Jrgen Habermas, 'Modernity - An Incomplete Project' in Hal Foster, Postmodern Culture, pp.3-15.

Preempting Jameson's preference for the phrase late-modernity rather than postmodernity, Habermas responds to ideas of postmodernity and posthistory in this essay 'Modernity - An Incomplete Project' (written as a talk in 1980 in receipt of the Theodor Adorno prize by the city of Frankfurt and later published under the title 'Modernity versus Postmodernity'). Firstly, and with some irony, he looks historically at the idea of modernity and traces the term 'modern', from its latin roots 'modernus' used in the 5th century to distinguish the present Christian times from the former Pagan past. To add some more detail here: Raymond Williams charts its early usage in English as something like 'just now', nearer the term 'contemporary' (which until the 19th century was 'co-temporary' - making it more 'of the same period' than 'of our own immediate time'). This is consistent with the association of the 'modern' in opposition to the 'ancient', but generally only in the 19th century did it become a positive term associated with improvement rather than mere alteration that needed further justification (Williams, 208-9). This for Habermas, serves to express the common understanding of 'modernity' as a transitional state between the old and the new - appearing at times of acknowledged renewal and fundamental change. Importantly, this coming obsession with 'the new' and the 19th century kind of aesthetic modernity is distinguished from being merely 'stylish' and therefore easily outmoded and in turn superseded - or should I say needing constant upgrades. Contemporary consumer culture is entirely contradictory in this respect as it is both obsessed with nostalgia and at the same time with the idea of almost instantaneous obsolescence, and can therefore be dismissed as ahistorical. New technology is the exemplary expression of this wanton post-modern consumerist condition of newness never being allowed to settle in the present, and without this remains useless unless attached to a concept of betterment. Habermas says 'the emphatically modern document no longer borrows this power of being a classic from the authority of a past epoch; instead a modern work becomes a classic because it has once been authentically modern' (4). Aesthetic modernity is characterised by a changed consciousness of the time and particularly through the metaphors of the vanguard and avant-garde. In this conception, newness is potentially revolutionary. He says: 'The avant-garde understands itself as invading unknown territory, exposing itself to the dangers of sudden, shocking encounters, conquering an as yet unoccupied future. ... [but] this anticipation of an undefined future and the cult of the new mean in fact the exaltation of the present. The new time consciousness... does more than express the experience of mobility in society, of acceleration in history, of discontinuity in everyday life. The new value placed on the transitory, the elusive and the ephemeral, the very celebration of dynamism, discloses a longing for an undefiled, immaculate and stable present.' (5) In this way he accounts for the interruption of the continuum of history as 'modernity revolts against the normalising functions of tradition'; not ahistorical at all but rather against false history and historicism - in a version of posthistoricism even. He is drawing upon Benjamin's concept of 'Jetztzeit' in articulating the present as a moment of revelation. But this approach appears to be waning according to Habermas and he cites Peter Brger's notion of the 'post avant-garde' that appear to repeating the failed gestures of the early twentieth century (a trajectory more recently refashioned in Eric Hobsbawm 'Behind the Times' - this is not a classic text at all) - think of all the limp neo-Duchampian work of the past decade. And yet inherent in the any term that carries the prefix 'post', is that it suggests not a distinct break 9otherwise it would simply be a new word) but in some degree a continuation of the project it seeks to replace - Modernity as 'an incomplete project' is a case in point. This is in keeping with the classical root of the term itself according to the earlier etymological sources. The specific dangers of the distinct break thesis are covered elsewhere in this study as neoconservative, ahistorical and apolitical fashion. Having made such a bold statement, there are of course reasons to dispute the project of
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cultural and aesthetic modernity too, but this has always been the case with its internal critiques expressed in debates over art's autonomy from wider culture (although to questionable effect it must be admitted). The question of whether art is best served as a critical mirror to society or whether the separation of art and everyday life should be reconciled is a complex and contradictory undertaking and I hesitate to begin to engage with it as it lies outside the scope of my study. Following Adorno and no doubt with postmodernist art practice in mind (but citing the anarchism of dada and surrealism), Habermas is keen to point to the contradictions in the dissolution of distinctions between art and life, along with attempts to declare that everything is art and everyone is an artist, as the critical function of art requires its relative autonomy. I'm not so sure that one should conflate art's separation from society quite so clearly with modernity but it probably is the case that the negation of art merely destabilises its possible critical function outside of art (and this would be consistent with Adorno's view (remember this was first delivered in receipt of the prize in honour of Adorno). Adorno's negative committment proposes aesthetics as potentially subversive but under present conditions, even this stance is less sure - or rather 'its criticality is now largely illusory (and so instrumental)' (Foster, 1993: xiii). Habermas calls this 'the false negation of culture' as for him reification is a much more complex business than a concern with mere art or the radical practice of individual artists. (1993: 11) Reification, remains a useful concept under consumer capitalism, more in fact a precondition, as traditionally the 'transformation of social relations into things' but also the 'effacement of the traces of production' (Jameson, 1991: 314), leaving people to happily consume free of guilt. Getting your computer connected requires disconnection from such productive issues, ironically displaced to another part of the globe that is supposedly made more accessible. And despite any new descriptions of the blurring of consumers and producers in trendy terms like users, reification continues to emphasis their separation in 'a Promethean inferiority complex in front of the machine' (Jameson quoting Gunther Anders, 1991: 315). In the cultural arena, it is as much a case of deification as reification; people or things only become part of the canon when they are already already dead, on the walls or in the vaults of the museum/masoleum, dead monuments to dead people and dead ideas. The idea of a radical canon is paradoxical - even Che Guevara and Mao ended up on T-shirts. The contemporary arts is full of tired old reproduction of all the worst aspects of modernist practice - individualist and self-validating to efface all traces of production. But rather than give up on modernity, Habermas's suggestion is to learn from past mistakes and from previous attempts at negating modernity. The problem is the way that these previous failures have become a defence for conservative positions that make resistance appear quite hopeless - he cites the premodernism, anti-modernism (and its notion of decentred subjectivity), and postmodernism (by now