A CRITIQUE OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTION IN JURGEN HABERMAS’ PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

The fundamental problems of global crises have rendered our humanity distorted and putting our humanity at crossroads. The problem of global crises facing our humanity today has necessitated the need for using the Habermasian tradition of the ethics of communicative action in resolving human problems. This paper is aimed at reflecting on the critique of Habermas’s conceptualization and contextualization of communicative action as role playing. Communicative action serves as the basis for socio-political order and the hallmark for an emancipated global society. This paper adopted the method of analysis in navigating through this plethora of global crises because Habermas believed that communicative action guarantees linguistic transparency, moral accountability and human emancipation. This paper concluded that communicative action is the ethics of dialogue and the key to moral answerability, human emancipation, social cooperation and linguistic transparency. Communicative action is the basis for normative ideal social order, normalization and the stabilization of human behaviours. Communicative action is predicated on the indispensability of dialogue. Dialogue is part and parcel of democratic stabilization.