File spoon-archives/frankfurt-school.archive/frankfurt-school_2000/frankfurt-school.0010, message 7


Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 13:06:21 +0300
From: Rauno Huttunen <rakahu-AT-cc.jyu.fi>
Subject: Re: HABERMAS' IDEAL SPEECH SITUATION




Ralph Dumain wrote:
> 
> I've never been inspired to go out of my way and research Habermas, but a
> particular concern of mine has come to a head and it may well turn out that
> Habermas' concern with systematically distorted communication and the ideal
> speech situation may be right on target viz. the urgency of what has been
> troubling me.  But I'm not intereted in the whole theory so much as I want
> to know how certain questions are addressed.  Can someone give me a cheap,
> quick, and dirty (as we used to say in the bookbinding business) response
> to the following interrelated questions?
> 
> Is a particular type of use of language required or proscribed in the ideal
> speech situation?  Do the norms of communication--which I assume (wrongly?)
> to relate to postulates of individual autonomy, the right of free inquiry
> and the untrammeled pursuit of truth, norms of rationality, and the goal of
> transparent communication and human relations--demand a certain type of
> language?  What does Habermas have to say about irony?  Metaphorical and
> symbolic language?  Or flame wars?
> 

I sent this fragment few months ago to Habermas list. I don't know does
it help. It is part of larger article called "Robert Young's Habermasian
concept of indoctrination - prospects and dead-lock".

Rauno Huttunen
>From Mika Häkkinen and Nokia Republic 


----------------------------------
2. Jürgen Habermas on ideal and real communication

2.1 The concept of ideal speech situation

With the concept of the ideal speech situation Habermas means idealized
conditions of speech. In an ideal speech situation, the conditions for
argumentative action are believed to be ideal ones. This means that in
the discourse there is no other force than the force of better argument.
Not inner (example prejudices) or outer (ideologies, short of time,
short of knowledge) restrictions determine the outcome of discourse.
Only the force of better argument ^Ö the guidelines of which are immanent
to the language itself - determines the speech situation. In the ideal
speech situation, systematically distorted communication is excluded
(Habermas 1984a, 177). In this imaginative but also factual ideal speech
situation it is possible to gain consensus about all those subjects that
generally are discursive in their nature. Many questions example
concerning the good life and personal convictions are not discursive
subjects, but in the modern pluralistic society we can live together
without sharing common view about the good life. A common
misinterpretation is to claim that Habermas demands an overrunning
totalitarian-style of consensus.

Habermas sets out four conditions for his ideal speech situation:

i) All who are potential participants of discourse, must have equal
rights to use speech acts in such a way that discourse could be
permanently open to claims and counter claims, questions and answers.
ii) All who participate to discourse, must have equal chances to present
interpretations, to make assertions, recommendations, explanations and
corrections (I believe this means the presentation of ad hoc hypotheses)
and also equal chances to problematize (problematisieren) or challenge
the validity of these presentations, to make arguments for and against.
In this 
way all possible critics shows up and no unreflected prejudice remains.

These two conditions make possible free discourse and pure communicative
action where:
iii) participants by presentative speech acts (repräseantative
Sprechakte) express equally their attitudes, feelings and wishes, and
also where participants are honest to each other (sich selbst gegenüber
wahrhaftig sind) and make their inner nature (intentions) transparent.
iv) participants have equally chances to order and resist orders, to
promise and refuse, to be accountable for one's conduct and to demand
accountability from others. Only this way the reciprocity of
action-anticipations (Reziprozität der Verhaltenserwartungen) is
realised (Habermas 1984a, 177-178; see also Benhabib 1986, 285).

According to Habermas, conditions i) and iv) must be fulfilled in order
that the discourse in general is possible. The second condition (the
postulation of freedom of speech) and the third condition (the
postulation of authenticity) together make possible the power of
rational motivation (the best arguments win). Nevertheless, Habermas
warns us that the idea of the ideal speech situation could be a
deceptive criterion alone for rational consensus (trügerischen in
letzter Instanz allein) (Haberm-as 1984a, 179).