collapsed into anti-modernism or even worse post-postmodernism) as symptoms of this tendency (dare I add transmodernism?). The Habermas essay was in contradistinction (at the time) to the other essays in the collection Postmodern Culture (or The Anti-Aesthetic, its American title) edited by Hal Foster (1993) although perhaps with similar purpose. Taking its cue from the incorporation of Modernism's once oppositional project, the collection of essays sought to revitalise this critical stance by rejecting the conservative stance that Habermas identifies. The difficulties were highlighted from the start: 'How can we exceed the modern? How can we break with a program that makes a value out of crisis (modernism), or progress beyond the idea of Progress (modernity), or transgress the ideology of the transgressive (avant-gardism)?' (Foster, 1993: vii) Taking its cue from Habermas, and the idea that modernity has lost its fixed historical reference, the idea was to trace the limits and the extent of change. Foster is keen to oppose the view that postmodernism is necessarily relativist or that it signals the end of ideology or history and that the engine of late-capitalism is so highly developed, so 'total', that resistance is impossible. However, he agrees that definitions revolve around the conflicts of new and old modes of cultural and economic exchange, and identifies a postmodernism of resistance that connects the cultural and social; whereas a postmodernism of reaction disconnects these spheres (x). he claims it tackles the 'false normativity' of the conservative form of postmodernism but isn't this what Habermas claimed was the project of critical modernism.
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Such contradictions abound. The term 'anti-aesthetic' (the alternative title in the States) is of further interest in this regard, as although intended to engage political questioning, it uses the modernist technique of 'negation'. For me, this simply suggests some hope in the debate (a well-worn one over modernism versus postmodernism) and stresses that conflict is in itself a useful preoccupation, and terms like modernity (with or without whatever adage) need to remain under suspicion but only after an understanding of its dynamics of resistance. Modernity: An Incomplete Project by Jugen Habermas 1. With the advent of post-modernity, we are forced to revaluate the modernity. 2. The goal of enlightenment is to enrich the life world through reason. But quite contrarily what the reason gave birth to all aporias and pathological disease, personality disorders, false totality of the racial representation, totally administered society, terrorism, anti-Semitism, fascisms, environment degradation, commodity fetishism and so many other disadvantages caused by societal modernity (a capitalist modernization of economy and society) 3. Societal modernization has modernized economy and society with capitalist mode of production, while cultural modernization has created differentiation of cultural value domains-science, morality and art, governed by district claims to validity: truth, rightness and authenticity and embodying district rationality: cognitive-instrumental, moral-practical and aesthetic-expressive. 4. Each district segment of cultural modernity with its own district unquestionable brand of reason has given the birth of expert. Cultural, separating elitist (S) from the communicative domain of the public at large. 5. Habermas rebuts the old conservatives attempt to escape into the nostalgia for premodernity the neoconservatives attempt to impart religious faith through the awakening of substantive reason and young conservation attempt to jump into post-modernity, claiming that the solutions to the problems of modernity can be searched within it. Therefore, there is no reason to find an escape from it. 6. Habermass accepts that modernity has its discontents and be also accepts that the division of life-world has separated ones ethics, aesthetics and cognition. 7. Through the communicative rationality (not by any social movements), he wants to link these faculties. That means, Habermass communicative rationality assumes a person whose ethics, aesthetics and cognition because identical. That is, the person who can think, feel and judge at once as a single mental process. 8. Communicative rationality assumes that language has potential for the emancipator charge. Communicative act of language can provide norms for non-dominating relations to others. Instead of one-sided, instrumental reasonbased on domination over others, Habermass reason is non-dominating and non-instrumental. Only such type of communicative rationality can limit the nemesis of the modern world. 9. For this, aesthetic should be given a new role-a role that can help to heal the division by drawing art near to the everyday praxis. 10. It is only art that has capacity for the social emancipation because there is possibility of mimesis-the nonidentical relation to the object. And also because are discursive field that takes place both in everyday interaction and institutionalized practices of argumentation is science, law and criticism. In other words, it is only in pure aesthetic realm, intersubjectively of communicative action is realized.
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The Project of Enlightenment Modernity is rooted in the development of Enlightenment. Habermas talks of Max Webers separation of religion and metaphysics into three independent spheres. Science, morality and art. This division, Habermas says, ultimately gave space to three dimensions of culture, truth, morality and beauty, knowledge, justice and taste. Eventually, the project of Enlightenment aimed to develop these three aspects objective science, universal morality and low, and autonomous art. In addition, it hoped to free these domains from their own mysterious and obscure traps, and to utilize this specialized culture for the enrichment of everyday life. But unfortunately, in the twentieth century, this division-science, morality and art has vome to debase the autonomy itself and has created the problem. So it has attempted to negate the culture. Negation of Culture The development of art in the 19th century encountered aestheticism i.e. art for arts sake. Consequently, instead of color, lines, sounds and movement the media of expression and techniques of production themselves became the aesthetic object. this process of alienating art and life continued in the 20th century too. The more art alienated from life the more surrealist explosives forced a reconciliation art and life. But, these attempts to remove the distinction between art and life, artifact and object, appearance and reality, spontaneous and conscious experiments. These attempts, through, have brought art closer to life, but unfortunately, have strengthened the structures, which the art is required to dissolve. This modernist and more specifically the surrealist attempt, Habermas calls are simply negating the art. Alternatives Habermas consents that modernity has thus failed, however he refuses to abandon the project. Rather he insists on learning from the mistakes of those extravagant programs, which tried to negate modernity. So, the project of modernity should be continued to establish a connection between modern culture and everyday life. He says: the project of modernity has not yet fulfilled. And the reception of art is only one of at least three of its aspects. The project aims at a differentiated relining of modern culture with an everyday praxis that still depends on uital heritages, but would be impoverished through more traditionalism. (Haberns) Thus, Habermas expects to have been established this kind of linkage, but conversely for the near future he does not see very strong possibility of such connection.

