POLITICAL THEORY

Critical Review of Introduction to Civil Society, Public Opinion, and Communicative Power

Critical Review of Introduction to Civil Society, Public Opinion, and Communicative Power

Introduction

Habermas was born in 1929 and grew up in a middle-class family in the small German town of Gummersbach. In 1944, Habermas joined Hitler Youth and was sent to help at the western front. Although the experience of World War II itself does not seem to have influenced his life and writings significantly, the break with Germany's Nazi past and the postwar confrontation with the Holocaust had a significant impact on the young Habermas. This is so to the extent that his subsequent philosophical, sociological, and political work can be seen as attempts to answer the question: How can we guarantee that breaks with civilization such as Nazism and the Holocaust will never happen again? It is against this background that we can understand Habermas's defense of modernity, reason, and the Enlightenment in the form of an intersubjectivist philosophy as it is spelled out in his theories of communicative action and reason, discourse ethics, and deliberative democracy.

Discussion

Habermas's contention is that, throughout the history of philosophy, philosophers have put a subject at the center and have associated rationality with the consciousness of this subject. This is evident, for instance, in the work of René Descartes, but Habermas also finds it in philosophers that are closer to his own thinking (Rasmussen, 1990).

Habermas links sociology and philosophy, in this case, action and rationality. He links instrumental and strategic action to instrumental rationality, where it is about the efficiency of achieving given goals. This kind of rationality is particularly dominant in the market and in bureaucracy, but it also governs much of our mundane lives as, say, when you consider how to get to work on time. Habermas distinguishes instrumental rationality from communicative rationality, which is linked to communicative action, that is, the process of reaching mutual understanding (Habermas, 1987).

Communicative Power

Thus, Habermas's notions of communicative action and communicative reason serve as the basis for a sociological analysis of society as well as a critique of existing power relations. Communicative action and reason can, according to Habermas, be shown to be unavoidable facets of communication and social interaction while at the same time providing a critical corrective to contemporary society (Habermas, 1987).

The Theory of Communicative Action is also known for Habermas's so-called colonization thesis. The argument is as follows. Society consists of a lifeworld of norms and institutions that are taken for granted by social agents; this lifeworld provides the background for communicative action and can be questioned in parts. In modern societies, there is a gradual differentiation of systems that become more or less independent of the life-world; the state and the market are good examples. There is a differentiation between lifeworld and systems as well as a differentiation of systems into more and more complex systems and subsystems, for instance, within the state. Systems are governed by instrumental and strategic rationality through systems media such as power (the state) or money ...