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Jurgen Habermas

Jurgen Habermas. German Still Alive (1929-) Second generation Frankfurter Originally a Marxist, later associated with social reformism Persisting goal: developing the Enlightenment tradition of achieving social progress through rational critique of received ideas and practices.

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Jurgen Habermas

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  1. Jurgen Habermas • German • Still Alive (1929-) • Second generation Frankfurter • Originally a Marxist, later associated with social reformism • Persisting goal: developing the Enlightenment tradition of achieving social progress through rational critique of received ideas and practices

  2. Enlightenment Values and the Sociological tradition Enlightenment = the rational critique of received practices will enable social progress Marx = suchprogress is hampered by ‘false class consciousness’ Durkheim = social structures will promote appropriate, i.e. socially rational, norms and values But Weber = rational critique is incompatible with adherence to social values Foucault = rational critique is a claim to power

  3. HABERMAS & CRITICAL THEORY • What is Sociology for? • Defending the Enlightenment tradition • (Cultural) Marxism - Frankfurt • Values and Rationality - ‘Praxis’ • Cognitive Interests – • Control,  Communication,  Criticism • Developing Weber re (instrumental) rationality and the ‘iron cage’ • but rejecting Foucault’s claim that rationality is experts’ ideology • Does the ‘cultural turn’ lead from Marx to Parsons?

  4. Cultural Marxism & Knowledge • Focus on how social control is maintained through the cultural production of (false) knowledge e.g. • Hegemony Term used by A. Gramsci to describe how the domination of one class over another is achieved by a combination of political and ideological means. Although political force, coercion, is always important, the role of ideology in winning the consent of the dominated classes may be even more significant… the latter being more important in capitalist societies. • Source: Abercrombie et al Penguin dictionary of Sociology • (emphasis added)

  5. KNOWLEDGE CONSTITUTING (COGNITIVE) INTERESTS • KnowledgeInterestMeansCriterion • Empirical Control Laws Proof • presumes the capacity to share knowledge: requires ↓ Hermeneutic Communication Understanding Consensus presumes the adequacy of available interpretations:requires ↓ • Critical Emancipation Ideology critique Praxis • These are the essential, rationally necessary, forms of knowledge

  6. Knowledge and Rationality • Empirical interest produces Instrumental rationality • Hermeneuticinterest produces Communicative rationality • Critical Interest produces Critical/Reflexive rationality

  7. SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS OF KNOWLEDGE • Empirical ScienceExperts/Laity • Hermeneutic Science Co-Interpreters • Critical ScienceEqual Participants (?)

  8. CRITICAL THEORY • Goal = Critique of Ideology • Ideology = ‘Systematically distorted communication’ • produces and is produced by • Domination

  9. THE BASIS OF RATIONAL CRITIQUE • Critique is not condemnation but questioning • Questioning is oriented to creating a better society • What is the better society? • The problem of value-judgements (Weber/Hume) • Knowledge versus Opinion • Can we identify rational (necessary) social values? • Habermas: rationality is achieved through discourse (speech)

  10. REQUIREMENTS OF THE IDEAL SPEECH SITUATION • Intelligibility • Truth • Justification • Sincerity • all according to Habermas are necessarily presupposed in any interaction setting.Re e.g. the effects of perceived ‘spin’. • a)But what would Goffman (or John Bone) say? • b)The ISS presupposes a social setting, an ideal speech community, in which these conditions are routinely attainable. Is this realistic?

  11. Habermas versus Goffman • Is/Should action be guided by the norms of • Communicative Rationality(Habermas)or • Dramaturgical Rationality(Goffman)? • Goffman:uncritical acceptance of cynical distortions of interaction orrecognition of the necessity of ‘honouring the situation’ • Habermas:emancipating identification of irrational constraints on interactionornaïve acceptance of dominant individualism

  12. The IDEAL SPEECH COMMUNITY • Exists where: • All interested parties can participate • All have the right to speak • All have the right to be heard • All ideas can be critically examined • Power differences are irrelevant to outcomes • Decisions are the outcome of unforced consensus

  13. Utopianism or Realism • Is such a community possible; if not it is a Utopian (unrealistic and therefore irrational) ideal: • Marx and Utopianism: Rational critique is rooted in the real (material) conditions of existence. Utopianism is dangerous fantasy • Ideology and Ideology critique: but if our understanding is shaped by power-distorted communication our critique will be ideological

  14. ‘Gaps’ in the System • Interstices:gaps in the system enable us to glimpse the possibility of domination-free relationships. • Historically: 5th century BC Athens; the agora 18th century coffee-houses: • World-wide web: unrestrained public forum: Zapatistas • Voluntaristic public involvement: NSMs • The intimacies of everyday life: love & friendship

  15. But • Athens and slavery • Coffee houses and stock markets • The web and porn • Iron Law of Oligarchy • ‘Private’ violence • And • Expertise; planners and citizens • Presentational skills; double-glazing salesmen • Sectional interests

  16. Therefore Critical Theory must indicate not only the potential areas of domination free dialogue but also explain why this potential has not been achieved in modern society

  17. Habermas’s Critique of Modernity • The ‘empirical’ knowledge interest in control is necessary but now dominates modernity by excluding the hermeneutic and critical interests; re Weber on instrumental rationality i.e. modernity is a ‘one-sided’ rationality • Consequence: Legitimation Crisis:a) Separation of efficiency-led social systems from the normative basis of the lifeworld • b) Colonisation of the lifeworld by ‘rational’ systems and technical experts • c) Production of system crises

  18. LIFEWORLD (lebenswelt) • Phenomenologythe world as immediately or directly experienced in the subjectivity of everyday life, as sharply distinguished from the objective “worlds” of the sciences, which employ the methods of the of the mathematical sciences of nature. • Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica. • Habermasextends this definition to contrast the life-world with the ‘methodically’ driven, impersonal routines of that dominate the social system of modernity e.g. politics, economics • Source: Me

  19. HABERMAS versus FOUCAULT • Habermas:Knowledge and Power are separable. Emancipation comes through rational, domination-free consensus • Foucault:Knowledge and Power are necessarily interlinked. Emancipation comes through the diversity of ideas

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