Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 29, No.

3, 1995

Ideal Speech Conditions, Modern Discourse and

Education

NIGEL BLAKE

Habermas’s educational importance is usually misconstrued or

underestimated, partly because the scope and implications of ideal
speech conditions are generally misunderstood. These conditions are
only relevant to discursive speech situations, but non-manipulative
teaching need not be discursive. And not even discursive teaching is
an appropriate occasion for ideal speech conditions. They properly
apply to discourse institutions, at the ‘epistemiccentre of modernity’.
Thus, the concept of ideal speech conditions impinges on the relation
of school to higher education and on curricular change as an agency
of modernisation, and illuminates the need for access to discourse
institutions, if personal autonomy is an aim for school children,
students or adults. Neo-Marxists, traditionalists and progressives all
misunderstand the importance of discourse institutions.

The ideas of Jurgen Habermas are a frequent point of reference in recent

philosophy of education, but by no means always for the best of reasons. Even
when cited sympathetically, his ideas are rarely properly digested. And only a
small corner of his work seems to attract serious interest. The one concept for
which Habermas is universally known in philosophy of education is that of the
ideal speech situation. This concept is important for his project of a
communicative ethics, which also excites some interest. Sometimes, on the
other hand, he is mistakenly invoked to characterise a late Enlightenment
position which we are supposed to recognise as superannuated if we know our
postmodernism.’
None the less, there are excellent reasons why Habermas should be given
serious attention. His voluminous work on a wide variety of fronts offers
important insights into many areas of vital education concern - ethics,
developmental psychology, general sociology, philosophical anthropology and
a sharp political analysis of the contemporary world. But the relevance of his
work to education goes much deeper than this. At the very centre of his own
concerns is that process which is also surely both central and basic to any
educational practice, namely linguistic interaction. And his deep analysis of this
interaction leads directly and quickly into a concern with learning processes at
both the individual and the social level. Further, this analysis is probably
unique in the variety of aspects under which he considers learning -
epistemological, psychological, normative, institutional, even anthropological

0 The Journal ofthe Philosophy of Education Sociery of Greot Britain 1995. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley
Road, Oxford OX4 IJF and 238 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.
356 N . Blake

and historical. In addition, he relates his ideas positively to those of a range of

other theorists of established educational importance, such as Piaget,
Kohlberg, Chomsky, Dewey and indeed R. S. Peters. One needs very good
reasons indeed to sidestep or ignore such a contribution.
This paper addresses the logical geography and the scope of application of
Habermas’s idea of an ideal speech situation. It seems to me that this concept
and its cognates - communicative action, discourse, consensus and so on -
have been widely and profoundly misunderstood. On the one hand, it has been
misunderstood to imply such extravagant forms of participatory openness that
even liberal-minded enquirers have jibbed at its supposed impracticality, which
may even seem to betray a failure of seriousness. And an important but
negative side-effect may have been to discourage interest in those other areas of
Habermas’s work which have educational implications but are not intimately
tied to the notion of the ideal speech situation - a notion which anyway seems
less central to the wider totality of Habermas’s own project than to
educationalists’ attempts to assimilate him. On the other hand, the concept of
the ideal speech situation does have implications at the curricular and
institutional levels of education and for the political relationship between
education and society; but these too have largely gone unnoticed or unexplored.
This paper attempts principally to clarify some fundamental ideas clustered
around the concept of the ideal speech situation. In particular, I will emphasise
the central educational relevance of the idea of the modern institutionalisation
of discourse. I will conclude by briefly indicating a number of promising
directions in which a renewed interest in Habermas could lead, in the hope that
others will be encouraged to look again and trace the many other avenues of
enquiry which such a rich corpus of work seems to open.

I
What does Habermas mean, then, by an ideal speech situation?
His concern is with certain special kinds of dialogue or speech interaction
which we may characterise as rational deliberation and which he calls
‘discourse’. As we shall see later, all utterances, spoken or written, rest on
certain background assumptions, which themselves rest on further assump-
tions. In everyday conversation, background assumptions are taken for
granted. In rational deliberation, by contrast, participants in dialogue
specifically put in question some assumption which they have hitherto treated
unproblematically between them. Here the implicit aim of dialogue is to explore
doubts and queries and disagreements. None the less, this is compatible with
the further aim of coming, eventually, to a rationally motivated agreement, for
without a concern for either agreement or rationality the process of questioning
and debate is pointless.*
Success in such deliberation has certain prerequisites not demanded in
unreflective speech interaction. Everyday life is an arena in which all manner of
motives are in play other than those of seeking rational agreement in
conversation. These other motives may be perfectly rational in their own right,
yet inimical to the pursuit of rationally grounded agreement with others -
keeping a valid secret, for instance. Furthermore, participants in deliberation

