9

Man and World 15:149-161 (1982) 0025-1534/82/0152-0149 $ 01.80

Martinus Ni]hoff Publishers, The Hague. Printed in the Netherlands.

THE POSSIBILITY OF A COMMUNICATION ETHIC RECONSIDERED:

HABERMAS, GADAMER, AND BOURDIEU ON DISCOURSE
DAVID INGRAM

Habermas's recent attempt to pioneer new terrain within communication theory by

combining philosophical hermeneutics and speech act theory has produced a highly
controversial response to the traditional philosophical problem of ethical relativism.
This problem continues to evoke sceptical reactions from various circles. On the
one hand, proponents of contemporary historicism do not hesitate to provide
evidence indicating the relativity of human consciousness and its products vis-fi-vis
changing social conditions. On the other hand, "decisionists" such as Karl Popper
have maintained that the commitment to practical reason as such is itself without
justification. 1 The commitment to behave in a rational, morally responsible way
is held to be contingent upon an arbitrary, subjective decision. In either case, the
possibility of anchoring ethical conduct in reference points having intersubjective
legitimacy is denied.
Habermas's theory of communicative competence is a bold attempt to refute
decisionism by grounding the commitment to reason (or reasoned justification)
in a priori conditions underlying human communicative comportment in general.
Its major thrust, however, is much more specific, namely, the derivation of a set
of universal normative principles (the ideal speech situation), which is itself directly
implicated in discursive reason.
In what follows, I would like to explore Habermas's deduction in some detail
with an eye toward assessing the peculiar model of rationality that informs his
treatment of discourse. Although I believe that a commitment to reason may well
reside at the foundation of our communicative competence, it nevertheless seems
to me that the model of rationality adduced by Habermas as welt as its moral
attributes regarding reciprocity is not universally and necessarily embedded in
the fabric of communication tout court, but rather reflects an intellectualist prejudice of the Enlightenment. In defending this objection, I recur principally to the
work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Pierre Bourdieu. These theorists challenge the
narrow academic definition of discursive reason by emphasizing the indispensable
role that rhetoric, authority, and preverbal communication play in strategies of
rational justification.
Habermas's theory of communicative competence grew out of an earlier effort

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to ground a regulative ideal of social life in a philosophical anthropology that took
as its terminus a quo a theory of a priori cognitive interests [cf. Erkenntnis und
Interesse (1968)]. The upshot of this theory is that communication and instrumental domination of nature are both essential conditions underlying the
preservation of the human species conceived as a social phenomenon. In a later
essay, "Was Heisst Universalpragmatik" (1975), Habermas clarified the sense in
which communicative comportment is privileged over other linguistic modes by
saying that the fundamental type of action definitive of speech is oriented toward
reaching an understanding about transmitted contents of information (verstdndigungsorientiert). 2 Speech is primarily aimed at sharing information for the
express purpose of facilitating harmonious interaction between social agents. Noncommunicative "strategic" forms of speech behavior such as manipulation, lying,
and deceiving, are derivative linguistic modes that are parasitic on consensual communication for their effects.
The speech act theories of J.L. Austin and J.R. Searle have provided Habermas
with a rudimentary model for analyzing all acts of communication. "The principle
task of speech act theory," Habermas states, "is to clarify the performative status
of linguistic utterances. ''3 Departing from the basic distinctions introduced by
Austin, Habermas analyzes performative utterances of the form, "I promise (assert,
assure, know, etc.) that P" into an illocutionary component (the pragmatic process
of entering into an engagement with another person, such as promising, asserting,
assuring, etc.) and a propositional content 'P', which consists of a referring expression (the picking-out of some state of affairs in the real world) and a predicate
expression (the attribution of properties to that state of affairs) that together
establish a connection between the utterance and the world of objects.
Though Habermas's universal pragmatics builds upon the speech act theories of
Austin and Searle, its general focus is similar to that of Chomsky's theory of
generative grammar, viz., it is not directly concerned with the empirical conditions
underlying the possibility of generating specific kinds of speech acts but is instead
concerned with the basic competence that speakers must possess in order to
generate any kind of speech act whatsoever. The aim of universal pragmatics is to
uncover just those universal expectations inherent in all speech acts that must be
operative in order for a successful practical engagement to occur. Unlike Chomsky's
theory of generative grammar, however, universal pragmatics asserts that.
the general competence of a native speaker does not extend merely to tile
mastery of an abstract system of linguistic rules, which -- preprogrammed by
his organic equipment and the processes of stimulated maturation - he introduces into a communication in order to function as a sender or receiver
during the transfer of information .... On the contrary, producing a situation
of potential ordinary language communication is itself part of the general
competence of the speaker. 4
The task of pragmatically structuring a situation in which a speech act engagement
can occur leads into a discussion concerning the issue of social consensus. Following

