Habermas on Understanding: Virtual Participation, Dialogue and the Universality of Truth [Book Review]
David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Jack Alan Reynolds
Learn more about PhilPapers
Human Studies 34 (4):393-406 (2011)
Although the success of Habermas’s theory of communicative action depends on his dialogical model of understanding in which a theorist is supposed to participate in the debate with the actors as a ‘virtual participant’ and seek context-transcendent truth through the exchange of speech acts, current literature on the theory of communicative action rarely touches on the difficulties it entails. In the first part of this paper, I will examine Habermas’s argument that understanding other cultural practices requires the interpreter to virtually participate in the “dialogue” with the actors as to the rationality of their cultural practice and discuss why, according to Habermas,such dialogue leads to the “context-transcendent truth”. In the second part, by using a concrete historical example, I will reconstruct a “virtual dialogue” between Habermas and Michael Polanyi as to the rationality of scientific practice and indicate why Habermas’s dialogical model of understanding based on the methodology of virtual participation cannot achieve what it professes to do
|Keywords||Theory of communicative action Performative understanding Virtual participation Dialogue Universality of Truth|
|Categories||categorize this paper)|
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server
Configure custom proxy (use this if your affiliation does not provide a proxy)
|Through your library|
References found in this work BETA
Ian Hacking (1999). The Social Construction of What? Harvard University Press.
Jürgen Habermas (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, 'Reason and the Rationalization of Society'. Polity..
Jürgen Habermas (1998). Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. The MIT Press.
David Bloor (1991). Knowledge and Social Imagery. University of Chicago Press.
Citations of this work BETA
No citations found.
Similar books and articles
Jari I. Niemi (2005). Habermas and Validity Claims. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 13 (2):227 – 244.
S. Levine (2010). Habermas, Kantian Pragmatism, and Truth. Philosophy and Social Criticism 36 (6):677-695.
Lawrence B. Solum (1989). Freedom of Communicative Action. Northwestern University Law Review 83 (1):54-135.
Samantha Ashenden & David Owen (eds.) (1999). Foucault Contra Habermas: Recasting the Dialogue Between Genealogy and Critical Theory. Sage.
David M. Rasmussen & James Swindal (eds.) (2002). Jürgen Habermas. Sage Publications.
Joseph Heath (1998). What is a Validity Claim? Philosophy and Social Criticism 24 (4):23-41.
Gerard Delanty (1997). Habermas and Occidental Rationalism: The Politics of Identity, Social Learning, and the Cultural Limits of Moral Universalism. Sociological Theory 15 (1):30-59.
Ali Mesbah, Religion, Rationality, and Language : A Critical Analysis of Jürgen Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action.
Johan Siebers (2011). What Cannot Be Said: Speech and Violence. Journal of Global Ethics 6 (2):89-102.
Jan Ajzner (1994). Some Problems of Rationality, Understanding, and Universalistic Ethics in the Context of Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 24 (4):466-484.
Barbara Fultner (1996). The Redemption of Truth: Idealization, Acceptability and Fallibilism in Habermas' Theory of Meaning. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 4 (2):233 – 251.
Hugh Baxter (2011). Habermas: The Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Stanford Law Books.
Jason L. Powell (ed.) (2012). Habermas. Nova Science Publishers.
Added to index2011-11-18
Total downloads36 ( #109,413 of 1,792,061 )
Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #463,566 of 1,792,061 )
How can I increase my downloads?