The Concept of Practical Reason

[00:00:01] MODERATOR:
Uh, it’s my pleasure to introduce tonight’s speaker, Professor Jürgen Habermas of the University of Frankfurt. Um, it’s customary on these occasions for me to tell you a lot of stuff about why he’s famous, uh, but I think you probably already know that because otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Uh, and what I thought I’d do instead is tell you the specific reasons why I admire Professor Habermas.

First of all, he is a living disproof of the widespread illusion that there is some unbridgeable gulf between continental and Anglo-Saxon philosophy. Uh, that somehow or other, we’re not supposed to be able to talk to people, uh, who were brought up on the continent of Europe. Uh, I have never found any difficulty in talking to Habermas, and when we taught a seminar together, at no point did anybody say, “Well, uh, I’m one kind of philosopher, and you’re another kind of philosopher.”

Okay, that’s one reason why I admire Habermas. Another reason is more difficult to state succinctly, but I’ll try to state it succinctly, and that is that Habermas is the inheritor of a certain philosophical tradition with which I have not myself been entirely in sympathy. But I have to say that he handles the weight of that tradition without sectarianism and with a great deal of flexibility and imagination.

Uh, the third reason that I especially admire Professor Habermas is, uh, that he is unusual among, uh, first-rate professional philosophers and that he is singularly free of vanity, malice, and hatred. I, I-

(laughter)

(laughter and applause)

I, I’ve always thought you couldn’t be a first-rate professional philosopher

(laughter)

without your share.

(laughter)

Uh, but I am always amazed that somehow or other Jürgen manages to do it. Uh, finally, and this I think may be to him the most important reason, and that is that he is the leading spokesman, not only on the continent of Europe, but in a way in the world at large, for the tradition of intelligence and rationality which has come to us from the European Enlightenment. And not just me, but all of us are in debt to him for that.

Okay, now a little bit about the ground rules. Um, tonight he’s gonna talk about practical reason, and he’s very kindly consented, uh, to hold a question period after that. And then tomorrow, there will be another lecture, the title of which is Morality, Law, and Politics, and that is in the library of the Men’s Faculty Club at two PM, and there will also be a discussion following that.

So at this point, it’s my pleasure to introduce Professor Jürgen Habermas.

(applause and cheering)

[00:03:24] JÜRGEN HABERMAS:
Ladies and gentlemen, dear John, I never had such a peculiar and, uh, sympathetic introduction. Thank you very much. I mean…

Um, I’m glad to be back in, uh, Berkeley after seven years. Um, uh, but, uh, facing, uh, such a large, uh, uh, number of, uh, kind and, at first glance, friendly, uh, audience, Um, it is implied that I have to disappoint at least ninety percent of you. So I’m sorry.

Uh, classical, classical ethics, like its modern counterpart, proceeds from the question, what ought I to do? This ought retains an unspec– an unspecific meaning until the problem in question is determined more closely, and with it then the vantage point whence it is supposed to be solved. Taking pragmatic, ethical, and moral questions as my guide, I wish first of all to differentiate the use of practical reason.

Practical reason is expected to fulfill different functions with respect to what it is expedient, good, or just. Accordingly, the constellation of reason and will changes in pragmatic, ethical, and moral discourse, and so I think also the meaning of ought in pragmatic instructions, in ethical advice, and in moral judgments. The second part of my lecture tonight is an attempt to roughly characterize the corresponding types of discourse and to distinguish those different concepts of practical reason that traditionally appear under the title purposive rationality, phronesis or judgments or, uh, morality.

You will have, uh, realized by now that I take quite the conventional route of moral philosophy and start from the internal point of view of a participant who is in need of orientation. Only at the very end, I will hint at the type of research for which I would use the results of, uh, tonight’s preliminary considerations. I mean, how, how is it, uh, phonetically and acoustically?

I mean, you, you understand me? I mean, uh, maybe not in content, but, uh

(laughter)

okay. It might be difficult behind me anyhow. To begin with, there are different types of questions: pragmatic, ethical, and moral questions.

Let me first, uh, illustrate that. We are confronted, we are confronted by practical problems in different situations. We search for reasons for a decision that mean different options.

If, for example, the bicycle we always use is broken, if our health starts to suffer, or if we, uh, don’t have the cash to satisfy certain needs. Now, in the next step, the goals can themselves become problematical. For instance, if the plan for a forthcoming holiday suddenly falls through, or if a person has to make up his mind as to which career he or she should strive for, at least if you are not just looking for jobs.

Whether one travels to Scandinavia or stays at home, this is a very German perspective, whether one would prefer to become a doctor or a manager depends in the first instance on our preferences and on the options, of course, open to us in such a situation. Again, we hunt for reasons, this time for a decision among the goals themselves. In both cases, what I ought to do is in fact determined by what one wants.

In other words, we are concerned with a rational choice of means given specific purposes or with a rational weighing up of purposes given existing preferences. Our will is in fact already framed by needs and values, and is only open for alternative choices of means or purposes. These compromise the techniques appropriate in each case, be they bicycle repair or treatment of a disease, strategies for for procuring money, programs for holiday planning or choice of career.

I mean, every one of you who ever has, uh, sit in a philosophical class already knows that philosophers’ examples are, uh, I mean, uh, surprisingly trivial. Uh, now such practical reasoning leads to recommendations which in simple cases take the semantic form of conditional imperatives. Kant speaks here of, uh, rules of skill, the Geschicklichkeitsregeln, and judicious advice, in other words, of technical and pragmatic imperatives.

Their illocutionary point can be understood as a relative ought. The instructions state what one ought to do or must do on the condition that one wishes to implement certain values or pursue certain purposes. Once the values themselves, however, become problematic, the question as to what ought I to do points beyond this horizon of purposive rationality.

With complex decisions such as, for example, the choice of a career pattern or an academic field, it may become clear that this is not a pragmatic question at all. Certainly, whoever wants to go into publishing management has to consider, at least in Germany, whether it would be more expedient to first run through an apprenticeship or to go straight to university. But whoever does not really know what she really wants is faced with a completely different situation.

In the latter case, the choice of career or the corresponding, uh, academic field is linked to the question of inclinations or interests, to the question of what sort of subject matter and activity one would find satisfying, and so on and so on, uh, I am not telling you. The more radically this question is pressed, the more it comes to a head as the issue of what life one wishes to lead, and this in turn amounts to the question as to which person one is and who one wishes to be. Whoever in the context of vital resolutions of this kind does not know what she wants, will in the end ask who she is and whom she wants to be.