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Wittgenstein, Habermas invokes the model of the language game in order to draw
out the consensuai presuppositions underlying speech acts. 5 In light of this model
every speech act can be regarded as part of a language game, the successful playing
of which depends on a mutual agreement with respect to the basic rules of the
game. Habermas mentions four basic rules that every speech act must satisfy. These
rules phenomenologically enter the domain of consciousness as validity claims
(Geltungsanspriiche), which both the speaker and the receiver tacitly recognize in
the utterance and whose validity is presupposed in establishing the trust necessary
for the acceptance of any engagement. The four validity claims mentioned by
Habermas are (1) comprehensibility: the speaker tacitly claims that his utterance is
comprehensible ; (2) truth : the speaker tacitly claims that the propositional content
of his utterance is true; (3) sincerity: the speaker tacitly claims that the manifest
expression of his intentions is sincere and that his behavior can be expected to
conform to them; and (4) appropriateness: the speaker tacitly claims that his
illocutionary act is appropriate {angemessen) in relation to the recognized normative context. 6 Above all, in order for a speech act to be accepted by the receiver,
the latter must be convinced of the speaker's willingness to fulfill the obligations
entailed by the illocutionary requirements of his utterance:
An utterance can count as a promise, assertion, request, question, or avowal
if and only if the speaker makes an offer that he is ready to make good insofar as...he indicates that in certain situations he will draw certain consequences for his action .7
If any of the four validity claims are questioned, then the reciprocal expectations
underlying speech will be shaken and communication will be disturbed. The
resumption of communication can occur only when the receiver's trust in the
speaker is restored. Thus, comprehensibility is reestablished once the speaker begins
to use conventionally accepted signifiers in a meaningful way. Sincerity is authenticated by the speaker's living up to his words. Truth and appropriateness, however, can be justified only through discourse.
In contrast to ordinary communicative interaction in which speakers unproblematically exchange information, discourse brackets the validity of disputed claims
and seeks to provide argumentative justification for them. As we shall see, for
Habermas the unique dialogical structure of argumentation that attempts to solicit
voluntary assent independent of any external or internal constraint other than that
of the better argument is itself a paradigm of reason. Significantly, Habermas makes
two observations about discourse that are decisive for his refutation of decisionism.
First, he observes that discourse is already entrenched in the horizon (or presuppositional background) of ordinary communicative interaction insofar as every engagement is premissed upon the assumption that the speaker is accountable for his
actions:
When we regard a person as a subject rather than as a mere object we can

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manipulate, we unavoidably hold him accountable. We must assume...that he
would tell us why he acted as he did in a given situation rather than otherwise...we expect that the acting subject intentionally follows all t h e n o r m s
that he follows [and] we expect that he only follows norms that appear
justifiable to him. ~

