of justification on the one hand and conceive that

96

3  Discourse Ethics

morally norms and rules are publically, contractually established on the other hand. In both discourse ethics and contractualist ethics, a system of moral rules and norms is characteristically a moral contract. The norms of such a system impose obligations. Still, differences exist between discourse ethics and contractualism. In particular, with regard to the normative justification of norms and principles, in contractualism, it is the reasonable irrejectibility of moral rules that constitutes the ground for the validity, legitimacy and rationality of moral rules. The principle of contractualism appeals to the idea of reasonable irrejectibility of moral rules in its normative justification of moral rules. In discourse ethics, it is the universal validity of norms that constitutes the ground for normative justification. In contractualism, valid, and legitimate moral rules are those for the general regulation of behavior which one cannot reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced, general agreement. The mechanism to establish moral norms is still individual’s individual exercise of his/her practical reason to the full scale. In discourse ethics, valid, legitimate, and rational moral norms are those for the general regulation of behavior that are universally acceptable by all participants in practical discourses. In discourse ethics, the mechanism to establish universal norm is practical discourse and the public use of reason. The principle of contractualism and the three principles of discourse ethics all emphasize moral agents’ freedom and autonomy in the ethical, moral life. In contractualism, it is a moral agent’s autonomy in moral deliberation. In discourse ethics, it is a moral agent’s autonomy in participation in practical discourses. In contractualism, the universality of a moral rule is determined by practical reason as embodied in individual consciousness. The principle of contractualism is grounded in human reason as subject-centered reason. The source of the validity, legitimacy, and rationality of moral principles lies in individual exercise of individuals’ practical reason. The normative basis of justification for moral principles and norms is the autonomous, free, and well-informed individuals’ practical reason. In comparison, in discourse ethics, the universality of moral norms is determined by the public use of reason and argumentation in practical discourses. It comes from the public use of reason by participants in discourses. It is from democratic, public argumentation. The principle of contractualism depends on the assumption of persons as human beings who have a same universally rational nature. The three principles of discourse ethics depend on the assumption of persons as persons of communicative competence and of willingness to communicate and thus arrive at mutual understanding with each other through discussions, debates, and exchanges of ideas and wills in the public sphere. Both discourse ethics and contractualism teach persons to be ethically and morally responsible citizens in the ethical-moral life. However, in discourse ethics, to be a responsible citizen, one must be communicatively competent, and one must be competent in the public use of reason in discourses in the public sphere. In discourse ethics, a responsible ethical life is inseparable from the critical, examined, and deliberative ethical life. In discourse ethics, the idea of responsibility calls for communicative competence and performative competence.

6 Conclusion

97

In summary, in comparison to Kant’s categorical imperative and Scanlon’s principle of contractualism, the three principles of discourse ethics emphasize a paradigm shift in ethical understanding: it shifts from grounding ethical-moral norms in human reason as a subject-centered reason to grounding ethical-moral norms in human reason as intersubjective; it shifts from an emphasis on an individual agent’s full, autonomous, and individual exercise of his/her practical reason in ethicalmoral reasoning to the emphasis on individual agents’ autonomous, competent, and public use of human reason in public, practical discourses.

6  Conclusion In conclusion, discourse ethics is a form of modernist ethics. It correlates the concepts of the rule of reason, truth, justice, equality, autonomy and normativity. It correlates the concepts of norm and value, obligation and good, duty and happiness, as well as autonomy and responsibility. It correlates the concepts of self-understanding and normative justification. It synthesizes insights of Kantian ethics and Hegelian ethics but supersedes both. Discourse ethics is an ethics of an examined life, a deliberative life, a good, worthy, and happy life, a dutiful and responsible life, and a competent life. It is an ethics that emphasizes the public use of reason in the ethical-moral life and an ethics about ethical-moral autonomy through the public use of reason and with communicative competence. It is an ethics of critical, responsible and competent citizenship and critical, responsible and competent ethical-moral life. It is a deontological, cognitivist, formalist and universalist ethics, but not an ethics of abstract universalism. Modernity establishes its ethical-moral norms, standards, principles, and rules of regulation of the ethical-moral life. Discourse ethics provides a new procedure of how those universal norms, standards, principles, and rules of regulation of the ethical-moral life should be validly, legitimately and rationally established. It provides a new basis of normative justification for ethical-moral norms, standards, principles, and rules of regulation of the ethical-moral life. Discourse ethics replaces the concept of human practical reason as subject-centered reason by the concept of practical reason as intersubjective. It replaces the emphasis on an individual agent’s full, autonomous, and individual exercise of his/ her practical reason by the emphasis on the public use of individual agents’ practical reasons. It replaces Kant’s abstract universalism with discursive universalism, and Kant’s purely transcendental ethical-moral thinking by critical, but both transcendental and contextual, ethical-moral thinking. It both projects normative possibilities unrealized but felt in a particular given social reality and ethical situation and correlates them with normative possibilities unrealized but felt in other given social realities and ethical situations. It thus refines values into reasons, and generates norms from reasons. The development of discourse ethics is an integral part of Habermas’s project of reconstruction of modernity in our time. It purports to provide a new modernist

98

3  Discourse Ethics

ethical world outlook, and a new modernist basis of ethical-moral justification. It is the product of Habermas’s direct application of his doctrine of modernity, in particular, his theory of communicative rationality, in the arena of ethics and morality. Plato claimed that an unexamined life is not worth living. For Habermas, an examined life is necessarily a modernist wherein one think deontologically and acts in accordance with a set of universally valid, legitimate and acceptable norms and principles and wherein one joins others in the public use of reason in the ethical, moral life. To be in accordance with human reason, or not to be in accordance with human reason, that is the question!

References Benhabib, S. (1992). Situating the self: Gender, community and postmodernism in contemporary ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Caney, S. (2005). Justice beyond borders. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Habermas, J. (1990). Moral consciousness and communication. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1993a. The philosophical discourse of modernity. Frederick G.  Larence, Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1993b. Justification and application. Ciara P. Cronin Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (1998a). Between facts and norms. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (1998b). The inclusion of the other. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (2008). Europe: The faltering project. Cambridge: The Polity Press. Retrieved from Jürgen Habermas (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Kant, I. (2012). The groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press. Korsgaard, C. M. (1996). The source of normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCarthy, T. (1978). The critical theory of Jürgen Habermas. Cambridge: Polity. Nietzshe, F. (1927). The genealogy of morals, in the philosophy of Nietzsche. New  York: Random House. Outwaite, W. (2009). Habermas: A critical introduction. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rehg, W. (2011). Discourse ethics. In B.  Fultner (Ed.), Jürgen Habermas: Key concepts (pp. 115–139). Acumen: Durham. Scanlon, T. M. (1998). What we owe to each other. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Chapter 4

Truth and Justice

Abstract  This chapter studies Habermas’s modernist doctrines of truth, justice, and the internal relationship among truth, justice, and human reason. First, it examines Habermas’s concept of truth: from the early discursive concept to the present Kantian-pragmatic concept. Second, taking the Habermas-Rawls debate in 1990s as its paradigm of illustration, it examines Habermas’s concept of the reasonableness of a political concept of justice, and his view on the inseparability of truth, justice, and reason. Third, it examines Habermas’s concept of the ideal speech situation as the mechanism for the establishment of a political concept of justice that is reasonable. Fourth, it examines Habermas’s view on the role of overlapping consensus in establishing a political concept of justice that is reasonable. It thus demonstrates Habermas’s modernist sentiment in which truth, justice and reason are inseparable; there can no justice without the rule of reason; there can be no the rule of reason without truth. Keywords  Truth · Justice · Reasonableness · Warranted assertability · Acceptability · The veil of ignorance · Ideal speech situation · The original position ONE CANNOT talk about modernity without mentioning truth and justice. The ideal of modernity is not just the rule of universal reason, but also the rule of universal truth and universal justice. Truth, justice, and reason are three watchwords of the condition called “modernity” in modern time and in our time. In our epoch, knowledge is power, as Francis Bacon famously pronounced it. Truth is the light, and therefore Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Kant, and Hegel still remain as the immortals. Meanwhile, the ideas of universal human rights, liberty, equality, autonomy, fairness, tolerance, humanity, the rule of law, and constitutional democracy reverberate the spirit of our epoch, and our conception of the condition and quality called “modernity” in our time. For many of us, modernity designates an intellectual, ethical-moral, political-­ legal, and institutional condition under which truth enlightens, justice shines, and reason rules among humankind on the earth. It is the condition in which truth, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 X. Chen, The Essentials of Habermas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79794-2_4

99

100

4  Truth and Justice

justice, and reason lead all humankind to liberation, freedom, and autonomy. Thus, the aspiration for universal truth, universal justice, and universal reason epitomizes the ideal of modernity and summarizes the heart of sentiment of modernity. Modern men and women are supposed to be devoted lovers of universal truth and universal justice. S/he who believes and loves knowledge, universal truth, and universal justice is modern, and s/he does not believe and loves universal truth and universal justice is called “postmodern”. Needless to say, for Habermas, truth is the first virtue of thought and justice is the first virtue of basic social institution. Habermas also staunchly defends the concept of universal truth and emphasizes the important association of truth and justice today. In 1990s, Habermas and Rawls engaged in a profound debate on the relationship between truth and justice, emphasizing again the intrinsic relationship among truth, justice, and reason. In an age when postmodernist attitude to truth is a fashion and such and the concepts as post-truth and alternative truth become popular, Habermas is a staunch defender of the idea of universal truth. Indeed, the idea of truth is always central in his philosophy. While Habermas claims that the conceptual triad of the public sphere, discourse, and reason has been his life-long concern, truth-claim is one of the four validity claims of communicative rationality. Habermas also asserts, “The formal pragmatics … cannot do without the fundamental concepts of truth and objectivity, reality reference, validity and rationality.”(Habermas, 2003) Truth and reason are not separable in Habermas’s philosophy. In his vision of truth, Habermas rejects relativism, contextualism, postmodernism, and metaphysical realism. He conceptualizes objective truth as one of the common grounds on which peoples of diversity set their footing to arrive at mutual understanding and therefore to articulate norms of action that are reasonable to all. At times, his concept of truth has also evolved from the early discursive concept to the present Kantian-pragmatic concept. Still, the ideal of universal truth, universal reason, and universal justice of modernity remains unwaved in Habermas. As a result, his vision of truth is modernist as much as Kantian-pragmatic and epistemological realist. In his vision of justice, Habermas criticizes political liberalism for its separation of a reasonable concept of justice and the idea of truth, rejecting postmodernism and communitarianism. He insists that a reasonable political concept of justice necessarily makes claim to have truth; the reasonableness of a political concept of justice is importantly defined by its being true. He conceives justice as giving due to basic rights, and insists that only those norms of justice can be valid that can be rationally consented by all those participants in practical discourses of justice. Moreover, in his doctrine of cosmopolitanism, Habermas insists on the existence of three families of public justice: municipal justice, international justice, and global justice. Correspondingly, Habermas’s doctrines of truth and justice consist of some renovating ideas as the following: 1 . The Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth; the epistemologically realist concept; 2. The distinction between truth and normative rightness; the concept that truth has an objective dimension and as an objective validity;

1  Normative Rightness and Truth

101

3 . The inseparability of a reasonable, political concept of justice and truth; 4. The cognitive role of overlapping consensus in discourses of norms of justice; 5. The concept of the public use of reason in developing a reasonable political concept of justice; 6. The mechanism of the ideal speech as the mechanism to develop a reasonable political justice; 7. The distinction between acceptability and acceptance of a political concept of justice; the internal connection of truth, justice, and reason; 8. The irreducibility of the right to the good. These concepts embody Habermas’s discursive thinking. Most importantly, they epitomize Habermas’s commitment to the modernity ideal of universal truth, justice, and reason. They exhibit that Habermas also offers a new basis of normative justification of universal truth and justice. Universal truth, justice and reason, another conceptual trinity in Habermas’s philosophy!

1  Normative Rightness and Truth As a modernist philosopher, Habermas staunchly defends the concept of truth, its value and its indispensability as passionately as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant and any other philosophers in the West and East. In Habermas’s vision, truth is central to human reason and one of the common grounds for the public use of reason in discourses. The claim of truth is one of the four validity claims of communicative rationality, and the norm of truth is thus always a norm of human reason; truth is constitutive of human communicative power. In rational communication, as Steven Levine notes, “speech-acts make a variety of claims to meaningfulness, truth, normative rightness (i.e. being in accord with a legitimate moral rule), and sincerity.” (Levine, 2010, p.681) Meanwhile, in a speech act, as Outwaite notes, “truth relates to external nature, rightness to society, truthfulness or sincerity to inner nature, and comprehensibility to language.” (Outhwaite, 2009, p.49) Habermas is a staunch defender of the concept of universal truth and he explicitly insists that truth has its objective dimension. As Barbara Fultner notes, in Habermas’s vision, our epistemic and cognitive action and practice are in effect governed by some formal pragmatic presuppositions, including “first and foremost the presupposition of a single objective world that is same for everyone.”(Fultner, 2003, xiii) This presupposition of a single objective world is a necessary condition for any rational, plausible cognitive activities and practices and “lies at the core of our ability to refer to objects in the world at all and, as such, underlies the representational function of language.”(Ibid) As we discussed early, Habermas defends the modernity ideal of the rule of universal reason, universal truth, universal justice, and universal human rights. He defends the modernist ideal of autonomy grounding in understanding of truth,

102

4  Truth and Justice

sensibility of justice, and concepts of rights and obligation, as well as liberty and duty. Consistent with his position on modernity, Habermas’s doctrine of truth consists of the following core ideas: 1. The formal pragmatic assumptions as the necessary conditions in rational epistemic and cognitive act and practice, in particular, the formal pragmatic assumption of a single objective world that is same to everyone as a necessary condition for rational epistemic and cognitive act and practice; 2. Truth is about the relation between a proposition/belief and the external nature which it presents and represents; 3. Truth is a property and virtue of a proposition or a statement and relates a proposition, statement or belief to the external object in the world which the proposition, statement or belief presents; 4. Truth and normative rightness are two distinctive properties of a proposition; 5. Truth is the objective, cognitive validity of a proposition, a belief or a statement; 6. A proposition is true if in it the state of affairs which it presents is factually given or attains; 7. The truth of a proposition must be affirmed and verified in practices; 8. The communicative dimension of truth; 9. Pragmatic naturalism; epistemological realism. Habermas resists the concept of truth as correspondence between a proposition and its cognitive object that is external in the world. Even in his Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth wherein he insists that “truth cannot be identified with justifiability or warranted assertability”, Habermas still intentionally subscribes to a concept of truth “purified of all connotations of correspondence.” (Habermas, 1998, pp.37-38) He thus differs from Kant who conceived truth to be correspondence. The word “intentionally” is deliberately used to indicate that in essence and reality Habermas’s present concept of truth has a connotation of correspondence to some extent. Habermas characterizes his present concept of truth as Kantian-­ pragmatic, and his position on truth as one of “epistemological realism”. Both a Kantian concept of truth and a pragmatic concept of truth have correspondence connotation to some extents. So is a realist concept. For example, in the Kantian concept, truth indicates that the object confirms to the formal structure of the mind and understanding. In pragmatism, truth indicates that a belief fits an action context; truth enlightens an action in a context; and the truth of a belief enables the belief to guide an action to success in an action context. What Habermas insists is actually that we do not have an unmediated access to the brutal or naked reality out there. Instead, we reflect an object and the reality out there through the mediation of language. Moreover, a proposition does not merely fulfill the presentational function of language. It performs a communicative function of language too. Thus, the concept of truth does not indicate an unmediated correspondence between the symbolic meaning of a proposition and the brutal, naked reality or a brutal, naked object in external nature. At the outset, a distinction between an epistemic concept and an epistemological concept of truth is in order, albert Habermas’s insistence that his present concept of

1  Normative Rightness and Truth

103

truth is non-epistemic. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and therefore, the concepts of truth, belief and proposition are always epistemological concepts. This does not mean that all concepts of truth are epistemic. An epistemic concept is one of justification-dependence. Being epistemic is being justification-dependent. And being epistemological is being related to knowledge. Truth is epistemological in the sense that it is associated with knowledge. Truth and knowledge are not separable. There can be empirical truths. There can be metaphysical truths too. There are truths of beings in nature. There are also truths of humanity, human history and civilization, and the human world too. Whatever the object of a true belief/statement is, the truth of our belief/statement of X is always associated with our knowledge of X and conversely, our knowledge of X is knowledge of X importantly because its claim of X is true of X. Thus, a plausible concept of truth is always epistemological. A concept of truth is an epistemic one if according to it, whether a statement is true depends on whether the statement is justified. It is not an epistemic one when according to it, the truth of a proposition or belief does not depend on its justification. As Barbara Fultner notes, Habermas’ concept of truth before and until middle 1990s was an epistemic one. But his concept of truth since late 1990s is justification-­ transcendent. In The Inclusion of the Other (1998), Habermas explicitly insists that truth and justifiability or warranted assertability are not identical. In Truth and Justification (2003), he labels his post-­1990s concept of truth as “Kantian-pragmatic”. Here a distinction exists between justification and affirmation, as well as justification and verification. Justification shows a statement or belief to be reasonable subjectively, intersubjectively or objectively. Affirmation or verification is factually affirming or verifying something to be the case and to be factually real. Justification does not necessarily need make reference to the world outside there, but affirmation or verification must make such a reference. In his earlier discursive concept at least until middle 1990s, Habermas claimed that the truth of a statement is in essence its warranted assertibility. In his early concept, truth is justification-dependent and the justifiability of a claim. In this discursive concept of truth, a statement is true when its claim is rationally justified under proper epistemic conditions. This concept of truth is an epistemic one. Since later 1990s, Habermas’s concept of truth has evolved from the early discursive concept to the present Kantian-pragmatic concept or the concept of truth of “pragmatic epistemological realism” (Habermas, 2003, p.7) The Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth is a non-epistemic one. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy reads: his new concept of truth is realist in holding the following: The objective world, rather than ideal consensus, is the truth-maker. If a proposition (or sentence, statement) for which we claim truth is indeed true, it is so because it accurately refers to existing objects, or accurately represents actual states of affairs—albeit objects and states of affairs about which we can state facts only under descriptions that depend on our linguistic resources.” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/habermas)

Truth does not indicate the justifiability or warranted assertability of a proposition in terms of intersubjective consensus among inquirers. It indicates the factual

104

4  Truth and Justice

association of a proposition and a state of affair which the proposition presents. His concept of truth is pragmatic in the sense that according to it, whether a proposition is true is importantly determined by whether or not it can be verified to work positively in the world. The truth of a proposition must be verified beyond justification among inquirers and with references to the world external to the subject—that is, the inquirer. So understood, truth is not just the subjectively or intersubjectively warranted assertability of a proposition or belief. Instead, it is the property of a proposition or belief that relates properly a proposition to the world or the external nature. “Truth, in contrast to normative rightness, is not an epistemic notion.”(Fultner, 2003, p.xv) To talk about truth is not to talk about rational justification, but to talk about the external relation between a proposition and a state of fairs which the proposition presents. Truth testifies that the relation between a proposition and a state of affairs is a relation wherein a state of affairs is given or attains in the proposition which presents it. Thus, as Outwaite notes, in Habermas’s vision, “truth relates to external nature”. Another conceptual clarification is this. When Habermas uses the term “truth”, he uses the German word “Wahrheitsgeltung (truth-value), not the German word “Wahrheit”. Wahrheitsgeltung is the truth condition or truth value of a proposition. That being said, Habermas is not talking about the condition under which a statement is justified, but about the condition under which a statement’s factual relation to a state of affairs is verified or affirmed. Thus, as Fultner notes, the German term “Wahrheitsgeltung (truth-value) in Habermas connotes what is in fact true. “The question of truth … for him is a question about objective validity (Wahrheitsgeltung) … Ultimately, objective validity is a matter of what is, in fact, true, not of what we take to be true.”(Ibid) Objective validity is distinguished from intersubjective or subjective validity. Being objective is being beyond the intersubjective and subjective. By this token, we can read Wahrheitsgeltung in Habermas as Wahrheit in a pragmatic sense, not in a realist sense. Habermas’s Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth as objective validity inherits the insight of Kant’s concept of objective validity. In Kant, “the ‘objective validity’ (objektiv Gültigkeit) of a judgment is its empirical meaningfulness”; “it is compositionally based on the empirical ‘reference’ (Beziehung)—whether singular or comprehensional—of the basic constituent objective representations of any judgment, namely intuitions and concepts.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) By this token, “the objective validity of a judgment is its anthropocentric rational empirical referential meaningfulness.”(Ibid) Thus, “Kant also sometimes uses the notion of ‘objective reality’ (objektive Realität) to characterize objectively valid representations that apply specifically to actually or really existing objects, and not to merely possible objects (A242 n.).”(Ibid) Habermas’s objective validity as facticity in the life world is to a great extent objective validity as anthropocentric rational empirical referential meaningfulness and as objective reality. Still, in Kant, “Objective validity, in turn, is a necessary but not sufficient condition of truth, and hence of objectively real propositions, for false judgments are also

1  Normative Rightness and Truth

105

objectively valid (A58/B83). In this way the objective validity of a judgment is equivalent to its propositional truth-valuedness, but not equivalent to its propositional truth.”(Ibid) In Kant, truth is a property of judgment. As he said: “Truth and error … are only to be found in the judgment, i.e., only in the relation of the object to our understanding.” (Kant, 1965, A293/B350) That is to say, “truth is a predicate of whole judgments, and not a predicate of the representational proper parts of judgments, i.e., intuitions/non-conceptual cognitions and concepts.” (Kant’s Theory of Judgment (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). By this token, the nominal definition of truth in Kant is that truth is “the agreement of knowledge with its object” in judgment (Kant, 1965, A58/B82) Habermas resists the concept of truth as correspondence, but does not resist the idea that truth implies a kind of agreement of knowledge with the fact of the object of knowledge. Habermas also does not draw the strong distinction between proportional truth-valuedness and propositional truth. Meanwhile, in Kant, “the nominal definition of truth must be sharply distinguished from the real definition of truth, i.e., the “criterion” (Kriterium) of truth, which is a rule for determining the truth or falsity of judgments in specific contexts (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Habermas also draws such a distinction and focuses more on the criterion (Kriterium) of truth, which is a rule for determining the truth or falsity of judgments in specific contexts in the lifeworld. Notwithstanding, in spite of his resistance to the concept of truth as correspondence, Habermas’s Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth is one of epistemological realism compatible to Aristotle’s realist concept of truth. Aristotle defined truth as follows: To say of what is that is is true; to say of what is that is not is false; to say of what is not that is not is true; to say of what is not that is is false (Aristotle, 2001, 1011b26-28). Habermas defines truth as follows: a proposition is true if and only in it the state of affairs which it presents is factually given or attains. He points out, “what we want to express with true sentences is that a certain state of affairs ‘obtain’ or is ‘given’” would be pointless if a true sentence itself were not a representation of a state of affairs which is supposed to be given in the true sentence (Habermas, 2003, p.254). Habermas characterizes his view on truth is the view of “pragmatic epistemological realism” view (Ibid, p.7; cf.Fultner, 2003, p.xviii). Thus, Habermas’s motto “realism without representation” should be read with some cares. By the motto, what Habermas asserts is as follows: Once we combine transcendental pragmatism with weak naturalism, the genetic primacy of nature over culture calls for adoption of epistemic realism. Only the realist presupposition of an intersubjectively accessible objective world can reconcile the epistemic priority of the linguistically articulated horizon of the lifeworld, which we cannot transcend, with the ontological priority of a language-independent reality, which imposes constraints on our practices (Habermas, 2003, p.30).

Transcendental pragmatism is Kantian pragmatism which Habermas identifies himself with. In the above, Habermas’s emphasis does no fall on denying representation, but on indicating the necessary presupposition of an intersubjectively accessible objective world and a language-independent reality in an epistemic act and a cognitive act. Meanwhile,

106

4  Truth and Justice

Habermas eschews the attempt to explicate the relationship between proposition and world metaphysically (e.g., as in correspondence theories). Rather, he explicates the meaning of accurate representation pragmatically, in terms of its implications for everyday practice and discourse. Insofar as we take propositional contents as unproblematically true in our daily practical engagement with reality, we act confidently on the basis of well-corroborated beliefs about objects in the world (Jürgen Habermas (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Thus, here it is not that there is no representation. Rather it is that the meaning of accurate representation should be understood pragmatically. Again, as Fultner indicates, “In ‘Wahrheitstheorien,’ Habermas already rejects both correspondence and coherence theories of truth.”(Ibid, xv) For him, “correspondence theory is too strong a notion inasmuch as it assumes the possibility of direct access to ‘true’ or ‘naked’ reality.”(Ibid) Habermas believes that our access to reality is mediated, e.g., mediated by language. That is to say, the external relation between a proposition and its object is mediated. Therefore, for Habermas, to conceptualize truth as a kind of direct, or naked, correspondence between a proposition and its object is problematic. For Habermas, “The discursive redemption or cashing (Einlösung) of truth-claim cannot … be carried out by a direct comparison of utterances with reality, as postulated by correspondence theories of truth.”(Outhwaite, 2009, p.40) Still, Habermas’s Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth is an epistemologically realist one that is compatible to Aristotle’s correspondence concept of truth. Indeed, in Habermas’s concept, in content, truth implies a certain extent of correspondence between a proposition and its object. Truth relates a proposition to the external nature. Habermas’s Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth brings into prominence the following. First, in human epistemic and cognitive act and practice, there are some formal pragmatic presuppositions, “first and foremost noteworthy the ­presupposition of a single world that is the same for everyone.”(Fultner, 2003, xiii) The ­presupposition of a single world that is the same for everyone “lies at the core of our ability to refer objects in the world at all.”(Ibid) It also imposes an objective constraint on cognition and our understanding of truth. Second, truth is not just truth understood as so and so. Truth is proven and verified as so and so. Third, truth is affirmed and verified in the lifeworld in which we live. The concept of formal pragmatic presuppositions in epistemic and cognitive act and practice leads Habermas to entertain “a ‘weak naturalism’ to complement his epistemological realism.”(Ibid, xiv) The complement of weak naturalism to epistemological realism thus affords Habermas’s concept of truth with accommodating the weak realist idea of truth implying correspondence but resisting the strong realist concept of truth as correspondence, amid Habermas’s vow that his concept of truth is purified of any connotation of correspondence. The Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth differs also from the concept of truth as coherence, amid in the concept, the lifeworld is our horizon of understanding. The coherence theory of truth is the doctrine that the truth of a belief consists in its coherence with a given, specified system of true beliefs. According to Habermas, “a coherence theory of truth fails to capture important aspects of our concept of truth … Coherence is too weak a notion for truth inasmuch as…statements are true not

1  Normative Rightness and Truth

107

because they cohere with other statements we accept, but because a state of affairs they describe actually obtains.”(Ibid, xv-xvi). Indeed, in Habermas’s early concept, “truth must … be defined in terms of a projected consensus.”(Outhwaite, 2009, p.40) In Habermas’s words, “the condition for the truth of statement is the potential agreement of everyone else.”(Habermas, 1984, p.109; Outhwaite, 2009, p.40) Habermas thus “infamously coined the term ‘consensus theory of truth’” to characterize his discursive concept of truth (Fultner, 2003, p.xvi). In his Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth, truth must be verified and affirmed in the lifeworld. Habermas’s early theory of truth—that is, his discursive theory of truth—is compatible to the consent theory of truth. The basic tenet of the consent theory of truth is that truth is determined by communal consent about reality, including consent by the community of natural science; for example, truth is that which is universally consented. The consent concept of truth is an epistemic concept. Thomas McCarthy indicates, “Habermas’s theory of truth is a much revised version of Peirce’s consensus theory: ‘The opinion which fated to be agreed upon by all who investigate it what we mean by the truth.’” (McCarthy, 1991, p.299) McCarthy refers to Habermas’s early discursive concept of truth. In “Wahrheitstheorien”, Habermas also says, “The condition of the truth of a statement is the potential agreement of all others.”(Habermas, 1973, p.219; McCarthy, 1991, p.299) In short, correspondence theory, coherence theory, and consensus theory all are not allies which Habermas’s Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth. Instead, its ally is pragmatism and the pragmatist concept of truth—the concept that the truth of a belief is, and must be, verified and affirmed in social practice to reflect reality and situation. He who awakened Kant from his dogmatist slum was David Hume. They who awaken Habermas from his discursive conception of truth are pragmatist philosophers especially Charles Sander Pierce, Richard Rorty, and Hilary Putnam. Habermas’s concept of truth evolves as times goes by. He “did espouse what he subsequently called a ‘discursive conception of truth until the mid-to late-1990s, according to which truth is ideal warranted assertability—a view he shared with Hilary Putnam, among others. Reflecting on and in response to criticism, Habermas has since abandoned this epistemic conception of truth.”(Fultner, 2003, p.xvi) Habermas himself acknowledges, “Inspired by C.S.Peirce’s famous suggestion, K-O.Apel, Putnam and I have all at one time or another defended some version of such a discursive concept of truth.”(Habermas, 2003, p.36) Since late 1990s, Habermas moved from his discursive concept of truth is discursive and defines truth as warranted assertability, conceiving truth to a Kantian-­ pragmatic one that conceptualizes truth as what is factually true. Even in the period of middle 1990s, “Habermas seems to concede this: ‘the criteria of truth lie at a different level than the idea of redeeming validity-claims which is expounded in terms of the theory of discourse.’”(Outhwaite, 2009, p.44) The later concept moves to a justification-independent concept of truth. The criteria of truth lies in the affirmation and verification of what a proposition claims by social practice mediated by communicative practice in the lifeworld. It

108

4  Truth and Justice

lies in the affirmation and verification by practice that in the claim of a proposition, a state of affairs is given or attains. With regard to his Kantian-pragmatic turn in his approaching to truth, Habermas says the following: For reasons similar to Putnam’s I have given up an epistemic conception of truth and have sought to distinguish more clearly between the truth of a proposition and its rational assertability (even under approximately ideal conditions). In respect, I see that the discursive conception of truth is due to an overgeneralization of the special case of the validity of moral judgment and norms (Habermas, 2003, p.8).

When the discursive concept of truth defines the truth of a statement or proposition as the justifiability of a statement or proposition, it overstates the justifiability or validity of a statement or proposition by conceptualizing the cognitive validity of a statement or proposition in the moral sense, not in a cognitive sense. In Habermas’s Kantian-pragmatic vision, the truth of a statement or proposition is its cognitive validity. Truth is a cognitive validity and thus a cognitive property. It is cognition that has truth or falsity, being true or false. Cognition is not just an act or practice of understanding, but also one of problem-solving (Ibid, p.26) When a cognition has no truth, it has no problem-solving capacity or power either. Thus, whether a cognition has truth, let us test it in practice to see whether it has the problem-solving power. As an old Chinese saying says: Whether the animal is a horse or donkey, let us see it in its walk! Thus, in Habermas’s Kantian-pragmatic vision, truth is the objective validity of a statement or proposition. Truth is not verified by universal recognition, but by how does the presentation of a state of affairs in the statement or proposition work in the lifeworld, which in turn means that (a) whether the state of affairs which the presentation presents factually and externally exists in the lifeworld and (b) being true for a statement or proposition means that its presentation of an externally existing state of affairs reflects that which exists externally in the lifeworld. Perhaps to characterize Habermas’s transition from the discursive concept of truth to the Kantian-­ pragmatic concept of truth as a transition from an intersubjective concept of truth to an objective concept of truth is an overstatement. Still, with the transition, truth is no longer an intersubjective validity. Instead, it is an objective validity. Notwithstanding, a distinction exists between truth (Wahrheitsgeltun) and normative rightness (sollgeltung). The truth which the cognition of a proposition has indicates that a proposition factually presents a state of affairs as it exists externally in the lifeworld. By this token, “truth is a justification-transcendent concept that cannot be made to coincide even with the concept of ideal warranted assertability.” (Ibid, pp.247-248) Habermas points out: What we want to express with a true sentence is that a certain state of affairs ‘obtains’ or is ‘given’. And these facts in turn refer to the ‘world’ as the totality of things about which we may state facts. This ontological way of speaking establishes a connection between truth and reference, that is, between the truth of statements and ‘objectivity’ of that about which something is stated (ibid).

In this sense, Habermas conceives the truth of a proposition as its objective validity. It is the property of the cognition of a proposition about a state of affairs. It

1  Normative Rightness and Truth

109

indicates that in the cognition of a proposition about a state of fairs, the state of affairs attains or is given. Thus, whether the cognition of a proposition has truth or falsity depends on whether in it a state of affairs factually attains or presents. This concept of truth is epistemologically realist in the sense that (1) it assumes that there is an objective state of affairs in the world, amid its presentation in a cognition is mediated; and (2) the objective existence of the state of affairs serves as a constraint on whether the cognition of a proposition is true or false. Therefore, in Habermas’s Kant-pragmatic vision, the truth of a statement, proposition or belief has five salient features as follows: (1) factual: a true statement, proposition or belief presents the fact of a given state of affair in the world; truth has a factual dimension; (2) objective: truth has an objective dimension; it indicates the relationship between a statement and a given state of affair which the statement presents; truth is that the cognition of a statement or proposition about its object in the world is objectively correct; the criterion of truth is objective, neither subjective nor intersubjective; (3) rationally communicable and actionable; as the objective validity of a cognition, truth has rational communicability; meanwhile, it can be acted on and when truth is acted on, positive effect is produced in the lifeworld; (4) justification independent; the criterion of testing truth is objective, and so is the process of verification or affirmation of the factual, objective content of truth; and (5) a janus face; on the one hand, it arises in particular space and time and thus its rise is context-dependent, and on the other hand, as a claim, it is universal and thus context-independent. In comparison, the normative rightness of a proposition refers to the intersubjective justifiability of the proposition in discourses. It is a moral validity, not an objective validity. “Moral validity claims lack the reference to the objective world that is characteristic of claims to truth. This means they are robbed of a justification-­ transcendent point of reference. The reference to the world is replaced by an orientation toward extending the borders of the social community and its consciousness about value.”(Ibid, pp.256-257) In moral validity, “the reference to the world is replaced by an orientation toward extending the borders of the social community and its consensus about values.”(Ibid, p.257) Here the normative rightness of a proposition can be understood as the intersubjective validity of the proposition, contrasted to its objective validity. While truth cannot be established through intersubjective justification in discourse, moral rightness is, and can be, established through intersubjective justification. Truth makes references to the external world outside our subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Normative rightness makes references to society, community (including the universal community of dialogue and communication of humankind), and culture. With this distinction, Habermas moves from an epistemic concept of truth to a non-­ epistemic one. Making reference to the external world indicates that (1) truth is of a cognition and the cognitive reality of a proposition or statement; and (2) it has an objective dimension, and is beyond subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Thus, truth is thus not the warranted assertability of a statement, but its cognitive reality. Warranted assertability relates to the intersubjectivity of truth-inquirers. Truth relates to an objective

110

4  Truth and Justice

world and is the cognitive reality of a proposition or belief. Thus, Habermas points out, With regard to the objective world, the proposition’s truth signifies a fact—the obtaining of a state of affairs. Facts owe their facticity to their being rooted in a world of objects (about which we state facts) that exist independently of our descriptions of them. This ontological description implies that no matter how carefully a consensus about a proposition is established and no matter how well the proposition is justified, it may nonetheless turn out to be false in light of new evidence. It is precisely this difference between truth and ideal warranted assertability that is blurred with respect to moral claims to validity (Ibid).

The truth of a statement is its cognitive reality in the lifeworld and indicates the fact that a state of affair is factually given or attains in the statement. Moral rightness is a statement’s being reasonably justified in discourses. And “ideal warranted assertability is what we meant by moral validity.”(Ibid, p.259) Meanwhile, “moral judgments that merit universal recognition are ‘right’ and that means that in a rational discourse under approximately ideal conditions they could be agreed to by everyone concerned.”(Ibid, p.229) Thus, moral rightness is epistemic. It is justification-dependence. In comparison, truth transcends beyond universal justification and justifiability. As Habermas says: The validity concept of moral rightness has lost the ontological connotation of justification-­ transcendent concept of truth. Where “rightness” is an epistemic concept and means nothing but worthiness of universal recognition, the meaning of the truth of statements cannot be reduced to epistemic conditions of confirmation, no matter … how rigorous they might be: truth goes beyond idealized justification (Ibid, pp.229-230).

Truth makes reference to the external world, and is tested and verified in practices and actions to have cognitive reality in the external world, not merely justified and agreed to in discourses. With regard to the relationship between truth and assertability, it is that a statement is recognized and agreed to because it has truth, not that a statement has truth because it is recognized and agreed to. By the same token, it is not that a statement is true because it has warranted assertability. It is that a statement has warranted assertability because it is true. In comparison, a statement has moral rightness because it is universally recognizable and recognized. “Truth goes beyond idealized justification!” Truth goes beyond universal recognition. A statement is valid when it is universally recognized, accepted and acceptable. A statement has truth when it is tested, verified and affirmed in practice that in it, a state of affairs which it presents is factually given or factually attains. Habermas further distinguishes between truth and value/good, amid the German word which he uses is the word “Wahrheitsgeltung (truth-value)”, not the word “Wahrheit (truth).” According to Habermas, “Truth is not a good that one may possess to a greater or lesser degree but a concept of validity.”(Ibid, p.227) Truth is of cognition and a cognitive validity that should not be conflated with a value, in particular instrumental value. Truths makes references to the external world. Value makes references to its user. Truth indicates cognitive reality. Value indicates intrinsic and instrumental worthiness.

2  A Reasonable Political Concept of Justice

111

In summary, defending the modernist idea of universal truth, Habermas first develops a discursive concept of truth and then distills it, moving from it to a Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth. In essence, Habermas’s Kant-pragmatic concept of truth is an epistemological realist concept. It distills, and supersedes, and goes beyond his early discursive concept of truth. In his Kantian-pragmatic concept, truth is cognitive reality and objective validity. Truth is factual, objective, effective, and universal. It is not that which is justified to participants in discourses based on good reasons. It is that which is tested, proven and affirmed in practices and actions to have cognitive reality in the lifeworld. In this concept, practice is the criterion of testing truth. In this concept, “Beliefs are confirmed in action by something different than in discourse.”(Ibid, p.254)

2  A Reasonable Political Concept of Justice We shall now turn to Habermas’s view on justice. Habermas defends not only a concept of truth as cognitive reality and objective validity, but also a concept of justice that has truth and the idea that a reasonable concept of justice is grounded in its having truth and being true. In the ideal of modernity, truth, justice, and reason are not separable. So are they in Habermas’s philosophy. Habermas’s defense of the concept of universal truth is part of his defense of the ideal of the rule of truth, justice and reason in modernity. Thus, Habermas insists that truth and a reasonable concept of justice are not separable. Habermas’s view on the inseparability of truth, justice and reason exhibits strikingly in his debate with Rawls about whether a political concept of justice must claim to have truth in order to be considered to be reasonable. Both Habermas and Rawls understand justice as giving due to basic human rights, human dignity and inviolability of the individuality of a human person. They disagree on whether a political concept of justice must claim to have truth in order to be considered as reasonable. They disagree on whether being reasonable necessarily means being true. In his debate with Rawls, Habermas still operated with his early discursive concept of truth. When he claimed that a political concept of justice that is reasonable must have truth, Habermas claimed that a political concept of justice that is reasonable must have warranted assertability. Still, his general view of the relationship between a reasonable concept of justice and truth remains unchanged today even though he adopts a Kantian—pragmatic concept of truth now. Habermas adheres to a concept of justice in terms of universal human rights. For him, justice concerns with individual rights and gives due to them. The obligations of justice are the commandments to give due to individual rights. They give due to “the inviolability of the individual” and “equal respect for the dignity of each individual.”(Habermas, 1990, p.200) Obligations of justice emphasize “equal respect and equal rights for the individual,” whereas obligations of solidarity emphasize empathy and concern for the well-being of one’s neighbor. Obligations of

112

4  Truth and Justice

justice underscore the subjective freedom of inalienable individuality (Ibid). In short, Habermas operates with a right-centered concept of justice. Meanwhile, Rawls explicitly defines justice as fairness in distribution of human rights and outlines two basic principles of justice. His first principle of justice reads, “Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.”(Rawls, 1971, p.60) Justice is about rights and basic liberty. Its first principle is to give due to basic rights. Moreover, according to Rawls, “Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason, justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others.”(Ibid, pp.3-4) Habermas and Rawls both recognize that a political concept of justice that serves as the basis for social cooperation among members of a political association is democratically, contractually developed by members of that association. They both hold that members of a social-political association will accept only what is a reasonable concept of justice as the basis for social cooperation. Still, they differ in their views on what makes a political concept of justice reasonable. They differ in their conceptions of the qualifier “reasonable”. For Rawls, the qualifier “‘reasonable’ refers to the attitudes of persons who are (1) willing to propose, agree upon, and abide by fair terms of social cooperation between free and equal citizens; and (2)capable of recognizing the burdens of argument and willing to accept their consequences.” (Habermas, 1998, p.87) As Habermas points out: Rawls introduces the predicate “reasonable” in the following manner. Citizens who are willing and able to live in a “well-ordered society” are reasonable; as reasonable people they also have reasonable views of the world as a whole. If the expected consensus results from reasonable comprehensive doctrine, its content also counts as reasonable. … The predicate is then extended from the attitude to the beliefs of reasonable persons (Ibid, pp.87-88).

Habermas points out: In Rawls, the term “reasonable” connotes the attitude of the holders of a political concept of justice, which is exhibited in a political concept of justice itself. By this token, the reasonableness of a political concept of justice is its being embodiment of the two-fold ‘reasonable” attitude as described here. Accordingly, the property “reasonable” of a concept of justice is neither epistemic nor epistemological, but merely politically prudential. To claim a political concept of justice to be reasonable is one thing. To claim that it has truth is quite another. To claim that a political concept of justice is reasonable is to claim that the terms of social cooperation which such a concept of justice proposes are fair to all parties; such a concept embodies the two-fold attitude of reasonableness as described above and has a kind of reflective equilibrium. For Habermas, by nature, the concept of reasonableness is epistemic, and being true and being reasonable for a political concept entail one another. Habermas argues,

2  A Reasonable Political Concept of Justice

113

In the present context what is of primary importance is that the reasonableness alone of citizens and worldviews, thus specified, by no means requires the adoption of the perspective from which the fundamental questions of political justice could jointly and publically discussed. The moral point of view is neither implied by “reasonable” attitude nor is made possible by “reasonable” worldviews. Such a perspective is first opened up when an overlapping consensus on a conception of justice has emerged (Ibid, p.88).

