Jürgen Habermas on Communicative Freedom
Lorenzo Ruga, SMITHHence, it is not in the least superstitious. It is even a counsel of realism, to look for the unforeseeable and unpredictable, to be
prepared for and to expect “miracles” in the
political realm.
Hannah Arendt
Introduction
S A PHILOSOPHER of real history, Foucault had been despairing on the faculty of the human will.1 The (human will) will never change. It will continue to be a power, a faculty to perpetuate domination among fellowmen. It will always be used to enslave and to coerce. We have not learned from history. This will to power does not hesitate to resurrect. Perhaps there has never before been a more dangerous ideology than this will to good (Friedrich Nietzsche). When we look back to history, the human being even those who have good will did not change the world. Very few does and still very plural are those darkened by bad will. But the question lies on,
“Why have we been putting our gaze on the past as our guiding principle? Can we not see that there is a vast present and the future? Hope then for the best, hope for the miracle that will happen to reason. Well, is not a thousand years not enough to make a verdict? We have been patient of extending this concept of miracle would happen but in fact, they are still phantoms. If it did not happen, therefore it will never happen. This cyclical corruption in the will must be ended to which he told us of the care of the self. Not through others but only through the self. Foucault is tied in the horror of history and the horror of existing unreason. Habermas in an optimistic side do not disregard historical lessons as nonsensical. However, he suggests a continues renewal from the dissolution of the exemplary past to unbounded future.
Objecting to this is that consensus as a plural will is not a possible source of good reason. We are again trapped in the subjective element in Kant. Can anything good can come out from reason? Can the human reform itself? Yes. The human being is a performer of miracles. Hannah Arendt says,
The decisive difference between the “infinite
improbabilities” on which the reality of our earthly life rests and the miraculous character in those events which establish historical reality is that, in the realm of human affairs, we know the author of the “miracles.” It is men
who perform them – men who because they have received the twofold gift of freedom and action can establish a reality of their own. 2
1 Bent Flyvbjerg, Ideal Theory, Real Rationality: Habermas Versus Foucault and Nietzsche, 1. Accessed
May 4, 2015.
2 Glen T. Martin, Ascent to Freedom, 27. Accessed May 4, 2015.
The Critical Theory
Originated and deviated from Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s negative dialectic in the critical theory tradition, Habermas is not despairing from the possible renewal of societies from the slumber of selfishness. He also do not despair from the possibility of arriving at correct reason that will emerge from Enlightenment. We here remember Hegel of the absolute spirit. We have to be critical but
we don’t end up to critique. We ought to communicate. This is to amplify the power of language in which human beings have a common ground. He envisioned that the only possible thing that we can do is to communicate to others in order to voice out what we needed and what we want to happen. And in turn, in the name of the human content dwelling from the oppressed, they are heard and addressed. Freedom is realized widening the doors of communication and charity. This is his philosophy of communicative rationality. He believes that the current society is a sick society due to lack of understanding or distorted communication. To be fully human needs a constant self-reflection of the words we say and the actions we do. We communicate so that problems are addressed and as addressed, ends to freedom. There is no freedom, or freedom and happiness is not enjoyed by all because only the rich have access to these sources. This communication search
for correct reasons, new reasons, practical reasons and these reasons addressees the common good. These reasons brought by consensus settles the matter in dispute. Only through this kind of ideal speech rationality which is based on truth, truthfulness, normative rightness, and intelligibility can correct the sick condition of our present sick rationality, a rationality that dominates others, a rationality that is still characterized by exclusion.
The greatness of philosophy is its royal path to self-reflection. “Know thyself,” says Socrates. Science does not sit down to reflect on the consequences. Progress is always in the context of a good life. And this good life is not for the few but for all. Domination of meaningless mechanisms creates the experience of meaninglessness. Societies cannot remain in this instrumental rationality of methods. It must be a We-Rationality that is recreated always for the good of everyone. This is done through a procedure by communication in the public sphere. This public sphere is not a rationality of rebellious people but a communion of voices coming from the heart. Proceeding from Aristotle’s concept of the good life, Kant argues that we should determine the good life not in terms of its contents, namely as a form of life to be realized. It is no longer the instrumental that dictates what is good for the people but it is the people that voiced out what is good for them. Rather, we determine what is correct on the basis of the procedure we adopt to decide what we should do. It is this procedure which is supposedly rational.
Critical theory is not to produce societies via description, but to understand societies and change it. The goal of communication is emancipation of the non-state actors. Linklater contends that knowledge of society, its practices and institutions is of necessary incomplete if it lacks emancipatory purpose. Beginning from understanding and expressed in language, by surrendering ourselves to good will and to the common good, can turn the world into a polis,3 a polis of a good and just life. Only by this surrender to the good that freedom can be achieved. This surrender is
founded from a sharp understanding of the ethics of the same species4 as Habermas puts is. It is to sharply understand and respect the human content in all humans. Why the common good? Because we are not without the community. Albert Einstein says,
Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of community.
Sensus Communis and Thinking
It can no longer be the benefit of the few and the capable. The horror of existing unreason must be ended. By communicative rationality, a fundamental reconfiguration of authority and sovereignty must be understood in the right way. A view of rearranging the world must be done on the basis of truth and correctness through self-reflection. Without communication and self-reflection, freedom from error can never be achieved. Not anymore in the boundaries generated by Cartesian coordinates. We must surrender our reason on the basis of the universal reason to which identified as sensus communis (sense of the community). Sensus communis according to Shaftesbury is the virtue of the heart more than the head.5 It is to have conscious decisions sensitive to the Other. In Kant, the greatest realization of freedom is the abolition of war among states.
The redefinition of what (thinking is) is trending to Hannah Arendt and must be the rule. Every selfish thinking is not thinking. Anything that is unjust and not moral is not thinking. Anything that is hegemonic and coercive is not thinking, is not valid and lacks legitimacy and binding powers. Despite the fact that rational freedom is “a precarious achievement offinite beings,” and despite the fact that our freedom arises only through social interaction with others, our freedom is
“not at our disposal.” It is something that transcends the individuality of each of us and gives us the dignity attendant on being moral beings who formulate moral and legal principles through
mutual interaction. “We experience our own freedom with reference to something which, by its very nature, is not at our disposal. The person, irrespective of her finiteness, knows herself to be the irreducible origin of her own actions and aspirations”.
In Hannah Arendt’s sense,” Habermas philosophy “unleash the generative force of communicative
freedom”.6 In this world whose societies are still governed closed doors, we are reminded of Kant’s categorical formula of ends. The “formula of ends” of the categorical imperative expresses the claim that every person is to be regarded “always at the same time as an end in himself” and
“never” to be treated “simply as a means. “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at
the same time as an end.” Theconcept of humanity obliges us to take up the “we” perspective from
which we perceive one another as members of an inclusive community no person is excluded from.7
4 Ibid, 8.
5 Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (London: Continuum, 1975), 22. 6 Ibid, 31.