Accountability (Zurechungsfahigkeit) means nothing less than that the speakers

could, in principle, justify their claims if challenged to do so. In other words, only
those speakers whom we assume are rationally accountable for their conduct are
taken seriously.
The second observation that Habermas makes [cf. Wahrheitstheorien (1973)] is
that truth, whether construed factually or normatDely, is itself inseparable from
rational discourse. Siding with Strawson, Habermas argues that the 'facts' to which
empirical propositions correspond are not unrelated bits o f matter existing outside
the scope of linguistic order but are, roughly speaking, linguistic interpretations of
relations subsisting between meaningful wholes (objects) and their properties. Values, too, are hermeneutically conceived as collective interpretations of need dispositions. Factual assertions and evaluations are true not because they correspond to
some independently existing substratum of objective matter, but because all persons
would assent to them solely on the basis of rational persuasion. It bears repeating
that universal assent is not sufficient of itself to establish the truth of a claim. The
intersubjective acceptance of belief means that "everybody can count on the
success or failure of certain actions; the truth of a proposition...means that everybody can be persuaded by reasons to recognize the truth claim of the statement as
being justified. ''9 Successful interaction, for example, may be facilitated by norms
that function ideologically in and through a process of concealment whereby agents
are misled into identifying the culturally disguised interests of a predominant class
with the interests of society at large. The difference between a truth-founding
consensus and a false one is that the former is reached independently of any
external or internal (ideological) constraint.
The preceding remarks suffice to lay out Habermas's refutation of decisionism.
This refutation strikes at the heart of the decisionist position by essentially arguing
that human existence as such carries with it certain obligations that are not subject
to choice. The minimum conditions for human existence entail participation in a
normatively structured speech community and, hence, entail a tacit deference to
the correctness and truth of one's conduct. The implicit commitment to the truth
and correctness of one's conduct in turn implies accountability and a willingness
to offer reasons in justification o f one's commitment if challenged to do so.
Habermas's refutation of decisionism strikes me as highly convincing. The
sceptic who plays language games while refusing to justify the validity claims
implicit in his utterences is convicted of inconsistency (because he repudiates his
own intentions) or incompetence (if his refusal stems from a failure to comprehend
the meaning of his actions). Put simply, the commitment to reason is independent
of any decision to reason and we may add that such a commitment must accom-

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pany communicative comportment in every social milieu. Leaving aside Habermas's
refutation of decisionism, I would now like to turn to the remainder of his
argument, which attempts to deduce one particular paradigm of rationality from
the notion of reasoned justification. It is important to bear in mind that a complete
refutation of ethical relativism will have to show not only that a commitment to
reason is necessarily presupposed in communication, but that the normative presuppositions underlying justificatory practice are not relative to changing Weltanschauungen.
The formal properties of argumentation mentioned by Habermas fall into two
major categories: the conditions concerning the progressive radicalization of
discourse, and the conditions pertaining to the ideal speech situation. The former
are based upon Stephan Toulmin's analysis of the structure of argumentation,
which he devides into four elements: the conclusion to be grounded, the data
offered in support of the conclusion, the warrant connecting the data and the
conclusion in a relationship of support, and the backing for the warrant. The main
point of his discussion of these properties is to underline the tendency toward
progressive radicalization that any argument must accommodate. Thus, just as a law
may require justification if it is lacking unanimous approval, so too, if the backing
that is introduced in support of this warrant (e.g., some theory) is disputed, it will
have to be justified. And so on until agreement is reached. The latter grouping,
formal argumentative conditions, carries the principal burden of Habermas's deduction and therefore merits closer scrutiny.
Reasoned justification differs from other avenues of gaining assent, such as
threat of violence or brainwashing, insofar as its efficacy depends entirely upon the
force of the better argument - the meaning of which Habermas attempts to capture
in the notion of the ideal speech situation. In order to assure that an issue will be
decided solely on the merits of the better argument, the pragmatic context of
discourse would itself have to guarantee conditions of openness and impartiality,
viz., it would have to ensure (1) the symmetrical distribution of chances to select
and employ speech acts so that no agent or agents could dominate the role of
speaker, (2) the freedom of dialogue from both external coercion (e.g., threats of
violence or economic and political pressure) and internal ideological constraint, (3)
the authenticity of the speakers, so that they do not deceive themselves or others
about their own "inner nature" (i.e., their true feelings and interests), and (4) the
suspension of all privileges and unilaterally binding norms, r~
There are two features of the ideal speech situation that have drawn extensive
comment from critics. First, the authenticity and freedom conditions seem to entail
a concept of rational agency that has distinct Enlightenment overtones. Rational
agency is identified with the attainment of a purely reflexive state of mind that
has penetrated beyond the screen of preconscious prejudices and motives and has
brought all mental contents to explicit self-awareness. The assumption seems to be
that true freedom and rational responsibility (Mfindigkeit) are opposed to the
authority of traditional prejudices and covert psychological compulsions. Second,
the necessity of guaranteeing a symmetrical distribution of chances to select and

