Habermas' Defense of Rationalism

Author(s): Allen W. Wood

Source: New German Critique , Spring - Summer, 1985, No. 35, Special Issue on Jurgen
Habermas (Spring - Summer, 1985), pp. 145-164
Published by: Duke University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/488204

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Habermas' Defense of Rationalism

by Allen W. Wood

1. Rationalism and Ethical Cognitivism

Jtirgen Habermas defends an ethic which he describes as "cognitiv-
ist, but cautious as regards ontological interpretations" (RHM 338)'
"Practical questions," according to Habermas, "admit of truth," and
"correct (richtige) norms must be capable of being grounded, in a way
similar to true statements" (LC 111, W 226). Habermas rejects ethical
naturalism, however. For him, there is a fact-value distinction, and
there are no moral "truths" in the sense that there are truths in science
or truths which ground the effectiveness of goal-oriented actions. The
correctness of norms is something different from the truth of prop-
ositions or the efficacy of teleological actions. The truth of propositions

1. In citing the writings of Habermas, I use the following abbreviations:

CES Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston,
1979). Cited by page number.
KI Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. J.J. Shapiro (Boston, 1971). Cited by
page number.
LC Legitimation Crisis, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston, 1979). Cited by page num-
ber.
R "A Reply to my Critics," inJ.B. Thompson and D. Held, Habermas: Critical
Debates (Cambridge, MA, 1982). Cited by page number.
RHM Zur Rekonstruktion des historischen Materialismus (Frankfurt, 1976). Cited by
page number.
TCA The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. T. McCarthy(Boston, 1984). Cited
by volume and page number. References to volume 2 (as yet untrans-
lated) cited Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt, 1981), by
volume and page.
TN "Der Ansatz von Habermas," in Willi Oelmueller (ed.), Transzenden-
talphilosophische Normenbegriindungen (Paderborn, 1978). Cited by page
number.
TP Theory and Practice, trans. John Viertel (Boston, 1973). Cited by page
number.
V "Vorbereitende Bemerkungen zu einer Theorie der kommunikativen
Kompetenz," inJ. Habermas and N. Luhmann, Theorie der Gesellschaft oder
Sozialtechnologie - Was leistet die Systemforschung? (Frankfurt, 197 1). Cited by
page number.
W "Wahrheitstheorien," in H. Fahrenbach, Wirklichkeit und Reflexion: Walter
Schulz zum 60. Geburtstag (Pfullingen, 1973). Cited by page number.

145

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146 Defense of Rationalism

and the correctness of norms relate to different sorts of "validity

claims," requiring a different sort of grounding (TCS 1: 23, 1:39). "The
grounding of correct commands and evaluations differs from the
grounding of true statements in the structure of their argumentation"
(W 227).
In fact, for Habermas cognitive claims and ethical or normative
claims relate to two different "worlds" in Karl Popper's sense. Prop-
ositional truth relates to the "objective world," normative correctness
to the "social world (as the totality of all legitimately regulated interper-
sonal relations)" (TCA 1: 99-100). (Habermas also follows Popper in
distinguishing a third "subjective world," in relation to which yet a
third kind of validity claim is possible, namely that of truthfulness
(Wahrhaftigkeit) in reporting one's thoughts, feelings and so forth.)
In both the cognitive and the normative case, however, Habermas
regards the validity claims as capable of being given a "rational" basis,
as capable of "objective evaluation," where valid claims are those for
which "there are good reasons or grounds" (TCA 1: 22). And in both
cases the conception of validity is tied to human discourse and the
reaching of a consensus. Following Peirce, Habermas conceives of
truth as what rational enquirers are destined to agree upon. "The con-
dition for the truth of statements is the potential consent of all others ...
Truth means the promise to attain a rational consensus" (W 219). On
this view, to say what it is for an assertionp to be true is closely tied to
"explaining what it means to redeem or ground with arguments the
claim that the truth-conditions forp are satisfied" (R 273). The validity
of norms, like the truth of assertions, is bound up with the realization
in discourse of a "justified consensus" (W 240).
Habermas clearly intends to apply this metaethical doctrine to social
relations and interactions, and to the resolution of interpersonal and
social conflicts. The result of this application is a position which I will
call "rationalism": the position that at least in principle social institu-
tions can always be founded, and interpersonal conflicts resolved, on
the basis of a rational consensus, an agreement between people on
terms which can be justified by objectively valid grounds or reasons.
The rationalist holds that there is always an objectively correct answer
to normative questions, and moreover that this answer is in principle
accessible to us through a process of discursive argumentation ter-
minating in a justified consensus. Rationalism rejects all non-
cognitivist, relativist, subjectivist or emotivist views which hold that
there is no objectively correct answer to normative or evaluative ques-
tions, and also the skeptical view that there can be no such thing as
knowledge or rationallyjustified conviction of what the correct answer
is. Likewise, noncognitivism, relativism, subjectivism, emotivism and