For Habermas, the property called “reasonableness” must be reasonableness in discourses and to the public use of reason, which in turn implies rational acceptability. Meanwhile, to claim that a political concept of justice has rational acceptability in discourses is to claim that this concept has intersubjective validity, which in Habermas’s discursive concept is truth. That which is reasonable in discourse and to the public use of reason is true, and that which is true is reasonable in discourses and to the public use of reason. To spell it out differently, what is reasonable is publically reasonable, which means that it is reasonable to the public use of reason. What is reasonably to the public use of reason is reasonable in accordance with communicative rationality, which necessarily makes a truth-claim. If a political concept of justice is reasonable, it must be reasonable to the public use of reason, which means that it is reasonable in discourses in accordance with communicative rationality and thus claims that it has truth. Meanwhile if a political concept of justice is reasonable to the public use of reason, it can be publically justified, it can be justified not only from the first-­ person perspective or the second-person perspective, but also from the first-, the second-, and third-person perspective all together. But neither the reasonable ­attitude nor a reasonable worldview has the third-party perspective and therefore, neither can make possible public justification from the third-party perspective. In Political Liberalism (1993), Rawls attempts to address the problem of public ­justification and appeals to what he dubs as “overlapping consensus.”(Ibid) For Habermas, Rawls fails badly to address the issue of public justification. Habermas thus asks: “How ‘reasonable’ worldview can even be identified as such if standards rooted in a practical reason independent of worldviews are not available?”(Ibid, pp.88-89) In other words, if a concept of political justice could be reasonable without rational acceptability and justifiability, the concept of reasonableness would not be meaningful. By nature, the property called “reasonableness” of a concept is always epistemic, not merely political, regardless the concept is a moral, ethical or political concept. Thus, Habermas insists that Rawls must understand the property “political” of a political concept in a proper sense. Here, Rawls in effect understands the concept of reasonableness in the sense of Aristotelian practical wisdom whose core is political prudence. Habermas in effect understands the concept of reasonableness in the sense of Aristotelian philosophical wisdom whose core is truth. So far as the issue of justice is concerned, while both philosophers associate the concept of justice and the concept of human reason, Rawls conceptualizes human reason in the political sense to make one claim only: practical and political prudence while Habermas insists that even human reason in the political necessarily make four claims: truth, normative rightness, comprehensibility and truthfulness. Both Rawls and Habermas emphasize the deliberative

114

4  Truth and Justice

characteristic of politics and conceptualize ideal politics to be under the guide of reason. Rawls conceptualizes human reason in political affairs to be merely instrumental and thus prudential while Habermas conceptualizes human reason in political affairs to be normative. Rawls grounds deliberation of politics in prudence while Habermas grounds deliberation of politics in truth and understanding. Rawls delegates the task of building the reasonableness of a political concept to “the original position” wherein “a reasonable person will employ her sense of justice to develop a freestanding political conception which she hopes can be accepted by all reasonable persons in their role as free and equal citizens.” (Ibid) Meanwhile, he leaves the task of justification to each person’s comprehensive or metaphysical world outlook. In Rawls, the process of building the reasonableness of a political concept is public, while the process of justification of such reasonableness is private or group-collective. For Habermas, the reasonableness of a proposed concept of political justice must be communicated, argued for and justified in public discourses. It must be acceptable to all participants who as concrete agents of particular identities, interest and desires participate rationally in public discourses of such a concept of justice. To be reasonable, a proposed political concept of justice cannot be merely from either the first-person or the second-person perspective, but must be also from the third-party perspective too; what is proposed must be intersubjectively acceptable to all. To be intersubjectively acceptable to all, a political concept of justice must be justifiable to all. For a political concept to be justifiable to all is for it to claim to have truth. In this context, Habermas argues that a distinction exists between acceptance and acceptability; to be reasonable for a concept of justice is to have rational acceptability within a political association. To have rational acceptability within a political association is to have rational justifiability. To have justifiability is to have truth in the discursive sense. For Habermas, Rawls’s “reflective equilibrium” is useful, but not sufficient for building a reasonable political concept of justice here. Rawls’s reflective equilibrium is that as reasonable citizens, we take one another into account as having reasonable comprehensive doctrines that endorse that political concept of justice; we thus broaden the circle of beliefs that must cohere before we determine what conception of justice we ought to adopt as the basis for social cooperation; and we should be persuaded that our choices are justifiable only on full, balanced reflection of all points of views. To a great extent, we should be willing to test our beliefs against variously developed moral theories and doctrines, though this does not mean that we should agree with any of them. Reflective equilibrium is also called “wide and general reflective equilibrium”. At the core of it is to widen our circle of beliefs to be as general and inclusive as possible. Reflective equilibrium is a method of balanced or coherent consideration of a set of beliefs in a process of deliberation and mutual adjustment among general principles and particular judgments. In Rawls, such a balanced and coherent consideration must be in a wide scope and more and more general level. For Habermas, reflective equilibrium will not do a complete job here. It is subject-­ centered and thus only from the first-person and the second-person-­perspective. It is

2  A Reasonable Political Concept of Justice

115

still an “egocentric universalization procedure” (Ibid, p.90). It cannot secure the kind of transition from “pro tanto justification” to intersubjective, public justification. But the property of the reasonableness of a political concept of justice is a property that is not merely pro tanto justifiable to oneself or some peoples, but to all, at least all members of a social-political community. Rawls talks about public justification based on overlapping consensus. In Rawls, “public justification happens when all reasonable members of political society carry out a justification of the shared political conception by embedding it in their several reasonable comprehensive views.”(Ibid, pp.90-91) For Habermas, Rawls’s interchangeable use of the terms “public” and “shared” in this context is misleading. In Rawls’s vision, though “the overlapping consensus results from everybody’s decision simultaneously”, it is arrived by “each individually for herself, whether the proposed conception fits into her own comprehensive doctrine.” (Ibid, p.91) A shared consensus is arrived by individual persons individually, while public justification is publically achieved in the public sphere. Shared consensus is arrived at by individual persons’ subject-centered reason individually, while public justification is arrived at persons’ public use of reason. Thus, we must not conflate shared consensus and public justification. In Rawls, everyone endorses the same political concept of justice for her/his own, nonpublic reasons and “each must satisfy herself that all others accept it” on their own comprehensive doctrines just as s/he accepts it on her/his own comprehensive doctrine (Ibid). As for those comprehensive doctrines in which members of a community ground their respective consents, “the express contents of these have no normative role in pubic justification; citizens do not look into the content of their doctrine. … Rather, they take into account and give some weight to only the fact— the existence—of reasonable overlapping consensus itself.”(Ibid) As Habermas sees it, the problems for Rawls are as follows. The so-called public justification “lacks a perspective of impartial perspective and a public use of reason in the strict sense.”(Ibid) Meanwhile, “it is doubtful whether ‘reasonable’ citizens in the sense outlined would ever reach an overlapping consensus if they could only convince themselves from within their own individual comprehensive doctrines of the validity of a conception of justice.”(Ibid) Habermas points out: The prospect of reaching a consensus depends essentially on what kinds of revisions are permitted at the last stage of a decentered justification. A pro tanto justified conception that “you or I” judge to be valid from our respective points of view may be overridden by the veto of others ‘once all values are tallied up. Our concept of justice must be revised before it can be endorsed by everyone (Ibid).

Thus, if overlapping consensus can ground the reasonableness of a political conception of justice, such overlapping or consensus must be of reasons and truths justifiable and acceptable to all who share the consensus. Being justifiable to all cannot be reducible to being justified and justifiable only to you and me. Being justified and justifiable to you and me does not mean intersubjectivity only of you and me, not intersubjectivity of all.

116

4  Truth and Justice

Here, the challenge rises from the diversity of worldviews of different members of a social-political association. Merely recognizing the existence of other worldviews is not enough to bridge understandings and cultivating overlapping consensus. To arrive at overlapping consensus, intersubjective communication and discourses are needed here. As Habermas sees it, three moments in diverse worldviews call for intersubjective communication and discourses: “those concerning (a) the definition of the domain of political matters, (b) the ranking and reasonable balancing of political values, and finally and most importantly (c) the priority of political over nonpolitical values.”(Ibid) We cannot take for granted that a political concept of justice which we reflectively endorse and consider to be justified from our perspectives will necessarily be accepted and endorsed by other reasonable citizens in our community. In this context, a pro tanto justification is not a public justification. Pro tanto reasonableness merely from the first-person or/and the second-person perspective is not sufficient for a political concept of justice to be reasonable in the adequate, proper sense. While public justification in the proper, adequate sense is necessary for a political concept of justice to be reasonable, public justifiability is necessary for a concept justified publically. For a political concept of justice, its public justifiability is grounded in its truth. Notwithstanding, according to Habermas, “there remains an unsolved tension between the reasonableness of a political conception acceptable to all citizens with reasonable comprehensive doctrines and the truth that individual ascribe to this conception from within their respective comprehensive doctrines.”(Ibid, p.94) The problem is as follows: On the one hand, the validity of a political conception of justice ultimately depends on the validity-generating resources of the different comprehensive doctrines in so far as they are reasonable; on the other hand, reasonable doctrines must in turn satisfy standards prescribed to them by practical reason. What makes them reasonable cannot be defined by standards internal to any one of them (Ibid).

By this token, while those comprehensive doctrines can grant justification of a political concept to those who scribe to them, the validity of such a political concept of justice ultimately must be justified in terms standards transcending those comprehensive doctrines, not their own internal standards. Admittedly, “Rawls also take the constraints of ‘public reason’—‘the general ones of theoretical and practical reason’—into consideration in Political liberalism.” (Ibid) Still, his view of such constraints is problematic. In Rawls, those constraints take effect only after “‘justice as fairness’ has been accepted by citizens; only then can they determine the priority of the right over the good.”(Ibid) But the constraints of public reason are supposed to be in the process of convincing citizens to recognize the reasonableness of a political concept of justice as fairness and to accept it. They are supposed to be in the process of justification. Rawls’s intention is to avoid the danger of political paternalism, not wanting that “philosophy undermines the political autonomy of citizens.”(Ibid, p.95) But political autonomy and philosophical reflection are compatible and can enhance and strengthen each other.

2  A Reasonable Political Concept of Justice

117

In Habermas’s vision, philosophy is to promote the public use of reason. Philosophy promoting the public use of reason will never undermine the political autonomy of citizens, but to elevate it. For Habermas, the idea that a reasonable concept of justice is not true or false is problematic. Habermas points out, On a weak interpretation, the claim that a theory of justice cannot be true or false has merely the unproblematic sense that normative statements do not describe an independent order of moral facts. On a strong interpretation, this thesis has the value-skeptical sense that behind the validity claim of normative statements there lurks something purely subjective: feelings, desires, or decisions, expressed in a grammatically misleading fashion (Ibid, p.63).

In a sense, the claim that a concept of justice is not true or false makes sense when one subscribes to moral relativism. Rawls does not want moral relativism. Meanwhile, the thesis that a reasonable political concept of justice is not true or false can make sense when one subscribes to value skepticism, and the thesis itself is a claim of value skepticism. Rawls does not want value skepticism either. As Habermas points out, “For Rawls both value skepticism and moral relativism are equally unacceptable.”(Ibid). Rawls characterizes his theory as constructivist liberalism. He wants to secure for normative statements “a form of rational obligation founded on justified intersubjective recognition, but without according them an epistemic meaning.”(Ibid, pp.63-64) Rawls’s strategy is wrongly footing. In short, Rawls’s separation of the reasonableness of a political concept of justice and the truth of such a concept falls short. When he does not want to accord normative statements of justice an epistemic meaning, Rawls then “introduces the predicate ‘reasonable’ as a complementary concept to ‘true’.” (Ibid, p.64) One is entitled to ask here, in what sense the predicate “reasonable” is complementary to the predicate “true”? Again, the term “epistemic” here connotes justification-dependence. Habermas points out: Either we understand ‘reasonable ‘in the sense of practical reason as synonymous with ‘morally true’, that is, as a validity concept analogous to truth and on the same plane as propositional truth; … Or we understand ‘reasonable’ in a more or less same sense as ‘thoughtfulness’ in dealing with debatable views whose truth is for the present undecided; then ‘reasonable’ is employed as a higher-level predicate concerned more with ‘reasonable disagreements’, than with the validity of their assertions (Ibid).

Given Rawls first introduces the predicate “reasonable” as an attitude and a quality of citizens, he seems to weigh more on the second reading above. Still, Rawls cannot escape the first reading. According to Habermas, when Rawls talks about reasonableness as an attitude and quality of a citizen, he in effect also talks about reasonableness as the attitude and quality of the practical reason of a moral person. Thus, at the end of the day, Rawls “explains the meaning of practical reason by reference to two dimensions: on the one hand, the deontological dimension of normative validity … and, on the other hand, the pragmatic dimension of a public sphere and the process of public reasoning.” (Ibid) Doing so, Rawls cannot avoid the association of reasonableness and

118

4  Truth and Justice

justifiability. He cannot avoid the fact that the property “reasonableness” is by nature epistemic. Thus, from a different avenue, Rawls still explains “reasonableness” in terms of normative validity in the public use of reason. In spite of Rawls’s resistance, “the predicate ‘reasonable’ points to the discursive redemption of a validity claim.”(Ibid) By this token, being reasonable and being true both refer to epistemic validity. Rejecting this fact, Rawls “thereby denies himself the possibility of exploiting the epistemic connotations of the expression ‘reasonable’, connotations that he must nevertheless attribute to his own conception of justice if it is to be able to claim some sort of normative binding force.”(Ibid) For Habermas, when one claims a political concept of justice to be reasonable, one claims also that it have truth—that is, one claims that it has warranted assertability. To claim that a political concept is reasonable is to claim that it has rational acceptability, and thus warranted assert ability. Habermas insists: The concept of justice must not be political in the wrong sense and should not merely lead to a Modus Vivendi. The theory itself must furnish the premises that “we and others recognize as true, or as reasonable for the purpose of reaching a working agreement on the fundamentals of political justice.”(Ibid, p.63)

A necessary connection exists between the reasonable and the warrantedly assertable. So does between the claim of reason and the claim of truth. Reason without truth is powerless. “Truth” without reason is not real truth. Here, for a political concept of justice, truth brings about normative validity— that is, normative acceptability, and justifiability to all. Following Habermas’s present Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth, it is also the case that for a political concept of justice, truth brings about cognitive reality and objective validity. Rawls fails to distinguish between acceptability and acceptance. What is accepted is not necessarily acceptable and thus reasonable. Rawls’s conflation of reasonableness with acceptance and his underlying assumption that what is accepted is reasonable are wrong. What is accepted is not necessarily acceptable and reasonable and thus not necessarily true. All the same, for Habermas, the reasonableness of a political concept of justice is by nature epistemic. Anything else, “Reasonable citizens cannot be expected to develop an overlapping consensus so long as they are prevented from jointly adopting a moral point of view independent of, and priori to, the various perspectives they individually adopt within each of their comprehensive doctrines.” (Ibid, p.77) To develop an overlapping consensus, reasonable citizens must engage each other in discourses geared to mutual understanding and carry out their epistemic tasks. To be competent in their epistemic tasks in discourses, reasonable citizens must follow communicative rationality in discourses. Here, we talk about overlapping consensus of all members of a social-political community, not merely between two members or among some members. In this context, even Rawls’s point of view from “wide and general reflective equilibrium” cannot replace the moral point of view. Habermas’s position in his debate with Rawls is consistent with his three principles in discourse ethics: the acceptability principle, the validity principle and the

3  The Best Mechanism to Establish a Reasonable Political Concept of Justice

119

universalization principle. The position can be rephrased in terms of the three principles as follows: only a political concept of justice can claim to reasonableness that is acceptable; only a political concept of justice can claim acceptability that is valid; a political concept of justice is valid when it can be publically justified and can be jointly, informedly accepted by all concerned citizens autonomously and without coercion. Thus, in his debate with Rawls, Habermas applies his three principles of discourse ethics in the subject-matter of justice and its relation to truth. In summary, in his debate with Rawls, Habermas insists that there is an internal, necessary connection of truth, justice, and reason; that for a political concept of justice to be reasonable, such a concept must have truth; that the reasonableness of a political concept of justice is by nature epistemic. Correspondingly, denying the epistemic connotation of the expression ‘reasonable’ only undermines the normative force of the claim of a political concept of justice to be reasonable. Meanwhile truth and justice are intrinsically associated. Justice without truth is not true justice, and truth without justice is not just truth. A reasonable political concept of justice is necessarily true, and truth is a necessary property of a reasonable political concept of justice.

3  T  he Best Mechanism to Establish a Reasonable Political Concept of Justice We now examine Habermas’s and Rawls’ view on the best mechanism to establish a political concept of justice that is reasonable. Habermas and Rawls agree that a reasonable political concept of justice is neither given by God nor given in nature; instead, it is democratically established by members of a political association. The question is what is the best mechanism for such a democratic legislature. For Rawls, the mechanism is what he dubs as “the original position.” The original position is an abstract discourse setting wherein representatives of members of a political association (as legislators) rationally deliberate about, articulate and establish the fundamental norms of justice from a totally fair and impartial point of view. The key component of the original position is the device called “the veil of ignorance”. The veil of ignorance is the device that deprives all participants in the legislature position of all self-knowledge and self-understanding including knowledge and understanding of their identities, social and historical circumstances, and interests. To spell it out differently, it is a device that turns all participants in the legislature position into abstract agents or persons. For example, the veil of ignorance is akin to an imaginable veil that deprives all US congressmen/women of their self-knowledge and self-understanding of who they are, what they are, whom they represent, and where they are from in a legislature position and process. As Habermas says, “Rawls conceives of the original position as a situation in which rationally choosing representatives of the citizens are subject to the specific constraints that guarantee an impartial judgment of practical questions.”(Ibid, p.51)

120

4  Truth and Justice

Needless to say, Rawls’s original position purports to be a public position of impartially establishing a political concept of justice. It purports to have the impartiality of representatives’ judgments in choosing a political concept of justice as the reasonable basis of social cooperation among all members of a political association. Of Rawls’s original position, Habermas raises three questions as follows: (1) Can the representatives in the original position comprehend the higher order interests of their clients—that is, members of a social-political association—whom they represent soly on the basis of rational egoism—that is, a subject-centered practical reason?; (2) “Can basic rights be assimilated to primary goods?”; and (3) “Does the level of veil of ignorance guarantee the impartiality of judgment?” (Ibid, p.52). According to Habermas, in Rawls’s mechanism, when representatives are situated in the original position, they lose their autonomy. Wearing the veil of ignorance, they no longer think, choose, and act as autonomous citizens, but are designed as abstract, rational agents. This naturally begs the question for one to ask: Can those who have no autonomy comprehend the higher order interests of those whom they are supposed to represent and who are autonomous citizens? For example, the representatives are supposed to understand and take into account “the fact that autonomous citizens respect the interests of others on the basis of just principles and not merely from self-interest that they can be obliged to loyalty that can be convinced of the legitimacy of existing arrangements and policies through the public use of their reason.”(Ibid) Representatives in the original position are supposed “both to understand and take serious the implications and consequences of an autonomy that they are themselves denied.” (Ibid, p.53) The second problem is this. Even in Rawls’s concept of justice, justice means fair distribution of rights and basic liberties. Rawls’s first principle of justice reads: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. But in Rawls’s mechanism, for representatives in the original position, “the issue of principle of justice can only arise in the guise of the question of just distribution of primary goods.”(Ibid, p.54) This in turn will force them to understand basic rights to be merely primary goods. It thus raises the question: Can rights be reduced to primary goods? To be sure, the question is not whether basic rights can also be conceived as a kind of primary good. The question is whether basic rights should be reduced to, and identified merely as, primary goods. As Habermas sees it, even Rawls cannot deny the deontological distinction between rights and goods (Ibid, pp.55-56). But the undeniable deontological distinction between rights and goods “contradicts the prima facie classification of rights as goods.”(Ibid, p.56) The third problem is this. The veil of ignorance imposes informational constraint in order to guarantee the impartiality of judgments of the representatives in the original position when they establish a political concept of justice as the basis of social cooperation among all members of community. The constraint by the veil of ignorance produces disinformation. This raises the question of whether the uninformed judgments of the representatives in the original position can be really impartial.

3  The Best Mechanism to Establish a Reasonable Political Concept of Justice

121

As Habermas sees it, ignorance, disinterest or indifference does not necessarily guarantee impartiality. Impartiality of judgment involves equal consideration of all legitimate interests of all parties, in particular the legitimate rights of all parties to have their particular interests, not indiscriminately ignoring all particular interests of all parties. Habermas points out: Rawls imposes a common perspective on the parties in the original position through informational constraints and thereby neutralizes the multiplicity of particular interpretive perspectives from the outset. Discourse ethics, by contrast, views the moral point of view as embodied in an intersubjective praxis of argumentation which enjoys those involved to an idealizing enlargement of their interpretive perspectives. Discourse ethics rests on the intuition that the application of universalization, properly understood, calls for a joint process of “ideal role taking.”(Ibid, p.57)

An informed, but enlightened judgment is more likely to be impartial than an ignorant, disinterested judgment is. A judgment is impartial if it equally considers all legitimate interests of all parties, and a judgment can equally consider all legitimate interests of all parties if it is an informed judgment that understands altruistically all legitimate interests of all parties affected. It may not be impartial if it is ignorant of legitimate interests of all parties affected. In light of the above, Habermas proposes the ideal speech situation as the alternative mechanism to Rawls’s mechanism of the original position. The ideal speech situation is the communicative situation of discourses following communicative rationality. It is a communicative situation that redeems the four claims of communicative rationality: comprehensibility, truthfulness, truth, and normative rightness and meets the four requirements of the universal pragmatics of rational discourse and speech: inclusion of speech, equality of speech, sincerity of speech, and freedom of speech. In an ideal speech situation, the four constraints of the universal pragmatics are as follows: (I) Nobody who could make a relevant contribution may be excluded; (ii) that all participants are granted an equal opportunity to make contributions; (iii) that participants must mean what they say; and (iv) that communication must be free from external and internal coercion so that the “yes” or “no” stances that participants adopt on criticizable validity claims are motivated solely by the rational force of the better reason (Ibid, p.44).

In other words, an ideal speech situation has two salient features. One is that its core component, and operating force is communicative reason. It is governed by communicative reason. Another is that it meets four necessary requirements of the universal pragmatics: inclusion of speech, equality of speech, truthfulness of speech, and freedom of speech. Notwithstanding, for Habermas, an ideal speech situation here should be preferred to the original position. As Habermas sees it, Under the pragmatic presuppositions of an inclusive and noncoercisve rational discourse between free and equal participants, everyone is required to take the perspective of everyone else and thus to project herself into the understandings of self and world of all others; from this interlocking of perspectives there emerges an ideally extended “we perspective” from which all can test in common whether they wish to make a controversial norm the basis of

122

4  Truth and Justice

their practice; and this should include mutual criticism of the appropriateness of the language in terms of which situations and needs are interpreted. In the course of necessarily undertaken abstractions, the core of generalizable interests can then emerge step by step (Ibid, p.58).

Needless to say, things are different in the original position wherein participants wear the veil of ignorance. “The veil of ignorance constrains the field of vision of parties in the original position from the beginning to the basic principles on which presumptively free and equal citizens would agree, notwithstanding their divergent understandings of self and the world.”(Ibid) The differences between the original position and the ideal speech situation include the following. First, differences in participants in the process of establishing a political concept of justice and principles, norms, and standards of justice. In the original position, participants participating in the process of developing a political concept of justice are without self-knowledge and thus agents without practical identity. In an ideal speech situation, participants participating in the process are of good self-knowledge and self-understanding. In the original position, participants in the process of establishing a political concept of justice are abstract persons, while in the ideal speech situation, participants in the process are citizens of concrete, particular identities, interests and ways of thinking. In the original position, participants in the process of establishing a political concept of justice are not autonomous while in the ideal speech situation, they are autonomous citizens who can address both the ethical question of self-understanding and the moral question of universal justification. The difference above is of great importance. The ideal speech situation prevents the process of establishing a political concept of justice from suppressing and oppressing the concrete, the particular, and the different. It puts the process under the four constraints of the universal pragmatics to have the voices of the concrete, the particular and the different included and heard, making the concrete, the particular and the different autonomous negotiators in the practical discourse that is tool of the universalization process. The difference between the original position and the ideal speech situation also reminds of this. The device of Rawls’s original position is the veil of ignorance, and the core of the veil of ignorance is abstraction. Abstraction is the feature of the original position, but also its Achilles’ heel so far as doing justice to the concrete, the particular, and the difference is concerned. The feature of the ideal speech situation is its inclusion and equality of the concrete, the particular and the different as the concrete, the particular, and the different. It thus has the strength that Young and others think it does not have: it refuses the “tendency to suppress difference”; it does not operate with the assumption that conceives the polity or community is a substantially “universal and unified.”(Young, 1990, p.10) Second, differences in structure. The original position is structured with the veil of ignorance, while the ideal speech situation is structured in accordance with the four constraints of the universal pragmatics. The original position structurally consists of the veil of ignorance that makes all participants in the process of establishing a political concept of justice and principles of justice to think impartially as abstract agents. The ideal speech situation structurally consists of the four constraints of the

3  The Best Mechanism to Establish a Reasonable Political Concept of Justice

123

universal pragmatics for rational deliberation, argumentation and negotiation of concrete. In it, all participants in discourses think critically, fairly and justly. The original position is structurally closed, while the ideal speech situation is structurally open and inclusive. Third, differences in perspective. The original person has a perspective of the third person, while an ideal speech situation is a mechanism wherein the first-­ person-­, the second-person-, and the third person perspective all have their due roles to play in a comprehensive horizon of understanding. In the original position, it is one for all—that is, one thinks for all. In the ideal speech situation, it is both one for all and all for one—that is, one thinks for all, for oneself, and for others, and all thinks not only for all, but also for individuals. The perspective which participants in the original position adopt is the perspective of the subject-centered human reason. The perspective which participants in the ideal speech situation is the perspective of human reason as intersubjective reason. The perspective of the original position is human reason as the constructing, dictating, and governing power. The perspective which participants in the ideal speech situation adopt is the perspective of human reason as the constructing, communicating, and negotiating power. Fourth, differences between an informed, enlightened process and a less informed, disinterested process; between the intersubjective perspective based on mutual understanding and the we-perspective based on ignorance of oneself and others; between the intersubjective perspective of universal acceptability based on intersubjective recognition and the we-perspective of acceptance based on reflective equilibrium. In the original position, the veil of ignorance imposes informational constraint in order to guarantee the impartiality of judgments of the representatives in the original position. Thus the process of developing a political concept of justice in the original position is information-limited, information-constrained, and information-­ restricted. In the ideal speech situation, there is no information-­ constraint and limitation. Instead, the ideal speech situation is intended for informed but critical practical discourse. The watch word in the original position is prudence. The pragmatic presuppositions in the ideal speech situation are comprehensibility, truthfulness, truth and normative rightness. The pragmatic presuppositions in the ideal speech situation are impartiality, inclusion and equality. Fifth, an ideal speech situation purports to arrive at mutual understanding among participants in practical discourses in constructing a political concept of justice as the common basis of social cooperation. The original position purports to reach mutual acceptance of a proposed political conception of justice. The ideal speech situation thus purports to develop shared reasons for and understanding of a political concept of justice. The original position is tended only to develop a proposed political conception of justice that can be reasonable to everyone of a political association. By this token, the function of an ideal speech situation is normative, while the function of the original position is strategic. An ideal speech situation purports to produce the acceptance of a proposed political concept of justice and to affirm its rational acceptability—epistemic, ethical-­ moral, and political acceptability. The original position aims merely at the establishment and acceptance of a political concept of justice. An ideal speech

124

4  Truth and Justice

situation purports to justify the validity, legitimacy, and rationality of those fair norms of justice for social cooperation, in addition to establish those norms. The original position functions merely to establish what can be considered to be fair norms of justice for social cooperation. Correspondingly, the task of legislature in the original position is to develop a political concept of justice that can be accepted by everyone wearing the veil of ignorance, while the task of legislature in the ideal speech situation is to develop a concept of justice that has the acceptability—that is, truth in a discursive sense—to all affected parties as participants in practical discourses. In summary, Habermas advocates the ideal speech situation as the best mechanism for the establishment of a reasonable political concept of justice. The ideal speech situation is a mechanism wherein its normative basis of justification for a political concept of justice, as well as any speech acts, involves the claim to have propositional truth and wherein a political concept of justice is established not only because it is accepted, but also because it has acceptability and is grounded in truth.

4  The Role of the Overlapping Consensus The preceding discussion leads us to the issue of the role of overlapping consensus in establishing a reasonable political concept of justice. In Rawls, overlapping consensus refers to the shared, intersected agreements of different normative theories that underwrite the basic social institutions of a political association and that provide supports for a political concept of justice. Rawls calls different normative theories as “comprehensive theories.” Accordingly, in Rawls’s vision, overlapping consensus consists of the shared, intersected supports which different comprehensive theories provide to a political concept of justice. In content, it consists of the shared supports for a political concept of justice from different comprehensive doctrines, not a universally shared agreement by all in practical discourse. It does not involve or include a shared understanding of truth and normative rightness. By nature, it is thus merely political. In comparison, in Habermas, overlapping consensus is more than shared, intersected supports for a political concept of justice from different comprehensive doctrines. Instead, it includes intersubjective understanding of truth and normative rightness. It is thus both political, and epistemic. Therefore, Rawls and Habermas disagree on what role overlapping consensus plays, and should play, in the political process of establishing a political concept of justice. For Rawls, the role of overlapping consensus is merely political, and it facilitates a cooperative, fair attitude of members of a political association. It functions to stabilize a political concept of justice on the basis of political and practical prudence. It politically stabilizes the institutionalization of principles of justice in a society, not a role of public justification of principles of justice. For Habermas, the role of overlapping consensus is both political and epistemic. Overlapping consensus has not only a political role to present and stabilize institutionalization of

4  The Role of the Overlapping Consensus

125

principles of justice in a society, but also an epistemic role of public justification of a political concept of justice to be reasonable, demonstrating the acceptability of such a concept. It is epistemic as much as political. For Rawls, the role of overlapping consensus is merely to express “the functional contribution that the theory of justice can make to the peaceful institutionalization of social cooperation.”(Ibid, p.62) It is “merely an index of utility, and no longer a confirmation of the correctness of the theory; it would no longer be of interest from the point of view of acceptability, and hence of validity, but only that of acceptance, that is, of securing social stability.”(Ibid) Overlapping consensus produces political support and acceptance of a proposed political concept of justice. It does not produce public justification of a proposed political concept of justice. For Habermas, overlapping consensus produces the acceptance of a proposed political conception of justice on the one hand and demonstrates the acceptability and justifiability of such a concept on the other hand. Overlapping consensus should not be merely an index of utility, or otherwise, a political concept of justice can never prioritize rightness over good or utility. Overlapping consensus is not restricted to the consensus that it is good or prudent to institutionalize a political concept of justice. It justifies that there are plausible reasons for such a concept to be rationally acceptable and thus the concept should be accepted. Rawls’s view on the role of overlapping consensus is consistent with his concept of justice as a political concept. As he says: “the aim of justice as fairness, then, is practical: it presents itself as a conception of justice that may be shared by citizens as a basis of a reasoned, informed, and willing political agreement.” (Rawls, 1993, p.62) For Rawls, the aim of a political concept is political, not metaphysical, epistemic, or epistemological. So is overlapping consensus political, not epistemic or epistemological. It is to stabilize the acceptance of a political concept of justice, not to demonstrate its acceptability. It is a political consensus on the reasonableness and utility of a political conception of justice, not an epistemic or epistemological consensus on its truth. It does not confirm or disaffirm that a political concept of justice has truth. Meanwhile, Habermas’s concept of overlapping consensus is consistent with his discourse principle in his discourse ethics. The discourse principle dictates that only those norms may claim to be valid that could meet with the consent of all affected in their roles as participants in a practical discourse. For Habermas, a political concept of justice is reasonable not simply because it is accepted, but because it is acceptable. For a political concept of justice to be endorsed as a reasonable one and its principles to be reasonable, it must demonstrate that it has acceptability. Correspondingly, for Habermas, overlapping consensus “primarily contributes to further justification” of principles of justice that underwrite basic social institutions, not merely serves “to explicate a necessary condition of social stability.”(Ibid, p.60) The burden of judgment on the reasonableness of a political concept of justice must be carried by the public use of reason. Therefore, as Habermas sees it, “Rawls must make a sharper distinction between acceptance and acceptability. A purely instrumental understanding of the theory is already invalidated by the fact that the citizens must first be convinced by the

126

4  Truth and Justice

proposed conception of justice before such a consensus can come about.”(Habermas, 1998, p.63) If citizens can come to a reasonable consensus about a political concept of justice in the public discourse, instead of merely entering into a coerced agreement, they must be rationally and reasonably convinced that they have good reasons and stand on solid ground to accept such a political concept of justice. If they can be convinced to give free, informed, and uncoerced consents to a political concept of justice, the concept must have acceptability, or otherwise citizens cannot be convinced to accept it. According Habermas, the political role of stabilization which Rawls designs for overlapping consensus cannot be separated from the epistemic role of public justification which overlapping consensus must play. It goes as follows: If Rawls rules out a functionalist interpretation of justice as fairness, he must allow some epistemic relation between the validity of his theory and the prospect of its neutrality toward competing worldviews being confirmed in public discourse. The stabilizing effect of an overlapping consensus would then be explained in cognitive terms, that is, in terms of the confirmation of the assumption that justice as fairness is neutral toward ‘comprehensive doctrines (Ibid).

There is no, and can be no, true stabilization without public justification. Public justification is always, and must be, public justification in discourses geared to mutual understanding. Discourse geared to mutual understanding the four validity claims of communicative rationality, and public justification in such a rational discourse always has a cognitive dimension. Therefore, for Habermas, in content and nature, overlapping consensus must include an intersubjective understanding of truth. It must include an intersubjective understanding of truths and acceptability of those particular principles of justice that underwrite basic social institutions of a well-ordered society and basic institutional arrangements in a well-ordered society. Even if we should understand overlapping consensus as overlapping supports for particular principles of justice, such overlapping supports must not be merely a constellation of reasons, but must be intersubjective reasons that are grounded in truth. Where there are overlapping supports for a political concept of justice from various comprehensive doctrines, there there are intersubjective recognition of truths. In summary, in Habermas’s vision of justice, truth, justice, and reason are intrinsically associated. A political concept of justice that is reasonably necessarily has truth. When a political concept of justice presents itself as a reasonable one, it also presents itself as one that has truth. There can be no justice without the rule of reason. There can be no the rule of reason without truth. There can be no reasonableness without justifiability. There can be no justifiability without truth. Thus, there can be no justice without truth. By this token, the idea of the rule of justice presupposes the idea of the rule of reason. The idea of the rule of reason presupposes the idea of the rule of truth.

References

127

5  Conclusion In conclusion, consistent with his philosophy of modernity, Habermas moves from an early discursive concept of truth to the present Kantian-pragmatic concept of truth that defines truth as cognitive validity and is realist epistemologically. In spite of his vocal rejection of the correspondence theory of truth, Habermas claims that in a true statement, a state of affairs is given or attains. This concept of truth is compatible to the Aristotelian realist concept of truth. All the same, Habermas firmly defends the idea of universal truth, which is also at the core of the ideal of modernity. Correspondingly, Habermas firmly insists that truth, justice, and human reason are not separable. His concept of justice is cosmopolitan, but also modernist. So is his concept of the relation among justice, truth, and human reason. Justice is grounded in human reason. And human reason is grounded in truth. And human reason in Habermas is intersubjective, not subject-centered. His modernist ideal aspires not only to the rule of truth, justice, and reason in the world, but also to the rule of universal truth, universal justice, and universal reason in the world. Habermas’s position in his debate with Rawls is consistent with his three principles in discourse ethics: the acceptability principle, the validity principle and the universalization principle. The position can be rephrased as follows: (a) only a political concept of justice can claim reasonableness that is acceptable; (b) only a political concept of justice can claim acceptability that is valid; (c) a political concept of justice is valid that it can be publically justified and can be jointly, informedly accepted autonomously and without coercion by all concerned participants in practical discourses of justice. Therefore, in Habermas’s vision, the mechanism of the ideal speech situation, instead of the mechanism of the original position, is the best mechanism to establish a political concept of justice that is reasonable. Correspondingly, there should be no separation of establishment and justification of a political concept of justice, which means the role of overlapping consensus in the procedure of developing a political concept of justice and practical discourses is both political and epistemic.

References Aristotle. (2001). In: R.  Mckeon (ed.) Metaphysics, in the basic works of Aristotle. and C.D.C. Reeve (trans.) Intro. New York: The Modern Library. Fultner, B. (2003). Translator’s Introduction. In: J. Habermas (ed.), Truth and justification, Barbara Fultner (trans.) Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (1973). “Wahrheitstheorien”, in Wirklichheit und Reflexion: Festschrift für Walter Schulz (pp. 211–265). Pfullingten: Neske. Habermas, J. (1984). Vorstudien und Ergänzungen zur Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Habermas, J. (1990). Moral consciousness and communication. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (1998). The inclusion of the other. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

128

4  Truth and Justice

Habermas, Jürgen. 2003. Truth and justifications. Barbara Fultner Cambridge: The MIT Press. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/habermas Kant, I. (1965). Critique of pure reason. Norman Kemp Smith (trans.) New York: St. Martin’s Press. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Levine, S. (2010). Habermas, Kantian pragmatism and truth. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 36(6), 677–695. McCarthy, T. (1991). The critical theory of Habermas. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Outhwaite, W. (2009). Habermas: A critical introduction. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Rawls, J. (1993). Political liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Chapter 5

Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy

Abstract  This chapter studies Habermas’s discourse doctrines of law and constitutional democracy. It first examines Habermas’s concepts of the genesis of public law, public law as a system of knowledge and action, the relationship between morality and law, the facticity and validity of law, the distinction between moral and legal norm, and the source of the validity of law. It then examines the discursive concepts of constitutional democracy, the distinction between ethnos and demos, the distinction between nation-state, popular sovereignty, nationalism, constitutional patriotism, post-nation democracy, the three normative models of democracy, and global democracy. Keywords  Validity · Facticity · Basic rights · Autonomy · Constitutional patriotism · Post-nation democracy · The proceduralist mode of democracy THE IDEAS of the rule of law and constitutional democracy are among the core ideas of modernity in our time. They represent the modernist approach to political system, government, and basic social institution. No wonder, from the very beginning, Habermas’s project of reconstruction of modernity includes the discourse doctrines of law and constitutional democracy, his renovating theories of law and constitutional democracy. In 1986, Habermas delivered his Harvard Tanner Lectures on Human Values under the rubric, “Law and Morality.” In 1992, his Tanner lecture text was published with the book title Between Facts and Norms, and thus officially inaugurated a new philosophy of law, the discourse doctrine of law. In 1996, The Inclusion of the Other (Die Einbeziehung des Anderen. Studien zur politischen Theorie) was published. In The Inclusion of the Other, Habermas refines his doctrines of law and constitutional democracy, responding to some criticisms. In 2001, Habermas received an honorable degree, Doctor of Laws, from Harvard University. The Harvard honorable degree of Doctor of Laws reflects Habermas’s great achievement in philosophy of law: the development of the discourse doctrine of law. And the discourse doctrine of law purports to be an alternative to both legal positivism and legal realism.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 X. Chen, The Essentials of Habermas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79794-2_5

129

130

5  Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy

Legal positivism holds that public laws are as they are publically published; their authority comes from their being publically published by legitimate government authority and power. According to this doctrine, “whether a society has a legal system depends on the presence of certain structures of governance, not on the extent to which it satisfies ideals of justice, democracy, or the rule of law. What public laws are in force in that system depends on what social standards its officials recognize as authoritative.” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-­positivism/) In legal positivism, public laws can still be authoratative even if they do not reflect the so-called natural laws. In comparison, legal realism entertains the idea that civil laws are, and ought to be, institutionalized natural laws and natural justice and public laws are subordinate to moral laws. In Habermas’s vision, a society must have a legal system to satisfy the ideals of justice, democracy, and the rule of law, while public laws and morality are two parallel institutions that are parallel, but complementary to one another. In his vision, public laws have both validity and facticity; they form a system of knowledge and action; that the rule of reason, the rule of law, social justice, and constitutional democracy are not separable. The discourse doctrine of law is one of the most renovating doctrines in our time. Its conceptual framework includes a set of core concepts as follows: 1 . The concept of public law as a system of knowledge and action; 2. The concepts of the facticity and validity of law; 3. The concept of the five categories of basic rights; 4. The distinction between legal norm and moral norm; 5. The concept of the complementary relationship between public law and morality; 6. The concept of the duality of coercion and freedom in public law; 7. The concept of the third category of public law: cosmopolitan law or world law (will be discussed in the next chapter). These concepts supersede some traditional philosophical concepts of civic laws and bring new insights into civic laws. Meanwhile, the discourse doctrine of constitutional democracy purports to develop a mode of democracy wherein popular sovereignty is exhibited most strikingly in the autonomous, public use of reason by all citizens in practical discourses of issues of public interests, and national, international and global policies pertaining to the fate of a political association. Its conceptual framework includes a set of core ideas as follows: 1 . The concept of post-nation democracy; the distinction between demos and ethnos; 2. The concept of constitutional patriotism; the concept of post-nation democracy; 3. The concept of the public sphere; the idea of the internal connection of democracy, the rule of law, and the rule of reason; 4. The concept of proceduralist mode of democracy; 5. The concept of citizenship in a democratic society; 6. The concept that democracy is the only source of legitimacy and validity of public laws; 7. The concept of three levels of democracy.

1  Public Laws and Morality

131

In short, Habermas’s discourse doctrines of law and constitutional democracy constellate the modernity ideals of the rule of reason, the rule of law, social justice and democracy in line with the spirit of our epoch. They are direct applications of the discourse doctrine of modernity in law and constitutional democracy.

1  Public Laws and Morality Public law and morality are two important, indispensable institutions of human civilization and they remain so in our time. With regard to law and morality, Habermas differs from Immanuel Kant. Kant’s doctrine of law is one of legal realism. In Kant, public law is subordinate to morality. In comparison, “Habermas argues that law and morality stand in a complementary relation.” (Cronin & De Greiff, 1998, p.xi) For him, while law and morality are two important, complementary institutions in a social-political community, they differ from one another. Each has its own institutional role to play and social function to perform. One cannot replace the other. Meanwhile, “Habermas’s differentiation between law and morality challenges the traditional assumption that morality represents a higher domain of value in which basic legal and political principles must be grounded.”(Ibid) That is to say, Habermas’s discourse doctrine of law challenges some core assumptions of legal realism or naturalism. In Habermas’s discourse doctrine of law, moral norms and legal norms are not the same, and public laws are not simply natural laws that are institutionalized in society. Habermas differs from Thomas Hobbes and other naturalist philosophers. In Habermas, morality provides the kind of impartial, universal perspective for deliberation and moral perspective is one of the three dimensions of the legal perspective. The legal perspective consists of the moral, the ethical, and the pragmatic perspective. A distinction exists between “moral and legal validity” (Ibid) To a great extent, Habermas’s view on the parrellel relationship between public law and morality reflects a core tenet of his doctrine of modernity and modernization: “modernization also involves functional differentiation.”(Zurn, 2011, p.158) Meanwhile, the distinction between law and morality is more than functional. According to Habermas, legal norms and moral norms differ from each other. Legal norms have facticity which moral norms do not have. Legal norms are coercive, administrated publically by social institutions and sanctioned by force. Moral norms impose moral obligations and duties, which we are free to carry out or neglect. In comparison, legal norms impose legal obligations that we cannot say “no” without suffering institutional sanction or punishment. Meanwhile, moral norms and legal norms differ in their cognitive, motivational, and organizational dimensions. Moral norms are cognitively indeterminate, and motivationally uncertain, while allowing organizational deficit, while legal norms are cognitively determinate, motivationally certain, and do not allow organizational deficit. Moreover, public laws that embody legal norms organize and turn diverse peoples into a particular social-political community. Morality affirms the solidarity of all human

132

5  Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy

beings as a universal moral community. Public laws regulate a heterogeneous public, while morality constrains a universal community. Habermas does not deny that public law and morality are importantly associated. As he says, “to be sure, moral and legal questions refer to the same problems: How interpersonal relationships can be legitimately ordered and action conflicts can be consensually resolved against the background of intersubjectively recognized normative principles and rules.”(Habermas, 1998a, p.106) Also, “a legal order can be legitimate only if it does not contradict basic moral principles. In virtue of the legitimacy component of legal validity, positive law has reference to morality inscribed within it.”(Ibid) Still, the relationship between law and morality is parallel and mutually complementary, not hierarchical. For example, “we must not understand basic rights or Grundrechte, which take the shape of constitutional norms, as mere imitations of moral rights, and we must not take political autonomy as a mere copy of moral autonomy. Rather, norms of action branch into moral and legal rules.”(Ibid, p.107) About the difference between the discourse doctrine of law and legal realism or naturalism, Habermas points out: The idea from natural law of a hierarchy of laws at different levels of dignity is misleading. Law is better understood as a functional complement to morality. As positively valid, legitimately enacted, and actionable, law can relieve the morally judging and acting person of the considerable cognitive, motivational, and organizational demands of a morality based entirely on individual conscience (Habermas, 1998b, p.257).