Trivial or weak decisions of preference do not, of course, require any justification. No one must justify the make or type of a car or the sort of pullover he prefers. Strong preferences, to adopt the term used by Chuck Taylor,

(uh)

are by contrast those evaluations that are not the product of some ephemeral mood or inclination, but rather involve his or her self-understanding. That means the manner of life she leads and the character. These are all bound up with a person’s specific identity.

It is this that lends existential resolutions not only their weight, but also a context within which they both require justification and to a certain extent are capable of it. Ever since Aristotle, serious value decisions have been treated as clinical questions of the good life or a life that is not failed. I mean, under modern conditions, we better speak not so emphatically of the good life, but rather in the negative, uh, of a life that is not misspent.

As Adorno said, “Das nicht verfehlte Leben.” An illusionary decision such as binding oneself to the wrong partner, choosing and staying with the wrong career can result in a misspent life. Practical reason, which in this sense is oriented not only towards what is possible and expedient, but also towards what is good, moves in the domain of ethics, to use the classical terminology.

Now, strong evaluations are embedded in contexts of self-understanding. How I conceive of myself depends not just on how I describe, I, my, myself, but also on the examples I try to model myself on. My identity is determined at once both by how I see myself and how I wish to be seen, on what I find myself to be and which ideals I project myself and my life towards.

This existential self-understanding is evaluative in nature and somehow, uh, Janus-faced. It contains two strands, namely both the descriptive element of the ego’s past life history and the normative element of the, let’s say, ego ideal. As a consequence, clarification of self-understanding or clinical ascertainment of one’s own identity require an appropriative form of understanding, namely the appropriation of one’s own life history as well as of traditions and contexts of life that have determined one’s socialization.

This hermeneutic procedure of self-understanding can be pushed to a level of self-reflection if, in a clinical sense, illusions are involved. Critical awareness of one’s life history and its formative context is not a value-neutral self-understanding. Rather, the hermeneutically gained description of self is linked, internally linked, with a critical relation to oneself.

That is, a more profound self-understanding will alter attitudes rooted at least in an overall life project. There will be better reasons at hand to decide, for example, on studying either applied economics or theology if one has clarified who one is and wishes to be. The answer to ethical questions are generally unconditional imperatives of the following type.

You must embark on a career that gives you the feeling that you are helping other people. The sense in which this sentence is an imperative can be understood as an ought that does not depend on contingent purposes and preferences, and yet is not absolute. Here, what you ought or must do means that on the whole and in the long run, it is good for you if you act accordingly.

Strong evaluations depend on the goal set me as an absolute, but set me as an absolute, namely on my good and happy or not misspent life. The question what I ought to do undergoes now a further change in meaning as soon as my actions violate the interests of others and lead to conflicts that need to be regulated impartially, then it’s from the moral point of view. A few comparisons will help us to clarify the new quality that thus comes into play.

Pragmatic tasks, I mean, of the sort I mentioned at first. Pragmatic tasks are posed from the perspective of an actor who proceeds from his own purposes and preferences. In strategic action, the– when at least two parties are involved, uh, the participants assume that each person decides egocentrically in line with his or her respective interests.

Here, a latent conflict, so to say, permanently, exists with means of various opponents from the outset. This conflict can either take its course or be curbed and brought under control, even on the basis of a balance of interests. However, without a radical change in perspective and attitude, the participants cannot perceive an interpersonal conflict to be a moral problem.

If I can only procure the money, for instance, I need by withholding some of the relevant facts, then, seen pragmatically, all that counts is the potential success of the maneuver, maneuver. Whoever casts doubts on the admissibility, however, of such an approach is putting a different type of question, namely, the moral question, whether everyone would want all persons in my situation to act according to the same maxim. Even ethical issues do not yet require a complete break with an egocentric perspective.

They refer, after all, to the telos of one’s own life. Seen from this perspective, other persons, other life histories and interest positions only gain importance to the extent that, in the framework of our intersubjectively shared form of life, they are kindred to and intertwined with my identity, with my life history, and the state of my interests. My socialization process is determined by traditions that I share with other persons, of course.

My personal identity is shaped by collective identities, and my life history is, of course, embedded in an overarching historical context. To this degree, the life which is good for me also touches on life forms that are common to us. Accordingly, for Aristotle, the ethos of the individual only mirrors the ethos of the polis.

However, the direction of ethical questions is different from that of moral questions. The relation of interpersonal conflicts that arise from opposing interests is not yet an issue. Let me return to our example.

Whether I wish to be someone who in actual need is prepared to engage in, let’s say, petty fraudulence vis-à-vis an anonymous insurance company is at first not a moral question, for the question has to do with my self-esteem and possibly with the respect of others shown me. But it does not focus on the issue of the equal respect for everybody. Yet, the moment we start testing our maxims in terms of their being reconcilable with those of others, we are getting closer to the moral standpoint.

Maxims are what Kant terms those situational, more or less trivial, everyday rules of thumb towards which individuals customarily orient their action. They relieve, these maxims, the actor of the burden of making decisions all the time, and they cluster more or less consistently to form a practice which reflects one’s character and the manner in which one conducts one’s life. In general, maxims form the smallest units in a network of habits in which a person or a group or a group’s identity and lifestyle take on a concrete shape.

They regulate the daily rounds, the manner one adopts when designing, when dealing with other people, handling problems, solving conflicts, and so on and so on. Now, these maxims are situated in the interface between ethics and morality because they can be judged according to both ethical and moral viewpoints. The maxim that I will allow myself to engage in petty fraud may not be good for me, namely, if it is not compatible with the picture of the person who I wish to be and as whom I want to be recognized.

The same maxim, however, may also be, and of course is, unjust, namely if general adherence to it is not equally good for all and everybody. If informed by the question of how I wish to live, then testing maxims lay claim to the practical reason in a different way than does the moral testing of whether a maxim is suited to regulate our lives if it constitutes a general practice. In the one instance, the maxim is tested in terms of whether it is good for me and appropriate to the situation.

In the other, I am testing whether I can want a maxim to be a general law obeyed and made by all.

(cough)

The former is an ethical consideration, the latter one of a moral nature, albeit still moral in a somewhat restrictive sense. For the result of this reasoning continues to remain somehow tied to the first-person perspective. Even in moral reasoning, even in moral reasoning, my own perspective is determined, is determined by my understanding of myself.

And a lax attitude towards petty formalism may also be compatible with the way in which I wish to live, even if others behave similarly in a comparable situation and occasionally then make me the victim of their dealings and feelings. It does not follow from an egocentrical test of a maxim’s universal liability that that maxim would also be accepted by all the others as a moral guideline for their actions. This conclusion would only be correct if my perspective would converge a fortiori with those of all the others.