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 Allen W Wood 147

skepticism all preclude rationalism: for if there is not an objectiv

correct and epistemically accessible answer to ethical questions, th
there is no possibility of founding social institutions or resolving soc
conflicts on the basis of a rationally justified consensus about it.
As a view about social institutions and conflicts, however, ration
ism is perhaps best contrasted with two other widely held views, whi
I will call "romanticism" and "pluralism." Romanticism agrees th
social institutions require consensus as their foundation, but ho
that this consensus must be based on non-rational grounds, such
emotional ties to other people or to traditional social institutions o
non-rational commitment to cultural or religious values. (Since tie
this kind seem to be limited in extent, a romantic will probably
skeptical of the extent to which social conflicts may be resolvable on
consensual basis.) "Romanticism" as I use the term covers a v
variety of outlooks, ranging froin Bossuet to Burke to Bakunin. N
single term in widespread use easily connotes the property that unite
irrationalist consensualists.
Pluralism differs from both rationalism and romanticism in that it
denies that social institutions can or need be based on consensus,
rational or not (except in those fortunate instances where people hap-
pen to share common beliefs, values or attitudes). The pluralist holds
that social institutions and the resolution of conflicts must be rational,
but a matter of rational calculation rather than consensus. Where
irresolvable conflicts cannot be endured (through the recognition that
mutual tolerance is in everyone's interest), they must be settled b
strategic action (bargaining and coercion) in accordance with neutr
institutions in which different individuals and groups participate throu
the recognition by each that it is in its own interest to do so. (The mark
economy, the modern political state and the modern legal system a
the institutions for which this neutral, mutually advantageous status i
most often claimed.) Pluralism in this sense may have some affiliation
with other current uses of the term, but I recommend that those uses
be ignored here (there is no particular reason, for instance, why
pluralist in my sense would have to value social diversity or deny that
modern capitalist societies are governed by a power elite).
Habermas defends ethical objectivism and cognitivism because h
is deeply committed to rationalism, and a cognitivist position in meta-
ethics is the only one a rationalist can consistently take. To be a no
cognitivist, subjectivist or skeptic commits one to taking a romant
pluralist or some other anti-rationalist position on the foundation
social institutions and the resolution of interpersonal conflicts.
Habermas sometimes recommends social interactions based on
rational consensus, on practical or instrumental grounds. Consen

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148 Defense of Rationalism

behavior, he says, has advantages which strategic behavior lacks (TN

287); and he suggests that the human race survives only through
socially co-ordinated activities requiring the presupposiiton of rational
consensus (TCA 1: 397). These aguments, however, do not go far
toward establishing rationalism. Only if we are already persuaded that
it is possible for human society to attain a rational consensus is it plaus-
ible to suppose that human survival rests on such a thing. Likewise,
pluralists may not dispute the fact that consensual behavior has advan-
tages which strategic behavior lacks; their doubt is rather over whether
consensual behavior is possible even in principle in ethical matters.
The advantages of consensual behavior will also not persuade roman-
tics either that a rational consensus is always attainable or that it would
always be preferable to a non-rational one.
Such practical-instrumental considerations do not explain Haber-
mas' commitment to rationalism, and they may even mislead. For the
differences between rationalists, romantics and pluralists is not really a
disagreement over what practical strategy is most likely to succeed in
founding or maintaining social institutions and in resolving social con-
flicts. Rationalists need not underestimate the difficulty of reaching
consensus in practice, just a pluralists may regard consensual resolu-
tion of conflicts as desirable where it is possible and romantics may not
necessarily spurn a consensus based on reason where one is available.
Likewise, the appeal of rationalism is not limited to the very dubious
idea that it is always possible to obtain, or even always desirable in
practice to seek, a rational consensual resolution to conflicts or a
universal rational consent to social arrangements. Rationalism says
only that rational consensus is possible in principle, if argument goes
on long enough on a high enough plane. But what is possible in princi-
ple is often impossible in the real world. A rationalist may be more
prone in practice than a pluralist or romantic to resort to fighting or
preaching if the rationalist has a lower estimate than they of the likeli-
hood that rational consensus may be reached and a higher estimate
both of the likely success of other expedients and the costs of con-
tinued dialogue.
Neither is the appeal of rationalism to be identified with the philoso-
pher's taste for disputation or the charm sweet reasonableness has for
the irenic personality. Rationalism appeals to Habermas, I think, for
the same reason I find that it appeals to me, namely its connection with
the values which Habermas, following Kant, calls "autonomy" and
"majority" or "adulthood" (Miindigkeit). Human individuals can be
autonomous, responsible beings only if they view themselves as such,
and address each other as such in their social interactions. But they
cannot do this if their interaction is founded on their collective tutelage

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 Allen W Wood 149

to social relations, institutions or values to which they cannot adopt a

detached, critical attitude, and which they cannot accept on rational
grounds. Nor can they do it if their orientation to one another is fun-
damentally strategic, a matter of coercion, manipulation and persua-
sion rather than rationally justified and mutually acknowledged agree-
ment. In short, the romantic model of social interaction treats human
beings like children who will never grow up, and the pluralist model
treats them alternatively like manipulators and things to be manipu-
lated. A pluralist society cannot be a genuine community, however stable
a social order it may be; and a romantic society, however close the ties
which hold it together, cannot be a community of autonomous beings
deserving of their own and one another's respect.
What Habermas has seen is that only if rationalism is true does it
make sense for us to think of ourselves as autonomous, responsible
beings. If rationalism is false, then we must abandon the ideas of
autonomy and responsibility, together with the idea of human dignity,
which is closely bound up with them. These considerations do not, of
course, show that rationalism is true; for the ideas of rational com-
munity, autonomy, Miindigkeit and human dignity might all be illu-
sions. If they are not to be dismissed as illusions, rationalism requires
some sort of defense.

2. Defending Rationalism
In his writings of the last decade or so, Habermas sets out to defend
rationalism, and his defense is wide-ranging and complex. He realizes,
to begin with, that it is questionable whether any society up to now has
ever truly been founded on a rational consensus. But this is just the
critical function of his rationalism: to point the way toward a society in
which people can be fully autonomous.
Habermas is also quite sensitive to the fact that even the idea of a
society founded on a rational consensus is a very recent and very Euro-
pean one, which is thus likely to be scorned as ethnocentric. His re-
sponse to such a cultural relativist challenge consists partly in a con-
cession and partly in a theory intended to justify the superiority of
cultures which value rational consensus over cultures which do not.
Habermas is willing to concede that the criteria for the validity of asser-
tions and normative judgments is relative to a social and cultural con-
text. But he insists that the context-dependence of these criteria does
not entail that "the ideas of truth, normative rightness and truthfulness
which underlie... the choice of criteria are context-dependent in the
same degree" (TCA 1: 55). Habermas' main response to cultural
relativism, however, is to argue (in an updated version of the strategy
Hegel employed in his Phenomenology of Spirit) that the ideal of social