The rejection of the realistic or naturalistic concept of a hierarchy of laws is one stone for two birds here. It also leads us to see that “law can compensate for the weaknesses of a highly demanding morality that … provides only cognitively indeterminate and motivationally unreliable results.”(Ibid). Here, Habermas has a unique concept of the legitimacy of public law. His concept of legitimacy is indebted to Kant’s on the one hand and differs from Kant’s on the one hand. In Habermas’s vision, legitimacy is not only a virtue of legal institutions and of decisions of law, but also a mandated quality of law and decisions of laws. Meanwhile, public law is legitimate if it is entitled to and in a justified position to exert power and authority. That is to say, in the discourse doctrine, the concept of legitimacy connotes a justified entitlement and position of authority. Meanwhile, the legitimacy of public law divides between legal and moral legitimacy, corresponding to the division between legal and moral validity. In Habermas, the concept of legitimacy and the concept of validity are importantly related. The concept of legitimacy connotes a justified entitlement and position to exert power and authority. And the concept of validity connotes being justified and justifiability. In our time, we can appeal neither to God nor nature for the legitimacy of public law. Thus, neither Aquinas nor Hobbes should be the one from whom we look for an answer about the source of legitimacy of public law. So far as the idea of legitimacy is concerned, Habermas draws importantly from Kant’s idea that law must be legitimate and to be legitimate, it must be justifiable. “Habermas is heavily indebted to Immanuel Kant’s concept of legitimacy … Kant

1  Public Laws and Morality

133

grounded their legitimacy in a universal principle of law.”(Habermas, 1998a, xi) Habermas emphasizes that to be legitimate, public law must be valid also from the moral perspective, which proffers a universal point of view. Though he considers law and morality to be two mutually complementary institutions, Habermas also emphasizes the moral legitimacy of public law grounded in the moral validity of law. Still, Habermas differs from Kant. Kant subordinated laws to morality. Habermas sees public laws and morality to be parallel, complementary to each other. For Kant, the legitimacy of law comes from its being the handmaid of morality. For Habermas, the legitimacy of law comes from the democratic process of establishing law. Thus Habermas asserts, “We must not follow him [Kant] in conceiving the aspects of legality as limitations of morality … we explain these aspects in terms of the complementary relation between law and morality.”(Ibid, p.113) Here, the legitimacy of public laws presupposes their validity, both legal and moral validity. Their validity comes from their rational acceptability, which in turn presupposes their justifiability and being justified in the democratic process of making public laws. Arguing for the democratic process of establishing public law as the source of the legitimacy of public law, Habermas quotes I.Mauss as saying the following: Positive law is not legitimate because it corresponds to substantive principles of justice, but because it is enacted in accordance with procedures that are formally just, that is, democratic. That all decide the same thing for all in the legislative process is a demanding normative presupposition that is no longer defined in a substantive manner but is intended to prevent arbitrary decisions and minimize domination through self-legislation of the addressees of the law, through equal procedural positions, and through the universality of legal regulation (Habermas, 1998b, p.137).

Public law is legally legitimate because it is democratically established in a just democratic process. It is morally legitimate because it is morally justifiable in discourses. The emphasis that the democratic process of legislature and discourses are respectively the sources of legal legitimacy and moral legitimacy of public law is in essence also an insistence on popular sovereignty as embodied in the public use of reason by citizens as the source of legitimacy of public law in our time. In discourse doctrine, the democratic process of legislature is the solely source of the legal legitimacy of public law. “The democratic principle states that only those statutes may claim legitimacy that can meet the assent (Zustimmung) of all citizens in a discursive process of legislation that in turn has been legally constituted.” (Habermas, 1998a, p.110) Here, Habermas rejects the naturalistic approach to law. Noteworthy, as Habermas indicates, the inseparability of the legitimacy of law and democracy is a hallmark of modernity in our epoch. It is at the core of modernity that public laws should have legitimacy, and validity, and be rationality, and democracy is the sole source of the legitimacy of law in our epoch. Popular sovereignty and the public use of reason is the sole source of the legitimacy of public laws. Thus, in the ideal of modernity in our epoch, the legitimacy of law and democracy to be inseparable. According to natural law tradition, public law comes from a higher source beyond the laws written by humankind. Kant identified morality as the source of legal law. Jean-Jacques Rousseau identified “shared tradition, civic virtue,

134

5  Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy

agreement on the common good“as the higher source of legal laws. Habermas resists both approaches here. He argues that in our time, the legitimacy of law must come from democratic discourses and procedures of establishing public laws. For Habermas, even what can be counted as natural laws must be universally recognizable and acceptable, which can only be justified in public discourses. Just as “the validity of statements can be established only through discursive engagement using available reasons,” valid views on natural laws can only be acquired through democratic, public discourses (Habermas, 2003, p.247). As Habermas sees it, morality and public laws regulate respectively different modes of interpersonal relationship and action. He points out: Moral norms regulate interpersonal relationships and conflicts between natural persons who are supposed to recognize one another both as members of a concrete community and as irreplaceable individuals. Such norms are addressed to persons who are individuated through their life histories. By contrast, legal norms regulate interpersonal relationships and conflicts between actors who recognize one another as consociates in an abstract community first produced by legal norms themselves. Although they, too, are addressed to individual subjects, these subjects are individuated not through personal identities developed over a lifetime but through the capacity to occupy the position of typical members of a legally constituted community (Habermas, 1998a, p.112).

Equally crucial, “only matters pertaining to external relations can be legally regulated.”(Ibid) Legal norms do not regulate peoples’ private lives. They regulate only peoples’ public activities. Thus, legal norms differ crucially from moral norms. Needless to say, “both norms are valid.” (Outhwaite, 2009, p.138) Both kinds of norms can be rationally acceptable and accepted. Still, public law is not just as system of knowledge, but a system of both knowledge and action. Moral norms merely represent “a form of cultural knowledge” while legal norms “in addition to this, has a binding character in the institutional level. Law is not only a symbolic system but an action system as well.”(Habermas, 1998a, p.107) Correspondingly, “the person who judges and acts morally must independently appropriate this moral knowledge, assimilate it, and put it into practice. She is subject to unprecedented (a) cognitive, (b) motivational, and (c) organizational demands, from which the person as legal subject is unburdened.”(Ibid, pp.113-114) To say it differently, three dimensional distinctions exist between moral norms and legal norms. First, moral norms are cognitively indeterminate, while legal norms are cognitively determinate. By “cognitive indeterminacy” is meant here that the cognitive boundaries of norms are indefinite, e.g., the cognitive boundary of the moral norm that one must always serve justice and humanity is indefinite. By “cognitive determinacy” is meant here that the cognitive boundaries of norms are definite, e.g., the cognitive boundary of the legal norm of crimes against humanity is specifically defined in the Statute of International Criminal Court and thus definite and determinate. So is the cognitive boundary of the legal norm of genocide or any other legal norm.

1  Public Laws and Morality

135

While law is a system of knowledge and action, the cognitive boundary of a legal norm is always definite and specifically defined. About the difference between law and morality pertaining to cognitive determinacy, Habermas says: Morality provides no more than procedure for impartially judging disputed questions. It cannot pick out a catalog of duties or even designate a list of hierarchically ordered norms, but it expects subjects to form their own judgments. Moreover, the communicative freedom they enjoy in moral discourse leads only to fallible insights in the contest of interpretation. Problems of norm justification do not present real difficulties. … Rather, the abstractness of these highly generalized norms leads to problems of applications as a conflict reaches beyond the routine interactions in familiar contexts. …Thus, the problems of justification and application in complex issues often over tax the individual’s analytical capacity. This cognitive indeterminacy is absorbed by the facticity of the genesis of law. The political legislature decides which norms count as law, and the courts settle contests of interpretation over the application of valid but interpretable norms in a manner at once judicious and definitive for all sides. The legal system of deprives legal persons in their role of addressees of the power to define criteria for judging between lawful and unlawful. Parliamentary legislative procedures, judicial decision making, and the doctrinal jurisprudence that precisely define rules and systematizes decisions represent different ways that law complements morality by relieving the individual of the cognitive burdens of forming her own moral judgments (Ibid, pp.114-115).

Therefore, moral norms impose general obligations of action while legal norms impose specific, definite obligations of action. A legal norm is one of specific knowledge and action. Second, moral norms are motivationally uncertain. In comparison, legal norms are motivationally certain and mandatory. Habermas points out: A principled morality encumbers the individuals not only with problems of deciding action conflicts but also with expectations (Erwartungen) regard her strength of will. … The actor is supposed to achieve harmony between herself as author of moral “ought” and herself as their addressee. In addition to cognitive indeterminacy of principled judgment, then, there is the motivational uncertainty about action guided by known principles. This absorbed by the facticity of the law’s enforcement. To the extent that moral cognition is not sufficiently anchored in the motives and attitudes of its addressees, it must be supplemented by a law that enforces norm-confirmative behavior while leaving motives and attitudes open. Coercive law overlays normative expectations with threats of sanctions in such a way that addressees may restrict themselves to the prudential calculation of consequences (Ibid, pp.115-116).

The compulsory force of moral norms are uncertain, while the compulsory force of legal norms are specific, definite and certain. For example, the compulsory force of the moral norms that one should serve justice is uncertain. But the compulsory force of the legal norm that one must not commit crimes against humanity or otherwise one would be legally prosecuted and one risks being jailed is specific, certain and definite. The motivational force of the moral norm that one should serve justice is uncertain, but the motivational force that one must not commit crimes against humanity is certain, definite, and specific. Third, moral norms allow organizational deficits and thus there can be organizational discrepancy between expectation and reality in moral norms. In comparison, legal norms must have organizational correspondence and cannot, and do not, allow

136

5  Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy

organizational deficits. Where there are legal norms, there are corresponding legal organizations to enact them. Habermas points out: A third problem, that of imputability of obligations, or accountability, results from the universalistic character of postconventional morality. … The more that moral consciousness attunes itself to universalistic value orientations, the greater are the discrepancies between uncontested moral demands, on the one hand, and organizational constraints and resistances to change, on the other (Ibid, pp.116-117).

While moral norms are still norms where organizational resources for their implements are, and can be, absent, legal norms cannot exist without corresponding institutions as their enactors and enacting conditions. Legal norms must be enforced institutionally and therefore they cannot be legal norms when organizational resources for their implements are absent. Legal norms do not, and cannot, allow organizational deficits. The cognitive, motivational, and organizational differences between moral and legal norms reflect the difference between the nature of morality and the nature of public law. Here, the key is that public law is a system of both knowledge and action. Habermas points out: Law is two things at the same time: a system of knowledge and a system of action. We can understand it just as much as a text that consists of normative propositions and interpretations, as we can view it as an institution, that is, as a complex of normatively regulated action. Because motivations and value orientations are interwoven with each other in law as an action system, legal norms have the immediate effectiveness for action that moral judgments as such lack. At the same time, legal institutions differ from naturally emergent institutional order s in virtue of their comparatively high degree of rationality; they give firm shape to a system of knowledge that has been doctrinally refined and coupled with a principled morality (Ibid, p.114).

“Law is both a system of normative propositions and interpretations and an institution, an action system.”(Habermas, 1998a, p.114; Outhwaite, 2009, p.137) Public law is a system of norms of actions and reasons of motivation for action on the one hand, and a system of norms as an embodiment of rational knowledge and understanding on the other hand. In comparison, because of its cognitive indeterminacy, morality should not be seen as a system of knowledge, amid it has a cognitive dimension. Meanwhile, “legal institutions differ from naturally emergent institutional order in virtue of their comparatively high degree of rationality; they give firm shape to a system of knowledge that has been doctrinally refined and coupled with a principled morality.”(Ibid) Noteworthy, while morality is a system of liberties and duties, public law is a system of basic rights and obligations. According to Habermas, “Modern legal systems are constructed on the basis of individual rights.”(Habermas, 1998b, p.256) Moreover, Basic rights are actionable individual rights whose meaning in part is to free legal persons in a carefully circumscribed manner from the binding force of moral commands by creating domains of legal conduct in which actors can act on accordance with their own preferences. Whereas moral rights only derive from duties that bind the free will of autonomous persons,

2  The Institution of Pubic Laws

137

legal entitlements to act in accordance with one’s preferences enjoy priority over legal duties, which in turn arise from legal restriction on these individual liberties (Ibid, p.191).

Basic rights are constitutional rights and differ from moral rights. Public laws give due to basic rights including rights that grant individual persons in some very circumscribed manner the freedom to say “no” to the binding force of a specific moral command. Therefore, Habermas further points out: This basic conceptual privileging of rights over duties is explained by the modern concepts of the “legal person” and of the “legal community.” The moral universe, which is unlimited in social space and historical time, include all natural persons with their complex life histories; morality itself extends to the protection of the integrity of fully individuated persons (Einzelner). By contrast, the legal community, which is always localized in space and time, protects the integrity of its members precisely insofar as they acquire the artificial status of rights bearers. For this reason, the relation between law and morality is more one of the complementary than of subordination (Ibid, p.256).

The moral community is unlimited in social space and historical time, while the legal community is always localized in space and time. In summary, in Habermas’s vision, public law and morality stand as two parallel, and mutually complementary institutions. Legal norms and moral norms differ from one another. They have different social functions and social roles, and cannot replace one another. The idea of the rule of law is at the core of ideal of modernity, amid the debate on whether there should be the rule of law or the rule of morality is debate since the ancient time.

2  The Institution of Pubic Laws The preceding discussion leads us to the discursive concept of the nature, essence, characters, features, and functions of public law. Following Kant, Habermas conceptualizes public law as a system of rights and obligations. That being said, in Habermas, public law as a system of rights and obligations has two salient features. First, it consists of valid and legitimate claims. It has what Habermas dubs as “validity”. Second, as a system of knowledge and action, public law is coercive. It has what Habermas calls “facticity”. Habermas says, “The positivity of law means that a consciously enacted framework of norms give rise to an artificial layer of social reality.”(Habermas, 1998a, p.38) For Habermas, the key to understand public laws is still to appreciate the dual features of facticity and validity of public law. Public law represents not only the rule of law, but also the rule of reason. The rule of law differs from the rule of morality. Still, the rule of law means also the rule of human reason. In our time, the rule of law, the rule of reason, and constitutional democracy that features popular sovereignty in the public use of reason are internally associated.

138

5  Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy

2.1  The Concepts of Facticity and Validity According to Herbermas, public law has a Janus face: on the one hand, it has the social reality of institutional coercion, which Habermas calls “facticity”; and on the other hand, it consists of a set of codes that not only codify behaviors, but also claim to be valid norms of conducts. Equally crucial, public law not only expresses communal concepts of good and values, but also purports to be valid norms of rights and obligations. Thus, public law is distinguished by the fact that it has both facticity and validity. The concept of facticity connotes the social reality that public law is coercive, enforceable and backed by institutional force that threatens to visit law-breaker with evil. It indicates that public law is coercive, enforceable and institutionally backed. In other words, the facticity of public law is that public law is compulsory law backed by institutional sanctions; it appears as the will of a lawgiver with the power to punish those who do not comply; to the extent that it is actually enforced and followed, its coercive nature and existence is a social fact. Facticity is not just fact. It is the social reality, the quality or condition of being a fact and being a real presence with particular content and meaning. Noteworthy, Habermas’s concept of the facticity of public law differs from Heidegger’s concept of Dasein’s facticity. In Habermas, the facticity of law refers to the social reality that public law is coercive, enforceable, and institutionally enforced. In Heidegger, Dasein’s facticity refers to Dasein’s “thrownness”—being delivered into the world and situated in given conditions. In Habermas, the facticity of public law is its social reality that it is coercive, institutionally enacted and enforced, and compulsory; to abide by it or to suffer being visited institutionally with evils. To claim that public law has facticity is to claim that it has the social reality of coercion and institutional enforcement. Facticity demarcates public law from morality. In turn, corresponding to its facticity, public law does not allow organizational deficit. Nor can it be cognitively indeterminate. Meanwhile, the validity of public law refers to the property that public law is logically sound, rationally justified, and legally authoritative; it connotes the justifiability of its being and authority. The validity of law is a ground of its legitimacy. In Habermas’s vision, the legitimacy of public law includes and presupposes rational justifiability, that is, validity. Thus, legal norms are “both enforceable laws and laws of freedom.”(Ibid, p.31) They are enforceable laws in the sense that they are institutionally backed by force. They are laws of freedom in the sense that they have validity and legitimacy and are established by free, autonomous, and public exercise of human reason and human freedom. Correspondingly, on the one hand, public law is coercive. On the other hand, the origin of public law is from democratic consensus and public law is therefore the choice by exercise of freedom. As a result, public law is the choice of public reason in a democratic process of establishing law. The validity of public law means claiming to reasons by public law. To say that public law has validity is to say that its norms claim to have good supportive reasons and are rationally justified; that “compulsory laws are not simply commands backed

2  The Institution of Pubic Laws

139

by threats but embody a claim to legitimacy”; “what H.L.A.Hart has termed the ‘internal aspect of law is a function of its legitimacy or social recognition.”(Rehg 1998, xi) To claim legitimacy is to claim being socially recognized to be in a rightful position of authority. It is to claim also being socially recognized to be in a justified position and in a justified ground of authority. It thus implies a claim to validity. Rational justification gives rise to validity, and validity means being rationally justified. Validity makes possible being socially recognized to be in a rightful position of authority. This brings into prominence the democratic principle in law-making in Habermas’s vision. “The democratic principle states that only those statutes may claim to legitimacy that can meet with the assent (Zustimmung) of all citizens in a discursive process of legislation that in turn has been legally constituted.”(Habermas, 1998a, p.110) Needless to say, the concept of the legitimacy of public law is crucial. “Law borrows its binding force, rather, from alliance that the facticity of law forms with the claim to legitimacy.”(Ibid, p.39) For Habermas, “legitimate law is compatible only with a mode of legal coercion that does not destroy the rational motives for obeying the law: it must remain possible for everyone to obey legal norms on the basis of insight.” (Ibid, p.121) Legitimate law is the choice by exercise of freedom and therefore it must have validity to be acceptable to all. “Legal norms of this type make possible highly artificial communities, associations of free and equal legal persons whose integration is based simultaneously on the threat of external sanctions and the supposition of a rationally motivated agreement.” (Ibid, p.8) Legitimate law is established only in a democratic process or in democracy. To appreciate the facticity-validity dual character of public law, we should see that public law does not merely express the communal concepts of good, values and importance. Instead, the legal perspective synthesizes the moral, ethical, and pragmatic perspectives. The ethical perspective enables public law to express the communal concepts of good, happiness, and communal solidarity. The moral perspective enables it to embody moral validity and to make claims to justice (both substantial and procedural) as giving due to rights and obligations. Public law establishes norms of social conducts and differs from a good policy of social interaction expressing specific social values, though laws also reflect social values. “Anyone wanting to equate the constitution with a concrete order of values mistakes its specific legal character; as legal norms, basic rights are, like moral values, modeled after obligatory norms of action—and not after attractive good.”(Ibid, p.255) The validity of public law also demarcates law from a good administrative policy. Public law makes valid claims on rights and obligations. It purports to give due to rights and obligations. All the same, in the discourse doctrine of law, pubic law is a basic institution with both facticity and validity. It is an institution with both coercive force and with valid and legitimate claims and supportive reasons. It is compulsory but also rational and reasonable. Public law stipulates norms and standards of conducts, actions, and practices that must be met or otherwise one would be visited with evil.

140

5  Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy

2.2  Legal Validity In Habermas’s vision, public law has not only moral validity, but also legal validity. The claim that public law has both facticity and validity is also the claim that public law has both legal facticity and legal validity. Here, legal validity is a distinctive category of validity. “In the legal mode of validity, the facticity of the enforcement of law is intertwined with the legitimacy of a genesis of law that claims to be rational because it guarantees liberty.”(Ibid, p.28) We should recall Kant here. As Habermas sees it, “for Kant, the facticity-validity relationship within the dimension of legal validity appears as the internal connection that law establishes between coercion and freedom.”(Ibid) For Kant, coercion and freedom constitute the dual character of legal validity. Kant’s concept is as follows: Law is connected from start with authorization to coerce; this coercion is justified, however, only for “the prevention of a hindrance on freedom,” hence only for the purpose of countering encroachments on the freedom of each. The validity claim of law is expressed in this internal “conjunction of the universal reciprocal coercion with the freedom of everyone.” Legal rules posit condition of coercion, condition “under which the will (Willkur) of one person can be unified with the will of another in accordance with a universal law of freedom.” On the one hand, legal behavior can be enforced as “the mere conformity … of an action with the law; this means it must be open to subjects to comply with the law for reasons other than moral ones (Ibid, pp.28-29).

Here, “Kant’s concept of legality dissolves the paradox of rules of action that without regard for their moral worthiness, only require a behavior that objectively corresponds to the norm: legal norms are at the same time but in different aspects enforceable laws based on coercion and laws of freedom.”(Ibid, p.29) For Kant, legality expresses the justifiability in terms both of enforceable laws of coercion and laws of freedom. This is the dual character of legal validity: coercion and freedom. And “the two components of legal validity, coercion and freedom, leave the choice of action orientation up to the addressees.”(Ibid) Here, coercion expresses validity as facticity, and freedom expresses validity as rational choice and acceptability. There is an empirical approach to legal validity in philosophy of law. Habermas points out, “for an empirical approach, the validity of positive law is in the first instance characterized tautologically, in that the law is considered to be whatever acquires the force of law on the basis of legally valid procedures and retains its legal force for the time being, despite the legally available possibilities of repeal.”(Ibid, p.29) For Habermas, “one can adequately explain the meaning of such legal validity only by referring simultaneously to both aspects—to de facto validity or acceptance, on the one hand, and to legitimacy or rational acceptability, on the other.” (Ibid) According to Habermas, the empirical approach is flawed. Legal validity presupposes legitimacy or rational acceptability, not merely de facto validity or acceptance. Legal validity consists not only of coercion. Thus, from the discursive point of view, legal validity integrates coercion and freedom. This is the discursive concept of legal validity: legal validity constellates de facto acceptance and rational acceptability of legal norms and thus constellates coercion and freedom or

2  The Institution of Pubic Laws

141

compulsion and reason. Equally crucial, legal validity is a rise of the public use of reason in the democratic process of legislature or in the democratic genesis of law. It is a rise of popular sovereignty as embodied in the public use of reason in the democratic genesis of law. The discursive concept of legal validity is greatly indebted to Kant on the one hand and a constellation of the genesis of law and democracy on the other hand, replacing Kant’s concept of individual exercise of human reason by the idea of the public use of reason in the democratic genesis of law. It reflects Habermas’s modernist aspiration for the integration of the ideas of the rule of law, the rule of reason, and democracy, the public use of reason, and public law embodying legitimacy, validity, and rationality. Needless to say, for public law, legitimacy here implies legal legitimacy and rational acceptability from the legal point of view. It refers both to the redemption of the rational potentials of law in general and the legal potentials in the formal, democratic process of legislature in particular. Habermas points out: The legitimacy of statutes is measured against the discursive redeemability of their normative validity—in the final analysis, according to whether they have come about through rational legislature process, or at least could have been justified from pragmatic, ethical, and moral point of view. The legitimacy of statute is independent of its de facto implementation (Ibid, p.31).

Thus, legal legitimacy designates the comprehensive acceptability that can be justified from the pragmatic point of view, the ethical point of view, and the moral point of view. De facto validity or acceptance is not sufficient because “de facto validity or factual compliance varies with the addressees’ belief in legitimacy, and this belief is in turn based on the supposition that the norm could be justified.”(Ibid) Not withstanding, a legitimately legal order “must always make it possible to obey its rules out of respect for the law.”(Ibid) On the one hand, a legal order must be legitimate. On the other hand, if it is legitimate, it makes “normative validity claims that expect a rationally motivated recognition” of members of a social-­ political community (Ibid). This means that “they at least invite the addressees to follow them from the nonenforceable motive of duty.”(Ibid) This does not mean that de facto acceptance has no role in producing legal validity. Instead, de facto acceptance is one of the two necessary conditions for legal validity. This is true both of a legal system and an individual legal norm, amid that the measure of legitimacy for a legal system may be higher than the one for an individual legal norms. Habermas quotes Ralf Dreier as indicating two conditions as the necessary conditions for the validity of a legal system: (1) social effectiveness of a legal system and (2) being ethically justified (Ibid, p.30). In comparison, “the legal validity of individual norms [requires] that these are enacted in accordance with a constitution satisfying the above-mentioned criteria. In addition, norms must individually display, first, a minimal of social effectiveness or the prospects for such and second, a minimum of ethical justification or the potential for such.”(Ibid) More crucially, the legal validity of a legal system or a legal norm is crucially tied to the fact that a legal system or an individual legal norm is de facto accepted and

142

5  Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy

published publically by the democratic process of legislature. De facto acceptance and public publication is a necessary condition for legal validity. All the same, “the positivity of law is bound up with the promise that democratic processes of lawmaking justify the presumption that enacted norms are rationally acceptable.”(Ibid, p.33) Here, The discourse-theoretic concept of law steers between the twin pitfalls of legal positivism and natural law: if the legitimacy of positive law is conceived as ultimately traced back to an appropriate communicative arrangement for the lawgiver’s rational political will-­ formation (and for the application of law), then the inviolable moment of legal validity need not disappear in a blind decisionism nor be preserved from the vortex of temporality by a moral containment (Ibid, p.453).

The inviolable moment of legal validity is the rational consensus with freedom and choice. Legitimate, valid law is not only rationally justifiable, but also rationally, voluntarily consented. In summary, the main point of Habermas’s view above is that (1) the legal validity of law implies the rational acceptability of law; and vice versa; and (2) rational choice implies reason and freedom. Therefore, legal validity integrates de facto acceptance and rational acceptability of legal norms and thus integrates coercion and freedom.

2.3  Private and Public Autonomy We are now in a position to discuss Habermas’s concept of basic rights, as well as private and public autonomy. For Habermas, public law is a system of rights and obligations. The “dual perspective on law—legal norms as both enforceable laws and laws of freedom” leads us to look back at individual rights (Ibid, p.31). A legal system is one of both rights and obligations. A just legal order must give due to and guarantee individual rights. While justice means giving due to what is due, legal justice gives due to individual persons’ basic rights and correspondingly, both private and public autonomy. Habermas points out: A legal order must not only guarantee that the rights of each person are in fact recognized by all other persons; the reciprocal recognition of the rights of each by all must in addition be based on laws that are legitimate insofar as they grant equal liberties to each, so far that each’s freedom of choice can coexist with the freedom of all (Ibid, p.32).

In a society with a legal system, communicatively engaging citizens must exercise their rights which must be protected by public laws. Meanwhile, their safeguarded rights must be compatible to other’s same rights and therefore they voluntarily consent to coercion of legitimate laws that coerce all to respect reciprocally each other’s rights. The concept of rights leads us to the concepts of private autonomy and public autonomy. By definition, autonomy means self-government or self-rule. Public laws define rights and corresponding obligations and therefore secure persons’

2  The Institution of Pubic Laws

143

autonomy. Legitimate rule of law presupposes persons’ autonomy. A legal order must give due to individual persons’ private autonomy and public autonomy. Habermas points out: On the one hand, as demarcating areas in which private individuals can exercise their free choice as they desire, law must guarantee the private autonomy of individuals pursuing their personal success and happiness. On the other hand, because its enactment must be such that reasonable individuals could always assent to its constraints rationally, legitimate law must also secure the public autonomy of those subject to it, so that legal order can be seen as issuing from the citizens rational self-legislation, as it were (Ibid, xxv).

Habermas quotes Friedrich Carlvon Savigny as saying: “a legal regulation secures ‘the power justly pertaining to individual person: an area in which his will rules, and rules with our consent.”(Ibid, p.85) Notwithstanding, public law also secures persons’ rights in participation in the popular sovereignty. Autonomy divides between private and public autonomy. Private autonomy refers to a person’s autonomy in exercise of his or her basic rights and in pursuing individual interests, desires and happiness. Correspondingly, individual rights to private autonomy are as follows: (1) the basic rights to the greatest possible measures of equal individual liberties; (2) the basic rights pertaining to the status of a member in a voluntarily association of consociates under laws; (3) The basic rights to legal protection. In comparison, public autonomy refers to popular sovereignty and person’s autonomy in participating in popular sovereignty and in forming public opinions and wills. And rights pertaining to public autonomy are (4) the basic rights to political participation and (5) the basic rights to basic provision of living conditions—that is, basic social-economic rights. The three categories of basic individual rights pertaining to private autonomy “generate the legal code itself by defining the status of legal person.”(Ibid, p.122) They are as follows: 1. The basic rights to the greatest possible measures of equal individual liberties constitute a necessary condition for “the politically autonomous elaboration.” (Ibid) Without these rights, there can be no a person’s meaningfully, politically autonomous elaboration. 2. The status of a member in a voluntarily association of consociates under laws constitute a necessary condition for “the politically autonomous elaboration.” (Ibid). Without this status, there can be no a person’s meaningfully, politically autonomous elaboration. 3. The basic rights to legal protection constitute a necessary condition for both “the actionality of rights and the politically autonomous elevation.” (Ibid) Without these rights, there can be no a person’s meaningful actionality of rights and meaningfully, politically autonomous elaboration. Notwithstanding, “these three categories of rights result simply from the application of the discourse principle to the medium of law as such, that is, to the conditions for the liberal form of a horizontal association of free and equal persons.” (Ibid).

144

5  Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy

With regard to the basic rights in category (1), Habermas points out that they are necessary for citizens to recognize legitimate laws. As he says: Norms appearing in the form of law entitle actors to exercise their rights or liberties. However, one cannot determine which of these laws are legitimate simply by looking at the form of individual rights. Only by bringing in the discourse principle can one show that each person is owed a right to the greatest possible measure of equal liberties that are mutually compatible. According to this principle, just those regulations are legitimate that satisfy the requirement that the rights of each be compatible with equal rights for all (Ibid, pp.123-124).

Only those regulations which satisfy the requirement that each person’s rights be compatible to equal rights of all persons can have the consent of all persons as participants in discourses and the democratic process of legislature. Also, in this context, the basic rights to the greatest possible measure of equal individual liberties include most of those classical liberal rights. Habermas points out: The classical liberal rights—to personal dignity; to life, liberty, and bodily integrity; to freedom of movement, freedom in the choice of one’s vocation, property, the inviolability of one’s home, and so on—are interpretation of, and ways of working out, what we may call a “general right to individual liberties,” however these may be specified (Ibid, pp.125-126).

Noteworthy, those classical liberal rights are included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1948. The basic rights in category (2) are rights for a person to be a legitimate member of a political association and to have a legitimate member status. As Habermas sees it, public laws do not normalize interactions between communicative competent subjects in general, but normalize interactions among members of a concrete political association. “The establishment of a legal code calls for rights that regulate membership in a determinate association of citizens, thus allowing one to differentiate between members and non-members, citizens and aliens.”(Ibid, p.124) “Internally, membership status forms the basis for ascribing the rights and duties that together constitute the status of citizen.” (Ibid) With regard to the basic rights in category (3), Habermas insists that “the legal institutionalization of the legal code requires, finally, guaranteed legal remedies through which any person feels her rights have been infringed can assert her claim.”(Ibid, p.125) Rights in category (3) include the basic rights of the due process. “The coercive character of law requires in cases of conflict special procedures for interpreting and applying existing law in a binding manner … In light of the discourse principle, one can then justify basic rights of due process that provide all persons with equal protection, an equal claim to a legal hearing, equality in the application of law, and then equal treatment before the law.”(Ibid) Thus, “the general rights to equal liberties, along with the correlative membership rights and guaranteed legal remedies, establish the legal code as such. In a word, there is no legitimate law without these rights.”(Ibid) The basic rights of the three categories mentioned above guarantee private autonomy in the sense that they secure persons as legal subjects who “reciprocally recognize each other in their role

2  The Institution of Pubic Laws

145

of addressee of laws and therewith grant one another a status on the basis of which they can claim rights and brings them to bear against one another.” (Ibid, p.125) Meanwhile, private autonomy and public autonomy are inseparable and individual rights pertaining to private autonomy and individual rights pertaining to public autonomy are not separable. The fourth category of individual rights are individual rights pertaining to public autonomy. They are as follows: 4. The basic rights to political participation are “the basic rights to equal opportunities to participate in processes of opinion-and will-formation in which citizens exercise their political autonomy and through which they generate legitimate law.”(Ibid) For Habermas, such rights are necessary for the legitimate rule of law. A legitimate rule of law is the rule of law established in accordance with the democratic principle of law. The democratic principle of law is that those who submit to laws must at the same time be co-authors of the laws to which they submit themselves. The democratic principle of law is the doctrine of self-legislation by citizens—the doctrine that “those subject to law as its addressees can at the same time understand themselves as authors of law.”(Ibid, 120). There is a necessary connection among rights in categories (1) through (4). Habermas points out, This category of rights is reflectively applied to constitutional interpretation and further political development or elaboration of the basic rights abstractly identified in (1) through (4). For political rights ground status of free and equal active citizens. This status is self-­ referential in so far as it enables citizens to change and expand their various rights or duties, or “material legal status”, so as to interpret and develop their private autonomy simultaneously.” (Ibid, p.123)

With regard to private autonomy, the basic rights to the greatest possible measures of equal individual liberties, the status of a member in a voluntarily association of consociates under laws, and the basic rights to legal protection are necessary. To these three categories of basic rights, rights in category (4)—that is, the rights to political and public participation—are necessary. And with regard to rights in category (4), rights of the first three categories are also necessary. While Habermas considers the basic rights of the above-mentioned four categories to be “absolutely justified categories of civil rights,” he considers the basic social-economic right to be justified “only in relative terms.”(Ibid) It goes as follows: 5. The basic social-economic rights are “basic rights to provision of living conditions that are socially, technologically, and ecologically safeguarded, in so far as the current circumstances make this necessary if citizens are to have equal opportunities to utilize the civil rights listed in (1) through (4) (Ibid). While their justification may be in relative term, the basic rights in category (5) are necessary for citizens to have equal opportunities to utilize the civil rights listed in categories (1) through (4). Thus, public laws constitute a system of rights. Basic rights should be entrenched in public laws, not merely conceived as moral rights or natural rights.

146

5  Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy

Public laws as the social mediations function to (1) protect private autonomy; (2) secure rights to participate in public politics and therefore secure public autonomy; and (3) institutionalize and stabilize popular sovereignty through organizing it into structured practices. A legal system “should contain precisely the rights citizens must confer on one another if they want to legitimately regulate their interactions and life contexts by means of positive law.”(Ibid, p.122) Noteworthy here, the five categories of individual rights which Habermas outlines above are those universal rights listed in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1948. With regard to private and public autonomy, Habermas in effect emphasizes both the tradition from John Locke, the liberal concern for individual liberty and rights, and the tradition from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that emphasizes republicanism, the common good, and popular sovereignty. Differing from thinkers of both traditions, Habermas conceptualizes popular sovereignty to be embodied the public use of reason by citizens in political participation. Meanwhile, he grounds legitimacy in popular democracy that require both private autonomy and public autonomy. He insists that valid laws always take into account both private autonomy and public autonomy. “The discursively filtered substance of norms finds expression in the two dimensions of self-determination and self-realization.” (Ibid, p.99) In summary, for Habermas, public law is a system of rights and obligations. In particular, it is a system of basic rights of five categories and corresponding obligations. It is a system of rights and obligations that are necessary and essential to private and public autonomy. Legal justice gives due to these five categories of basic rights, as well as both private and public autonomy.

3  Constitutional Democracy This leads us to Habermas’s discourse doctrine of constitutional democracy. In the ideal of modernity, the idea of the rule of law and the idea of constitutional democracy are not separable. In the ideal of modernity, democracy is the sole source of the legitimacy of law and its legal validity, while the rule of law is the necessary condition for any just, legitimate democracy. Thus the discourse doctrine of constitutional democracy is an important application of Habermas’s doctrine of modernity, and inseparable from his doctrine of public law and legitimate public authority. Meanwhile, the discourse doctrine of constitutional democracy is post-­metaphysical, normative, and rationalistic. It deals with a full range of subject-matters of democracy—the normative forms, necessary conditions, citizenship, and procedure. Democracy is a modern form of government as a new, legally and politically mediated form of political community. The rule of law and democracy find their union in modern state. In this context, constitutional democracy is of great importance in a two-fold sense. In the domestic front, democracy builds the modern relationships between state and citizens and between the people and citizens under the rule of law. In the global arena, democracy builds the relations among states,

3  Constitutional Democracy

147

nation-­peoples, international institutions, and global institutions, and between peoples and humankind in whole under the rule of law. Constitutional democracy constellates the ideas of the rule of law, the rule of reason, and the rule of justice. For Habermas, modern democracy is situated in a unique historical reality: cultural diversity. Correspondingly, a distinction exists between ethnos and demos. So does a distinction exist between nation and people, as well as between nation and state. Habermas thus puts forth the provocative concepts of post-nation state and post-nation democracy. The concept of post-nation state is that a modern state today is no longer a state of a people of homogeneous ethnicity, common ancestry and common history; a modern nation-people is no longer one of the same, homogeneous ethnicity. The concept of post-nation democracy is that while a democracy today is still the democracy of a people, it is not of a people of homogeneous ethnicity, common ancestry and common history; instead, a democracy today is of a people consisting of diverse peoples. Thus, Habermas points out, “we live in pluralistic societies that move further and further away from the model of a nation-state based on a culturally homogeneous population.” (Habermas, 1998b, p.117) In our time, some fine distinctions exist between demos and ethnos, as well as between nation and people. Demos refers to a polity of civic politics based on territorial citizenship. In comparison, ethnos refers to a community of identity politics based on blood ties or ethnicity. What is unique of present democracy is that a democratic polity today is a kind of civil polity not based on ethnic or cultural identity and blood ties, but a polity grounded in what Habermas dubs as “constitutional patriotism”. It is a polity under the rule of law and based on recognition of common principles, values, and conceptions of rights and obligations. Constitutional patriotism is the doctrine that the national solidarity of a democratic polity today is grounded in the common love of, solidarity with, and loyalty to the basic constitution of the polity, not in the recognition of a shared ethnic identity, common ancestry, history and cultural heritage of peoples of the polity. It is the doctrine that citizenship should be determined on a set of shared recognitions of common values embodied in the basic constitution of a political association, rather than on shared common ancestry, common history or ethnic origin. It is the doctrine that citizens devote their political attachment to the principles, norms and values of the basic constitution of a political association, rather than the origin of their nationality and commonality of their history. It replaces the love of one’s ethnicity and common ancestry by the devotion and commitment to the basic constitution of a polit. It replaces the rule of ethnicity and ancestral commonality by the rule of law, common principles and values. Distinctions exist among nationalism, republicanism, and constitutional patriotism here. Nationalism conceives a nation-state to be a polity of a specific ethnic group(s) of people. It conceives a nation-state to be a “socio-psychological mechanism”. Democracy of nationalism is of a nation-people. It is democracy wherein demos is identified with ethnos and public law protects the nation-people. A democracy of nationalism operates with “the ethnonational understanding of popular sovereignty” and the nationality principle (Ibid, 140). “The nationality principle implies

148

5  Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy

a right of national self-determination. According to this principle, every nation that wishes to govern itself has the right to exist as an independent state.”(Ibid) In comparison, republicanism conceives a nation-state to be a polity of free, equal and autonomous citizens. “The central idea of republicanism is that the democratic process can serve at the same time as a guarantor for the social integration of an increasingly differentiated society.”(Ibid, p.117) A democracy of republicanism is of a people consisting of free, equal citizens. It integrates ethically and politically different groups of people into one people. In a democracy of republicanism, public laws protect the common good of the people of common destiny. In it, national self-­ determination is not the rule of a homogeneous people or ethnic self-determination. Instead, “so long as national independence movement appeals to democratic self-­ determination in the republican sense, a secession … cannot be justified without taking into account of the legitimacy of the status quo.”(Ibid, p.143) Still, a republican democracy is of definite communal self-understanding and one of collectivity. Finally, a democracy of constitutional patriotism is citizens’ democracy. In such a form of democracy, public laws provide the mechanism and mediums of political constellation, but not ethical integration and political homogenization. A democracy of constitutional patriotism also organizes peoples of different ethnic groups into a political community under the rule of law and also conceives a political association to be a polity of free, equal, and autonomous citizens. However, a democracy of constitutional patriotism is one of free, equal and autonomous citizens, not one of a people of common destiny, and ethical, substantial homogeneity. A democracy of constitutional patriotism is a post-nation democracy, not a nation-democracy. The concept of post-nation democracy is that democracy is not one of a homogeneous nation-people, but one of a people of diverse peoples of free, equal, autonomous individual persons; the national solidarity of the democratic polity is grounded in the common solidarity with and loyalty to the basic constitution of the polity, not in the recognition of a shared ethnic identity, common ancestry, history and cultural heritage of peoples of the polity. In a post-nation democracy, demos is not ethnos nor grounded in ethnos. Here, in a democracy of constitutional patriotism, the emphasis is on the love of, solidarity with, and loyalty to, the basic constitution of the polity. In it, the basis of political allegiance is the shared cognition and endorsement of the basic constitution of the polity, not the shared sense of common ethnicity, religious identity, or common destiny. In other words, a democracy of constitutional patriotism is featured by the emphasis on the allegiance to, solidarity with, and loyalty to the constitution of the polity. A democracy of constitutional patriotism has its unique political culture. In a democracy of constitutional patriotism, The political culture of a country crystallizes around its constitution. Each national culture develops a distinctive interpretation of those constitutional principles that are equally embodied in other republican constitutions—such as popular sovereignty and human rights—in light of its own national history. A ‘constitutional patriotism’ based on these interpretations can take place originally occupied by nationalism.”(Ibid, p.118)

3  Constitutional Democracy

149

Thus, in a democracy of constitutional patriotism, the consciousness of a nation-­ people is replaced by the consciousness of the constitution of the polity. The doctrine of a democracy of constitutional patriotism is at the core of Habermas’s political philosophy. The doctrine epitomizes Habermas’s post-­ metaphysical way of political thinking and his emphasis on public laws as the foundation of a modern state. In the doctrine, a fine distinction exists between a state and a nation, as well as between a nation and a people. As Habermas points out: The ‘state’ on the modern conception is a legally defined term, which refers, at the level of substance, to a state power that possesses both internal and external sovereignty, at the spatial level over a clearly delimited terrain (the state territory) and at the social level over the totality of members (the body of citizens or the people) (Ibid, p.107).1

A state is a political entity of definite territory, and legitimate sovereignty and consists of citizens. In the substantial level, a state is an entity that has sovereignty and thus the authority to establish, administrate and enforce public laws within a political association. In the spatial level, a state is an entity in a specifically defined territory. In the social level, a state consists of citizens. “State power constitutes itself in the form of positive law, and the people is the bearer of the legal order whose jurisdiction is restricted to the state territory.”(Habermas, 1998b, p.118) The foundation of a state is public laws, in particular, the basic constitution of a political association. While a nation or nation-people does not necessarily exist under the rule of law, a modern state necessarily grounds itself in the rule of law. Meanwhile, a nation is a political community of a specific people, and a people is a collective community of individual persons. Thus, Habermas says: In political usage, the concepts ‘nation’ and ‘people’ have the same extension. But in addition to its legal definition, the term ‘nation’ has the connotation of a political community shaped by common descent, or at least by a common language, culture and history. A people becomes a ‘nation’ in this historical sense only in the concrete form of a particular form of life (Ibid).

