Dialogic Foundations 285Universal Pragmatics and Fallibilism
The question arises as to what this more fallibilistic rationality, rooted in inter-
subjectivity, would look like for Habermas? The discussion now moves to the centre
stage of Habermas’s developed thinking. In many ways, Habermas clearly accepts
the point that the more traditional foundational moral and political belief systems
are now untenable. As argued, he also disputes the postmodern reading. His own
alternative, which had been intimated from some of his earlier writings of the 1960s,
is to focus on discourse as a basis for social and political legitimacy. As Habermas
himself notes, there are strong parallels between his work and that of Karl-Otto Apel
(Habermas 1979: 1–2). Apel is concerned with the point that any meaningful action
presupposes some form of ideal intersubjective communicative community—a realm
of unhindered discourse—within which validity can be assessed. For Apel, all logical
argumentation ‘alreadypresupposesan intersubjectively valid ethics as conditions
of its possibility’. The preconditions of any rational argument are therefore reliant
upon certain conditions being met. Thus, there is a form of underlying consensual
community present in the way that we communicate with one another. For Apel,
‘This means...that no one can honestly come to terms with himself in his own
thought unless he has in principle accepted all the norms of sincere communication
predicated on the reciprocal recognition of communication partners’ (Apel 1978: 96–
7). All human interests and needs, which can be validated, would be open for debate in
this sphere of, what Apel calls, ‘non-repressive deliberation’. Thus, in summary, every
speaker presupposes an ideal speech situation and community. Emancipation, for
Apel, will be ‘the progressive implementation of the standard of ideal communica-
tion and non-repressive deliberation within the real communication community’
(Apel 1978: 99).
Habermas basically adopts a more systematically developed form of the above
argument. He tries to defend a more universalistic understanding of reason, which
is embedded in ordinary human discourse and knowledge claims. The position is
fallibilist, and yet at the same time, a modest universalist account of reason. It is
essentially concerned with what we presuppose when we speak and try to understand.
For Habermas, this perspective allows philosophical reason to work constructively
with all the various sciences or knowledge domains. Philosophy therefore embodies
a more reticent role, arbitrating between types of substantive reason. As he notes:
Even in the most difficult processes of reaching an understanding, all parties appeal to the
common reference point of possible consensus, even if this reference point is projected in each
case from within their own contexts. For, although they may be interpreted in various ways and
applied according to different criteria, concepts like truth, rationality, or justification play the
samegrammatical role ineverylinguistic community. (Habermas in Schmidt (ed.) 1996: 417)
As opposed to just unravelling the particular domains of substantive reason and
knowledge, Habermas indicates the common consensual underpinning rules which
function inanysuch discourse and have in turn deeply subtle but definite ethical