v. 40 n. 2 (2020)
Artigos

Habermas, Rorty, and the Problem of Competent Interlocutors

PDF (English)
  • Claudio Cormick
Claudio Cormick
IIF -SADAF - CONICET
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36446/af.2020.368

Publicado 2020-11-01

Creative Commons License

Este trabalho está licenciado sob uma licença Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Resumo

In texts such as “Richard Rorty’s Pragmatic Turn” Jürgen Habermas defends a theory that associates, on the one hand, the truth-claim raised by a speaker for a proposition p with, on the other hand, the requirement that p be “defendable on the basis of good reasons […] at any time and against anybody”. This, as is known, has been the target of criticisms by Rorty, who−in spite of agreeing with Habermas on the central tenet that the way of evaluating our beliefs must be argumentative practice−declares that the only “ideal presupposed by discourse” is “that of being able to justify your beliefs to a competent audience”. We will consider two texts from 1971, -surprisingly neglected in most approaches to the debate-, in which Habermas did include such a “competence condition” to elucidate the notion of truth. We will discuss whether there are good reasons to relinquish such a condition and to refer, instead, only to the formal or procedural properties of argumentative exchanges, as Habermas does in presenting the notion of “ideal speech situation”. As we will try to argue, there are no such good reasons.

PDF (English)

Referências

  1. Boghossian, P. A. (2007). Fear of knowledge: Against relativism and constructivism. Oxford University Press.
  2. Brand, A. (1976). Truth and Habermas’ paradigm of a critical social science. Sociologische Gids, 23(5), 285-295.
  3. Ferrara, A. (1987). A critique of Habermas’s consensus theory of truth. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 13(1), 39-67.
  4. Ferrara, A. (1989). Critical theory and its discontents: On Wellmer’s critique of Habermas. Praxis International, 9(3), 305-320.
  5. Fultner, B. (1996). The redemption of truth: Idealization, acceptability and fallibilism in Habermas’ theory of meaning. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 4(2), 233-251. https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559608570833
  6. Habermas, J. (1984). Questions and counterquestions. Praxis International, 4(3), 229-249.
  7. Habermas, J. (1985a). The theory of communicative action, 1: Reason and the rationalization of society (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Beacon Press.
  8. Habermas, J. (1985b, May/June). A philosophico-political profile. New Left Review, 151.
  9. Habermas, J. (1989). Wahrheitstheorien. In Vorstudien und Ergänzungen zur Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Suhrkamp. (Original work published 1973).
  10. Habermas, J. (1990). Discourse ethics: Notes on a program of philosophical justification. In Moral consciousness and communicative action (pp. 43-115). (Original work published 1983).
  11. Habermas, J. (1992). Postmetaphysical thinking: Philosophical essays. The MIT Press.
  12. Habermas, J. (1996). Rortys pragmatische Wende. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 44(5), 715-742. https://doi.org/10.1524/dzph.1996.44.5.715
  13. Habermas, J. (2000). Richard Rorty’s pragmatic turn. In R. Brandom (Ed.), Rorty and his critics (pp. 31-55). Wiley Online Library.
  14. Habermas, J. (2002). On the pragmatics of social interaction: Preliminary studies in the theory of communicative action (B. Fultner, Trans.). The MIT Press.
  15. Habermas, J. (2014). Truth and justification. John Wiley & Sons.
  16. Habermas, J., & Luhmann, N. (1979). Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie. Was leistet die Systemforschung? Suhrkamp. (Original work published 1971).
  17. Iser, M. (1998). Habermas on Virtue. In The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy (pp. 148-154). Philosophy Documentation Center. https://doi.org/10.5840/wcp20-paideia19986146
  18. Kalpokas, D. (2005). Richard Rorty y la superación pragmatista de la epistemología. Ediciones del Signo.
  19. Kim, K.-M. (2011). Habermas on understanding: Virtual participation, dialogue and the universality of truth. Human studies, 34(4), 393-406.
  20. Kim, K.-M. (2014). Beyond justification: Habermas, Rorty and the politics of cultural change. Theory, Culture & Society, 31(6), 103-123.
  21. Kusch, M. (2017a). Epistemic relativism and pluralism. In Epistemic pluralism (pp. 203-228). Springer.
  22. Kusch, M. (2017b). Epistemic relativism, scepticism, pluralism. Synthese, 194(12), 4687-4703.
  23. Lafont, C. (2018). Communicative rationality: Vorbereitende Bemerkungen zu einer Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Preparatory remarks for a theory of communicative action, 1971). In C. Lafont, H. Brunkhorst, & R. Kreide (Eds.), The Habermas Handbook (pp. 288-305). Columbia University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/brun16642
  24. Levine, S. (2011). Truth and moral validity: On Habermas’ domesticated pragmatism. Constellations, 18(2), 244-259.
  25. McCarthy, T. A. (1973). A theory of communicative competence. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 3(2), 135-156.
  26. McCarthy, T. A. (1984). Reflections on rationalization in the theory of communicative action. Praxis International, 4(2), 177-191.
  27. Pettit, P. (1982). Habermas on truth and justice. Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture Series, 14, 207-228.
  28. Rorty, R. (1984a). Habermas and Lyotard on post-modernity. Praxis International, 4(1), 32-44.
  29. Rorty, R. (1984b). Solidarity or objectivity? Nanzan Review of American Studies: A Journal of Center for American Studies, Nanzan University, 6, 1-18.
  30. Rorty, R. (1986). On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz. Michigan Quarterly Review, 25(3), 525-534.
  31. Rorty, R. (1990). Truth and freedom: A reply to Thomas McCarthy. Critical Inquiry, 16(3), 633-643. https://doi.org/10.1086/448550
  32. Rorty, R. (Ed.). (1991a). Is natural science a natural kind? In Objectivity, relativism, and truth: Philosophical papers (Vol. 1, pp. 46-62). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139173643.004
  33. Rorty, R. (Ed.). (1991b). The priority of democracy to philosophy. In Objectivity, relativism, and truth: Philosophical papers (Vol. 1, pp. 175-196). Cambridge University Press.
  34. Rorty, R. (1993). Putnam and the relativist menace. Journal of Philosophy, 90(9), 443-461.
  35. Rorty, R. (2000). Universality and truth. In R. Brandom (Ed.), Rorty and his critics (p. 30). Blackwell.
  36. Rorty, R. (2010). Reply to Albrecht Wellmer. In The philosophy of Richard Rorty. Open Court.
  37. Seidel, M. (2014). Epistemic relativism: A constructive critique. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
  38. Wellmer, A. (1986). Ethik und Dialog: Elemente des moralischen Urteils bei Kant und in der Diskursethik (1. Aufl). Suhrkamp.
  39. Wellmer, A. (2010). Rorty on truth, justification, and experience. In R. Auxier & L. Hahn (Eds.), The philosophy of Richard Rorty. Open Court.