How can free and equal people cooperate to solve conflicts and common problems in a rational and legitimate way? In this article I deduce principles for doing so from the requirements of rational communication set out in the discourse theory of Jürgen Habermas. I apply them in defining a process of efficient decision making. What I call ‘communicative design’ denotes the design of a reason giving process in which the practice of proposing and assessing claims with regard to rulemaking and (...) problem solving is undertaken on an equal and autonomous basis. Two sets of prescriptions are given: organisational principles for the composition of groups and argumentative principles for deliberation. However, any procedure aimed at achieving a rational consensus in decision making in organisations has to deal in practice with limitations of time, participation and the information available. Communicative design may not guarantee strictly rational decisions, then, but the procedure it constructs does promise relatively ‘more valid’ decisions than might be expected if another procedure had been adopted. (shrink)

Re-working the Gramscian idea of the ‘organic’ intellectual from the cultural-political sphere to Higher Education (HE), suggests the need to develop critical and questioning ‘counter hegemonic’ ideas and behaviour in community education students. Connecting this reworking to the Habermasian theory of communicative action, suggests that these students also need to learn how to be constructive in developing such knowledge. Working towards critical and constructive capacities is particularly relevant for students who learn through acting in practice settings where general principles and (...) purposes acquired in the academy need to be interpreted in response to the unique demands of specific situations. From a Gramscian perspective, enabling students to develop the qualities of organic intellectuals means that lecturers have a duty to teach critical knowledges which the student will be unfamiliar with and unlikely to possess. If teaching is not to become simply didactic, however, there is also a need to acknowledge Habermas’s contention that all knowledge is contingent. This does not mean that knowledge is merely relative, subjective, or essentially interest serving, as some postmodernists would have it. In Habermasian terms, knowledge is developed through a rigorous process of contesting validity claims according to procedures appropriate to discipline areas. In these procedures, contestation occurs to the point where there is general agreement about the best current understanding, until such time as this is overtaken by ideas with a better claim. The danger is that over commitment to contestation in the classroom undermines subject knowledge and ultimately the authority of the educator. Speaking Habermas to Gramsci, and vice versa, helps socially and politically committed educators to construct a space in which didactic and discursive moments purposefully alternate. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is to provide an in-depth review of Andrew Feenberg’s Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason. To this end, the anal...

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of critique in Habermasian thought. Given that the concept of critique is a central theoretical category in the work of the Frankfurt School, it comes as a surprise that little in the way of a systematic account which sheds light on the multifaceted meanings of the concept of critique in Habermas's oeuvre can be found in the literature. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring the various meanings (...) that Habermas attributes to the concept of critique in 10 key thematic areas of his writings: (1) the public sphere, (2) knowledge, (3) language, (4) morality, (5) ethics, (6) evolution, (7) legitimation, (8) democracy, (9) religion, and (10) modernity. On the basis of a detailed analysis of Habermas's multifaceted concerns with the nature and function of critique, the study seeks to demonstrate that the concept of critique can be considered not only as a constitutive element but also as a normative cornerstone of Habermasian thought. The paper draws to a close by reflecting on some of the limitations of Habermas's conception of critique, arguing that in order to be truly critical in the Habermasian sense we need to turn the subject of critique into an object of critique. (shrink)