Jurgen Habermas, "Modernity: An Unfinished Project?"

5. The "Modernity" essay: "The occasion of the essay aligns Habermas with Adorno; yet the content of the lecture aligns him with precicely that rationalist tradition in Enlghtenment of which Adorno was enormously sceptical. Here, as in his later work of the 1980s, Habermas sees the possibility of salvaging Enlightenment rationality. The project of modernity done by eighteenth-century philosophers 'consisted of their efforts to develop objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art according to their inner logic', their aim being, according to Habermas here, 'the rational organization of everyday social life.' (Thomas Docerty Postmodernism 95) Modernism "... held the extravagant expectation that the arts and sciences would further not only the control of the forces of nature but also the understanding of self and world, moral progress, justice in social institutions, and even human happiness."
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II. Main Idea & Questions for Discussion: Main Idea: Habermas thinks that the problems of cultural modernity lies more in social modernization than in the modernity's project. Although the latter has its aporia (failure to connect with the lifeworld), it cannot be continued with proper appriation of expert cultures. 1. How does Habermas defined social modernization and cultural modernity, and their relations to modernity? How does "neoconservatism" misunderstand the relation between cultural modernity and social modernization? 2. Do you agree with Habermas that the modernity project is unfinished, but not a thing of the past? What is his way of carrying on the project? Is there any other way for it to be further developed in the postmodern society? 3. In other words, is 'public sphere' or rational differentiation possible today? III. Outline Habermas' questions: 'Is modernity as passe as the postmodernists claim it is?' <Defining modernity in terms of its relations to the past and--in aesthetic modern mentality--its changed sense of time and space.>

The Old and The New 1. The 'modern'--change from the old to the new-- is not necessarily a rejection of the past. -- "With varying contents, the term modernity repeatedly expresses the consciousness of an era that relates itself to the past of classical antiquity in order to conceive itself as the result of a transition from the old to the new. -- Antiquity as a normative model --> until "querelle des anciens et des modernes" -- dispute between the ancient [philosophers] and the modern [philosophers] -- Enlightenment and 19th century rojmanticism-- ". . . this romanticism produces a radicalized consciousness of modernity that detached itself from all historical connections and retained only an abstract opposition to tradition and history as a whole." -- "Classical has always meant what survives through the ages. The emphatically modern no longer derives this force from the authority of a past age; it derives it soley from the authenticity of a contemporary relevance that is now in the past." The Aesthetic Modern Mentality

1. "aesthetic modernity" -- characterized by an altered consciousness of time.

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-- "This consciousness is expressed in the spatial metaphor of a vanguard --that is, an avant-gatrde that scouts unknown territory, exposing itself to the risks of sudden and shocking encounters, conquering an as-yet uninhabited future, and orienting itself in an as-yet unsurveyed terrain." (159) -- the foraward orientation, the anticipation of an undefined, contingent future, and the cult of the New mean the glorification of a present that repeatedly gives birth to new, subjectively defined pasts. -- in the celebration of dynamism is the longing for an immaculate and unchanging present."As a selfnegating moment, modernism is a 'yearning for true presence.'" (159) --> abstract opposition to history, which is no longer structured as an organized process of transmission that guarantees continuity. --> [Aesthetic Modern Mentality] rebels against everything normative bestowed from Tradition; "explodes" the continuum of history.

