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Beilharz, Peter. Social Theory, edited by Peter Beilharz, Allen & Unwin, 1992. ProQuest Ebook Central, .
Created from unimelb on 2017-01-15 16:22:18.
S O C I A L THEORY
Beilharz, Peter. Social Theory, edited by Peter Beilharz, Allen & Unwin, 1992. ProQuest Ebook Central, .
Created from unimelb on 2017-01-15 16:22:18.
Beilharz, Peter. Social Theory, edited by Peter Beilharz, Allen & Unwin, 1992. ProQuest Ebook Central, .
Created from unimelb on 2017-01-15 16:22:18.
SOCIAL THEORY
social intercourse is established. But more than this, it is also the means
through which social rules are learned, tested, unlearned and criticised
as social problems. So, according to Habermas, whilst subjects participate permanently in social interactions both constituted through and
mediated by language, this language use is oriented to validity claims,
both through its use and, as importantly, in the cultural horizons which
lie underneath or arch over it. There is then, for Habermas, an intended
relation between meaning, use and validation: in inter-subjective everyday communicative activity, the recognition of social norms imbedded in
language and the rightness of those norms to the social context is
constantly being recognised.
Sociologically Habermas contests the one-dimen~ionalit~
of social
critique by developing a counter-image of modernity. Modernity is typified by a differentiation and development of the constellations of the
three modern types of action complexes and institutional forms: science,
morality and political legitimation, and aesthetics. This has an homologous relation with the philosophical level, i.e. with the differentiation of
the types of rationality appropriate to the formation of action/
knowledge in those three spheres: science is developed according to the
principles of a cognitive construction of rationality, with its validation in
terms of truth; political and legitimatory patterns of action and knowledge develop and proceed according to the principles of moral-practical
rationality with its validation in terms of normative rightness; modern
aesthetics develops according to its own distinctive form of rationality,
the expressive with its own form of validation, truthfulness.
Moreover, each form of differentiation accords, so Habermas argues,
with the way in which humankind orients itself to the worlds that it
creates-the external world of nature or systemic environments, which
he terms the system and the world of inter-subjectively constituted
sociality which he terms the life-world which encompasses everyday life
in the mundane sense, political forms of consensus formation, as well as
the world of inner subjectivity of desires, needs and fantasies which
'matches' homologously with aesthetic experience.
From Legitimation Crisis (1975) onwards Habermas formalised this
distinction and differentiation between system and life-world and the
perspectives which each embodies, embraces and develops. Social systems, as they become more complex, differentiate themselves and
become self-regulating according to their own media, or forms of selfregulation and self-reflexivity, constituted through either purposive/
cognitive or strategic knowledge and criteria of validity. The life-world
thematises, as has been suggested, the normative structures (values and
institutions) of a society. According to Habermas' schema, this 'inner
life' of society does not belong to the system simply as an environment,
as do other systems; rather it exists as a world sui generis and resists
total absorption to the system's imperatives through socialised individu-
Beilharz, Peter. Social Theory, edited by Peter Beilharz, Allen & Unwin, 1992. ProQuest Ebook Central, .
Created from unimelb on 2017-01-15 16:22:18.
HABERMAS
ation and the interpretative capacities which persons and societies have
to develop t o ensure a coherent identity.
This distinction, and especially the life-world perspective, allows
Habermas the critical leverage, he assumes, which the Frankfurt School
denied itself. Programmatically, Habermas attempts to develop a critique
(critical theory) of the deformations and unfettered expansions of instrumental and strategic rationalities whilst simultaneously providing the
basis for this critique from the vantage point of redeeming the utopian
horizon of modernity itself, located neither in the world or perspective
of systems-orientated administrative affairs or capitalist commodification, nor in aesthetics, but in the moral-practical perspectives located
in the life-world,
Hence we return t o our opening theme. This outline indicates two
things about the Habermasian project from the vantage point of his
utopian horizon. Firstly, it indicates his commitment and interest in the
public sphere. The notion of the public sphere was the initial point of
departure for his reflections, and in many respects provides a continuing
point of reference around the problem of political modernity as 'purely
human' relations as well as provides a shift in perspective. In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989) Habermas' theory of
democracy involves the historical-philosophical working through of the
separation of civil society from the state, and its formation as both a
realm of (capitalistic) economic activity located in private property and
as the public political sphere as public opinion formed by autonomous
personalities. Habermas rightly argues that economic 'man' and 'citizen9
stand as two differentiated and competing aspects of the modern world,
aspects which have either been minimised or treated as derivatives of
one or the other in political philosophy and social theory from Kant
onwards. Habermas adds to his discussion about modernity the formation of the modern state from its absolutist form, to its form as a
constitutional republic to its form as a social democratic welfare state in
the twentieth century. In this framework the public sphere is diagnosed
as having both shrunk and been absorbed by the state or the interests of
capital.