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 Ideal Speech Conditions, Modern Discourse and Education 357

come to it, as to any speech interaction, with the baggage of their background,
their social situation and their associated beliefs, attitudes, values and the rest.
These may also subtend motives which, while compatible with simpler kinds of
interaction, such as communicating with colleagues at work or chatting with
neighbours, are extraneous to rational deliberation and constrain or interfere
with it. For Habermas, the speech situation of rational deliberation is fraught
with obstacles. At worst, these may include external and internal constraints,
such as force or threats, ideological or psychological distortions. By definition,
an ideal speech situation is one in which rational deliberation is protected
against those constraints which might introduce extraneous motives. But this
situation is always difficult to achieve. The conditions of deliberation are rarely,
if ever, ideal.
Habermas and others have attempted to specify formal conditions which
would constitute immunity from such constraints. An ided speech situation
would require that anyone could participate in the given dialogue, that they
could call into question any proposal, that any new proposal might be mooted
and that all participants might express their attitudes, wishes and needs relative
to the dialogue; nor ought anyone be hindered by compulsion from doing these
things.3 Habermas has claimed that only under such conditions would rational
deliberation and its participants be guided by ‘the force of the better argument’
alone.4
Now if rational deliberation has a central place in education, and if ‘the force
of the better argument’ should be a guiding value for it, it may at first seem that
teaching needs to be conducted under the conditions of an ideal speech
situation. But as we see, rational deliberation in real life can never be the
product of disembodied and unsituated subjects, so neither can teaching be.
And if complete disinterestedness is psychologically and ideologically difficult
and rarely achieved, and besides is no precondition of successful communica-
tion, what then does a commitment to rational deliberation really imply for
education? Is it that teaching should aim at an unrealistic if not impossible
ideal, with few if any model instances found outside the classroom? Would that
constitute a useful insight into the conditions of education? Certainly
Habermas has interesting things to say about precisely what impedes such an
ideal. But these do not show how those impediments may be avoided. So is it
rather that the unrealisable ideal should none the less still guide teaching,
notwithstanding the impossibility of its full attainment? Could we reasonably
mould educational practice along such lines?
Even this suggestion may seem unhelpful, since Habermas’s prescription for
an ideal speech situation can seem unworthy even of partial emulation. For
what seems to be enjoined is an almost anarchistic conduct of discussion.
Anyone may speak, they may say whatever they will, and so on. Yet
unstructured speech situations can kill rationality; and even in comparatively
structured situations, a liberal attitude to the conduct of discussion can still
bring difficulties. The selfish or plain narcissistic speaker can frustrate dialogue
among others. The poorly articulate can lead us off the point and waste time.
The strategic manipulator of discussion may prosper. It does seem that
discussion needs careful management if it is to be fruitfully rational. It does
seem to need constraints on speech. But if this is so, the concept of the ideal

