Date: 	Thu, 20 Mar 1997 11:26:25 -0500
From: Kenneth MacKendrick <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: RE: HAB: Habermas and social action




> Hi, I'm not sure I see the shift to which you're referring--i.e., since the
> early 70's consensus in discourse and, more broadly, mutual understanding in
> communicative action have been and still are (even in TCA) the normative
> core of his theory of social integration.  In TCA and elsewhere, he
> distinguishes communicative from strategic action; only the former is
> oriented toward mutual understanding (and hence implicity to consensus), but
> the latter is parasitic on the former, through which alone can lifeworld
> meanings be regenerated.  So, while consensus is for Habermas not the goal
> of all types of action (e.g., strategic action) and never has been, still
> communicative action (which does remain internally linked to consensus) is
> the action type central to his normative social theory.
> 
> For recent stuff, you might want to look at _Between Facts and Norms_,
> Ch. 1.2 and also check the index under "consensus, social integration/action
> coordination."  Even more recently, see "Actions, speech acts,
> linguistically mediated interactions and the lifeworld," in G. Floistad,
> ed., _Philosophical problems today_, Vol. 1 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), pp.
> 45-74.  --Vic

Axel Honneth (see _The Critique of Power_ Chptr. 7-9) has a good discussion of the 
shfit from emancipatory reflection (in Habermas's _Knowledge and Human 
Interests_) to formal/universal/transcendental pragmatics and the shift from  
historical materialism to social evolution.  Maeve Cooke has also written a good 
study of Habermas's linguistic pragmatics, _Language and Reason_.  Habermas's 
distinction between facticity and validity is, in my opinion, the key to understanding 
Habermas - all else flows from there.  As Vic Peterson has noted - there is a good 
summary in Habermas's _Between Facts and Norms_ which not only adjusts, in a 
minor way, Habermas's focus but he tries to correct some of his more problematic 
formulations - its also his clearest statement about language, reason, consensus 
etc. that I have read.  It might also be worth it to look at Seyla Benhabib's 
article "Afterward" in _The Communicative Ethics Controversy_ (also in _Situating 
the Self_).

ken




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