Habermas’s emphasis here is that the modern union of nation and state is historical and contingent; since it is historical and contingent, if we enter into a historical period of post-nation state, this should not be surprising. The modern concept of a state as a substance of a nation-people or a community of national substance is a historical concept. As Habermas sees it, the modern marriage of nation and state works to solve a two-fold problem: the legitimation problem and the integration problem. According to Habermas, “The achievement of the nation-state consisted in solving two problems at once: it made possible a new mode of legitimation based on a new, more abstract form of social integration.”(Ibid, p.11) The legitimacy problem is that the

1  In comparison, Aristotle said: ““EVERY STATE is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.” (Aristotle, 2001, p.1127)

150

5  Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy

legitimacy of a modern state was neither divine-given nor natural given (e.g., familial or ethnic origin). “The legitimation problem resulted from the fact that the pluralism of worldviews that followed the schism of the religious confessions gradually stripped political authority of its religious grounding in ‘divine right.”(Ibid) Equally crucial, modern states differed from traditional states in many ways. For example, modern states belonged to peoples, while traditional states belonged to particular families—that is, for example, royal families. In modern time, the integration problem arose in the context of urbanization and economic modernization. People were divorced from the traditional ties associated with lands and local communities. As a result, how to integrate them into a political community became a problem and challenge. Also, a modern state was no longer the extension of a family or an ethnic people. A new reality of urbanization, economic modernization, and a new set of economic relationships and foundation called for a new political structure corresponding to its new economic foundation. The integration problem arose in the context of cultural diversity resulting from urbanization and economic modernization. To the legitimacy problem and the integration problem, the modern union of state and nation provided its solution and exit. Through the union, The nation-state responded to both of these challenges by politically mobilizing its citizens. For the emerging national identity made it possible to combine a more abstract form of social integration with new structures of political making. Democratic participation, as it slowly became established, generated a new level of legally mediated solidarity via status of citizenship while providing the state with a secular source of legitimation (Ibid, p.112).

With an abstract form of political integration and democracy as its source of legitimation, a nation-state enabled a modern polity to meet the challenge of both the legitimacy problem and the integration problem. As a result, modern states had the following unique features: (1) the sovereignty of the state power: modern states were featured by the sovereignty of the state power in given territory; (2) The ability of a state to claim national sovereignty to other nations; here, the state was the proper, legitimate power or authority to proclaim the sovereignty of a nation-state; (3) The ability of the state power to claim authority to its subjects; and (4) the differentiation of the state from civic society; for example, the separation of state and church: “The two defining characteristics of the modern state were the sovereignty of state power… and the differentiation of the state from society.”(Ibid) By definition, sovereignty is having the autonomous, supreme, and comprehensive legal authority, power and legitimacy to govern a political community of definite territory. A modern state had the autonomous, supreme, and comprehensive legal authority, power, and legitimacy to govern itself as a political community of definite territories without any interference from outside sources or bodies. Correspondingly, a modern state could claim its autonomous, supreme, and comprehensive legal authority, power, and legitimacy to self-government, and its proper rights and obligations in an international community. In the name of a people, a modern state could claim proper, legitimate state authority and power to its citizens,

3  Constitutional Democracy

151

for example, its juridical, legislative, and executive authorities. Meanwhile, a modern state embodied a realm of public authority. The ideal type of modern state guarantee both its citizens’ public and private autonomy: “View as ideal types, they guarantee political as well as private autonomy, and in principle, even equal political autonomy for everyone. A democratic constitutional state is, ideally speaking, a voluntary political order established by the people themselves and legitimated by their free will-formation.”(Ibid) A constitutional, democratic state is a polity that has a government of people, by the people, and for the people under the rule of law. It has a legal order that safeguards the five categories of basic rights, as well as private and public autonomy. In modern time, modern states married nationalism or republicanism in one form or the other. Modern nation-states had “a double coding of citizenship, with the result that the legal status defined in terms of civil rights also implies membership in a culturally defined community.” (Ibid, p.112) Thus, “the nation is Janus-faced. Whereas the voluntary nation of citizens is the source of democratic legitimation, it is the inherited or as ascribed nation founded on ethnic membership (die geborene Nation der Volksgenossen) that secures social integration.”(Ibid, p.115) In our time, a modern state should marry constitutional patriotism. In our time, there are three normative modes of democracy today: the liberal, the republican, and the proceduralist. The term “normative” connotes “being justified” and “being justifiable” here. What is normative is justified and justifiable. By this token, the concept of three normative modes of democracy is the concept of three justified and justifiable modes of democracy. Fair to say, the concept of a normative mode of democracy here is also intended to distinguish between true democracy and fake democracy in the world we live. As Habermas sees it, in the world we live today, the liberal mode and the republican mode of democracy represent two popular modes of democracy. The liberal mode of democracy emphasizes individual persons and individual liberties, while the republican mode of democracy emphasizes community and the republic, as well as collective deliberation. They differ at least in three arenas. First, they differ in their concepts of citizenship. In the liberal concept, citizens are bearers of individual rights. “The citizen’s status is determined primarily by individual rights he or she has vis-à-vis the state and other citizens.”(Ibid, p.240) And “individual rights are negative rights that guarantee a domain of freedom of choice within which legal persons are freed from external compulsion.”(Ibid, p.241) In the liberal mode of democracy, citizens are also bearers of public rights that afford citizens the opportunity to assert their private interests in government and other basic social institutions (Ibid, pp.240-241). In the republican concept, citizens are both bearers of rights—both private rights and public rights—and politically responsible members of a community. Their civil rights consist not only of the rights to assert their interests, but also of the rights to participate in the democratic process of will-and opinion formation, as well as the democratic process of formation of government. According to the republican view,

152

5  Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy

The status of citizens is not determined by the model of negative liberties to which these citizens can lay claim as private persons. Rather, political rights—preeminently rights of political participation and community—are positive liberties. They do not guarantee freedom from external compulsion, but guarantee instead the possibility of participating in a common practice, through which the citizens can first make themselves into what they want to be—politically responsible subjects of a community of free and equal citizens (Ibid, p.241).

Again, negative liberty refers to freedom from interference by other persons, social institutions, the state and government. It is concerned primarily with freedom from external restraint and coercion. It is contrasted to positive liberty, e.g., the liberty to participate in the political process of will-and opinion-formation. Here, in the republican concept of citizenship, there is a stronger sense of collective identity—for example, national identity or other collective identity, a stronger sense of the WE. Second, they differ in their concepts of public law. In the liberal concept, public laws are exclusively of protection of individual rights. In the republican concept, public laws are to protect equally both individual rights and the common good of the polity. As Habermas indicates, in the liberal concept, “the point of a legal order is to make it possible to determine which individuals in each case are entitled to which rights.”(Ibid, pp.241-242) In this concept, ‘the legal order is conceived in terms of individual rights.” (Ibid, p.242) In comparison, in the republican concept, those individual rights “owe their existence to an ‘objective’ legal order that both enables and guarantees the integrity of an autonomous life in common based on equality and mutual respect.”(Ibid) Habermas says: The republican concept at least points in the direction of a concept of law that accords equal weight to both integrity of the individual and the integrity of the community in which persons as both individuals and members can first accord one another reciprocal recognition. It ties the legitimacy of the laws to the democratic procedure by which they are generated and thereby preserves an internal connection between citizens’ practice of self-legislation and the impersonal sway of the law (Ibid).

This is not to say that the republic concept is flawless. Instead, it is that the republic concept of public law rightly emphasizes that laws are to protect both the integrity of individuals and the integrity of a polity. Third, they differ in their concepts of the democratic political process. In the liberal concept, “politics is essentially a struggle for positions that grant access to administrative power. The political process of opinion-and will-formation in the public sphere and in parliament is shaped by the competition of strategically acting collectives trying to maintain or acquire positions of power.”(Ibid, p.243) In the republican concept, politics is citizens’ practice of self-determination wherein political opinion and will of a community are formed through political dialogue oriented to collective understanding; there is always power struggle in the political process, but such a struggle is always bended to the deliberative style and the stubborn character of political discourse. In politics in the republican concept, “the paradigm is not the market but dialogue.”(Ibid)

3  Constitutional Democracy

153

For Habermas, neither the liberal mode nor the republican mode of democracy fully actualizes the potential of democracy. The liberal mode is insufficient in democratic deliberation, while political deliberation in the republic mode of democracy is too collective and missionary. For him, modern democracy must be one in which “discursive process of opinion-and will-formation plays a central role.”(Ibid, xv) He thus proposes the proceduralist mode of democracy as the third normative mode of democracy. The proceduralist mode of democracy is a procedure-focused and communication-­ focused democracy. Its core idea is that democracy should be a form of life and government grounded in institutionally secured, rational discourses and communication geared to arrive at mutual understanding among citizens. The qualifier “proceduralist” is not intended to emphasize formal politics only. Instead, it emphasizes that there should be an institutionalized procedure for democratic discourse and argumentation. Most importantly, it emphasizes a rational procedure of democratic process wherein rational democratic deliberation is institutionally safeguarded. Habermas refers to Robert Dahl to indicate that such a procedure for a truly democratic discourse, argumentation, and communication should include five essential elements. Habermas says: Such a procedure should guarantee (a) the inclusion of all those affected; (b) equally distributed and effective opportunities to participate in the political process; (c) an equal right to vote on decisions; (d) an equal right to choose topics and, more generally, to control the agenda; and (e) a situation that allows all the participants to develop, in the light of sufficient information and good reasons, an articulate understanding of the contested interests and matter in need of regulation (Ibid, p.315).

This concept of a rational procedure of democratic deliberation and argumentation directly applies Habermas’s concept of the basic requirements of an ideal speech situation of a rational discourse here. In the idea of an ideal speech situation, it is emphasized that the procedure of rational discourse, grounded in communicative rationality, should meet four requirements: (1) inclusiveness and public nature—that is, being opened to the general public, (2) equal rights of communicative freedom of all citizens, (3) truthfulness of all participants, and absence of deception and illusion, and (4) absence of coercion. The proceduralist mode of democracy thus can be understood as “the institutionally secured forms of general and public communication that deal with the practical question of how men can and want to live under the objective conditions of their ever-expanding power of control.”(McCarthy, 1991, p.15) This mode of democracy “results in differences both from the republican conception of the state as an ethical community and from the liberal conception of the state as a guardian market society.”(Habermas, 1998b, p.246) In the proceduralist mode of democracy, the state is a polity of common laws. The proceduralist mode of democracy differs further from both the liberal mode and the republic mode of democracy in some crucial areas. First, they differ in conceptualizing the function of the democratic process. In the liberal view, democratic process is a process wherein interests are negotiated and advanced. In the republican view, while the democratic process is to form common

154

5  Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy

public will and collective self-understanding, “democratic will-formation is supposed to take the form of an ethical discourse of self-understanding.”(Ibid) In the proceduralist mode of democracy, a democratic process is the mechanism wherein citizens reach mutual understanding under the guidance of communicative rationality, instead of under the guidance of moral reason or cultural rationality, and form common opinions and wills. As William Outwaite notes, proceduralist mode of democracy “incorporates elements both of liberal concepts of politics as the mediation of private interests and of the republican conception of self-organizing ethical community.”(Outhwaite, 2009, p.142) “Discourse theory invests the democratic process with normative connotation stronger than those found in the liberal model but weaker than those found in the republican model.”(Habermas, 1998a, p.298) Second, they differ in their conceptions of legitimation. In the liberal view, “democratic will-formation has the exclusive function of legitimating the exercise of political power.”(Habermas, 1998b, p.249) In the liberal view, to legitimatize a political power is to contractualize the power. It is to ground it in a social contract. In comparison, “on the republican view, democratic will-formation has the stronger function of constituting society as a political community and keeping the memory of this founding act alive with each new election.”(Ibid) In the republic view, to legitimatize political power is to associate it with a founding act of a social-political community. In the proceduralist mode of democracy, democratic process of will-­ formation functions to rationalize “the decisions of a government and an administration bound by law and statute.”(Ibid, p.250) In the proceduralist mode of democracy, “rationalization signifies more than mere legitimation but less than constitution of political power.”(Ibid). Third, they differ in their conceptions of popular sovereignty. In the liberal view, popular sovereignty is embodied in the autonomy of free, self-interest-centered citizens. In the republican view, popular sovereignty is “bound to the notion of an embodiment in the (at first actually physically assembled) people.”(Ibid) In the proceduralist mode of democracy, “popular sovereignty … retreats into democratic procedures.”(Ibid, p.251) “Proceduralized popular sovereignty and a political system tied into the peripheral networks of the political public sphere go together with the image of a decentered society.”(Habermas, 1998a, p.298) In the proceduralist mode of democracy, popular sovereignty is embodied in the public use of reason in discourses. Fourth, they differ in their concepts of where practical reason resides. In the liberal mode of democracy, practical reason resides in universal human rights. In the republican mode of democracy, practical reason resides in the ethical substance of a specific community. In the proceduralist mode of democracy, “practical reason no longer resides in universal human rights, or in the ethical substance of a specific community, but in the rules of discourse and forms of argumentation that borrow their normative content from the validity basis of action oriented to reaching understanding.”(Ibid, p.296) Fifth, the differences among the three normative modes of democracy as described above can be phrased in their different ways of thinking too. So far as the

4 Conclusion

155

difference between the proceduralist mode and the liberal mode of democracy is concerned, the proceduralist mode of democracy is procedure-centered, normativity-­ centered democracy while the liberal democracy is interesting-centered, individual-­ centered democracy. With regard to the difference between the proceduralist mode and the republic mode of democracy, the proceduralist mode of democracy is procedure-­centered democracy, while the republican mode of democracy is republic identity-centered, entity-centered democracy. Correspondingly, they differ in modes by which practical reason is exercised. In liberal democracy, practical reason that is subject-centered is exercised individually. In republican democracy, practical reason is exercised collectively. In the proceduraist mode of democracy, practical reason is exercised publically. Habermas points out, “According to discourse theory, the success of deliberative politics depends not on a collectively acting citizenry but on the institutionalization of the corresponding procedures and conditions of communication, as well as on the interplay of institutionalized deliberative process with informally developed public opinions.”(Ibid, p.298) The emphasis on deliberative politics in discourse theory is an emphasis on the public use of reason, the rule of truth, the rule of justice, and the rule of law. It is an emphasis on intersubjective deliberation, procedure of discourse and rational communication. Noteworthy, he also envisions that a future world society will have a proceduralist mode of global democracy. A cosmopolitan world society is a culturally pluralistic one, and not a world-state or a world community of common fate or other metaphysical bond. Its mode of democracy cannot be a republic one. Meanwhile, in addition to individual persons, nation-states are also actors and players in a cosmopolitan world society, and thus the liberal mode of democracy is not the mode of democracy for a cosmopolitan world society either. In summary, in Habermas’s vision, constitutional democracy integrates the ideas of the rule of reason and the rule of law. In his procedurlist mode of democracy, practical reason resides in the rules of discourses and forms of argumentation, exhibiting itself in the public use of reason, and popular sovereignty also retreats into democratic procedures defined by laws under the guidance of reason.

4  Conclusion In conclusion, according to Habermas, both the rule of law and constitutional democracy are fundamental to and constitutive of modernity in our epoch. The rule of law is an instrument of justice in our epoch, and constitutional democracy is the vehicle of justice in our epoch. Also, the rule of law is an instrument of the rule of reason. It is an institutional embodiment of the rule of reason. Constitutional democracy is the vehicle of the rule of reason. It is the vehicle of the public use of reason. While public law is a necessary instrument of a modern state and a well-ordered society, we must not approach rationalization of public law merely from the point of view of an instrumental reason and approach it merely strategically. Instead, we

156

5  Morality, Public Law and Constitutional Democracy

should also approach rationalization of publically deontologically and integrate rationalization, validation, and legitimization into one integral process. We must appreciate the central roles of the public use of reason, democracy, and discourse in constructing norms and principles that are entrenched in public laws. Public law is a system of knowledge and action and has both facticity and validity. It stands in a parallel, complementary relation to morality. It is of rights and obligations, as well as private and public autonomy. Constitutional democracy is democracy under the rule of law. It is what Aristotle would call “polity” or “constitution”. A modern, normal state today is, and should be, a constitutional, democratic state. The marriage of the rule of law and democracy in a modern constitutional state solves both the integration problem and the legitimacy problem of modern state in our time. Meanwhile, the proceduralist mode of democracy is advocated as the alternative to both the republican mode and the liberal mode of democracy because the proceduralist mode of democracy integrates the ideas of the rule of law, the public use of reason, the rule of truth, and the rule of justice better than either the liberal mode or the republican mode of democracy does. Traditionally, from Plato, Aristotle to Kant, the idea of democracy and the idea of the rule of reason are always considered to be incompatible to each other. Traditionally, many philosophers including Plato, Aristotle and Kant insisted that where there is democracy, there there is no the rule of reason. Habermas stages a Hegelian revolution in conceptualizing the relationship between democracy and the rule of reason to be a relationship of mutual entailment: where there is constitutional democracy, there there is the rule of reason; where there is the rule of reason, there there is the call for constitutional democracy; constitutional democracy entails the rule of reason, and the rule of reason finds the best vehicle in constitutional democracy. The starting point of Habermas’s discourse doctrines of law and constitutional democracy is that a modern state is a substantially and culturally heterogeneous polity or a polity of cultural diversity. Against the backdrop that we can no longer appeal to God or nature for the source of legitimacy and validity of law, but can depend only on democracy of diverse peoples of a political association, discourse doctrine of law appeals to democracy and to the public use of reason in the democratic process of legislature. Given that the public of democracy is irreducibly heterogeneous, the proceduralist mode is a more viable mode of democracy than either the republican mode or the liberal mode of democracy. Meanwhile, the discourse doctrine of constitutional democracy grounds democracy in constitutional patriotism, neither in naturalism nor in republicanism. With regard to a modern form of life, Iris Young puts forth the idea of city life as a normative ideal. As Young says, “By city life, I mean a form of social relations which I define as the being together of strangers.”(Young, 1990, p.237) Young’s concept of being together of strangers in a city and Habermas’s concept of being together of differences in a polity pretty much are the same. But in discourse doctrine, it is insisted that being together of strangers and differences is possible if and only if there are the rule of law and constitutional democracy and that only public laws can function as the necessary mediation for strangers and differences to be

References

157

together. It is emphasized that the proceduralist mode of democracy is a more viable mode of democracy for strangers and differences to be together. The rule of law, the rule of reason, and constitutional democracy, that is the modern way of life. That is what we know, and that is what we need to know!

References Aristotle. (2001). The basic works of Aristotle. New York: Modern Library. Cronin, C., & De Greiff, P. (1998). Introduction. In J. Habermas (Ed.), The inclusion of the other. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (1998a). Between facts and norms. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (1998b). The inclusion of the other. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (2003). Truth and justification. B. Fultner (Ed. and trans.). Cambridge: The MIT Press. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-­positivism/ McCarthy, T. (1991). The critical theory of Jürgen Habermas. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Outhwaite, W. (2009). Habermas: A critical introduction. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Regh, W. (1998). Translator’s Introduction. In Between facts and norms. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of differences. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zurn, C. (2011). Discourse theory of law. In B. Fultner (Ed.), Jürgen Habermas: Key concepts (pp. 156–176). Durham: Acumen.

Chapter 6

Cosmopolitanism

Abstract  This chapter examines Habermas’s discourse doctrine of cosmopolitanism. It studies Habermas’s concepts of the cosmopolitan condition, a pluralistic world society, cosmopolitan law, human rights as constitutional rights, human rights fundamentalism, the possible world constitution, cosmopolitan sovereignty, and the three-tiered, networked realm of public authority in a cosmopolitan world society. It explores cosmopolitanism from Kant to Habermas—the conceptual continuity and renovations. It examines the intellectual, moral, and institutional changes since the end of World War II, and how these changes have prepared for the cosmopolitan ideal which Habermas advocates. Keywords  Discourse cosmopolitanism · Cosmopolitan condition · Cosmopolitan law · Human rights as constitutional rights · Human rights fundamentalism · Three-tiered realm of public authority · Cosmopolitan sovereignty

A UNIQUE renovation which Habermas has brought to the modernity project in our epoch is his integration of the ideal of cosmopolitanism and the ideal of modernism, extending the ideas of the rule of reason, the rule of justice, the rule of law and constitutional democracy to global politics on the one hand, and introducing global protection of human rights, development of world peace, and cultural openness and toleration under the rule of law as newly added dimensions of modernity on the other hand. His doctrine of cosmopolitanism can be read as discourse doctrine, a global application of his discourse doctrines of modernity, ethics, justice, the rule of law, and constitutional democracy. To a great extent, Habermas uses the term “cosmopolitan” in a Kantian sense. In Habermas, the term “cosmopolitan” is also a qualitative cocnept, not merely a spatial concept, connoting also a global condition under the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws. A cosmopolitan order is the global, constitutional order that purports to protect human rights and promote world peace under the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws. In Habermas, as it is in Kant, a cosmopolitan condition is contrasted to what Kant would characterize as the natural state or condition. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 X. Chen, The Essentials of Habermas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79794-2_6

159

160

6 Cosmopolitanism

A natural state on the earth is an international state or condition wherein there is the absence of the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws. It is an international state or condition wherein relationships between nation-states or peoples are not regulated by international and cosmopolitan laws. `Thus, Habermas sometimes refers a cosmopolitan order to a republican order, meaning a constitutionalized order. Meanwhile, Habermas also integrates the Grecian idea of cosmopolitan condition as one of cultural openness, inclusion and toleration. Needless to say, in Habermas’s vision, the term “cosmopolitan” is intended to indicate our global belonging and global obligation. A core tenet of the discourse doctrine of cosmopolitanism is that a person has a dual belonging and dual citizenship: the national and global; correspondingly, each person, as well as each nation-state and its government, has a dual sets of duty and obligations: national and global. It is the idea that “the peoples of the earth have thus entered in varying degrees into a universal community … wherein a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere.”(Habermas, 1998, p.171) It is the idea that “all forms of the state are based on the idea of a constitution which is compatible with the natural rights of man, so that those who obey the law should also act as a unified body of legislators.”(Ibid, p.165) In Habermas’s vision, cosmopolitanism is in essence the philosophy that aspires to a global order and world society purports to globally protect human rights, promote world peace and promote cultural oneness, inclusion and toleration under the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws, including under the rule of a world constitution. In discourse cosmopolitanism, each of us belongs simultaneously to two “republics”: the nation-state in which one is born, grows up, and lives, and the entire earth itself—a non-state world society wherein human rights are protected and world peace is promoted under the rule of law. “Each of us dwells, in effect, in two communities—the local community of our birth, and the community of human argument and aspiration that ‘is truly great and truly common, in which we look neither to this corner nor to that, but measure the boundaries of our nation by the sun’.”(Nussbaum, 1997, p.6) Correspondingly, each of us simultaneously has a dual citizenship—the citizenship of our nation-state and a world citizenship— and a dual set of duties and obligations: duties and obligations to our fellow citizens of our nations-states and global duties and obligations to all humankind. In general, in discourse doctrine, the ideal of cosmopolitanism is to build a culturally open, inclusive, and tolerant world society purporting to protect human rights and promote world peace under the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws, in particular under the rule of a world constitution. Thus, its conceptual framework consists of the following core concepts: 1. The concept of human rights as constitutional rights; the concept of three categories of public rights: individual persons’ citizen rights within the borders of their nation-states; the national rights of a nation-people; each person’s cosmopolitan rights; 2. The concept of three categories pubic law: municipal, international, and cosmopolitan law; the concept of three-tiered, networked realm of public authority in a global order under the rule of law;

1  The Ideal of Cosmopolitanism

161

3. The concept of a political constitution of a culturally pluralist world society; all forms of state are based on the idea of a constitution that guarantees human rights as basic constitutional rights; 4. The concept of a constitutionalized global order purported to protect human rights and promote enduring world peace under the rule of law, in particular under the rule of a world constitution; 5. The concept of each person’s dual citizenship; 6. The concept of divided, networked cosmopolitan sovereignty; the concept of relativity of national sovereignty; 7. The rejection of human rights fundamentalism. Discourse cosmopolitanism extends discourse ethics, and the ideas of the rule of law, the rule of reason, social justice and constitutional democracy beyond the borders of nation-states. It applies the concept of the public use of reason in global politics. It advocates the norm of human rights as the operating norm of global justice and teaches global democracy as the mechanism and source of legitimate cosmopolitan laws. It argues for cultural inclusion and toleration among nations and peoples under the rule of law. Habermas insists that the establishment of the United Nations is a milestone for the ideal of cosmopolitanism. His discourse doctrine of cosmopolitanism in effect teaches the spirit and core ideas of the Charter of the United Nations: the security of humanity, world peace, co-existence of nation-peoples, human rights, and cultural toleration. The cosmopolitan world society which discourse cosmopolitanism envisions is the same one which the UN Charter advocates. In the vision of discourse cosmopolitanism a world society in our epoch should be one of modernity; a world society of modernity in our epoch is a cosmopolitan society. A cosmopolitan world society in our epoch has the following salient characteristics: (1) the rule of law; all human beings associate together on the basis of constitutional patriotism; (2) cultural diversity, openness and toleration among peoples; (3) purported to protect human rights globally; (4) develop permanent world peace under the rule of law; 5) constitutional democracy as the way and the public use of reason as the way; thus such a cosmopolitan world society is one wherein reason enlightens and justice shines; and 6)all citizens and governments carry out their dual sets of duty and fulfill their dual set of obligation.

1  The Ideal of Cosmopolitanism Philosophical cosmopolitanism, including the origin of the philosophical concept “cosmopolitan” itself, can be traced back to Grecian philosophy. Discourse cosmopolitanism imbibes insights from Grecian cosmopolitanism. It inherits the Grecian cosmopolitan ideal of cultural toleration and global belonging from the perspective of our epochal spirit. That said, discourse cosmopolitanism is developed directly from Kant’s cosmopolitanism. Its vision of a world community of modernity as a

162

6 Cosmopolitanism

republican one that purports to protect human rights and to develop world peace under the rule of law is a democratized vision of Kantian cosmopolitanism. Its conceptual framework is developed from Kant’s. Discourse cosmopolitanism does not rise to answer the philosophical questions of who we are and what we are, but to answer the question of how we ought to extend our lives together amid the diversity among us. It does not purport to develop a modern world people of homogeneous substance and identity, but proposes to develop a world society of modernity in our epoch in line with the spirit of our epoch and wherein different peoples on the earth can co-exist, co-develop, and co-­ prosper together under the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws. Its deal is developed from Kant’s. The core tenets of discourse cosmopolitanism are developed from Kant’s conceptual framework. Those core tenets that owe their origins to Kant include but are not limited to the following: the ideas of cosmopolitan condition as a condition of the rule of law, a cosmopolitan order under the rule of law purported to protect human rights and promote world peace, world constitution, a global legal order without a global state, and a cosmopolitan world under the rule of reason. Even those Habermas’s renovating concepts such as a three-tiered realm of public authority, dual citizenship, and relative inviolability of national sovereignty are intended to iron out those inconsistencies in Kant’s cosmopolitanism. It supersedes Kantian cosmopolitanism, but also preserves and develops those core ideas of Kantian cosmopolitanism. Thus, to understand Habermas’s doctrine of cosmopolitanism, we should first visit Kant’s.

1.1  The Kantian Turning Point Kantian cosmopolitanism is an epochal-making milestone and a decisive turning point in the history of the idea of cosmopolitanism. Kant has conceptualized the ideal of cosmopolitanism as aspiring to a world society that purports to protect persons’ cosmopolitan rights and promote permanent world peace under the rule of law. He has redefined the term “cosmopolitan” to connote a condition of the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws. Thus, Kant has re-conceptualized the ideal of cosmopolitanism in line with the ideas of the rule of law, human rights, justice and modernity. He has also injected the ideal of autonomy, popular sovereignty, and a republican order of modernity into the ideal of cosmopolitanism. Kant’s cosmopolitanism has conceptually renovated the ideal of cosmopolitanism with the ideal of modernity, aspiring for a global order of the rule of reason and the rule of law. Its contribution includes, but is not limited to, the following: 1. The concept of a cosmopolitan order purported to protect human rights and secure permanent world peace under the rule of law; 2. A new concept “cosmopolitan” that is not just a spatial concept, but also a concept of quality, connoting a condition of global order under the rule of law;

1  The Ideal of Cosmopolitanism

163

3. The concept of cosmopolitan rights (Weltbuergerrecht) as the third category of public rights; 4. The concept of cosmopolitan laws as the third category of public laws; the concept of a cosmopolitan constitution; 5. The idea of humankind in whole as a community of common (public) laws; 6. The question of cosmopolitan sovereignty and thus the question of how can a constitutionalized world order without a world state is possible; 7. The question of national sovereignty in a cosmopolitan order. Noteworthy, Habermas inherits all 1–5 concepts of Kant, and creatively addresses Kant’s questions of 6–7. Pauline Kleingeld reads Kant’s cosmopolitanism as a form of moral cosmopolitanism inheriting from Grecian cosmopolitanism. Kleingeld points out: According to Immanuel Kant, Germans are model cosmopolitanism. In his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View of 1798 he writes that they are hospitable toward foreigners, they easily recognize the merits of other peoples, they are modest in their dealing with others, and they readily learn foreign languages. Finally, “as cosmopolitans,” they are not passionately bound to their fatherland (Kleingeld, 2012, p.1).

Kant’s characterization of German people’s being “cosmopolitan” is at home with being cosmopolitan in Grecian culture as indicated by Thomas Pogge (2012). Thus, Kleingeld points out: “On Kant’s view, cosmopolitanism is an attitude taken up in acting: an attitude of recognition, respect, openness, interest, beneficence and concern toward other human individuals, cultures, and peoples as members of one global community.”(Ibid) Kleingeld further indicates that Kant’s cosmopolitanism “stands more in the tradition of the Stoic (Ibid, p.2). For Kant, as it is for the Stoics, “cosmopolitanism involved the affirmation of moral obligations toward humans anywhere in the world.”(Ibid) That being said, Kantian cosmopolitanism should be read as political cosmopolitanism that inherits insights of Grecian cosmopolitanism, but redefines the ideal of cosmopolitanism importantly. The term “political” here is understood in two interrelated senses. In one sense, it connotes being concerned with justice of basic social institutions, justice of relationships among individual persons, and between governments and individual persons. In another sense, it underscores the fact that the focus of the doctrine is on protection of human rights and promotion of world peace. It is concerned with civil-political rights of persons and global civil-political justice. It is in the second sense that we understand Kant’s cosmopolitanism to be “political”. That is to say, “political cosmopolitanism” is understood here in a very narrowed sense: it is understood as the philosophy that advocates a constitutionalized world order purported to protect human rights and promote world peace under the rule of law, but also rejects the concept of a world state, for example, the French revolutionary Anacharsis Cloots’s “a republic of the united individuals of the world”.1

1  As Pauline Kleingeld notes, “Cloots argues, on the basis of the principles of social contract theory, that genuine cosmopolitanism indeed demands the abolishment of all states and the establishment of a “Universal Republic.’”(Kleingeld, 2012, p.6)

164

6 Cosmopolitanism

Kant has redefined the term “cosmopolitan” with the idea of the rule of law. In Kant, the term “cosmopolitan” still has a spatial meaning, and connotes the meaning of being global and global belonging. In Kant, the term “cosmopolitan” is also a term of quality and connotes the condition of the rule of international and global laws. It connotes a constitutionalized international condition or state, as contrasted to the international state of nature wherein the rule of law is absent. As Otfried Höffe points out, Kant distinguished between two kinds of international conditions or states: (1) the international state of law and (2) the international state of nature. Kant described “the counterpart of cosmopolitanism (‘world citizenry’) as an international state of nature.” (Höffe, 2006, p.167) The international state of the rule of international law is a cosmopolitan condition, contrasted to the international state of nature. By international state of nature, Kant meant “the state of coexistence while lacking legal form.”(Ibid) That is a condition or state wherein relations among nation-peoples are not ruled by international laws and lack a legal form. On the contrary, the international state of the rule of law is referred as a cosmopolitan condition. Thus, Kant’s “the seventh proposition calls the international state of law ‘cosmopolitan’.” (Ibid, p.168) By this token, in Kant, “‘Cosmopolitan’ rather has a double meaning: it designates both political, legal state and the goal of establishing it.” (Ibid, p.169) That is to say, the term “cosmopolitan” connotes a political, legal quality or property. Correspondingly, in Kant, a cosmopolitan order is a political, legal order geared to promote world peace and protect humans’ cosmopolitan rights. Noteworthy, while in Grecian and Stoic cosmopolitanism, the term “cosmopolitan” connotes mainly global belonging and the quality or condition of cultural openness, inclusion and toleration, in Kant, it connotes both global belonging and a condition of the rule of law in the globe. At the core of the ideal of modernity are the rule of human reason, universal justice, and the rule of law. At the core of Kant’s cosmopolitan ideal are the rule of human reason, the rule of law, and cosmopolitan justice. Notwithstanding, Kant’s cosmopolitanism is political at least in terms of its four foundational ideas: (a) cosmopolitan rights, (b) cosmopolitan laws including a cosmopolitan constitution, (c) a cosmopolitan order—that is, a global order under the rule of law, and (d) permanent world peace. Its focus falls on protection of cosmopolitan rights, the rule of cosmopolitan laws, and the limits of what government can do to individual persons in terms of laws. It thus focuses on global civil-political justice, amid Kant has never evoked the term of global justice. Noteworthy, Kant is the first philosopher to evoke the concept of cosmopolitan rights and his argument for a person’s cosmopolitan rights is not in terms of a person’s being a moral person, but in terms of a person’s being a shared owner of the earth. In turn, his concept of a person’s cosmopolitan rights renovates the ancient concept of world citizen and turns the concept into a modern concept. The concept of cosmopolitan law (ius cosmopolitism), including the concept of a cosmopolitan constitution, creates the third category of public law—that is, world law—to the family of pubic law. It introduces a juridical dimension to the ideal of cosmopolitanism. The concept of a cosmopolitan order that purports to protect persons’ cosmopolitan rights and to bring about permanent world peace under the rule

1  The Ideal of Cosmopolitanism

165

of law transforms the concept of one’s cosmopolitan obligation from an obligation of humanitarian morality into the obligation of justice, redefining the concept of one’s global obligation. Thus, Kant has renovated the ideas of one’s global b­ elonging and bond with the ideas of the rule of law, liberty, and social justice and modernity. This demarcates Kant from Grecian and Stoic cosmopolitanism. In his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace, Kant put forth a concept of ius cosmopolitism (cosmopolitan law/right) among peoples. There, Kant claimed that we should expand the rights of hospitality “to the earth’s surface which belongs to the human race in common” and such an expansion would “finally bring the human race ever closer to “a cosmopolitan constitution.” (Kant, 1972, p.118) He singled out “three aspects of public rights: civil, international, and cosmopolitan right.”(Ibid, p.123) Civil rights refer to a person’s rights as a citizen of a nation-state. International rights refer to the national rights of a people among nations and peoples. Cosmopolitan rights refer to a person’s rights as a citizen of the global human community. Meanwhile, as Seyla Benhabib indicates, Kant recognized three interrelated but distinct families of public laws: First is domestic laws, the sphere of posited relations of right, which Kant claims should be in accordance with a republican constitution; second, there sphere of rightful relations among nations (Voelkerrecht), resulting from treaty obligations among states; third is cosmopolitan right, which concerns relations among civil persons to each other as well as to organized political entities in a global civil society (Benhabib, 2006, p.21).

Kant’s concept of three categories of civil rights and three categories of public laws is inherited and developed by Habermas. Kant’s bona fide concern was cosmopolitan rights. Klaingeld points out that in Kant, “cosmopolitan right is concerned with the juridical relations between states and foreign individuals (or groups) whom he [Kant] regards as citizens in a single allencompassing juridical realm.”(Kleingeld, 2012, p.7) So far as the right of hospitality is concerned, it is “the right to visit” and “the right of an alien not to be treated as an enemy upon his arrival in another country.”(Kant, 1972, p.118) Kant also asserted that “cosmopolitan right shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitality.”(Ibid) All the same, in Kant, first, cosmopolitan rights exist; and second, they constitute the third category of civil rights. Third, “Kant himself regarded cosmopolitan right as an essential condition of a global rightful order”; accordingly, “cosmopolitan right is a necessary element of perpetual peace.”(Kleingeld, 2012, p.73) Kant claimed, “The idea of cosmopolitan right is not fantastic and exaggerated, but rather an amendment to the unwritten code of national and international rights, necessary to the public rights of men in general.”(Ibid, p.119) For example, “Hospitality is a right that has belongs to all human beings insofar as we view them as potential participants in a world republic.”(Benhabib, 2006, p.22) “The right to visit, to associate, belongs to all men by virtue of their common ownership of the earth’s surface.”(Kant, 1972, p.118) Correspondingly, at the core of Kant’s cosmopolitanism is the concept of a cosmopolitan order wherein “a violation of rights in one part of the earth is felt all over it [the earth].”(Ibid, p.119)

166

6 Cosmopolitanism

Kant argued for a person’s cosmopolitan rights on the basis of his/her shared ownership of the earth and conceptualizes them as the third category of public rights. This means that cosmopolitan rights impose the obligation of justice as the commandment to give due to rights, not duty as the commandment to do the right thing for the sake of the right thing itself. The juridical relations between states and foreign individuals, as well as among all citizens, in the globe give rise to the obligation of global justice, not merely the duty of universal morality. Thus, Kant’s concept of cosmopolitan rights integrates the concept of rights, the rule of law, justice, and obligation. Notwithstanding, Kant recognized that the path to a cosmopolitan world society was long and bumping. He claimed, “The greatest problem for the human species … is to achieve a universal civil society administrated in accord with the right.”(Ibid, p.33) According to Kant, humankind faces a great challenge to develop a global order geared to protect persons’ cosmopolitan rights under the rule of law. And humankind’s approach to a cosmopolitan constitution can be a two-step journey. The first step is that “distant parts of the world can establish with one another peaceful relations that will eventually become matters of public law.”(Ibid, p.118) The second step is that “the human race can gradually be brought closer and closer to a cosmopolitan constitution.”(Ibid) All the same, for Kant, the ideal that humankind must strive to have a cosmopolitan constitution and thus to constitutionalize a global order under the rule of cosmopolitan laws is not negotiable. First, as Kant saw it, “the republican constitution is the only one wholly compatible with the rights of men.”(Ibid, p.124) Second, only a republican constitution can bring about permanent peace and enduring protection of rights. What Kant looked for was not a treaty for temporary truce and temporary protection of rights. Instead, he looked for a cosmopolitan condition of permanent peace and permanent protection of rights that “nullifies all existing causes for war” and for crimes violating rights (Ibid, p.107). A few remarks on Kant’s cosmopolitan constitution are in order. First, Kant’s cosmopolitan constitution is a public law, not a moral law. It is the basic law for the global human community just as a nation’s constitution is the basic law for a nation-­ people. It does not consist merely of cosmopolitan principles. Instead, it consists of public laws that embody cosmopolitan principles. Second, putting forth the idea of cosmopolitan constitution, Kant’s view is that “the implementation of basic rights calls for a republican or democratic constitution not only within individual states, but also at international level (i.e., in relations between states) and at cosmopolitan levels (i.e., in relations between individuals, states and peoples everywhere in the world).”(Cronin, 2011, p.201) Third, while advocating a cosmopolitan constitution, Kant did not want a world state. In Kant’s vision, the function of the cosmopolitan constitution is not to create a world state, but to provide a set of basic laws to shape and restrict human activities and practices. Fourth, a cosmopolitan constitution is evolved from international laws, or in Kant’s words, peoples on the earth are gradually led to it through constitutionalization of international laws (Kant, 1972, p.118). That being said, a cosmopolitan

1  The Ideal of Cosmopolitanism

167

constitution is not identical to and reducible to international laws, but belongs to the third category of pubic law: world laws. Fifth, while cosmopolitan constitution is developed from functioning international laws, Kant did not say what such a constitution will be. Is it a documentary constitution itself, or a body politic akin to the Constitution of the United Kingdom? Kant himself indeed talked about “a body politic” in the context of discussing a cosmopolitan situation and community of humankind (Ibid, pp.37–38) Still, it is unclear whether a cosmopolitan constitution is a single document or a body politic. Sixth, in Kant, the concept of cosmopolitan constitution leads us to the troubling water of the concept of sovereignty. Some conceptual issues of sovereignty of a cosmopolitan constitution arise here. In one aspect, it is the question of whose common will which a cosmopolitan constitution itself expresses. A civic constitution as public law expresses the will of a political, legal being and declares its authority in terms of representing this will. Whose will a cosmopolitan constitution expresses here? Also, what is the relationship between this will embodied in cosmopolitan law and wills of different nation-peoples in the world? In another aspect, whose and which government is the political, legal authority that is the necessary enactor of cosmopolitan constitution? Whose and which government is the legitimate administrator of a world constitution? Kant himself complicated the matter by wanting a world constitution, but not a world state. As he claimed, “the proposal for a universal cosmopolitan nation, to whose power all individual nations should voluntarily submit, and whose laws they should obey, may sound ever so nice in the theory of the Abbe St. Pierre or of a Rousseau, yet it is of no practical use.”(Ibid, p.89) Also, Kant claimed that “the idea of international right presupposes the existence of many separate, independent, adjoining nations.”(Ibid, p.124) And the concept of international right contradicts the idea of a world state. “If there were such a global political body, there would be strictly speaking be only one state, and then international right would not be applicable.”(Ibid, p.60) Kant bequeathed to present cosmopolitanism a troubling question: How can a world constitution without a world state possible? To this question, Kant’s answer was that a world congress or a world federation that consisted of sovereign states would be the enactor of the cosmopolitan constitution. As he said, “this would be a federation of nations, but it must not be a nation consisting of nations.”(Ibid, p.115) A world federation is not a world state, while a world republican order is constitutionalized by world laws, including a cosmopolitan constitution. Kant’s answer leaves much to be desired. Problems exist here. First, if cosmopolitan laws are legitimate, and globally valid and authorative, they must be established through global democratic processes. They cannot just be assumed to be issued from universal human reason. Can a federation of nations have the kind of democratic process to establish legitimate public laws? Second, there is a question of whether cosmopolitan laws directly grant individual persons world citizen status by passing nation-states. If they do, then Kant’s concept that national sovereignty is not violable is problematic and need to be

168

6 Cosmopolitanism

revised. If they do not, cosmopolitan laws lose one of their most important functions and one of their legitimate grounds to exist. Third, in situation wherein municipal laws and cosmopolitan laws are in conflict, in particular in situations wherein following municipal laws, the government of a nation-state commits offences such as crimes against humanity, should the individual government and its leaders be held accountable? If they are not, then the concept that cosmopolitan laws—for example, cosmopolitan constitution—constitute the third category of public laws is problematic. If they should be, then there must be international institutions as necessary legal agents to hold such a government and its leaders accountable. Noteworthy, Kant wanted to give such concepts as cosmopolitan rights and cosmopolitan constitution “a binding power over and beyond the moral obligation which they impose on individual agents.”(Benhabib, 2006, p.24). Held credits Kant for connecting “the idea of cosmopolitanism with the standpoint of public reason.”(Held, 2010, p.15) He is right on the mark. It should be added that Kant’s more important contribution is to associate the idea of cosmopolitanism with rights and the rule of law; doing so, Kant turns the project of cosmopolitanism from an ethical-moral project into a political, constitutional project. He turns the project from one of conceiving a universal moral order into one of constitutionalizing a political, legal order. He turns to endeavor of cosmopolitanism from constructing universal principles and norms of relationships between governments and citizens, and among all human beings into one of constitutionalizing international laws to protect persons’ cosmopolitan rights and to promote world peace. Now, Kant’s cosmopolitanism differs from what Pogge calls as “legal cosmopolitanism”. “Legal cosmopolitanism endorses a world state or cosmopolis which, invoking the ancient Greek word ‘polis’ (city-state), is a political society that includes all human beings.”(Pogge, 2012, p.12) Kant’s cosmopolitanism categorically rejects the concept of a world state. Kant’s cosmopolitanism aims at developing a world order under the rule of law or a constitutionalized world order wherein cosmopolitan rights are protected and permanent world peace is safeguarded, while legal cosmopolitanism does not necessarily focus on protecting cosmopolitan rights and promoting world peace. Kant’s political cosmopolitanism is intersected with what Pogge dubs as “social justice cosmopolitanism”, but not identical to the latter.2 The objectives of Kant’s cosmopolitanism are only two: to protect cosmopolitan rights and to promote world peace in the globe under the rule of law. In comparison, in social justice cosmopolitanism such as what David Held advocates, the objective of cosmopolitanism is comprehensive, i.e., global governance of finance, healthcare, and environment, and the role of world security. In relation to global justice, Kant’s cosmopolitanism is

2  Pogge sees social-justice cosmopolitanism to consist of four core tenets: “(1) normative individualism: the ultimate units of moral concern are human beings or persons… (2) Universality or all-­ inclusiveness: every human being…counts as an ultimate unit of moral concern… (3) Impartiality or equality… all human beings matter equally …and (4) generality: the special equal status of every human being has global force.” Ibid, p.14.