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358 N . Blake

speech situation can offer us no guidance in deciding which constraints would

be legitimate and worthwhile. For all that it implies is that any constraints
would compromise the ideal.
The first claim I want to establish, however, is that it is a mistake to treat the
concept of the ideal speech situation as a criterion for teaching.
The conditions of the ideal speech situation prescribe an equality, a
symmetry of speech roles between participants in a dialogue. Anyone may
speak, they may each say what they will and so on. However, these conditions
are only relevant to rational deliberation - or discourse - and not, as I shall
show, to the typical form of everyday speech interaction which Habermas calls
communicative action. And if it can be argued that most teaching actually is
and properly should be a form of ordinary communicative action rather than
discourse, then it follows that the conditions of the ideal speech situation are at
most only occasionally relevant to the teaching situation.
Following Austinian speech act theory, Habermas treats linguistic utterance
as a species of social interacti~n.~ A speaker speaks in order to elicit some
kind of consequential change on the part of the hearer, changing either her
actions or her beliefs, attitudes or other mental dispositions. Such changes
enable hearers and speakers to coordinate their actions, beliefs and
expectations.
Any uttered statement has preconditions of validity - conditions under
which it might count as, for instance, true or reasonable or perhaps normatively
acceptable. For instance, the utterance ‘I forbid you to attend my lecture on
Kant next week’ presupposes at least two conditions: constatively, that I am
actually going to give a lecture on Kant next week, and normatively, that I am
in a position of such authority to forbid you to attend. In addition, this
utterance seems to imply certain affective conditions: in this case perhaps a
degree of hostility between speaker and hearer. This too seems to be a condition
of validity for the utterance. The utterance seems anachronistic if there is no
hostility. If a speaker utters a statement, then in Habermas’s terms he ‘raises
validity claims’: that is, he implies that the conditions of validity of the
statement are fulfilled.
For a hearer to understand an utterance is in part for her to see what claims
are implicitly raised. For the hearer to believe or trust the speaker is for her to
grant implicitly - though not necessarily rightly - that these preconditions
actually do obtain. This acceptance of a validity claim is not necessarily or even
characteristically a conscious process. Typically, the hearer concedes the claims
and accepts the utterance unproblernuticully.
Now speakers and hearers cannot communicate unless they both implicitly
impute certain obligations to whoever speaks. There is a ‘speech act immanent
obligation’ incumbent on any speaker, and anticipated by any hearer, that the
speaker will be able to justify whatever validity claims he raises. For if the
hearer cannot assume that the speaker accepts this obligation, she has no
reason to accept unproblematically any validity claim raised by the speaker;
neither will interrogation of the speaker supply any reason, since the same
uncertainties will attend any answer she may receive. In such a situation, raising
validity claims loses all point, and it cannot underpin mutual understanding.
Symmetrically, there is no point in the speaker speaking unless he assumes the

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 Ideal Speech Conditions, Modern Discourse and Education 359

hearer to impute such an obligation to him. Where these obligations are

honoured and taken to be honoured, Habermas speaks of communicative
action:

in communicative action one actor seeks rationally to motivate another by relying

on the . . . binding/bonding effect (Bildungseffeekt)of the offer [to redeem his implicit
validity claims] contained in his speech act.6

It is mutual understanding that is secured by communicative action, and this in

turn requires symmetry of expectations regarding obligations immanent in the
speech-act.
Communicative speech acts are contrasted with strategic speech acts, in
which this symmetry of expectations is betrayed. In strategic action, the agent’s
intention is to achieve goals of his own ‘through influencing the decisions of
opponent^'.^ An agent acts strategically when he is not going to achieve his
intentions simply by securing shared full understanding between himself and his
protagonist. Ex hypothesi, he has something in mind which he needs not to
communicate. Consequently he must achieve his purpose by indirect means, for
instance by a particular tone of voice or by guiding his hearer unknowingly
towards particular inferences, perhaps playing upon the hearer’s known
psychological weaknesses. This introduces an asymmetry of expectations into
interaction. The hearer assumes the speaker’s goal to be to secure full mutual
understanding, but in this she is mistaken. Partial understanding is necessary,
else the interaction is pointless, but understanding is not the speaker’s sole or
primary goal: rather it is a means to a further end. It is thus irrelevant to him
whether he can in fact redeem his validity claims, so long as the hearer believes
that he can.
Clearly, teaching requires the symmetry typical of communicative action,
since understanding between teacher and student is its necessary prerequisite. It
is also morally necessary that a teacher believe that he can indeed redeem his
own validity claims. But does it not follow that teaching should be conducted
under ideal speech conditions? After all, discourse is that form of commu-
nicative action which aims at securing the most complete understanding and
rational agreement between speakers. In discourse, contests over validity claims
are hopefully brought to a satisfactory resolution.
However, the symmetry of expectations necessary for ordinary commu-
nicative action is not the symmetry of speech roles demanded by discourse.
While a symmetrical anticipation of the speech-act-immanent obligation is
essential for achieving understanding, it does not follow that speakers need be
equal partners in non-discursive conversation.
Discussing asymmetries of speech roles, Robert Young considered the
example of speech inequalities between a boss and his employees.*Employees
may desist from arguing with their boss even when they know he is wrong.
Institutionally, they are inhibited from saying what they choose. This kind of
unfairness may strain goodwill, and cause other kinds of problem. But it need
not induce a breakdown in communication. There is still symmetry in
expectations that all speakers accept their immanent speech-act obligations,
so boss and subordinates can still understand each other. The only problem is

