Normative Rationality
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Normative Rationality
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Rationality by Jürgen Habermas
In order to explain the concept of Normative Rationality the concept of Communicative rationality by Jürgen Habermas should be outlined first: “Rationality” and “Coordination” were key concept of Jürgen Habermas typology of actions in language pragmatics serving as instruments to his analysis (Zierhofer, 2002, p. 1365). The typology was established to formulate a critique of modern society in which certain sorts of validity claims, ways of coordination of actions, kinds of binding, rationalities and forms of relation dominate. Habermas then comes to confront the typical modernistic features with non-modernistic ones (ibid.). The term “Rationality” in Habermas thus refers to “collective behavior”, a “quality of interaction”, “collective projects” or the “quality of social relations” organized in particular ways (ibid.). An important distinction is made between “communicative” and “instrumental rationality”. The latter refers to actions which are coordinated by potential outcomes, thus in a rather functional way implying “claims of validity” linked to functionality and “efficiency” (ibid.).This idea serves Habermas to describe the working of systemic integration like he sees the modernistic system. Instead “communicative rationality” has to be considered its “analytical complement”, being more “normative”, “antagonist” (ibid.). Here it is not only a certain kinds of validity claims which can be articulated, but simply “all different kinds”. The respective type of integration described by Habermas is “social integration” relating to “contexts of mutual understanding” and “dissent”, where argumentation is “unrepressed”. This involves power relations as well as moral norms (ibid.), being less typical of what is supposed as modernistic. On that basis we can progress to understand normative rationality following Jürgen Habermas ideas.
Assumptions by Jürgen Habermas
Habermas ´ argument relies on the following assumptions: (a) that communication can proceed between two individuals only on the basis of a consensus (usually implicit) regarding the validity claims raised by the speech acts they exchange; (b) that these validity claims concern at least three dimensions of validity (I, truthfulness; WE, rightness; IT, truth); and (c) that a mutual understanding is maintained on the basis of the shared presupposition that any validity claim agreed upon could be justified, if necessary, by making recourse to good reasons. This is an ideal situation which in reality is not achieved very often, in fact is results to be much more often (deliberately) obstructed (think of the exclusive mechanism of Michel Foucaults' discourses).
Rationality and Speech acts - understanding normative rationality
So we could say that for a speech act to be believed (and thus effectively changing the view of those who listen to it), it has to communicated in an open-minded understanding community. The effect of the speech-act is based on validation. The speech act has to be valid in three distinctive ways, which can be taken as (analytical) levels. Normative Rationality is one of these three levels, the other two are Purposive Rationality and Aesthetic Rationality. Habermas used Karl Popper's three world model for the theoretical construction of his Validity Claims (fig 1). All this being said it's now possible to explain what is meant by each form of rationality and as a consequence each form of validity:
Purposive Rationality = The claims must have Truth in the objective (physical) world, there has to be some kind of physical evidence which can be used to strengten the claim (think of real life examples, supporting abstract theory)
Normative Rationality = The claims must have Rightness (normative correctness) in the social world, The claims have to fit between the normative borders of the community in which they are made. This is a difficult aspect of validation, because these borders often make validation impossible (again think of Foucaults' exclusive mechanism of discourse).
Aesthetic Rationality = The claims must have Truthfulness (sincerity) in the subjective innerworld, People have to really believe the things they are saying. If they are not sincere this will be noticed by their public (think of bodylanguage).
References
Habermas, J. (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action. Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Zierhofer, W. (2002). Speech acts and space(s): language pragmatics and the discursive constitution of the social. Environment and Planning A, 34, 1355-1372.
Contributors
Paul Cuijpers (s0406309) en Mike van der Linden (s4094913)
Enhanced and links added by --SusanVerbeij 11:11, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
Enhanced by Janna Völpel, s3015041JannaVolpel 15:19, 7 May 2012 (CEST)
Edited by Robert Wursten
