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Does Hegel's Critique of Kant's Moral Theory Apply to Discourse Ethics?1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2015
Abstract
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Several years ago Jürgen Habermas wrote a short answer to the question: “Does Hegel's Critique of Kant apply to Discourse Ethics?” The gist of his short answer is, “no”. Insofar as Hegel's criticisms of the formalism and abstract universalism of the moral law never even applied to Kant's moral theory in the first place, they also fail to apply to discourse ethics. Insofar as Hegel's criticisms of the rigorism of the moral law and of Kant's conception of autonomy do hit the mark, discourse ethics successfully draws their sting by reconceiving Kant's moral standpoint along the following lines. 1. Kant wrongly undertakes to establish the moral law as a “fact of reason”: discourse ethics derives the moral standpoint from two premises — one formal, a rationally reconstructed logic of argumentation, and one material, namely our intuitions about how to justify utterances. 2. Kant wrongly contends that we must be able to think of ourselves as both intelligible characters, inhabiting a noumenal world, and as empirical characters inhabiting the world of appearances: discourse ethics allows that in everyday contexts of action and in the context of moral discourse we have one character that has real needs and interests. 3. Kant is also mistaken in arguing that moral autonomy requires human beings to abstract away from their needs and interests and to will universalizable maxims for the sake of their universal form: discourse ethics understands moral autonomy to consist in the free adoption of a standpoint from which conflicts of interest can be impartially regulated, by giving special weight to the satisfaction of universalizable interests. 4. Kant misconceives the categorical imperative as an objective test of universalizability that is applied by individual wills in isolation: discourse ethics reconceives the moral universalism as an ideal of intersubjective agreement of participants in discourse. On the differences between the principles of discourse ethics and Kant's categorical imperative Habermas is wont to cite McCarthy's summary of his — Habermas' — position: “Rather than ascribing as valid to all others any maxim that I can will to be a universal law, I must submit my maxim to all others for the purposes of discursively testing its claim to universality. The emphasis shifts from what each can will without contradiction to be a general law, to what all can will in agreement to be a universal norm” (MCCA 67).
- Type
- Hegel and Ethics
- Information
- Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain , Volume 19 , Issue 1-2: number 37/38 , 1998 , pp. 17 - 34
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 1998
Footnotes
1
Abbreviations of Habermas' works referred to here are as follows:
BFN = Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997).
CES = Communication and the Evolution of Society (London: Heinemann, 1979).
DEA = Die Einbeziehung des Anderen (Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp, 1996).
ED = Erläuterung zur Diskursethik (Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp 1990).
EI = Erkenntis und Interesse, (Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp, 1973).
JA = Justification and Application, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993).
LC = Legitimation Crisis (London: Heinemann: London, 1976).
MCCA = Morality and Communicative Consciousness (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).
MKH = Moralbewusstsein und Kommunikatives Handeln (Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp, 1986).
OCCM = “On the Cognitive Content of Morality”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1997.
PMT = Postmetaphysical Thinking (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).
SE=“Sprechakttheoretischer Erläuterungen zum Begriff der kommunikativen Rationalität”, in Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 50 ( 1996): 65-91.
TCA = Theory of Communicative Action, two vols. (Boston: Beacon Press 1984 & 1987).
TKH = Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp 1982).
VE = Vorstudien und Ergänzungen zur Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp, 1984).
WT = “Wahrheitstheorien” in Vorstudien und Ergänzungen zur Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp, 1984).
WUP = “What are Universal Pragmatics” in Communication and the Evolution of Society (London: Heinemann, 1979).
Other abbreviations:
AA = refers to the Prussian Academy Edition of Kant's Complete Works, vol. IV, Berlin, 1902
AS = Autonomy and Solidarity ed. P. Dews (London: Verso 1992)+0, p. 194.
HCD = Habermas: Critical Debates, J. Thompson & D. Held eds. (London: MacMillan, 1982).
References
2 Originally Habermas outlines four validity claims, the fourth being that of intelligibility, but he soon pares it down to three. (WUP 2) These three validity-claims correspond to the three types of illocutionary act which Habermas' suggested taxonomy of speech acts allows — constatives, regulatives and expressives. (TKH1 443: TCA1 322) These in turn relate to the three value-spheres which structure the life-world, the scientific-technical, the legal-moral and the aesthetic-expressive. Since our concern is not with the claim to truthfulness, and its related value sphere the aesthetic-expressive, the claims to truth and Tightness are my sole concern here.
3 “I defend a cognitivist position … namely that there is a universal core of moral intuition … In the last analysis, they stem from the conditions of symmetry and reciprocal recognition which are unavoidable presuppositions of communicative action. … Any attempt … to defend a cognitivist-universalist ethical theory involves the public assertion that in your own society and in others all practical and political questions have a moral core which is susceptible to argument”. (AS 201)
4 TCA1 p.42.
5 MCCA 87-94. JA 50, 55-6. For an elaboration of the premises in the derivation of (U) see Rehg, W., “Discourse and the Moral Point of View: Deriving a Dialogical Principle of Universalisation”, Inquiry 34 (1991): 27–48 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Habermas does not provide the derivation, rather he states that such a derivation is possible. Some of the difficulties posed by the derivation of (U) are unearthed by W. Rehg op. cit.. In particular the second premise brings culturally specific and value-laden assumptions into play, assumptions about the moral relevance of interests and needs. But this threatens to blur the strict distinction Habermas wishes to draw between values and norms, between moral questions of justice and ethical questions of the good. See below.
