The Nature of Political Theory

288 The Nature of Political Theory

empirical sciences may, in future, provide indirect confirmation of the reconstructive
philosophical theory itself.

Discourse Ethics and Deliberative Democracy

One of the important aspects of Habermas’s communicative theory is its strong
implications for theories of ethics and politics. Yet discourse, as a basis of political and
social legitimacy, does move the argument away from asubstantivetowards a more
proceduralconception of ethical and political theory. Ethics and politics are seen to
presuppose a moral community whose norms are fully, freely, and equally acceptable
to those subject to them.
In many ways Habermas’s conception of ethics is mid-way between Hegel and
Kant. As Habermas comments, ‘discourse ethics takes up [the] basic intention of
Hegel so as to redeem it by Kantian means’ (Habermas 1990: 197). Habermas is
a deontologist concerned with the procedurally right over the good, however, at
the same time, he is also sensitive to contextualist, conventionalist, and historical
claims concerning ethics. His position (particularly his position from the 1990s), can
be described as a conventionalist-inclined neo-Kantianism. The neo-Kantianism is
manifest in his concern for the procedurally right, his formalist defence of a procedure
of moral and political argumentation, rather than immediately fostering substantive
moral principles, and his concern with procedural universalism. His Hegelian, and
quasi-Aristotelian emphasis, is manifest in his implicit conventionalism and historical
sensitivity, as well as his focus on intersubjectivity. The crucial ethical question, for
Habermas, is not focused on the individualsubjectraising a categorical imperative
for itself, it is rather centred on whatintersubjectivelyvalid norms (and ultimately
institutions and institutional processes) would participants, in an ideal speech com-
munity, agree to best characterize their common rational concerns. In other words,
ethical norms arisefromestablished reasonable communication practiceswithincon-
ventional society. Habermas, in one sense, is therefore reformulating the Kantian
imperative that one ought rationally to will those common intersubjectively valid
norms, which are implicit in any ideal socially communicative act. Insofar as one does
‘will’ these intersubjective norms, one furthers the realization of the ideal communal
life—an update on the kingdom of ends.
Habermasian discourse ethics are premised on a moderately cooperative com-
munity (an existing lifeworld), who are already engaged in discourse or deliberation.
It is premised therefore on human praxis. It maintains that by examining what is pre-
supposed in the existing conventions of reasonable communication, one can ascertain,
extract, and reflect on these basic presupposed components, for example, the valid-
ity claims discussed earlier. These presupposed components embody (procedurally)
the basic structure of an ethics and an account of justice that only those norms,
which are actually commonly accepted (and rationally shown) as presupposed within
communicative endeavours, will meet with the approval of participants in discourse.
There is an implicit egalitarian and non-repressive (or non-dominatory) principle