Habermas takes as his point of departure P.F. Strawson’s phenomenology of moral experience.1 For Strawson, moral experience has a real content. It comes as "a response to disgraceful wrong done to one by another,"2 a response of indignation or resentment when there is no restitution for personal insult. At the start, the perpetrator or a third person may produce excuses that try to make repairs to the disturbed interaction. The excuses may be attributed to circumstances, thus making the act less unjust, or to the incompetence of the actor (that he is just a child, or not himself, etc.), thus taking an objectivating attitude and precluding any moral reproach from the start. The important point here for Strawson is that the personal response of indignation or resentment is possible only in the performative attitude of persons taking part in interaction.

Such is the case of moral feelings, the content of moral phenomena, that they are linked to each other internally. We feel gratitude for a good deed done to us, admiration for a good act, forgiveness for an injustice suffered, and many other emotions such as contempt, malevolence, consolation, encouragement, satisfaction, recognition, indifference, etc. Moral feelings are accessible to us only in a performative attitude, that is, they are embedded in the practice of everyday life, and as such are unavoidable.3 One can, of course, take an objectivating attitude towards this interpersonal relation, but this cannot be sustained for long. "The human commitment to participation in ordinary interpersonal relationships is . . . thoroughly and deeply rooted for us."4

What makes the indignation or resentment moral? The emotional response is rightly directed at a specific other person who has violated our integrity. But what makes it moral is not that the interaction between the two concrete individuals has been disturbed, but because of the violation of an underlying normative expectation that is valid not only for the alter and the ego, but also for all members of the social group.5 Emotional responses such as guilt and obligation "would be devoid of moral character were they not connected with an impersonal kind of indignation over some breach of a generalized norm or behavioral expectation."6

This impersonal character of norms is inwardly linked to their authoritative or obligatory character. Norms claim to exist by right, and "if necessary . . . can be shown to exist by right."7 The indignation or reproach directed beyond the person to the violation of a norm has a cognitive foundation. "To say that I ought to do something means that I have good reasons for doing it."8 These reasons are irreducible to questions of mere prudence (the empiricist’s questions of what do I want to do and how can I do it) or expediency (the utilitarian’s question of what can we do to produce desirable outcomes).

Habermas sums up Strawson’s observations in three points: (1) "Moral phenomena are grasped only in the performative attitude of participants in interaction." (2) Indignation and "personal emotional responses point to suprapersonal standards for judging norms and commands." (3) "Moral-practical justification of a mode of action aims at an aspect different from a feeling-neutral assessment of means-ends relations, even when such assessment is made from the point of view of the general welfare."9

Where can such cognitive foundation of norms be found; and why do we have norms in the first place, and ultimately morality? For Habermas, the answer is seen in the vulnerability of the human species. Human beings are profoundly vulnerable and therefore in need of consideration and compensation. This vulnerability of the human species is rooted not in its biological weakness (the infant’s lack of faculties and long period of rearing), but in the fact that human beings are individuated only through socialization.10 Human beings are constituted as individuals by growing into an intersubjectively shared lifeworld, which lifeworld is reproduced in turn through the communicative actions of its members.11 Thus, the identity of the individual and that of the collective are interdependent through the medium of language. This is "the medium by which the intersubjectivity of the shared world is maintained"12 and where participants become more and more individuated. The human person can form his personal identity only through participation in relations through language. This explains the insecurity and fragility of the human being.