7 “True impartiality pertains only to that standpoint from which one can generalize precisely those norms that can count on universal assent because they perceptibly embody an interest common to all affected”. (MCCA 65, 198: JA 12-13) Elsewhere Habermas claims that the principles of discourse ethics explicate the moral standpoint, i.e. “the point of view from which norms of action can be impartially grounded” and that moral discourses aim at “the impartial evaluation of action conflicts”. (BFN 97)
8 “We must view them (his interests and my interests) neither with our own eyes nor with his, but from the place and with the eyes of a third person who has no particular connection with either and who judges with impartiality between us”. Smith, Adam Theory of the Moral Sentiments III 3.3 Google Scholar cited from Wiggins, David “Universality, Impartiality, Truth” in Needs Values Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), pp. 74 Google Scholar.
9 Williams, B., Ethics and The Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana, 1985)Google Scholar.
10 See MCCA 182 & “Individuation through Socialisation. On George Herbert Mead's Theory of Subjectivity”, PMT 179-188.
11 “Justice and Solidarity: On the Discussion Concerning ‘Stage 6”’ in Philosophical Forum XXI (1989–1990): 39 (my emphasis)Google Scholar.
12 All references to Hegel, G.W.F., Werke in zwanzig Bänden, eds. Moldenhauer, E. and Michel, K., (Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp, 1986)Google Scholar. (Volume number in bold, followed by page number.)
13 See Korsgaard, C. “Kant's Formula of the Universal Law”, in Pacific Philosphical Quarterly, 66 (1965): 31 Google Scholar; See also Wood, A.W., Hegel's Ethical Thought, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 157 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 O'Neill, O. “Kant after Virtue” in Constructions of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 145–65Google Scholar. Höffe, O. Immanuel Kant (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), pp. 149–51Google Scholar; Allison, H., Kant's Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 85–94 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 On this see Lottenbach, and Tenenbaum, , “Hegel's Critique of Kant in the Philosophy of Right”, Kant-Studien (1995): 219–21Google Scholar.
16 The moral will here refers to what Kant terms “Wille” as opposed to “Willkür”. See Silber, John R., “The Ethical Significance of Kant's Religion” in Religion Within The Bounds of Pure Reason Alone (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), pp. xciv–cvi Google Scholar, and H. Allison, op. cit. pp. 129-36.
17 I have used the excellent English translation by Nisbet, H.B., ed. Wood, A., Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 162–3Google Scholar.
18 The task Kant sets himself in these works is that of justifying the moral law. Sally Sedgwick makes this point comprehensively in “On the Relation of Pure Reason to Content: A Reply to Hegel's Critique of Formalism in Kant's Ethics” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research XLIX, 1 (1988)Google Scholar.
19 The translator is not wholly at fault here, since his rendering, although inaccurate, is certainly permitted by an ambiguity in the formulation of (U) in the German:
daß die Folgen und Nebenwirkungen, die sich jeweils aus ihrer allgemeinen Befolgung für die Befriedigung der Interessen eines jeden Einzelnen … ergeben, von allen Betroffenen akzeptiert… werden können. (MKH 75; ED 12 my emphasis in bold)
20 Felmon John Davis thinks discourse meta-ethics requires the official version: “parties must have the same reason (to the same degree) to agree”. He does not note that this would have fatal implications for Habermas' overall theory. “Discourse Ethics and Ethical Realism: A Realist Realignment of Discourse Ethics”, European Journal of Philosophy 2, 2: 125–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21 Since all those affected have, in principle, at least the chance to participate in the practical deliberation, the “rationality” of the discursively formed will consists in the fact that the reciprocal behavioral expectations raised to a normative status afford validity to a common interest obtained without deception. (LC 110) Cf. also WT 173-4 & CES 88–90.
22 See also Rehg, W., Insight and Solidarity: The Discourse Ethics of Jürgen Habermas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 Similarly, Principle (D), claims Habermas, explicates the moral standpoint, i.e. “the point of view from which norms of action can be impartially grounded”. (JA 12-13)
24 Wellmer, Albrecht makes this criticism in Ethics and Dialogue in the Persistence of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985), p. 154 Google Scholar. See also Benhabib, S., Critique Norm and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory (New York: Columbia U P., 1986)Google Scholar; Cooke, Maeve, in “Habermas and Consensus” European Journal of Philosophy 1, 3: 257–8Google Scholar; and McCarthy, Thomas “Practical Discourse: On the Relation of Morality to Politics” in Ideals and Illusions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 198 Google Scholar. Habermas is not unaware of this problem (MCCA 305) but does not seem to regard it as a pressing problem for moral philosophy.
25 An interest can have both a particular object and a particular subject, such as my interest in being the one who loves my children. I have a particular interest in my children's (not in all children's) being loved. And I have an interest in being the one who loves them.
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