Talk:The Theory of Communicative Action

This summary was widely checked out in the process of writing my thesis at the Royal College of Art, London - doctoral thesis (2002) 'Exploding Cinema 1992 - 1999, culture and democracy' by Stefan Szczelkun. Copy available in the RCA library and from the British Library. Abridged for Wikipedia by the author. Full text online.

It may seem long for a Wikipedia entry but I argue that the two volumes of TCA are also very long and densely argued and it is impossible to do justice to this work and be very brief. My summary does leave out many parts of Habermas argument especially with the tradition of Sociology. But hopefully the key arguments are rendered faithfully for common edification. Szczels (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 11:20, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

On just rereading the entry it seems of utmost relevance to the operation of Wikipedia itself - and this hsould be a further reason for retaining a longer summary of TCA.

What is probably needed in addition is an up-to-date literature review of the main discussions of TCA. Many discussants of TCA seem not to have read volume 2! which has led to impoverished reactions to this theory. Szczels (talk) 11:33, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Adhering to Wikipedia policy

Szczels, this is a fine beginning. I have Wikified and copy edited the first half.

Be sure to study the policies of Wikipedia. In particular, Wikipedia is not a forum for publishing one's own research. Any statements in a summary of a book must be based on the book itself or *other* people's textual criticisms.

Wikipedia must have a philosophy project among its Projects. One can take guidance from it and also participate in it. Hurmata (talk) 04:37, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I thought I had cut the parts that were 'my research' in creating this abridged version for Wikipedia... or do you mean having an opinion about the status of TCA? Please be specific. I will look for citations at the places you indicate.

I probably could make a summary of others textual criticisms of TCA, at least up to around year 2000. Szczels (talk) 14:33, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Summary of Critical Responses to TCA

an invitation to contribute! The first set of critical responses seemed to revolve around ideas of power. Michel Foucault could be seen to challenge the use of Ideal speech situation in TCA. Foucault's criticism is that Habermas's use of the Ideal Speech Situation is utopian in suggesting that communication could ever be free from relations of power.

"The thought that there could be a state of communication which would be such that the games of truth could circulate freely, without obstacles, without constraint and without coercive effects, seems to me to be Utopia." The Final Foucault By James William Bernauer, David M. Rasmussen 1988 p18

James Tully comes to Habersmas' defence here:

"It is not utopian but a strongly idealised regulative idea against which actual games inundated by relations of power can be evaluated in the name of freedom." James Tully in ASHENDEN, Samantha. & David Owen. Foucault Contra Habermas: recasting the dialogue between Genealogy and Critical Theory, Sage 1999 p130

In fact Foucault himself can also be found to insist on ideal conditions for the freedom of subjects:

"Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only in so far as they are free. By this we mean individual or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments may be realised." (Foucault in DREYFUS, Paul & Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, University of Chicago (& Harvester Wheatsheaf UK) 1983 p221)

Another focus of critique was on the issue of judgement. People will reach understandings on such matters as what constitutes a valued movie or part thereof without a verbal debate. This agreement is not arrived at through an explicit validation of reasons as demanded by Communicative Action. To a great extent agreement is reached through a barely perceptible alignment of a collective responses.

Habermas has to appeal to aesthetic revelation to give a prefiguration of the intergration of different aspects of rationality or of different subject positions. Richard Beardsworth summarises Jean-Francois Lyotard's objection to this:

Habermas's desire to articulate difference through the hegemony of cognitive judgement is unjust to the many strands of the social fabric, which resist translation into a common structure of language. Richard Beardsworth in BENJAMIN, Andrew. Judging Lyotard, Routledge 19922 p47

Lyotard challenges Habermas's implied aesthetic production of an ideal social harmony with reference to Kant's formulation of the sublime, which is an aesthetics of dissonance, of incommensurability. For him, in a philosophical tradition in which reason has been facade for ideological justification, all the talk of consensus or synthesis is suggestive of tyranny or exclusion whether totalitarian or majoritarian. It is he argues, more important to talk about inventive dissensus.

But according to Ingrams, Lyotard seems to agree with Habermas that:

The dynamics of postindustrial capitalism exacerbate the problem of the one sided cultivation of rational competences... the scientific and technological - at the expense of the moral and expressive. David Ingram in D'ENTREVES, Maurizio Passerin. & Seyla Benhabib, eds. Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity: critical essays on The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Polity Press 1996 p270

The argument between Habermas and the Postmodernists seems to come down to the connotative meanings of theory. Postmodernists think that these are all important whilst Habermas holds out for a coherent theoretical argument which proceeds on a denotative level.

My intensive research ended around 2001 so responses after this will not be taken into account above Szczels (talk) 16:07, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Associated recent works

James Suroweicki's The Wisdom of Crowds (2004) has an interesting resonance with TCA

Jonathan Schell's The Unconquerable World (2003) takes a much more practical and political approach without ever mentioning Habermas but the books are surely of parallel concerns.

Barbara Ehrenreich's Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (2007) Suggests how dance and carnival contribute to collective solidarity. This can be see to answer some of Habermas bias towards verbal communicative action.

Alienation and reification in TCA

In reference to the introductory thesis in the article that the Theory of Communicative Action "challenges the Marxian focus on economics (or alienated labor) as the main or sole determining factor of oppression" a clearer distinction between development of and liberation from alienation could be useful. Habermas actually doesn't give up the Marxian critique of the market system as the core of social alienation (Habermas, 1981a, p. 492). Building on the concept of reification derived from both Max Weber and Georg Lukaćs he challenges the Marxist focus on class conflict. He describes the reification of social interaction as a class independent phenomenon of »inner colonization« (ibid., p. 489 ff.). According to Habermas (1981b, p. 455 ff.) in the course of capitalist development money and power have become to dominant medium for social interaction. For this reason "Habermas argues that the key to liberation is rather to be found in language and communication between people" (WilliamKAB71 (talk) 06:38, 25 May 2010 (UTC))

References: Habermas, J. (1981a). Zur Kritik Der Funktionalistischen Vernunft (Vol. 2). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Habermas, J. (1981b). Handlungsrationalität Und Gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung (Vol. 1). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.