Long

Theory and Praxis: What is action? What is political? Where is democracy?

SOC207: Lecture 10

Dr Jordan McKenzie

Lecture Overview

What is the public sphere? What is democracy?

Habermas on Theory and Praxis

The role of the public sphere as a place of both theory and practice

Debate, discourse, truth and coffee

Adorno: Negative Dialectics

Gadamer: Philosophical Hermeneutics, Horizons of Knowledge/Meaning

The Theory of Communicative Action

The Public Sphere

For Klaus Eder (2006),

“The public sphere is a space between state and society. It is neither a political institution nor a social institution, but an instance from which these institutions are observed and their meaning (especially their legitimacy) is communicated in either an affirmative or a critical way. The public space can thus be described as a third space between the state and society (Somers 1993, 1995, 2001). In this space some speakers turn to a public; media allow that these speakers are heard even beyond the presence of a public. The mass-media turn the public space into a functionally specific system of public communication which guarantees that communication in public will go on and address any issues that may be raised (Ferree et al. 2002). This idea contains two analytically separate elements: actions of a specific type which is public speaking, and a space where such talking is possible and communicable to other actors. These two elements provide the key for understanding the variation of empirical and theoretical notions of a public sphere.”

Habermas and the Public sphere

•For Habermas, the public sphere is a place for individuals to perform as citizens in the process of forming public opinion.

•Public opinion must be the result of active discourse from all members of society, and must come from the ‘grass roots’ rather than through social authorities (such as political leaders or the media)

•The public sphere is where ideas meet, are challenged, and developed into something new. Debate is both a source of motivation for political action, as well as a kind of political action.

Democracy…

•Requires that the people have access to open and transparent information,

•‘Only when the exercise of political control is effectively subordinated to the democratic demand that information be accessible to the public, does the political public sphere win an institutionalized influence over the government through the instrument of law-making bodies. (Habermas 1964: 49)

•Requires free and cooperative communication,

•‘Citizens behave as a public body when they confer in an unrestricted fashion--that is, with the guarantee of freedom of assembly and association and the freedom to express and publish their opinions-about matters of general interest’ (Habermas 1964: 49)

•Requires independence from economic pressures/manipulation, and exist for the common/public good,

•‘A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body. They then behave neither like business or professional people transacting private affairs, nor like members of a constitutional order subject to the legal constraints of a state bureaucracy.’ (Habermas 1964: 49)

Habermas on Theory and Praxis

•Key texts,

•Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962)

•Theory and Practice (1963)

•Theory is a necessary condition for action/praxis, facts alone cannot motivate action/praxis.

•This perspective incorporates a definition of theory that is considerably more diverse than academic or disciplinary approaches.

•The communicative turn in social and critical theory.

Habermas and the English Coffee Houses

•For Habermas, the lack of a public sphere where individuals can create discourse for questions regarding politics, philosophy and economics is of great significance to modernity.

•Although these ‘public’ forums were only open to white, property-owning males, at the time, the lack of class status was radical.

Enlightenment debates

Kant, ‘What is Enlightenment?’ (1784)

•“Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! [Dare to know!] "Have courage to use your own reason!" – that is the motto of enlightenment.”

•The key to enlightenment is not simply the use of reason, but the right to publicly use one’s own reason without fear of persecution.

Habermas, Knowledge and democracy

•For Habermas, the rational and open discourse of a public sphere is capable of producing ‘true knowledge’.

•If discourse is allowed to flourish as an ongoing project in the formation of, and the critical analysis of ideas, then it can result in identifying political, moral and ethical truths.

Adorno: Negative Dialectics (1966)

•For Adorno, the process of critique is never complete because our perception of the world will never fully match the world ‘as it really is’.

•Therefore, theorising about the world (based upon the knowledge that we have of the world) will inevitably result in mismatches – whether they be major or minor.

•Critique is a means for minimising these inconsistencies between theories of the world, and the ‘objective’ world.

Hans-Georg Gadamer

• Truth and Method (1989) [1960]

•Historical experiences form ‘prejudices’

•“The horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point” (1989: 302)

•Ricoeur, “History precedes me and my reflection; I belong to history before I belong to myself” (1990: 303)

Habermas: 
The Theory of Communicative Action (1984)[1981]

•All communication has intention, interests, purpose.

•The speaker wants a specific reaction (agreement, empathy, anger)

•How do their speech acts achieve these goals?

•Open, honest and informed discourse can solve virtually any problem, but our communication practices act against mutual understanding and recognition.

•For Habermas, truth is not that which is impervious to criticism, but that which has best survived criticism. Therefore, as active public sphere of debate and discourse can clarify the distortions of truth in culture and ideology.

•This is a project that is never complete, but does allow for a culturally mediated approach to knowledge that cannot be reduced to relativism.

•But, Habermas is not interested in reducing sociology to linguistics. We must study real things, not just linguistic representations of those things.

•“rationality has less to do with the possession of knowledge than with how speaking and acting subjects acquire and use knowledge” (1981: 8)

Truth, ethics, action?

Kant’s categorical imperative (practical ethics):

•My actions are ethical if I am willing for them to become universal rules that are followed by all. I.e theft.

Habermas’ Communicative Turn:

•Our actions are ethical if we, as a community, hold open and transparent debates about the action that lead to a consensus.

•Therefore, Habermas develops a socially based/derived notion of the categorical imperative.

•Therefore, ‘Truth’ is not found in individual rationality. It is found in the act of communication and exchange.

Therefore…

•For Habermas, the public sphere is where knowledge is developed, refined and/or deconstructed.

•Meanwhile action (which is dependant upon knowledge, theory and meaning) is inspired by the public sphere whilst influencing the public sphere in a reflexive form of interaction.

•Central to the project of autonomy, is the role of the individual as citizen rather than simply a consumer, worker etc.

References

•Adorno, T. (1966) Negative Dialectics. The Continuum Publishing Company: New York.

•Eder, K. (2006) ‘Making Sense of the Public Sphere’ in Delanty, G. Handbook of Contemporary European Social Theory. Routledge: Oxon.

•Gadamer, H. G. (1989)[1960] Truth and Method. Crossroad: New York.

•Habermas, J. (1973) [1963] Theory and Practice. Beacon Press: Boston.

•Habermas, J. (1989) [1962] The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. MIT Press: Cambridge

•Habermas, J. (1981) [1984] The Theory of Communicative Action: Volume one – Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Beacon Press: Boston.

•Hohendahl, P. (2011) ‘Critical Theory, Public Sphere and Culture. Jürgen Habermas and his Critics’ New German Critique, No.16 pp.89-118.

•Mannheim, K. (1936) Ideology and Utopia. Routledge: London.

•Ricoeur, P. (1990) ‘Critique of Ideology’ in The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur. Ed. by Ormiston, G. & Schrift, A. SUNY Press: New York.

•Schutz, A, (1972)1932] The Phenomenology of the Social World. Northwester University Press: Illinois.