1  The Ideal of Cosmopolitanism

169

concerned with global civil-political justice, while social-justice cosmopolitanism is concerned with both global civil-political justice, and global distributive justice. All the same, Kant’s cosmopolitanism is a milestone of the development of the ideal of cosmopolitanism and marks a modernist turn of the ideal. Habermas’s cosmopolitanism renovates Kant’s in line with the spirit of our time while defending the rule of reason, the rule of law, and the rule of justice in the ideal of modernity on the earth. During the interim time from Kant to Habermas, the world we live has experienced a revolutionary change, and a new epochal spirit has emerged, which in turn constitutes a driving force for Habermas’s reconstruction of Kantian cosmopolitanism.

1.2  C  onceptual and Institutional Revolutions After World War II Kant’s ideal of a global order purported to protect persons’ cosmopolitan rights and to promote world peace under the rule of law has been realized to a great extent on the earth since the end of the World War II. Unprecedented progresses including institutional developments have been made since the end of World War II to the extent that Kant’s cosmopolitan vision now is no longer a utopia, but an emerging reality with flesh and blood. After having suffered and being bruised, the ideal of the rule of reason, the rule of law, and the rule of justice on the earth has stood high and been shining. In particular, the rule of law on the earth has been breathlessly, institutionally expanded. Since the end of World War II, in particular since the establishment of the United Nations in 1945 and the Declaration of Universal Human Rights by the United Nations in 1948, the norm of human rights has become the operating, juridical norm of global justice in our time and the institution of the offence of crimes against humanity has been part of legal architecture on the earth. The Charter of the United Nation in 1945, the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights in 1948, the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Rwanda in 1994, the UN 1995 Declaration of Principles of Tolerance, and the Statute of International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998–2002 all have institutionally “affirmed the importance of universal principles, human rights and the rule of law.”(Held, 2010, p.142) The United Nations was established in 1945. As a result, “the idea of a cosmopolitan order … acquired an institutional embodiment with the foundation of the United Nations.”(Habermas, 2009, p.312) Habermas says, “The Kantian project [of cosmopolitanism]…only acquired an institutional embodiment with the foundation of the United Nations.”(Ibid) The United Nations claims that its mission is both to protect human rights and to promote enduring world peace. The UN Charter states that the peoples of the United Nations are (1) to establish world peace; (2) to reaffirm “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human

170

6 Cosmopolitanism

person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small”; (3) to establish cosmopolitan conditions for “justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law”; and (4) “to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.” (united_nations_ charter.pdf [unmissions.org]) Member states of the United Nations thus pledge “to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors.”(Ibid) The United Nations is in effect an institution that purports to develop two aspects of a cosmopolitan condition: (1) a global order that purports to protect human rights, promote world peace, and safeguard the security of humanity under the rule of law, and (2) a world society of intra-and inter-cultural openness, inclusion and toleration. The Declaration of Universal Human Rights was published by the United Nations in 1948. As Benhabib claims: “Since the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, we have entered a phrase in the evolution of global civil society which is characterized by a transition from international to cosmopolitan norms of justice.”(Benhabib, 2006, p.16) International norms of justice regulate relationships among state-nations and among peoples and they give due to the rights of nation-­ state. Cosmopolitan norms of justice are about individual persons’ human rights and they give due to individual persons’ basic human rights. Also, various international and global institutions that are necessary enacting conditions for a juridical global order have been assembled democratically and many more are continuously assembled. For example, the Statute of International Criminal Court (ICC) (1998–2002) is a milestone of institutional assembly for a constitutionalized global order. As Held observes, since the end of World War II, “from the foundation of the UN system to the creation of the EU, from changes to the laws of war to the entrenchment of human rights, from the emergence of international environmental regimes to the establishment of the ICC, people have sought to reframe human activity and embed it in law, rights and responsibilities.” (Held, 2010, p.94) In particular, peoples on the earth have sought to develop laws and norms to protect human rights and to promote world peace, which have global validity-claims, and “which set down standards or boundaries which no agent, whether a representative of a global body, state or civil association, should be able to violate.”(Ibid) Meanwhile, as Robert Fine notes, “In the Question of German Guilt (first published in 1945), Jaspers argued that the institution of ‘crimes against humanity’ at Nuremberg marked the dawn of a new cosmopolitan order in which individuals, as well as states, could be held accountable to international law even when acting within the legality of their own state.” (Fine, 2003, p.610) The same can be said of the Tokyo Trial of Japanese war criminals in the Far East in 1945, as well as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Rwanda in 1994. Noteworthy, these legal precedents have achieved one goal which Habermas insists to be crucial to cosmopolitan law and modernity in our epoch: Cosmopolitan law is “institutionalized in such a way that it is binding on the individual governments.” (Habermas, 1998, p.179)

1  The Ideal of Cosmopolitanism

171

Correspondingly, practices of global politics and newly enthroned conventions in the globe since the end of World War II have produced a body of paradigms of global justice and legal precedents in global social-political life. They have created a global body politic that can serve as the paradigm of a possible world constitution. By this token, the idea of a cosmopolitan constitution is continuously actualized in those international statute laws, treatises, covenants, and legal precedents. Indeed, the birth of a global body politic of legal precedents and international laws is one of the most striking marks of the modernity in our epoch. It is a global body politic of the rule of law, the rule of reason, global civil-political justice, human rights, liberty, and humanity’s security. Moreover, global democratic discourses of justice, peace, rights, liberty, the rule of law, globalization, cosmopolitanization, normalization, the law of humanity, crimes against humanity, toleration, and the community of humanity of common fate that have become an itinerary of the global social-political life thrive in an unprecedented speed and demonstrate an astonishing vitality. In turn, those global discourses have produced new intellectual resources and conceptual tools to the ideal of cosmopolitanism in our epoch. They have renovated the ideal of cosmopolitanism with the ideal of modernity and the spirit of our epoch. Intellectually, as Pogge indicates, two core tenets of cosmopolitanism in our time are that “the ultimate units of concern are human beings or persons—rather than, say, family lines, tribes, ethnics, central, or religious communities, nations, or states … [and] the special equal status of every human being has global force.” (Pogge, 2012, p.14) Since the end of World War II, the idea that the ultimate units of concern of world politics are human beings or persons and the idea that as the ultimate units of concern, all human beings are equal, free world citizens both have been part of the spirit of our epoch. Correspondingly, since the end of World War II, the ideas of the law of humanity, crimes against humanity, and world peace have been institutionalized to become juridical. The change both renovates the contents of these ideas and in turn renovates the cosmopolitan ideal with the ideal of modernity in our epoch. Also, since the end of the Cold War in 1990s, democracy is recognized globally as the form of life and government for humankind in our epoch. Democracy is a new path to a possible world constitution. It is the necessary source of the legitimacy, validity, and rationality of a world constitution. It is the plausible way and mechanism of global constitutionalization. It provides a new possibility and condition for global justice in terms of human rights and world peace. In summary, the development of the Kantian ideal of cosmopolitanism has taken an institutional turn since the end of World War II. Many of its core tenets are institutionally implemented. Institutional resources for a global order of global justice purported to protect human rights and develop world peace are constantly developed and the legal architecture for a cosmopolitan order of global justice is continuously assembled. The marriage of cosmopolitanism and modernism is institutionally affirmed.

172

6 Cosmopolitanism

1.3  Habermas’ Reconstruction Discourse cosmopolitanism is developed from Kantian cosmopolitanism and embodies the marriage of cosmopolitanism and modernism in our time. It envisions a cosmopolitan world society with a set of modern conditions that include but are not limited the following: 1. a democratically established world constitution governing relations among individuals, and between governments and individuals; 2. peoples of diverse cultures open themselves to each other, tolerate each other, and co-exist and co-develop under the rule of law; 3. basic human rights under the rule of law; enduring world peace under the rule of law, the rule of reason, and the rule of justice. At the core of discourse cosmopolitanism is the tenet that legitimate, valid norms and laws of a world society are established through global democracy including democratic, public discourses. Emphasizing the idea of the rule of law, discourse cosmopolitanism rejects what Habermas dubs as “human rights fundamentalism”, a doctrine that grounds international politics of human rights not in the ground of international and global laws, but in some self-claimed moral grounds. In discourse cosmopolitanism, the term “cosmopolitan” is also a qualitative term, not just a spatial term. It connotes both a condition under the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws, which Habermas also dubs as the “republican” condition, or a constitutionalized global order on the one hand, and a condition of cultural openness, inclusion, and toleration in the globe under the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws on the other hand. Moreover, the term has also the political connotation of protection of human rights and promotion of world peace in the globe under the rule of law. The discourse connotation of the word “cosmopolitan” fully develops the Kantian connotation and the Grecian connotation of the word “cosmopolitan”. It brings together the ideas of the rule of law, the rule of reason, justice, rights, and cultural tolerance that are constitutive of the spirit of our time. Discourse cosmopolitanism inherits several core concepts from Kant and the core part of the conceptual framework of Kantian cosmopolitanism. Its conceptual framework intersects with the Kantian conceptual framework importantly. What Habermas inherits from Kant include the following: 1. The concept of cosmopolitan rights; the concept of three categories of public rights; 2. the concepts of cosmopolitan laws and a cosmopolitan constitution; the concept of three categories of public laws; 3. The concept of a cosmopolitan order geared to promote world peace and safeguard cosmopolitan rights under the rule of law; 4. The concept of cosmopolitan condition as a condition under the rule of law; the distinction between the state of nature and the cosmopolitan condition in international relation and politics.

1  The Ideal of Cosmopolitanism

173

5 . the idea of a constitutionalized global order without a world state; 6. The Kantian question of how is a constitutionalized global order without a global state possible. Meanwhile, discourse cosmopolitanism reconstructs and develops Kantian cosmopolitanism. The conceptual renovations in discourse cosmopolitanism include the following: 1. The concept of human rights as constitutional rights; the distinction between human rights and moral rights; 2. The concept of democracy as the source of legitimate cosmopolitan laws; 3. The concept of three-tiered, networked realm of public authority in a cosmopolitan world society; a cosmopolitan world society as a pluralist world society; 4. The concept of tolerance as a norm, a value, and a virtue in a cosmopolitan world society; 5. The concept that national sovereignty is not absolute in our age of human rights politics; 6. The rejection of humans fundamentalism; 7. Global democracy; Thus, in discourse cosmopolitanism, we find the ideal of the rule of reason, the rule of law, the rule of justice, and universal human rights—an ideal which is constitutive of the ideal of modernity, as well as the ideal of cultural tolerance, constitutional democracy, constitutional patriotism, the public use of reason, and the distinction among state, nation, and people—another ideal which is also constitutive of the ideal of modernity of our epoch. Habermas recognizes the insights of Kant’s cosmopolitanism, but also sees fatal inconsistencies in Kant’s doctrine, for example, the incompatibility between the idea of absolute inviolability of national sovereignty and the idea of global politics of human rights under the rule of law. He understands the challenge of the question which Kant has bequeathed to us: How can a global order under the rule of world laws without a world state possible? Thus, he sets out to reconstruct Kant’s vision, to “radicalize it where its break from the old order of nation-state is incomplete, socialize it so as to draw out the connections between perpetual peace and social justice, and modernize it so as to comprehend the ‘differences both in global situation and conceptual framework that separate us from him’.”(Fine & Smith, 2003, 469) In Kant, the ideal of cosmopolitanism is grounded in a subject-centered human reason. In Habermas, the ideal of cosmopolitanism is grounded in human reason as an intersubjective power. In Kant, the source of legitimate cosmopolitan laws is the subject-centered human reason. In Habermas, the source of legitimate cosmopolitan laws is global democracy among nations, peoples, and persons and their public use of their human reason. In Kant, national sovereignty is absolutely inviolable. In Habermas, in some very circumscribed circumstances, the concern of national sovereignty should be given away to the concern of human rights from the global perspective and in terms of the global standards and thus national sovereignty should

174

6 Cosmopolitanism

be respected in general, but is not absolutely inviolable. Moreover, Habermas puts forth the concept of three-tiered, networked realm of public authority in a cosmopolitan world society, answering the key Kantian question of how is a global juridical order without a world state possible. In short, developing beyond Kantian cosmopolitanism, discourse cosmopolitanism integrates the ideal of cosmopolitanism with the ideal of modernism, and emphasizes the ideas of the rule of reason, the rule of law, the rule of justice, universal rights, and global justice. It renovates both the conceptual framework and core tents of Kantian cosmopolitanism with ideas and concepts from the spirit of our epoch.

2  Human Rights and Cosmopolitanism In our epoch, the ethical-moral, social-political, and legal speech of global justice is the human rights speech. The universal speech of our epoch is the human rights speech. The modernity speech in our epoch is the human rights speech. Since the 1948 UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights, no concept in moral, social-­ political, and legal thinking in our epoch is more powerful than the concept of human rights. No wonder, essential to discourse cosmopolitanism is the concept of human rights. The discourse concept of human rights includes several ideas. First, the norm of human rights is the operating norm of cosmopolitanism. A cosmopolitan order is to protect human rights and to promote world peace in the globe under the rule of law. Second, human rights are constitutional rights and “are constitutive for the legal order as a whole.”(Habermas, 1998, p.190) A distinction exists between human rights and moral rights. Third, human rights divide between rights to private autonomy and rights to public autonomy. Fourth, a unique concept of the dialectical relationship between the concern of human rights and the concern of national sovereignty. Fifth, the rejection of human rights fundamentalism.

2.1  What Is a Right? The concept of rights is the most significant concept in our epoch. What is a right? What is its content? What is its scope and limit? Many scholars have endeavored to answer these questions. Habermas’s concept of human rights in discourse is totally in line of the UN declaration of universal rights and the Hofeldian model. Thus here, we can take the Hofeldian model of rights as the conceptual guide. According to the Hohfeldian Model, the anatomy of a right consists of four moments: 1. Privilege; a privilege is one’s entitlement to be exempted from certain general duty;

2  Human Rights and Cosmopolitanism

175

2. Claim; “A claim-right can entitle its bearer to protection against harm or paternalism, or to provision in case of need, or to specific performance of some agreed-upon, compensatory, or legal or conventional specific action” (Wener, 2005, p.229). 3. Power; “To have a power is to have the ability within a set of rules to alter the normative situation of oneself or another” (Ibid, p.231). 4. Immunity; “One person has an immunity whenever another person lacks the ability within a set of rules to change her normative situation in a particular respect” (Ibid, p.232). The Hohfeldian Model of rights is a modernist model. In this model, human rights give a person his/her privilege, claim, power, and immunity in virtue of being a human. The Hohfeldian Model is a good model for us to appreciate those basic rights outlined in the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Habermas’s concept of basic human rights. Basic human rights outlined in the Declaration consist of rights as privileges, as claims, as powers, and as immunity. So are Habermas’s five categories of basic rights. Habermas’s five categories of basic rights are consistent with the Hohfeldian Model of rights. Habermas’s five categories of basic rights are also rights as privileges, as claims, as power, and as immunity. The Hohfeldian Model can be a model for us to appreciate those basic rights outlined in the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ratified in 1966, went into force in 1976), the UN 1966–1976 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights constitutes the international bill of rights, and The 1995 UN Declaration of Principles of Tolerance. Basic human rights outlined in these treaties consist of rights as privileges, as claims, as powers, and as immunity. Moreover, the Hohfeldian Model can be a model for us to appreciate those basic rights defended by the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal, the statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Rights which these treaties affirm consist of rights as privileges, as claims, as powers, and as immunity. For the sake of understanding, we can also conceptualize basic human rights as dividing under two rubrics: basic civil-political rights, and basic social, economic and cultural rights. Habermas’s division of human rights in terms of private autonomy and public autonomy is consistent with the UN division of human rights between civil-political rights and social-economic-cultural rights. According to the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, basic civil rights are entitlements to the ensuring of each person’s physical and mental integrity, life and safety, to protection from discrimination, prejudice, and harms on grounds of race, gender, national origin, color, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, or disability, to privacy, as well as to the freedoms of thought and conscience, speech and expression, religion, the press, assembly and movement. Meanwhile, basic political rights include entitlements to justice in law, such as entitlements to a fair trial, due process, to seek a

176

6 Cosmopolitanism

legal remedy, to participate in civil society and politics such as freedom of association, to assemble, to petition, to self-defense, and to vote. In sum, in Habermas’s vision, while the envisioned cosmopolitan world society purports to protect human rights in the globe under the rule of law, in contents, human rights consist of privilege, claim, power, and immunity under the rule of law. Basic rights—that is, basic privilege, claim, power, and immunity—can be divided into five categories. Habermas’s concept of basic rights is consistent with what is outlined in the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights and other UN covenants pertaining to rights.

2.2  Human Rights as Constitutional Rights The Archimedean point of discourse cosmopolitanism is the norm of human rights as the operating norm in a pluralist world society under the rule of law. But Habermas’s argument for human rights is slightly different from Kant’s argument for cosmopolitan rights. Kant talked about cosmopolitan rights in terms of the shared ownership of earth by all human beings. Habermas talks about human rights as constitutional rights which citizens in the world necessarily grant one another if they are to extend their lives together under the rule of law. Kant’s argument is a realist one. Habermas’s argument is discursive. Kant’s cosmopolitan rights are natural rights. Habermas’s are constitutional rights. Both Kant and Habermas defend the modern ideal of universal human rights. Meanwhile, Habermas renovates the modern idea of human rights by integrating it with the idea of the rule of law, conceiving human rights as constitutional rights that are juridical by nature. Emphasizing human rights as constitutional rights, “Habermas moves away from Kant’s transcendental deductions of cosmopolitan right,” and admits “democratic procedures into the determination of cosmopolitan rights.”(Fine & Smith, 2003, p.481) In Kant, the norm of cosmopolitan rights is a rational norm grounded in human reason itself. In comparison, in Habermas, the norm of human rights is a constitutional norm of democratic construction. Thus, with the concept of human rights as constitutional rights, Habermas also defends the modernity ideal of democracy as the way of humankind. Habermas’s renovation of the concept of human rights can be divided into four areas: (1) The concept of human rights as constitutional rights; the distinction between human rights and moral rights; (2) The division of basic rights into five categories; the division of rights to private autonomy and rights to public autonomy; (3) the association of the concept of human rights with the modern concept of individual liberty; grounding the idea of human rights in the modern idea of basic liberty; (4) the rejection of human rights fundamentalism. According to Habermas, the concept of human rights in the modern sense has its origin in the modern concept of individual liberty. He says:

2  Human Rights and Cosmopolitanism

177

Human rights in the modern sense can be traced back to the Virginia Bill of Rights and the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 and to the Declaration of des droits de l’homme et du citoyen of 1789. These declarations were inspired by the political philosophy of modern natural law, especially that of Locke and Rousseau. It is no accident that human rights first take on a concrete form in the context of these first constitutions, especially as basic rights that are guaranteed within the frame of a national legal order. … The concept of human rights does not have its origins in morality, but rather bears the imprint of the modern concept of individual liberties, hence of a specifically juridical concept (Habermas, 1998, pp.189-190).

The rights to basic liberties are rights which human beings must grant each other if they are to extend their lives together under the rule of law. Thus, they are constitutionalized as basic human rights. For this reason, Habermas insists that human rights are constitutional rights and “juridical by their very nature.”(Ibid, p.190) For Habermas, the norm of human rights “bears the print of the modern concept of individual liberties.” The modern concept of rights is a rise of the modern concept of individual liberties. Modern laws constitutionalize one’s basic rights to basic individual liberties as human rights. The origin of the concept of human rights is not in morality, but in the the modern concept of individual liberties. Human rights are civil rights, but “equipped with a universal validity claim.”(Ibid, p.191) Habermas’s underlying emphasis is that the norm of human rights imposes juridical obligation of justice, not merely moral duty. With one stone for two birds, Habermas defends both the modernist idea of universal human rights and the modernist idea of the rule of law. Habermas points out: “Human rights belong structurally to a positive and coercive legal order which founds actionable individual legal claims. To this extent, it is part of the meaning of human rights that they claim the status of basic rights which are implemented within the content of some existing legal order, be it national, international or global.”(Ibid, p.192) That is to say, human rights are legal rights, and the norm of human rights is coercive and juridical. He argues: “Law serves to protect individual freedom of choice in accordance with the principle that everything is permitted which is not explicitly forbidden by general laws that set limit to freedom.”(Ibid, pp.191–192) Noteworthy here, modern thinkers such as John S.Mill, John Lock, and Immanuel Kant associated public law with individual liberty. In Kant, for example, as Habermas points out, Kant conceives of law as “the sum of the conditions under which the choice of one can be united with the choice of another in accordance with a universal law of freedom.” According to Kant, all special human rights are grounded in the “single original right” to equal individual liberties: “Freedom (independent from being constrained by another’s choice), in so far as it can co-exist with the freedom of everyone else in accordance with a universal law, is the only original right belonging to every many by virtue of his humanity.”(Ibid, p.192)

No wonder, in modern time, “human rights take their place in the Doctrine of Rights and only there.”(Ibid)

178

6 Cosmopolitanism

For Habermas, as constitutional rights, human rights differ from moral rights. Human rights are rights which human beings on the earth necessarily grant one another if they are to extend their lives together under the rule of law. They are legally constituted and protected. Moral rights are rights which a person has in virtue of being a human. Human rights have their origin in individual liberties and consist of previllege, claim, power, and immunity centered on the idea of individual liberty. Moral rights have their origin in human dignity and consist of previllege, claim, power, and immunity centered on the idea of human dignity. That being said, what lends human rights “the appearance of moral rights is not their content, and most especially not their structure, but rather their mode of validity, which points beyond the legal order of nation-states.”(Ibid, p.192) Because the claim of human rights is universally valid beyond the legal orders of particular nation-states, human rights are often conflated with moral rights. Correspondingly, human rights generally take the form of basic rights. “It is part of the meaning of human rights that they claim the status of basic rights which are implemented within the context of some existing legal order, be national, international or global.” (Ibid, p.192) And “basic rights are equipped with a universal validity claim because they can be justified exclusively from the moral point of view.”(Ibid, p.191) Still, basic rights should not be conflated with moral rights. Habermas points out further that moral rights derive from moral duties and therefore have no priority over duties; in comparison, legal rights derive from individual liberties, not legal duties, and in some circumstance, may have priority over legal duties. Habermas says: Basic rights are actionable individual rights whose meaning at least in part is to free legal persons in a carefully circumscribed manner from their binding force of moral commands by creating domains of legal conduct in which actors can act in accordance with their own preferences. Whereas moral rights only derive from duties that bind the free will of autonomous persons, legal entitlements to act in accordance with one’s preferences enjoy priority over legal duties, which in turn arise from legal restriction on these individual liberties (Ibid, p.191).

In general, liberty and duty, as well as rights and obligations, are not separable and should not be separated. Still, in given circumstances, we can prioritize one over the other in a carefully qualified manner. Human rights as basic rights can be prioritized over legal duties in some circumstances. In some very circumscribed circumstances, when the claims of legal rights and the claims of legal duties are in conflict, the claim of legal rights can have priority. The ramifications are as follows. First, violation of basic rights in the name of public duty may not be justified in some very circumscribed circumstances. Second, violation of human rights is not merely a kind of moral wrong, but a prosecutable criminal offence. With regard to the second ramification, Habermas says, “The establishment of a cosmopolitan order means that violation of human rights are no longer judged and combated immediately from the moral point of view, but rather are prosecuted, like criminal actions within the framework of a state-organized legal order, in accordance with institutionalized legal procedures.” (Ibid, p.193)

2  Human Rights and Cosmopolitanism

179

Correspondingly, international and global politics of human rights must be accountable to public laws and be grounded in international and cosmopolitan laws. Thus, while advocating the norm of human rights as the operating norm of global justice in our epoch, discourse cosmopolitanism categorically rejects what Habermas dubs as “human rights fundamentalism”. Human rights fundamentalism is the doctrine that international and global politics of human rights do not need to be accountable to public laws, as long as one can provide them with a moral justification. It is the doctrine that dissociates politics of human rights from the rule of law. Human rights fundamentalism fails to see that human rights are constitutional rights, and therefore politics of human rights must be accountable to public laws and be grounded in public laws. Habermas points out that human rights fundamentalism has three features. First, it pursues international and global politics of human rights in a way that sets aside international and cosmopolitan laws. “The human rights politics of a world organization becomes inverted into a human rights fundamentalism only when it provides a moral legitimation under the cover of a sham legal legitimation for intervention which is in reality nothing other than the struggle of one party against the other.”(Ibid, p.190) Second, it conflates human rights with moral rights, not recognizing that the foundation of human rights is positive law; human rights are constitutive of a legal order. Third, it is extreme, radical, and one-sided interpretation of human rights. Human rights fundamentalism radically interprets human rights merely from its moral point of view and in terms of the concept of good. Meanwhile, Habermas insists that the correction and remedy to the politics of human rights fundamentalism is to ground the global politics of human rights in international and cosmopolitan laws. “Human rights fundamentalism is avoided not by renouncing the politics of human rights, but only through a cosmopolitan transformation of the state of nature among states into a legal order.”(Ibid, p.201) International and global politics of human rights is indispensable to a cosmopolitan world society on the earth. A world society should purport to protect human rights and promote world peace in the globe under the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws. Therefore, to reject international and global politics of human rights fundamentalism is not to reject international and global politics of human rights, but to properly ground it. In short, discourse cosmopolitanism firmly holds to and defends the modernist ideal of the rule of law and universal human rights in international and global arena. In discourse cosmopolitanism, a cosmopolitan world society is one geared to protect globally human rights and promote world peace under the rule of law. Human endeavors that purport to globally protect human rights and promote world peace must be grounded in international and world (cosmopolitan) laws. In the globe, what Kant calls “the international state of nature” is transformed into what he calls “the international state of law” or “the cosmopolitan state/condition”.

180

6 Cosmopolitanism

3  T  hree Categories of Public Laws and Three Categories of Civil Rights The concept of human rights as constitutional rights presupposes the idea of cosmopolitan laws as another category of public law. If there are human rights as the third category of civil rights, then there are corresponding cosmopolitan laws as the third category of pubic law that define human rights as public rights. In modern time, municipal and international laws have existed as two categories of pubic laws. Now comes the third one: cosmopolitan laws. Habermas credits Kant for developing the concept of cosmopolitan laws as the third category of public laws. Kant claimed, “In this way distant parts of the world can establish with one another peaceful relations that will eventually become matters of public law, and the human race can gradually be brought closer and closer to a cosmopolitan constitution.”(Kant, 1972, p.118) Habermas points out, with the concept of cosmopolitan laws, “Kant introduces a third dimension into his legal theory: cosmopolitan laws (das Recht der Weltbürger).”(Ibid, p.165) Kant added the third category of laws—cosmopolitan laws (ius cosmopolitism), including a cosmopolitan constitution, or world laws—to the categories of civil laws. Accordingly, Kant has envisioned a cosmopolitan order that is not merely moral, but also juridical. Habermas recognizes that since Kant, public law are divided into three families: municipal, international, and cosmopolitan laws. Needless to say, municipal laws here refer to laws of nation-state, international laws refer to laws between nation-­ states, and cosmopolitan laws are laws for all nation-states, all peoples and all persons. Cosmopolitan laws refer to those public laws that have global validity and authority. Discourse cosmopolitanism inherits Kant’s division of public laws. It also recognizes Kant’s claim that cosmopolitan laws are public laws evolving from international laws and are from constitutionalization of international laws. Both Kant and Habermas hold that international treaties will lead to a “cosmopolitan constitution”. As Habermas see it, cosmopolitan laws differ from international laws here. “Whereas international laws, like all law in the state of nature, is only provisionally valid, cosmopolitan law would resemble state sanctioned civil law in definitively bringing the state of nature to an end.”(Ibid, p.168) International laws are valid and legitimate between nation-states that sign on them. Cosmopolitan laws are globally valid and legitimate. The ultimate units of concern in international laws are nation-­ states. The ultimate units of concern in cosmopolitan laws are individual persons. Meanwhile, for Habermas, cosmopolitan laws have global facticity too, not merely global validity and are backed by institutional forces and enacted by a three-tiered, networked realm of public authority. Habermas makes no bone his view that cosmopolitan laws are public laws and have facticity. It is a hallmark of discourse cosmopolitanism to insist that cosmopolitan laws have both validity and facticity. According to him, cosmopolitan laws directly establish the legal status of individual person (Habermas, 1998, p.181). Cosmopolitan laws are binding on both individual persons and individual

3  Three Categories of Public Laws and Three Categories of Civil Rights

181

governments. Thus, for example, the norm of human rights is a cosmopolitan norm and the establishment of a cosmopolitan order means that violation of human rights will be prosecuted as criminal actions. Habermas claims that “cosmopolitan laws would resemble state-sanctioned civil laws in definitively bringing the state of nature to an end.”(Ibid, p.168). For Habermas, nation-states must submit themselves to coercive cosmopolitan laws. He says: “cosmopolitan law must be institutionalized in such a way that it is binding on individual governments. The community of peoples must be able to ensure that its members act at least in confirmation with the law through the threat of sanctions.” (Ibid, p.179) Habermas differs from Kant. In Kant, “The order henceforth described as ‘cosmopolitan’ is supposed to differ from an internal legal order by virtue of the fact that states, unlike individual citizens, do not submit themselves to the public coercive laws of superordinate power but retain their independence.”(Ibid, p.168) Habermas extends the modernist idea of the rule of law fully in the globe. Here, the concept of cosmopolitan law binding on individual governments enriches the modernist idea of the rule of law. With regard to the source of legitimate cosmopolitan laws, Habermas differs from Kant. For Habermas, the source is global democracy and the public use of reason in global affairs and discourses. For Kant, it is from individual reason. To spell it out differently, for Habermas, it is global democracy that legitimately establishes cosmopolitan laws as the third category of public laws. For Kant, legitimate cosmopolitan laws is dictated by the subject-centered human reason. So far as the process is concerned, Habermas shares with Kant the view that legitimate cosmopolitan laws come from constitutionalization of international laws. Still, in Habermas, such a process of constitutionalizaiton of international laws is necessarily democratic, and necessarily involves democratic, public discourses and formal politics of democracy in the globe including some formal processes of legislature. In Kant, the process may not necessarily be democratic. According to Kant, cosmopolitan laws are of humankind, by human reason and for humanity. They exist for humankind in whole to live as a community. For Kant, Reason can provide related nations with no other means for emerging from the state of lawlessness, which consists of solely war, that that they give up their savage (lawless) freedom, just as individual person do, and by, by accommodating themselves to the constraints of common law, establish a nation of peoples (civitas gentium) that (continually growing) will finally include all the peoples of the earth (Ibid, p.117).

Here, Kant’s human reason is what Habermas calls subject-centered reason. In Kant, the legitimate source of cosmopolitan laws is from the subject-centered human reason. “From the throne of its moral legislative power, reason absolutely condemns war as a means of determining the right and makes seeking the state of peace a matter of unmitigated duty.”(Ibid, p.116) In comparison, in Habermas, the legitimate source of cosmopolitan laws is from the universal human reason as intersubjective reason and from the public use of reason; it is from global democracy. Now, Habermas endorses Kant’s view on a cosmopolitan order under the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws. In particular, Habermas indicates that in Kant,

182

6 Cosmopolitanism

“the legal principles implemented within single states should lead ultimately to a global legal order that unites all peoples and abolishes war: ‘all forms of the state are based on the idea of a constitution which is compatible with natural rights of man, so that those who obey the law should also act as a unified body of legislators.’”(Ibid, p.155) In Kant, there should be a constitutionalized global order based on the idea of rights. Kant claimed, “The greatest problem for the human species … is to achieve a universal civil society administrated in accord with the right.”(Kant, 1972, p.3) This led Kant to put forth the concept of cosmopolitan constitution. According to Kant, “the republican constitution is the only one wholly compatible with the rights of men.”(Ibid, p.124) And only a republican constitution can bring about permanent world peace and enduring protection of rights. Noteworthy, what Kant looked for was not a treaty for temporary truce and temporary protection of cosmopolitan rights. Instead, he looked for permanent peace and permanent protection of rights that “nullifies all existing causes for war” and for crimes violating rights (Ibid, p.107). Thus, for Kant, to speak of persons’ cosmopolitan rights and real, perpetual world peace, we need a cosmopolitan constitution. “In this way distant parts of the world can establish with one another peaceful relations that will eventually become matters of public law, and the human race can gradually be brought closer and closer to a cosmopolitan constitution.”(Ibid, p.118). Habermas endorses Kant’s view above, but reforms it with the discourse principle. For Habermas, only those legal norms can be claimed to be valid that can be consented by all as participants in the public, practical, and political-legal discourses. Global democracy guided by communicative rationality is the only source of legitimate cosmopolitan laws. Cosmopolitan laws are not given by a divine power or given in nature. They are human institutions that are of humankind, by humankind and for humankind. They are by humankind through global democracy among all humankind. This leads us here to the matter of the sovereignty and authority of cosmopolitan laws. On the point of sovereignty, Habermas is at home with Kant on the one hand and differs from Kant on the other hand. What is sovereignty? By definition sovereignty is having the autonomous, supreme authority and full rights to govern a political entity (community) of definite boundaries. What are the essential features of sovereignty? Habermas’s concept of cosmopolitan sovereignty has three of the four elements of Simon Caney’s concept of sovereignty. These three elements are as follows: First, legality and jurisdiction: “The concept of sovereignty is juridical.”(Caney, 2005, p.149) Conceptually, sovereignty connotes the full legal rights, authority and power of a political entity to govern itself without any interferences from outside sources or bodies. Thus, sovereignty connotes legal authority and legitimacy. It implies having the legitimate authority to coerce with institutional forces and to be adjudicated by laws; it is having the legal authority and power. By this token, to claim that cosmopolitan laws are sovereign is to claim that they are juridical, legally authoritative. Second, supremacy: “A political unit is sovereign if it is the supreme authority.”(Ibid) The sovereign has the supreme authority, in particular the supreme

3  Three Categories of Public Laws and Three Categories of Civil Rights

183

legal authority. Sovereignty is exhibited not only in having legitimate authority, but in having the legitimate, highest authority. To claim that cosmopolitan laws are sovereign is to claim that they are laws of supreme authority, for example, they can override municipal or international laws pertaining to human rights when they are in conflict with municipal laws. Third, territoriality: sovereign authority and legitimacy are confined within a well-defined territory. A sovereign political authority always exists in a well-defined territory. For example, America is sovereign in the sense that its own government has the supreme authority within the borders of America; beyond the borders, it has no legitimate authority. To claim that cosmopolitan laws are sovereign is to claim that they are applicable to a defined territory—here, the entire Earth. In summary, in discourse cosmopolitanism, the sovereignty of cosmopolitan laws consists of their legality, supremacy, and territoriality. Meanwhile, the sovereignty of cosmopolitan laws does not have the element called “comprehensiveness” in Caney’s concept. In Habermas, as it is in Kant, cosmopolitan laws are particularly restricted to laws of protection of human rights and promotion of world peace, and do not include laws about other matters such as social-economic or environment. Thus, in Habermas, cosmopolitan sovereignty is not comprehensive sovereignty, but sovereignty in particularly restricted domains: human rights and world peace. This leads us to the following issues. First, it is the question of whose common will of cosmopolitan laws themselves express. Cosmopolitan laws as public laws express the will of a political, legal being and declares its authority in terms of ­representing this will. Whose will cosmopolitan laws including a cosmopolitan ­constitution express? For Habermas, it is the will called “intersubjectivity” of a democratic, pluralist world society of all human beings. It is the intersubjectivity of all humankind as autonomous, free, and equal citizens. Habermas resists the concept of humankind in whole as a world state, or the concept of humankind in whole as a community of metaphysical foundation such as a community of common fate. Instead, in his vision, the cosmopolitan world society is a republican community of all human beings as free, equal, and autonomous citizens on the earth. Second, it is the question of whose and which government that is the necessary enactor of cosmopolitan laws. Both Habermas and Kant do not want a world state. Habermas then proposes a three-tiered, networked realm of pubic authority. He conceives a constitutionalized world society under the rule of law, but not a world state. On this point, Habermas shares common views with Kant, but also differs from Kant. Kant claimed, “the proposal for a universal cosmopolitan nation, to whose power all individual nations should voluntarily submit, and whose laws they should obey, may sound ever so nice in the theory of the Abbe St. Pierre or of a Rousseau, yet it is of no practical use.”(Kant, 1972, p.89) Also, for Kant, “the idea of international right presupposes the existence of many separate, independent, adjoining nations.”(Ibid, p.124) For Kant, the concept of international rights contradicts the idea of a world state. “If there were such a global political body, there would be strictly speaking be only one state, and then international right would not be applicable.”(Ibid, p.60) Thus, Kant bequeathed a daunting question to the present discourse of cosmopolitanism: How is a global order under the rule of law without

184

6 Cosmopolitanism

a world state possible? How can a global order of the rule of law without a world state possible? Or how can a global regime of the rule of law not be a world state? To his own question, Kant proposed the concept of world federation of nations as the answer. In his vision, a federation consists of sovereign states whose sovereignty is not violable; “this would be a federation of nations, but it must not be a nation consisting of nations.”(Ibid, p.115) Habermas sees inconsistencies in Kant here. About Kant’s vision, there is a question of whether cosmopolitan laws grant individual persons direct world citizen status by passing nation-states. If they do, then the concept that national sovereignty is not violable need to be revised. If they do not, then the concept that individual persons are the ultimate unites of ethical-moral, political-legal concerns and deliberation becomes meaningless. Another inconsistency is that in a situation wherein following the municipal laws, the government of a nation-state commits offences to cosmopolitan laws such as crimes against humanity, whether that government and its leaders should be held accountable for their acts. If they are not, the concept of the sovereignty of cosmopolitan laws need to be revised. If they should be, the concept that national sovereignty is absolutely not violable is problematic. Moreover, Kant handicapped the supremacy of cosmopolitan laws when he asserted the absolute inviolability of national sovereignty. Habermas’s remedy to the shortcoming of Kant’s doctrine is the idea that national sovereignty is not absolute. He points out that according to Michael Walzer, international interventions are permitted and justified under one of the following three conditions: 1. “To lend support to a national liberation movement that manifests the identity of an independent community by the very act of resistance”; 2. “To defend the integrity of a political community under attack when it can only be protected by opposing intervention”; 3. “In case of enslavement, massacre, or genocide a criminal government deprives its own citizens of the possibility of giving expression to their forms of life and thereby of preserving their collective identity (Ibid, p.148). Walzer provides an instructive approach to deal with the issue of national sovereignty in cosmopolitanism. The supreme authority of cosmopolitan laws pertaining to human rights and world peace should be emphasized. National sovereignty should be respected in general. But under situations wherein there are serious, systematic and violent violation human rights, even crimes such as crimes against humanity or genocides, international interventions should be called for and thus national sovereignty can be transgressed. Following cosmopolitan laws, there should be accountability of a government in its relation to citizens. All governments are accountable for governmental policies and acts towards their citizens and with regard to human rights. No wonder, “The UN Charter of June 1945 imposes on its member states a general obligation to respect and promote human rights.”(Ibid, p.181) Therefore, Habermas applies the modernist idea of popular sovereignty in the global context and develops the discursive concept of cosmopolitan sovereignty enacted by a three-tiered, networked realm of public authority. By this token,

4  A Possible World Constitution

185

national sovereignty is respected, but not absolutely inviolable. As exemplified in his reflection of the UN Charter, Habermas defends the idea of cosmopolitan sovereignty on the one hand, and emphasizes proper respect for the sovereignty of a nation-state on the other hand.

4  A Possible World Constitution The backbone of discourse cosmopolitanism is a possible world constitution that comes from constitutionalization of international laws, and from global democracy. The possible world constitution institutionally constructs the popular sovereignty of humankind in whole in the globe and functions as the basic law for all humankind and all governments on the earth. A world constitution is the basic law for humankind in whole. In the global level, “a political constitution primarily geared to setting limits to power founds a ‘rule of law’ that can normatively shape existing power relations.”(Habermas, 2009, p.316) A world constitution is the legal basis for the legitimization of global politics geared to protect human rights and promote world peace.

4.1  A Discursive Concept of World Constitution Habermas’s concept of world constitution is indebted to Kant’s concept of cosmopolitan constitution and it can be traced back to his 2007essay entitled “A political constitution for the pluralist world society” which is published in the Journal of Chinese Philosophy. In 2009, a book chapter with the same title but slightly different contents is included in his Between Naturalism and Religion. Both his 2007 article and 2009 book chapter advocate the same concept of a world constitution. The basic ideas of Habermas’s concept of a world constitution for a pluralist world society can be summarized as follows: 1. The world constitution is sovereign public law, not merely a moral law; it is the basic law for the cosmopolitan world society; 2. The world constitution does not need a world-state government as its enacting condition or enactors; instead, its enactor is a three-tiered, networked realm of public authority; 3. The world constitution does not function to turn different peoples into a people, but functions to define the basic norms, rules, and principles binding human activities of all; 4. The world constitution functions to define juridical rules, norms, principles, and standards that shape and set limit of human activities in order to protect human rights and promote world peace in the globe;

186

6 Cosmopolitanism

5. The world constitution comes from constitutionalization of existing, functioning international laws through global democracy; 6. The world constitution is binding on both individual persons and individual governments; 7. The world constitution evolves from international laws, but belongs to the third category of public law called “cosmopolitan law.” All the same, at the core of the cosmopolitan ideal of a cosmopolitan world under the rule of law is the rule of the world constitution on the earth. This is true of Kant’s cosmopolitanism. It is also true of discourse cosmopolitanism. Now, the matter at hand boils down to the question of how best to constitutionalize international laws and treaties into a world constitution. More exactly, the challenge is how to develop a world constitution out of international laws without a world state. To answer the question, Habermas proposes some conceptual renovations. To start, Habermas proposes that we re-conceptualize the function of a constitution. He proposes that a constitution should be conceptualized as the basic law to define a legal order and to define rules and norms of human activities, not a basic law to create a substantial political entity such as a people or a nation. By this token, the concept of constitution and the concept of a political-entity are separated. A constitution is thus viewed as the basic law to define the procedure of how powers should operate, not as the basic law that organizes a centralized power and a substantial entity. In short, Habermas proposes that the modern concept of constitution is replaced by a discursive concept of constitution. For Habermas, a world constitution is to define procedures, norms, and standards of human activities, not to build a world entity called “a world state”. It is to define a world order, not to create a united, centralized authority. It is to produce an order in which different players can co-exist and co-play, not to integrate different players into one player. As Habermas sees it, a world constitution primarily sets limits to powers under the rule of law (e.g., nation-state governments) and directs the exercise of political powers in accordance with public laws (Ibid). In a sense, the function of a world constitution in Habermas’s vision is thus akin to the function of the UN Charter, amid the world constitution is legally binding. Thus, the deep meaning of constitutionalization of international laws in discourse cosmopolitanism is that international laws are constitutionalized as basic laws of the world society to define procedures, scope and limits of human activities in the globe and to define procedures, norms, and standards of how nation-states, nation-peoples on the earth should interact with one another, and how citizens on the earth how interact with each other, not creating and defining an international state-entity. International laws are constitutionalized to define procedures in which different peoples and different nation-states can interact with each other, and all humankind can interact with each other in a way that they co-exist, co-develop, and co-prosper. A world constitution functions in such a way to bring about world peace and protect human rights in the globe.

