Characteristics Of Habermas Communicative Action

Habermas explains that, “in any speech act, the speaker takes up a relation to something in the objective world, something in a common social world, and something in his own subjective world. Habermas expands on the phenomenological conception of the life world as a context for mutual understanding. The life world provides context and background from which individuals draw upon when making propositions. And simultaneously provides social norms, and background for a speakers intent. For Habermas Communicative Action is how we achieve practical reason. Knowledge and norms result from a mutual understanding achieved through communicative action. Habermas believes human rationality comes as the necessary result of successful communication. Habermas,

The first charactarisitc is cognitivism, meaning that discourse ethics starts from the assumption that even moral problems are capable of being solved in a rational and cognitive way. Habermas determined there are two types of normative statements –moral and ethical. Moral claims are claims about justice (attempts to eliminate bias), and ethical claims are about what is good. It is hard to eliminate bias when making an ethical claims these are concerned with what is good. Lastly a norm is valid only if "all affected can accept the consequences and the side affects its general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction for everyone 's interests (and these consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities)." We presuppose certain rules of discourse such that coercion does not make something valid nor does the use of deception. Speech acts can only be useful if those conditions are met. Through communicative action speakers attempt to show one another that their view has reasons and value, while simultaneously attempting to reach a type of common understanding. Although the speakers may not ultimately agree with all of the claims made by the other, they at the very minimum reach an understanding of where the other is coming from. Under this conception of every day speech outlined by Habermas dignity, respect, and humanity is built within language.An example of this ideal form of speech is in a discussion where two speakers may not agree on whether abortion is right but they do agree upon a on form of democracy. We shift from questions of what’s good to what is right – which ultimately leads to representative