Norms and the cultural system they form as such constitute the compensation or safety device for this vulnerability. They have the two-fold objective of defending the integrity of the individual and preserving the vital fabric of the ties of mutual consideration.13 Human beings develop moral intuitions "that instruct us on how best to behave in situations where it is in our power to counteract the extreme vulnerability of others by being thoughtful and considerate."14 "The fundamental problem of ethics is guaranteeing mutual consideration and respect in a way that is effective in actual conduct."15 The two tasks of morality are then to emphasize the inviolability of the individual, that is, the respect for the dignity of each individual, which is justice, and to protect the web of intersubjective relations of mutual recognition, which is solidarity.16

Clearly morality’s two-fold task of justice and solidarity can take place only in interactions that are communicative. Interactions are communicative "when the participants coordinate their plans of action consensually, with the agreement reached at any point being evaluated in terms of the intersubjective recognition of validity claims."17 To carry out their action plans on a consensual basis, the participants must reach understanding about something in the world, be it the objective world of facts and states of affairs, the subjective world of lived experiences, or the social world of interpersonal relationships.18 "In reaching an understanding about something in the world, subjects engaged in communicative action orient themselves to validity claims. . . . This is why there is no form of socio-cultural life that is not at least implicitly geared to maintaining communicative action by means of argument, be the actual form of argumentation ever so rudimentary and the institutionalization of discursive consensus building ever so inchoate."19

Validity claims, argument, understanding and consensus are mediated in linguistic processes which are symbolized concretely in the speech act. Depending on the kind of speech act (constative, regulative or representative), validity claims can be of three types: (1) claims to truth, referring to the objective world of facts and state of affairs; (2) claims to rightness referring to the social world of regulated interpersonal relations; and (3) claims to truthfulness referring to the subjective world of lived experiences.20 What is of interest to us is, of course, the second type, the claims to rightness or normative validity. But first we need to distinguish communicative action from strategic action, norms from facts, and moral questions from valuative ones.

Communicative action is distinct, though not separate in the lifeworld, from strategic action. In strategic action, "one actor seeks to influence the behavior of another by means of the threat of sanctions or the prospect of gratification," whereas in communicative action, "one actor seeks rationally to motivate another by relying on the elocutionary binding/bonding effect (Bindungseffekt) on the other contained in his speech act."21 Unlike in strategic action, the agreement in communicative action "cannot be imposed or brought about by manipulating one’s partner in interaction", but "depends on the rationally motivated approval of the substance of the utterance."22 Strategic action is teleological, geared towards implementing an action plan, and thus directly oriented towards success; whereas communicative action is after a shared interpretation of the situation, oriented towards understanding to reach a consensus.23

For Habermas, communicative action is important for the reproduction of the lifeworld, which is reproduced through cultural tradition, social integration, and socialization which operate only in communicative action.24 In communicative action, there is a circular process wherein social agents are both the initiators who master the situation and the products of tradition, of the socialization process. The social agents are supported by the lifeworld which is simultaneously the context and the resource of their action.25 In the context of the lifeworld, they really have no choice between communicative action and strategic action;

They do not have the option of a long-term absence from contexts of action oriented toward reaching an understanding. That would mean regressing to the monadic isolation of strategic action, or schizophrenia and suicide. In the long run such absence is self-destructive.26

 

In communicative action, there is the universe of norms and the universe of facts. The objectivity of norms is different from the objectivity of facts in that the former refers to the "independence of `objective spirit’" while the latter points to the existence of states of affairs independently of formulation.27 Nevertheless, the relation of facts to its corresponding assertoric speech act is symmetrical, that is to say, claims to truth reside only in the speech act; whereas in norms, the relation is asymmetrical: norms "lay claim to meaning and validity regardless of whether they are promulgated or made use of in a specific way."28 True, there is a connection between the existence of norms and the anticipated justiciability of the corresponding "ought" statements, but the connection is not an inner one as in the case of states of affairs and of assertoric statements.29 This is because norms are dependent upon the "continual reestablishment of legitimately ordered interpersonal relationships,"30 and the orders of society "are not constituted independently of validity, as are the orders of nature, towards which we can assume an objectivating attitude."31