4  A Possible World Constitution

187

In short, Habermas proposes that we move from the modern, people-constituting concept of constitution to the discursive, procedure-defining concept of constitution. Unlike national constitution, a world constitution does not create a world people in the same sense that a national constitution creates a nation-people such as the American people, the German people or the Chinese people. The metaphor “one people under one constitution in a cosmopolitan republic” should be understood as all peoples in spite of their differences follow and live up to a same constitution. The constitutional procedure is not to integrate peoples into one, but to define a same basis for human activities of different actors. Correspondingly, Habermas proposes that we disassociate the concepts of constitution and of a state or an entity. Conceptually, these two concepts are connected historically, and contingently, not necessarily. If they were necessarily connected, we could not talk about a world constitution without a world state. Learning from the liberal concept of constitution, Habermas advocates “the conceptual independence of three elements, namely constitution, the powers of the state, and citizenship.”(Ibid) He argues, “the liberal type of constitution that limits the power of the state without constituting it also provides a conceptual model for constitutionalization of international law in the form of a politically constituted world society without a world government.”(Ibid) Habermas proposes that we move from the modern, state-centered concept of constitution to the discursive, procedure-centered concept of constitution. In the modern, state-centered concept of constitution, constitution and state are not separable. Meanwhile, With the transition from state-centered international law to a cosmopolitan legal order, nation-states will be restricted in their scope of action without being robbed of their status as subjects of a global legal order by the individual world citizens, who now acquire the additional status of subject of cosmopolitan laws. Rather, republican states can remain subjects of a world constitution without a world government alongside individual world citizens (Ibid, pp.316-317).

A transition from the state-centered concept of constitution to a procedure-­ centered concept of constitution makes possible conceptualizing a constitutionalized global order without a world-state. It makes possible conceptualizing a world constitution without a world state. Moreover, Habermas proposes that we dissociate the concepts of constitution and of a central power, moving away from the modern concept that a constitution functions to constitute a central authority and power and moving to the discursive concept of constitution functioning to define a platform of interplays of powers. We must move away also from the concept that the necessary enactor of a constitution is a central power and authority, and replace the concept of a central power and authority as the necessary enactor of a constitution by the concept of a networked realm of public authority and power as the enactor of a constitution. Habermas points out that in the liberal tradition, the constitution does not have the function of constituting authority but only that of constraining power. And we can draw insights from the liberal concept of constitution here. Habermas does not say whether a possible world constitution should be a single documentary, statute law similar to the Constitution of the United States of America

188

6 Cosmopolitanism

or it should be understood as a body politic or the sum total of statute laws, common laws, legal precedents, international treaties, and acts of the United Nations—in short, as a constitution that is similar to the Constitution of the United Kingdom. The idea that a world constitution is from constitutionalization of international laws does not indicate what a world constitution will look like either. Noteworthy also, if we understand a world constitution as a body politic akin to the Constitution of the United Kingdom, then the existence of a world constitution will not be marked by a formal legislature act of a global-state government nor does administration and enacting of it require a centralized, global-state government. Instead, we can conceive a world constitution as an evolving being, and constitutionalization of international laws as a constant evolving process.

4.2  The Three-Tiered Cosmopolitan Order Proposing the concept of cosmopolitan condition as the condition of the rule of law, in particular the rule of a world constitution, Habermas advocates the concept that “cosmopolitan sovereignty comprises networked realms of public authority shaped and delimited” by a world constitution (Held, 2010, p.100). “Within the cosmopolitan framework … the political authority of states is but one aspect of a complex, overlapping regime of political authority.”(Ibid) The concept of a three-tiered, networked realm of public authority in a cosmopolitan world society indicates that there can be, and there are, governments and governmental institutions as the necessary enactors of cosmopolitan laws and cosmopolitan sovereignty without a world state. In a cosmopolitan world society, there are three-tiered embodied in, represented and enacted by a three-tiered, networked realm of public authority. We should move from the concept of one-tier sovereignty to the concept of three-tiered —national, international, and global—sovereignty. That is to say, a global order is legally administrated by three-tiered—national, international, and global—networked realm of public authority. Thus, Habermas claims, “On my understanding, the constitutionalized world society … is a multilevel system.”(Habermas, 2009, p.322) The three-tiered global order goes something as follows: 1. The supranational arena: “the supranational arena is dominated by one single actor”; this single actor is the United Nation; its authority is restricted to “fulfillment of two functions, namely, securing peace and human rights on a global scale”(Ibid); 2. The regional or continental arena: between the supranational arena and national arena are those “regional or continental regimes equipped with a sufficiently representative mandate to negotiate for whole continents and to wield the necessary powers of implementation for large territory” (Ibid, p.324); 3. The national arena: “nation-states must retain a privileged status also with a view to the far-reaching agenda.”(Ibid, p.323) This is the lowest, supporting level. It will be occupied by the nation-states which are currently members of the Nation Nations.

4  A Possible World Constitution

189

In the system above, cosmopolitan sovereignty is enacted and administrated by a three-tiered, networked realm of public authority. Humankind in whole is a sovereign community of common laws. The sovereignty of humankind in whole as a community, and the sovereignty of cosmopolitan laws will be enacted by a three-­ tiered, networked realm of public authority. Corresponding to the concepts of divided sovereignty and three-tiered, networked realm of public authority, Habermas reforms the Kantian concept of national sovereignty to the discursive concept that national sovereignty is not absolute. The renovation is a conceptual necessity. If cosmopolitan laws must be sovereign, they must be binding on individual governments and states too. If they must be binding on individual governments and states, national sovereignty cannot be absolute, inviolable under any circumstances. No nation-states or their governments can break cosmopolitan laws and be free of international prosecution in the name of national sovereignty. For example, no nation-states or their governments can commit crimes against humanity, or crimes of genocide and free of international prosecution in the name of national sovereignty. This leads us to the concept of a pluralist world society in Habermas. Differing from Kant, Habermas conceives a pluralist world society also as one of world citizens, not merely a federation of nations. He says, “The point of cosmopolitan law is, rather, that it bypasses the collective subjects of international law and directly establishes the legal status of the individual subjects by granting them unmediated membership in the association of free and equal world citizens.”(Habermas, 1998, p.181) That being said, nation-states or nation-peoples are collective actors or members in a world society too. At the end of the day, in discourse cosmopolitanism, a world society consists of three-tiered members too: individual persons as world citizens, nation-states/nation-peoples, and regional unions such as the European Union. Habermas’s renovation underscores one of the core tenets of cosmopolitanism today: individual persons are the most basic units of the ethical-moral, political and legal deliberation in a cosmopolitan world. Correspondingly, in discourse cosmopolitanism, respect for individual persons—their values and rights to particular ways of lives of their choice, as well as particular nation-peoples—is utmost emphasized. The rule of law in the pluralist world society does not aim at elimination of diversity, but at facilitation of peaceful co-existence of diverse communities, peoples, and individual persons. It is to create and preserve conditions for peaceful cultural openness and toleration among peoples and individual persons.

4.3  The Concept of Dual Citizenship Discourse cosmopolitanism is not universalism or communism. In discourse cosmopolitanism, all persons always hold a dual citizenship—as both world citizens and as national citizens. Cosmopolitan laws directly give all persons the status of world citizenship. This does not cancel persons’ national citizenships. Instead,

190

6 Cosmopolitanism

“each of us dwells, in effect, in two communities—the local community of our birth, and the community of human argument and aspiration that ‘is truly great and truly common, in which we look neither to this corner nor to that, but measure the boundaries of our nation by the sun’.” (Nussbaum, 1997, p.6) Habermas entertains the concept of a cosmopolitan world society wherein each person has both national citizenship and world citizenship. He examines the possible conflict of the normative expectation of a cosmopolitan citizenship and that of a national citizenship in a citizen. He argues that “cosmopolitan citizens would have to be guaranteed the conditions they require given their respective local contexts if they are to be able to make effective use of their formal rights. On this basis, fair boundaries between national and cosmopolitan solidarity—that is, boundaries acceptable to both sides—would have to be laid down.” (Habermas, 2008, p.121) In his response to Thomas Nagel’s misgiving, Habermas indicates that the conflict between the role of national citizen and that of cosmopolitan citizen is inevitable but reconcilable. In his “thought experiment” of a cosmopolitan order, which he labels as a “second state of nature”, he insists: “The contradiction between the normative standards of cosmopolitan and national citizens (analyzed by Thomas Nagel) must be defused within a monistic constitutional political order”; meanwhile, “the monistic construction should not lead to a mediatization of the world of states by the authority of a world republic which ignores the fund of trust accumulated in the domestic sphere and the associated loyalty of citizens to their respective nations.”(Ibid, pp.119–120) There can be gaps between “the expectations and demands of the citizens in their contrasting roles as cosmopolitan and national citizens”, no question of that (Ibid, p.117). The expectations and demands of a cosmopolitan citizen are from one’s global belonging and global duties and obligations to all human beings and humankind in whole. The expectation and demands of a national citizen are from one’s solidarity with one’s nation-state and fellow country men and women as well as one’s national belonging and national duties and obligations. The gap goes something as follows: Cosmopolitan citizens take their orientation from universalistic standards which peace and human rights policies of the United Nations must satisfy no less than global domestic politics negotiated among the global players. National citizens, by contrast, measure the conduct of their governments and chief negotiators in these international arenas in the first instance not in accordance with global standards of justice, but above all in terms of the effective pursuit of national or regional interests. But if this conflict were fought out in the heads of same citizens, the notions of legitimacy which evolve within the cosmopolitan framework of the international community would inevitably clash with the legitimate expectations and demands derived from the frame of reference of the respective nation-­ states (Ibid, p.116).

Needless to say, this does not alter the fact that (1) each of us has a dual citizenship; and (2) there is a challenge, but not impossibility, for each of us to reconcile these two sets of expectations and demands in our ethical-moral and social-political deliberations.

4  A Possible World Constitution

191

A person’s dual citizenship imposes a unique burden on the person in global democracy, in particular global democracy to assemble global legal architecture. In such a context, as Benhabib notes, “The tension between universal human rights claims and particularistic cultural and national identities is constitutive of democratic legitimacy.”(Benhabib, 2006, p.32) In such a context, a citizen may be in a situation of conflict between meeting the normative expectation as a citizen of a particular nation and meeting the normative expectation of a cosmopolitan citizen. A citizen should resolve this conflict within himself or herself in and through active participation in democratic deliberations. The concept of dual citizenship in turn underscores some modernist features of discourse cosmopolitanism. It underscores the modernist ideas of rights, the rule of law, and constitutional democracy. It goes as follows. First, contrasted to Grecian cosmopolitanism that is centered on the concept of universal good, discourse cosmopolitanism is rights-centered. Correspondingly, claims of basic human rights are substantial claims of a person’s global citizenship. The concept of basic human rights brings into prominence the global citizenship which each of us has. It also emphasizes the value of national citizenship, and each person’s rights to participate in a political association. Second, in discourse cosmopolitanism, “the democratic construction of a world constitution without a state” is not “the same construction of a ‘state of nature’ that served in the social contract tradition as a yardstick for constitutionalization of national law”(Habermas, 2008, p.118) Instead, it implies “imposing a constitution on an existing state power.”(Ibid) By this token, the key is that “a politically constituted world society would be composed of citizens and states.”(Ibid, p.117) And “any jurisdification of world politics must take as its starting point individuals and states, as constituting the two categories of founding subjects of a world constitution.” (Ibid, p.119) In Grecian cosmopolitanism, individual persons are the only founding subjects of a cosmopolitan world. Third, discourse cosmopolitanism recognizes the national rights of state-nations, cultures, and peoples, while it emphasizes individual persons’ rights. It also recognizes that a person’s rights and liberty to retain his/her membership of particular nations is among the basic rights of a person as a global citizen. A nation-state has legitimate claims in a cosmopolitan world society as individual persons do. Noteworthy also, in the concept of a three-tiered, networked realm of public authority, nation-states constitute one tier of the networked realm of public authority. Fourth, both Grecian cosmopolitanism and discourse cosmopolitanism emphasize cultural openness and tolerance in a cosmopolitan world society. But Grecian cosmopolitanism emphasizes cultural openness and tolerance on the basis of common good. Discourse cosmopolitanism emphasize cultural openness and toleration on the basis of rights, both cultural rights and individual rights. Thus, in discourse cosmopolitanism, cultural openness and toleration is not merely a value and virtue, but a norm of obligation and duty. Fifth, in Grecian cosmopolitanism, the cosmopolitan condition connotes a condition of cultural plurality, openness and toleration. In discourse cosmopolitanism, a

192

6 Cosmopolitanism

cosmopolitan condition is a condition of cultural plurality, openness and toleration under the rule of law and a condition of recognizing and respecting rights. In summary, the concept of dual-citizenship is a signature concept of discourse cosmopolitanism. So is the concept of dual set of obligation—the national and the global. With this concept, discourse cosmopolitanism differs from Grecian cosmopolitanism. It also irons out some inconsistencies in Kant’s cosmopolitanism.

4.4  A World Society: Habermas and Rawls John Rawls famously puts forth the concept of the Society of People, claiming that equalitarian cosmopolitanism is illegitimate. Some crucial distinctions exist between Habermas’s cosmopolitan world society and Rawls’s Society of Peoples. They are at least as follows. First, the Society of Peoples is people-centered, while a cosmopolitan world society is individual-person-centered—that is to say, individual persons are the most basic units of ethical-moral, political-legal deliberations. Like Pogge, Habermas emphasizes three basic tenets of cosmopolitanism: the worthiness of all persons as individual persons, equality, and obligations and duties that bind all. He insists, “The point of cosmopolitan law is, rather, that it bypasses the collective subjects of international law and directly establishes the legal status of the individual subjects by granting them unmediated membership in the association of free and equal world citizens.”(Habermas, 1998, p.181) Second, the Society of Peoples includes only “those peoples who follow the ideals and principles of the Law of Peoples in their mutual relations.”(Rawls, 1999, p.3). The Society of Peoples consists of only two kinds of peoples on the earth. In comparison, a cosmopolitan world society consists of all peoples on the earth. By this token, a cosmopolitan world society is all inclusive, while the Society of Peoples is selective, not all inclusive. Third, the Society of Peoples is governed by the Law of Peoples, consisting of eight articles, and the Law of People is international law (Ibid, p.37). In comparison, a cosmopolitan world society is governed by cosmopolitan laws as the third category of public laws, including the cosmopolitan constitution. In the Society of Peoples, there are two categories of public laws: municipal and international. In a cosmopolitan world society, there are three categories of public law: municipal, international, and cosmopolitan. Fourth, the objective of the Society of Peoples is comprehensive, e.g., economic, social, political, and so on. The objective of a cosmopolitan world society is political—more specially, a cosmopolitan world society purports to protect human rights and promote world peace in the globe under the rule of law. Fifth, the Society of Peoples is a governed by a two-tiered realm of public authority: national and international. A cosmopolitan world society is governed by a three-­ tiered, networked realm of public authority: national, regional, and global. In a

4  A Possible World Constitution

193

cosmopolitan world society, there is divided, networked sovereignty wherein national sovereignty is not absolute. In the Society of Peoples, national sovereignty is absolute. Meanwhile, in spite of their differences, there are also common points between the two concepts of a world society. Rawls’s concept advocates a liberal world society, while Habermas’s advocates a cosmopolitan one. The two concepts differ. Still, both concepts also share five core beliefs. First, both concepts advocate a world society under the rule of law, not a world society in a natural state. In both concepts, the norm of human rights is the operating norm. Both concepts talk about a world society as a juridical community, not merely a moral community. Both Rawls’s Society of Peoples and Habermas’s pluralistic world society are societies under the rule of law, and constructed and legitimated by public laws. They both are civic societies. Second, both concepts emphasize that protection of human rights and promotion of world peace can be stable if and only if they are based on the rule of law. Both concepts are rights-centered, not universal good centered. Both concepts emphasizes justice as giving due to basic rights and purport to create a world order geared to promote world peace, and co-existence of peoples on the earth. Third, in both societies, legitimate laws governing relations between peoples, as well as between governments and peoples, can only be democratically established, not given by a divine power or in nature itself. Thus, both concepts emphasize the rule for reason, amid in Rawls’s concept emphasizes individual-subject-centered reason but Habermas’s concept emphasizes the public use of reason. Fourth, in both concepts, cultural toleration is a norm of justice. Both concepts recognizes that if a world society is a well-ordered one, then cultural toleration is a norm of obligation of justice amid cultural diversity is an ineradicable reality. In both Rawls’s liberal Society of Peoples and Habermas’s cosmopolitan world society, tolerance is a civil virtue and an instrumental good. But in both societies, tolerance is not merely a civil virtue and instrumental good. It also first of all a civil, public or legal obligation of public justice. Fifth, both concepts advocate the idea of a world community of common laws, not the idea of humankind in whole as a community of common fate or a community of homogeneous substance and identity. Both concepts recognize, respect, and are geared to preserve the rich diversity of ways of thinking and being humans on the earth. Sixth, corresponding to the above, neither in Rawls’s vision nor in Habermas’s vision, humanity in whole is conceived as an entity of unified, homogeneous substance. Thus, in both visions, safeguarding the security of humanity is not a task of a future world society. On this point, their visions differ a little from visions of other cosmopolitan philosophers such as David Held. In short, though Rawls’s explicitly rejects equalitarian cosmopolitanism, Rawls’ liberal vision of a future world order and Habermas’s cosmopolitan vision may not be incompatible. They differ. They are in conflict. But they can co-exist.

194

6 Cosmopolitanism

5  Conclusion In conclusion, discourse cosmopolitanism integrates the ideal of modernism and the ideal of cosmopolitanism. It advocates building a cosmopolitan world society that purports to protect human rights and promote world peace globally under the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws and that is culturally opened, inclusive and tolerant under the rule of international and cosmopolitan laws. Its vision is totally at home with the mission of United Nations as declared in the Charter of the United Nations. Discourse cosmopolitanism reconstructs Kant’s cosmopolitan rights into human rights as constitutional rights. Its concept of basic human rights is consistent with the list of human rights in the UN 1948 Declaration of Universal Rights. It replaces Kant’s concept of a cosmopolitan constitution with the discursive concept of a world constitution for a pluralist world society as democratically established and enacted public law. It redefines the nature, function, and value of a world constitution in line with the idea of democracy. It replaces Kant’s concept of a federation of nations with a concept of a pluralist world society of citizens and nations, and a world society that is governed by a three-tiered, networked realm of public authority. Discourse cosmopolitanism integrates the ideas of the rule of reason, the rule of justice, universal human rights, cultural tolerance, democracy, and the rule of law in global politics. It re-conceptualizes what is public (positive) law, and both national sovereignty and cosmopolitan sovereignty. It provides the ideal of cosmopolitanism with a new horizon, vision, vista, and basis of normative justification. Discourse cosmopolitanism affirms the three basic principles of cosmopolitanism: “the worth of individuals, equality, and the existence of obligations binding all (Caney, 2005, p.4) Discourse cosmopolitanism integrates these principles with the ideas of the rule of law, the rule of reason, and cultural tolerance. Discourse cosmopolitanism also underscores four tenets of cosmopolitanism in our time: global justice, humanity’s law (cosmopolitan laws), humankind in whole as a community, and dual citizenship. Therefore, discourse cosmopolitanism is another milestone of the ideal of cosmopolitanism. Moreover, what discourse cosmopolitanism advocates is not merely a utopia, but an emerging reality today!

References Benhabib, S. (2006). Another cosmopolitanism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Caney, S. (2005). Justice beyond borders. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cronin, C. (2011). Cosmopolitan democracy. In B. Fultner (Ed.), Jürgen Habermas: Key concepts (pp. 196–221). Acumen: Durham. Fine, R. (2003). Kant’s theory of cosmopolitanism and Hegel’s critique. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 29(6), 609–630. Fine, R., & Smith, W. (2003). Jürgen Habermas’s theory of cosmopolitanism. Constellations, 10(4), 469–487.

References

195

Habermas, J. (1998). The inclusion of the other. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (2008). Europe: The faltering project. Cambridge: The Polity Press. Habermas, J. (2009). Between naturalism and religion. Cambridge: The Polity Press. Held, D. (2010). Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and realities. Cambridge: Polity Press. Höffe, O. (2006). Kant’s cosmopolitan theory of law and peace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (1972). Perpetual peace: A philosophical essay. M. Campbell Smith (trans.), Prefaced by Robert Latta. New York: Garland Publishing. Kleingeld, P. (2012). Kant and cosmopolitanism. Cambridge: Cambridge Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (1997). Kant and stoic cosmopolitanism. The Journal of Political Philosophy., 5(1), 1–25. Pogge, T. (2012). Cosmopolitanism: A path to peace and justice. Journal of East-West Thought., 2(4), 9–32. Rawls, J. (1999). The law of peoples. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Retrieved from united_nations_charter.pdf (unmissions.org) Wener, L. (2005). The nature of rights. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 33(3), 223–252.

Chapter 7

Tolerance and Inclusion

Abstract  This chapter studies the discourse doctrine of tolerance. It first examines Habermas’s concept of tolerance, the relationship between tolerance and rejection, as well as that between tolerance and endorsement, the distinction between tolerance and indifference, the definition of tolerance in Habermas and that in the UN covenant. It then explores the discursive concepts of the object of tolerance, otherness, rejectablity, tolerance as the match-maker of modern society, and religious toleration as a paradigm. It finally investigates the discursive concept of tolerance as an obligation, a value and a virtue. It discusses the discursive concepts of the relationships between tolerance and democracy, between tolerance and justice, as well as between tolerance and cosmopolitanism. Keywords  Tolerance · Rejection · Endorsement · Indifference · The cultural other · Otherness · Cosmopolitanism WE CANNOT talk about modernity as a condition or quality of our epoch without mentioning tolerance as a norm of obligation, a value, and a virtue of our epoch and the idea of tolerance as constitutive of our epochal spirit and constitutive of our epoch. The Charter of the United Nations in 1945 purports to make tolerance a norm of our epoch. In 1981, the United Nations published the Declaration on Elimination of All Forms of the United Nations and of Discrimination. In 1995, The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) published its Declaration of Principles of Tolerance, and designated November 16 of each year as the International Tolerance Day. Habermas’s doctrine of tolerance applies his ideas of communicative rationality, the public use of reason, rights, equality, justice, autonomy, duty, obligation, value, and cosmopolitanism in national, international, and global affairs. It conceives tolerance as a norm, a value, and a virtue of our epoch. In the discourse doctrine of modernity, inclusion is a necessary condition for an ideal speech situation and a necessary condition for rational argumentation and a necessary presupposition of the universal pragmatics. One of the four pragmatic presuppositions of the universal pragmatics in a rational discourse is “inclusivity: no one who could make a relevant © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 X. Chen, The Essentials of Habermas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79794-2_7

197

198

7  Tolerance and Inclusion

contribution may be prevented from participating.” (Habermas, 2009, p.82) This in turn vouches for tolerance as a norm, a value, and a virtue. The discourse doctrine of tolerance purports to provide a just response to the fundamental reality of our epoch: cultural diversity and human rights (both individual rights and cultural rights). Our epoch is one of cultural diversity. As Isalah Berlin famously claimed: We must say that the world in which we see as incompatible values are not in conflict is a world altogether beyond our ken; that principles which are harmonized in this other world are not the principles with which, in our daily lives, we are acquainted; if they are transformed, it is into conceptions not known to us on earth. But it is on the earth that we live, and it is here that we must believe and act (Berlin, 1991, p.13).

The world we live in our epoch is culturally diverse. It is also one wherein fundamental human rights exist. How best to live in such a world? It is to recognize that tolerance is a norm, a value, and a virtue. In discourse doctrine, tolerance is a norm of justice that imposes obligations to respect everyone’s equal rights amid diversity. The norm of tolerance imposes obligations of justice to recognize and respect all who have equal rights to participate in opinion-and will-formation in public discourses in spite of diversity. It imposes obligations of justice to recognize and respect every person’s equal freedom in the context of diversity. In addition, tolerance is a value. “Tolerance protects a pluralistic society from being torn apart as a political community by conflicts and worldviews.” (Habermas, 2009, p.82) It is the very instrument of social cooperation and peaceful coexistence amid diversity. Moreover, tolerance is a political virtue of citizenship. It is an excellence in itself and also makes a person function excellently as a citizen. It liberates and elevates persons and communities. The discursive doctrine of tolerance has a modernist vision of humanity and the world in our epoch. It represents a cosmopolitan approach to the rich cultural diversity of peoples and ways of life in our epoch. It manifests the spirit of constitutional democracy, enlightenment, and the rule of reason. It constellates the ideas of rights, equality, duty, obligation, value, justice and prudence in our epoch. At the core of the discourse doctrine of tolerance are the following concepts: 1. The concept of tolerance as an act of inclusion and an intermediate act between rejection and endorsement; 2. The distinction between tolerance and indifference; the distinction between tolerance and rejection; and the distinction between tolerance and acceptance; 3. The concept of tolerance as a norm of justice and as a duty of prudence in a pluralist world; 4. The concept of tolerance as a value for a pluralistic society; 5. The concept of tolerance as a political virtue of citizenship; 6. Tolerance is necessary for and constitutive of constitutional democracy in our epoch. These concepts form the core of the discourse doctrine of tolerance as a modernist, cosmopolitan doctrine and thus demarcate it from Scanlon’s contractualist doctrine of tolerance and Locke’s liberalist doctrine of tolerance.

1  The Concept of Tolerance

199

Live, and let live, that is the norm of our epoch! That is also the norm of Habermas’s discourse philosophy.

1  The Concept of Tolerance Conceptually, tolerance refers to an attitude and toleration refers to a form of social practice in some contexts, and are interchangeable to refer to a form of social practice in other contexts. In the discourse doctrine, the two concepts are used interchangeably to refer to a kind of social practice. At times the word “tolerance” is also used to refer particularly to a virtuous attitude which Habermas dubs as the political virtue of a citizen and the word “toleration” is also used to refer to a form of legal action. Habermas’s discourse doctrine emphasizes tolerance as an attitude and act consisting of critical inclusion, critically bearing and critical accommodation, and active engagement. In Habermas’s vision, tolerance has also the connotation of respect for diversity and recognition of the existence of the cultural other. Meanwhile, in Habermas’s vision, tolerance is clearly distinguished from endorsement, acceptance, indifference, and rejection.

1.1  The Historical Origin of the Word “tolerance” In January 2004, in Philosophy, 29:307, Habermas published his “Religious Tolerance: The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights”, officially inaugurating his discourse doctrine of tolerance. Later on, the article is included as a book chapter in his Between Naturalism and Religion. In both the article and book chapter, Habermas discusses how from the point of view of rights, justice, and prudence, tolerance is a norm, a value, and virtue of our epoch. He also carefully draws some conceptual distinctions between tolerance and other activities such as indifference, rejection and endorsement. According to Habermas, “It was not until the sixteenth century… that the German language borrowed the word ‘toleranz’ from the Latin and French.”(Habermas, 2009, 252) Thus, the public use of the word “tolerance” in Germany can be traced back to the sixteenth century, a century when Germany experienced radical, critical, social, intellectual and cultural transformation. Conceptually, the Latin word, “tolerantia” connoted bearing, supporting, and endurance. “In this context the concept immediately assumed the narrow meaning of toleration (or indulgence [Duldsamkeit]) of other religious confessions.”(Ibid, p.251) That is to say, in the sixteenth century, when the German language imported the term “toleranz” from Latin and French, the concept of tolerance was interchangeable to the word “indulgence”. In modern time, the concept of tolerance gained its spotlight when John Lock’s A Letter Concerning Toleration was published in 1689. Locke’s great influence on

200

7  Tolerance and Inclusion

conceptualizing tolerance in this context is not that he has given a definition of tolerance. It is that he has provided a paradigm of tolerance—religious toleration. Habermas observes, “English makes a more precise distinction than German between ‘tolerance’ as a form of behavior and ‘toleration’ as a legal act through which a government grants more or less unrestricted permission to practice one’s religion.”(Ibid, p.252) Toleration in Locke evidentially refers to a legal act through which a government grants unrestricted permission to practice one’s religion. In comparison, “in German, the predicate ‘tolerant’ refers both to a legal order that guarantees toleration and to the political virtue of tolerant behavior.”(Ibid). Not surprisingly, Habermas quotes a Montesquieu as saying the following: When the legislator has believed it a duty to permit the exercise of many religions, it is necessary that he should enforce also a toleration among these religions themselves. … It is necessary, then, that the laws require from the several religions, not only that they shall embroil the state, but that they shall not raise disturbances among themselves (Ibid).

In the above, toleration is an authoritarian act of permission while tolerance is a political virtue, and they are causally associated with one another. Still, conceptually, this early concept of toleration and tolerance differs from the concept of toleration and tolerance as respect for, appreciation of and acceptance of the rich cultural diversity among cultures and peoples which Habermas advocates today. The concept of tolerance as an authoritarian act of permission gained steam in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and religious tolerance was emphasized by some governments. Habermas says: “In the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, religious tolerance became a legal concept. Governments issued tolerance edicts that enjoined state officials and the populations to be tolerant in their t­ reatment of religious minorities.”(Ibid, 251) On this point, “legal acts of toleration by absolutist governments created the expectation that people (as a rule majority of the population) should behavior tolerantly toward members of religious communities which until then had suffered oppression and repression.”(Ibid) According to Habermas, Spinoza and Locke have introduced an epistemic spin to the concept of tolerance. Habermas points out, Since Spinoza and Locke, the philosophical justifications offered for religious toleration point away from the authoritarian act unilaterally declared religious toleration toward a right to exercise one’s religious freedom, which entails a right to protection against the imposition of alien religious practices (Ibid, p.252).

The spin is that religious toleration implies a reciprocal recognition of each other’s rights to religious freedom; toleration is not, and should not be, merely a unilaterally authoritarian act of permission, but a reciprocal act of recognition and respect; the concept of tolerance does not express an act of compassion and benevolence, but an act of justice. It is not an act of solidarity, but an act of respect for rights. Conceptually, the concept of tolerance has the meaning of reciprocal recognition and respect for the rights of the tolerated. The concept of tolerance as implying reciprocal recognition and respect for the rights of tolerated is one step forward toward the concept of tolerance as respect, acceptance, and appreciation of the rich diversity among cultures and peoples. Here,

1  The Concept of Tolerance

201

it is helpful to bring in the UN 1995 Declaration of Principles of Tolerance here. The Declaration reads: “Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world’s cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. It is fostered by knowledge, openness, communication and freedom of thought, conscience and belief. Tolerance is harmony in differences.” (www.unesco. org/) In the declaration, tolerance is conceptually conceived as respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world’s cultures, and the terms “tolerance” and “toleration” are interchangeable. Respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of ways of life and peoples in our world imply a reciprocal recognition of each other’s rights to cultural and religious freedom and autonomy. The rich cultural diversity in effect colors the public space that associates cultures and peoples in spite of their differences. In the UN Declaration, the act of tolerance as an act of respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of ways of life and peoples is not an act of endorsement. Thus, the Declaration further reads: “Tolerance is not concession, condescension or indulgence. Tolerance is, above all, an active attitude prompted by recognition of the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of others.”(Ibid) Tolerance does not involve one’s concession to or indulgence in the tolerated. Instead, tolerance is an act of reciprocal recognition and an act of respect for diversity. Notwithstanding, in the UN Declaration, tolerance is to respect, accept, and appreciate the rich diversity between oneself and others, not to eliminate the diversity between oneself and others through acceptance or oppression of others. The object of the act of respect, acceptance and appreciation is the difference or diversity between oneself and others. All the same, historically, as Habermas sees it, the terms “tolerance” and “toleration” suggest the ideas of putting up with, accommodating, and bearing others in their otherness and reciprocal recognition between oneself and others. They indicate tolerance as a value, and a virtue of citizenship.

1.2  The Meaning of the Concept of Tolerance In light of the above, Habermas conceives tolerance to single out a unique class of act and practice in some contexts and a kind of attitude in other contexts. In either way, in Habermas’s vision, tolerance or toleration means bearing and endures the cultural other. It is an act that implies reciprocal recognition of and respect for each other’s rights among free, equal and autonomous citizens within and beyond a political association. It is an act of free, equal, and autonomous citizens’ reciprocal recognition of, respect for, and appreciation of the rich diversity of ways of life and peoples in the world. In discourse doctrine, tolerance is an intermediate act between rejection and endorsement. It involves some aspects of permission. The discourse concept of tolerance is totally at home with Thomas Scanlon’s contractualist concept of tolerance. In the discourse concept, to borrow words of Scanlon, “Tolerance requires us to

202

7  Tolerance and Inclusion

accept people and permit their practices when we strongly disapprove them. Tolerance thus involve an attitude that is intermediate between wholehearted acceptance and unconstrained opposition.”(Scanlon, 2002, p.187) In the discourse concept, tolerance is the intermediate act and attitude that borders with rejection on the one side and endorsement on the other side. It is thus distinguished from rejection on the one hand and from endorsement from the other. Conceptually, in the discourse doctrine, tolerance means bearing and living in tension with what is conceived to be the other based on mutually recognition of and respect for each other’s rights and freedom. Thus, tolerance implies reciprocal recognition between citizens, but the reciprocal recognition that is required “must not be confused with esteem for an alien culture and way of life, or for rejected convictions and practices.”(Habermas, 2009, p.69) Correspondingly, tolerance is understood also as “the legally noncoercible political virtue of citizens in their dealing with other citizens who adhere to rejected conviction.” (Ibid, p.258) Meanwhile, bearing the tolerated entails the act of inclusion, and rejection entails the idea of exclusion. Tolerance and inclusion are importantly associated. Notwithstanding, in the discourse concept, tolerance involves a reciprocal recognition and respect each other as a legitimate, equal, and free citizen and participant in a community and its public, social-political, and ethical-moral lives and discourses. It involves inclusion and critical interaction of each other in spite of the difference. As a political virtue of citizenship, tolerance involves including and bearing those who are others—that is, those whose convictions and practices one rejects. By this token, tolerance is characteristically reciprocal. It implies reciprocal recognition between or among free, equal, and autonomous citizens. It involves reciprocally bearing one another. That A tolerates B implies also that B tolerates A. Tolerance is not a kind of authoritarian or paternal permission. It is equally and reciprocally bearing one another. It is a cosmopolitan act of approaching cultural diversity. By “cosmopolitan” is understood as culturally open, engaging, and interacting with what is the other. In practical discourses, tolerance involves reciprocal recognition and respect for each other’s rights, freedom, and autonomy among all participants. It involves a cosmopolitan approach to differences in world outlooks, values, and concepts of duty, obligation, and happiness. In discourse doctrine, tolerance is a political duty and virtue of citizenship to treat other citizens as legitimate, equal, and free participants in the communal lives and public discourses, not a paternal, authoritarian policy of government toward citizens of different beliefs and convictions. As a form of practice, tolerance is what citizens ought to practice toward each other amid cultural diversity It is the bridge for citizens of different beliefs and convictions to approach and engage each other in order to arrive at a mutual understanding amid those irreconcilable epistemic differences among them. As an attitude, it is political openness, nondiscrimination and inclusion in the context where epistemic commonality between parties is absent. Tolerance is necessary for a democratic process of opinion-and will-formation amid cultural diversity. Tolerance is called for not because there is, and there can be, shared understanding of truth, value, and good in given contexts. Instead, tolerance

1  The Concept of Tolerance

203

is called for because there is no, and there can be no, shared understanding of truth, value, and good in given contexts. Meanwhile, amid cultural difference, there can be no democracy without inclusion. And there can be no inclusion without tolerance. Moreover, there can be no democracy without the public use of reason. There can be no the public use of reason in the true sense without inclusion, and there can be no inclusion without tolerance. Thus, constitutional democracy makes tolerance necessary. Tolerance makes constitutional democracy possible. Notwithstanding, a few conceptual distinctions exist between tolerance and other activities. They are between tolerance and indulgence; between tolerance and indifference; and between tolerance and endorsement. Tolerance is the intermediate act and attitude bordering with rejection on the one side and endorsement on the other side. It differs from indulgence, indifference, and endorsement. Tolerance and indulgence belong to two different families of act. Admittedly, in sixteenth century, in German language, toleration and indulgence both indicated bearing the religious other. Still, in the discourse doctrine of tolerance, tolerance and indulgence are not identical. They differ in their respective objects. The object of tolerance is that which one wants to reject, and that is rejectible, not desirable from one’s perspective. The object of indulgence can be what is rejectable or what is desirable. Between tolerance and indulgence, each act has its own content. Tolerance is bearing X in action, but rejecting X in sentiment and belief. Indulgence is entertaining X in both action and sentiment. Thus, Habermas claims, “the concept would be used in too loose sense if ‘tolerance’ were extended to include the patient and indulgent treatment of others or of strangers in general.”(Ibid, p.258) In discourse doctrine, tolerance is the reciprocal act between two equal, free, autonomous, legitimate participants who cannot agree with each other in views, while indulgence is a paternal act which one party extends to another in social interaction and an act in which the indulging party may not find the indulged party to be disagreeable and the two parties may not have irreconcilable disagreement in views and convictions. The act of tolerance is, and must be, reciprocal, while the act of indulgence can be just a one-way street. The act of tolerance is not, cannot and should not be, paternalist. But the act of indulgence can be and is often so. Parties which the act of tolerance involves must be equal and autonomous, while parties which the act of indulgence involves can be unequal, and non-autonomous. Tolerance is not indifference either. “Tolerance is not indifference; for indifference toward the convictions of others, or even esteem for others and their otherness, robs tolerance of its proper object.”(Ibid) Indifference robs tolerance of its proper objects in the sense that it in effect excludes what should be tolerated as the proper object of tolerance. For example, indifference excludes those whose convictions and practices one rejects as legitimate, equal, and free participants in the communal lives and public discourses. Indifference is in effect another kind of rejection or acceptance, never an act that is an intermediate between rejection and whole hearty acceptance. In discourse doctrine, to tolerate X is to recognize and include X as a legitimate, equal, autonomous participant in a communal life and public discourses. To be indifferent to X is not to recognize and not to include X as a legitimate,

204

7  Tolerance and Inclusion

autonomous participant in the communal life which one participates in public discourses which one joins. Tolerance presupposes reciprocal recognition between the tolerator and the tolerated, while indifference has no such a reciprocity. To tolerate X is to respect X’s rights. To be indifferent to X is not to recognize X’s rights. To tolerate X is to preserve and produce conditions necessary for a democratic procedure of opinion-and will-formation amid the absence of epistemically common basis and ground. To be indifferent to X destroys conditions necessary for a democratic procedure of opinion-and will-formation amid the absence of epistemically common basis and ground. Tolerance builds bridges among peoples, and opens windows and doors to peoples. Indifference destroys bridges among peoples and closes windows and doors to peoples. Thus, Habermas claims that the requirement of “equal inclusion of all citizens in civil society” call for a political culture of tolerance “which prevents liberal attitude from being confused with indifference.”(Habermas, 2008, p.69) Furthermore, tolerance differs from acceptance or endorsement. Each of them has its own object of concern. The object of tolerance must be that which is unacceptable and what should be rejected according to one’s world outlook, and concepts of rightness, good, value, and happiness. The object of endorsement must be that which is acceptable and that which should be accepted according to one’s world outlook, and concepts of rightness, good, value, and happiness. Each act has its own content too. To tolerate X is to bear and accommondate X in action but also to resist X in sentiment and belief. To endorse X is to welcome and embrace X in both action and sentiment. Tolerance is called for when and where epistemic agreement and consensus become impossible. In comparison, acceptance is called for when epistemic agreements and consensus exist. Tolerance is practiced between legitimate, autonomous participants in public discourses and social-political lives who cannot agree with each another in views and beliefs, and indeed who reject each other in views and convictions. In comparison, acceptance occurs between parties who can agree to each other, and have arrived at common consensus to some degrees. Tolerance does not necessarily seek common consensus, while acceptance always seeks and implies common consensus. Noteworthy, while it absorbs the social destructiveness of intellectual, ethical-­ moral, political and practical disagreement, tolerance is the prelude for reciprocally tolerated parties continuously to debate and engage each other, and to continue to disagree with one another. For example, “religious tolerance is supposed to absorb the social destructiveness of a persistent irreconcilable disagreement.”(Habermas, 2009, p. 262) Religious tolerance makes religious diversity and disagreement possible and sustainable. The same can be said of cultural or political tolerance. In comparison, acceptance brings debates, disagreements to an end and rest. Tolerance preserves and renovates debates, disagreements, and continuous discussions in the public sphere, while acceptance brings about peace and agreement in public discourses.

2  The Object of Tolerance

205

Now, in discourse doctrine, a conceptual distinction exists between tolerance and the virtue of civility, amid both are political virtues of citizenship. Habermas points out: Tolerance toward those who think differently should not be confused with the willingness to cooperate and to make compromises. Tolerance becomes necessary—over and above patient pursuit of truth, openness, mutual trust, and a sense of justice—only when the ­parties with good reason neither seek agreement concerning controversial beliefs nor think agreement is possible (Ibid, p.261).

In discourse doctrine, tolerance becomes necessary only when there can be no epistemic reconciliation and compromise in understanding of what is truth, and what is right. Civility is the virtue of willingness to cooperate and to make compromise. Tolerance is not civility by nature and in content, and civility is not tolerance by nature and in content, amid they can butter each other. In discourse doctrine, tolerance differs from political civility also in epistemic requirements. First, in political civility, it is required that all citizens must develop an epistemic stance toward religions and secular worldview that they encounter within a universe of discourse hitherto occupied only by their own belief systems. Second, in political civility, all citizens must develop an epistemic stance toward the internal logic of secular knowledge and toward the institutionalized monopoly on knowledge of modern scientific experts. Third, in political civility, all citizens must “develop an epistemic stance toward the priority that secular reasons also enjoy the political arena.” (Ibid) But in political tolerance, what is required is that citizens reciprocally recognize and respect each other’s political freedom and rights, and bear each other in spite of their differences. In religious tolerance, what is required is that all citizens recognize citizens’ religious freedom and rights. In summary, in discourse doctrine, tolerance is a unique kind of act or practice that is the intermediate between outright rejection and whole hearty endorsement. It is an act that is called for when equally free, autonomous citizens cannot, and do not, agree with one another in views, beliefs, and ways of life but must co-exist in a community. It is a political virtue of citizenship but differs from political civility in nature and content. As an attitude, tolerance is constitutive of a cosmopolitan attitude that is an attitude of cultural openness, inclusion, and toleration. As a form of act and practice, it is a form of cosmopolitan act and practice.