2. the failure of avant-garde art Daniel Bell locate the origins of the crisis manifested in advanced Western societies -- "a split between culture and society, between cultural modernity and the demands of the economic and administrative systems.' -- Bell thinks that avant-garde art has "penetrated the values of daily life and infected the lifeworld with the modernist mentality. " -- "the seductive force" of Modernism -1. the dominance of the principle of unrestricted self-realization, 2. the demand for authentic expression of the self, 3. the subjectivism of an overstimulated sensibility, 4. unleashing hedonistic motives that are incompatible with the discipline of professional life . . . <the mistaken view of neomodernism> Cultural Modernity and Social Modernization 1. Cultural Modernity (oppositional mentatlity) misunderstood and connected with its opposite p. 161; blamed for the consequences of social modernization; 2. the consequences of social modernization: altered attitudes towards work, consumer habits, levels of demand, leisure-time orientation--> the crisis of motivation, lack of social identification, incapacity of obedience, narcissism, withdrawal from competition for status. <aporias within cultural modernity, or modernity's project> The Project of Enlightenment 1. modernity's project: -- rational differentiation: separation of the substantive reason expressed in religious and metaphysical worldviews into three moments: science and scholarship, morality and art, or the cognitive-instrumental, the moral-practical, and the aesthetic-expressive. (162) -- differentiation means both specilization and detachment from the stream of tradition. (163) --optimistic: applying expert cultures to rational organization of living conditions and social relations:
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"a release of the cognitive potentials thus accumulated from their esoteric high forms and their utlization in praxis" (162) -- e.g. differentiated reason: Karl Popper (scientific criticism), Paul Lorenzen (artificial language), Adorno (critical content in art). -- negative consequences: growing distance between these expert culture and the general public. --> the lifeworld impoverished. --> attempts to 'sublate' the expert cultures. * Habermas thinks that while the optimism surrounding the Enlightenment project has waned, the problem which motivated the project remains. What problem is that? <example of autonomy and sublation in art> Kant and the Autonomy of the Aesthetic -- In the aesthetic domain, there is the judgement of taste, the free play of the imagination, -- in terms of enjoyment -- disinterested pleasure: "a state of mind evoked by the play of -- in terms of artistic production -- the genius or artist 'gives authentic expression to what he experiences in his concentrated dealings with a decentered subjectivity that is released from the constraints of knowledge and action." the representational capacities, a state set in motion aesthetically." -- two conditions for aesthetic autonomy: -- 1. the institutionalization of art production independent of the market and of a nonpurposeful enjoyment of art mediated by criticism; -- 2. aestheticist self-understanding: 'the media of representation and the techniques of production advance . . . become aesthetic objects in their own right.' e.g. l'art pour l'art -- art for the sake of art <detachment --> lack of reconciliation> The False Sublation of Culture 1. Surealism 'at tempts to eliminate the discrepancy between art and life, fiction and practice, and illusion and reality. . . " Theodor Adorno: surrealism "renounces art, without, however, being able to shake it off" 2. the "double errors" of false sublation: -- 'When the containers of an autonomously developed cultural sphere are shattered, its contents disintegrate. When meaning is desublimated and form destructured, nothing is left." -replaces one form of onesidedness and one abstration with another:
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The process of reaching understanding in the lifeworld require the whole breadth of cultural transmission. Hence a rationalised everyday life could not be redeemed from the rigidity of cultrual impoverishment. . . --e.g. to aestheticize politics 3. sublation of philosophy -- --> --e.g. to replace politics with moral rigorism or to subjugate politics to dogmatic doctrines Alternatives to the False Sublation of Culture 1. art criticism as a bridge between expert culture and lifeworld-- criticism concerned with life-problems, or used to illuminate a life-historical situation. ". . . revitalises the need-interpretations and normative expectations and alters the way in wihch these moments refere to one another." (167) 2. appropriation of expert culture e.g. Paul Weiss; a group of German workers; In examples like these, where the expert culture is appropriated from the perspectives of the lifeworld, something of the intention of the doomed Surrealist revolt, and . . .has been preserved. 3. social modernization be guided into other, noncapitalist directions, and if the lifeworld can develop, on its own, institutions that will lie outside the borders of the inherent dynamics of the economic and administrative systems. Three Conservatisms p. 168 -- "young conservatives" -- "transpose the spontaneous forces of the imagination, the experience of the self, and affectivity onto the sphere of the distant and archaic; set up a dualistic opposition between instrumental reason and a principle accessible only through evocation. . .(e.g. Derrida) --"old conservatives" -- a return to positions prior to modernity with the use of Aristotle or a renewal of cosmological ethics; e.g. Leo Strauss -- "new conservatives" -- welcome the development of modern science as long as it overstep its own sphere only to further technical progress, capitalistic growth, and rational administration. For the rest, they advocate a politics of defusing the explosive contents of cultural modernity.

