Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action

Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action

J iirgen

H aberm as

translated by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen introduction by Thomas McCarthy

Polity Press

This translation@ 1990 Mas sachu se tts Institute of Technology This work origi nally appeared in German under the title Moralbewwstsma und AmnmuniAativts Hondeln@ 198! by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main. The autho r has added the essay "Morality and Ethical Life" for the English­ language edition of this book.

First published in the United Kingdom in 1990 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd. First pu blished in papnback 1992 Reprinted 1995, 2003, 2007

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criticism and

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ISBN: 978-0-7456-0340-7 ISBN: 978-0-7456-11044

(pbk)

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Contents

Introduction by Thomas McCarthy Philosophy as Stand-In and Interpreter

vu 1

Reconstruction and Interpretation in the Social Sciences

21

Discourse Ethics : Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification

43

Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action

1 16

Morality and Ethical Life : Does Hegel's Critique of Kant Apply to Discourse Ethics?

1 95

Index

217

Introduction Thomas McCarthy

In his approach to moral theory Habermas is closest to the Kantian tradition .' Like Kant, he distinguishes the types of practical reasoning and corresponding types of "ought" proper to questions about what is practically expedient, ethically pru­ dent, and morally right. 2 C alculations of rational choice gen­ erate recommendations relevant to the pursuit of contingent purposes in the light of given p referen ces . When serious ques ­ tions of value arise, deliberation on whb one is, and who one wants to be, yields ethical advice concerning the good life. If q uesti ons of justice are involved, fair and impartial considera­ tion of conflicting interests results in judgments concerning what is right or just. And like Kant, Habermas regards ques­ tions of the last type, rather than specific a lly ethical matters, to be the proper domain of moral theory. This is not to say that ethical deliberation is irrational or exhibits no general structures of its own.3 But it is to say that the disappearance of value-imbued cosmologies and the disintegration of sacred canopies have opened the q u estion "How should I (or one, or we) live?" to the irreducible p l uralism of modern life. To sup­ pose that all of the questions of the good life dealt with under the rubric of classical ethics-qu estions of happine ss and virtue, character and ethos, community and tradition-