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employ speech acts while eliminating all privileges and unilaterally binding norms
entails a democratic form of life that is distinctly egalitarian and nonauthoritarian.
Habermas himself concludes that the ideal speech situation is counterfactual.
Even in modern Western democracies that formally institutionalize procedural rules
guaranteeing freedom of speech and association, the balance of dialogical give and
take is so tilted in favor of privileged corporations that control the organs of mass
media that the vernacular idiom through which society as a whole reaches political
consensus is itself thoroughly tainted by ideology.
Aside from the immense gulf separating true social democracy from its existing
facsimile, the ideal speech situation also entails desiderata that perhaps cannot
possibly be fulfilled, e.g., discourse without limitation as to duration, participation,
or degree of radicalness. For this reason, Habermas concedes that the ideal speech
situation, however much it is operatively effective in actual communication, is
utopian in content.
The utopian dimension of Habermas's theory raises serious doubts about the
success of his ethical project. If, as Habermas sometimes suggests, the ideal speech
situation is to function principally as a heuristic device in the social sciences for
hypothetically reconstructing hidden (because ideologically repressed) interest
positions, then no matter what its methodological shortcomings might be, its
ethical implications would be nugatory. 11 In his debate with Gadamer and elsewhere, however, Habermas emphatically affirms the ethical function of this regulative ideal, if not as a goal toward which we as moral agents ought to aspire, then
at least as a standard for critically appraising actual sociopolitical consensus. On the
latter reading, which I take to be faithful to Habermas's primary intent, we are
enjoined to adopt an attitude of scepticism regarding all de facto social consensus.
It is this attitude that informs Habermas's endeavor to reconstruct social theory on
the basis of psychotherapeutic presuppositions, for it authorizes us to question
behind the 'pathological' language games of an ideologically duped public:
...the depth-hermeneutic experience teaches that in...the context of tradition
...the repressiveness of coercive relationships prevails...thus, every consensus
which terminates in an understanding of meaning stands in principle under
the suspicion of being pseudo-communicatively coerced. Enlightenment
demands in all cases...that reason be brought to bear as the principle of noncoercive communication in contrast to the experiential reality....It binds
understanding to the principle of rational discourse, as a consequence of
which truth would only be guaranteed through that consensus which would
be aimed at under idealized conditions of unlimited and domination-free
communication.12
As Gadamer points out, this formulation of the ethical function of the ideal speech
situation does not extricate Habermas from the difficulties that he inherits from
the German Enlightenment, expecially Kant. Kant observed that 'ought' (what
reason commands universally) must not overstep 'can' (what is possible given the
conditions of human social existence). Kant's attempt to reconcile the uncon-

