Page 24 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

1 What Is Universal

Pragmatics?*

I
The task of universal pragmatics is to identify and reconstruct
universal conditions of possible understanding [V erstandzgung}.*
In other contexts one also speaks of “general presuppositions of
communication,” but I prefer to speak of general presuppositions
of communicative action because I take the type of action aimed
at reaching understanding to be fundamental. Thus I start from
the assumption (without undertaking to demonstrate it here)
that other forms of social action—for example, conflict, com-
petition, strategic action in general—are derivatives of action
oriented to reaching understanding [verstandigungsorientiert].
Furthermore, as language is the specific medium of understand-
ing at the sociocultural stage of evolution, I want to go a step
further and single out explicit speech actions from other forms
of communicative action. I shall ignore nonverbalized actions and
bodily expressions.”

The Validity Basis of Speech

Karl-Otto Apel proposes the following formulation in regard to
the general presuppositions of consensual speech actions: to
* JT would like to thank E. Tugendhat and G. Grewendorf for their helpful criti-
cisms of a first draft of this paper. They will have their disagreements with this
revised version as well. J. H.