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360 N.Blake

that the employees may doubt whether the boss can actually redeem his
obligations, for all that he honestly thinks he can. Asymmetry in speech roles
is not precluded by the demands of communicative action, even if role
asymmetries may sometimes be objectionable on other grounds.
So it should not be thought that role asymmetry is necessarily objectionable in
communicative action. This is important with regard to teaching, which
traditionally takes asymmetric role forms. The role asymmetry of the lecture, for
instance, is quite compatible with symmetry of expectations between speaker
and hearers concerning the redemption of validity claims. The lecture is not
discourse, a dialogue in rational deliberation; but neither is it, for all that, a
failure of communicative action. The lecturer's typical motive is simply and
properly to be understood, and the role asymmetry need not inhibit her success.9
So discourse and non-discursive communicative action differ in one major
respect. The former requires speech role symmetry in an ideal speech situation,
the latter does not.IO Most conversation is not discursive and moreover shouZd not
be so. Communicative interaction is the woof and weft of ordinary social life. In
day-to-day contexts, even when a speaker wants the unfettered understanding
and rational agreement of his audience he does not seek rational deliberation of
implicit validity claims, but rather their unproblematic acceptance. In such
contexts considerations of ordinary tact, discretion or selflessness might some-
times preclude the expression of certain attitudes, wishes or needs. A practical
need for decisive action might preclude an indefinite extension of discussion and
debate. On occasion certain people, for good moral reasons, should be excluded
from participation in some decisions because they are simply 'none of their
business'. So in day-to-day contexts one might specifically, and perfectly
rationally, not want to enact the conditions of the ideal speech situation.
Moreover it is not just inappropriate but impossible for us to stop to call in
question all the validity claims raised in our multitudinous speech acts.''
Therefore we need some specific reason to call in question any one of them.
Day-to-day life does not provide these often.
Is there anything necessarily wrong, then, with any form of teaching which
similarly does not conform to the ideal conditions of speech? To think so is to
believe that all communicative interaction in teaching should be discursive. But
why should one believe that? It might be thought that implementing ideal
speech conditions is a necessary hedge against strategic interaction.'Z But as we
have seen, interaction does not have to be discursive simply in order to avoid
being strategic.I3
So is there anything wrong in a situation in which students accept
unproblematically all the background validity claims presupposed by a
teacher's statements? After all, there is no escape from a situation in which
students take most of the validity claims raised by the teacher as unproble-
matic. Even in discourse, every utterance raises further validity claims which
must themselves be accepted unproblematically for the discourse to function at
all. Thus one can hardly suppose that there is something epistemologically
second-rate about non-discursive teaching.
What seems to haunt an author like Robert Young is the fear that if students
do not discursively question validity claims they are therefore reacting
uncritically, and that if teachers dissuade them from doing so they are

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 Ideal Speech Conditions, Modern Discourse and Education 36 1

behaving like indoctrinators. But this rests on a confusion. We must not

construe every question in a conversation as a demand for discourse on
background assumptions. There is a difference between simply asking to know
more and having reasons to doubt the presuppositions of what is being said: a
difference between asking for reasons and doubting the background assump-
tions common to some claim and the reasons offered for making it; a difference
between asking for the justification of a claim and questioning whether the
justification rests on valid background assumptions; a difference between
repudiating an explanation offered, as mistaken or inadequate for instance, and
repudiating the assumptions on which it rests. Each of these contrasts shows
that one may be critical and enquiring without necessarily engaging in
discourse.
If some kinds of question are not discursive, then non-discursive teaching
andtlearning need not be unquestioning. But of course it will miss a critical
dimension. Whether discourse, and thus ideal speech conditions, are relevant to
teaching depends on whether and when it is appropriate for students to be not
just questioning but fully critical. Since good reasons are needed for raising
doubts, one constraint on full criticality must be what a student has already
learned, typically in a less critical mode.