Only if my identity and my life project would reflect a uni– a universally valid form of life as Aristotle still thought. Would that which from my perspective is equally good for all indeed be in the equal interest of everyone? But, you know, under modern conditions, we are far from that.

It is only Kant’s categorical imperative that breaks with the egocentricity of the golden rule. According to the Categorical Imperative, a maxim is just, as you well know, if everyone could want it to be adhered to by all in comparable situations. Not only me, but each person must be able to want the maxim to become a universal law.

Only– I mean, think of human rights, for instance. Only a maxim that can be generalized from the perspective of all possibly affected by it deserves general agreement and is thus worthy of recognition.

Then it’s morally binding. The question of what I ought to do is now answered with strict reference to that which one, which one ought to do. Moral precepts are categorical or unconditional imperatives that express valid norms or derive from them.

The evolutionary point of such imperatives can be understood as an ought that is dependent neither on contingent purposes or preferences, nor on the telos of a good, but it needs not a totally misspent life that I set for myself as an absolute goal. Rather, what one ought to do must or what one must do means that it is just and thus the content of one’s duty. To sum up, uh, the question of, uh, what I ought to do can receive either a pragmatic, an ethical, or a moral meaning.

We are concerned in all three cases with the justification of a choice between possibilities of, uh, alternative courses of action. Yet pragmatic tasks demand a, uh, different type of action, and the corresponding question requires a different type of answer than do ethical and moral tasks. A preferential appraisal of purposes and, uh, purposive rational assessments of ele– of available means both serve a decision on how one should intervene in the objective world in order to bring about a desired state of affairs.

This type of reasoning involves clarification, of course, of empirical questions and questions of rational choice. Recommendations on the suitable technique or an implementable program forms the terminus ad quem of the corresponding pragmatic discourse. Now, rational preparation of a serious value decision which touches on the direction one takes in leading one’s life, is something different.

Here, we have to do with the hermeneutic clarification of an individual’s self-understanding and the clinical question of one’s good or not misspent life. The advice as to the correct orientation of one’s life forms the terminus ad quem of the corresponding ethical discourse. Finally, moral judgment of actions and maxims is yet again something unlike the two other.

Moral reasoning serves to clarify what are legitimate behavioral expectations in the face of interpersonal conflicts. Here we are con-concerned with the justifications and the application of norms that encode reciprocal duties and rights. Moral judgments in view of a conflict in the domain of norm-regulated actions forms the terminus ad quem of the corresponding moral-practical discourse.

The pragmatic, the ethical, the moral use of practical reason is thus designed for technical and strategic instruction, clinical advice, and moral judgment respectively. Practical reason is a name we give to the competence to provide justifications for corresponding imperatives. Depending on the time of action at stake and the decision to be made, not only the evolutionary meaning of the master ought changes within a certain category, so does the concept of the will that is to be determined by imperatives in each case.

The notion of the will that is addressed changes in each case. The art of pragmatic instructions is relative to contingent, to contingent purposes and preferences, and is addressed to the free will of a subject who makes intelligent decisions on the basis of given needs and values. The capacity for rational choice does not extend to the, uh, underlying interests and value orientations themselves, but are framed by them.

The art of clinical advice, on the other hand, is relative to the telos of a good life and is addressed to the free will of an individual who has decided already on leading, let me say, an authentic life and strives for what one might call self-realization. So, the capacity for existential decision and radical self-choice, uh, an expression of Kierkegaard, of course, always speaks within the horizon of a life history from the traces of which the individual can learn who she is and wants to be. And finally, the categorical order of moral norms is addre-is addressed to the free will of an autonomous person who acts according to, uh, self-legislated, uh, laws.

It is only in this will, in its third meaning, that is free in the emphatic sense that it can be determined throughout in terms of moral judgments, that is, of reasons. In the domain in which moral law obtains, neither accidental dispositions nor moral life history or personal identity places a limit on the penetrations, so to say, of will by practical reason. Only such a will, which is completely determinable by moral insights, can be called autonomous, at least in the Kantian sense.

All heteronomous traits have been erased from it, whether due to subjective preferences or individual life projects. Kant, however, confused the autonomous will with an omnipotent will. In order to put this will in a sovereign position, Kant had to transpose it into the intelligible world.

Yet in the world as we know it, the autonomous will is efficacious only to the extent that the motivational force of good reasons is able to prevail over competing motives. In sum, practical reason is directed towards the will of a purposive, rationally acting subject when applied from the viewpoint of what is expedient. It is addressed to the will of a subject, secondly, of authentic self-realization when applied from the viewpoint of what is good for him or her.

And finally, it is addressed towards the will of a subject capable of moral judgment when applied from the viewpoint of justice. The constellation, so to say, of reason and will changes in each case. In line with changes in the meaning of the question, what ought I to do?

Not only does a change occur in the agency, the will of the actor who is hunting for an answer, but So too in the informant, the concept of practical reason itself changes in these instances. For Kant, practical reason coincides with morality. Reason and will are only unified in a person’s autonomy.

For empiricism, deeply ingrained in Anglo-Saxon traditions, for empiricism, practical reason is absorbed in its pragmatic application. It is somehow reduced to purposes of rationality, for instance, in utilitarianism. For the Aristotelian tradition, practical reason takes on the role of a phronesis or a judgment, which clarifies an ethical form of life from within the horizon of a life history or a form of life.

In each of these three cases, practical reason is assumed to achieve something different, which is shown by the different types of, uh, discourse in which we, uh, move, uh, respectively. Let me, in the second and, uh, shorter part of my lecture, first briefly, uh, elucidates at least some features of these different types of, uh, discourse and thereby the different concepts of practical reason. In a certain way, pragmatic discourses, in which we justify technical and strategic instructions, have something in common with empirical discourses.

They serve to relate empirical knowledge to hypothetical purposes and preferences, and to evaluate the consequences of, of course, always incompletely informed decisions. So technical or strategic instructions derive their validity from the empirical knowledge that they rely on. Their validity is independent of whether an addressee in fact decides to adopt the instructions or not.

Here, no internal relation obtains between, let me say, reason and will. In ethical discourses, this constellation changes to the extent or to the effect that valid advice does, or at least is supposed to provide a rational motive for a switch in attitude and disposition. In the processes of reaching self-understanding, the roles of participants in argumentation and the role of social actors somehow overlap.

Whoever wants to gain a clear view on his life or her life as a whole, who wishes to justify seeing his value in decisions and to ascertain his or her identity cannot be substituted as a participant in an ethical discourse, as it is, of course, the case in pragmatic discourses. Notwithstanding this partic-particularistic feature, we can, I think, still speak of a discourse, For here, the argumentational steps must also remain open to their intersubjective supervision and corroboration. The members of the same lifeworld are the potential participants who take on the catalytic role of detached critics in processes of reaching self-understanding, and this role then can institutionally, so to say, uh, uh, differentiate it, uh, become differentiated out into the professional role of a therapist.