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ditional imperatives of pure reason with the conditioned circumstances of biologically and socially determined human nature was judged a failure by his immediate
successors in the tradition. It is Hegel in particular who draws our attention to the
formal emptiness and abstract ideality of the Kantian law-testing method of comparing one's taken-for-granted customary maxims with a purely formal standard of
universalizability. The agent's interpretation of this standard is necessarily preconditioned by the very traditional prejudices it seeks to evaluate. ~3
Habermas's ideal speech situation functions in a way analogous to the Kantian
procedure and likewise presupposes the standpoint of pure reason. Gadamer has
criticized the utopian nature of this Enlightenment concept of rationality by
arguing that sociolinguistic prejudices necessarily constitute the background
horizon of all human understanding. Moreover, following Aristotle, he has forcefully shown that the very process of applying general norms to concrete circumstances
involves a process of reinterpretation by means of which these norms are qualified
to fit the peculiar exigencies of the situation. This alone would seem to preclude
any a priori theorizing about moral conduct. 14
Important as the above considerations are for any treatment of the ethical
relativism question, they nevertheless fail to dispose of all the possible rejoinders
that might be proffered in defense of Habermas's position. The fact that understanding is ineluctably conditioned by prejudices and that all value orientations
are legacies inherited from past tradition does not affect the transcendentalist
attempt to show that these prejudices may yet be necessarily and universally
presupposed in the conditions of human existence. One might, for example, view
cultural evolution as a process of making explicit fundamental values essential to
humanity as such. Again, the hermeneutic circle characteristic of molding general
standards to fit specific situations says nothing about the status of these standards
prior to application. At most, it suggests that the prescriptive, critical range of
general standards is indeterminate, but not totally indefinite (i.e., lacking any
definite meaning), is
It seems to me that if the Habermasian position is to be attacked, one must
indicate the very specific sense in which its model of reason is either (1) so utopian
as to be incompatible with the necessary conditions of social life, or (2)expressive
of particular cultural prejudices that are not intersubjectively valid.
Gadamer's debate with Habermas is especially germane to this issue because in
his effort to repudiate Habermas's position on both accounts, he too subscribes to
the view that rational accountability and reciprocity are a priori presuppositions
underlying communication.
Gadamer argues that Habermas's ideal speech situation, which warrants the questioning of every social consensus as potentially distorted, has the anarchistic consequence of undermining our basic trust in the reliability of language games:
A game partner who is always "seeing through" his game partner, who does
not take seriously what they are standing for, is a spoil sport whom one
shuns. The emancipatory power claimed by the psychoanalyst is a special

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rather than a general function of reflection and must be given its boundaries
through the societal context and consciousness within which the analyst and
also his patient are on even terms with everyone else. 16
This objection derives its impetus from the notion of accountability. To hold a
speaker accountable is to assume that he knows what he is doing and why he is
doing it. It means, among other things, that the speaker is recognized as rational,
i.e., as having the capacity to judge the rightness and wrongness of social norms in
relation to his own interests, and as sincere, i.e., as having both the capacity to
perceive his true interests and the willingness to convey his knowledge to others
honestly. The ideal speech situation, however, warrants our questioning others as
pathologically affected, as lacking the qualifications for rational accountability, and
therefore, as unreliable in matters of speech. It is evident that Habermas's theory
of communicative competence has the paradoxical and self-defeating consequence
of undermining an assumption, the mutual acceptance of which it posits as necessary for any communication whatsoever.
The model of rational justification proposed by Habermas is also criticized by
Gadamer on the grounds that it reflects an academic prejudice of the German
Enlightenment. Gadamer insists that reasoned justification cannot be grasped in
abstraction from rhetoric, whose modus operandi necessarily rests upon an appeal to prejudice and a recognition of authority. A natural kind of authority
devolves to one who has a command of language and knows how to use it well. The
privileged status of the rhetorician is not ipso facto nullified by the formal conditions of the ideal speech situation, which only exclude institutionally sanctioned
privileges and unilaterally binding norms. Hence, assuming that differences in
educational background persist in the ideal speech situation, one can expect that
disparities in actual communicative power will result in an attendant stratification
sanctioning the authority of some over others. 17 Aside from the authority that
naturally accrues to gifted speakers - an authority that is not excluded from the
ideal speech situation despite the fact that it obviously introduces the kind of
dialogical disequilibrium that Habermas seeks to avoid - Gadamer observes that
argumentative strategies are necessarily manipulative as well as dialogical. On the
one hand, reason-giving appeals intentionally or otherwise to the inchoate values,
interests, and needs of the receiver while at the same time molding them. Far from
being a dispassionate affair, the argumentative search for the truth invariably
engages passions and prejudices at many different levels, and it is precisely the
engagement of these prejudices that elicits recognition and agreement. On the other
hand, the monological effort to convince others is not removed from considerations
of dialogical reciprocity altogether, for the authority of the speaker is itself contingent upon the free recognition of the listener, who decides whether the
hortatory appeals confirm his own beliefs. In connection with this general point,
Gadamer goes so far as to suggest that even the mass-media technocrat is "educated" by the humble consumer who expresses his power through the scale of
preferences he brings to bear in the marketplace. 18

