Page 71 - Democracy and the Public Sphere

66 Jürgen Habermas

This conception of universal pragmatics lies at the heart of
Habermas’s model of ‘communicative action’. Communicative action
encompasses two types of action which, in practice, combine in
varying measures. At one extreme ‘discourse’ explicitly thematises
validity claims and subjects them to discursive testing. At the other
extreme, ‘consensual action’ operates against the backdrop of
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intersubjectively recognised validity claims and on the basis that
it could, at any time, be suspended in favour of discourse whenever
the consensus comes into question.
Communication, of course, often resembles something other than
‘communicative action’. It’s often used strategically to engineer
consent by blocking discursive testing (shouting and sarcasm are
just two perennially popular tactics); and it’s often deployed with
the aim of generating ambiguity (as in many forms of aesthetic
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communication, for example). So why does Habermas privilege
this consensual ideal of speech and action? For Habermas, these other
pervasive modes of interaction are not separate from but derivative
of communicative action itself.
The goal of persuasion implicitly gestures towards egalitarian
relations, according to Habermas: ‘The illocutionary force of a speech
act consists in its capacity to move a hearer to act under the premise
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that the engagement signalled by the speaker is seriously meant.’
A ‘speech-act-immanent obligation’ (to provide grounds, to justify
and/or to demonstrate sincerity if called upon) empowers the hearer
(in a limited sense) just as the illocutionary force of the speech act
itself empowers the speaker. The ‘ideal speech situation’ consists in
equality between interlocutors and the unhindered scope for each
to question and defend validity claims.
Habermas’s ‘ideal speech situation’ has always provoked controversy.
We can only begin to take it seriously, of course, if we acknowledge
its status as a counterfactual. It is something that Habermas believes
is anticipated in communication – an unspoken aspirational norm,
rather than a concrete possibility. Precise equality between fellow
interlocutors would be as difficult to imagine as it would be to

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measure: in reality participants will occupy differential levels of
authority to act as ‘fi nal arbiter’ when the inevitable constraints of
time are faced; some participants, more than others, will command
high levels of implicit trust in the validity claims they raise because
of their status or reputation – they will evoke less discursive testing;
and the discrete boundedness of communicative encounters implied
by the terms ‘ideal speech situation’ or ‘reciprocity’ is shattered

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