Now, reaching an understanding of self leads to evaluative statements on what is good for a particular person. Such evaluations rest on the reconstruction of a life history, whereas now reconstruction means not only the descriptive grasping of formative processes by dint of which I have become the person I find myself to be. It simultaneously means a critical sifting and reorganization of the elements in such a way that my own past appears in the light of current alternatives as the consistent developmental pattern of the very person whom I wish to be and to remain, and as whom I wish to be accepted also in the future.

That existentialist thinker of thought, that, uh, Heidegger calls, uh, ein geworfener, um,

(cough)

uh, a dwarf, projected project, illuminates the, um, uh, Janus face of those strong evaluations for which justification is gained via a critical appropriation of one’s own life history. Here, genesis and validity can no longer be separated from one another as in the case of technical and strategic instructions. In the very, uh, act of recognizing what is good for me, I simultaneously make the advice my own.

By convincing myself of a clinical advice, I already decide to reorient my life as advised, whether I succeed or not. Of course, my identity only gives way, so to say, to the reflexive pressure of a changed understanding of self. In fact, it’s defenseless even when confronted with such, um, hitting advice, if this, uh, understanding obeys the same standards of authenticity as does the ethical discourse itself.

Such a discourse assumes a pre-existent striving for an authentic life on the part of the addressee, and insofar, the whole enterprise of ethical discourse remains dependent on the prior decision to lead a conscious life. Now, as Aristotle said, ethics is only something for people who have been rightly socialized. This is another way to put the same point.

And Kierkegaard, of course, is the one single example who in fact analyzed this, uh, uh, um, uh, process of becoming prepared to take such a radical, uh, uh, self-choice as he called it. So in ethical discourse, reason and will mutually determine one another while they remain both embedded in the context thematized in such discourse as a topic. In such processes of reaching self-understanding, the participants must not jump out on some particular life history or form of life in which they actually find themselves.

By contrast, now, moral practical discourses demand just that. They demand a break with everything that is taken as a matter of course in a customary, concrete ethical life. They require that I take a distance from those contexts of life with which my own identity is bro-bound up.

Only under the presuppositions of a universal discourse in which all those possibly affected could take part, and where each could adopt an argumentational stance to the validity claims of problematical norms and actions. Only here is a complete reversal of roles and, uh, perspectives possible. And this is, of course, the very idea of a universal discourse, uh, laid out by George Herbert Mead.

This vantage point of impartiality that allows us to transcend the subjectivity inherent in each person’s own perspective, but without, and that is important, but without losing its link to the performative attitude of the participants. The objectivity of an ideal observer would block any access to the intuitive knowledge of the lifeworld. Moral argumentation requires instead the idealizing expansion, expansion of our communication community from within.

Norms will meet with agreement before this forum only if they express a common interest of all those affected. And to this extent, discursively grounded norms bring to bear at once both a recognition of what lies in the equal interest of everyone, as well as a general will that has, at least presumably, without repressing any single will, absorbed within itself the wills of all. In this sense, the will that is determined by moral reasons does not remain external to practical reason.

The autonomous will, so to say, is absorbed by this type of, uh, reasoning. It is very hot. I, uh

(laughter)

, think you allow me to, uh, finish with the official part of, uh, this, uh, uh, event. Now, as a consequence, Kant believes that practical reason first truly becomes, uh, uh, becomes, so to say, uh, uh, in its own, uh, as this norm-testing competence. That means Kant really, uh, identifies practical reason with

(cough)

this, uh, very narrowly defined, uh, concept of morality. Now, in interpreting the categorical imperative, we have to be careful in order to avoid the one-sidedness of Kant’s theory, a theory that concentrates solely on questions of moral justification. I have two reservations.

First, as soon as moral justification relies on a principle of universalization that compels the participants to submit problematic norms independent of particular situations, independent of given motives or existing institutions through the test of what all could will, the question arises whether norms which would be justified in such a manner can be applied at all, can be applied to any situation and any case. Such norms owe their abstract generality to the fact that they only stand the test of universalization in a decontextualized form. In such an abstract form, valid norms can, however, only be applied without further ado.

to standard situations which are already characterized by those conditions that are specified in advance in the if component of the rule. However, every justification of norms has to operate under the normal limitations of a finite mind. In the process of justification, we cannot a priori consider all those traits that once may characterize the constellations of unforeseen particular cases.

It is for this reason that the application of laws requires an additional argumentation of its own which, uh, Kant never took into consideration. The impartiality of the judgment cannot ga– cannot again be secured in this process of application by the principle of universalization. When confronted by questions of context-sensitive application, practical reason must rather be brought to bear via another principle.

I call it the principle of appropriateness. In the case of application, it must be shown, namely, which of the norms already presumed to be valid are most suited to a given problem now in the light of all the relevant features of a situ-situation which is as exhaustively described as possible. The procedure of justification remains uncomplete until it is complemented by an as rational procedure of application.

Now this was the first reservation. The second one is this. Discourses of application remain, as do those of justification, a purely cognitive affair, and thus offer no compensation for first having uncoupled moral judgments from actors’ motives and institutional context.

Moral judgments are valid irrespective of whether the adversary actually does what is held to be right. Certainly, the autonomy of the adversary’s will must be, let me say, measured in terms of whether he or she is able to act according to his or her moral judgments. But moral insights, as you may know, do not by themselves bring about moral actions.

The validity claim associated with normative sentences is certainly of a binding nature. This is part of the semantic content. In Kant’s terminology, an obligation makes you feel how your will is affected by a normative claim to validity.

And to bad conscience, by the way, that plagues us when we have acted against our better insights, shows that the reasons on which such a validity claim is raised are not without any impact. Feelings of guilt are a, a palpable indicator of, uh, violations of obligations, yet in such a case, they only express that we know that we have no good reasons for acting otherwise. So guilt feelings indicate some sort of a split in will.

Let me in the end, uh, shift, uh, the level of analysis and turn from individual to collective will formation. That will be the topic of my, uh, seminar tomorrow. Empirical will, split off from autonomous will, in a Kantian sense, plays a noteworthy role in the dynamics of our moral learning processes, if there is such a thing.

Such a split is a symptom for a weakness of will only if the moral demands which it violates are at the same time legitimate and can be imputed to a person under given conditions. More often, the protest of a diverging empirical will is not just a sign of weakness that can be attributed to an individual actor. More often, it discloses the voice of someone excluded by rigid moral principles a-and selectively applied moral principles.