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The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has vigorously criticized structuralist
"intellectualism" for basically the same reasons that Gadamer criticizes Habermas's
universal pragmatics. Unlike Gadamer, however, whose social philosophy betrays
a conservative tendency to esteem the virtues of consensual solidarity and authority
at the expense of social critique and democratization, Bourdieu's radical sympathies
lead him to question not only the legitimacy of all de facto consensus - a point
over which he and Habermas are in accord - but the legitimacy of discourse as the
primary means for achieving rational consensus.
According to Bourdieu, structuralist intellectualism advances the viewpoint that
"language is the precondition for the intelligibility of speech...it follows that
because it is constructed from the strictly intellectualist standpoint of deciphering,
Saussurian linguistics privileges the structure of signs, that is, the relations between
them, at the expense of the practical functions, which are never reducible, as
structuralism tacitly assumes, to functions of communication or knowledge. ''19
Contrary to the hermeneutic posture adopted by Gadamer and Habermas, Bourdieu
maintains that language games, though seeming to be primarily concerned with
communication (the exchange of information) are in fact practices that have as
their main (albeit concealed) purpose the ritualized maintance of economic and
political relationships of domination. Thus, in his treatment of pedagogical
discourse, which is usually taken to be an example of communication par excellence, he shows that the function of efficient communication is sacrificed for the
sake of maintaining appearances. The quasi-religious aura of professorial charisma
perpetuates the sanctity of academic authority and the cult of decrees, thereby
contributing to the maintenance of the bourgeois ideology of rewards based upon
merit.
Reference to the limiting case of an educational system having no other
technical function beyond its social function of legitimating the culture and
the relation to culture of the dominant classes enables us to bring to light
some of the tendencies of the French system, which is able to communicate
so little while giving such prominence to the spoken word, only because it
always tends to give primacy to the social function of culture (scientific as
well as literary culture) over the technical function of competence .2o
The kind of discursive model of rationality that Habermas promotes under the
rubric of "pure communicative action" is identified by Bourdieu as one of many
different dispositions toward communicative practice that are accessible to one
depending upon social standing.
The disposition to express feelings and judgements in words, which is greater
the higher the level in the social hierarchy, is only one dimension of the disposition, demanded more and more the higher the educational hierarchy and
the hierarchy of occupations, to manifest, even in one's practice, the capacity
to stand aloof from one's practice and from the rule governing that practice.
Contrary to appearances, nothing is more opposed to literary ellipsis or
metaphor...than the practical metaphors...which enable working-class speech

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to supply all or part of the verbal information by implicit (or gestural)
reference to the situation and circumstances...21
The outcome of Bourdieu's analysis is that the priority given to purely discursive
rationality in Western society is not due to its embeddedness in the nature of communication as such, but is rather a function of its capacity to perpetuate interclass
linguistic differences and secure the privilege of those who are documented as possessors of "cultural capital". A different relation to justificatory practices would
require a shift in the distribution of social power among the different classes.
Bourdieu's criticism of linguistic intellectualism suggests that strategies of justification other than those sanctioned by the ideal speech situation may coincide
with our intuitions about rational persuasion. Ad hoc preverbal gesture, for
example, may serve to facilitate the recognition of truth and open up new horizons
of discussion. It might be helpful here to recall some of the justificatory procedures
practiced by students in the 1960s (the burning of draft registration cards, street
dramatizations of war scenes, demonstrations in front of military installations,
etc.). It is often rhetorical devices such as these that have a more compelling impact
on nonintellectuals than mere argumentative pedantry.
Where, then, do we stand with respect to Habermas's refutation of ethical
relativism? I venture to say that perhaps not all is lost for those of us who anticipated a higher yield from communication theory. However, before I suggest how
Habermas's position might be partially salvaged, I would like to review some of
the earlier objections to his theory.
One major objection raised by Gadamer against the ideal speech situation is that
because it is so utopian, it undermines our basic trust in one another. A moral
doctrine that authorizes a total distrust of social life ultimately subverts the very
foundations of its own possibility. Although it is evident that Habermas does not
intend to extend the sceptical posture beyond the point where it would threaten
social life in general, that, nevertheless, seems to be the unavoidable consequence
of his theory. In comparison to the unconditional demands of the ideal speech
situation, every de facto consensus must be judged to be forced and constrained.
The above objection to Habermas's theory notwithstanding, there is, I believe,
some kernal of truth in his claim that an expectation of reciprocity resides at the
foundation of communication. If such an expectation is indeed operative, then this
could provide moral grounds for adopting a limited, albeit empirically warranted,
critical attitude. Now the very fact that assent must be voluntarily given in discourse certainly places ethical restraints on how we go about our business. For one
thing, the weight given to voluntary assent means that the one with whom one
argues must be recognized as a fellow interlocutor whose speech rights merit equal
consideration. These rights include having the opportunity to respond, crossexamine, and proffer counterarguments.
To be sure, the extreme egalitarian interpretation of these rights contained in
Habermas's analysis of the ideal speech situation seems to be mistaken. Does having
an equal right to respond, cross-examine, and rebut necessarily entail a symmetrical