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150 Defense of Rationalism

relations based on rational consensus can be understood as the histori-

cal result of a social learning process, of which cultures and world-
views lacking this notion can be seen as earlier stages. This is the focus
of Habermas' ambitious attempt to "reconstruct" Marxian historical
materialism, employing some social analogue to the ontogenetic stages
of cognitive and moral development worked out in the theories ofJean
Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg (CES 95-177).
But to reply to cultural relativism is merely to answer one common
objection to rationalism, and not to provide a positive argument for it.
And there does seem such a direct line of argument in Habermas'
writings. This argument is apparently intended as a transcendental one
in something like the Kantian sense. It is closely connected to the
theoretical program in the philosophy of language which Habermas
calls "universal pragmatics." According to Habemas, the possibility of
a "universal and unconstrained consensus," and with it the ideas of
autonomy and Miindigkeit, are given along with the one thing which
"raises us out of nature" and "the only thing whose nature we can
know: language" (KI 314). Habermas' defense of rationalism is based
on a thesis about the universal conditions which must be presupposed
if we are to account for the possibility of communicative speech.
The starting point for transcendental philosophy in Kantian and
post-Kantian thought is self-consciousness, and especially the possi-
bility of self-knowledge through becoming object to oneself. Follow-
ing the recent discussions by the so-called "Heidelberg School" (in-
cluding Dieter Henrich, Ulrich Pothast, Conrad Cramer and Ernst
Tugendhat), Habermas regards this approach to self-consciousness as
beset with difficulties which can be solved only by rejecting the subject-
object model in favor of alinguistic approach to self-awareness (TCA 1:
392-397).2 Quite deliberately Habermas intends to replace a transcen-
dental philosophy based on a subject-object theory of self-consciousness
with a transcendental philosophy based on language. Habermas'
transcendental argument for rationalism is based on the idea that the
possibility of unconstrained rational consensus is something presup-
posed by the most fundamental use of language: its use to arrive at
what he calls Verstiindigung ("reaching understanding") (CES 1).
Before going further into Habermas' transcendental defense of
rationalism it may not be amiss to observe that this type of defense would

2. The term "Heidelberg School" is used by Tugendhat, Selbstbewusstsein und

Selbstbestimmung (Frankfurt, 1979), p. 10. See also Henrich, Fichtes ursprtlngliche Einsicht
(Frankfurt, 1967); Henrich, "Selbstbewusstsein," in R. Bubner, K. Cramer and R.
Wiehl (eds.), Hermeneutik und Dialektik (Tiibingen, 1970); and Tugendhat, Traditional and
Analytical Philosophy, trans. P.A. Gorner (Cambridge, Eng., 1982), pp. 50-75.

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 Allen W. Wood 151

not be necessary at all if Habermas had not rejected ethical naturalism:

the doctrine that ethical or normative truths are factual truths about
the real world like the truths of natural science. For to admit that there
are such truths and that human beings have in principle some kind of
epistemic access to them is already to admit that it is possible in prin-
ciple for people to reach a rational consensus about ethical matters,
namely by coming to share a knowledge of ethical truth. But Habermas
belongs to a tradition in which ethical naturalism is stigmatized as "ob-
jectivistic" and "scientistic," terms implying something both crude
and dehumanizing. According to Habermas, the differentiation of
validity claims to theoretical truth, normative correctness and subjec-
tive truthfulness is a mark of a modern society and worldview; the
failure to differentiate them is a sign of primitive societies and mythical
worldviews (TCA 1: 7 1). (If this means what it seems to, then Habermas
is classifying ethical naturalism and a materialist theory of mental
states as myths, incompatible with a modern scientific worldview.)
Besides, Habermas' account of theoretical or scientific truth is a dis-
tinctly non-realist one. For Habermas, the possibility of rational con-
sensus in theoretical matters also rests on essentially the same transcen-
dental argument from the possibility of language which we are about
to consider. Thus even if Habermas were to agree that moral truths
have the same status as factual or scientific ones, he would still have to
insist that rationalism requires a transcendental foundation. Ethical
naturalism would provide a real alternative to Habermas' transcen-
dental approach only if combined with some form of realism as regards
theoretical knowledge.

3. Universal Pragmatics
"Universal pragmatics" is an attempt to provide a formal analysis of
language; not, however, an analysis of syntactic structures (sentences)
or semantic units (propositions), but of speech acts or utterances (see
CES 7). It seeks to give "an explicit description of the rules that a com-
petent speaker must master in order to form grammatical sentences
and to utter them in an acceptable way" (CES 26). Habermas describes
his project as a "rational reconstruction" of linguistic competences.
Universal pragmatics seeks to reconstruct a competent speaker's pre-
theoretical know-how in the form of explicit rules (CES 15-20). The
theory is a universal pragmatics because it seeks to reconstruct not
merely the pragmatic competence of the speakers of a given language,
but the "general and unavoidable presuppositions of communica-
tion" (CES 23). This is what gives universal pragmatics its transcenden-
tal claim.
But Habermas' prefers to describe the transcendental character of