Habermas claims that the ideal speech situation is not just a
theoretical construction. In every empirical speech situation,
participants voluntarily tend to fulfill the conditions of the ideal
speech situation. But no empirical investigation or study could ever
reveal the facticity of the ideal speech situation, yet it still
operates (acts on) there. "The ideal speech situation is neither just an
empirical phenomenon nor construction but in the discourse fulfilled
condition of reciprocity. This condition could be - but not necessarily
- counterfactual; when it is made counterfactual, it is operatively
acting (working) fiction. Thus I rather speak about foreseeing or
anticipating of the ideal speech situation. Anticipation alone is not a
guarantee for that we dare (...) establish rational consensus; at the
same time the ideal speech situation is a critical standard by which
actually achieved consensus can be questioned and also legitimated
(verified) (...) " (Habermas 1984-a, 180). With his obscure formulations
Habermas tries to get hold of this very difficult concept of the ideal
speech situation. It is not only a moral maxim (Kant) or the
cunningly-behind operations of the World Spirit (Hegel). It is a
simultaneously real element of discourse and a counterfactual standard
for actual discourse.

With the theory of communicative action Habermas, without any
explanation, just stops using the concept of ideal speech situation (he
also dropped some other concepts too like ideology, interests of
knowledge and consensus theory of truth) and started referring to the
universal presuppositions of argumentation. This shifting is shown
already in his article What is Universal Pragmatics (1979) where he does
not use the concept of ideal speech situation. He starts to speak about
"universal conditions of possible understanding" and "general
presuppositions of communicative action"  (Ibid, 1). In his article 
"Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification",
where Habermas sets out the grounds for his discourse ethic, he relies
on Robert Alex's formulation of universal presuppositions of
argumentation (Habermas 1990, 88-89):

"(2.1) Every speaker may assert only what he really believes.
(2.2) A person who disputes a proposition or norm under discussion must 
provide a reason for wanting to do so.
(3.1) Every subject with the competence to speak and act is allowed to
take 
part in a discourse.
(3.2) a. Everyone is allowed to question any assertion whatever.
b. Everyone is allowed to introduce any assertion whatever into the
discourse.
c. Everyone is allowed to express his attitudes, desires and needs.
(3.3) No speaker may be prevented, by internal or external coercion,
from exercising his rights as laid down in (3.1) and (3.2)."

In sections 2.1 and 2.2 those conditions that are necessary for "common
competitive quest for truth" are represented. These sections also
implicate the participant's reciprocal acknowledging of responsibility
and authenticity (Wahrhaftigkeit). In Section 3.1. Habermas calls for
rules of openness (transparency). In Section 3.2. he secures symmetrical
interaction, and in Section 3.3 excludes outer constraints.

In this article Habermas mentions the presuppositions he had earlier
described as features of the ideal speech situation. He says that he
does not want to specify, renew or change his former notion of the ideal
speech situation. "The intention of my earlier analysis still seems
correct to me, namely the reconstruction of the general symmetry
conditions that every competent speaker who believes he is engaging in
an argumentation must presuppose as adequate-ly fulfilled. The
presupposition of something like an ^Ñunrestricted communication
community', an idea that Apel developed following Peirce and Mead, can
be demonstrated through systematic analysis of performative conditions."
(Habermas 1990, 88).

In his book Between Facts and Norms , Habermas claims that talk about
"the ideal communication community" (Karl-Otto Apel) and "the ideal
speech situation"  tempts improperly hypostatisation of validity claims.
Habermas wants to replace this "counterfactual comparing to ideal
conditions" with Brunkhorst's "idealizing presuppositions". Brunkhorst
states that "the idealizing presuppositions we always already have to
adopt whenever we want to reach mutual understanding do not involve any
kind of correspondence or comparision between idea and reality"
(Brunkhorst according to Habermas 1996, 323). Still it remains unclear,
what profound way this concept of ideal speech situation or ideal
communication community differs from Brunkhorst's idealizing
presuppositions.

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