The social reality has an intrinsic link to normative validity claims, and normative claims to validity "mediate a mutual dependence of language and the social world."32 The fact that there is no inner connection between the existence of norms and their justiciability as regards their claims characterizes the ambiguity of norms. The "existence of social currency of norms says nothing about whether norms are valid," and "norms whose claims to validity are in fact redeemable do not necessarily meet with actual recognition or approval."33 Norms are encoded in social reality by conviction or sanction or both, a mixture of rational insight and force. The acceptance of a norm by society or social agents does not necessarily mean or is not identical to its worthiness to be followed; for the latter we have to resort to the logic of practical discourse.34 In this regard, Habermas reminds us of Durkheim’s warning regarding the fallacy of reducing the obligatory character of norms to the obedience shown by the followers of those in power: "a norm does not enjoy validity simply because it is linked to sanctions that enforce compliance."35

Given the difference between norms and facts, normative statements cannot be tested in the same way as descriptive statements.36 Not being a property, norms or rightness can only be justified essentially in communicative endeavors, in real discourse.37

When participants engage in discourse over rightness or norms of interaction they enter into the sphere of the practical. Practical discourse, however, can be on moral or valuative questions. Valuative questions deal with issues of the good life, which is distinguished from the mere reproduction of life. Issues of the good life can be discussed within the horizon of life or individual lifestyle because, being value preferences, they shape the identities of groups and individuals in such a way that they become part of culture and personality.38 Moral questions, on the other hand, are decided rationally in terms of justice or universalizability of interests.39 They presuppose a hypothetical attitude or certain detachment from the concrete particular lifeworld in order to claim normative validity in the strict sense.

How does a society arrive at moral consciousness or engage in practical discourse of moral consequence? Habermas utilizes Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development in describing the logic of the development of the moral point of view of society or of social agents in action.40 We cannot describe this in detail but in summary: the stages can be divided into: (1) pre-conventional, (2) conventional, and (3) post-conventional. The key to understanding the division lies in the increasing differentiation and integration of the system of the speaker’s perspectives and the system of world perspectives. In Kolhberg’s psychological terms differentiation "refers to the degree to which the structure of thought at a given stage allows one to separate out specifically moral judgements from other value judgements of practical reason; integrate conflicting claims in such a way as to resolve conflicts."41 Speaker perspectives are the communicative roles of speaker, hearer and listener, or first, second and third person perspectives, the third being an observer’s point of view interpreting the I-thou interaction. World perspectives are the three world relations of the natural, social and subjective.

It is when the social world of norm-guided interactions is set off from the lifeworld that the post-conventional stage of discourse ethics begins. Here the speaker and the world perspectives are joined while differentiated, that is to say, the two systems must be put in relationship to one another.42 At the level of discourse, the opposition between consensual orientation and success orientation or between normatively regulated and strategic actions is overcome. At this third stage of interaction, the pressure to act is minimized and the focus is on testing validity claims implicit in communicative action. With a hypothetical attitude, norms are now thematized and tested in terms of principles.43

In the conventional stage, the social world is still very much embedded in the lifeworld: morality and ethics have not yet really separated; morality has not yet become autonomous as morality.44 In ethical life, justice is not yet problematic as it is situated in the horizon of the good life, but in the moralizing gaze of the participants in the third stage, justice and the institutions it embodies cease to be familiar and are in need of justification.45

The three stages of moral development can be exemplified in the conception of justice. In the preconventional stage justice takes its natural embryonic form of bonds and loyalties based on the complementarity of command and obedience or on the symmetry of compensation. In the conventional stage, justice assumes a social world and consists in the conformity to roles and norms. In the post-conventional stage, "the social world dissolves into so many conventions in need of justification . . . traditional norms are split into social facts and norms."46 Norms now have lost their certainty and have to be justified in the light of principles. The justification can only take place in discourse, and thus here the idea of justice can be "gleaned only from the idealized form of reciprocity that underlies discourse."47

