Discourse ethics is a philosophical theory of morality, attempting to update Kantian ethics for modern egalitarian intuitions and social epistemology. The theory originated with German philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel, and variations have been used by Frank Van Dun and Habermas' student Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
Kant extracted moral principles from the necessities forced upon a rational subject reflecting on the world. Habermas extracted moral principles from the necessities forced upon individuals engaged in the discursive justification of validity claims, from the inescapable presuppositions of communication and argumentation.
The simplest form of discourse ethics is Habermas' "Principle of Universalization", which holds that
:a moral norm "is valid just in case the foreseeable consequences and side-effects of its general observance for the interests and value-orientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion."
Discourse ethics is a possible grounding for critical theory.
It is also a possible approach to the management of science. That approach is primarily popular in Europe, in part because Europeans prefer rule-based social adaption to technological progress, whereas Americans prefer utilitarian approaches.
Habermas and Apel
Habermas's discourse ethics attempts to explain the implications of communicative rationality to moral insight and social norms. It reformulates Kantian deontological ethics into the analysis of communicative structures. This means that it is an attempt to explain the universal and obligatory nature of morality as a consequence of certain universal obligations associated with successful communication.
It is also a cognitivist moral theory, which means it holds that moral norms can be justified like facts. Thus it is explicitly attempting to bridge the gap between the "is" and the "ought."
However, the entire project is undertaken as a rational reconstruction of moral insight. It claims only to reconstruct the implicit normative orientations that guide individuals and it claims to access these through an analysis of communication.
Public discourse ethics
Public discourse ethics consists of conversations about ideas in civic or community contexts marked by diversity of perspectives requiring thoughtful public engagement. This discourse is made up of differing insights that helps to shape the public's engagement with one another. This type of discourse is meant to protect and to promote the public good.
For public discourse ethics to be successful there must be an effective level of civility between people or persons involved (Freud: "Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock"). At the same time, participants must be free to criticize each other's argumentation.
Public discourse ethics allows interlocutors to make ethical or normative demands on each other. where its application to democracy and the legislative process was substantially refined and expanded. Before this book, Habermas had left open the question of the various applications of discourse theory to almost any type of consensus oriented group ranging from highly visible political and governmental groups, such as Parliament in Great Britain and Congressional debate in the United States, and other consensus oriented activities as found in public and private institutions such as those supported on various international websites and Wikipedia.<!-- The whole paragraph -->
See also
- Argumentation theory
- Foucault–Habermas debate
References
Further reading
- Calhoun, C. 1992 ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press).
- Cohen, J.L., 1995, “Critical Social Theory and Feminist Critiques: The Debate with Jürgen Habermas,” in Johanna Meehan, ed., Feminists Read Habermas: Gendering the Subject of Discourse (New York: Routledge), pp. 57–90.
- Eley, G., 1992, “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century,” in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press), pp. 289–339.
- Foucault, M., 1988, “The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom,” in James Bernauer and David Rasmussen, eds., The Final Foucault (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press), pp. 1–20.
- Fraser, N., 1987, “What’s Critical About Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender,” in Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell, eds., Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender (Cambridge: Polity Press), pp. 31–56.
- Stephan Kinsella, Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide
- Ryan, M.P., 1992, “Gender and Public Access: Women’s Politics in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press), pp. 259–288.