11
I want now to consider discourse and ideal speech in connection with curricular
aims. We must examine further the connection between discourse and ideal
speech, looking first at the role of ‘discourse’ in teaching.
Most teaching is not discursive, and does not need to be conducted under
ideal speech conditions. But surely it would be a poor form of education which
never involved teacher and pupils in episodes of rational deliberation. Indeed, I
shall argue that discourse is essential as an element in the curriculum. But even
when teaching is properly discursive, it still need not conform to the conditions
of the ideal speech situation.
Consider again those ordinary conversations where there are positive reasons
against aiming for ideal speech conditions. It is commonplace here for the
interaction to ‘go discursive’ for a while; for speakers to come to a point where
they want to put in question some claim they have been taking for granted. This
may constitute just a particular phase of the conversation. But in such an event
one cannot suddenly invoke the conditions of ideal speech. The same
considerations which qriginally weighed against doing so should still apply.
Considerations of, for instance, tact, pertinence or practicality should not be
suspended. The conversation as a whole still sits within that everyday context in
which these requirements are important. To disregard those considerations in
order to implement ideal speech conditions would be to nullify the normative
and expressive presuppositions of the conversation as a whole.
The requirement of ideal conditions of speech can be viewed in two different
ways: either as a prescription for the conduct of discourse, or as a criterion,
gauge or measure of the rationality of its pr0cess.1~In the latter case, it is the
sole criterion. Whenever any relevant considerations have been positively
suppressed in a conversation, its process is by definition invalid. Therefore

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 362 N. Blake

whenever one believes that something may have been unwittingly suppressed,
because of constraints on speech, and yet ex hypothesi one does not know what
has been suppressed, then one simply cannot guarantee that the outcome has
been rational. Conversations such as these are rationally impaired in their
process whether or not their outcomes are, as it may happen, rational.
However, as a prescription for optimal conduct, implementing ideal speech
conditions cannot be a categorical requirement. There are cases where it is
necessary to balance that prescription against the exigencies of particular
situations. We may need to trade off optimal rationality against other
considerations - to say things like ‘We need to make a decision quickly now,
and we simply can’t explore the matter any further’.” In these cases, for various
reasons, we have to operate without certain safeguards of rationality.
Interaction here may be relatively risky, but that does not mean that it is
foredoomed to an irrational outcome. The same applies to those discursive
episodes within everyday conversations just discussed.
The context of teaching is surely just the kind which bristles with
countervailing considerations to those of securing ideal speech conditions.
The teacher is typically tightly limited for time, perhaps teaching youngsters
who are still learning the ethics of free and fair dialogue, and so may need some
steering. mere may be many things best left unsaid -personal matters
concerning particular pupils, or intellectual, moral or emotional considerations
beyond their grasp. Disciplinary needs may preclude the expression of certain
attitudes, and so on. In many respects a teacher may need to compromise the
ideal conditions, even when attempting discourse with students. That is not to
say that the requirements of ideal speech should be disregarded. They are
relevant and important, and they may often count for more than other
considerations. Sometimes, for instance, candour counts for more than tact.
But even in discursive teaching the realisation of ideal speech considerations
cannot be the paramount consideration.
In fact it is hard to imagine any singular conversation ever conforming to the
ideal conditions of speech. First, all live discussions must take place under
limitations of time and space. There is often not physical room for everyone to
participate who might like to do so, nor time available for all to say as much as
they would like. More subtly, it often seems undesirable for certain people to
express certain wishes or attitudes, or even to be present at all, simply because
of who they are - a man’s voice in discussions of women’s issues, a boss’s
voice in a discussion of labour conditions. The inhibiting person may be polite,
self-restrained and fair, yet still a problem, despite his best intentions. But if this
is so, it begins to seem that the requirement of ideal speech conditions has no
relevance either as a criterion of rationality. What kind of dialogue could ever
measure up to it?
The answer is that a discursive exchange or a discourse is not coeval with a
conversation. Where a validity claim has been put in question, there may have
been other dialogues in which the same claim or its logical concomitants have
been examined. They are therefore relevant to the current conversation, so that
if a discourse is to be conceived as potentially inclusive of any relevant
considerations coming from any quarter, these earlier dialogues may be treated
as belonging to the same discourse as the current conversation. Thus a