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152 Defense of Rationalism

his argument in qualified terms: "... we are forced as it were in a

transcendental sense to presuppose .. ." (R 255), ". .. something like a
transcendental investigation .. ." (CES 23). Habermas' rational recon-
struction differs from Kantian transcendental philosophy not only in
being concerned with language rather than self-consciousness, but
also through the fact that it is a reconstruction of empirically observed
competences, and makes no claim to provide a priori knowledge (CES
24). I think this is the main reason why Habermas often denies that he
is engaged in "transcendental philosophy" (CES 21-25, TN 128; TCA
1: 138). Another reason is to distance himself from the views of K.-O.
Apel, which have some resemblance to his but aim at being "transcen-
dental philosophy" in a more traditional sense (CES 22-23).
Habermas understands any speech act as attempting to establish a
determinate type of "interpersonal relation" between speaker and
hearer (CES 49). Corresponding to the type of interpersonal relation
there is whatJ.L. Austin called a determinate "illocutionary force" to a
given speech act; each illocutionary force represents a "universal-
pragmatic category of meaning" (CES 44). An act of promising differs
in this way from an act of warning, or notifying, or asking, or assuring,
or avowing (CES 46-50). The aim of a speech act is to be accepted by the
hearer. A speech act can, however, fail to be accepted either due to con-
tingent facts about the hearer or because it fails to meet a pragmatic
condition of acceptability. Universal pragmatics is concerned with
failures of the latter kind, and with specifying the rules to which a
speech act must conform if it is to be acceptable (CES 59).
Acceptability for Habermas is of four sorts: (1) comprehensibility
(well-formedness of the utterance), (2) propositional truth (of what is
asserted), (3) normative rightness (of action-guiding utterances) and (4)
truthfulness (of subjective avowals). One might think that the last three
of these four types of acceptability apply to distinct species of utterance:
truth only to assertions, normative rightness only to "ought"-state-
ments, truthfulness only to avowals of the speaker's subjective state.
But clearly some utterances can be judged in more than one way. To
use Habermas' own example: if a professor in the middle of a class
makes a request, asking a student to fetch a glass of water, the student
can find the request unacceptable in several different ways. The stu-
dent can take issue with its normative rightness ("No. You can't treat
me like one of your employees."), or with its subjective truthfulness
("No. You really only want to put me in a bad light in front of the
others.") orwith its factual presuppositions ("No. The next water tap is
so far away that I couldn't get back before the end of the session.")
(TCA 1: 306). Similarly, one could imagine challenging an assertion
either(l) because it is untrue, or because (2) although true, the asser-

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 Allen W Wood 153

tion divulges information which ought to be kept secret, or because (3)

true or not, the speaker does not mean what she says. Habermas con-
tends, in fact, that every utterance, considered in context, lays claim to
acceptability in all four ways at once (CES 63, TCA 1: 99, R 271).
Habermas puts this by saying that every utterance "claims validity"
or "raises validity claims" of the four kinds. The utterance claims
validity as measured by the understood norms of the social life-world
shared by the speaker and the hearer. But these norms, Habermas
insists, may always be questioned or challenged. Claims to com-
prehensibility can be made good only in practice, through the produc-
tion of utterances that others in fact can understand. Claims to truth-
fulness (about one's subjective states) are made good through further
interaction: the agent's behavior will show whether the avowal was
truthful, deceptive or self-deceptive (TP 18). Claims to cognitive -uth
and normative correctness, however, presuppose the validity of norms
by which truth and correctness are determined. Communication thus
presupposes that these norms can be shown valid by further argu-
ment. Habermas speaks of this as the "redeeming" of the implicit
validity claims, and as providing a "warranty" (Gewiihr) for them (TCA
1: 302). And he has a special name for the use of language involved in
critical discussions which thematize such norms: he calls it "discourse"
(Diskurs), in contrast to the communicative action involved in the per-
formance of speech acts (TCA 1: 42).3
The presupposition that a warranty can be given for the validity
claims to truth and correctness raised by a speech act is in effect the pre-
supposition that speaker and hearer could enter into discourse and
arrive at a rational consensus concerning these claims. This presup-
poses, according to Habermas, that "the structure of com-
munication... excludes all force... except the force of the better
argument (and thus that it also excludes ... all motives except that of a
co-operative search for truth)" (TCA 1: 25). A situation in which these
presuppositions are perfectly realized Habermas calls "the ideal speech
situation" (W 258).
Controversy has arisen over this conception, and in particular over
Habermas' claim that the ideal speech situation requires "a symmetri-

3. Not all Verstiindigung for Habermas takes place in a context where the discursive
redemption of validity claims is recognized as an option; Habermas seems to take the
presupposition of this option as one of the marks of a modem society and its world view
(TCA 1: 70-71). Here again his "reconstruction of historical materialism," or of the
process of "anthropogenesis" through a series of stages with a "developmental logic"
is supposed to provide thejustification for taking the presuppositions of modern com-
municative competence as having a kind of universal validity (TCA 1: 139-140).

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154 Defense of Rationalism

cal distribution of chances to choose and to apply speech-acts" (V 137).

Habermas has admitted that his earlier attempt to specify the con-
ditions of an ideal speech situation may be defective (R 255). The
attempt to describe the ideal speech situation may be an important
project from the standpoint of developing a substantive communica-
tive ethic along the lines which Habermas sometimes seems to intend.
But it does not seem to be an important issue from the standpoint of
Habermas' defense of rationalism, which deals with metaethical issues
(That metaethical positions are not ethically neutral is a platitude
which I do not in the least dispute. Indeed, I argued earlier that only a
cognitivist metaethic is able to dojustice to the values of autonomy and
Miindigkeit. The truth of this platitude, however, does not abolish the
difference between ethical and metaethical issues, or provide a bridge
from a cognitivist metaethical theory of communication to a "com-
municative ethic," if there is such a thing at all.)