What can be gleaned from this development is the gradual decentering of the social actor in his understanding of the world.48 Simultaneous with this decentered understanding of the world is a consciousness which is becoming reflective as it takes up an observer’s attitude towards interaction.49 The moralization of society consists thus of interactions emancipating themselves from parochial conventions and of norms losing their attachment and historical coloration to a particular form of life and becoming more abstract or generalized. Norms are now subject to other norms, subordinated to principles or to higher level norms. The performance of duties moves from a motivation of respect for the law to a demand that validity be the motive.50 The reciprocity built into action oriented towards reaching understanding moves from an authority-governed complementarity and interest-governed symmetry to behavioral expectations of social roles guided and linked together by accepted norms, and finally to ideal role-taking in discourse where participants are given universal access and equal opportunity, and thus are impregnated by a cooperative search for truth.51 It is in discourse that the success-orientation of competitors in strategic action "is assimilated into a form of communication in which action oriented towards reaching understanding is continued by other means. . . . Here convictions change internally via a process of rationally motivated attitude change."52 The moral point of view is to be found only "in discursive procedure that redeems normative claims to validity."53 This can be only from the perspective of a decentered understanding of the world able to integrate different but coordinated perspectives.

In discourse ethics conflicts of action are settled by consensus. The argument reached is truly reflexive in nature and expresses a general interest or common will because it is brought about by a real process of argumentation where the concerned social agents cooperate.54 The agreement attained relies on the actors’ complete reversibility of relations with other participants in argumentation, and at the same time in the persuasive force of the better argument.55 The general will takes on a moral quality because the judgement aims at universality and impartiality.56 For a contested norm to be valid and consented to, the principle of universalization (U) must be applied. This states:

All affected can freely accept the consequences and the side effects that the general observance of a controversial norm can be expected to have for the satisfaction of the interests of each individual.57

All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects its general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone’s interests (and these consequences are preferred to those known alternative possibilities for regulation).58

 

Only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse.59

 

Principle (U) is distinguished from principle (D), "which stipulates the basic idea of a moral theory but does not form part of a logic of argumentation."60 Principle (D) is "the assertion that the philosopher as a moral theorist ultimately seeks to justify,"61 and already presupposes principle (U).62

The principle of universalization does not mean that moral norms are valid if they are generally teachable and publicly defendable (Kurt Baier & Bernard Gert), nor that they ensure equality of treatment (Marcus Singer). For a norm to be valid, "It is not sufficient . . . for one person to test whether he can will the adoption of a contested norm after considering the consequences and side effects that would occur if all persons followed that norm or whether every other person in an identical position could will the adoption of such a norm."63 Valid norms deserve recognition by all concerned, and therefore the principle of universalizability requires "all affected to adopt perspectives of all others in the balancing of interests . . . to compel the universal exchange of roles that G.H. Mead called "ideal role-taking" or universal exchange."64 But unlike Mead’s or John Rawl’s theory of the original position, which is fictitious and under the veil of ignorance, Habermas’s principle takes place in the context of a real practical discourse or argumentation; therefore it is presupposed in the principle of discourse ethics.

The principle of discourse ethics refers to the procedure to redeem normative claims to validity. It is formal like Kant’s categorical imperative, but reformulates the monologism and rigorism of Kant by introducing moral argumentation that ensures awareness of consequences.65 As formal, it does not provide substantive guidelines for generating justified norms, but is a procedure for testing the validity of norm. This absence of substantive guidelines does not mean that principle (D) is devoid of content, for practical discourse takes place within the horizon of lifeworld, of real life conflict situations, of actors seeking consensual means of regulating controversial social matters.66

What rules are presupposed in discourse ethics? Habermas enumerates some of R. Alexy’s presuppositions of argumentation on three levels, logical, dialectical or procedural, and rhetorical or process. It is the third level that has ethical import which includes the following rules: 67

(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).68

Rule (3.1) sets the potential participants to the moral discourse; rule (3.2) ensures equal opportunity for all participants; and rule (3.3) protects them from the possibility of repression.69 Consensus depends on these rules: on the inalienable right of the actor to say yes or no, his freedom to respond to criticizable validity claims, and his overcoming of his egocentric viewpoint, his emphatic sensitivity to the needs and interests of all others.70 The two aspects of these rules, autonomy of persons and their imbeddedness in intersubjective relations, are intimately connected and provide the framework of a practical discourse: an unrestricted communication community motivated solely by the force of the better argument in the cooperative search for truth.71