I mean, the voice of injured integrity and of human dignity, the voice of the denied difference. How does this work? Now, in moral discourse, validity and genesis are again disconnected as it is necessary in a cognitive enterprise.

Since the principles of a post-tradition- post-traditional morality lay claim to a status which is somehow analogous to true premises. Yes, yes. So universal claims to validity may sometimes provide a facade, and behind this facade, um, a, uh, powerful but unjustifiable interest that is merely forced through can all the more easily conceal and entrench itself.

Therefore, social movements and political battles have repeatedly been and will continue to be necessary in order to break the chains of a false, merely pretended universality of a biased appeal to principles which are in fact only selectively read and applied in an insensitive fashion. Thus, we can learn from the painful experiences and sometimes from the irreparable sufferings of those who have been humiliated and insulted, wounded, and slain. We can learn from that that no one may be excluded in the name of any moral universalism, be they underprivileged classes, an exploited nation, a marginalized minority or suppressed, suppressed women.

Whoever excludes in the name of universalism another party who has a right to remain a stranger to the others, betrays the very idea he or she espouses. Correctly understood and carefully handled, the universalism of equal respect for everybody and of solidarity with all does not contradict, but I think we have even empirical evidence for that, even for most radical pluralism that involves a variety of different forms of life and individualized life projects. Now, uh, this, uh, thought, it’s, uh, only a hint, of course, already goes beyond the bounds of our, uh, of tonight’s, uh, uh, consideration of individual will formation.

Thus far, our examination of the pragmatic, ethical, and moral employment of practical reason has been informed by the traditional question of what ought I to do? If the direction of the question is shifted from the first person singular to the first person plural, then it is more than just the form of reasoning, uh, which, uh, changes, I think. What we have to face is not a shift in perspective, let’s say, from the interiority of monological thought to the publicity of a discourse, but rather a change in the way the problem is put.

The only changes in which we encounter other persons. I think that in fact new problems arise once that other person is a real person who confronts me with his or her own stubborn non-substitutable, non-substitutable will, it is above all the reality of a will foreign to me that belongs to the conditions of a collective will formation. The fact of the plurality of actors, Hannah Arendt, and the condition of double contingency in social interaction poses the problem, uh, that, uh, uh, Parsons in his, uh, technical language has, uh, called, uh, the problems of pattern maintenance and productive goal attainment.

You know that contractarian theories in modern natural law have reacted to these very problems. They miss, however, I think, the intersubjective nature of a collective will formation that must not be thought of as an individual will formation projected on a larger scale. Cognitive operations then are no longer accomplished in mente.

They shift onto the level of the procedures and communicative presuppositions of discourses and negotiations that are actually, uh, carried out. So, uh, I will, uh, in a similar but much more complicated way, I say that the more, uh, internal way, uh, take up the same questions that has been, have been dealt with by, uh, contractarian, uh, theories tomorrow. Thank you.

(applause)

(applause and cheering)

[01:01:02] MODERATOR:
Um, Professor Abu-Masa has kindly agreed to take questions from the floor. Are there any questions? Uh, well, while people are getting out, I have a question.

Um, I, I, I, I’m not really sure that Habermas divides the territory quite the way that I want to divide it. And just to clarify my own understanding of what he said, let me, uh, say a little bit about how it seems to me the distinction between what he calls strong evaluations and other sorts of works and what it has to do with self-definitions. It seems to me there’s clearly a distinction between the kind of decision you make when you’re deciding whether or not to choose a Chevrolet or cheat on your income tax, and the kind of decision, uh, that you make when you’re deciding whether or not to commit suicide.

And in the first case, uh, you can appeal to a, uh, a prior preference, uh, schedule and a, on a, uh, prior existing, uh, self-conception. And, uh, Kant– both Kant and the utilitarians really seem to me to be more addressed to that kind of a distinction. But when you’re deciding on the other sort of question that involves basic self-definitions, who am I?

What sort of person am I?

[01:02:19] JÜRGEN HABERMAS:
You can’t appeal to a preexisting preference scale because that’s what you’re trying to invent, and there isn’t any criterion to which you can appeal to. And I think in a way, you could really argue against Kant. You can’t even appeal to the categorical imperative because what you’re trying to decide is, am I the sort of person who lives by the categorical imperative or maybe I don’t give a damn about the categorical imperative.

[01:02:42] MODERATOR:
Now, that distinction seems to me to cut across the, the moral non-moral distinction. And I’m not sure that that’s the way I would divide up the territory, and I wasn’t really clear if that was how you were dividing it up. And one thing that puzzled me was the remarks that you made at the end about appropriateness.

Because, of course, where the Kantian category, I mean, that was addressed, I take it, to Kant. And the point about the Kantian categories is they only are intelligible from inside. Uh, that is, I have to ask myself, what’s the intentional content of the motivation of this decision, and can I universalize that?

And then the appeal to the public characterization would seem to be irrelevant. But anyway, what’s your reaction?

(laughter)

[01:03:34] JÜRGEN HABERMAS:
Yeah, I mean, uh,

(laughter)

I think that, uh, the, the ethical, as you put it, overlap, uh, moral and non-moral, but, uh, uh, my, uh, terminological proposition was to define, uh, morality on Kantian lines as narrow, uh, or so narrow that, uh, uh, there is no, uh, moral, uh, element, uh, included in, uh, uh, ethical reasoning, as you said. Um, but it is still a normative kind of reasoning. So I don’t, I don’t see, uh, a really interesting, difference in, uh, uh, I mean, making the conceptual cuts between the two of us.

Now, to the more important, uh, in my view, more important question of justification and application, uh, maybe, uh, this is a very brief way to introduce, uh, complicated, uh, but anyhow well-known questions. Um, I think that

(cough)

To justify an action in the light of a given norm or to justify a norm in the light of a given principle, or to justify given principles just procedurally, um, can operate along con– can operate along, uh, at least the intuition of universalization that is, uh, expressed in the categorical imperative. I would give this universalization procedure, however, uh, a, uh, an intersubjective is leading according to, uh, pragmatists like, uh, George Herbert Mead, namely what, uh, is really particular in, uh, this American tradition is, uh, the solution of one problem. Let me just extend, and I mean, I know that you, you, uh, I mean, I mean, I, you were so, so, uh, let me say, um, easy in dropping, I mean, the, the best and most important tradition of this country that I… Let me just, let me just, let me just, uh, uh, uh, make the point,

Yeah? I mean, traditionally in a Kantian way, uh, of, uh, argument, one, uh, says, “Oh, uh, look at Socrates.” Look at Luther, uh, before the Reichstag in Augsburg, who said, ‘Here I am standing, I cannot but to, uh, act in this and not in another way.’