Jrgen Habermas
Jrgen Habermas is without no doubt the greatest living German philosopher and he has become famous because of his grand theory called the communicative theory of action. At the heart of Habermass theory of communicative action is the vision that the modern world-view is differentiated into three parts. Following Immanuel Kant and Karl Popper, Habermas distinguishes the objective world, the social world and the subjective world. A communicatively competent speaker can independently present differentiated statements concerning any of these three worlds. She can independently evaluate any statement about the world with proper validity claims. There are three validity claims for these three worlds:

1. Truth (Wahrheit). A claim that refers to the objective world is valid if it is true, i.e. if it corresponds to the reality. 2. Truthfulness (Wahrhaftigkeit). A claim that refers to the subjective world is valid if it is honest, i.e. if it has an authentic relationship with the subjective world. 3. Rightness (Richtigkeit). A claim that refers to the social world is valid if it does not contradict commonly agreed social norms (Habermas, 1984, p. 440). Let us examine the example of the claim Teachers have right to practise indoctrination in schools. This claim refers to the social world, and its proper validity claims is rightness (justice). A communicatively competent opponent could challenge this claim by stating that it contradicts that which is commonly considered as morally correct behaviour (or it would be commonly considered as such in a free and critical discourse). If an opponent merely says that My inner self told me that indoctrination is wrong (truthfulness or authenticity) or It is scientifically proven that indoctrination is wrong (truth), she is using an incorrect validity claim and she is not a communicatively competent speaker. So, in this case, the proper validity claim is that of rightness or justice. Habermas theory of language is connected to his division of human action. Habermas divides ideal (pure) types of action into the categories of social and non-social action. An object of non-social action is nature, and the objects of social action are other people. According to Habermas, non-social action is always purposive-rational instrumental action: the actor makes use of specific objects for his or her own benefit. Social action can be either success-oriented strategic action or understanding-oriented communicative action. Strategic action is purposiverational action oriented towards other persons from a utilitarian point of view. The actor does not treat others as genuine persons rather, as natural objects. Strategic action means calculative exploitation, or manipulation, of others. An actor who acts strategically is primarily seeking her own ends and manipulates other people either openly or tacitly. Communicative action is the opposite of strategic action. Communicative action or its pure type means interpersonal communication, which is oriented towards mutual understanding, and in which other participants are treated as genuine persons, not as objects of manipulation. Actors do not primarily aim at attaining their own success but want to harmonise their plans of action with the other participants (Habermas, 1984, p. 285; see also p. 333.) Following Austin and Searle Habermas claims that the use of language with an orientation of understanding is the original mode of language use and strategic use of language is parasitic (Habermas, 1984, p. 288). Action orientation Oriented to Success Oriented to Reaching Understanding Action situation Nonsocial Instrumental action Strategic action Communicative action Action situation Social Fig. 1. Pure types of action (Habermas, 1984, p. 285). Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorono (1972), in their book Dialectic of Enlightenment, maintain that the rationalisation of society means above all the growth and expansion of instrumental. Habermass view is more optimistic. He states that modernisation promotes both strategic and communicative rationalisation. Communicative rationalisation means spreading of communicative reason and it is possible because of differentiation of the worlds and validity claims. Habermas puts high hopes to communicative rationalisation. That is why Habermas is the heritor of Enlightenment and Enlightened Reason. Habermas like others 20th major philosophers (Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Popper, Derrida etc.) wants to overcome traditional metaphysics. Habermas calls traditional philosophy as philosophy of consciousness. According to Habermas paradigm of philosophy of consciousness is exhausted and the symptoms of exhaustion should be
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dissolved with the transition to the paradigm of mutual understanding (Habermas 1990a, p. 29698). Put it shortly Habermas wants to resolve transcendental philosophy with his reconstructive project which includes postWittgensteinian philosophy of language, Piagets structuralism, Kohlbergs Kantianism, reconstruction of Webers and Horkheimers theory of rationality, reconstruction of Parsons functionalism, reconstruction of Schtzs phenomenological sociology of knowledge etc. This project is called as the communicative theory of action. Habermas also widen his theory of communicative action to the areas of ethics (discourse theory of ethics) and justice (discourse theory of justice) creating the encyclopedic system of knowledge in the spirit of Enlightenment. When Habermas started his academic career he was ultra-left-wing Marxist in the spirit of Herbert Marcuse. Nowadays his political commitments lies somewhere, between social democracy and political liberalism. He strongly promotes so called The United States of Europe, which has its own foreign minister, a directly-elected president and its own financial basis (Habermas, 2006; 2007; Habermas & Derrida, 2006). This might imply also Europes own educational policy and the ministry of education.