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distribution of chances for doing so? Should verbose, circumlocutionary usages of
language be penalized for taking more time than laconic or pithy modes of speech?
And what about those who are especially knowledgeable and have a command of
the language - are they to be restrained for the sake of diffusing the privilege and
power that accompany such ability?
Looking at the issue of reciprocity from the other side of the coin, however,
leads one to suspect that Gadamer's willingness to countenance the manipulation of
public opinion by the mass media errs in the opposite direction. The idea, for
example, that consumers in liberal democracies are equal partners in a game of
Socratic dialogue that includes such corporate giants as Exxon, General Motors,
and the United Auto Workers Union, stretches the limits of credulity. Here one
may find ample evidence for doubting the rationale behind much consumeroriented activity. Yet the kind of limited scepticism that we occasionally bring
along with us in our communicative transactions with others can at most have an
empirical warrant. Furthermore, such a critical attitude must be tempered by a
willingness to extend our recognition of accountability contingent upon a satisfactory demonstration of a like willingness on the part of the other.
In the final analysis, the reciprocity conditions that are entailed by the logic of
reason-giving are a great deal more general than those that are discussed by Habermas. Subsequently, although the logic of reason-giving admits of a plethora of possible rhetorical variations other than the conventional discursive procedure
championed by Habermas, this need not of itself force one into the relativist camp.
Nevertheless, it must be duly acknowledged that the reciprocity principle, universal
though it be, does not yield much in the way of any positive,prescriptive content
that might be used to generate a concrete set of moral recommendations. The difficulty, of course, concerns the generality of this quasi-transcendental principle - a
generality that makes the satisfaction of the principle compatible with an indeterminate, but not wholly indefinite, range of social and political arrangements. As
Gadamer notes,
The ideal of a shared life under conditions of uncoercive communication is
therefore just as binding as it is indeterminate. Very different lifestyles can be
harnessed to this formal framework. Even the anticipation of life as it should
be which is just as essential to practical reason must be spelled out 22
Perhaps it is best to regard the reciprocity principle as a limiting condition that
functions as a critical barrier against any attempt to reduce social life to a technologically engineered matrix of preprogrammed responses. So understood, it
would explain why we tend to look unfavorably upon the manipulation of public
opinion by mass media. In any event, the ethical problems raised by the use of
rhetorical strategies in argumentation deserve far greater consideration than they
have hitherto received.

