Discourse

Discourse
Ethics
Ethics
Introduction
there are many ways of
understanding and
articulating the good

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“ what is the basis of the
shared conception of
the good?
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 Western world began to emphasize the

“ autonomy of the human being from the will

and intelligence of a transcendent God,
people lost the basis of the good that
everyone could agree with. The primary
task of Western men was to find was to
find the basis of the conception that did
not rely on a transcendent order.
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 Why did
discourse ethics
emerged?
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Jurgen Habermas
> One of the most important philosophers
of discourse ethics

> One of his most important contributions

to philosophy is the analysis of the
emergence of public sphere and civil
society, as well as his articulation of
discourse theory and discourse
processes.
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Competing
conceptions of the
good
 Societies today are no longer
homogenous reasoning. In large societies
where the multiplicity of people’s needs
to be accommodated, conflict and
injustice cannot be avoided.

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 Injustice is a particular danger in multicultural
societies. Any society need a dominant system to
guide free and autonomous people regarding what
is acceptable behavior. The dominant system also
determines what is acceptable and unacceptable
behavior, what can be expected and what duties
persons have to each other and to society.

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“ How does a dominant
system come about?
It evolves.
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Dominant systems are generally useful guides for
human behavior, especially in a community. And
dominant systems are not generally problematic
in communities that share the same perspective on
reality and where general conditions for human
dwelling remain unchanged.

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Simple things such as manner of dressing and
everyday courtesies could be misconstrued to
be violations of good conduct. More
troublesome things such as criminal behavior
or sexual conduct could even lead to trouble.

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“Legislating” for
Autonomous,
Rational Beings
“ Human beings are rational
and autonomous, and as
such need to legislate for
themselves their rules of
behavior.
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Reasons why actions make sense to people:
• Practicality
• Fear of negative consequences
• Based on authority

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• People act according to their free will if they
are doing things they believe to be good.

• By following a maxim they have willed

themselves to do the good.

• People who desire to realize themselves as a

good are ought to follow laws for it is good.
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People have a need to realize their potential
as free beings and not just as free beings but
beings who seek their fullest potential. This
fullest potential can be called the good.

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People need guidance, norms, or
guides to know what to do ad
determine what is good.

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 There must be a way of arriving at a
conception of the good that is valid not
just for an individual but for one's
community as well.

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Humanity has already seen that people from
various backgrounds, cultures, and societies
have produced various forms of rationality
with their own conception of the good.

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 All affected can accept the consequences
“ and the side effects its general
observance can be anticipated to have for
the satisfaction of everyone’s interests
(and these consequences are preferred to
those of known alternative possibilities
for regulation).

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 Unlike Kant’s categorical imperative, it
proposes that a norm can only be valid if
all affected can accept the consequences.

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“
Only those norms can claim to be valid
that meet (or could meet) with the
approval of all affected in their
capacity as participants in a practical
discourse.

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Practical Discourse refers to a
cooperative process of
argumentation

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Shared opinion and
will-formulation
 The shared conception of the
good among people become their
shared norm for acting together.

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 Cooperative discourse creates a
certain process where people gain
what we can call, borrowing from
Habermas, a we-perspective.

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We-perspective - a community's shared
horizon of understanding that is born
from the free and fair engagement of
persons who bear different frames
for understanding the good.

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Creative dialogue is really founded on
mutual justification because here
people come together to explain to
each other why they believe what they
believe .

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“ Not all conceptions of
the good are acceptable
to all people.
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It is important for people of goodwill
to engage in a process of mutual
justification and clarification, as
much as they work for mutual
understanding and respect.

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 Participants in constant engagement
of goodwill eventually become a
we ,because they are called on to
listen to each other and try to imagine
where each person is coming from.

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Consensus building is
different from making
compromises.
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“ Can an ideal communicative
situation exist given the
realities of influence and
power?
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Basic Principles to Ensure Fairness

First, all affected must

be part of the process of
deliberation.

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Basic Principles to Ensure Fairness
Second, the process must be fair
such that all external influence
like power and money are suspended
and only the force of the better
argument has influence over the
participants.

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Basic Principles to Ensure Fairness

Third, all decisions or

agreements have a "for
now" characteristics.

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THANK YOU!

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