Habermas
a. Background Jrgen Habermas was born in Dusseldorf, Germany in 1929 and studied at universities in Gottingen, Zurich, and Bonn. He became assistant to Theodor Adorno at the Institute for Social Research in 1959 and later was a professor at Heidelberg and Frankfurt, retiring as a professor in 1994. His writings are a contemporary approach to critical theory and these writings are supradisciplinary in that they combine philosophy and sociology with other forms of social theory. While his books and articles are generally regarded as difficult to read, being an a certain Germanic intellectual tradition, Farganis notes that Habermas may be the most important German social theorist since Max Weber. His analysis builds on the ideas of earlier social theorists and philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber, and the earlier critical theorists, and also uses some of the American theorists such as Mead. His most important work may be The Theory of Communicative Action (1981), where he presents the theories of "the theory of communicative rationality and the theory of societal rationalization" (Braaten, p. 2). The central concern of Habermas is similar to that of the earlier critical theorists with modernity, rationality, autonomy, freedom, and human happiness, and how these are connected as societies change.

c. Communicative Action A theory of communicative action was developed by Habermas, and this has made a major contribution to contemporary social theory. The basic idea of this approach is that "it is through the action of communicating that society actually operates and evolves; this process is encompassed and structured by the actors lifeworlds" (Wallace and Wolf, p. 175). That is, Habermas looks on communication among people, interaction through communication, and the results of this as ways in which the social world operates. Wallace and Wolf quote Habermas arguing that communicative action: is not only a process of reaching understanding; actors are at the same time taking part in interactions through which they develop, confirm, and renew their memberships in social groups and their own identities. Communicative actions are not only processes of interpretation in which cultural knowledge is "tested against the world"; they are at the same time processes of social integration and of socialization. (Wallace and Wolf, p.175, from Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action).

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i. Distorted Communication. Habermas agrees that modernity and the forces of the administered society have dominated society and social relations and even the inner self, limiting imagination and options for people. Even "desire and passion are increasingly structured by the social system itself" (Elliott, p. 188). Habermas refers to this process as excommunication, that is, repressive forces take communication away from the individual, social processes, and public life. Certain forms of communication are excluded or prohibited, thus intersubjective relations are privatized and deformed. In order to overcome this "Habermas argues that emancipation entails the elimination of unconscious distortions of communication in order to secure the self-reflective movement toward political autonomy" (Elliott, p. 188). While the study of the psyche and repression, the conscious and the unconscious, and language and linguistics is beyond the scope of this course, these arguments of Habermas make a certain amount of sociological sense at the level of interaction of individuals and at the institutional and structural level. ii. Language and Work. Ritzer (p. 292) notes that Habermas developed a critique of Marxian analysis in the early 1970s, noting that Marx identified human creativity with work and labour. While Habermas does not entirely reject this, he argues that this analysis of Marx was one-sided and misleading. Habermas argues that human creativity, or the essence of humanity or species-being is two-fold: work or labour on the one hand, and social action on the other. For Marx, an analysis of work and labour formed the basis for production, exploitation, social class, and the forces of history. Humans were limited by nature, the forces of production, and the relations of production, and these resulted in alienation and limits on human creativity. At the same time, Marx looked on work and labour as potentially freeing humanity from nature. As the productive forces developed, the working class would create the possibility of a freer and more just society. Habermas argues that this captures only one aspect of human potential and creativity. Perhaps more basic is human social interaction, communication, and language, so that these rather than work and labour, language and speech may form the basis for human creativity. For Habermas, it is communication and communicative action that allow social interaction to take place. Just as work and labour were limited and distorted for Marx, so communication and social interaction became distorted by modernity for Habermas. The institutions and social structures that develop in modernity constrain communicative action and thus limit social interaction. By analogy to Marx, Habermas argues that these limits can be overcome, not just by ending private property, alienation, and exploitation, but by ending the distortions of communication. Ritzer argues that "whereas for Marx the goal was a communist society in which undistorted work (species-being) would exist or the first time, for Habermas the political goal is a society of undistorted communication (communicative action)" whereby there would be the "elimination of barriers to free communication" (Ritzer, p. 293). iii. Reason and Action. Closely connected to the analysis of work and language are the arguments of Habermas concerning reason, action, and knowledge. Weber identified various types of rationality, and earlier critical theorists argued that for the most part, modern rationality was associated with instrumental forms of reason and purposive-rational action. That is, the modern era was associated with great development of purposive, instrumental forms of reason and action, whereby the administered society developed more efficient means of meeting specific ends. Critical reason and value-rational aspects of reason generally were downgraded or eliminated, according to earlier critical theorists. Habermas develops much the same idea, by distinguishing instrumental reason or purposive-rational action from communicative action or communicative forms of reason. The emphasis on instrumental reason has led to a great
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development of productive forces, technology, bureaucracy, and administration, with theories of these being well developed by Marx, Weber, and their followers. However, this is not the only form that rationality can take, so that earlier critiques of rationality, even by critical theorists, were often partial. Ritzer notes that Habermas seeks a rational society, but one with rationalization of communicative action, that is, communication free from domination, so that it can be open and free communication (Ritzer, p. 294). Ideology and legitimation of existing systems, perhaps from instrumental reason, interfere with this and limit the development of communicative action. As a result, the pursuit of rationality in this more inclusive sense would lead to "the removal of the barriers that distort communication, but more generally it means a communication system in which ideas are openly presented and defended against criticism" (Ritzer, p. 294). In this sense, Habermas is committed to modernity and the project of the Enlightenment, thus distinguishing him from earlier critical theorists and postmodernists. That is, for Habermas there is still potential in modernity, by developing communication and discourse in the public sphere. Habermas thus develops a somewhat different version of rationality than what Weber, Marx, or earlier critical theorists developed. Since communicative action is the action associated with social interaction, Habermas is able to integrate some of the ideas from the symbolic interaction perspective into this social theory. That is, he sees the forms of social interaction as another type of rationality. iv. Ideal Speech. Habermas grounds his arguments in the concept of ideal speech and the ideal speech situation "a situation in which everyone would have an equal chance to argue and question, without those who are more powerful, confident, or prestigious having and unequal say. True positions would prevail under these circumstances because they are more rational" (Wallace and Wolf, p. 178). The ideal speech situation is one in which the participants are oriented toward developing a mutual understanding, and not just to achieving some specific purposive result through the interaction. Habermas notes:
the goal of coming to an understanding is to bring about an agreement that terminates in the intersubjective mutuality of reciprocal understanding, shared knowledge, mutual trust, and accord with one another. Agreement is based on recognition of the corresponding validity claims of comprehensibility, truth, truthfulness, and rightness. (Wallace and Wolf, p. 178, from Habermas "What is Universal Pragmatics?")

