Chapter Three Critique of the Philosophy of Language
Thinking with Habermas
To attempt to construct a Marxist philosophy of
language is necessarily to encounter the thought of
Habermas. For he has, in sense, already undertaken
this endeavour and it may be that he has succeeded
in it. Habermas’s philosophy in fact possesses two
characteristics that cannot leave me indifferent. The
first is that it constitutes the philosophy of language
as first philosophy. Habermas’s declared goal is to
effect a shift from the philosophy of consciousness,
which in the European (especially German) tradition
occupied a dominant position, to a philosophy of
language. This is why my favourite object is not only
admissible but central to the philosophical enterprise.
The second is that this first shift involves another:
an exit from historical materialism, which is one of
the origins of Habermas’s thinking, but one which
is not so much a rejection as a reconstruction. And
the reconstruction, which aims to preserve the
emancipatory dimension of Marx’s project, is effected
by a move from the paradigm of labour to that of
language. My favourite object is thus not only licit
and central, but has already been dealt with.
Habermas’s œuvreis sizeable and covers the
domains of philosophy of language, sociology,
political philosophy, and philosophy of law. But his
central thesis, never abandoned and defended at