In The Theory of Communicative Action (1984 and 1987b) the public
sphere emerges through the perspective of his differentiated image of
society with its paradoxes and pathologies in the relation between its
system and life-world constituents. The relation between life-world and
system constitutes the battleground between the dynamics of modernity,
none of which are reducible to one another-capitalism, which is typified by strategic rationality and is systematised and secured through the
media of money; the nation state, especially the welfare state, which is
systematised and secured through the media of bureaucraticadministrative power; and democracy, which is formed rather than
Beilharz, Peter. Social Theory, edited by Peter Beilharz, Allen & Unwin, 1992. ProQuest Ebook Central, .
Created from unimelb on 2017-01-15 16:22:18.
S O C I A L THEORY
systematised through the dynamics (rather than secured media) of consensually orientated 'political will formations' that are anchored in the
life-world.
Conflicts arise at the seam between system and life-world. The h o e r atives of the autonomous systems of either the market or the
bureaucratic-administrative-welfare state can 'infiltrate9 life-world contexts in a vvav that can assimilate the life-world to one or other of the
system imperatives. This phenomena of 'the internal colonisation of the
life-world9 by the system results, so Habermas argues, in the 'cultural
impoverishment and fragmentation of everyday consciousness9 (198%:
355). But this process of colonisation is not total, it is neither precipitous nor does it predecide the outcome. Rather there are only tendencies
and contradictions because the life-world itself contains a permanent
communicative potential through which protests and social movements
are formed. The issue then becomes what type of potential is located in
the life-world and its social movements. Critical theory can ask whether
e communicative potential is traditionalising or modernising, that is
post-traditional in that it
to the universality of reason, as well as
the forms of reason in
. From the vantage point of conflict
Habermas singles out the public political sphere, i.e. the democratic
moment of modernity, as the central guiding focus for his theoretical/
philosophical endeavours. The problem he sets for himself is its meaning
and grounding. And it is here that we can indicate the second aspect: in
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere he is interested in
examining and reconstructing the historical meanings of the idea of the
public sphere; in The Theory of Communicative Action he is interested
predominantly in its philosophical grounding.
Lurking between the meaning and the grounding is an almost
Aristotlean moment in Habermas' project. One can intuit a sympathy for
Aristotle's (and Arendt9s)notion of politics as acting, as doing, as praxis
and poeisis, as against technique, strategies and technical expertise. In
establishing the sensus communis, the truth is in the agreement, in the
activity of understanding and reaching consensus over the norms which
are deployed. For Habermas this is essentially a practice-discursive affair
in which, through argumentation, the social actors expose and make
known the norms that are in use. Language 'is orientated to observing
intersubjectively valid norms that link reciprocal expectations' (1979:
118). This provides the basis from which the rational content of communication is established. Rationality entails
Beilharz, Peter. Social Theory, edited by Peter Beilharz, Allen & Unwin, 1992. ProQuest Ebook Central, .
Created from unimelb on 2017-01-15 16:22:18.
Primary sources
Beilharz, Peter. Social Theory, edited by Peter Beilharz, Allen & Unwin, 1992. ProQuest Ebook Central, .
Created from unimelb on 2017-01-15 16:22:18.
S O C I A L THEORY
Beilharz, Peter. Social Theory, edited by Peter Beilharz, Allen & Unwin, 1992. ProQuest Ebook Central, .
Created from unimelb on 2017-01-15 16:22:18.