2  The Object of Tolerance This leads us to the issue of the object of tolerance: the cultural other. Tolerance implies respect for diversity produced by others. It presupposes reciprocal recognition of others’ rights and fulfills the tolerator’s obligation in terms of justice. Respect, accommodation, and appreciation of the rich diversity of cultures, forms of expression and ways of being human in a community presuppose recognition of,

206

7  Tolerance and Inclusion

bearing and living with cultural others. Thus, we cannot talk about tolerance without mentioning the very object of tolerance—the cultural other. What does it mean to be the other? In a sense, the other is an irreducible opposite. In this sense, man is the other of woman, the sun is the other of the moon, and the heaven, the other of the earth. It is in the nature of otherness that the other is irreducible. Ontologically, the other is featured by its irreducibility as a difference or opposition. Cognitively, the voice of the other challenges any monopoly of claims to truth, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. The other is a voice of incommensurability, incompatibility, and alterity. Ethically, the other is a challenge and threat to our sense of identity and a challenge and constraint to our way to be free, good, and happy. Politically, the other is an alterity, anomaly to be reckoned with. In discourse doctrine, the other is an irreducible difference. Difference is a necessary condition for tolerance. Tolerance is a necessary condition to preserve difference. That being said, difference itself is not a sufficient condition for X to be an object of tolerance, e.g., reducible, compatible other is not a proper object of tolerance. That is to say, difference that is reducible, compatible is not a legitimate object of tolerance. Therefore, the question for us here becomes what kind of cultural other we ought to tolerate. The discursive answer is as follows. First, in discourse doctrine, the object of tolerance is an irreducible, incompatible, and incommensurable difference, not just any difference. That is to say, irreducibility, incompatibility, and incommensurability are among the conditions that makes a difference the legitimate object of tolerance. For example, the object of tolerance is a belief or way of life that is totally different from, incompatible to, and incommensurable with one’s own beliefs and way of life. “Only those conceptions call for tolerance that conflict for subjectively understandable reasons but where there is no reasonable prospect of reaching a rational agreement.”(Ibid, p.260) There is no reasonable prospect of reaching a rational agreement between conflicting conceptions or beliefs that call for tolerance because they are incompatible and incommensurable. Second, in discourse doctrine, the object of tolerance is that which other citizens have rights to hold to. X becomes a legitimate object of tolerance because of rights—its rights or its holder’s rights. Huberman points out, “toleration means that believers, members of other religions, and non-believers must concede each other’s rights to observe convictions, practices, and ways of life which they themselves reject.”(Habermas, 2008, p.69) Here, to concede rights is to refrain from exercising one’s rights to reject convictions, practices, and ways of life which others have rights and are entitled to hold to. Only beliefs or practices that are either held by those who have legitimate, equal citizen rights to hold to them or themselves are legitimate, though disagreeable should be tolerated. Thus, “we do not confront chauvinists or racists with calls for more tolerance.”(Ibid) Neither do we call for tolerance when we deal with terrorism. Habermas says, “Refraining from discrimination, and hence showing equal respect for everybody, is what is called for in the first instance toward those who are different, rather than the tolerance calls for by those who think differently.”(Habermas, 2009, pp.258–259) To refrain from discrimination is to

2  The Object of Tolerance

207

recognize those who think differently have equal rights to subscribe to their beliefs and to practice what they practice. “Tolerance begins only once discrimination has been overcome.”(Ibid, p.259) A fine line to be drawn here is this. Only if X’s owner has legitimate rights, then X can be an object of tolerance. A belief or practice that is totally different, incompatible, and incommensurable to one’s own beliefs and way of life can be an object of tolerance if and only if its owner has legitimate rights to hold to it. X becomes an object of tolerance, instead of an object of rejection, because its holder has legitimate rights to hold to it. For example, a Christian should tolerate Islam which another citizen has legitimate rights to subscribe to under the rule of law. But no one should tolerate terrorism or racism because no citizens in a community has any legitimate rights to subscribe to either of them, amid they both are legally prohibited. Meanwhile, as Habermas sees it, “only some who has subjectively convincing reason for rejecting the beliefs of people of other faiths can practice tolerance.”(Ibid, p.258) That is to say, only that which one has subjectively sound and justified reasons to reject can be a tolerator. “Tolerance can exist only when the parties involve can base their rejection on a reasonable ongoing absence of agreement.”(Ibid). If X is a belief of practice and for X to be an object of tolerance, it must be that which one wants to reject and has good reasons to reject X, but X’s owner has legitimate rights to hold to it. With regard to this feature of the object of tolerance, Habermas says: We need to show tolerance only towards worldviews we consider wrong and habits we do not appreciate. The basis of recognition is not esteem for this or that quality or achievement, but an awareness of belonging to an inclusive community of citizens with equal rights in which each is accountable to everybody else for her political utterances and actions (Habermas, 2008, p.69).

On this point, Habermas’s view is totally at home with Scanlon’s argument from another perspective. Scanlon talks about the rights of those who should be tolerated. Scanlon also insists that if a person is an object of tolerance, the person must be wrong from one’s point of view and one wants to, and has good reasons to, reject the person, but the person has legitimate rights to be what s/he is and to do what s/he does. Thus, Scanlon asserts, “Tolerance requires us to accept people and permit their practice even when we strongly disapprove of them.”(Scanlon, 2002, p.187) He says: Tolerance requires that people who fall on the “wrong” side of the differences … should not be … denied legal and political rights: the rights to vote, to hold office, to benefit from the central public goods that are otherwise open to all, such as education, public safety, the protections of the legal system, health care, and access to public accommodations (Ibid, p.189).

In both Habermas and Scanlon, the concept of tolerance is associated with the concept of rights, and so is the object of tolerance associated with the concept of rights. Tolerance is a rights-centered practice. Tolerance is a norm of obligation and duty in our epoch importantly because it is associated with the norm of justice as giving due to rights. It is a principle of duty in our epoch also because it is importantly associated with the concept of rights.

208

7  Tolerance and Inclusion

In discourse doctrine, the concept of tolerance thus reveals the unforced force of human reason in its public use. It reveals the unforced force of human reason as an intersubjective power, not as a subject-centered power or consciousness. It demonstrates the rule of reason as an intersubjective power and the rule of communicative rationality. Only an intersubjective reason calls for tolerance of the irreducible, incompatible, and incommensurable difference which one has good reasons and is justified to consider it to be wrong and should be rejected, but other citizens have legitimate rights to hold to.

3  Tolerance as the Pace-maker of Modern Society Tolerance is a norm of obligation and a principle of duty in our epoch. It is also a great instrument of humanity in our epoch. It is an instrument of diverse humankind on the earth to peacefully and cooperatively co-exist, co-develop, and extend their lives together under the rule of law. It is a great instrument of human civilization in our epoch. The title of Habermas’s article in Philosophy, “Religious Tolerance: The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights”, as well as the book chapter in Between Naturalism and Religion with the same title, summarizes several important points: 1. Religious tolerance gives due to cultural rights, and presupposes and recognizes the existence of cultural rights; 2. Religious tolerance is a matter of rights and therefore a matter of obligation and duty; 3. Religious tolerance is also an instrumental value—a pacemaker. Thus, the title of the article and book chapter underscores Habermas’s view on religious tolerance as a norm, as value, and as a virtue. This view is consistent with Article 1.1 of the UN Declaration on tolerance. The UN article reads: “Tolerance is harmony in difference. It is not only a moral duty, it is also a political and legal requirement. Tolerance, the virtue that makes peace possible, contributes to the replacement of the culture of war by a culture of peace.” (www.unesco.org/) In the UN article, tolerance is a political and legal obligation, a virtue, and an instrumental value. Fair to say, in his essay and book chapter, Habermas intends religious tolerance as a paradigm of social-cultural tolerance in general. In discourse doctrine, social-cultural tolerance is a norm, a value, and a virtue of modernity amid cultural diversity as the permanent reality of human existence today.

3.1  Tolerance as a Norm of Obligation Tolerance as the Paradigm Toward cultural diversity in a community, cultural oppression is an unjust response and approach. Cultural oppression is incompatible to the ideas of basic human

3  Tolerance as the Pace-maker of Modern Society

209

rights and cultural rights and therefore to the idea of justice. Reversely, endorsement is also an unjust response and approach. The people of one culture may find peoples of other cultures and their ways of speech and life to be incompatible to their own, and to endorse cultural others means abandoning oneself and one’s own culture, doing injustice to oneself and one’s own culture. Cultural indifference does not violate others’ rights, but it is not just either. Cultural indifference fails to include the other in the common communal life and thus to a great extent fails to respect and honor the cultural other’s rights. It fails to reciprocally recognize the other. In discourse doctrine, cultural tolerance is the only just approach to cultural diversity. If we ask the Scanlon question amid cultural diversity, “What do we owe to each other amid cultural diversity?” the Habermasian answer is that we owe each other to tolerate each other amid we are different. Thus, social-cultural tolerance is required by justice, tolerance is a norm of obligation and a principle of duty. The norm of tolerance imposes an obligation of justice which citizens owe to each and different peoples owe to one another. The principle of tolerance dictates that tolerance is the only right thing to do, and one should do it because it is right. In discourse doctrine, tolerance is about giving due to rights, about giving due to equal freedom, and about equal respect for each other’s basic liberties. It is therefore about justice. Correspondingly, what tolerance imposes on each person and on governments is duty and obligation. Again, in Habermas’s vision, the obligations of justice are the commandments to give due to rights. Justice gives due to “the inviolability of the individual” and “equal respect for the dignity of each individual.” (Habermas, 1990, p.200) Justice also gives due to cultural rights. Obligations of justice underscore the subjective freedom of inalienable individuality (Ibid). They also underscore the subjective freedom of a cultural group of people. In Habermas’s vision, tolerance is a norm of obligation because it expresses what we owe to each other as equal, autonomous citizens in a social-political community. Practicing tolerance, we do not do our fellow citizens or peoples of other culture some favors or bestow upon them some kindness and benevolence. Instead, practicing tolerance, we fulfill our obligations to our fellow citizens and give due to what they are entitled to. In the global arena, tolerating each other, peoples on the earth do not do some favors or bestow some kindness on each other. Instead, they fulfill their obligations to each other. As a norm of obligation, the norm of tolerance is both necessary and juridical in our time. It is necessary because it is a norm of justice. It is juridical because in our time it has become a constitutional norm and the norm of tolerance is entrenched in the three families of public laws—municipal, international, and cosmopolitan laws. It is juridical because it is about basic human rights, and basic human rights are constitutional rights. As a principle of duty, tolerance is a commandment of moral necessity to respect for rights—both individual rights and cultural rights. In short, tolerance is a norm of obligation of justice grounding in two fundamental realities and conditions of humanity today: cultural diversity and basic human rights. Taking religious tolerance as an example. Religious tolerance is a norm of obligation of justice grounding in two fundamental realities and conditions of humanity

210

7  Tolerance and Inclusion

today: religious diversity and rights of religious freedom. Habermas points out that religious freedom is a civil rights which “every person can claim as a human being.”(Habermas, 2009, p.252) He insists that “there is certainly a conceptual connection between universalistic justification for the basic right to religious freedom, on the one hand, and democracy and human rights as the normative foundation of the constitutional state, on the other hand.”(Ibid, 254) Accordingly, to respect each other’s freedom of conscience and rights is an obligation of justice which is imposed on every person and every community. Religious diversity include at least the following: (1) diversity between the religious and the non-religious/secular; (2), inter-religious diversity—for example, between Christianity and Islam or Christianity and Confucianism or Confucianism and Buddhism—and (3) intra-religious diversity, e.g., between Sunni and Shiite in Islam, between Catholicism and protestant Christianity. Correspondingly, religious freedom or freedom of conscience involves at least freedom in three levels: (1) the freedom to believe or not to believe a religion; to be or not to be religiously; (2) the freedom to choose which religion to believe; and (3) the freedom to choose which version of a particular religion to believe. All the same, the question here is what do we owe to each other amid religious diversity and rights? The answer, according to Habermas, can only be: religious tolerance. Extending the question: What do we owe to each other amid cultural diversity and rights? According to Habermas, as well as the UN Declaration, the answer can only be cultural tolerance. It can only be respect and giving due to the rich diversity of cultures and ways of being humans on the earth. No wonder, religious tolerance as a norm of obligation is entrenched in public laws in both municipal and international levels. That being said, Habermas’s defense involves a discursive twist. In discourse doctrine, inclusion is a necessary condition for rational discourses and it is one of the four requirements of an ideal speech situation. The absence of epistemically shared understanding calls for tolerance, not rejection, if the norm of inclusion is to be observed. There is, and can be no, inclusion without tolerance amid the absence of epistemically shared view and understanding of truth, duty, obligation, value, and happiness. Equally crucial, communicative rights is among a person’s basic rights to public autonomy and private autonomy. The obligation of inclusion is an obligation of justice as giving due to one’s basic communicative rights. And accordingly, tolerance is a norm of obligation of justice. Meanwhile, the claim of tolerance is a necessary presupposition for rational discourse. It is a rise of the norms of inclusion and equality in the universal pragmatics. Here, tolerance is a moral obligation in the sense that the norm of tolerance has universal validity claim and is totally acceptable to all participants in the moral life. Tolerance is necessary for constitutional democracy. This is because of two realities of democracy today. First, cultural diversity is the inevitable starting point of democracy and the reality and condition of the orbit of democracy today. Second, democratic inclusion and reciprocal recognition of rights are constitutive of true democracy. Democracy is the instrument of justice in our time, it travels in the orbit of cultural diversity and operates with the energies of rights. Then, what do we owe

3  Tolerance as the Pace-maker of Modern Society

211

each other in democracy amid diversity and rights? Habermas’s answer is the obligation of inclusion and tolerance. There can be no true democracy without democratic inclusion and reciprocal recognition of rights. Thus, there can be no truly democratic inclusion without tolerance. Democratic inclusion is not intended not only for those whom we agree with, but intended also for those whom we disagree with. True democratic inclusion involves inclusion of those whose views we consider to be wrong and want to reject, whose ways of speech and life we disapprove and want to reject, and whose world outlooks we consider to be incompatible to ours. Reciprocal recognition is called for not only when we interact with those whom we agree and endorse, but also when we interact with those whose views we want to reject, whose ways of speech and life we disapprove and want to reject, and whose world outlooks we consider to be incompatible to ours. Thus, while constitutional democracy is a norm of modernity in our time, democratic inclusion and reciprocal recognition of individual rights and cultural rights are necessarily constitutive of constitutional democracy. Democratic inclusion and reciprocal recognition are thus principles of modernity. Both principles in turn bring into prominence the norm of tolerance as a norm of obligation of modernity in our epoch. In short, in discourse doctrine, cultural diversity and basic rights give rise to the validity claim of tolerance and the obligation of tolerance as an obligation of justice. Justice as giving due to individuals’ basic rights and cultural rights imposes obligations of tolerance amid cultural diversity. Meanwhile, the presupposition of democratic inclusion in a rational public discourse dictates the norm of tolerance in practical discourses in the public sphere, as well as in social-political life of a social-­ political community. Tolerance is a norm of our epoch imposing obligations of justice as giving due to religious rights and freedom. It is juridical. It is a norm and principle of modernity in our time and constitutive of the spirit of our time.

3.2  Tolerance as a Value Tolerance is not only a norm of obligation and a principle of duty, but also a value. It is something desirable and good. It is just and right, which means that it has its intrinsic value. Equally important, it is an instrumental value to a community amid diversity. It is an instrument of prudence, peace, social cooperation, and co-­existence of peoples. Thus, for example, Habermas points out, “Tolerance protects a pluralistic society from being torn apart as a political community by conflicts and worldviews.”(Ibid, p.258)Tolerance is an instrument to preserve social cooperation and unity at an age of cultural diversity and conflict. Unity and cooperation are necessary and essential to a community. Unity does not need to be totalitarian or homogeneous, for example, unity under the rule of law can be democratic unity of diversity. There can be no community without minimal unity. Iris Young proposes city life as a normative ideal and

212

7  Tolerance and Inclusion

alternative to the concept of community which Young considers to be inevitably oppressive and repressive. By city life, Young mean a form of relations and life which Young calls as “being together of strangers.”(Young 1990, p.237) But a few things can be said of Young’s proposal. First, Young’s city life is in essence a community of multiculturalism, and what Young emphasizes is what multiculturalism emphasizes, e.g., diversity of cultural groups and group identities, heterogeneity of peoples, etc. Second, even a multicultural being together has minimal unity, and it is thus being together, not being separately. Being together is not just co-presence in a common space, but being united into a being. Thus, a city, multicultural as it may be, has minimal unity under the rule of law, and will lose to be a city once it has absolutely no unity at all, e.g., not a communally recognized mayor, municipal government, and regulative laws. That being said, taking Young’s concept of being together of strangers as the guide and the reality of cultural diversity as the starting point, let us ask: How is it possible for strangers to be together or in Habermas’s idiom, for strangers to extend their lives together? The answer can only be: the rule of law and cultural tolerance. The instrumental value of tolerance can be summarized as follows: 1. It is instrumental to respect individual rights and basic liberties; thus, it is instrumental to justice; 2. It is instrumental to preserve social cooperation and reduction of social conflict; thus it is instrumental to public goods; 3. It is instrumental for individual person to be communicatively competent and performatively competent; thus, it is instrumental to democracy; 4. It is instrumental to develop a difference-sensitive, inclusive community on the one hand and liberation of subcultures to live up to the spirit of our time on the other hand; Thus, as Habermas insists, tolerance is not only a norm of obligation and a principle of duty in our time which we cannot reasonably reject, but also a value which we desire in our epoch. Tolerance is not only obligatory. It is also a good and desirable, attractive. It is an instrument to prevent a pluralist world falling apart. The concept of tolerance as a value is also emphasized in the UN 1995 Declaration. Article 3.1 of the UN 1995 Declaration reads: “In the modern world, tolerance is more essential than ever before … Since every part of the world is characterized by diversity, escalating intolerance and strife potentially menaces every region. It is not confined to any country, but is a global threat. Toleration is an instrumental value to justice and social cooperation.”(www.unesco.org/) The UN Declaration claims that tolerance is a value, at least an instrumental value. Thus, the discourse concept of tolerance as a value is totally at home with the concept of tolerance as a value in the UN Declaration. In discourse doctrine, tolerance is an important instrumental value for a culturally pluralistic society. It is a mediating, bridging, and reconciling force. Tolerance is necessary for communication geared to mutual understanding among citizens. It thus makes possible mutually cooperative relations among all citizens of a culturally diverse community in the absence of the epistemically shared views and

3  Tolerance as the Pace-maker of Modern Society

213

understanding. Tolerance alone may not be sufficient to generate social cooperation of different peoples in a community. Still, without tolerance, no social cooperation in a community or society is possible. As Habermas sees it, tolerance in a society “unites people in solidarity in spite of increasing diversity and recognizes as binding no authority which cannot be derived from deliberation and revisable agreements among all concerned.” (Habermas, 2008, p.15) It creates the condition necessary for members of the community to cooperate with each other and to extend their lives together. It is thus an instrumental value to a community or society to achieve communal goods. It is an instrument of prudence, social cooperation, and communal solidarity. With regard to tolerance as a value, Scanlon says, “The answer lies … in the relation with one’s fellow citizens that tolerance makes possible.” (Scanlon, 2002, p.192) Tolerance is an instrument for us to build the kind of relation with one’s fellow citizens. He adds that “any alternative [to tolerance] would put me in an antagonistic and alienated relation to my fellow citizens, friends as well as foes.”(Ibid, p.201) This is Habermas’s position too. Taking religious tolerance as an example, for Habermas, tolerance establishes a new kind of relation of citizenship that respects equally and reciprocally each other’s rights of religious freedom. Thus, “pluralism and the struggle for religious tolerance were not only driving forces behind the emergence of the democratic state, but remain important impulses for its consistent development up to the present day.”(Habermas, 2009, p.257) Correspondingly, “religious tolerance is supposed to absorb the social destructiveness of a persistent irreconcilable disagreement.” (Ibid, p.262) In discourse doctrine, diversity can be a source of strength for a community, but can also be a source of challenges. Diversity creates the internal contradiction that is a double-edged sword: it promises to drive a community forward but also threatens to tear down the community. Tolerance allows people of conflicting beliefs, practices, and life styles to co-exist, and to form a common social-political community under the rule of law. Thus, Habermas claims that tolerance protect a pluralistic society from being torn apart as a political community by conflicts over worldviews; tolerance is thus instrumental for the public good of a culturally pluralistic community. In discourse doctrine, cultural diversity calls for communications, exchanges and mutual engagements of different views and perspectives and can be instrumental to discover truth, value, and meaning. Admittedly, no all cultural others are reasonable or rational and no all cultural others are worth keeping. Still, diversity of views and perspectives can produce dynamic discourses of truth, value, and meaning. But diversity can be a positive factor to discover truth, value, and meaning if and only if rational communication of different views exists. Rational communication of different views is possible if and only if tolerance of difference and diversity of views exists. By this token, tolerance can be the mid-wife of discourses of truth, value, and meaning amid cultural diversity. Notwithstanding, according to Habermas, tolerance is both an instrument of unification and an instrument of liberation. Tolerance both unifies and liberates a civil

214

7  Tolerance and Inclusion

society. Tolerance liberates cultures and peoples. Conversely, Habermas points out that without a political culture of tolerance and inclusion, Two complementary process will not be able to develop hand in hand —namely the opening of the political community to a difference-sensitive inclusion of foreign minority cultures on the one hand, and the liberalization of these subcultures to a point where they encourage their individual members to exercise their equal rights to participate in the political life of the larger community on the other (Habermas, 2008, p.70).

While tolerance includes and unifies peoples, it also liberates peoples and cultures. It includes and constellates different peoples into a common community under the rule of law. It connects and brings peoples to recognize, appreciate, and live in the rich cultural diversity of the world, and therefore liberates peoples from their self-isolation and self-imprisonment. In summary, in discourse doctrine, tolerance is necessary, instrumental to respect rights, to be performatively competent in a world of cultural diversity, to preserve public goods of a community, and to bring about social cooperation amid cultural diversity and the absence of a shared understanding of truth and what is right. Tolerance is an indispensable instrument of prudence and good will amid cultural diversity of humanity on the earth.

3.3  Toleration as a Virtue For Habermas, tolerance is also a virtue of our epoch, in particular a political virtue of citizenship. It is “the legally noncoercible political virtue of citizens in their dealing with other citizens who adhere to rejected conviction.” (Habermas, 2009, p.258) In particular, tolerance is the political virtue of citizenship at a time in which cultural diversity is a permanent reality, not merely a bypassing phenomenon. It is the political virtue not only of national citizenship, but also the political virtue of global citizenship. Tolerance is an excellence itself, and also makes those peoples who embody it function excellently. It means inclusion, accommodation, and bearing, which is characteristic excellence in itself. Tolerance makes persons who practice it function excellently as citizens and those communities that practice it function excellently as human communities. It liberates and elevates persons and communities. In discourse doctrine, tolerance also manifests a kind of excellence of performative competence. Robert P. Wolff asserts. Wolff indicates, “The virtue of a monarchy is loyalty … The virtue of traditional liberal democracy is equality, while the virtue of a socialist democracy is fraternity. The ideal nationalist democracy exhibits the virtue of patriotism … the virtue of the modern pluralist democracy … is tolerance.” (Wolff et al., 1969, pp.3–4) In Habermas’s vision, the diversity of humanity today—that is, the diversity of peoples as particular embodiments of humanity on the earth—is an epochal hallmark and an enduring reality. Accordingly, tolerance is an epochal vir-

3  Tolerance as the Pace-maker of Modern Society

215

tue in our time. It is a virtue of citizenship—both national and global citizenship —in our time. Meanwhile, tolerance as a virtue of citizenship is acquired through habitual practices, although citizens can be, and should be taught about tolerance as a virtue. Habermas points out, “Toleration” is not only a question of enacting and applying laws, it must be practiced in everyday life. Toleration means that believers, members of other religions, and non-­ believers must concede each other’s right to observe convictions, practices, and ways of life which they themselves reject. This concession must be supported through a shared basis of mutual recognition which makes it possible to overcome repugnant dissonances (Habermas, 2008, p.69).

Tolerance is a norm that imposes obligation, no question of that. But it is also a virtue of citizenship. As we are told by Aristotle, a virtue itself is an excellence and makes those who possess it function excellently. Tolerance is a political virtue of citizenship in the sense that it is an excellence in itself and makes persons function excellently as citizens. In discourse doctrine, tolerance is an excellence itself. It is the excellence of performative competence. It is an excellence of prudence, inclusion, and reasonableness in the social-political life of a community. It makes citizens function excellently because it makes them be communicatively and performatively competent. Habermas points out, “The recognition of differences, the mutual recognition of others in their otherness, can also become a distinguished mark of a shared identity” of all of us (Habermas, 2006, pp.44–45). In our time, given the realities of cultural diversity and human rights, what is the virtue of a citizen? Habermas’s answer is tolerance. Tolerance is an excellent characteristic of a person in a world of cultural diversity and human rights. It also makes one functionally excellently as a citizen, e.g., it makes a person have a broad, open mind and therefore be excellent in performative competence as a citizen. It is constitutive of excellence of communicative competence. For example, the universal pragmatics of rational communication has four presuppositions, and among them are inclusion, and equality. Tolerance as the virtue makes one be excellently in following these two norms of the universal pragmatics. According to Habermas, the fact that tolerance makes persons excellent in being citizens and makes them function excellently as citizens can be summarized as follows. First, tolerance liberates persons. It expands persons’ horizons of mind. The more tolerant persons are, the greater horizons of their minds become. Tolerance is an excellence of liberation. Second, the more tolerant persons are, the better persons are. Tolerance elevates persons as citizens to a higher level of being. It signifies transcendence above self-imprisonment and self-idolization. Third, the more tolerant persons are, the more persons respect others’ equal rights, and the better they are as reasonable fellow citizens. Tolerance makes persons reasonable, prudent, and wise as citizens. Fourth, tolerance makes a person be more morally, communicatively, politically, intellectually, and performatively competent. Recognizing tolerance as a norm, a principle, a value, and a virtue of our epoch, discourse doctrine adopts the stance of cosmopolitanism, not the the stance of

216

7  Tolerance and Inclusion

multiculturalism. Habermas’s idea of tolerance is cosmopolitan and compatible to the idea of multiculturalism, but may also be in conflict with the latter, in particular if the latter is radical. The idea of tolerance and the doctrine of militant secularism may also be in conflict and militant secularism need to be more difference-sensitive. In other words, secularism can be intolerant. The same can be said of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism “appeals to the protection of collective identities and accuses the other side of ‘Enlightenment fundamentalism’.”(Habermas, 2008, p.70) On the one hand, “multiculturalists fight for an even-handed adjustment of the legal system to the claim of cultural minorities to equal treatment. They warn against a policy of enforced assimilation with uprooting consequences.”(Ibid) In multiculturalism, “the secular state … must not promote the integration of minorities into the egalitarian community of citizens so vigorously that it tears individual out of the contexts in which they form their identities.”(Ibid) On the other hand, multiculturalism can be intolerant. It may imprison people in their cultures. Such an imprisonment is undesirable within national borders. It is also undesirable beyond national borders. Philosophically, multiculturalism goes hand in hand with cultural relativism. Cultural relativism is the doctrine that all justified principles, norms, values, and meanings are culturally relative. Multiculturalism also goes hand in hand with contextualism. Contextualism is the doctrine that all justified principles, norms, values, and meaning are contextual. From the discursive point of view, both cultural relativism and contextualism are philosophically wrong. Multiculturalism can be radical and extreme. Extreme multiculturalism “often relies on the mistaken notion of the ‘incommensurability’ of world-views, discourses, or conceptual schemes. From this contextualist perspective, cultural ways of life appear to be semantically closed universe, each of which holds fast is own unique standards of rationality and truth claims.”(Ibid, p.72) Tolerance emphasizes respect for the rich diversity of cultures and bearing different cultures. It rejects xenophobia. But it emphasizes respect for cultural difference in order to redeem the claims of individual rights and freedom. It can be a pacemaker for cultural rights. Meanwhile, it rejects the idea that collective right or the concern of collective identity can override individual rights. It rejects the concept that collective identity has priority over individual rights and freedom. In radical multiculturalism, collective right or the concern of collective identity is claimed to be able to override individual rights. Secularism “insists on the uncompromising inclusion of minorities in the existing political culture” and accuses “their opponents of a ‘multicultural betrayal’ of the core value of Enlightenment.”(Ibid, p.71) “The secularists fight for a color-blind political inclusion of all citizens, irrespective of their cultural origin and religious membership.”(Ibid) Secularism thus “warns against the consequences of a ‘politics of identity’ which goes too far in adapting the legal system to the preservation of the intrinsic characteristics of minority cultures.”(Ibid) Thus, for example, “Pascal Brucker rejects cultural rights because these supposedly give rise to parallel societies—to ‘small, self-isolated social groups, each of which adheres to a different norm.’”(Ibid) According to discourse doctrine,

4 Conclusion

217

secularism should be more difference-sensitive. It is part and parcel of the idea of tolerance to emphasize that we should be sensitive to cultural differences and to bear cultural differences in the context wherein there are legitimate claims of cultural rights. By this token, secularist indiscriminate rejection of cultural rights is undesirable and wrong. In summary, in discourse doctrine, tolerance is a norm, a value, and a virtue of our epoch. The idea of tolerance demarcates cosmopolitanism from multiculturalism. It associates discourse doctrine with cosmopolitanism, not multiculturalism.

4  Conclusion In conclusion, in Habermas’s philosophical vision, tolerance is a unique, but indispensable class of practice in our epoch. It is a class of act and practice that does justice to the fundamental reality of our time: cultural diversity and human rights. It is the just way of humanity in our time amid diversity and rights. It has its unique category of object of concern. As a form of act or practice, it is an intermediate act between outright rejection and full-hearty endorsement. It also differs from indifference. Tolerance is difficult and challenging, but it is just, good and virtuous. It demands no selfless efforts or unselfish efforts, but self-efforts, public efforts, intersubjective efforts, and collective efforts. It requires no that peoples are the same. It requires that peoples respect each other as equal, free, and autonomous. It does not appeal to the common human nature. It appeals to persons’ wiliness and sensitivity to recognize and respect each other’s rights amid diversity and to appreciate the rich diversity of ways of being humans. Tolerance is the way for the strange, the different, the incompatible, and most importantly, the free, independent, and autonomous to be together, to live together, and to extend their lives together. Tolerance is a norm, a principle, a value, and a virtue of our epoch, and the idea of tolerance is constitutive of the ideal of cosmopolitanism in our epoch. Tolerance is a norm of justice as giving due to rights, equality and autonomy. The norm of tolerance is entrenched in municipal, international, and cosmopolitan laws. It imposes obligations of justice. Tolerance is a principle of duty too. It dictates ethical-­moral duty. In addition, tolerance is a great value in our time amid cultural diversity of peoples and ways of speech and life. It is an instrument of prudence and good faith. It is instrumental for social cooperation and avoiding social disintegration. It also brings civility to a society. Finally, tolerance is a core virtue of our epoch, in particular a core virtue of political citizenship. It is an excellence itself and exhibits the mind’s characteristics of openness, inclusion and accommodation. It makes citizens function excellently as citizens. It liberates and elevates persons and communities. As a norm, a principle, a value, and a virtue of our epoch, tolerance is constitutive of modernity of our epoch, and constitutive of the spirit of our epoch. Habermas’s discourse doctrine of tolerance is totally at home with the spirit of our epoch, and an

218

7  Tolerance and Inclusion

integral part of his reconstruction of the modernity project in our epoch. The doctrine provides the idea of tolerance with a discursive horizon, vision and vista and a new basis of normative justification. It grounds the idea of tolerance in the concept of human reason as an intersubjective consciousness, as a communicating, constructing, discovering, elevating, and liberating power, and as a critical, unforced force that inspires, leads, and directs.

References Berlin, I. (1991). The crooked timber of humanity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Habermas, J. (1990). Moral consciousness and communication. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (2006). The divided west. Cambridge: Polity Press. Habermas, J. (2008). Europe: The faltering project. Cambridge: Polity Press. Habermas, J. (2009). Between naturalism and religion. Cambridge: The Polity Press. Scanlon, T. (2002). The difficulty of tolerance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolff, R. P., Moore, B., Jr., & Marcus, H. (1969). A critique of pure tolerance. Boston: Beacon Press. Retrieved from www.unesco.org

Chapter 8

Conclusion: Climbing the Mountain of Modernity

Abstract  This chapter concludes the conceptual studies of Habermas’s philosophy. It concludes that Habermas has contributed greatly to the conceptual renovation in Western philosophy and world philosophy, and is thus one of the greatest philosophers of our epoch. Keywords  Modernity · The voice of reason · Truth · Justice · The rule of law · Tolerance · Practical discourse

FOR DECADES, Habermas’s philosophy contributed greatly to change the philosophical landscape of the world we live. He stands as one of the most inspiring, and influential philosophers and thinkers of the twentieth century and this century. His philosophy stands as “the Empire Building” of philosophy in the world. At universities in the world, Habermas is taught as a German philosopher or continental philosopher. But doubtlessly, he is a world philosopher, and indeed, the most influential one in our time. In an epoch and world that is full of intellectual conflict, ambiguity and uncertainty, lacks moral clarity, needs practical sensibility, and calls for communicative competence, Habermas’s philosophy offers lights, truths, and enlightenment. In a time calling for responsible, reflective, and competent citizenship, Habermas’s philosophy offers lights, truths, and illumination. In a time calling for thinking over various issues—national, international and global—and thinking over various matters—metaphysical, cognitive, ethical-moral, social-political, legal and religious, Haberma’s philosophy provides a broad horizon, a profound vision, a critical standing point, and a rational stance. In an epoch of cultural diversity and respect for rights as a norm of obligation, Habermas’s philosophy emphasizes the public use of reason, rational discourse, building ideal public sphere, rational communication purported to arrive at mutual understanding, the rule of law, inclusion and tolerance, community of common law amid diversity, heterogeneity, and difference. It advocates an examined life, reflective and self-reflective practice, and critical discourse. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 X. Chen, The Essentials of Habermas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79794-2_8

219

220

8  Conclusion: Climbing the Mountain of Modernity

On October 23, 1994, Mitchell Stephens wrote in Los Angeles Times Magazine and commented on Habermas as follows: Habermas is a German philosopher—“the leading systematic philosopher of our time," Richard Rorty of the University of Virginia calls him. But Habermas comes to this debate as much more than just a philosopher. “In terms of range and depth there is no one close to him," says Thomas McCarthy, a professor of humanities and philosophy at Northwestern University. "Habermas has been able to go into discussions in political theory, in sociology, in psychology, in legal theory—in a dozen different disciplines—and become one of the dominant voices in each one." (https://www.nyu.edu/stephens/Habermas)

Habermas is more than a philosopher. He is one of the dominant intellectuals in our epoch. That being said, in its limited space, this book focuses on presenting only Habermas as a dominant philosopher in our epoch. It focuses only on demonstrating the systematic character and the range and depth of Habermas’s philosophy, and the value of his philosophy in our epoch. The conceptual map which the book draws maps out a broad range of areas of Habermas’s philosophy including epistemology, ethics and moral philosophy, social-political philosophy, philosophy of law, philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, and global philosophy. It maps out a broad range of philosophical themes including modernity, truth, knowledge, justice, reason, normativity, autonomy, validity, legitimacy, rationality, law, the rule of law, human rights, freedom, duty, obligation, value, identity, difference, solidarity, tolerance, inclusion, the public sphere, practical discourse, public good, public norm, public virtue, citizenship, nation, state, people, constitutional democracy, oppression, repression, cosmopolitanism, and sovereignty. It maps out debates between Habermas’s philosophy and various other philosophies such as postmodernism, contextualism, pragmatism, relativism, traditional realism, nationalism, republicanism, liberalism, multiculturalism, culturalism, and fundamentalism. It maps out the distinctions between Habermas’s philosophy and Kantian philosophy, Hegelian philosophy, and Marxist philosophy, as well as traditional critical theory, amid Habermas is read as a neo-Kantian, Hegelian-Marxist or the banner holder of the second generation of critical theorists from time to time. It further maps out the conceptual renovation and contribution which Habermas makes to philosophy. It is intended to be comprehensive and full scale. Habermas’s philosophy thus mapped out above synthesizes modernism, cosmopolitanism, rationalism, and present critical theory. It is a discourse philosophy. It is a paradigm of philosophy as thinking things over. It is a paradigm of an enterprise of critical inquiry. It reflects a philosopher’s life as an examined life, demonstrating a philosopher as a mid-wife of truth, reason, and justice. It underscores a core tenet of modernity today that the true division of humanity today is this: those who think and those who don’t; having courage to think freely and autonomously and having the courage to have an independent, autonomous personality. Habermas’s philosophy thus mapped out reflects our epochal spirit. It is critical, illuminating, inspiring, and enlightening in our time. It is a voice of reason, truth, wisdom and hope. It is broad, rich and profound in content, complicated but systematic in structure and revolutionary in nature and character. To have conceptual

8  Conclusion: Climbing the Mountain of Modernity

221

clarity in understanding a systematic philosophy of such complexity, breadth and depth as Habermas’s philosophy is always a daunting task. And core concepts are always the cornerstones of a great philosophy. About Habermas and his philosophy, as well as his contribution to the voice of human reason in our time, Stephens further observed, In the academic world nowadays, such range, depth and dominance attract an endless stream of conference invitations. Habermas accepts his share. And sometimes at these conferences, particularly if Americans are in attendance, he'll find himself surrounded by postmodernists. Swords will be raised. The debate will resume. The postmodernists might begin questioning, for example, whether "reason" isn't just the name the powerful give to their rationales for holding power or whether "justice" isn't just an excuse for the majority to impose its morality on the minority. … Whether he has been a voice of reason and justice is disputed in philosophic and political circles, but Habermas certainly has been a staunch advocate of the importance of these principles. He believes we can reason out solutions to our problems that just institutions can lead to a fairer society. And when irony-wielding postmodernists make light of these possibilities, Habermas responds with formidable barrages of scholarship and logic (Ibid).

Stephens’s comment did justice to Habermas. This book demonstrates that Habermas’s contributions to the voice of human reason in our epoch include contributions of such inspiring concepts as modernity, intersubjective reason, communicative rationality, the public sphere, the public use of reason, discourse, legitimacy, validity, normativity, discourse ethics, truth, justice, the rule of law, constitutional democracy, autonomy, popular sovereignty, cosmopolitanism, and tolerance, as well as the new standards, norms, and normative basis of justification of modernity. Habermas claims that modernity is an unfinished project. This is true of modernity of our epoch as one of globalization. The world still faces great challenge to renovate itself, to enlighten itself, and to modernize itself in accordance with the spirit of our time. Against this backdrop, the value of the voice of human reason and critical thinking in our epoch is self-evident. The value of Socrates’s calling for us to live an examined life is self-evident. Our epoch is one calling for critical, rational reflection, choice, and action amid the challenges of so-called postmodernism, post-­ truth, and alternative-fact era. Various global issues that concern humankind in whole as a community of common fate need rational reflection, choice, and action. Various regional and national issues call for citizens’ responsible deliberations on national policies and jurisprudence. National, regional, and global ethical-moral, social-political lives will be far better off if we listen to the voice of human reason and thus they call for rational deliberation, choice, and action. In our time, we need the voice of human reason as much as we need Nietzschean Apollonian energy, Dionysian energy and artistic cruelty. We need what Plato dubbed as the combination of philosophical wisdom and political power. Governments should be enlightened by truth, reason, and justice. Nations-states should be enlightened by truth, justice and reason. Also, our time is one of popular sovereignty and democracy. Peoples should be enlightened by truth, justice and reason. Enlightenment and emancipation are still daunting tasks for all humankind.

222

8  Conclusion: Climbing the Mountain of Modernity

True autonomy cannot be grounded only in free will, but also must be grounded in understanding, reason, and wisdom. To say it in the metaphor of Plato’s fable of the cave of prisoners, to ascend above to the sun, to truth, justice, and reason is still the task for all humankind! Humankind still need great philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Rawls, Scanlon, and Habermas. Humankind still need reading philosophical classics, and philosophers who produce philosophical classics. Humanity reading is humanity educated, claims Victor Hugo. In our time, Habermas has the theoretical valor to swim against the wave in our time, amid our epoch is one in which postmodernism, post-(universal) reason, and post-(universal) truth have a huge share of market. Our epoch is not a post-modern, post-reason and post-truth epoch. In our time, the concept of universal reason is bruised, and challenged, and suffers, but it stands shiningly. In Habermas’s vision, human reason is an intersubjective consciousness and power. Human rationality is the intersubjective structure and grammar necessarily presupposed in human activities grounded in communicative action. In his vision, human reason is the communicating, constructing, discovering, elevating, and liberating power, the critical, unforced force, and the reasoning, negotiating, bridging, building, and developing capacity. Human rationality is the necessary grammar of human practices, institutions, and activities. Modernity is a quality of our epoch. Aspiration for modernity is at the core of the spirit of our epoch. Equally crucial, in his vision, human reason should be exercised publically, not privately—either individually or collectively. The world is given as it is, and how we live in it or how we make it for our living is up to our deliberation, choice, and action. The world is given as it is, and we are thrown into a time which may not be that of our choice. But how to institutionally, intellectually, ethically, morally and politically renovate the world to elevate human civilization is up to us, depending on whether we can think, choose, and act reflectively, rationally and critically. To think rationally and critically over public issues and matters of public concerns in the public sphere and through discourses, one should avail oneself with philosophical insights, a good conceptual framework and abundant analytical tools. Equally crucial, thinking rationally and critically implies that one is competent in thinking publically in practical discourses. One should have what Habermas dubs as “communicative competence” and “performative competence” in practical discourses. To raise the levels of public discourses in the national, international, and global theaters is to raise their reflective, rational, critical levels. Socrates famously claimed that an unexamined life is not worth living. An unexamined life in our epoch or a thoughtless life in our epoch is not living at all. The French writer Victor Hugo famously claimed that things exist but humans live. The French philosopher Blaise Pascal insisted that the most unique thing of human beings is that human beings think and have thoughts. Jean-Paul Sartre reminded us of drawing a distinction between being-for-itself and being-in-itself and reminded us of the truth that human beings must not simply be beings-in-themselves or thing-­ like beings. An unexamined life or thoughtless life makes one merely exist, not live! Thus, the Shakespeare’s question, “To be, or not to be, that is the question!”, becomes the question today: To think or not to think, that is the question! It is the

8  Conclusion: Climbing the Mountain of Modernity

223

question today: to think rationally and critically, or not to think rationally and critically, that is the question! Habermas’s life as a philosopher’s life is an exemplary answer to the question in our time. At the center of the conceptual map which this book has drawn is the concepts of reason, truth, and justice. So far as being the voices of truth, reason and justice are concerned, Habermas is a beacon in our time. Moreover, Habermas’s emphasis on the public use of reason fills an important lacuna that has been created by the emphasis on individual use of reason since modern philosophy. The public use of reason brings public reason, which is intersubjective, to the center of discourses and human living. It requires that norms, rules or laws that regulate our actions be justifiable or acceptable to all individual persons over whom norms, rules and laws purport to be authoritative. Public reason is the mediation between individual reason and universal reason. The emphasis on the public use of reason is one of the most distinctive marks of Habermas’s reconstructed project modernity; the emphasis on the public use of reason demarcates Habermas from ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, modern philosophers such as Descartes, Locke, and Kant, and contemporary philosophers such as Husserl, Rawls and Scanlon on the one hand, and from modern philosophers such as Hegel and Marx, who advocate collective use of reason, on the other hand. Habermas asserts that the conceptual trinity of the public sphere, discourse and reason has been at the center of his life-long philosophical sentiment. And the essential spirit of that conceptual trinity is the public use of reason in normsetting, standard-defining, and truth-discovering in human practices and activities. The revolutionary nature of the concept of the public use of reason should be appreciated here, amid our time is one of cultural diversity and rights. Human reason that is exercised either individually or collectively, but not publically, is totalitarian, oppressive and repressive, and always subject-centered, that is, either centered on an individual subjectivity or a collective subjectivity. Human reason that is exercised publically is intersubjective, open, inclusive, tolerant and thus democratic. Human reason that is used non-publically is a discriminating, excluding and separating power, and a key-holder who stops the entrance of certain peoples into the public theater, to use a Habermas’s expression. Human reason that is exercised publically is an including, bridging, communicating, connecting, constructing and creating power. It is always a door-opener who welcomes everyone to enter into the public theater. Equally crucial, while individual exercise of reason or collective exercise of reason involves turning a heterogeneous public (or group of people) into a homogeneous one, the public use of reason is merely to regulate the traffics of activities of a heterogeneous public (or group of people). The public use of reason is the key to reconstruct the totalitarian modernity project in the enlightenment into a modernity project that delivers its promise of human emancipation, autonomy, and justice. Young Hegelians, Nietzsche, Horkheimer, Adorno, Heidegger, Derrida, Bataille, Foucault and various others all fail to see this and thus their critiques of modernity and discontent do not see any way out. They are lead to one road that is opened but untaken: the negation of the concept of a subject-centered human reason, replacing it by a concept of human reason as an

224

8  Conclusion: Climbing the Mountain of Modernity

intersubjective consciousness and power; replacing the individual, authomous exercise of human reason by the public, autonomous exercise of human reason. The public use of reason is the very weapon and instrument to overcome totalitarianism. The public use of reason purports to establish norms of action and rules of activities just as it is to establish traffic lights and to delineate road lanes for transportation of peoples in a city. It is the key to the three principles of discourse ethics: the acceptability principle, the discourse principle, and the universalization principle. The acceptability of a norm of action is established by the public use of reason in discourses. The validity of a norm of action is established by the public use of reason in discourses. No the public use of reason, no acceptability or validity of a norm of action. The public use of reason makes possible that the universalization process of establishing norms, rules, and principles of human activities is a process of intersubjective communication, negotiation and construction of the different, the incompatible, and incommensurable, by the different, and for the different, not a process of abstraction that screens off the different, the incompatible, and the incommensurable. Norms, rules and principles that are constructed by the public use of reason in the process of universalization function to regulate the traffic of public activities and social practices of different peoples, not to turn diverse, heterogeneous, pluralistic peoples into a homogenous people of the same identity, nature and substance or to turn a heterogeneous public into a homogeneous one, just as traffic lights in a city regulate activities of different drivers, not turning different drivers into one kind of drivers. In the public use of reason, the two functions of human reason—(1) the norm-­ setting and (2) self-reflecting and enlightening function—that Habermas (2009) focuses on in the universalization process are about setting common norms of regulating traffics of human practice and making different peoples follow common laws and rules, not about turning different peoples into a homogeneous people. That is to say, in the public use of reason, the function of human reason is not to create a substantial collectivity, but to produce a map of rules and norms, to establish traffic lights and speech limits, and to delineate road lanes and directions of movement of activities. To spell it out differently, the starting point of the public use of reason is not that peoples are all the same and therefore must be together and have solidarity. Instead, it is that peoples are different, and to be together as being together of strangers and different, peoples must negotiate and construct common norms and rules just as they need common traffic lights for all who are different to drive in a city. The standing point of the public use of reason is not that people must be the same in order to be together. Instead, it is that peoples are, and cannot be the same, and if they are to extend their lives together, they must communicate and negotiate with one another and jointly create common norms, rules, and laws to regulate traffics of their activities; if they are to move their lives forward, they must build public transportation that is regulated by public traffic lights and rules (e.g., speed limits, lane confinements and constraints).