This ideal speech situation is thus oriented toward developing an understanding, and when agreement is reached, this is the knowledge and truth of the situation. Several principles of the ideal speech situation are as follows (adapted from Ritzer, p. 295).

Mutual Understanding. What the speaker says is understandable and comprehensible by others. Same language, structures that are understandable, topics and claims that make sense to others involved in conversation. Truthful. The speaker provides reliable knowledge in the sense that the propositions stated by the speaker are true. When specific facts and statements concerning the natural or social world are made, the speaker provides statements that he or she understands to be correct. That is, there is not deliberate misrepresentation by the speaker. Sincere Expression. The speaker is sincere or reliable in the sense that the speaker is truthful and believable. When opinions, attitudes, views, and interpretations are being provided, the speaker generally attempts to be sincere and not deliberately mislead.

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Right to Speak. The speaker has the right and it is proper for the speaker to speak. Individuals who have a statement to make should be allowed to do so, and their view should be listened to and seriously considered. Legitimacy. Speech acts take a position with respect to normative or legitimate social order. This may be connected to the first point, that the speech acts relate in some way to the social order of which one is part.

d. System and Life-World Habermas has developed an elaborate theoretical social system, perhaps with Parsons as a model. While much of this is complex, one part of this approach is that of system and life-world, and colonization of the life-world by the system. This is analogous to the dominance of commodity exchange of Marx or to Webers rationalization, but provides a new way of integrating agency and structure. Ritzer notes that the system is the domain of formal rationality, while the life-world is the site of substantive rationality. The colonization of the life-world, therefore, involves a restatement of the Weberian thesis that in the modern world, formal rationality is triumphing over substantive rationality and coming to dominate areas that were formally defined by substantive rationality. (Ritzer, p. 549). The life-world is the area of communicative action, where active subjects are, and where social interaction and communication take place. This site is where daily activities occur, in families, in peer groups, and in informal discussions and meeting places. Here "speaker and hearer meet, where they reciprocally raise claims that their utterances fit the world and where they can criticize and confirm those validity claims, settle their disagreements, and arrive at agreements" (Habermas, quoted in Ritzer, p. 549). It is practical and substantive rationality organized to meet practical ends and being related to values that characterizes the actions of people in the lifeworld. In this sphere, it is important for communication to be free and open, and rationality here means listening and debating, so that "understanding, or a rational method of achieving consensus, is based ultimately on the authority of the better argument" (Ritzer, p. 550). The system is the set of institutions that exist that are based not so much on the viewpoint an experiences of acting subjects, but on the perspective of others. These involve the growth of institutions and structures, economy and exchange, and formal rationality. These are the realm of power, whereby some are able to develop means of exercising power over others and dominating them. Educational institutions, workplaces, and political institutions are part of the system. Initially, in traditional societies, life-world and system may be identical in which the taken-for-granted lifeworld is highly encompassing. People mix only with others who share the same lifeworld, so they are always able to communicate with each other and have no reason to become self-conscious about the structure of shared experience. (Wallace and Wolf, p. 175). This is similar to Simmels traditional society or Durkheims society with mechanical solidarity. For Habermas, two developments take place over time. First, the various parts of the life-world become more differentiated, so that the culture, social, and personality patterns and relationships become separated. Ritzer notes that "engaging in communicative action and achieving understanding in each of these themes leads to the reproduction of the life-world through the reinforcement of culture, the integration of society, and the formation of personality" (Ritzer, p. 550). This aspect of Habermas is very much like the theory of Parsons, with Habermas using much the same systems as does Parsons.
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Second, the system, or these systems increasingly become detached from the life-world as the cultural and social structures become more distant from people. These structural patterns increasingly come to dominate people and in the language of Habermas "they exercise more steering capacity over the life-world" (Ritzer, p. 550). Instead of consensus achieved through substantively rational communication and discussion, these structures develop a formal rationality which may not be based on common understandings. This one-sided rationality develops a logic of its own and the systems become increasingly separated from the life-world of people. Note the similarities here to Webers view of rationalization, Durkheims anomie, or Marxs alienation. The result of this is that the system colonizes the life-world. While both life-world and system are essential parts of society, the detachment of the two is associated with domination of the system over the life-world. Language and communication is required to maintain social interaction, and this becomes the primary basis on which consensus is reached in modern societies. The difficulty is that it becomes difficult to carry this on in a complex and highly differentiated society. As a result, economic and political systems emerge which provide a means of communication, but through exchange and money in the case of the economy, and power in the case of politics. The requirements associated with such systems tend to be those of formal rationality, and these come to determine the dynamics of the system. The result is a deforming of the life-world as the system increasingly colonizes more and more aspects of the life-world. "Communication becomes increasingly rigidified, impoverished, and fragmented, and the life-world itself seems poised on the brink of dissolution""(Ritzer, p. 553). e. Public Sphere i. Public and Private (p. 456) Integration of private and public spheres in traditional societies, where the lifeworld and system more or less identical. Separation of public and private with development of modernity corresponds to separation of lifeworld and system. Public = collective concerns and activities of state Private = affairs not so subject to state but more concerned with personal Colonization of lifeworld could be viewed as invasion of private by the public.

