Habermas: A Very Short Introduction Very Short Introductions are for anyone wanting a stimulating and accessible way in to a new subject. They are written by experts, and have been published in more than 25 languages worldwide. The series began in 1995, and now represents a wide variety of topics in history, philosophy, religion, science, and the humanities. Over the next few years it will grow to a library of around 200 volumes – a Very Short Introduction to everything from ancient Egypt and Indian philosophy to conceptual art and cosmology. Very Short Introductions available now: ANARCHISM Colin Ward CLASSICS Mary Beard and ANCIENT EGYPT Ian Shaw John Henderson ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY CLAUSEWITZ Michael Howard Julia Annas THE COLD WAR Robert McMahon ANCIENT WARFARE CONSCIOUSNESS Sue Blackmore Harry Sidebottom Continental Philosophy THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE Simon Critchley John Blair COSMOLOGY Peter Coles ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia CRYPTOGRAPHY ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn Fred Piper and Sean Murphy ARCHITECTURE DADA AND SURREALISM Andrew Ballantyne David Hopkins ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes Darwin Jonathan Howard ART HISTORY Dana Arnold Democracy Bernard Crick ART THEORY Cynthia Freeland DESCARTES Tom Sorell THE HISTORY OF Dinosaurs David Norman ASTRONOMY Michael Hoskin DREAMING J. Allan Hobson Atheism Julian Baggini DRUGS Leslie Iversen Augustine Henry Chadwick THE EARTH Martin Redfern BARTHES Jonathan Culler EGYPTIAN MYTH Geraldine Pinch THE BIBLE John Riches EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH POLITICS BRITAIN Paul Langford Anthony Wright THE ELEMENTS Philip Ball Buddha Michael Carrithers EMOTION Dylan Evans BUDDHISM Damien Keown EMPIRE Stephen Howe CAPITALISM James Fulcher ENGELS Terrell Carver THE CELTS Barry Cunliffe Ethics Simon Blackburn CHOICE THEORY The European Union Michael Allingham John Pinder CHRISTIAN ART Beth Williamson EVOLUTION CHRISTIANITY Linda Woodhead Brian and Deborah Charlesworth FASCISM Kevin Passmore MODERN IRELAND Senia Pasˇeta FOUCAULT Garry Gutting MOLECULES Philip Ball THE FRENCH REVOLUTION MUSIC Nicholas Cook William Doyle Myth Robert A. Segal FREE WILL Thomas Pink NIETZSCHE Michael Tanner Freud Anthony Storr NINETEENTH-CENTURY Galileo Stillman Drake BRITAIN Christopher Harvie and Gandhi Bhikhu Parekh H. C. G. Matthew GLOBALIZATION Manfred Steger NORTHERN IRELAND GLOBAL WARMING Mark Maslin Marc Mulholland Habermas PARTICLE PHYSICS Frank Close James Gordon Finlayson paul E. P. Sanders HEGEL Peter Singer Philosophy Edward Craig HEIDEGGER Michael Inwood PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE HIEROGLYPHS Penelope Wilson Samir Okasha HINDUISM Kim Knott PLATO Julia Annas HISTORY John H. Arnold POLITICS Kenneth Minogue HOBBES Richard Tuck POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY HUME A. J. Ayer David Miller IDEOLOGY Michael Freeden POSTCOLONIALISM Indian Philosophy Robert Young Sue Hamilton POSTMODERNISM Intelligence Ian J. Deary Christopher Butler ISLAM Malise Ruthven POSTSTRUCTURALISM JUDAISM Norman Solomon Catherine Belsey Jung Anthony Stevens PREHISTORY Chris Gosden KAFKA Ritchie Robertson PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY KANT Roger Scruton Catherine Osborne KIERKEGAARD Patrick Gardiner Psychology Gillian Butler and THE KORAN Michael Cook Freda McManus LINGUISTICS Peter Matthews QUANTUM THEORY LITERARY THEORY John Polkinghorne Jonathan Culler RENAISSANCE ART LOCKE John Dunn Geraldine A. Johnson LOGIC Graham Priest ROMAN BRITAIN Peter Salway MACHIAVELLI Quentin Skinner ROUSSEAU Robert Wokler MARX Peter Singer RUSSELL A. C. Grayling MATHEMATICS RUSSIAN LITERATURE Timothy Gowers Catriona Kelly MEDICAL ETHICS Tony Hope THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION MEDIEVAL BRITAIN S. A. Smith John Gillingham and Ralph A. Griffiths SCHIZOPHRENIA MODERN ART David Cottington Chris Frith and Eve Johnstone SCHOPENHAUER SPINOZA Roger Scruton Christopher Janaway STUART BRITAIN SHAKESPEARE Germaine Greer John Morrill SOCIAL AND CULTURAL TERRORISM Charles Townshend ANTHROPOLOGY THEOLOGY David F. Ford John Monaghan and Peter Just THE TUDORS John Guy SOCIOLOGY Steve Bruce TWENTIETH-CENTURY Socrates C. C. W. Taylor BRITAIN Kenneth