Dialogic Foundations 287motivating force of sanctions...is taken by the rationally motivating force of accept-
ing a speaker’s guarantee for securing claims to validity’ (Habermas 1984: 302).^19
Thus, in every act of communicative action, ‘the system of all validity claims comes
into play; they must always be raised simultaneously’ (Habermas 1979: 65–6). They
are universal and inherent in all speech which genuinely tries to reach an understand-
ing. These validity claims are the taken for granted background to any communicative
action, thus, the ‘participants presuppose that they know what mutual recognition
of reciprocally raised validity claims mean’. As Habermas continues, ‘I have proposed
the nameuniversal pragmaticsfor the research program aimed at reconstructing the
universal validity basis of speech’ (Habermas 1979: 5). This is neither, for Habermas,
an epistemological enterprise, nor a concern with the human subject, but one rather
wholly orientated to intersubjectivity, speech, and dialogue.^20
Three further implications are worth noting here. Habermas has been accused of
fostering, once again, foundational or universalist claims and riding roughshod over
diverse cultures and social difference. Clearly Habermas does feel strongly that some
cultures (such as the occidental) ‘have had more practice than others at distancing
themselves from themselves’ (Habermas in Schmidt (ed.) 1996: 417). Despite this,
Habermas is still convinced, minimally, that ‘all languages offer the possibility of
distinguishing between what is true and what we hold to be true’. He continues, ‘The
suppositionof a common objective world is built into the pragmatics of every single
linguistic usage. And the dialogue roles of every speech situation enforce a symmetry
in participation perspectives. They open up both the possibility for the ego to adopt
the perspective of alter and vice versa, and the exchangeability of the participant’s
and observer’s perspectives’ (Habermas in Schmidt (ed.) 1996: 417). To deny these
inner validity claims of language is to commit a ‘performative contradiction’. This
contradiction he sees rife in postmodern writing.^21
The second point to note here is that this is not an ‘extramundane’ context free,
asocial or ahistorical view of reason. Reason is still situated and, to a degree, con-
textual, despite being pragmatically transcendent. For Habermas, reason is therefore
both immanentandtranscendent. In Habermas’s words, ‘the validity claimed for
propositions and norms transcends spaces and times, but in each actual case the
claim is raised here and now, in a specific context, and accepted or rejected with
real implications for social interaction’ (Habermas in Schmidt (ed.) 1996: 417). A
related point to bear in mind here for Habermas is that we should not separate out
universals and particulars, or identity and difference, so rigidly. It is not a question,
for him, of considering cultures at the expense of universal reason, or universal reason
at the expense of cultures. There is relation between these phenomena, as he puts it,
somewhat abstractly, ‘Repulsion towards the One and veneration of difference and
the Other obscures the dialectical connection between them’ (Habermas in Schmidt
(ed.) 1996, 418). Third, in offering this reconstruction of reason, which underpins
all knowledge spheres and mediates between them, Habermas sees the possibility
of a new constellation of knowledge, or new possibilities for understanding. Philo-
sophy will be, as he says, a new ‘stand-in interpreter’. This, for Habermas, indicates
a more fruitful relation between the various knowledge spheres. For example, the