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discourse can be taken to extend itself across a large number and wide variety of
dialogues and not be localised in one time or place. It is to spatially and
temporally extended discourses such as these that the conditions of ideal speech
may appropriately apply. In these, lapses from ideal speech conditions may in
principle be corrected later. Voices, proposals and attitudes which have been
suppressed can be allowed to be heard eventually. Thus, in contrast with singular
conversations, it is appropriate to assess the rationality of such discourses over
significant periods of time by reference to the requirement of ideal speech
conditions.
Furthermore, if and only if a discourse has been institutionalised, this
requirement may also function as a categorical prescription for its conduct. A
discourse may be institutionalised in a variety of ways, in university
departments, specialist journals, conferences, academic and other specialist
societies, museums, organised laboratories and so on. Institutionalisation brings
cadres of office-holders, such as professors, editors, librarians or curators
charged with responsibility for overseeing the conduct, preservation and
transmission of a discourse. Part of their duty is to maintain its social bases
which include an important material and economic aspect. In modern societies,
preservation and transmission of knowledge involves archives (libraries,
museums, administrative records and so on) used and maintained by discourse
institutions, among others. The material activities of discourse institutions are
no less important than their social activities.
It is simply an historical contingency that discourse has been institutionalised.
But one can readily see why the innovation lasts. Institutionalisation secures the
survival of expert communities dealing with particular discourses. They come to
share ever more clearly defined purposes and interests, expert languages and
assumptions, and doubtless much else. The expert community acquires a larger
stake in its own survival and also the means to secure it. Inasmuch as the binding
purpose of such communities is to advance their own discourses, their
institutions need to secure the marginalisation of extraneous purposes which
may interfere with this goal. The creation and maintenance of ideal speech
conditions are thus appropriate as their overriding aim, securing the observance
of rules guaranteeing various rights of speech and reply to those who wish to
participate.
Institutionalised discourse stands at the epistemic centre of modern society,16
and is constituted by the approximation of its conditions over time to an ideal
speech situation. This is no less true of normative discourse, institutionalised in
the law, politics and formal religion, than it is of the textbooks and laboratories
of science and technology; and perhaps also of discourse in the affective sphere,
institutionalised in museums, publishing houses and libraries, theatres and
musical institutions, press criticism and so on. Certain value-laden practices,
those of securing the ideal conditions of speech, are central to modern forms of
knowledge, and thus have a central importance for us. To fail to understand
this is to fail to understand the normative core of the modern world.
Once this point is taken, a number of far-reaching implications for education
come into focus. I shall finish by indicating an intentionally disparate set of
them. First, we should remember that education transmits shared knowledge17
and - it is to be hoped - that part of it which is rationally most defensible. I

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364 N. Blake

have argued that the rational status of knowledge is determined by the degree to
which its conditions of production approximate to the conditions of ideal
speech. But this has social and institutional implications for school education
which have been obscured by some tendencies in educational theory.
Neo-Marxist theorists, properly attending to the social and material
conditions of the production of knowledge, too often dismiss transmitted
knowledge as simply the ideological product of particular social groups
pursuing particular social interests. Traditionalists, in reaction, sometimes
defend the validity of the transmitted tradition by minimising or even denying
the formative importance of social and material circumstances in the production
of knowledge. Progressivists tend to ground the validity of an individual's
knowledge in the authenticity of his cognitive activities - these in turn judged
partly by their resistance to institutionalisation. The autonomous person is
frequently portrayed in socially individualistic terms, almost as an existential
hero. He may engage in dialogue with others, but retains an inner core of
moderated scepticism towards any institution, and repudiates commitment to it.
All three groups share at least one mistake. None draws a distinction
between those social and material institutions which do foster rationality and
those which do not. For the neo-Marxist, all knowledge producers are mired in
cultural relativity. For the conservative, the material constraints of institutions
are to be transcended. For the progressive, it is their social constraints which
are the problem. But for Habermas and for those who believe that an idea of
ideal speech conditions is genuinely operative, there are institutions which,
through their social organisation and its material embodiment, constitute and
promote rationality rather than impede it. The institutions of higher education
are not unique among these, but they are, arguably, those least tied to sectional
interests. Consequently, the knowledge which they constitute has a special
claim to be disseminated as part of the shared knowledge of the society.
Necessarily, education in a modern society involves the induction of
youngsters into the rudiments of knowledge not just constituted but preserved
and transmitted by the discourse institutions of higher education. This is not to
imply that school education must be modelled on the academic practices of
higher education or restricted to academic knowledge. But it is to say that
school education must maintain some connection, however distant, with higher
education. At its simplest, we may say that behind the school textbook must lie
the university library. Similarly, behind the discovery class in a school
laboratory should stand the practices and products of research institutes.
Secondly, in virtue of its overlooked relationship to discourse institutions in
the form of higher education, school education in a modern society not only
preserves and transmits the culture but reshapes and reconstitutes it. It is the
institutionalisation of discourse that secures modern progress in all cultural
spheres of action. It is central to the maintenance of all forms of social
modernity, including those of a modern economy.'8 And the relation of the
discourse institutions of higher education to schools makes both them and the
schools themselves major organs for the dissemination of intellectual
innovation. Thus problems about curriculum change are logically related to
questions about the innovatory potential of discourse institutions operating
under approximately ideal speech conditions.