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NOTES
1. Among the relativists, Habermas's major opponent is Hans-Georg Gadamer, whose Wahrheir und Methode (Tfibingen, 1960) is at once an attempt to restore the idea of practical
truth to the Geisteswissenschaften in opposition to historicism while at the same time
preserving the historicity of cultural transmission [cf. Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (Frankfurt, 1967), pp. 264-901. Habermas's debate with Popper is contained within an anthology of essays translated into English by Glyn Adey and David
Frishy entitled The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology (London, 1976). Cf. J. Beatty,
"Communicative Competence and the Skeptic," Philosophy and Social Criticism (Fall,
1979).
2. J. Habermas, "What is Universal Pragmatics," in Communication and the Evolution of
Society, ed. and trans. T. McCarthy (Boston, 19795, p. 1.
3. Ibid., p. 34; also, cf. J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford, 1962); and J.R.
Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge, 1969).
4. J. Habermas, "Towards a Theory of Communicative Competence," lnquiry 13 (1970):
3 6 6 - 6 7 ; see also N. Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, MA, 1965).
5. Habermas, Zur Logik, pp. 1 6 6 - 6 7 , 1 7 0 - 1 , 214-15, 2 1 9 - 2 1 ; also see L. Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations (New York, 1953); Blue and Brown Books (Berkeley, 1969);
and Remarks on the bbundations of Mathematics (Oxford, 1965).
6. Habermas, "Universal Pragmatics," p. 2.
7. Ibid., p.61.
8. J. Habermas, "Vorbereitende Bemerkungen einer Theorie der Kommunikativen Kompetenz," in Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozial-Technologie (Frankfurt, 1971 ), pp. 1 1 8 19.
9. J. Habermas, "Postscript to Knowledge and Human Interests," Philosophy of Social
Science 3 (1973): 170; and "Wahrheitstheorien," in Wirklichkeit und Reflexion: Festschrift far Walter Schutz (Pf~illingen, 1973), p. 216; also of. P.F. Strawson, "Truth," in
Truth, ed. G. Pitcher (Englewood Cliffs, N J, 1964), p. 38.
10. Habermas, "Wahrheitstheorien," pp. 245-46, 2 5 4 - 5 8 ; also of. Stephan Toulmin, The
Uses of Argument (Cambridge, 1964).
11. J. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston, 1975), pp. 113-14.
12. J. Habermas, "Der Universalit~/tsanspruch der Hermeneutik," in Hermeneutik undIdeologiekritik (Frankfurt, 1971) pp. 153-54.
13. H.-G. Gadamer, "Llber die M6glichkeit einer philosophischen Ethik," in Kleine Schriften I
(Tfibingen, 1967), pp. 184-88.
14. Ibid.; also of. "Rhetorik, Hermeneutik, und Ideologiekritik" and "Replik," in Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik.
15. In the introduction to the second edition of Theorie und Praxis, Habermas acknowledges
that the application of general norms (the recommendations of enlightenment) to concrete
circumstances presupposes a hermeneutic circle. Nevertheless, he continues to demarcate
the theoretical justification of general principles of enlightenment from both the process
of enlightenment and political practice. Both Anthony Giddens ["Habermas's Critique of
Hermeneutics," in Critical Sociology (New York, 1979), p. 64] and Thomas McCarthy
[The Critical Theory ofJgtrgen Habermas (Cambridge, 1979), p. 2641 indicate the difficulties that this poses for Habermas's attempt to unite theory and practice.
16. H.-G. Gadamer, "On the Scope and Function of Hermeneutical Reflection," in Philosophical Hermeneutics, ed. and trans. D. Linge (Berkeley, 1976), pp. 4 1 - 4 2 .
17. In an unpublished paper, "Communication Theory and Democratic Socialism," Andrew
Feenberg discusses the discomfort that many writers on the left, such as James Miller
[Telos 25, Fall, 1975) and Alvin Gouldner ("Revolutionary Intellectualism," Telos 26
(Winter 1976) l experience with Habermas's ideal speech situation, believing it to be an

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18.

19.
20.
21.
22.

elaborate ideological cover for the defense of the specific interests of traditional, humanistic intellectuals.
"Replik," pp. 314-17, and "Scope and Function," pp. 22-25. Recently, Gadamer has
come to acknowledge that the rhetorical manipulation of assent that occurs in mass
industrial society needs to be counterbatanccd with greater dialogue between individuals
and corporations ["Hermeneutics and Social Science," Cultural Hermeneutics 2 (1975):
314]. Also cf. H.-G. Gadamer, Vernunft im Zeitalter der Wissensehaft (Frankfurt, 1976).
P. Bourdieu, Outline o[a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge, 1977), p. 24.
P. Bourdieu and J.-C. Passcron, Reproduction, Societ2 and Culture, trans. R. Nice
(London, 1977), p. 124.
Ibid., p. 117.
"Replik," p. 316.