O. Morgan THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR Wittgenstein A. C. Grayling Helen Graham WORLD MUSIC Philip Bohlman Available soon: AFRICAN HISTORY INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS John Parker and Richard Rathbone Paul Wilkinson THE BRAIN Michael O’Shea JAZZ Brian Morton BUDDHIST ETHICS JOURNALISM Ian Hargreaves Damien Keown MANDELA Tom Lodge CHAOS Leonard Smith THE MARQUIS DE SADE CITIZENSHIP Richard Bellamy John Phillips CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE THE MIND Martin Davies Robert Tavernor NATIONALISM Steven Grosby CONTEMPORARY ART PERCEPTION Richard Gregory Julian Stallabrass PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION THE CRUSADES Jack Copeland and Diane Proudfoot Christopher Tyerman PHOTOGRAPHY Steve Edwards Derrida Simon Glendinning RACISM Ali Ratansi DESIGN John Heskett THE RAJ Denis Judd ECONOMICS Partha Dasgupta THE RENAISSANCE Jerry Brotton THE END OF THE WORLD ROMAN EMPIRE Bill McGuire Christopher Kelly EXISTENTIALISM SARTRE Christina Howells Thomas Flynn SIKHISM Eleanor Nesbitt FEMINISM Margaret Walters SOCIALISM Michael Newman THE FIRST WORLD WAR THE HISTORY OF TIME Michael Howard Leofranc Holford-Strevens FOSSILS Keith Thomson TRAGEDY Adrian Poole FUNDAMENTALISM THE VIKINGS Julian Richards Malise Ruthven THE WORLD TRADE HUMAN EVOLUTION ORGANIZATION Bernard Wood Amrita Narlikar For more information visit our web site www.oup.co.uk/vsi/ James Gordon Finlayson HABERMAS A Very Short Introduction 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York AucklandCape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala LumpurMadrid MelbourneMexico CityNairobi New DelhiShanghaiTaipeiToronto With offices in ArgentinaAustriaBrazilChileCzech RepublicFranceGreece GuatemalaHungaryItaly Japan South KoreaPolandPortugal Singapore SwitzerlandThailandTurkeyUkraineVietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © James Gordon Finlayson 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as a Very Short Introduction 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0–19–284095–9 13579108642 Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall Acknowledgements I am grateful to all my colleagues in the Department of Philosophy at the University of York. I greatly appreciated discussing ideas with Marie McGinn and Stephen Everson. Tom Baldwin was all I could have wished for in a colleague and head of department, and I benefited greatly from his friendship, encouragement and encyclopaedic knowledge of philosophy. Above all Christian Piller was both a good friend, departmental neighbour, and conversation partner, whom I made find out more about Habermas than he bargained for, and whose insightful questions always left me thinking more deeply and more clearly than I had before. In 2003, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to teach Habermas’s discourse ethics to an excellent class of students at the University of York. I gained ideas from the contributions of Robin Howells and Alexander Perry. I am indebted also to Matt Brown, Juliana Sokolová, Sonja Schnöring, John-David Rhodes, Charlie Burns and William Outhwaite, all of whom read and or commented on drafts of the book; to Marsha Filion, the commissioning editor at Oxford University Press, Alyson Lacewing and Peter Butcher at Refinecatch, who helped me to make order out of managed chaos. I would especially like to thank Dr. Ting-Ming Li and Connie Dibiasio both of whom, in different ways showed me care, generosity, and kindness, over the last few years. Finally, my parents Kathryn and Jon Finlayson, and Juliana deserve special mention, for their love, support and goodwill, upon which I have been able to rely in difficult times. This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface: Who is Jürgen Habermas? xi Abbreviations xxi List of illustrations xxiii 1 Habermas and Frankfurt School critical theory 1 2 Habermas’s new approach to social theory 16 3 The pragmatic meaning programme 28 4 The programme of social theory 47 5 Habermas’s theory of modernity 62 6 Discourse ethics I: the discourse theory of morality 76 7 Discourse ethics II: ethical discourse and the political turn 91 8 Politics, democracy, and law 106 9 Germany, Europe, and post-national citizenship 122 Appendix 139 Further reading 143 Index 153