4. The Verstindigungs-thesis
Habermas admits that the enterprise of universal pragmatics is
based on the assumption that what is "fundamental to all speech is the
type of action aimed at Verstiindigung, reaching understanding" (CES 1).
Let us call this assumption the "Verstindigungs-thesis". The thesis
would be fairly uncontroversial if all it said were that speech acts aim at
being understood. But the Verstindigungs-thesis means much more
than this. Verstdndigung, Habermas tells us, is a type of "agreement"
(Einverstiindnis) which "has to be accepted or presupposed as valid by all
the participants" (TCA 1: 287). To aim at Verstiandigung is therefore very
much the same as aiming at a consensus which the participants regard
as rational.
Only the Verstiindigungs-thesis justifies Habermas in saying that all
speech acts aim at acceptance and that every acceptance presupposes
an acceptability which is grounded in norms which can be warranted
through discourse. Pretty clearly, to assume the Verstiindigungs-thesis is
practically equivalent to assuming that the possibility of rational con-
sensus is a presupposition of speech, which is precisely the burden of
Habermas' transcendental argument for rationalism. At times, Haber-
mas seems to be merely stipulating that the term "communicative
action" refers only to action aiming at Verstiindigung (CES 1; TCA 1:
285-286, 294, 310). But in that case, a universal pragmatics of com-
municative action (in this stipulated sense) would do little towards
defending rationalism. It would restrict itself by definition to speech
acts which were assumed to be oriented toward Verstiindigung and
would do nothing to show that the speech acts in which people engage
in real life are oriented toward Verstiindigung. In some places, however,

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 Allen W. Wood 155

Habermas seems to be jusitifying his restricted definition of "com-

municative action" by alleging that since Verstindigung is the fun-
damental purpose of speech, we are justified in concentrating on
speech acts oriented toward it (TCA 1: 287-288). This makes his pro-
cedure defensible, but it points to the urgency of providing some
independent argument for the Verstandigungs-thesis.
Before we search for such an argument, let us get a bit clearer about
what the Verstdndigungs-thesis says. Habermas does not mean the
VerstZndigungs-thesis to say that people first have the aim of reaching
understanding with one another and then invent language and speech
in order to fulfill this aim. "We cannot define speech in terms of the
purpose of Verstdndigung because we cannot explain what Verstdndigung
is if we do not know what it is to speak" (TN 156). "The concepts of
speech and understanding reciprocally interpret one another" (TCA 1:
287).
Perhaps we can illustrate the point by analogy with the purpose or, as
we say, the "object" of a game. The object of a game is something
defined within the game, and not a pre-existent purpose for whose
sake the game is invented. Only within the game of baseball can we
have the purpose of scoring runs, and only within chess can we aim at
checkmating the opponent: likewise, only someone who has language
can have Verstindigung as a purpose. And yet just as checkmating the
opponent is the aim of chess, so that one is really playing chess only if
one has this aim, so Habermas contends one is really engaged in
linguistic communication only if one aims at Verstindigung with those
with whom one speaks. This is what Habermas has in mind when he
states the Verstdndigungs-thesis by saying that Verstdndigung is the "inherent
telos" of human speech (TCA 1: 287, TN 156).
It is important to Habermas's transcendental argument for rational-
ism that Verstdndigung should be a pervasive aim of speech belonging as
it were to language itself, and not merely a purpose which particular
speakers have when they engage in speech acts. In the first place,
Habermas admits that certain speech acts, such as true imperatives (as
opposed to "normatively authorized" imperatives) and declarations of
one's intention (what Habermas calls Ankiindigungen) do not immedi-
ately aim at any rational consensus (TCA 2: 51-52). As Habermas sees,
unless the Verstdndigungs-thesis is established, it will be open to us to
reconstruct speech-acts on the model of strategic action as well as on
the model of action oriented toward Verstdndigung (TCA 1: 288).4

4. Habermas is right, I think, to regard strategic or goal-oriented action in this res-

pect as the chief rival to communicative action. I am unconvinced byJonathan Culler's
attempt in the present volume to use literary speech (fiction or poetry) as a counterex-

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156 Defense of Rationalism

In the second place, until it is established that Verstiindigung is a fun-

damental and pervasive purpose of speech, even those types of com-
munication which clearly are oriented toward Verstiindigung will not be
of much support in defense of rationalism. People do often invoke
moral norms as if they had objective validity, and engage in the activity
of arguing about ethical questions as if there were some truth about
them to be discovered. This behavior does seem to presuppose that a
rational consensus on such matters is possible. It provides no trans-
cendental justification of rationalism, however. For people also engage
in the activity of praying, which presupposes the existence of some
supernatural being able to hear and respond to the prayer; but this is
no transcendental argument for the reality of supernatural beings,
because praying is an activity in which we need not engage, and in
which we probably will not engage unless we happen already to believe
in its presuppositions.
Likewise, when we disapprove of others' behavior or find that we
disagree on ethical questions, there is no need for us to suppose that
our disapproval has rational validity and no need to deal with moral
differences by rational argument. We can always respond to the offending
behavior by unreasoned exhortation, as the emotivists recommend;
moral differences can either be tolerated or else resolved by irrational
persuasion or strategic action. (If the romantics and pluralists are cor-
rect, these are the only real expedients open to us anyway.) Habermas'
transcendental argument for rationalism gains a hold on us only
because it argues that we cannot engage in the normal activities of com-
municative speech at all without raising validity claims to truth and
normative correctness and presupposing that they are redeemable

ample to Habermas' Verstiindigungs-thesis, as ingenious and witty as Culler's presenta-

tion is. For it is simply obvious that poetic or fictional communication is parasitical on
the communication which takes place in the everyday practice and which is what con-
cerns Habermas. People do not learn to use language to tell stories or create poems
until they have learned to use it to state facts, guide conduct and avow their thoughts
and feelings. The very notion of a fictional narrative makes sense only by contrast with
a narrative which aims to be a factual report. A society of people who used language
only to narrate facts and never to tell stories or create poems would be dull, but con-
ceivable. A society of people who used language only to tell stories or write poems is
unthinkable. To say this, of course, is not to denigrate the importance of literary uses of
language. For all it shows, non-literary uses of language might exist for no higher pur-
pose than to make novels and poetry possible. Literature may be parasitic on practical
fact-stating, action guiding communication in the way that all the activities which make
life worth living are parasitic on bare physical survival. Culler is no doubt correct that
Habermas has not yet provided a theory of language suitable to accounting for literary
speech acts. But he has not shown that this is any defect in Habermas' program as it
stands, but at most an omission to be made good in it.