And so there was an appeal to, uh, i-if, if one wants to explain autonomy, to, uh, the individual mind as against the whole world. Now, what is left out in terms of intuitions that should be safe is that then morality in fact becomes something that is most seriously and in the last instance solved in the innermost core of the lonely soul. But this contradicts totally, uh, to the, uh, reverse side of justice, which is namely covered by morality too.

Namely, to the intuition that to act morally mean to act as well, just as in a solidary way, only that this solidarity is not just to my family, not just to my city, but to mankind. Now, uh, Mead, uh, took these examples and said, “No.” I mean, in order to cover, uh, this, uh, solidaric feature of moral, um, uh, uh, universalism, we should rather think of an appeal to a community which transcends, in some and the most severe cases, that community in which I, in fact, uh, have been raised and grown up and still am a defending for– defending social actor. So what he invents is the, uh, not so to say the appeal to, to a categorical imperative, to a, a Sitten, that’s a law of morals or whatever, who, uh, which then can be applied by a single mind.

No, what he is appealing to or what he is proposing is that we should think of an appeal to a community that ideally encloses all those which would be affected by, uh, uh, an action or, uh, an affording norm, uh, if only it would be established as a universal norm. Now, if you think about justification in that way, then application should be really distinguished, I think, in a different way than, than we are usually, uh, we are used to. Namely, then we have, uh, uh, somehow, uh, to see that the very, uh, notion of impartiality, which is at the core of the notion of settling moral conflicts, is only halfway, um, uh, covered, yeah, by the principle of universalization, whether in a Kantian or Millian fashion.

And that there must be again a certain principle, and I think these principles can be, uh, e-exclusively of a procedural nature, please. I mean, there’s nothing substantive with it. Uh, uh, there is then a principle of, uh, appropriateness which demands to, uh, uh, select independently justifiable norms among them in the light of an as exhaustively described, uh, situation as, uh, possible.

And then, uh, the, the, the picture somehow is different. I was too long, isn’t it?

[01:10:46] MODERATOR:
No, it’s all right. Um, o-okay, other questions, uh, to Professor Habermas. Yes, this person here.

[01:10:52] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
I’d like to know if you have a developmental model of morals, then doesn’t it seem that it, doesn’t it seem that the, this developmental model is really a meta morality that the first principle of morality would have to be not to obstruct my own development on the scale of morality with that of another?

[01:11:18] JÜRGEN HABERMAS:
Now, uh, apart from the developmental side, so you know, I come back to that, Um, uh, I would say that, uh, what philosophers are usually talking about and should only talk about, as philosophers I mean, uh, is something very trivial and not very substantive, namely, uh, the, uh, explanation of what it means to settle a certain type of conflict impartial, im-impartially. That means they explain, to put it in the traditional phrase, uh, the moral point of view. But with this, uh, they just remind everybody who has been raised in the family and has somehow learned, uh, to get, uh, into, uh, the very reciprocities and mutualities of life in connection which are linked with the very type of communicative action through which socialization processes can proceed only anyhow.

I mean, uh, uh, what, what they do is to remind, uh, anybody of us, uh, of the very formal point of view which allows to, uh, discuss in a reasonable way moral conflicts. With this, there is no single moral question of any substance, uh, solved. And this is important because, uh, since two thousand years, for philosophers suppose that they are the ones who can set up a morality in terms of any substantive points of views and norms.

Maybe they can do that, but then please, they should be aware that they change their role and, uh, show up as a participant among participants because, only in moral discourses proper, and this is not a moral discourse which I have been, uh, uh, leading, uh, uh, tonight. Only in proper moral discourses we can jointly, I mean, take those decisions, the consequences of which we have to carry too. So it is a very minor business, if you want, from a participant’s point of view, that is or can be solved by philosophers.

Now, the developmental thing, um, whether now this is something meta-ethical or meta-theoretical, you said. Um, And whether, uh, if you, uh, look at it from a developmental perspective, um, yeah. Um, you, um, are engaged in, uh, like Kohlberg, in, uh, uh, laying out, uh, only a, uh, empirical theory into which certain normative premises, uh, have been built in.

And I mean, if that was the question, then I would just say yes. Maybe I misunderstood you there.

[01:14:58] MODERATOR:
Uh, there’s a question over here, Professor Nader.

[01:15:01] PROFESSOR NADER:
Professor Al-Ulama, I’m not a philosopher, I’m an anthropologist, and I’m attracted to the word practical in your title. Could you conceive of using, or could you tell us how you might use the concept of practical reason to remedy the fact that there has never been a woman who has given the Howison Lecture in philosophy?

(laughter and applause)

(applause)

[01:15:27] JÜRGEN HABERMAS:
I’m,

(applause)

I’m glad to leave the answer to, uh, those in charge.

(laughter)

[01:15:37] MODERATOR:
Uh,

(laughter and applause)

I, I, I’m happy to suggest that Professor Nader be on the selection committee.

(laughter)

(applause)

Other, uh, other questions?

(background chatter)

[01:15:53] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
I, I, I think that on the ethical and the pragmatic side, uh, I don’t see how people make judgments in their time. Um, but in, in about forty years, in the last forty years, I have been trying to decide whether America is an imperialist enterprise or the shield of the West. So on the moral side, uh, the, the set of moral structures which we all agree on don’t seem to quite let me know how to deal with that problem.

I, I hope it’s broken, it’s broken.

[01:16:39] JÜRGEN HABERMAS:
Uh, I mean, uh, uh, this is, uh, a well-known issue of political debates, and the answer depends on, uh, more or less well-informed, uh, uh, political attitudes Uh, of course, saying that, it means that there can be on these issues also some, uh, informations of, uh, from the side of political and sociological and economic analysis. And, uh, if we look into this cell, into this field, then you see again, uh, at least more recently, that the field is, uh, heavily split.

I don’t think that it helps you if I just utter my own political opinion on this. I mean, um, I’m, I’m not hesitating to utter political opinions, I mean, but, but then, uh, w-we should do it, uh, not with any, uh, philosophical authority. Okay.

Um, uh, uh, just coming back to I don’t want to escape that type of question. Um, of course, as, uh, an anthropologist and as a sociologist, uh, you and I can easily analyze, I mean, the, uh, selection mechanisms of, uh, higher education in, uh, the United States and in Europe in order to give an explanation of that fact. I mean, this is no normative answer to that, of course.

