Jurgen Habermas by Fultner Barbara;

Author:Fultner, Barbara;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1886909
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Ethical authenticity and the good life

As a moral theory, Habermas’s discourse ethics is predicated on a conviction shared by many moral philosophers today, namely that philosophy is no longer in the position to dictate a comprehensive theory of the good life that is both informative and universally valid (see IO: 3–46; Habermas 2003b: 1–15). Habermas thus carves out the moral domain from its traditional setting, the encompassing set of issues that have to do with flourishing, happiness and the good life, and restricts the task of moral theory to the reconstruction of the “moral point of view” from which we can impartially justify (and apply) norms for the treatment of persons in general. This modern approach to morality has not gone unchallenged, particularly by feminists and thinkers influenced by Aristotle and Hegel. In response, Habermas has developed an account of the “ethical employment of practical reason” that, though context-bound, is not entirely at the mercy of subjective preferences.18 Indeed, to appreciate Habermas’s discourse ethics as a moral theory, it helps to have some sense of his treatment of the “ethical” questions that once constituted an important dimension of moral philosophy, and that still trouble it today.

Ethical questions about the good life arise not only for individuals but also for groups. For groups, ethical questions “refer to a shared ethos: what is at issue is how we understand ourselves as members of our community, how we should orient our lives, or what is best for us in the long run and all things considered”. Our focus here, however, is on “ethical-existential” questions that arise for the individual, that is, questions about who one is and wants to be, or how one should lead one’s life so that it is “not misspent” (IO: 26, 27). Unlike moral questions, ethical questions do not yield universally binding answers. But neither do they merely yield the hypothetical imperatives of pragmatic reasoning, which have only a conditional validity that depends on the individual’s existing preferences, values and goals. Rather, ethical deliberation can lead to answers that are “absolute” or unconditional for an individual, as, for example, when one confirms a compelling call to some vocation, such as medicine (JA: 5). And unlike pragmatic reasoning, where each individual has “final epistemic authority” to identify his or her preferences, ethical reasons are open to intersubjective testing in discourse (IO: 25–7). To see how, we must start with the validity claim at issue in ethical discourse. We can then specify the appropriate audience and reasons.

The clearest examples of ethical-existential questions concern major decisions about the direction of one’s life, for example, decisions about marriage and career. At issue in such decisions are “authenticity claims”. As Habermas puts it, “the authenticity of a life-project can be understood as a higher-level validity claim analogous with the claim to truthfulness of expressive speech-acts” (IO: 27). More precisely, authenticity claims are complex validity claims that combine truthfulness (i.e. sincerity) with evaluative claims, that is, claims about the values and goods realized by one’s life choices.

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