The Challenge of Modernity: Habermas and Critical Theory

Jason L. Powell , Harry R. Moody

The theoretical-philosophical work of Jurgen Habermas occupies a significant position in western social and political discourse. Roderick (1986) claims Habermas represents the most important attempt at re-constructing critical theory out of the shadows of Marx. Coupled with this, Habermas uses Kant and Hegel to revitalise Marxism by developing an emancipatory theory of society. In addition, drawing on the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory (Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin and Marcuse), Habermas elaborates a far-reaching critique of methods of domination in modern society. Despite this critique, Habermas is more affirmative and keen towards the classical philosophical tradition, particularly the enlightenment. For the past two decades in particular, Habermas has written on the enlightenment project in a reflexive manner, facing up to enlightenment thought and
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legacy via a systematic critical analysis of the present: its historiography, pathologies, and future prospects. At the same time, there has been a huge escalation of neo-Nietzschean philosophers under the labels of postmodernist and post-structuralist who have castigated the enlightenment to the dustbin of the history of ideas, claiming that its metanarratives of progress and freedom have failed and that western rationality is exhausted. Building Block of Modernism: Communicative Action The theory of communication, in the hands of Habermas, serves to disclose a profound continuity between human language and the values embedded in the project of modernity, values which he hopes to vindicate. Habermas attempt to reconstitute the project of modernity through language is consistent with diachronic model of understanding language. Language is the vehicle for the most fundamental form of social action, namely his theory of communicative action. Habermas (1981, 44) defines communicative action as: that form of social interaction in which the plans of action of different actors are co-ordinated through an exchange of communicative acts, that is, through a use of language orientated towards reaching understanding. Sociologically, Habermas (1981) fuses micro and macro dimensions: he uses Mead and Durkheim as a theoretical bridge to develop communicative action. While Mead is important because of symbolically mediated interaction, Durkheim is important because of his analysis of the sacred and process of secularization of religion. Therefore, Habermas (1981 and 1992) sees the language communication framework as a new way of reaffirming the project of modernity. Habermas wants to show how the transformation from traditional society to modernity involved a progressive secularization of normative behaviour reconstructed through communicative action. Drawing on his assessment of communicative competence of social actors, Habermas (1981) distinguishes between action orientated to success and action orientated to understanding and also between the social and non-social contexts of action. Action orientated to success is measured by rules of rational choice, while action orientated to understanding takes place through communicative action. [edit] Habermas versus Postmodernists Habermas offered some early criticisms in an essay, "Modernity versus Postmodernity" (1981), which has achieved wide recognition. In that essay, Habermas raises the issue of whether, in light of the failures of the twentieth century, we "should try to hold on to the intentions of the Enlightenment, feeble as they may be, or should we declare the entire project of modernity a lost cause?"[18] Habermas refuses to give up on the possibility of a rational, "scientific" understanding of the life-world. Habermas has several main criticisms of postmodernism.

First, the postmodernists are equivocal about whether they are producing serious theory or literature. Second, Habermas feels that the postmodernists are animated by normative sentiments but the nature of those sentiments is concealed from the reader. Third, Habermas accuses postmodernism of being a totalizing perspective that fails "to differentiate phenomena and practices that occur within modern society".[18] Lastly, Habermas asserts that postmodernists ignore that which Habermas finds absolutely central namely, everyday life and its practices.

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