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 Allen W Wood 15 7

through rational discourse. Something like the Verstdndigungs-thesis

seems to be required if such an argument is to succeed.
It is not self-evident, however, that speech must have a single,
encompassing telos, inherent or not. The claim that it has one, and that
it is to be identified with Verstdndigung, therefore seems not only to be
crucial to Habermas' transcendental defense of rationalism, but also
something of which Habermas should feel the need to convince us.
This makes it all the more puzzling that although Habermas identifies
the Verstiindigungs-thesis as an "assumption" of universal pragmatics,
he does not spend much time anywhere arguing for it. To date, as far as
I know, his only explicit attempt to defend it is to be found in subsec-
tion B of the "Intermediate Reflection" in Volume One of The Theory of
Communicative Action (TCA 1: 286-295). ". .. It can be shown," Haber-
mas says, "that the use of language with an orientation to reaching
understanding is the original mode of language use, upon which indirect
understanding, giving something to understand or letting something
be understood, and the instrumental use of language in general are
parasitic. In my view, Austin's distinction between illocutions and
perlocutions accomplishes just that" (TCA 1: 288). The next section of
this paper will be devoted to examining the argument Habermas
introduces with these remarks.

5. Illocutions and Perlocutions

For Austin, a locutionary act is an act of saying something; an illocution-

ary act is an action I perform in saying something; and aperlocutionary act
is something I do by saying something, it is something I cause to hap-
pen as a result of the speech act I perform. To use Austin's example:
You say to me "Shoot her!" This is a locutionary act, an act of saying
something. In saying this, however, you are also doing something: you
are ordering, advising, or entreating me to shoot her (which of these
illocutionary acts you are performing will depend on such things as the
context and your tone of voice). But by ordering, advising or entreating
you also intend to be doing something else, namely persuading me to
shoot her. This act of persuading is aperlocutionary act.5
The distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts is not
easy to draw in an entirely clear way. Habermas draws it in three ways:
by the aims of speech acts, by their conditions of success, and by the
relation of the expressibility of their aims to the conditions of success.6

5. SeeJ.L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Oxford, 1965), p. 101. Hereafter
cited as "Austin."
6. Habermas considers and, following Strawson, rejects Austin's suggestion that
illocutionary acts are conventional in a way that perlocutionary acts are not (TCA 1:

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158 Defense of Rationalism

The aim of an illocutionary act "follows from the very meaning of what
is said," while the aim of a perlocutionary act does not (TCA 1: 290).
The conditions of success for an illocutionary act can be inferred from
the description of the act, while the conditions of success for a perlocu-
tionary act "refer to a context of teleological action thatgoes beyond the
speech act" (TCA 1: 290-29 1). Finally, the aims of illocutionary acts can
be achieved only by being expressed, whereas the aim of a perlocution-
ary act is "not declared or admitted as such" (TCA 1: 292).
The third of these points, at any rate, seems highly questionable,
especially in the strong form Habermas presents it: he says that the aim
of a perlocutionary act, if it is to succeed, must be concealed from the
other participants in communication, the performer of a perlocution-
ary act must deceive them about this aim (TCA 1: 294). Austin's point
here is that illocutionary acts "could be made explicit by the performa-
tive formula," where perlocutions could not (Austin, p. 103). I can
order you to shoot her not only be saying "Shoot her!" but also by say-
ing "I hereby order you to shoot her!" But I cannot persuade you to
shoot her by saying "I hereby persuade you to shoot her."
But as this example itself shows, there is in many cases no need for
me to conceal my perlocutionary aim if I am to accomplish it. When I
order you to shoot her, my perlocutionary aim (of persuading you to
shoot her) is plain to both of us. If I were to say: "I hereby order you to
shoot her, and my aim in saying that is to persuade you to shoot her,"
that might sound stupid, as belaboring the obvious, but it would not
normally doom my perlocutionary aim to failure, and the avowal
appended to the order would not divulge any information I had been
keeping secret. Habermas is no doubt correct that illocutionary acts
cannot succeed unless their illocutionary aims are expressed, and
there is a mutual acknowledgement of those aims and their expression
on the part of speaker and hearer (TCA 1: 292; see Strawson, p. 447);
but it depends on the circumstances whether expression of a perlocution-
ary aim defeats that aim.
Habermas wants to identify the distinction between perlocutionary
and illocutionary acts with the distinction he draws between "orienta-
tion to success and orientation to understanding" (Erfolgs- und Verstiin-
digungsorientierung) (TCA 1: 286). He wants to understand this not as a
distinction between two ways of looking at the same action, but as two
different and mutually exclusive ways of acting. "Social actions can be
distinguished acording to whether the participants adopt either a
success-oriented attitude or one oriented to reaching understanding"

292-293). See P.F. Strawson, "Intention and Convention in Speech Acts," Philosophical
Review, 73 (1964), 439-460. Hereafter cited as "Strawson."

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 Allen W. Wood 159

(TCA 1: 286). Success-oriented social actions are strategic actions.