8  Conclusion: Climbing the Mountain of Modernity

225

In the conceptual map which this book has drawn, while living in truth is at the core of modernity, and Habermas’s concept of truth is still an evolving project. Habermas has staunchly defended the concept of universal truth and its value; He has staunchly rejected such ideas as post-truth, alternative-truth and such “isms” as relativism, contextualism, culturalism, provincialism, subjectivism and naïve objectivism. He has worked hard to synthesize insights into truths from Kant, traditional critical theory and American pragmatism. He has made Kantian-pragmatic turn in his approach to truth, and returned to a position of truth which he characterizes as a position of epistemologically realism wherein in a true statement or belief, a state of fairs is given or attains. Equally crucial, Habermas rekindles the modernist sentiment of truth as claimed by Winston Churchill: The truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. He rekindles what John Rawls also claims: truth is the first virtue of belief as justice is the first virtue of social institution. Habermas rejects the correspondence theory of truth. He insists that his Kantian-­ pragmatic concept of truth will not have any connotations of correspondence. Still, his concept of truth is epistemologically realist and consistent with the Aristotelian doctrine which asserts that to say of what is that is is true; to say of what is that is not is false; to say of what is not that is not is true; to say of what is not that is is false. In his epistemological realist vision, a statement that is not factually true— that is, a statement in which a state of affairs is not given or does not attain—does not have truth. And a statement whose claim is not factually correspondent to that which the statement claims is not a true statement. In Habermas’s vision, truth is a cognitive property and not unmediated correspondence. But truth is not, and cannot be, truth without factual correspondence. Truth without factual correspondence is not objective, but truth is objective validity and thus objective. In the conceptual map which this book has drawn, truth and justice are not separable. A reasonable political concept of justice necessarily claims to have truth. The reasonableness of a political concept of justice is importantly defined by its being true. Truth gives a political concept of justice its cognitive justifiability, validity. It is also instrumental to stabilize the institutionalization of a political concept of justice as the basis of social cooperation in a community. Unlike Grecian philosophers such as Plato, Habermas has never used the concept of justice in a cognitive sense, in which justice means the essential and profound truth. That being said, he insists that a political concept of justice cannot be reasonable if it does not have truth. No concepts that do not have truths that do not have truths are, and can be, reasonable. In discursive term, only a concept of justice can claim to be reasonable that claims to have truth. In the conceptual map which this book has drawn, rights and justice are two of the watching words of our epochal spirit and the rule of truth and the rule of justice are two core conditions of modernity in our epoch, Habermas has contributed greatly to the discourses of justice and human rights. So far as his contribution to the voice of justice in our time is concerned, it includes not only his association of the voice of justice with the voice of truth and his emphasis on the public use of reason in practical discourses of social justice, but also his concept of global justice in

226

8  Conclusion: Climbing the Mountain of Modernity

terms of international laws and cosmopolitan laws—that is to say, his integration of the concept of justice and the concept of the rule of law in global politics. So far as his contribution to the voices of human rights is concerned, his contribution includes not only his interpretation of human rights as constitution rights, and division of basic human rights into five categories consistent with the spirit of our time, and the 1948 UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights, as well as his concept of global politics of human rights, but also his criticism and rejection of human rights fundamentalism and insistence that the politics of human rights must be grounded in the rule of public law. In the conceptual map which this book has drawn, the rule of law and constitutional democracy are two core conditions of modernity in Habermas’s philosophy. His conceptual association of the rule of reason, the rule of law, and constitutional democracy epitomizes the spirit of our epoch. The rule of reason, the rule of law and constitutional democracy constitute the way of justice of humankind in an epoch of cultural diversity and human rights. They are better choices than any of their alternatives for humankind in our epoch. The trinity of them is the way of humankind today. Noteworthy, traditionally, democracy was considered to be a bad form of government and life by philosophers from Plato, Aristotle in ancient time to Kant in modern time. According to these philosophers, the idea of democracy was inconsistent with and incompatible to the idea of the rule of reason. Habermas subverts this traditional view. Moreover, his discursive defense of democracy is also revolutionary: constitutional democracy is the best vehicle for the rule of reason in our time, in particular amid our time is one of cultural diversity and rights. In his vision, a strength of constitutional democracy is that it is the best vehicle of the public use of reason. Democracy without the rule of reason and without the public use of reason is bad democracy. Thus, it is not just democracy, but democracy under the rule of reason that is, and should be, the way of humankind today. In Habermas’s vision, diversity and difference make the rule of law can constitutional democracy necessary. And the rule of law and constitutional democracy makes sensitivity to and sustaining of diversity and difference possible. The rule of law and constitutional democracy are the necessary conditions for the being together of the strangers, the different, the incompatible, and the incommensurable. The rule of law and constitutional democracy involve the public use of reason. The public use of reason is the instruments for the strangers, the different, the incompatible, and the incommensurable to be together, not to be in clash with one another and locked in a life-death struggle to exclude each other. Habermas’s concept of the three normative modes of democracy is illustrating. Among the three normative modes of democracy, liberal democracy emphasizes the individual use of individual reason that thinks individually, instrumentally, and rationally. Liberal democracy emphasizes the individual use of human reason in terms of rights, interests and desires. Republican democracy emphasizes the collective use of collective reason that thinks collectively, rationally and teleologically. Republican democracy emphasizes the collective use of human reason in terms of collective identity, history and fate. Proceduralist democracy emphasizes the public

8  Conclusion: Climbing the Mountain of Modernity

227

use of reason that thinks intersubjectively, rationally and deontologically. Proceduralist democracy emphasizes the public use of reason in terms of rights, truth, and normative rightness. As indicated above, conceptually, public reason and the public use of reason is an alternative to both individual reason and collective reason. Public reason thinks intersubjectively and democratically. Public reason is intersubjective and the public use of reason is intersubjective exercise of reason. Both individual reason and collective reason are subject-centered reason. Conceptually, the public use of reason and the individual exercise of reason can be compatible and mutually complementary. Indeed, Habermas’s idea of the public use of reason and the modern idea of individual’s autonomous exercise of reason in modern philosophy form a complementary relationship. Most importantly, the public use of reason is the way of the rule of reason in a constitutional democracy. Thus, the idea of the public use of reason integrates democracy and the rule of reason into one, making constitutional democracy the best way of the rule of reason. In the conceptual map which this book has drawn, the ideal of modernism and the ideal of cosmopolitanism are brilliantly combined amid cultural diversity is the permanent reality in our epoch. Habermas has renovated the ideal of cosmopolitanism with core ideas of modernity. He has renovated the ideal of cosmopolitanism with a set of renovated including the concepts of a world constitution, divided sovereignty, the three-tiered, networked realm of public authority in a cosmopolitan world society, dual citizenship, dual set of duty and obligation, a cosmopolitan order as one of cultural openness, inclusion, and toleration under the rule of law that purports to protect human rights and promote world peace under the rule of law in the globe, cosmopolitan law, human rights as constitutional rights and rejection of human rights fundamentalism. His renovation of the concept “cosmopolitan” synthesizes the Grecian concept and the Kantian concept of the cosmopolitan condition. Kant’s political cosmopolitanism is a milestone of the evolution of the ideal of cosmopolitanism. Habermas’s discourse cosmopolitanism is another milestone. The historical journey of the ideal of cosmopolitanism consists of some distinctive phrases: (1) Grecian-Stoic cosmopolitanism; (2) Kantian cosmopolitanism; and (3) present cosmopolitanism, of which Habermas’s discourse cosmopolitanism is milestone and most distinctive representation. Equally crucial, discourse cosmopolitanism is of our epoch, by our epoch and for our epoch. The intellectual, ethical, and institutional resources which our epoch has produced make the ideal of discourse cosmopolitanism no longer a utopia for tomorrow, but an emerging blood and flesh reality today. The evolution from Kantian cosmopolitanism to Habermasian cosmopolitanism is not merely a conceptual evolution, but also an evolution from a conceptual blueprint to an emerging reality. In the conceptual map which this book has drawn, tolerance is a norm, a principle, a value, and a virtue of modernity our epoch and an indispensable instrument of justice in politics of difference and diversity in accordance with Habermas’s philosophy, which makes it a philosophy of our time. The starting point of discourse philosophy is not that all humankind are the same. Instead, it is that humanity is diverse and divided; there is a rich diversity of cultures, ways of speech, and ways

228

8  Conclusion: Climbing the Mountain of Modernity

of being a human on the earth. Thus, live, and let live is the norm of human living today. To bear the different, to accommondate the other, and to include the incompatible—in short, to practice tolerance is the norm of justice today. Habermas has contributed conceptually to the philosophical discourse of tolerance in our epoch. He conceptually associates the idea of tolerance with the ideas of the rule of reason, the rule of law, justice, inclusion, rights, duty, obligation, value, virtue, citizenship, equality, democracy, the public use of reason, and performative competence. He demonstrates that difference makes tolerance necessary, and tolerance makes sustainment of difference possible and that tolerance makes the public use of reason necessary, and the public use of reason makes sustainment of enduring tolerance possible. Diversity and rights call for tolerance. The rule of reason stabilizes tolerance. The public use of reason sustains tolerance. In a time when humankind in the world have serious questions of their self-­ identity, the nation-states wherein they live, the peoples of which they are parts, of their governments, their ways of life, and their relationships to each other, Habermas’s philosophy of modernity, communication geared to mutual understanding, the public use of reason, discourse, truth, justice, ethics, morality, laws, nation-­ state, people, tolerance, post-nation democracy, constitutional patriotism, and cosmopolitanism illuminates and inspires. It provides new insights into solutions of the legitimation problem and the integration problem of present human community. In our epoch as one of globalization and cosmopolitanization, Habermas’s philosophy provides a modern, cosmopolitan, and global world outlook that is totally consistent with the spirit of our epoch. In the conceptual map which this book has drawn, Habermas’s philosophy contributes newly and renovates a wide range of philosophical concepts, which in turn has served to renovate Western philosophical conceptual inventory. Those concepts which Habermas contributes newly and renovates include but are not limited to the following: the public sphere, discourse, reason, the distinction between subject-­ centered reason and intersubjective reason, the public use of reason, communicative rationality, communicative practice, performative competence, normative rightness, ideal speech situation, discourse ethics, acceptability, validity claim, legitimacy, law as a system of knowledge and action, validity and facticity of law, constitutional patriotism, post-nation democracy, tolerance, the cosmopolitan condition, world constitution, human rights as juridical rights, rejection of human rights fundamentalism, a three-tiered realm of public authority on the earth, post-metaphysical condition, and post-metaphysical thinking. The conceptual map which this book has drawn indicates that those concepts which Habermas has contributed newly or renovated are inspiring and timely needed in philosophers today. In the conceptual map which this book has drawn, in the areas of philosophy where Habermas still struggles and his concepts are still constantly evolving (e.g., in epistemology and in the subject-matters of truth), his struggles themselves are instructive and illustrating, while imposing challenges for us to delineate accurately the meanings of his concepts and to understand them as part of the general conceptual framework of Habermas’s philosophy in whole. Notwithstanding,

8  Conclusion: Climbing the Mountain of Modernity

229

understanding those concepts such as the concept of truth in Habermas’s philosophy becomes a more daunting, challenging task. On this point, understanding the evolution of those concepts in Habermas is important for us to grasp the meanings of those concepts in Habermas today. Corresponding to the above, this book maps out the conceptual framework of Habermas’s philosophy in six main areas: 1 . His discourse doctrine of modernity; 2. His discourse ethics; 3. His doctrines of truth and justice and their relation; 4. His discourse doctrines of law and constitutional democracy; 5. His discourse doctrine of cosmopolitanism; 6. His discourse doctrine of tolerance. It explains what each part of the conceptual framework in these six areas itself is on the one hand and how they are integrated together into a comprehensive conceptual framework on the other hand. Doing so, this book travels across the entire Habermas’s philosophical empire. It explores Habermas’s signature conceptual trinity of the public sphere, discourse, and human reason, Habermas’s ethical-moral philosophy. It explores Habermas’s doctrine of truth and justice, Habermas’s philosophy of law and constitutional democracy, Habermas’s doctrine of global ethics and politics, and Habermas’s political philosophy of tolerance. It travels through Habermas’s vast, complex empire of epistemology, ethical-moral philosophy, social-political philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, and legal philosophy. It traces the footsteps of Habermas’s long philosophical journey wherein he has encountered various Western philosophers. Habermas characterizes his philosophical thinking as a post-­metaphysical one. He does not follow Kant’s or Adorno’s footstep to develop an esthetics. Thus, the conceptual map this book presents has not covered metaphysics and esthetics. In entirety, the conceptual map which this book has drawn indicates that Habermas’s philosophy is a philosophy of modernity, the rule of reason, the rule of truth, the rule of justice, and the rule of law in our epoch. It is a philosophy for an epoch of diversity and rights. It is a philosophy of rights, liberty, freedom, equality, autonomy, responsibility, competence, citizenship, normative deliberation, enlightenment, and emancipation. It is a philosophy of cosmopolitan world outlook. It is a philosophy of an examined life, a deliberating life, a good, worthy and happy life, and a competent, dutiful and responsible life. It is a philosophy of democracy and popular sovereignty. It is a philosophy of intersubjectivity—the unforced force, the elevating power, the liberating energy, the communicating and bridging capacity, and the constructing ability. It provides a new basis of normative of justification of norms, standards, and rules of action on the grounds of acceptability, validity, and universality and with the dimension of legitimacy, validity, and rationality. The order of the first six chapters reflects and is pretty much built on the timely order of the developments of Habermas’s six philosophical doctrines in his system. The order of these chapters also underscores the logical expansion of the conceptual framework of Habermas’s philosophy. The book thus had demonstrated that the

230

8  Conclusion: Climbing the Mountain of Modernity

expansion and the system of the conceptual framework of Habermas’s philosophy is logically, gradually and horizontally from one area to another, and accordingly, Habermas’s reconstruction of the modernity project expands gradually from one area into another. Even today, Habermas’s reconstruction of the modernity project still continues to expand. He has singled out some general criteria and qualities of modernity in our epoch including the rule of reason, the rule of justice, the rule of truth, the rule of law, liberty, rights, duty, obligation, separation of state and civil society, distinction between state and nation, distinction among state, nation, and people, constitutional democracy, constitutional patriotism, the public use of reason, rational communication, tolerance, and a constitutionalized world society. He has pointed out that the modernity project must respond to the three challenges of our epoch: globalization, cosmopolitanization and normalization; it must setting its footing on the reality of our epoch: diversity and rights. Kant claims the motto of enlightenment to be, “Sapere Audie! ‘Have courage to use your own understanding!’”(Kant 1972, p.33) Habermas’s motto of enlightenment and modernity is: communication, discourse, and the public use of reason in the public sphere. Again, this small book focuses on giving a conceptual map of Habermas’s philosophy, and on dealing with the conceptual issues of this systematic, complex, and brilliant philosophy. It does not devote much space and time to exploring various normative issues of Habermas’s philosophy, and therefore has not devoted much discussions to defenses and criticisms of Haberma’s philosophy. Conceptual analysis and normative studies are importantly associated, but also distinctive from each other. Each has its focus and scope of studies. That being said, there should be a balanced studies—that is, both conceptual, and normative studies—of Habermas’s philosophy today. These two areas of studies butter and enhance each other, complement one another, and complete one another. All the same, this book is intended merely to throw the stone to attract the jade in the discussion of Habermas’s philosophy today. Its focus falls on drawing a conceptual map of Habermas’s philosophy. Victor Hugo said: “True division of humanity is this: the luminous and the dark. To diminish the number of dark, to increase the number of the illuminous, behold the aim. This is why we cry: education, knowledge! To learn to read is to rekindle a fire; every syllable spelled sparkle.”(Hugo 1992, p.854) He further said: “What humanity requires, is to be fed with light; such nourishment is found in reading … Humanity reading is humanity knowing.”(Hugo 1906, p.7) This is very true of humanity in our epoch. For humanity in our epoch, reading the philosophy of a great philosopher such as Habermas is learning and nurturing, as it is reading Shakespeare or Kant. Modernity, enlightenment, and emancipation. Those are what humanity should search for in our epoch. This is at least one way of stating the conclusion of this book.

References

231

References Habermas, J. (2009). Between naturalism and religion. Cambridge: The Polity Press. Retrieved from https://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Habermas Hugo, V. (1906). William Shakespeare. Meiville B. Anderson (trans.). Chicago: A.C.McClurg and company. Hugo, V. (1992). Les misérables. New York: The Modern Library. Kant, I. (1972). Perpetual peace: A philosophical essay. M. Campbell Smith (trans.), Prefaced by Robert Latta. New York: Garland Publishing.

Index

A Abstraction, 11, 50, 57, 58, 72, 73, 83, 122, 224 Acceptability, 11, 38, 53, 66–69, 71, 72, 74, 77, 80, 81, 84, 87, 90, 92, 93, 95, 101, 113, 114, 118, 119, 123–127, 133, 140–142, 224, 228, 229 Adorno, T., 44 Age of globalization, 1, 2 Alterity, 20, 206 Aquinas, T., 89 Archimedean point, the, 176 Argumentations, 3–5, 11, 14, 29, 33, 36, 38, 47, 48, 50, 66–68, 70, 71, 74–76, 80–83, 86–91, 93, 95, 96, 121, 123, 153–155, 197 Aristotle, 8, 12, 31, 32, 41, 68, 89, 99, 101, 105, 106, 156, 215, 222, 223, 226 Assertability warranted, 12, 47, 70, 103, 104, 109, 110 Austin, J.L, 40 Authorities, 13, 14, 16, 24, 25, 28, 29, 31, 48, 58, 59, 81, 130, 132, 138, 139, 146, 149–151, 167, 180, 182–184, 186–192, 213 Autonomy, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 20, 22, 50, 56–59, 61, 66–68, 71, 76, 80, 87, 88, 92, 93, 95–97, 99–101, 116, 117, 120, 132, 142–146, 151, 154, 156, 162, 174–176, 197, 201, 202, 210, 217, 220–223, 229

B Bataille, G., 3, 21, 223 Beck, U., 15 Belonging global, 160, 164, 190 national, 190 Benhabib, S., 3, 33, 165 Bernstein, R., 56 C Caney, S., 72 Citizen global, 191 national, 189, 190 Citizenship global, 161, 191, 214 national, 190, 191, 214 Claims, 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16, 23, 27, 37, 38, 42, 43, 46–48, 50, 52–54, 57, 58, 61, 66, 68–70, 72, 74, 75, 77–81, 85, 88–90, 93, 100, 101, 103, 107–114, 117–119, 121, 124, 125, 127, 133, 137–140, 144, 145, 150, 152, 165, 169, 170, 175–178, 180–183, 188, 191, 203, 204, 206, 210, 212, 213, 216, 217, 221, 222, 225, 230 Coercion, 36, 44, 47, 49, 80, 81, 93, 119, 121, 127, 130, 138–140, 142, 152, 153

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 X. Chen, The Essentials of Habermas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79794-2

233

234 Coherence, 106, 107 Communications, 1–3, 5, 8, 14, 17, 23–26, 29–31, 33–55, 70, 74, 81, 88, 90, 94, 101, 109, 116, 121, 153, 155, 201, 212, 213, 215, 219, 224, 228, 230 Community of common fate, 1, 4, 15, 155, 171, 183, 193, 221 of common laws, 2, 4, 15, 153, 189, 193, 219 Competence communicative, 35, 36, 44, 48, 72, 86, 94, 96, 215 performative, 44, 72, 86, 96, 215, 228 Comprehensibility, 5, 6, 10, 46, 49, 50, 53, 70, 101, 113, 121, 123 Consensus overlapping, 30, 51, 101, 113, 115, 118, 124–127 Constitution, 14–16, 22, 30, 43, 139, 141, 147–149, 154, 156, 160–168, 171, 172, 177, 180, 182, 183, 185–194, 226–228 Constitutionalization, 166, 171, 180, 181, 185–188, 191 Contextualism, 100, 216, 220, 225 Contractualism, 67, 92–97 Cooperation, 34, 44, 53, 87, 112, 114, 120, 123–125, 198, 211–214, 217, 225 Correspondence, 12, 13, 102, 105–107, 127, 135, 225 Cosmopolitan condition, 159, 164, 166, 170, 172, 188, 191, 227, 228 law, 8, 15, 16, 130, 162, 164, 167, 170, 172, 173, 179–183, 187, 189, 192, 194, 209, 217, 226 rights, 16, 162–166, 168, 172, 176, 182, 194 Cosmopolitanism, 2–4, 8, 14–16, 19, 100, 159–194, 197, 215, 217, 220, 221, 227–229 Cosmopolitanization, 9, 15, 171, 228, 230 Crime against humanity, 134, 135, 169, 171, 184, 189 Criticism rational, 5, 6, 43, 89, 90, 121 Critique immanent, 5 transcendent, 5, 54

Index Cultures, 1, 5, 7, 8, 10, 14, 20, 32, 33, 41–44, 51, 54, 57, 72, 86, 105, 109, 148, 149, 163, 172, 191, 200–202, 204, 205, 208–210, 214, 216, 227 D Dah, R., 153 Dasein, 59, 138 Democracy constitutional, 14, 99, 129–131, 137, 146–149, 155, 156, 159, 161, 176, 198, 203, 210, 211, 226, 227 global, 14, 15, 130, 146, 155, 159, 161, 171–173, 181, 182, 191, 215 liberal, 14, 146, 151, 153–156, 214, 226 post-nation, 14, 147, 148 proceduralist, 153–157 republican, 14, 148, 151, 153–156, 226 Demos, 9, 13, 130, 147, 148 Derrida, J., 3, 21, 58, 223 Descartes, R., 8, 20, 33, 53, 99, 222, 223 Differences, 2, 4, 9, 10, 13–15, 17, 30–34, 50, 53, 56, 58, 73, 78, 85, 86, 92, 94, 96, 110, 122, 123, 132, 135, 136, 153–157, 173, 187, 193, 201–203, 205–208, 213, 215–217, 219, 220, 226–228 Discourses, 1–11, 13–17, 19–30, 32–55, 61, 62, 65–98, 100, 101, 106, 107, 109–111, 113, 114, 116, 118, 119, 121–127, 129–135, 139, 144, 146, 152–156, 159–162, 171–174, 176, 179–183, 185, 186, 189, 191, 192, 194, 197–199, 201–206, 208–217, 219–225, 227–230 Diversity, 2, 4, 9, 10, 13, 16, 17, 20, 51, 90, 100, 116, 147, 150, 156, 161, 162, 189, 193, 198–202, 204, 205, 208–217, 219, 223, 226–230 Doctrine the discourse, 13, 61, 62, 75, 129–132, 139, 146, 156, 160, 197, 198, 202, 229 Domination, 53, 56–58, 61, 133 Duties, 5, 7, 10, 20, 29, 66–70, 72, 75–78, 80, 81, 88, 90–92, 94, 95, 97, 102, 131, 135–137, 141, 144, 145, 160, 161, 166, 174, 177, 178, 181, 190–192, 197, 198, 200, 202, 207–212, 217, 220, 227, 228, 230

Index E Endorsement, 148, 198, 199, 201–205, 209, 217 Enlightenment, 9, 17, 19–22, 31, 50, 55–62, 198, 216, 219, 221, 223, 229, 230 Epistemic, 38, 39, 42, 67, 69, 70, 79, 82, 83, 87, 91, 95, 101–110, 112, 113, 117–119, 123–127, 200, 202, 204, 205 Epistemological, 5, 12, 100, 102, 103, 105, 106, 111, 112, 125, 225 Equality, 3, 16, 17, 20, 22, 34, 43, 44, 56–59, 61, 79, 83, 97, 99, 121–123, 144, 152, 168, 192, 194, 197, 198, 210, 214, 215, 217, 228, 229 Equilibrium reflective, 114 Essences, 3–5, 13, 19, 25, 31, 102, 103, 111, 133, 137, 160, 212 Ethics discourse, 10, 17, 38, 65–98, 118, 121, 125, 127, 161, 221, 224, 228, 229 Ethnos, 9, 13, 130, 147, 148 F Facticity, 14, 104, 110, 130, 131, 135, 137–140, 156, 180, 228 Fairness justice as, 53, 112, 116, 126 Falsity, 5, 10, 54, 105, 108, 109 Fate community of common, 1, 4, 155, 193, 221 Fine, R., 170, 176 Foucault, M., 3, 5, 21, 34, 54, 60, 223 Freedom, 5, 7, 12, 16, 17, 20, 22, 28, 29, 31, 36, 37, 42, 50, 53, 56, 58, 60, 61, 73, 76, 79, 85, 87, 91–93, 96, 100, 112, 121, 130, 135, 137–140, 142, 144, 151–153, 170, 175–177, 181, 198, 200–202, 205, 209–211, 213, 216, 220, 229 Freud, S., 56 Fundamentalism human rights, 15, 179, 226 G Gadamer, H.-G., 3, 21, 41, 57 Gehlen, A., 43 Genesis, 135, 140, 141 Genocides, 134, 184, 189 Globe, 16, 27, 164, 166, 168, 171, 172, 174, 176, 179, 181, 185, 186, 192, 227

235 Good, 5, 10, 13, 14, 17, 29, 37, 39, 46, 47, 51, 52, 60, 66–69, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78–82, 85, 88–91, 93, 95, 97, 101, 110–112, 116, 120, 122, 125, 126, 134, 138, 139, 146, 148, 152, 153, 170, 175, 179, 191, 193, 202–208, 211–214, 217, 220, 222, 229 Governments, 15, 28, 31, 32, 129, 130, 146, 151–154, 160, 161, 163, 164, 167, 168, 170–172, 181, 183–190, 193, 200, 202, 209, 212, 221, 226, 228 H Habermas, J., 1 Happiness, 4, 5, 10, 13, 56, 66, 68, 70, 72, 75, 78, 83, 88, 89, 91, 94, 97, 139, 143, 202, 204, 210 Hegel, G.W.F., 3, 5, 8, 21, 43, 55, 58, 62, 72, 89, 99, 222, 223 Heidegger, M., 2, 21, 42, 43, 138, 223 Held, D., 6, 15, 168, 193 Heterogeneous, 9, 11, 23, 31, 33, 35, 39, 41, 74, 132, 156, 223, 224 Hobbes, T., 131 Homogeneous, 4, 9, 11, 23, 27, 30, 31, 74, 147, 148, 162, 193, 211, 223, 224 Horizon, 2, 8, 9, 41, 42, 58, 59, 105, 106, 123, 194, 215, 218, 219 Horkheimer, M., 3, 5, 58, 62, 223 Hospitality, 165 Hugo, V., 17, 222, 230 Husserl, E., 12, 95, 223 I Immunity, 175, 176, 178 Impartiality, 73, 85, 120, 121, 123, 168 Imperative categorical, 11, 65–67, 69, 71, 80, 93–95, 97 Inclusion, 2, 9, 16, 17, 20–22, 27, 32, 49, 65, 73, 76, 83, 84, 103, 121–123, 129, 153, 160, 161, 164, 170, 172, 197–220, 227, 228 Incredulity, 20, 60 Indifference, 57, 121, 198, 199, 203, 204, 209, 217 Indulgence, 199, 201, 203 Institutions, 3, 6–8, 14, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 35, 38, 41–43, 54, 61, 71, 94, 100, 124–126, 129–133, 136–147, 151, 152, 163, 168–170, 182, 188, 221, 222, 225

236 Integration, 7, 15, 30, 139, 141, 148–151, 156, 159, 216, 226, 228 Intermediate, 198, 201–203, 205, 217 Intersubjectivity, 17, 30, 31, 45, 50–52, 61, 66, 75, 78, 93, 109, 115, 183, 229 Interventions, 15, 43, 83, 179, 184 Intuition moral, 72, 88 Inviolability, 79, 89, 111, 112, 144, 162, 173, 184, 209 Irrejectibility, 96 J Jaspers, K., 170 Jünger, E., 43 Justice Cosmopolitan, 168, 169 global, 15, 16, 19, 100, 161, 164, 166, 168, 171, 174, 179, 194, 225 international, 100 Justifiability, 38, 42, 47, 102, 103, 108–110, 113, 114, 116, 118, 125, 126, 132, 133, 138, 140, 225 Justification private, 14, 114 public, 8, 10, 14, 20, 56, 61, 67, 70, 78, 87, 95, 114, 116, 124–126, 138, 142, 145 K Kant, I., 131, 132, 163, 177 Klaingeld, P., 163 Knowledge self, 82, 119, 122 Korsgaard, C., 78 L Languages, 3–6, 10, 40–43, 47, 54, 59, 70, 101, 102, 106, 122, 149, 163, 199, 203, 220, 229 Law cosmopolitan, 8, 15, 16, 130, 159, 162–164, 166, 167, 172, 173, 179–183, 186, 187, 189, 192, 194, 209, 217, 226 international, 16, 43, 164, 166, 170, 180, 181, 183, 185, 186, 189, 192, 226 municipal, 168, 180, 184 of the People, 148 the rule of, 19, 77, 99, 129, 159, 208, 219 Legality, 133, 140, 170, 182, 183

Index Legitimacy, 2, 3, 8, 14, 30, 32, 38, 43, 55, 61, 62, 76, 77, 84, 87, 91, 96, 120, 124, 130, 132–134, 138–142, 146, 148–150, 152, 156, 171, 182, 183, 190, 191, 220, 221, 228, 229 Legitimation, 149–151, 154, 179, 228 Liberalism, 3, 100, 113, 116, 117, 220 Liberty, 5, 13, 17, 20, 22, 56, 57, 61, 66–68, 91, 95, 99, 102, 112, 120, 136, 137, 140, 142–146, 151, 152, 165, 171, 176–178, 191, 209, 212, 229, 230 Locke, J., 146 Luhmann, N., 3 Lukács, G., 2 Lyotard, J.-F., 3, 21, 60 M Marcus, H., 3, 6, 44 Marx, K., 3, 5, 62, 223 Marxism, 3 Mauss, I., 133 McCarthy, T., 54, 107, 220 Mead, G.H., 3, 88 Mechanism, 13, 35, 53, 56, 61, 65–67, 70, 81, 86, 92–96, 101, 119–124, 127, 147, 148, 154, 161, 171 Modernism, 20, 44, 62, 159, 171, 172, 174, 194, 220, 227 Modernity, 1–3, 8–17, 19–62, 65, 67, 68, 71, 75, 76, 81, 82, 87, 91, 97–102, 111, 127, 129, 131, 133, 137, 146, 155, 159, 161, 162, 164, 165, 169–171, 173, 174, 176, 197, 208, 211, 217–230 Morality, 2, 8–11, 14, 24, 28, 38, 42, 51, 52, 65–71, 73, 75, 79–81, 87–91, 93–95, 98, 129–157, 165, 166, 177, 221, 228 Multiculturalism, 212, 216, 217, 220 N Nagel, T., 190 Nationalism, 147, 148, 151, 220 Nations, 2, 9, 13, 14, 16, 54, 74, 144, 146–151, 160, 161, 165–167, 169–171, 173, 181, 183, 184, 186, 188–191, 194, 197, 220, 230 Naturalism, 23, 65, 102, 105, 106, 131, 132, 156, 185, 199, 208 Nietzsche, F., 3, 21, 59, 223 Norms, 1–4, 6, 7, 9–11, 13–17, 19–21, 23, 29, 30, 32, 33, 35, 37, 38, 42, 43,

Index 45–48, 50–56, 60–62, 65–78, 80–88, 90–98, 100, 101, 108, 119, 121, 122, 124, 125, 129–132, 134–142, 144, 146, 147, 156, 161, 168–170, 172–174, 176, 177, 179, 181, 182, 185, 186, 191, 193, 197–199, 207–212, 215–217, 219–221, 223, 224, 227–229 Nuremberg Trial, the, 43 Nussbaum, M., 160, 190 O Obligations, 2, 5, 7, 10, 11, 17, 20, 29, 51, 66–72, 76–81, 88, 90–92, 94–97, 102, 111, 117, 131, 135–139, 142, 146, 147, 150, 156, 160, 161, 163, 165, 166, 168, 170, 177, 178, 184, 190–194, 197, 198, 202, 205, 207–212, 215, 217, 219, 220, 227, 228, 230 Openness, 16, 26, 27, 54, 159–161, 163, 164, 170, 172, 189, 191, 192, 201, 202, 205, 217, 227 Oppression, 1, 2, 9, 27, 34–36, 40, 44, 56, 57, 61, 62, 83, 87, 200, 201, 208, 220 Outwaite, W., 2, 72, 134, 136, 154 P Paradigm paradigm shift, 9, 10, 21, 50, 52, 53, 62, 94, 97 Parsons, T., 3 Patriarchy, 56 Patriotism constitutional, 147 Peace permanent, 4, 15, 161, 162, 164, 166, 168, 182, 208, 227 worlds, 2, 4, 14–16, 159–164, 166, 168, 169, 171–174, 179, 182, 184–186, 192–194, 227 Peirce, C.S., 3, 12, 107 People, 24, 76, 100, 131, 160, 198, 220 Perspective ethical, 6, 11, 14, 77, 131, 139 the first person, 77, 86, 113, 114, 116 legal, 14, 131, 139, 142 moral, 6, 14, 77, 82, 113, 121, 131, 139 pragmatics, 14, 121, 123, 131, 139

237 the second-person, 86, 113, 114, 116 the third-person, 78, 86, 123 Piaget, J., 3 Plato, 6–8, 31, 32, 41, 68, 98, 99, 101, 156, 221–223, 225, 226 Pogge, T., 168, 192 Polis, 28, 168 Polity, 14, 122, 147–153, 156 Positivism, 13, 60, 129, 130, 142 Possibilities, 3, 19, 29, 42, 50, 54, 56, 86, 87, 97, 106, 118, 140, 152, 171, 184, 221 Post-metaphysical, 4, 6, 15, 61, 62, 146, 149, 228, 229 Postmodernism, 20, 21, 44, 50, 56, 60, 100, 220, 221 Pragmatism, 3, 102, 105, 107, 220, 225 Presuppositions, 36, 37, 42, 44–51, 59, 62, 84, 87, 88, 91, 94, 95, 101, 105, 106, 121, 123, 133, 197, 210, 211, 215 Principle the acceptability, 11, 69, 80, 87, 95, 118, 127 of democracy, 2, 133, 147, 155, 182, 211 the discourses, 11, 38, 69, 81, 82, 84, 87, 93, 95, 125, 143, 144 the universality, 82, 92, 96 Privileges, 35, 174–176 Public reason, 11, 116, 138, 168, 223, 227 Public sphere, the, 21, 67, 115, 130, 204, 219 Putnam, 3, 12, 107, 108 Q Qualification, 23, 26, 82 Qualities, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 22, 31, 42, 45, 54, 61, 73, 99, 117, 132, 138, 162, 164, 197, 207, 222, 230 R Rationality, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8–11, 17, 21–23, 30, 32, 33, 38, 40, 44–58, 60–62, 65, 66, 70, 71, 74, 83, 84, 87, 94, 96, 98, 100, 101, 113, 118, 121, 124, 126, 133, 136, 141, 153, 154, 171, 182, 197, 208, 216, 220–222, 228, 229 Rawls, J., 71, 83, 86, 111–121, 124–127, 192, 193, 222, 223, 225 Realism, 12, 13, 100, 102, 103, 105, 106, 129–132, 220, 225

238 Realm empirical, 85, 94 formal, 94 intelligible, 94 of public authority, 24, 30, 31, 33, 151, 160, 162, 173, 174, 180, 184, 185, 187–189, 191, 192, 194, 227, 228 Reason intersubjective, 9, 10, 21, 22, 31, 45, 48, 50–52, 54, 55, 59–62, 67, 74–76, 80, 82, 88, 92, 93, 95, 97, 113, 123, 127, 173, 181, 208, 218, 221–224, 227, 228 public, 4–7, 9–11, 14, 17, 22, 23, 28, 29, 31, 32, 50–52, 54, 55, 61, 62, 65–67, 69, 71, 74–76, 82, 84, 86–88, 90, 93, 95–98, 100, 101, 113, 115, 117, 130, 133, 137, 138, 141, 146, 154–156, 161, 173, 181, 193, 203, 208, 221, 223–226, 228 subject-centered, 9, 10, 21, 22, 48, 50–55, 57–59, 61, 62, 66, 67, 75, 80, 82, 84, 92, 93, 96, 97, 115, 123, 127, 155, 173, 181, 208, 223, 227, 228 universal, 9, 10, 12, 19, 22, 44, 45, 48, 50, 51, 53, 54, 56, 59–62, 65, 66, 68, 71, 75, 80, 82, 84, 85, 93, 96, 99, 100, 111, 127, 154, 181, 222, 223 Reasonableness, 14, 100, 112–119, 125–127, 215, 225 Recognition, 2, 38, 46, 48, 52, 54, 55, 69, 70, 76, 77, 79, 88, 89, 108, 110, 117, 123, 126, 139, 141, 142, 147, 148, 152, 163, 199–202, 204, 205, 207, 210, 211, 215 Rejection, 16, 95, 127, 132, 161, 173, 174, 176, 198, 199, 201–203, 205, 207, 210, 217, 226–228 Relativism, 60, 100, 117, 216, 220, 225 Repression, 2, 35, 36, 56, 61, 62, 200, 220 Republicanism, 146–148, 151, 156, 220 Respects, 34, 51, 71, 76, 79, 83, 89–91, 108, 110, 111, 120, 141, 142, 152, 163, 170, 175, 184, 185, 189, 193, 198–202, 204–206, 209, 210, 212–217, 219 Rights basic, 13, 14, 22, 100, 112, 120, 130, 132, 136, 137, 139, 142–146, 151, 175, 177, 178, 193, 210, 211 civil, 145, 151, 165, 175, 177, 180–185, 210

Index cosmopolitan, 16, 160, 162–166, 168, 172, 176, 182, 194 human, 19, 99, 144, 159, 198, 220 international, 165, 167 Rorty, R., 3, 12, 107, 220 Rousseau, J.-J., 133, 146, 167, 177, 183 S Savigny, F.C., 143 Scanlon, T., 92, 95, 97, 198, 201, 207, 213 Schmitt, C., 43 Secularism, 216, 217 Security, 16, 161, 168, 170, 171, 193 Shakespeare, W., 47, 230 Simmel, G., 2, 5, 6 Situation an ideal speech, 7, 33, 36–38, 48–50, 121–123, 153, 197 Societies, 2, 4–6, 9, 10, 13–17, 20–25, 27, 28, 30–35, 41–45, 57, 58, 76, 86, 101, 109, 112, 115, 124–126, 130, 131, 142, 147, 148, 150, 153–155, 160–162, 165, 166, 168, 170, 172–174, 176, 179, 182, 183, 185–194, 198, 204, 208–217, 221, 227, 230 Solidarity, 5, 10, 11, 17, 66, 67, 72, 73, 76, 79, 84, 88–90, 95, 111, 131, 139, 147, 148, 150, 190, 200, 213, 220, 224 Sovereignty cosmopolitan, 16, 161, 163, 182, 184, 185, 188, 194 national, 150, 161–163, 167, 173, 184, 189, 193, 194 popular, 7, 20, 22, 30, 56, 130, 133, 137, 141, 143, 146–148, 154, 155, 162, 184, 221, 229 Spaces, 6, 22–33, 35, 41, 43, 53, 54, 75, 81, 109, 137, 201, 212, 220, 230 Speech act illocutionary, 81 locutionary, 40 perlocutionary, 40 Spinoza, B., 200 Spirit the Absolute, 5, 8, 55 of our epoch, 2, 5, 9, 16, 17, 20–22, 67, 68, 76, 91, 99, 131, 162, 171, 174, 197, 211, 217, 221, 222, 226, 228 Subjectivity, 50–52, 61, 78, 109, 223

Index Subjects, 7, 24, 27, 34, 36, 41, 45, 50–54, 58–60, 72, 73, 75, 88, 104, 119, 134, 135, 140, 143–145, 150, 152, 187, 189, 191, 192 T Tolerance, 2, 3, 9, 16, 17, 20, 21, 99, 169, 170, 172, 173, 175, 191, 193, 194, 197–221, 227–230 Toleration, 2, 8, 16, 17, 20, 51, 159–161, 164, 170–172, 189, 191–193, 199–201, 203, 205, 206, 212, 214–217, 227 Totalitarianism, 9, 50, 55–58, 62, 224 Transcendence, 5, 10, 53, 215 Trinity conceptual, 9, 22, 101, 223, 226, 229 Truth, 2–14, 17, 19, 20, 22, 29, 31, 34–36, 38, 42, 44, 46, 49, 50, 52–54, 56, 59–62, 67–70, 76, 77, 87, 88, 90, 95, 97, 99–127, 155, 156, 202, 203, 205, 206, 210, 213, 214, 216, 219–223, 225, 227–230 Truthfulness, 5, 6, 10, 37, 42, 46–49, 52, 53, 70, 101, 113, 121, 123, 153 U Understanding, 1, 2, 4–8, 10, 21, 27, 33–35, 37–42, 44–48, 51, 52, 57, 68, 73, 76, 77, 79, 81, 83, 84, 86–88, 94–97, 100–102, 105, 106, 108, 114, 116, 118, 119, 121–126, 136, 147, 152–154, 175, 188, 202, 203, 205, 206, 210, 212–214, 219, 221, 222, 228–230

239 Universalism abstracts, 72, 73, 97 Utilitarianism, 70, 71, 91, 92, 95 V Validity validity claims, 5, 6, 10, 36, 37, 42, 44, 46–49, 51–53, 55, 60, 70, 81, 91, 95, 100, 101, 109, 117, 118, 121, 126, 140, 141, 177, 178, 210, 211, 228 Value instrumental, 110, 211–213, 217 intrinsic, 110, 211, 216 Veil of ignorance, 11, 31, 71, 73, 82, 83, 119, 120, 122–124 Virtue, 5, 17, 35, 38, 68, 84, 100, 102, 132, 133, 136, 165, 173, 175, 177, 178, 181, 191, 193, 197–202, 205, 208, 214–217, 220, 225, 227, 228 W Walzer, M., 17, 184 Weber, M., 3, 56 World the life, 2, 41, 42, 104 X Xenophobia, 216 Y Young, I.M., 3, 6, 26, 33, 40, 156