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 Ideal Speech Conditions, Modern Discourse and Education 365

Finally let us return to the question of personal autonomy. The

autonomous individual is one who both can and does engage freely in
rational deliberation. But as we noted earlier it has often been taken that this
involves a critical self-distancing from established social practices. However, if
Habermas’s account is correct, even the processes of rational deliberation at
their most rigorously critical are themselves intrinsically social. The pursuit of
autonomy does not involve withholding commitment to all social institutions
but commitment to the appropriate ones. Autonomous persons should
commit themselves to discourse institutions. It is only through these that they
can exercise their autonomy most rationally and best pursue, in dialogue with
others, those critical projects which inform their lives outside discourse
institutions.
Now if autonomy is an educational goal for all, that has important social
implications. For it commits us not only to maintaining the independence of
discourse institutions, but to maximising access to them and perhaps also to a
proliferation of their forms. Higher education is the locus classicus of
institutionalised discourse, but it may never be the case that higher education
is suitable for all. Elements of discursive discussion seem to merit an
important place in secondary education on that ground alone, even if it
cannot be its typical medium. As we have seen, this does not equate
straightforwardly with unstructured discussion sessions. Nor does it reduce to
extended chats in which students may begin to ‘find themselves’. Intrinsically,
discourse has a subject matter and an agenda which transcend personal
concerns, though it does not exclude them. Also it extends critique impartially
to all contributions made to it. The early practice of the skills of autonomy
exchanges the constraints of course work for a commitment to critique of
one’s own thoughts no less than others, which, if freer than course work, may
be no less demanding.
The same problem of access suggests a much expanded role for continuing
and other forms of adult education in securing a space for discourse which
can only ever be inadequately provided at secondary level. After all, it is to
the conduct of our adult lives that personal autonomy and thus the practice
of discourse is especially relevant. This practice needs to be an ongoing
commitment, rather than a dimly remembered episode in one’s educational
career.
I hope I have indicated some doors which may be opened to educational
theory by an interest in the institutionalisation of discourse under ideal speech
conditions, and suggested ways of redeeming from scepticism the promise of
the work of Habermas for philosophy of education.

Correspondence: Nigel Blake, Institute of Educational Technology, Open

University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. The intricacies in relating Habermas to his Enlightenment inheritance and his ‘postmodern’context are
addressed in a forthcoming paper, ‘The democracy we need: situation, post-foundationalism and
Enlightenment values’.

