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In cases of systematic distortion, the meaning of the communication is not in a meaning that is ostensibly shared; it is in the disjunction between the interests of the participants in that meaning. Habermas goes on to elaborate his theory of an ideal communicative situation where it is possible to argue through interests and so to resolve problems of human life – in the political discourse of social democracy, for instance. This points us towards “the transcending force of reflection.”¹⁰

One of the key vectors of distortion in Habermas’ account is the rise of “instrumental reason”¹¹ in modernity, an institutional-technocratic discourse of ends and means that obscures human interests in the everyday, subjective, communicative experience of “the lifeworld.”¹² To restore a self- and social understanding of interest – this becomes Habermas’ philosophical and political project.¹³

“I term as ‘communicative reason’ the capacity of social actors to operate in this space of reasons with a critical probe instead of fumbling blind. This ability manifests itself in saying ‘no,’ in loudly protesting or in quietly annulling an assumed consensus.”¹⁴ Habermas’ project was to create ideal situations for critical communicative action.

Habermas held great hope for social democracy and the creation of conditions where arguments about interest could be fairly had, and just resolutions reached. He thought that, after the horrors of the twentieth century, the European Union might evolve into a new model of cosmopolitan constitutionalism, escaping the narrowness of nationalism and Europe’s authoritarian past. He held out hope for the United Nations as a site of democratic governance in an era of globalization.

But by the turn of the twenty-first century, he had arrived at pessimistic conclusions. In a 1998 paper “Learning by Disaster,” he chronicled persistent failures to communicate and to learn – social, economic, and environmental.¹⁵

The world cannot be changed by communication alone, in part because the context of communication is one where interests are unbalanced by inequalities, where those with power are able to dominate processes of participation in meaning – and beyond communication, our interpretations and representations too. Not only is communication distorted; so are our meanings, both in the institutions of social life and the lifeworld of everyday experience.

The question, then, is what is to be done?

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¹ Michaël Foessel and Jürgen Habermas, 2008 [2015], “Critique and Communication, Philosophy’s Missions: A Conversation with Jürgen Habermas,” Esprit (8–9): 40–54, p. 40.

² Ibid., p. 3.

³ Jürgen Habermas, 1978, Knowledge and Human Interests, London: Heinemann, Chapter 8.

⁴ Jürgen Habermas, 1970 [1985], “On Hermeneutics’ Claim to Universality,” pp. 293–319 in The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, edited by K. Mueller-Vollmer, New York: Continuum, p. 315.

⁵ Jürgen Habermas, 1967 [1988], On the Logic of the Social Sciences, translated by S.W. Nicholsen and J.A. Stark, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 116–20, 148–49.

⁶ Jürgen Habermas, 1970 [1985], “On Hermeneutics’ Claim to Universality,” pp. 293–319 in The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, edited by K. Mueller-Vollmer, New York: Continuum, pp. 310, 316.

⁷ Jürgen Habermas, 1967 [1988], On the Logic of the Social Sciences, translated by S.W. Nicholsen and J.A. Stark, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 172.

⁸ Jürgen Habermas, 1971 [1974], Theory and Practice, translated by J. Viertel, London: Heinemann, p. 22.

⁹ Jürgen Habermas, 1970 [1985], “On Hermeneutics’ Claim to Universality,” pp. 293–319 in The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, edited by K. Mueller-Vollmer, New York: Continuum, p. 317; Jürgen Habermas, 1970 [1990], “A Review of Gadamer’s ‘Truth and Method’,” pp. 213–44 in The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, edited by G.L. Ormiston and A.D. Schrift, Albany: State University of New York Press.

¹⁰ Jürgen Habermas, 1967 [1988], On the Logic of the Social Sciences, translated by S.W. Nicholsen and J.A. Stark, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 172.

¹¹ Jürgen Habermas, 1981 [1984], The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, translated by T. McCarthy, London: Heinemann, p. 366.

¹² Jürgen Habermas, 1981 [1987], The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2: Lifeworld and System, a Critique of Functionalist Reason, translated by T. McCarthy, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, pp. 117–19.

¹³ Jürgen Habermas, 1978, Knowledge and Human Interests, London: Heinemann, pp. 306–11.

¹⁴ Michaël Foessel and Jürgen Habermas, 2008 [2015], “Critique and Communication, Philosophy’s Missions: A Conversation with Jürgen Habermas,” Esprit (8–9): 40–54, p. 49.

¹⁵ Jürgen Habermas, 1998, “Learning by Disaster: A Diagnostic Look Back on the Short Twentieth Century,” Constellations 5(3):307–20.

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Kalantzis, Mary, and Bill Cope. 2020. Adding Sense: Context and Interest in a Grammar of Multimodal Meaning. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 190–192. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108862059

Jürgen Habermas’ “Theory of Communicative Action” §AS2.0a