They are in Weber's sense "purposive-rational" (zweckrational). Under-
standing-oriented actions, on the other hand, aim at reaching a rational
consensus with others. Habermas attempts to distinguish the two
types of action by saying that success-oriented actions aim at influenc-
ing others, whereas understanding-oriented actions aim at reaching an
understanding with them. "This is not a question of the predicates an
observer uses when describing processes of reaching understanding,
but of the pre-theoretical knowledge of competent speakers, who can
themselves distinguish situations in which they are causally exerting an
influence upon others from those in which they are coming to an
understanding with them, and who know when their attempts have
failed" (TCA 1: 286).
It is not immediately clear that Habermas has succeeded in identify-
ing two mutually exclusive orientations. Surely achieving understand-
ing with someone else is a goal or purpose I can set for myself; when I
seek this goal, I am oriented to success in achieving it; and actions
which I take to achieve it can bejudged effective or ineffective by stan-
dards of Zweckrationalitdt. Moreover, at least part of what I do toward
this goal normally involves exerting influence on others, as well as sub-
mitting to the influence they exert on me. These considerations sug-
gest that success-orientation and understanding-orientation are not
mutally exclusive categories of action, but that the latter is a species of
the former.
Habermas' distinction between the two kinds of action seems most
defensible if we see it as a distinction between actions which aim merely
at bringing about certain results (influencing others, coming to an
agreement with them) and actions which have, in addition to this, a
further aim. Agreement or consensus with others is something which
can be brought about by manipulating them, or even by manipulating
oneself so that one comes to share their convictions, sentiments and
values. But Verstiindigung in Habermas' sense is an agreement which
one at the same time regards as "valid," as having a rational basis. To
achieve Verstiindigung one must achieve an agreement with others
which conforms to rational norms, so that it is seen as a rationally
grounded one. Speech acts oriented to understanding aim not merely
at acceptance, but also at acceptability, at validity which is achieved by
conformity to norms which can be warranted in rational discourse.
Conformity to rational norms, however, is not a state of affairs which is
causally produced in the world in the way that defacto agreement be-
tween people can be. It is not just zweckrational but also wertrational (or,
as Habermas would perhaps prefer to say, normrational [TCA 1: 174]).
And it is not something which one can produce, as one can produce

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160 Defense of Rationalism

conduct of a certain description, just by exerting influence on others or

on oneself.
Let us now see how this is supposed to bear on Habermas' attempt to
argue for the Verstiindigungs-thesis by employing Austin's distinction
between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. What Habermas wants
to claim is that perlocutionary acts are one and all strategic actions,
actions "oriented to success," linguistic interventions in the world aim-
ing at bringing about an effect in it, whereas illocutionary acts are acts
of a different kind, acts "oriented to reaching understanding":
Illocutionary results are achieved at the level of
interpersonal relations on which participants in commu-
nication come to an understanding with one another
about something in the world. In this sense, they are
not innerworldly but extramundane. Illocutionary re-
sults appear in the lifeworld to which the participants
belong and which forms the background for their proc-
esses of reaching understanding. They cannot be in-
tended under the description of causally produced
effects (TCA 1: 293).
Acts oriented to understanding may be called "extramundane" in the
same sense that they may be said to aim at something beyond the
production of states of affairs in the world: they aim not merely at de
facto acceptance, but also at acceptability or validity, at conformity to
rational norms.
Habermas wants to make use of the fact that perlocutionary acts are
parasitic on illocutionary acts to show that whenever speech acts are
cases of stratetic action or action oriented to success, they are parasitic
on acts oriented to understanding. This would show that all speech acts
involve Verstiindigung as an inherent telos, even those which are strategic
in nature, oriented to success rather than understanding. It would con-
firm the Verstindigungs-thesis.
Habermas is correct, of course, that perlocutionary acts are nor-
mally parasitic on illocutionary acts. You cannot normally succeed in
using a speech act to persuade me to shoot her unless you succeed in
ordering, advising or entreating me to shoot her. Some perlocutionary
effects might of course be produced by a variety of different speech
acts, so that any of them would do. If my perlocutionary aim is to annoy
or interrupt you, I might even succeed in doing this by inarticulate
mumbling or shouting in which no illocutionary act at all is per-
formed. But perlocutionary aims of any greater sophistication than
this will require some kind of illocutionary success, often a very deter-
minate kind. If strategic or success-oriented action were parasitic on

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 Allen W Wood 161

understanding-oriented action in the way that perlocutionary acts are

parasitic on illocutionary acts, then Habermas' argument for the
Verstiindigungs-thesis would have succeeded.
But Habermas' argument does not succeed, because the distinction
between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts simply does not corres-
pond to the distinction between success-oriented and understanding-
oriented acts in the way the argument requires. Perlocutionary acts, to
begin with, are not so sinister as Habermas makes out. As we noted
above, perlocutionary acts are not necessarily doomed to failure if
their aims are manifest. Some perlocutionary acts, in fact, can even be
oriented to understanding rather than to success. A teacher, for instance,
sometimes finds it necessary to use the perlocutionary effects of speech
acts in order to get a student to appreciate a point. Imagine a timid stu-
dent who has formulated a correct and insightful argument, but has so
little trust in her own ability that she is unable to be thoroughly convinced
by it. The teacher performs the illocutionary act of complimenting the
student on her cleverness in order to have the perlocutionary effect of
persuading the student to take her own ideas seriously, and thereby to
attain to the rational conviction that her argument is sound. Nor is it
obvious that all illocutionary acts must aim at Verstiindigung. Habermas
provides no real argument that they must, and to assume that they do
seems very close to simply assuming that the Verstiindigungs-thesis is
true. To that extent, the argument looks simply question-begging.7

7. Habermas claims that "a speaker, if he wants to be successful, may not let his
perlocutionary aims be known, whereas illocutionary aims can be achieved only
through being expressed" (TCA 1: 292), immediately after citing Strawson, giving the
reader the impression that Strawson agrees with this claim. But either Habermas has
misunderstood Strawson or else he reasons from Strawson's position in a grossly falla-
cious way. Strawson agrees that an illocutionary aim can succeed only if it is expressed
and understood by the hearer: "An essential feature of the intentions which make up
the illocutionary complex is their overtness" (Strawson, 454). And he infers from this
that some speech acts (his example is the act of insinuating) may be classified as
perlocutionary rather than illocutionaryjust because their aims cannot be made overt.
"The whole point of insinuating is that the audience is to suspect, but not more than sus-
pect, the intention... The intention one has in insinuating is essentially nonavow-
able" (Strawson, 454). But Strawson never makes the mistake of claiming that what is
true of insinuating is true of every perlocutionary act. Habermas' claim that "per-
locutions may not be 'admitted' as such" (TCA 1: 292) can agree with Strawson only if
we give it a (strained) reading which says either (1) that it is permissible that per-
locutions not be admitted, or else (2) that some perlocutions are such that it is impermis-
sible to admit them. The sentence in English translation admits of both these strained
readings; Habermas' German (Perlokutionen diirfen nicht als solche 'zugegeben' werden) does
not admit of the first strained reading, but at most of the second strained reading. If we
take it in this way, then Habermas has not misunderstood Strawson, but he then
fallaciously infers from "some perlocutions are such that it is impermissible to admit
them" to "all perlocutions are such that it is impermissible to admit them."