[01:18:26] MODERATOR:
Uh, I’m happy to tell Professor Nader that Elizabeth Anscombe was, uh, the, the, uh, Howison lecturer. Elizabeth is from, uh, Cambridge University. Uh, are there other questions at this point? Uh, yes, over here.

(crowd chatter)

Yes. We can hear you if we all shut up.

[01:18:55] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Um, you have mentioned that the, the position of the ideal observer, and I am wondering whether rational discourse is, is is the sole requirement to get to that position of the ideal observer, or are there other, other requirements or qualifications to get to that position? As you know, the, there are material interests and conflicting material interests. There are-

[01:19:25] JÜRGEN HABERMAS:
There are.

[01:19:26] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
I, my question is whether rational discourse can somehow, um, or what it is, is a way to, to work out the, those conflicts. You might have, you might have answers to, to this question, but I might have

(coughing)

missed the, the answer.

[01:19:45] JÜRGEN HABERMAS:
Yeah. Yeah, a-a-as far as I understand, I mean, it has two aspects. I didn’t refer to the, uh, ideal observer as a, uh, sufficient model.

This is the model of utilitarianism, and I do think that if you take that position, you cut yourself off from all moral intuitions, and that from all necessary knowledge. So, uh, the, uh, uh, position for the moral point of view I, uh, propose is that of a higher order intersubjectivity. That means the, uh, point of view of participants in a discourse, uh, which operates from the presupposition, at least, that each is willing and capable of taking the, uh, perspectives of everybody else.

That is, uh, you get an, uh, position of impartiality from within. That’s a Rousseauian model, I mean, in this respect, and you don’t get pseudo-objectivity from a third person’s view which is just not, uh, applicable, applicable to moral patients. But as far as I understand, you are just as satisfied with, uh, the whole, uh, model of, uh, rational discourse and are asking, of course, uh, I mean, what should it mean in face of, uh, I mean, uh, the reality of listening to debates and, uh, of, uh, other, uh, less, uh, uh, enjoyable features of public communication and private as well.

Uh, now, uh, did I, did I ignore that? Did I, did I get some questions?

[01:21:40] MODERATOR:
No, I think so. Yeah. But, uh, but there’s another a-aspect to the question, and that is you appealed earlier to the concept of an ideal community.

And I guess the difficulty with that is when you specify the features of the ideal community, you have perfect discourse, and the community is perfectly rational, uh, and it, uh, uh, strives, uh, or on some other models, it strives to maximize some sort of good. Then it looks like the notion of the ideal community reduces, uh, to more traditional notions. That is, it looks like the ideal community doesn’t add anything to the tradition and ethics, because the features of the community are already contained in these other theories.

Now, what’s your reaction to that?

[01:22:28] JÜRGEN HABERMAS:
I, uh, I know only of, uh, as I said, the pragmatist tradition in which this, uh, uh, type of, uh, ideal role-taking or universal discourse has been applied to, uh,

(cough)

um, um, the, uh, explication, the question of explication of the moral point of, uh, Mills. I, um, do think that, uh, more is implied in this intersubjectivist notion of morality than in the, uh, traditional ones because, um, you have, uh, both sides in one, uh, uh, taken into consideration, namely, the aspect of, uh, the equal respect for everybody. And this is a, this is sort of saying it’s a glance, on the individual whose autonomy has to be respected.

And on the, on the other hand, you have equally taken into consideration the aspect of, uh, solidarity. That means of being a member of, uh, some sort of a community, the structure of which is jointly fair. And, um, uh, I, uh, think that, uh, my somewhat complicated notion of, uh, of, of discourse, I mean of modern discourse, which, uh, should be analyzed in terms of pragmatic presuppositions, which are necessary for all those who, uh, enter the discourse, that this, um, notion of discourse is a, let me call it reflective form of, uh, communicative action.

And, uh, that means that in the very communicative structure of such a discourse on the pragmatic level, there is something built in via presuppositions, namely built in, in what we also have built in into, uh, communicative action and interaction. That means certain, uh, uh, uh, re-reciprocities in, uh, uh, life and nation, uh, certain, uh, um, uh, possibilities to change, uh, perspectives, not only from first to second, second to third, third to first person, but also, uh, perspectives from person to person and so on. So I mean, if I would go into this, then you would see this was not my topic, uh, today.

Then you would see that, um, uh, the intersubjectivist approach does make a difference. I mean, but I don’t think that this was a question of meaning. I mean, I-

(laughter)

It was, it was because, uh,

(unintelligible)

added to, to you. Um. let me see. I mean, did I, did I, did I get it? Am I restating your question? Did I get it? Oh, I get it.

[01:26:02] MODERATOR:
There’s a question here in the front row.

[01:26:05] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Well, I guess what I heard the woman’s question has to do with, um, material preconditions- Yeah… for a speech community. And can you address that, you know, the material, the linguistic, the institutional, um, because the question of power is lurking behind that.

[01:26:23] MODERATOR:
I don’t know if everybody in the back could hear that.

[01:26:25] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
A little bit louder.

[01:26:25] MODERATOR:
The questioner was asking about the material preconditions of Professor Habermas’ conception of an ideal speech community, and would Professor Habermas address himself to what kind of, uh, uh, economic basis is necessary to have his ideal?

[01:26:44] JÜRGEN HABERMAS:
Now, uh, the, uh, approach tonight was conventional. That means strictly normative. And, uh, from that perspective, you, uh, can get to the point where, uh, the, uh, maybe really important questions, uh, of, um, uh, social and economic and material food conditions show up, but you can’t deal with them from that perspective.

Now, there’s one way. Let me, let me, uh, take one route in order to, to make you aware of the perspective I have had. There is one route to continue this normative kind of reasoning and, uh, yet to, uh, uh, see what it implies for the answer of your question.

Uh, I had expected that, uh, some of you and many of you, of course, do have these questions, um, would have asked, um, how we– really, what, what it really means to distinguish with, uh, between these three categories of, uh, uh, practical questions and, uh, whether there is not implied a much deeper problem, namely how to recognize which problem is of a moral or an ethical or a, uh, pragmatic nature, since it is so easy to turn all practical questions, for instance, uh, into utilitarian ones or rational choice questions, or to turn any moral reflection, like, uh, my friend Chuck Taylor or Sandel or, uh, our colleague, uh, uh, Bernard Williams, to turn any question, uh, of a practical and normatively known nature into an ethical one. So, uh, and in practical life, for instance, we have this primary evidence that there are some people who aestheticize everything, uh, and, uh, understand, uh, all practical questions as somehow, uh, questions of how to ex-express oneself or how to find the, the right code, the right symbol system, the right, uh, uh, sequence of signs and so on and so on. So, uh, we, uh, we, we, we see economizers, we see aestheticizers, we see moralizers, and I, uh, suppose we have also, this is my invention, ethicalizers.