Habermas argues that the above rules are not mere social conventions or a free personal decision to adopt them in order to "play the game" of discourse, but inescapable presuppositions in discourse intended to reach rationally motivated consensus. "Commitment to them is rationally inescapable because they must, logically, be assumed if one is to engage in a mode of thought essential to any rational human life."72 Acceptance of these presuppositions implies the validity of the principle of universalization.73 Social agents who engage in discourse to validate contested norms inescapably presume these rules. To repudiate them while participating in discourse is to be involved in what Karl Otto Apel calls "performative contradiction."

Nevertheless, these conditions are merely approximations and may therefore the counterfactual. Discourse rules (3.1) to (3.3) state only that participants in argumentation must assume these conditions to be approximately realized, or realized in an approximation adequate enough for the purpose of argumentation, regardless of whether or not and to what extent these assumptions are counterfactual in a given case."74 The conditions are idealized and therefore institutional measures are needed to approximate them.75

Since the conditions are idealized, there is no guarantee that consensus can be reached, What happens when interests continue to conflict and do not prove susceptible to generalization? Should social agents then resort to compromise? In modern societies, where interests and value orientations become more differentiated, this usually happens. There is a need in modern societies for "regulations that impinge only on particular interests."76 Here, Habermas contends, discursive consensus is not needed, but compromise is sufficient. Nevertheless, a fair compromise calls for morally justified procedures of compromising, and in the end communicative ethics provides that ground.77

The ethics of compromising cannot be reduced to simple contractarianism as in the minimal ethics of J.L. Mackie,78 nor to the theory of argumentation of Ernst Tugendhat who sees argumentation as making possible not impartiality of judgement, but freedom from influence or autonomy in will formation.79 Both Mackie and Tugendhat reduce compromise to a bargaining and balancing of power. For Habermas, generalizable interest is an issue not in compromise but in particular conflicting interests. Of course, in compromise all concerned have equal rights to participation, "but these principles of compromise formation in turn require actual practical discourses for justification."80 This demands an impartial judgement about the interests of all concerned that "is not met by equality of opportunity to make one’s interests prevail."81

The question of power brings us to the limitations of an ethics of communicative action. The justification of norms in terms of their universalizability necessitates a disengagement from their lived context to subject them to hypothetical reasoning. Their worthiness to be recognized does not always mean in actual practice that they are indeed recognized, accepted and followed. The "discursive justification of norms is no guarantee of actualization of moral insight . . . and cannot by itself insure that the conditions necessary for the actual participation of all concerned are met."82 Material living conditions and social structures, such as poverty, abuse and degradation, make a mockery of the demands of discourse ethics.83 And always the threat to use force rather than argumentation to settle conflicts confronts the human species. Practical discourses, unlike theoretical ones, "cannot be relieved of the burden of social conflicts."84 This is where perhaps Paul Ricoeur’s "hermeneutics of suspicion" can complement Habermas’s communicative ethics. Ricoeur "provides us with an ethical orient-ation toward structures of inequality such that those structures are, at least initially, always to be brought under interpretations which illuminate them as possible structures of power."85

Nonetheless, the limitations of Habermas’s communicative ethics also bring into focus its merits and demands. Its distancing moment of critique is oriented towards reflectively tested claims to validity which must be effective in practice, for only when action and conflicts are guided by moral insight can they motivate. But this also necessitates reinsertion into the practical life by herme-neutic effort and prudence, and an internalization of abstract and universal principles.86 In the social context, institutions are needed as support for socialization and education that serve the general interest. The principle of universalization, which makes discourse ethics an exacting type of communication and therefore a liability, transcends the boundaries of the concrete lifeworld of the family, neighborhood, city or state. This transcendence makes discourse ethics truly objective and integrative. The ethics of communication unites the opposition of justice and solidarity and expresses indeed the oneness of humanity.