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162 Defense of Rationalism

The distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts, in

fact, looks unsuitable to Habermas' purpose in that the aim of reaching
understanding itself looks more like a perlocutionary aim than an
illocutionary one. Verstdndigung is not something which one can achieve
simply by using an explicit performative formula, as one might give an
order or present an argument (by saying "I hereby order you . . ." or "I
argue that..."). Instead, Verstiindigung is something which must be
achieved by means of illocutionary acts, such as raising validity claims,
accepting the validity claims of others, or performing the various acts
of arguing, disputing, objecting, replying, conceding and agreeing
which belong to discourse. Verstiindigung may not be an effect pro-
duced entirely in the external world, but it is a result of speech acts
which necessarily goes beyond the illocutionary aims immanent in
them. Verstdndigung requires persuasion (Austin's own example of a
perlocutionary effect) and it requires that one's speech acts conform to
rational norms, which is a stronger requirement than illocutionary
success (at least as Austin understands it). This of course does not show
that illocutionary acts are not oriented to Verstindigung, but it does
show that such an orientation involves a concern which goes beyond
their illocutionary effects.
Of course if we define "illocutionary success" as "acceptability" in
Habermas' sense, then illocutionary success requires conformity to
norms whose discursive justification the participants in speech pre-
suppose possible. But this whole conception of illocutionary success
belongs to a theory which, by Habermas' admission, presupposes the
Verstiindigungs-thesis. It cannot legitimately be appealed to in an argu-
ment for that thesis.
Let me emphasize that my objection is not merely that Habermas has
misunderstood Austin or that he has decided to give a new sense to
Austin's terminology. Both are true, but the former is not important in
itself, and the latter is not in itself a ground to object to anything.
Habermas' project, after all, is different from Austin's (in my judg-
ment, much more interesting than Austin's). The objection is rather
that Habermas' argument for the Verstdndigungs-thesis is question-
begging if he uses Austin's terminology in his new way, but that the
argument will not work if it is understood in Austin's way.

6. Concluding Remarks
I conclude that Habermas still has not given an adequate argument
for the Verstdindigungs-thesis, and that his transcendental defense of
rationalism is therefore still fundamentally incomplete. Nevertheless,
Habermas' transcendental defense of rationalism is an original, in-
triguing and promising approach to the defense of rationalism in a

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 Allen W. Wood 163

nonrealist context. The resurgence of various forms of nonrealism in

recent years has often gone hand in hand with an irrationalism which is
sometimes as pernicious in practice as it is misguided in theory.
Habermas' approach represents a possibility of replying to contem-
porary irrationalists on their own grounds. For this reason, I would be
only too willing to see his argument for rationalism carried through
successfully. Bad arguments can be given for what is true, and to
expose Habermas' argument for the Verstdndigungs-thesis as unsuc-
cessful has no tendency whatever to show that the thesis is not true.
So sympathetic am I to Habermas' project, that I would like to end
by suggesting a way in which he might argue quite convincingly for the
Verstiindigungs-thesis. The argument would work, however, only if
researchers successfully complete the program of universal pragmatics,
and give it the status of a science. This is, of course, something Haber-
mas never pretends to have done, and about the possibility of which most
of us will no doubt be skeptical. In that sense, I am not going to sketch an
argument which can be employed at present, but one which might be
employed someday, if all goes well.
Suppose that Habermas and his colleagues succeeded in articulat-
ing a comprehensive formal theory of universal pragmatics, which
went to make up part of a theory of structural linguistics. Suppose
further that this theory proved superior to all going rival theories, as
measured by such familiar criteria in post-positivist philosophy of
science as fitting the empirical facts, explaining the phenomena re-
searchers regard as most in need of explanation, and yielding fruitful
research problems. If the Verstdindigungs-thesis were a fundamental
assumption of a theory which could claim these accomplishments,
then it could reasonably be claimed that the Verstiindigungs-thesis had
been very strongly confirmed by a retroductive argument or inference
to the best explanation. The Verstdindigungs-thesis would have the status
of a confirmed part of science, and so would its meta-ethical conse-
quences (ethical cognitivism and rationalism), along with any ethical
implications these might have (the reality of some of the presup-
positions of the values of autonomy and Miindigkeit).
The scenario I havejust sketched is one which it is difficult to believe
will ever come to pass. But it conforms slendidly to the 18th-century
Enlightenment vision that through success in empirical science we
might confirm ethical truth and found conditions in which human
beings might live together in harmony and dignity. In the past two cen-
turies, it has become so difficult to preserve this vision that it has come
to be widely regarded as ludicrous, unintelligible, even (in the eyes of
Habermas' teacher Theodor Adorno) something sinister and mon-
strous. That Habermas has the capacity in our dark time to articulate in

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164 Defense of Rationalism

impressive detail and with incredible erudition a philosophy conform-

ing to the Enlightenment vision is not the worst reason we might give
for honoring him as the most significant philosopher now living.s

8. I wish to thankAnton Leist, Satya Mohanty, Trent Schroyer, Thomas McCarthy,

Seyla Benhabib and Richard Miller for comments on earlier versions of this paper.

THESIS EIEVEN
Number 10/11 1984/85

The Discourse Ethics of Habermas

Agnes Heller

On 'Rationality' and 'Development'

Cornelius Castoriadis
The Welfare State Crisis and Work
Hinrichs/Offe/Wiesenthal
Delegation and Political Fetishism
Pierre Bourdieu
Rationality, Language and Bureaucracy
Michael Pusey
Discourse and Rationality
Janna Thompson

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