For instance, if you have seen the, uh, uh, apostolic letter of the Pope, which I read in the New York Times the other day, then, I mean, it is an ambiguous statement, at least in this, uh, selective, uh, presentation there. But there seems to lurk in the background, um, uh, a, uh, an attempt to deal with straightforward moral questions in ethical terms, namely in terms of, uh, how we interpret that form of life in which the relation between men and women is, so to say, defined or patterned or whatever. Uh, while– I mean, if this really comes to the fore, and if then one image of feminist– or femininity, if that is a word, Weiblichkeit, um, rules out, I mean, questions of equal rights.

For instance, that’s a working place in the, on the labor market and so on, then we would have, I mean, I’m careful here, we would have a instance, an instance, uh, for, yeah, turning moral questions into ethical ones, without sufficient justification. So one could have asked that question, and I, I am, I am, uh, at least worried by it. And, uh, I, uh, am not prepared to, uh, recur to subjective faculties like judgment.

Now, not in the Aristotelian sense. I mean, in fact, it is some sort of judgment that we somehow use if, I mean, uh, somebody who, uh, makes, uh, on the stage an happening, uh, uses somebody from the audience in such a way that, uh, this type of happening goes nearly to the border of a life, let’s say. Then of course, you can easily imagine the type of discourse.

Half of them say, “Look, this is really art,” and the other half say, “Look, I mean, this is morally, uh, in-indignant,” or what is it? Insulting, undignified here. Um, uh, uh, and then what is it?

What is it? What makes us aware when the moral differentiation applies, or the ethical one, or the pragmatic one. Now, I mean, in fact, it is something which we cannot really explain.

It’s something like judgment. So from this, I– and now I come back after this detour to your question. So it is from this, I mean, purely normative, uh, perspective, um, that I think that there are somehow, um, selective, well-founded selective mechanisms which do, uh, lay constraints, moral constraints on ethical decisions and moral and ethical constraints on pragmatic, uh, decisions.

Um, but how to justify it when we only have the competition of several types of discourse that we know? There is no meta-discourse, I mean. Now, my intuition to answer that question from this non-empirical perspective is to say, no, only to the extent that we would have a type of institutional framework which is able to, which is capable to implement practical reason in all its dimensions, Um, into collective processes of collective will formation on all levels.

Only if we would have that type of institutionalization, it is not just a just society. No. It is a society which would institutionally, so to say, whole life, a probability for justiceness, for goodness, and for efficiency at the same time, I mean.

Only then we would have a, uh, selective mechanism which, uh, is not, so to say, imputed through the subjective faculties of individual, uh, uh, human, uh, beings. In saying that, I only want to, uh, point of course, uh, to, uh, the totally different, uh, methods of, uh, how we can analyze analyze the present situation in societies like ours, analyzed from the viewpoint of counteracting tendencies, and now evaluating these tendencies in terms of whether they rather work in favor, in a given complete situation, of a even only step-by-step further implementation of that, uh, practical reason which has to take an institutional shape within collective will-formation or not. And then as actors, as political actors, we can make up our minds what to do about it in order to take our moment to, uh, act in support for those, uh, tendencies.

So, uh, I only say that in order to, to, to, uh, I mean, to make clear that I am the last who, uh, would stop, uh, moment of reasoning just at that point. But, uh, uh, yeah, I mean, then you have, uh, to go into, into, of course, different types of analysis, of political economic analysis.

[01:36:58] MODERATOR:
I think I have time for one more question. Yes.

[01:37:02] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Um, how do you apply the, your i-ideas about morality in ideal discourse communities to real discourse communities? That is, real discourse communities where there is no single standard or norm of rationality. For example, there are communities in this country of religious fundamentalists, people who believe in the liberal tolerance, uh, people who believe in mystical practices, and so on, all in a single community.

How can one make sense of your ideas in the case of communities like that?

[01:37:40] JÜRGEN HABERMAS:
Now, uh, there is an answer to that from, uh, two perspectives. One is the perspective of, uh, Um, uh, let me say a, uh, second-person performative, uh, attitude, namely of a participant in argumentation. From this and only from this perspective, I maintain that you cannot, anyone cannot enter argumentation, that means some business which is designed for convincing each other.

You cannot enter argumentation proper without presupposing that there is a sufficient, uh, um, um, uh, uh, Annäherung, what is it? Uh, Annäherung, uh, uh-

[01:38:39] MODERATOR:
approximation,

[01:38:40] JÜRGEN HABERMAS:
approximation, uh, uh, to, uh, the three suppositions that, uh, in fact, uh, this ongoing discussion is to a sufficient extent free from, uh, uh, contingent force from within and from without, so that there is space for, uh, that particular force of the better argument. This is only, please, only what one can analyze as a necessarily intuitive knowledge that we bring to the pragmatic settings of argumentations, and it says nothing about, uh, the empirical processes. Not nothing, but not so much from an observer’s point of view, which is informed by this second-person knowledge.

Uh, we can then empirically analyze and also clinically describe, uh, what is going on as a deviant and distorted pattern of communication. Now, fundamentalist, uh, groups, uh, as an example, uh, they discuss with each other, uh, under, uh, certain substantive premises which they, uh, exclude from being, by their very nature, uh, from being treated hypothetically. And, uh, we know that, uh, these types of discourses are, I mean, relevant for religious communities, for, uh, types of metaphysical, pre-modern metaphysical, uh, reasoning.

Uh, I mean, uh, we are not in a position to just rule that out. But, uh, from a sociological point of view, I cannot see how, uh, it can survive because, um, I mean, the, uh, um, basic structures of modern societies work under premises, for instance, in the legal system, under premises which are incompatible with that attitude. That is not saying that there is not also a type of experience that is, by God, worthy of being saved, but not in these terms, I think, can they be saved, uh, uh, within modern societies.

So then, uh, in our types of societies, these communities form in place. But, uh, there are also counter examples, uh, for many and so on. And, uh, again, I mean, what should I now apply my, uh, uh, interpretation, uh, to it.

I mean, there are certain explanations, more or less plausible, why that, uh, can, uh, happen. But I don’t think that it really can stand once the culture is broken up, once there is no longer a totality which is immune from, uh, pressures from without, And, uh, this is not the modern condition anymore.

[01:42:24] MODERATOR:
Uh, I want to remind you that the, uh, discussion can continue tomorrow when Professor Habermas will lecture in the Men’s Faculty Club library at two PM. And I want to thank Professor Habermas for his excellent presentation.

(applause and cheering)