Jurgen Habermas

Chapter eight says that Habermas was involved in a “systematic and sustained effort to illustrate how a theory of communication is fundamental to and pervades every level of society.” Habermas, through each stage of his theory, seeks to promote or address the idea of “collective discussion within society.”

Habermas divided human knowledge into three subjects: “work, interaction, and power.” These three areas of knowledge, he says, are interrelated. They promote interaction (even competition) among individuals in society. I found it interesting that he associates power with the ability to “[coordinate] action through speech.” Language is the means and container of interaction and knowledge. When I think about this on terms relative to me, this association is rational. The words we choose to use are conveyers of meaning and are generally used to promote an “action” from its receiver—whether that be simply listening, responding, or reflecting. Habermas goes on to address in the end that it is in “rationality” that language finds its power.

When it came to the section on “Universal Pragmatics,” I had a harder time understanding what the theory of “speech-act” really accomplished. The section says the idea of speech act was developed with the notion that “with every utterance, an intentional act is being performed.” Habermas consolidated this idea using three types: “constatives, regulatives, and avowals.” Constatives assert what one understands as true. Regulatives regulate on the basis of an agreement between persons of what is right and what is wrong. The last type, avowals, verbalizes or expresses the internalities of the individual.

The section I found most relevant to rhetoric was Habermas’ section on discourse. The main goal of the speech act is consensus; however, when agreement is not achieved a secondary process takes place: discourse. Argumentation is used to “examine and either accept or reject the problematic claim.” We have seen this most recently demonstrated in the responses we have read from Churchill as he has sought to resolve the “tensions between claims and the validity of those claims.”