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(1982) Habermas, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
"Practical questions", according to Habermas, "admit of truth":1 "just (richtige) norms must be capable of being grounded in a similar way to true statements".2 Truth, on his view, means "warranted assertibility": this is shown when participants enter into a discourse and "a consensus can be realized under conditions that identify it as a justified consensus".3 If, he writes, "philosophical ethics and political theory are supposed to disclose the moral core of the general consciousness and to ">reconstruct it as a normative concept of the moral, then they must specify criteria and provide reasons: they must, that is, produce theoretical knowledge".4 Thus for Habermas judgements about moral and political questions can be rationally grounded and differences about such questions can be rationally resolved.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-16763-0_8
Full citation:
Lukes, S. (1982)., Of Gods and demons: Habermas and practical reason, in J. B. Thompson & D. Held (eds.), Habermas, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 134-148.
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