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366 N. Blake

2. This is not to deny the possible aim of exploring differences of opinion between speakers, which may even
prove irreconcilable. But even here the aim of rational agreement also still operates, albeit at a higher
level - the aim of agreeing on what the differencesbetween speakers really are. To agree on that is to
learn something and to share that learning with one’s protagonist.
3. See White, S . K. (1988) The Recent Work of Jurgen Hubennus (Cambridge University Press), p.56,
quoted from Habermas, J. (1989) Moral Consciousnessund Communicative Action (London, MIT Press),
p. 89. Here Habermas draws on R. Alexy. ‘Eine Theorie des praktischen Diskurses’, in W. Oelmiiller,ed.,
Normenbegdndung, Normendurchsetzung (Paderborn, 1978).
4. Habermas’s exact position on the status of ideal speech conditions has been in flux for some time, but this
seems irrelevant to the immediate concerns of this paper.
5. The hearer may be either concretely present (if only at the end of a phone) or notionally present as a
reader of one’s written words.
6. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, p. 58.
7. Jiirgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vof. I, Reason and Rationalization of Society
(Frankfurt 1981), p. 287.
8. See Robert Young (1990), A Critical Theory of Education: Habermas and our Children’s Future (New
York), p. 113.
9. This is not to deny that a poor lecture might be redeemed by greater role equality if students had more
leeway to ask questions and seek clarification.
10. Because he fails to distinguish between discutsive and non-discursive communicative action, Robert
Young misses this important point. This leads him to note those ‘concrete situations . . . in which a
degree of asymmetry of speech roles is entirely rational and appropriate’ (Young, op. eit., p.76) as if
they were practically necessary departures from the otherwise ideal speech situation - a position
which sits ill with characterising their asymmetry as ‘rational and appropriate’. But as we can now
see, where interaction is not discursive the demands of the ideal speech situation are irrelevant
anyway.
11. This indeed is a major point that Habermas conceded to Gadamer in their important debate on
hermeneutics.
12. This seems to be part of Robert Young’s position, for instance: see Young, op. cit., ch. 6.
13. I have argued elsewhere (see my Modernity and the problem of cultural pluralism, Journal of Philosophy
of Education, 26. 1, 1992) that institutionaliseddiscourse is indeed a hedge against certain, typically non-
linguistic, forms of strategic action, and I stand by that. But what provides the hedge in that case is not
the fact of discursivity but the fact of its instititutionalisation.
14. See pp.xvii-xviii of the lucid and compact discussion of these issues in Thomas McCarthy, ‘Translator’s
introduction’ to Jiirgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Frankfurt 1973), pp. x-xviii. McCarthy quotes
Habermas (from ‘Wahrheitstheorien’ in Wirchlichkeit und Reflexion: Festschrift fur Walter Schultz
(Pfullingen, 1973), pp. 21 1-265, p. 218) as describing the ideal speech situation as ‘a fiction that is
operatively effective in communication’, but also as ‘a critical standard against which every actually
realized consensus can be called into question and tested’ (and for Habermas, consensus is the
appropriate outcome of. any process of rationally conducted discourse).
15. For instance, as Habermas acknowledges himself, in a democratic process ‘majority decisions are held to
be only a substitute for the uncompelled consensus that would finally have resulted if discussion did not
always have to be broken off due to the need for a decision’. See Jiirgen Habermas, Towards a Rational
Society, Boston, 1970, p. 7; quoted in Young, op. cit., p. 64.
16. For an early exposition of this view, see ‘Some constitutents of social systems’, Part I, Ch.2 of
Legitimation Crisis. The argument is not merely definitional - that modern societies just are those
which institutionalise discourse. Nor is it merely an historical generalisation - that those societies
which we identify as modern have in fact institutionalised discourse. Habermas wants to argue that just
as there is an irreversible logical sequence of stages in the cognitive development of children, as
described by Piaget and Kohlberg, so too there is a comparable irreversible sequence of stages in
‘social learning’, or the capacities for learning inherent in particular kinds of social organisation:
compare Legitimation Crisis, part I, Ch. 2 (c), pp. 14-17 with ‘Reconstruction and interpretation in the
social sciences’ in: J. Habermas (1990) Moral Consciousness und Communicative Action (MIT), in
particular pp.33-39. (This is not to deny that such advances can be repressed under certain political
regimes, but to insist that, however repressed socially, advances in social learning cannot be validly
repudiated.)

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 Ideal Speech Conditions, Modern Discourse and Education 367

17. The alternatives to shared knowledge which I have in mind are not personal, subjective or, per
impossibile, logically private knowledge, but local, idiosyncratic knowledges specific to small social
groups, perhaps lacking mechanisms for preserving a knowledge over time.
18. See again Legitimation Crbb, Part I, Ch. 2, and also J. Habermas, ‘Neoconservativeculture criticism in
the United States and West Germany: an intellectual movement in two political cultures’ (in Habermas
and Modernity, ed. Richard J. Bernstein (Cambridge and Oxford, 1985)) for a discussion of those
conservative political and social movements which seek to be selective in what they accept of the
modernity which flows from the institutionalisation of discourse - wishing to sustain a modern
economy in a context of traditional moral and aesthetic norms and indeed with their support.

REFERENCES
Bernstein R. J. (Ed.) (1985) Habermas and Modernity (Cambridge and Oxford).
Blake, N. P. (1992) ‘Modernity and the Problem of Cultural Pluralism’, Journal of Philosophy of Education,
Vol 26, no. 1.
Habermas, J. (1970) Toward a Rational Society, Boston.
Habermas, J. (Frankfurt 1973, London 1976) Legitimation Crbb.
Habermas, J. (Frankfurt 1981, London 1984) The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. I, Reason and
Rationalization of Society.
Habermas, J. (1989) Moral Consciowness and Communicative Action (London, MIT Press).
Oelmuller, W . (Ed.) (1978) Normenbegnhdung, Normendurchsetzung (Paderborn).
White, S . K. (1988) The Recent Work of Jurgen Habermas (Cambridge University Press).
Young, R. (1990) A Critical Theory of Education: Habermm and our Children’s Future (New York).

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